Bill C-43 (Historical)

Budget Implementation Act, 2005

An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 23, 2005

Part 1 amends the Income Tax Act and the Income Tax Application Rules to
(a) increase the amount that Canadians can earn tax free;
(b) increase the annual limits on contributions to tax-deferred retirement savings plans;
(c) eliminate the foreign property limitations on tax-deferred retirement savings plans;
(d) increase the Child Disability Benefit supplement to the Canada Child Tax Benefit;
(e) allow for a longer period for the existence of and contributions to a Registered Education Savings Plan in certain circumstances where the plan beneficiary is eligible for the disability tax credit;
(f) increase the maximum refundable medical expense supplement;
(g) exclude emergency medical services vehicles from the standby charge;
(h) extend to January 11, 2005 the date for charitable giving in respect of the 2004 taxation year for the tsunami relief effort;
(i) eliminate the corporate surtax; and
(j) extend the SR&ED tax incentives to SR&ED performed in Canada’s exclusive economic zone.
Part 2 amends the Air Travellers Security Charge Act to reduce the air travellers security charge for domestic air travel to $5 for one-way travel and to $10 for round-trip travel, for transborder air travel to $8.50 and for other international air travel to $17, applicable to air travel purchased on or after March 1, 2005.
Part 3 amends Part IX of the Excise Tax Act to extend the application of the 83 per cent rebate of the goods and services tax (GST) and the federal component of the harmonized sales tax (HST) to eligible charities and non-profit organizations in respect of the tax they pay on their purchases to provide exempt health care supplies similar to those traditionally provided in hospitals. It also amends that Act to provide that a director of a corporation may, under certain conditions, be held liable not only for unremitted net GST/HST amounts, but also for GST/HST net tax refund amounts to which the corporation is not entitled. Finally, it amends that Act to allow, under strict conditions, the creation of a Web-based GST/HST registry to facilitate the verification of a supplier’s registration by a registrant for the purposes of claiming input tax credits.
Part 4 amends Schedule I to the Excise Tax Act to phase out the excise tax on jewellery through a series of rate reductions over the next four years.
Part 5 amends the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act to authorize the Minister of Finance to pay funds to a trust established to provide the provinces with funding for the purpose of early learning and child care.
Part 6 authorizes the Minister of Finance to pay funds to a trust established to provide the Territories with funding for the purpose of assisting them to achieve the goals of the Northern Strategy.
Part 7 amends the Auditor General Act to permit the Auditor General to conduct inquiries into and report on the affairs of certain corporations that have received at least $100,000,000 in funding from Her Majesty in right of Canada. This Part also amends the Financial Administration Act to extend the application of financial management and control provisions in that Act to wholly-owned subsidiaries of parent Crown corporations and certain parent Crown corporations.
Part 8 authorizes the payment of funds to various foundations, including the Federation of Canadian Municipalities for the purpose of providing funding to the Green Municipal Fund.
Part 9 amends the Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada Act to focus the mandate of the Foundation, to modify its governance structure, to establish qualifications for the appointment of the directors and the President, to impose a duty of care on the directors and the President and to require that the Foundation offer its services in both official languages. It also amends the Act to specify the type of funds the Foundation may receive and the appropriate use of those funds and to require that those funds be invested in accordance with policies, standards and procedures established by the board. In addition, the provisions of the Act respecting auditing, annual reports and winding-up have been expanded.
Part 10 amends Part 1 of the Budget Implementation Act, 1998 to broaden the category of persons to whom the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation may grant scholarships and bursaries to include not only persons who are Canadian citizens or permanent residents of Canada within the meaning of subsection 2(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act but also persons who are protected persons within the meaning of subsection 95(2) of that Act, for example, Convention refugees.
Part 11 authorizes the Minister of State (Infrastructure and Communities), pursuant to the initiative commonly known as “A New Deal for Cities and Communities”, to make payments for the purpose of providing funding, in the fiscal year 2005-2006, to cities and communities for environmentally sustainable infrastructure initiatives, in accordance with agreements to be negotiated with provinces, territories and first nations.
Part 12 enacts the Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador Additional Fiscal Equalization Offset Payments Act. The legislation will implement the arrangements of February 14, 2005 reached with Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia on offshore revenues. To do this, the legislation will
(a) authorize the payment of equalization offset payments to Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia for 2004-05 to 2011-12, set out the conditions under which payments will be extended to any of fiscal years 2012-13 to 2019-20, and authorize payments for that period should those conditions be met;
(b) set out the manner in which the offset payments are to be calculated;
(c) authorize the making of a cash pre-payment in the amount of $2 billion in respect of the agreement with Newfoundland and Labrador and a cash pre-payment in the amount of $830 million in respect of the agreement with Nova Scotia; and
(d) implement all other aspects of the agreements.
Consequential amendments to the Budget Implementation Act, 2004 respecting offset payments to Nova Scotia will also be required to ensure that 100 per cent offset is being provided for in fiscal years 2004-05 and 2005-06.
Part 13 establishes an Agency, to be called the Canada Emission Reduction Incentives Agency, to acquire greenhouse emission reduction and removal credits on behalf of the Government of Canada.
Part 14 enacts the Greenhouse Gas Technology Investment Fund Act. That Act establishes an account in the accounts of Canada called the Greenhouse Gas Technology Investment Fund to which are to be charged amounts paid by the Minister of Natural Resources for the purpose of
(a) research into, or the development or demonstration of, technologies or processes intended to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases from industrial sources or to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere in the course of an industrial operation; or
(b) creating elements of the infrastructure that are necessary to support research into, or the development or demonstration of, those technologies or processes.
The Act also provides for the creation of technology investment units in respect of amounts that are contributed to Her Majesty for those purposes.
Part 15 amends the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation Act to
(a) increase the deposit insurance coverage limit for insurable deposits from $60,000 to $100,000;
(b) repeal the authority of the Corporation to make by-laws respecting standards of sound business and financial practices for member institutions; and
(c) provide that the deposits of a federal institution shall automatically be insured.
Part 16 amends the Canada Student Financial Assistance Act to provide for the termination of the obligations of certain borrowers in respect of student loans in the event of their death or if, as a result of their permanent disability, they are unable to repay their loan without exceptional hardship, taking into account their family income.
Part 17 amends the Currency Act with respect to the Exchange Fund Account and the management of Canada’s foreign exchange reserves. These amendments include authorizing the Minister of Finance to establish a policy concerning the investment of assets held in that Account and to advance funds to that Account on terms and conditions that the Minister considers appropriate.
Part 18 amends the Department of Public Works and Government Services Act to provide the Minister of Public Works and Government Services with responsibility for the procurement of goods and services for the federal government, and to authorize the Minister to negotiate and enter into contracts on behalf of the Government of Canada and to make commitments to a minimum volume of purchases on its behalf.
Part 19 amends the Employment Insurance Act and the Department of Human Resources Development Act to allow the Canada Employment Insurance Commission to set the premium rate under a new rate-setting mechanism. In setting the rate, the Commission will take into account the principle that the premium rate should generate just enough premium revenue to cover payments to be made for that year, as well as the report from the employment insurance chief actuary and any public input. On an as-needed basis, the Commission may also contract for the services of persons with specialized knowledge in rate-setting matters. If it is in the public interest to do so, the Governor in Council may substitute a different premium rate. In any given year, the rate cannot change by more than 0.15% ($0.15 per $100) from the previous year’s rate, and for the years 2006 and 2007 must not exceed 1.95% ($1.95 per $100).
Part 20 amends the Employment Insurance Act, for the purpose of the implementation of a premium reduction agreement between the Government of Canada and a province, to allow for a regulatory scheme to make the necessary adjustments and modifications to that Act as required to harmonize it with a provincial law that has the effect of reducing or eliminating the special benefits payable under that Act. A consequential change is also made to the parental benefits provisions.
Part 21 amends the Financial Administration Act to provide the authority for the President of the Treasury Board to create a shared-governance corporate entity for the purpose of administering group insurance or other benefit programs. In addition, the amendments provide the authority for the Treasury Board to establish or modify those programs not just for employees of the public service but for other persons or classes of persons as well.
Part 22 amends the Old Age Security Act to increase the guaranteed income supplement by $18 a month for single pensioners and by $14.50 a month for each pensioner in a couple, effective January 2006. Also, the amendments increase the allowance by $14.50 a month and the allowance for the survivor by $18 a month, effective January 2006. In addition, the amendments provide for identical increases to the guaranteed income supplement, the allowance and the allowance for the survivor in January 2007.
Part 23 authorizes the Minister of Finance to pay funds directly to the provinces of Quebec, British Columbia and Saskatchewan and to each of the three Territories.

An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to make Certain Payments

[Barry Devolin, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to participate in today's debate on Bill C-48. I have listened to presentations that have been made here today and in the past.

As members know, I am a rookie member. As one of my colleagues pointed out, I am approaching the end of my rookie year. It is my understanding that Bill C-43 is actually the budget, that the government goes through a budgetary process every year, and this year when that document came forward, it was named Bill C-43.

The Minister of Finance spent months working with his officials and stakeholders to develop a fiscal framework that would serve as a budget for the country for a year. Bill C-43 is called “An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 23, 2005”. First reading was on March 24.

It is important for Canadians who may be watching this on TV tonight to remember that there is one budget, Bill C-43. That is the budget and it has been passed. I might add that when this was brought forward in the wintertime both the Bloc and the NDP quickly said they were going to vote against the budget. It was very clear to us as the official opposition that if we opposed the budget we would actually trigger an election in the wintertime.

While we did not support everything in the budget, and while there were several provisions we liked that did not go far enough or fast enough, we concluded that we did not want to defeat the government and cause an unnecessary election at that time. We abstained on that bill.

Subsequently there have been a couple of changes made to Bill C-43. That has caused our party to vote in favour of it. As we have said all along, it is not perfect, but it takes several steps in the right direction and we can live with it. That is really what it boils down to. Some of my caucus colleagues had to hold their noses when they voted for it, I think, but at the end of the day we did vote to support Bill C-43.

Bill C-48 is not the budget. It is not a budget, it is not the budget, it is not part of the budget, it is not an amendment to the budget and it is not a supplement to a budget. It is an illegitimate child conceived in a hotel room in downtown Toronto between the Prime Minister and the leader of the NDP; I can picture the two of them sitting there on the ends of two beds talking about what they were going to do.

They drafted Bill C-48. It would be interesting for Canadians to actually see a copy of Bill C-43. It is 110 pages long and filled with all kinds of complicated language and references to other supporting documents. If they were to see a copy of Bill C-48, they would see that it is only two pages long.

The rigour that went into the budget and the legions of bureaucrats who spent time knitting this together as something that could work for Canada were not in that hotel room. There were only two people in that hotel room and they wrote something that even in both official languages is only two pages long.

I have had some debate with my colleagues about whether this was initially written on a napkin; we debated whether it was and then whether they had to use both the front and the back of the napkin to get it all down. We all know that not so many years ago the previous prime minister presented what was essentially a handwritten note on a napkin and suggested that it had legal status and the people of Canada should have believed that it was a legitimate document.

Bill C-48 was a deal cooked up between the Prime Minister and the leader of the NDP and it served no purpose other than trying to defend the Prime Minister and keep him in power for a few more months. That is the bottom line. I would argue that the brevity of this document, the fact that there is almost nothing here, is proof of that point.

I remember when this came out. The leader of the NDP crowed that it was a great deal for Canadians. He crowed that it was a great victory for his party. He threw that $4.6 billion number around. He crowed about the fact that the corporate tax cuts he disagreed with had been removed.

Since that time it has been interesting to watch the government backpedal on this, saying that it is not really $4.6 billion, that the government will only spend the money if there is an unexpected surplus. Given that the government is setting the budget, one would think if it was being honest with Canadians and there was going to be surplus, it would know about it in advance.

Presuming that the Minister of Finance actually intends to deliver what he said he was going to deliver in the budget, there will not be an unintended surplus, in which case this will never happen. It raises the question as to whether the Prime Minister was being disingenuous with the leader of the NDP, whether the Minister of Finance was being disingenuous with the people of Canada, or whether it was the leader of the NDP who was being disingenuous with the people of Canada. That is on the spending side.

On the tax cut side, the leader of the NDP crowed that he had killed the corporate tax cuts. One of the parts of the original budget that we supported was the idea that there were corporate tax cuts. We thought they should have been introduced more quickly and that the cuts should have been deeper, but we at least agreed with the principle that we needed to move in that direction. We thought it was something we could work with moving forward.

The NDP ideologically disagreed with that at the time and that was to be expected. The leader of the NDP puffed up his chest and said that the NDP got the corporate tax cuts killed. Now we hear the Minister of Finance saying that is not really true, maybe they will be taken out and maybe they will not, but even if they are, they will be reintroduced later.

Again I ask the question of who is not telling the truth in this story. When we consider what the leader of the NDP has said, what the Minister of Finance has said, and what the Prime Minister has said, they do not add up. Somebody is being misled. Either this is meaningful, it means something and real consequences will come as a result of this bill, which is what the NDP suggests, or as the government now suggests, nothing very substantial will come as a result of this, “We will put the tax cuts back in somewhere else. We were honest with Canadians when we laid out our initial budget. We are not expecting an unexpected surplus and we can only spend these dollars if there is an unexpected surplus, so it actually does not meaning anything”.

In conclusion on this point, I say to Canadians that Bill C-43 is the budget. Bill C-48 is not the budget. It is a deal that was cut later. It is a piece of legislation before the House. Many of my colleagues today have argued very eloquently that their problem with this bill is that there was no due diligence, that there is no plan. There is $4.6 billion in proposed spending with no provisions for how that money is going to get spent. That is a very legitimate concern.

At the end of the day this bill is a political convenience, a piece of politically convenient politics. The two principals that negotiated it are arguing almost the opposite outcomes of what it is going to mean. It behooves all members of the House, in particular those in the opposition, to exercise their due diligence. It is part of our responsibility as members of the House, as watchdogs on the government, to make sure it is spending our money properly and doing things in the proper way.

It is inconceivable to me that anyone would suggest that Bill C-48 was developed through any appropriate or reasonable process or that there was ever any due diligence or anywhere close to the amount of due diligence that was necessary. The irony, of course, is the actual title of Bill C-48, “an act to authorize the Minister of Finance to make certain payments”. Someone should have put in brackets “the Minister of Finance who was not even there when the deal was done”.

My last point is that all Canadians know that there was great stress between the previous prime minister and the previous minister of finance, but I do not think the previous prime minister ever took the feet out from underneath his finance minister the way the present Prime Minister took the feet out from under his finance minister with this shoddy piece of legislation.

[Charlie Penson, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I thought the member for Edmonton—Leduc really hit the nail on the head when he talked about the irresponsibility of this Liberal-NDP coalition budget. It is really illegitimate.

I was on the finance committee during the prebudget hearings. We heard from a lot of Canadians about what they wanted. We thought the budget in Bill C-43 set out the priorities that government thought important. We thought that was its agenda for the year. Then we found out that they had an illegitimate meeting in that no-tell motel room in Toronto and produced an illegitimate budget as a result.

The member for Edmonton--Leduc was talking about the debt. I would like to ask him a question. Was it not the irresponsible spending during the last coalition of these two parties, the NDP and the Liberals, that ran up this massive debt and cost interest charges of $35 billion to $40 billion per year, which Canadians are having to pay?

[James Rajotte, Conservative, Edmonton—Leduc, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak tonight to Bill C-48, the second budget bill produced by the government, the Liberal-NDP budget.

It probably will come as no surprise to anyone to find out that I am strongly opposing the legislation for various reasons, which I would like to lay out before the House.

It should be noted that what the government has done to the budgetary process in Canada has basically thrown every parliamentary tradition surrounding budgets out the window. The Liberals have taken every fiscal framework in this country and thrown it out the window.

In the last election the finance minister from Regina stood up and said that there was no way we could afford these Conservative promises because we only had a $1.9 billion surplus. Months later, it turned out that the forecast was actually a $9.1 billion surplus. Obviously the government was not revealing the accurate figures.

In that respect it is nice to know that people like the member for Peace River, vice-chair of the finance committee, has actually rectified this by having some independent experts provide some forecasting so we can have some confidence in the numbers the government is producing.

It is so amazing to see a government in which a Prime Minister, without even phoning or consulting his own finance minister, meets with the leader of the NDP and Buzz Hargrove in a hotel room and rewrites his own budget that he presented in the House on February 23. The finance minister found out later on that the Prime Minister had completely rewritten the budget.

Imagine if the former prime minister, Jean Chrétien, had done that to the present Prime Minister when he was finance minister. This is a man who was ready to resign over the fact that his friends at Earnscliffe were not getting enough contracts. Imagine what he would have done if the prime minister at that time had changed his own budget.

It is unprecedented for a government to introduce a budget, saying that it is the budgetary document that has been worked on for a year, and then, a month later, say that it made a big mistake and that $4.5 billion of tax cuts will be taken out and put back in another budget.

As the member for Peace River pointed out, the Prime Minister stood in the House and said that we could not tinker with the budget because it was perfect and it was the ultimate document, but then a month later he stands in the House and says that it was a $4.6 billion budget but, “oops, I missed the $4.6 billion. We will put it into a new piece of legislation”.

That brings me to my second point. This legislation is the worst legislation I have ever seen and that has probably been produced in the history of this country. It contains no fiscal framework whatsoever.

Just for the reference of members, the 431 page budget plan 2005 lays out a lot of specifics as to where money goes. We could debate the specifics all we wanted. Then the government introduced Bill C-43, the budget implementation bill. Again we could debate the pros and cons of the legislation

Let me read some specifics: Increase the amount that Canadians can earn tax free; increase the annual limits on contributions to tax deferred retirement savings plans; extend the scientific research and education tax incentives; amend part 6 of the Excise Tax Act. Another good one is that part 2 amends the air travellers' security charge to reduce the air travellers' security charge for domestic air travel to $5 for one way travel and to $10 for round trip travel, for transport air travel to $8.50 and for other international air travel to $17, applicable to air travel purchased on or after March 1, 2005.

Why am I saying this? It is because this is how we introduce a piece of legislation. We can debate it, but all Canadians know that if they go to the website and pick up Bill C-43 they can see where their money is going. They either like it or they do not and they can debate it.

Bill C-48, with $4.5 billion on two pages, is the most ridiculous piece of legislation ever introduced. This is what it says, “This enactment authorizes the Minister of Finance to make certain payments”. That provides a lot of solace to those taxpayers working till June to fund the government. He will make certain payments. What will he fund? He will fund things for students. What will he fund for students? I do not know. The Liberals do not know. They will just fund things for students. They will go to universities across the country telling students that they will not have to pay as much for education. How will the Liberals do that? They do not know but they will do it because they will ensure there is a contingency fund of a few billion dollars.

They are going to fund foreign aid with $500 million. Where is that going to go? It does not say. This piece of legislation, at the very least, after they threw out the entire budgetary process of the Parliament of Canada and the Government of Canada, ought to have stated exactly where the $500 million would be going so we could have actually debated something, rather than debating a nothing piece of legislation.

I encourage all Canadians watching the debate to go to the parliamentary website or pick up Bill C-48 and read what an absolute farce it actually is.

Thirdly, the bill is fiscally irresponsible. The Government of Canada has been on a spending spree like no other in our history. From 1999 to this fiscal year, we have seen a 44.3% increase in spending that is unsustainable in the long term. It has completely forgotten about the debt. We have a $500 billion debt in this country. We have debt payment charges on a yearly basis of about $35 billion to $40 billion. I believe it is the largest outlay every year by the Government of Canada from a fiscal sense and the government is not even addressing that.

What that means is that the government is basically mortgaging our children's future to pay for present programs. That is fundamentally wrong and it is unjust to future generations of Canadians. The debt ought to receive the proper attention. We need a true debt retirement program over a 20 year period.

Another point is that this does not respect taxpayer dollars. It is very easy for MPs, especially on the left side of the spectrum, to stand up and say that we should spend more and more and that there are wonderful areas that need to be addressed. In fact, as members of Parliament we could all stand and say that this is a very good initiative so we should spend more on it.

However the counterbalance to that is that we in the House do not produce this money. We do not generate the wealth. We do not generate the jobs that generate the wealth across the country. It is Canadians working hard until June. Canadians work until June to fund the government's activities and yet it seems so little in the House do we hear from the other side any recognition of the fact that very moderate Canadians of modest means work until June to actually fund the activities that we fund.

It is very easy to spend other people's money. This is very sensitive to me. I want to indicate that I was raised in a very middle class home by two parents who were school teachers. They never made more than $65,000 per year, most of the time on one income, whether it was my mother or father working. They raised four kids and were paying 40% of their income in taxes and paying more and more in taxes and user fees each year. That is where the money is coming from.

All the NDP talks about is corporate tax cuts. Fine, let us not debate that right now, let us debate the fact that we are taking money out of the pockets of average Canadians who cannot afford the little things in life that they would like some money to actually afford, whether it is for music lessons or a two week holiday that year. What the government and the NDP is doing is taking money away.

We ought to rephrase the way we actually talk about taxes in the country. We are not taking taxes. We are taking people's life energy because what they are doing each and every day is getting up, going to work for 8 to 12 hours a day, pouring their life energy into something. What the government does, without respect for any of that hard work, is it takes away that life energy and spends it indiscriminately, wastes it on all sorts of programs, whether it is Kyoto, the firearms registry or whatever one wants to say.

That is why the whole paradigm, the whole shift needs to occur. We cannot just say that money grows on trees and that we will spend it in whatever way we please. We actually have to start realizing that taxpayers are working hard to produce this money and we should treat that money as funds in trust. This is not our money to spend. It is money to divert to the priorities of Canadians but at the same time we must have respect for the fact that they work until June for the government to even fund all these activities. It is fundamentally wrong and it needs to change but it will only change as a result of a Conservative government in Canada.

[John McKay, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member makes her argument based upon corruption, waste and mismanagement. I do not know how many times she repeated that phrase, but apparently the Government of Canada is corrupt for the purposes of Bill C-48. However, for the purposes of Bill C-43, it is not corrupt and her party supports it.

The hon. member and her party cannot have it both ways. Either the Government of Canada is in fact corrupt for Bill C-43 and Bill C-48, or it is not corrupt at all. Why did the hon. member vote in favour of Bill C-43 which apparently keeps a corrupt government in power?

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure tonight to put some comments on the record because I have sat here all afternoon listening to speeches from members opposite. The creative ways I have heard of balancing budgets and providing programs for Canadians have left me a little puzzled as to the reality of Bill C-48.

The Conservative Party of Canada believes that every person in this country has a right to the highest standard of living possible. Every Canadian in our country should proudly have a job. Every Canadian should have a future and a vision for their families. When we talk to families, what do they want? They want violin lessons. They want hockey lessons. They want to go on family vacations. They want to have opportunities.

If we look at the stats, particularly among women, the small business entrepreneurs in our nation are growing at a great rate. It has been one of our greatest contributions to our nation's economy.

It is about giving families the ability to have the post-secondary education of their choice, to go to summer camps, and to develop their lives in the direction that they so choose. It is about giving Canadians a choice, a choice to live the way they want to live in the highest possible standard. It is imperative to talk about the differences between what our party stands for and what the members opposite stand for.

At this point in time there is such a blurred line between the Liberals and the NDP that they have become almost like one party. Ordinarily speaking, when we come to the House of Commons, the government in power puts forth a budget and we vote on it, and we put our points across. There has been the most unusual experience of the Liberals and the NDP getting together to put forth a quick put-together budget that has a horrendous amount of promises in it with no plan behind it. When ones spends these horrendous amounts of dollars, there has to be a plan attached to it.

There is one thing that also occurred to me as I was listening to the speeches. In our democratic society, we stand for democracy. That means that Canadians have a right to vote for whomever they want to be in government. There was nothing before the last election to suggest that Canadians voted for the Liberals and the NDP to run the finances of this country. This country was very afraid to put things out because there was a lot of fearmongering before the election and the fearmongering was all based upon the scandal and what would happen with the Gomery commission.

Just to review, the Gomery commission was shut down, just left there and neglected until after the election. I can see now that the present government did that for a very good reason. If that kind of information had come out about the scandal and about the misuse of dollars, about how bags of money were handed to Liberal friends, about how taxpayer money was spent on the last Liberal election, the Liberals would never have been elected.

In retrospect, it was probably a very clever, though devious, political move to push that election forward before the Gomery report was allowed to come out and actually addressed what was happening in Canada.

It is very unusual that another party would prop up a government that has a proven scandal. To this extent, it is the greatest scandal that our country has ever experienced at this high level of government. We have the NDP shoring up the government. It is agreeing with it.

Originally, our side of the House supported Bill C-43. It was simple. On our side we saw some aspects of the budget bill that we could live with. We did not like everything, but we thought of Canadians. We were thinking about the fact that Canadians did not want an election. We were trying to be considerate. We were trying to work together and then all of a sudden in the dark of night in a hotel room in Toronto, there was another deal done. All of a sudden there was another budget bill to deal with.

It is difficult to support this kind of underhanded manoeuvring by the Liberals and the NDP. We thought we had one corrupt party in Canada, but now we have two. We cannot shore up this kind of thing in spite of the fact that originally we had the full intention of shoring up the government for as long as we possibly could for the good of Canadians, so that no Canadian family had to go into another election.

We not only have the budget, but we have another issue as well. There is legislation that is absolutely irresponsible, and totally injurious to the population. The redefinition of marriage is one of those issues. There is no need for this bill. In a conversation the other night with some of my constituents, one of my constituents said that this bill had been presented for one reason and that was to deflect the attention off what was happening with this horrendous scandal, and it certainly did that.

We have had great debates here because we on this side believe that the definition of marriage is the union of a man and a woman with equal rights given to same sex couples. Every same sex couple in the nation has the choice to live the way that they want with all the benefits. This is the democratic choice. In a democratic country people have the right to choose who they want to live with, how they want to live within the parameters of the law, and what church to go to or not to go to. There are certain things, as long as the laws are abided by, that people in our nation can do.

What the NDP and the Liberals are also doing is shoring up the decriminalization of marijuana. This legislation that is coming forth is nothing short of appalling. We are talking about the budget, we are talking about corruption, we are talking about this irresponsible legislation, and people across our nation are totally flabbergasted by the lack of responsible government, the lack of democratic government, and the sort of godfather type of thing that says that the government will do business the way it wants to do business, whether Canadians like it or not.

The problem is that this is all done with taxpayers' money. When there is a tax and spend government, like the Liberal-NDP alliance, with no plan in place as to how that money will be spent, we have a horrendous problem in this country. Families need to grow, and families need to make decisions about their own spending, but in the House of Commons, the Liberals and the NDP are taking control of Canadian families.

We heard it across the way in terms of the national day care program. On this side of the House we believe that families should have a choice of whether they want to send their children to day care, whether they want to have their children at home, or whatever they want to do. That should be out of government hands.

On this side of the House we have tried to put forth a very responsible policy that allows families to make their choices. Today, standing in the House of Commons, I am appalled at what has happened here with the NDP members hitching their wagon to the corrupt Liberal government and not only liking it, but promoting it and putting all their wrath on members of the Conservative Party of Canada because they want to rule. I ask, what backroom deal was done to make this happen?

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise to speak on Bill C-48, a budget bill that was introduced by the Liberal government.

What is important about Bill C-48 is the backroom deal that was made by the NDP and Liberals for the government to stay in power. Originally, Bill C-43, the budget bill, had a lot of sense to it, but when the Liberal government felt threatened it suddenly made a deal with the NDP in Bill C-48, which committed $4.6 billion extra as demanded by the NDP.

Without thinking, without consultation and without any kind of plan, the deal with struck. Now we have a bill before the House that has an additional $4.6 billion for expenditures. It is causing concern across the country because we do not know how the money is going to be spent.

Of course there are vague ideas such as housing, foreign aid and things like that, but there is absolutely no concrete plan because this was struck very quickly. Neither did the NDP members ever have an idea about what they wanted to spend the money on, but because there was an opportunity presented to them they signed a deal and said they wanted $4.6 billion to be spent on certain areas, which they identified.

Now Canadians are stuck with it. Today we are debating the bill. It is not possible under any circumstances for any person who is fiscally responsible to support the bill, because this bill, in its generalities, is just about spending money.

Of course one of the areas that has been targeted is foreign aid, which the NDP keeps thinking is its domain. I have been in Parliament for almost eight years and have constantly heard from the NDP that it wants to increase the foreign aid budget to 0.07%, because this was a figure that was pulled out of the air and now the United Nations is committed to it. I think that is a substantial sum of money.

But the dynamics have changed. I come from the continent of Africa, which has been a recipient of the largest amount foreign aid for years and years and I have seen the effects when foreign aid is given without a plan and how it becomes a completely ineffective tool of development. Today, Africa and Latin America have not--and I repeat, have not--borne any fruit from the money that has been poured into these countries with good intentions. Today Africa has the highest levels of HIV and poverty. It has an education system and a health care system that are collapsing. So does Latin America.

People have the idea that if we throw money at this, which is what this budget is all about and what the NDP came up with, for some reason or somehow the extra money will solve the problem and we do not need to have a plan.

Even this week Mr. Lewis was crying that there needs to be 0.07%. What I do not understand about the 0.07% issue is how the money is going to be spent for these people. As a former critic of international development, I have gone round the world. I have been to Europe and I have seen the foreign aid budget for Ireland and for the Netherlands and the foreign aid budgets for all these countries that are pouring in more and more money, but for what and how are we going to use it?

Let me give a small example. When the tsunami disaster took place, the world responded with generosity. Suddenly there was all that money coming in, but there was no plan for how to spend it. The money was there, but how would we spend this money? That today is the issue of foreign aid.

The finance ministers at the G-8 have just wiped out the debts of all these poor countries. I do not see anything wrong with that because those countries were being burdened by their debts. They could not spend money on education and social services that were required in their countries because they were paying this heavy debt. There was no tangible economic benefit received for the money that had been borrowed because nobody was interested in seeing how development took place in these countries.

Now we have the same scenario. We have cleaned up the debt. Fine, but what have we really done? We have changed the fundamentals. Let me explain. Yesterday, even the World Bank president admitted there was a serious flaw. Unless we correct the fundamental flaws that cause poverty in these countries, we can throw as much money as we want at them but nothing much will happen. Let us talk about these fundamental flaws that are causing concern around the world.

Trade barriers to these countries are the largest impediments to development. Farmers in these countries cannot sell their products to us at all because we put artificial barriers on them. The subsidies that we give out, the thousands and thousands of dollars to agriculture, are hurting all those farmers in those countries. If they cannot sell their products, they will remain beggars. We come along and throw a couple of dollars at them and call it foreign aid, but it does not work. That is a fundamental flaw. We need to change that. The WTO is saying that change is required if we want to take Africa and Latin America out of poverty. That is one of the critical factors.

Another factor is good governance, responsible governance. NEPAD has come into place in Africa to provide good governance to Africans. That is fine. One can understand that we would support NEPAD. If Africans can police themselves well and bring in good governance, we would be happy with that, but the case of Zimbabwe shows that NEPAD has a serious flaw. No one is holding Mr. Mugabe accountable for the simple reason that Mr. Mugabe fought for independence in that country when it was under white rule. Out of courtesy to him and out of courtesy for that war that he fought in the bush, nobody is willing to hold him accountable despite the fact that every factor indicates that Zimbabwe is going down.

How could we expect that these kinds of people will be brought to justice? Mr. Mugabe did his job but it was time for him to move on and he did not. These examples keep going on and on. It does not take long for countries that are not sound to fall down. We need to stand behind the African countries and tell them they have to have those institutions. We need to support those institutions.

Only recently, CIDA narrowed its focus to 25 countries. Prior to that we were in 106 countries giving a few dollars and doing what? I do not understand what we were doing. Today my colleague questioned the Minister of International Cooperation as to why we give aid to China. China itself is giving foreign aid to other countries and Canada gives foreign aid to China. Somebody needs to knock their heads here. In answer to our questions we hear, “No, we do not give aid to China. We give it to the other institutions to help them”. They have the money for their institutions to move forward. WTO negotiator John Weekes is working to help China in the WTO.

I could go on and on about foreign aid. It is difficult to support this budget because there is no plan. There is no plan on how we want to spend this thing out here. Hopefully, somebody will hold the government accountable because these are Canadian taxpayers' dollars that we are talking about.

An Act to authorize the Minister of Finance to make certain payments

[Shawn Murphy, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans]

Mr. Speaker, earlier today the House, with the support of the Conservative Party , the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party, passed Bill C-43 dealing with approximately $180 billion of program spending. We are now dealing with Bill C-48 which is an additional $2.25 billion per year over the next year with the clear caveat that the government will not go into a deficit.

The bill was referred to a committee. I would have thought that if there were any concerns, problems or difficulties the committee would have worked on the bill, improved it, enhanced it and set it back to the House. However, the Conservative Party in its alliance with the Bloc Québécois voted all the paragraphs down.

Given the relatively small amount of money we are talking about in Bill C-48, why was it not dealt with at the committee level? Was this action at the committee controlled by the Bloc Québécois?

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to rise at report stage to address Bill C-48, an act to authorize the Minister of Finance to make certain payments.

This bill is somewhat historic. This is the first federal-NDP budget in three decades. Of course our Conservative Party cannot support this NDP budget. Canadians did not vote for an NDP budget. They did not send the 289 MPs who are not NDP members of Parliament to Ottawa to vote for this. Even the Liberal MPs across the way who are now supporting this bill are not doing so for the right reasons.

If the kind of irresponsible and reckless spending contained in Bill C-48 were a good idea, then that spending would have been included in the budget original, but it is not.

Liberal MPs are now indistinguishable from their NDP coalition partners on matters of financial policy.

Let us all recognize Bill C-48 for what it is. It is a brazen and desperate attempt to hold onto power by a regime that has been exposed as corrupt, arrogant and untrustworthy. NDP MPs have paid a price to gain their budget. Because they have actively maintained this corrupt regime in power, they are now tarred with the same brush.

However, Bill C-48 is also something else. It represents higher taxes, a return to deficit spending and a deepening of the national debt that we had recently begun to get under some control. That kind of fiscal irresponsibility and recklessness has real consequences for working families and taxpayers across Canada. Ultimately, the ability of the government to spend money depends exclusively on taking money away from the average Canadian. For some folks, it means the loss of music lessons or sports camps for their kids. For others, they may have to cancel their vacation, the one that they were looking forward to all year long. Some Canadians are going to have to work that many more hours to pay this tax bill, but those hours are hours not spent with family and friends, enjoying life.

We have a very different vision of Canada. We believe in fair taxation, individual responsibility and limited government. We recognize that government is not always the best institution to address and solve every societal problem.

For example, in my riding of south Surrey--White Rock--Cloverdale, we have a private organization called the Peace Arch Community Services, or PACS. PACS helps thousands of people in my community every year, with everything from helping the unemployed find a job or helping the hungry with food to counselling for those addicted to drugs and alcohol.

PACS does receive grants from various levels of government to help provide some of these services, but it also raises a significant portion of its funding privately. Indeed, there is great support for PACS in my community, and that is amply demonstrated by the generosity of those who fund it.

Of course PACS is just one of many private organizations, from service clubs to faith-based organizations to community groups, that provide or fund services in the community to help the weak and the vulnerable in society.

My fear is that as the government ratchets up the spending and takes even more money from people's discretionary income, there will be less left in people's pockets to give to groups like PACS that is making a real difference in the lives of Canadians.

Our Conservative vision includes a significant tax reduction that would allow Canadians greater freedom to support such worthy causes. I have no doubt they will. I am excited about the possibilities for our great land if Canadians are given such freedoms.

We had some votes late Tuesday evening of this past week where a couple of facts became apparent.

The first is that our Conservative Party is keeping its commitment to work constructively within this minority Parliament. As an example, we supported Bill C-43 at report stage, despite our misgivings about several elements in the main budget. We want to make this Parliament work and our actions speak louder than mere words.

The second and unmistakable fact is the failure of the Liberals to pay anything more than lip service to making this Parliament work. We continue to see arrogance in action as the Liberals reject reasoned amendments put forward by my party to bring the budget and its spending in line with the commitments the government made in its throne speech.

I want to review some of those commitments. They were proposed by our party and endorsed by the Liberals in a vote in the House. We called upon the government to do the following: to ensure that the employment insurance fund would only be used for the benefit of workers instead of balancing the federal budget; to reduce taxes for low and modest income Canadians; to tell the truth in government budget forecasting; to make the electoral system more fair; and to give Parliament a real voice on key foreign and defence policy issues such as missile defence.

As we examine these points in order, we can see from this budget legislation that the Liberals have repeatedly broken their promises to Parliament and to Canadians.

EI premiums have not been lowered to the level where revenues are commensurate with expenditures. Instead, the government continues to run a huge EI surplus to help it balance the budget. This is doubly strange because in the years that the Prime Minister was finance minister, he explicitly stated that payroll taxes killed jobs. It is true that payroll taxes kill jobs and excessive Liberal payroll taxes under the Prime Minister have certainly killed tens of thousands of jobs. Promise made, promise broken.

The Liberals committed to reduce taxes for low and modest income Canadians. In fact the measly tax reduction offered by the Liberals works out to one cup of coffee a month or just $1.33 starting next year. That rises to $8 a month for an individual by the fourth year of the budget. How generous. By comparison, during the last election, the Conservative Party offered the average taxpayer savings of $1,000 annually by the fourth year.

The Liberals committed to reduce taxes, yet their pennies a day tax reduction is virtually meaningless for most working families struggling with rent or a mortgage or buying school supplies or clothes or food. One might also consider the fact that the government has done nothing to reduce the high cost of gasoline, a large component of which is federal taxes. Again, promise made, promise broken.

As for truth in budget forecasting, we have already seen backtracking on this commitment. We can easily add up the more than $26 billion in additional new spending commitments the government has made since introducing the budget in February. Nearly $5 billion of that total, contained in the legislation we are debating now, was to obtain the common support of the NDP. That works out to about $260 million per vote if we add it up and divide by the number of MPs in the NDP. Yet we have the spectacle of the government standing in the House day after day in question period denying that its spending spree is going to send us back into deficits and debt.

Business groups agree that the government has been less than forthcoming with the truth in budget forecasting. According to Nancy Hughes Anthony, President of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce:

Without a fiscal update, we are flying blind when it comes to Canada’s finances with only vague assurances from the government that it will be able to balance budgets in the future....Until Canadians are given all the facts and figures, we have every right to fear that we are flirting with future budget deficits given the government’s excessive spending.

Promise made, promise broken.

As for making the electoral system more fair, there are 57 different bills the government has introduced, including the bill we are debating today, yet not one of them addresses electoral reform. Promise made, promise broken.

The government promised to give Parliament a real voice on key foreign and defence policy issues such as missile defence. Yet earlier this year Parliament was totally excluded by the Prime Minister when he unilaterally decided to opt out of the U.S. missile defence system. Once again, promise made, promise broken.

In that same throne speech the government claimed “parents must have real choices” when it came to child care. Where is the choice? The fact is the government continues to discriminate against single income families in the tax code. It simply does not value the work of the parent who stays at home. If parents are to have real choices, it is critical to reduce taxes for all families with young children.

In our amendments to the other budget bill a couple of days ago, we gave the government the opportunity to meet its promise to give parents a greater choice in child care and it chose to vote against its own promise.

As we have seen with other Liberal promises, the throne speech amounted to all talk and no action. In this budget, once again it is promise made, promise broken. The Liberals have proven themselves untrustworthy promise breakers. Soon they will have to provide an accounting to the Canadian people for this.

In the meantime I will conclude my speech where I began, and that is to say that we cannot support this NDP budget implementation bill, Bill C-48.

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is about time that maybe we all work together to make the government hold to what it says. One difference between Bill C-43 and Bill C-48 is that there were tax cuts in Bill C-43. They were not all exactly outlined. When would they come into effect? We are not sure, but they were at least there. The member talked earlier about companies going offshore. Why do they go offshore? They go offshore to get a better tax rate. That has been admitted in the House. Why not keep those companies here by cutting taxes?

[Bev Desjarlais, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, we now have an admission that there were no more details in Bill C-43 than Bill C-48, yet the Conservatives supported Bill C-43 even though they do not trust what they say is a corrupt government. When one takes Gomery into question, there certainly is that attitude.

If the government is not spending those dollars for Canadians, the teeth that we now have is a minority position. Canadians know that the dollars are there. They are going to go at the government and so are we. If we want the teeth, then let us have all the teeth from across the way, from the Conservatives and the Bloc, on the government as well to ensure that those dollars do go to Canadians.

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think there were a lot of details in Bill C-43. I have dealt with affordable housing issues. We have heard the minister stand over there and tell us that there is $1.5 billion in Bill C-48.

If I were negotiating a deal, I would have put some teeth into it to ensure that the government spends the money. I sat and listened to stakeholders in my riding. The stakeholders in my riding heard one thing and then when the bill came out it was something different. I would have hoped that Bill C-48 would have had some teeth in it. It is $4.6 billion sitting there for the government to spend at will whenever it feels like it. That is where I stand.

[Bev Desjarlais, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, in regard to the concern that there are no details in Bill C-48, I am curious as to whether or not there were any more details in Bill C-43. My understanding is that both budgets were written with the same sort of process. It is just that in this case, Bill C-48 is an NDP budget and Bill C-43 was the Liberal government's budget.

My colleague seems to have an objection to the fact that there are no details in Bill C-48. Could he tell me whether or not there were more details in Bill C-43 and, if so, what they were?

[Dale Johnston, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly appreciate the hon. member's hyperbole, but that is exactly what it is, hyperbole.

What my leader said was that this is not a budget with which we are thrilled, this is not a budget that we feel is sufficient to bring down the government, and this is a budget we can live with.

Just for the sake of the people who are watching and for the sake of Hansard , let us not confuse the budget that the hon. member is talking about, Bill C-43, and this back of the napkin or back of the envelope budget, whichever we like, Bill C-48, which was cobbled together at the last minute by the Liberal government, the finance minister, the NDP and of course Buzz Hargrove. I do not know how they could ever have managed to get this just right without Buzz Hargrove. Apparently that is what it takes.

That is what we are discussing here today. They are two separate and completely distinct bills. Bill C-43, on which I have answered the previous questioner, is the one that we did support, and Bill C-48 is the one we do not support.

[Dale Johnston, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is really quite simple. Because we voted to support Bill C-43, we did not vote to prolong the life of the government across the way. We voted for Bill C-43 because it contains some measures we supported, some measures of which we were actually the instigators.

Some things in Bill C-43 came right out of the Conservative policy book. For instance, although the gasoline tax rebate is watered down somewhat in Bill C-43, that was a Conservative plan some eight or nine years ago. I know that the hon. member who asked the question will recall that my colleague Mr. Morrison, from Cypress Hills--Grasslands in Saskatchewan, put forth a private member's bill suggesting exactly the same thing.

The other reason that I personally voted for it was that it gave Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia control over their natural resources. This is also a policy that we have long advocated and are glad to see come in.

Why did we vote for the bill? Because we were not in a position to separate out the things we like about Bill C-43 and vote for them, and separate out the things we do not like about Bill C-43 and vote against them. Therefore, we had to vote to support the entire bill, because it did contain at least two measures that we both instigated and support.

[John McKay, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, I am amused by this line of argument by the hon. member and his party opposite which says that Bill C-48 is propping up the government and, of course, propping up a corrupt government. Only an hour ago we voted on third reading of Bill C-43. Bill C-43 is a complete budget document in and of itself. I do not know what the hon. member was doing when he was voting for Bill C-43, or what his party was doing voting for Bill C-43. If he truly believes that he is propping up this corrupt government, then he should not have voted for Bill C-43.

Would the hon. member enlighten me? Why would he vote for Bill C-43 which props up a corrupt government, but not vote for Bill C-48 because it will prop up a corrupt government? It does not make any sense.