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

[Bev Desjarlais, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, to respond directly to my colleague's comments, he mentioned that the Conservatives support good, quality education so I am at a loss as to why they would not support the additional dollars the NDP has ensured in Bill C-48. They were not in Bill C-43, the budget that the Conservatives were willing to go along with. They are in Bill C-48, yet the Conservatives are talking about not supporting it. That is speaking on two sides, and I imagine we will see both coming out in the pamphlets that the Conservatives will send around in the next little while.

In the member's last statements, he talked about supporting the environment. Again, on the road to improving support for environmental initiatives, it is in the NDP budget, Bill C-48. It is there. It hit that right on the mark. He talked about the need for affordable housing. That is in the NDP budget, Bill C-48.

I am really at a loss as to what the problem is that the Conservatives have with this budget other than the fact that corporations may not get $4.6 billion in tax cuts, the corporations that the Conservatives are here to represent rather than representing all the people of Canada. Tax breaks for small and medium sized business are still in the budget. That was part of the deal as well. Those members can talk about them not being there all they want, but the reality is that they are still there.

If the Liberals can come up with another $4.6 billion for tax cuts, we will deal with that next time around, but what we are saying is that if they can give this $4.6 billion after already giving billions of dollars in tax cuts in the last number of years, they can give back to Canadians. Why are the Conservatives against dollars going back to ordinary Canadians?

[Bev Desjarlais, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Prince Albert mentioned a number of items that were not in the budget. He mentioned forestry, equalization, farming and BSE, and obviously, they were not in Bill C-43 when it came before the House. However, $4.6 billion in tax cuts for corporations was in that budget, which in essence the Conservatives supported by way of not voting against it. In essence, they were voting for a budget that did not have farming, BSE, equalization, forestry and a number of items.

We worked out a deal where some additional dollars could help out Canadians with education and affordable housing. My colleague again mentioned and criticized the foreign affairs dollars which were supported by his own colleagues and are still supported by his own colleagues within his party. So they had better get things together because they are starting to sound like the Prime Minister and the finance minister.

If all those things were not in the budget, why did he not vote against the budget and why did his party not make some effort to get that budget changed so that it would reflect the needs of Canadians?

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

There is incivility on that side of the House. That is quite the hypocrisy coming from the New Democrats.

We want to pay off debt so we can relieve generations to come of crippling bills. The New Democrats want to send a major $500 billion bill to my children and my children's children rather than paying off the national debt.

We want an arrangement whereby we have real jobs here in Canada, not overseas in China. We in the Conservative Party of Canada are fighting for auto workers, for family farmers and for others who deserve to work here in Canada.

Bill C-48 is a wolf in sheep's clothing. The New Democrats are peddling paradise while they are flouting the open and transparent budgetary processes of the House. They are peddling paradise using deceptive reasoning.

I want to probe a couple of the arguments that the NDP has been putting forth in favour of Bill C-48. The first is that the New Democrats are simply taking the tax cuts for corporations like Ford, General Motors and Chrysler and reallocating them to other areas, to what they call their priorities. This is not actually true. This is not a simple reallocation within the same fiscal year.

Bill C-43 offers corporate tax relief. It is a guaranteed budget expenditure, so it is accounted for in a particular year's fiscal arrangement. Bill C-48, the NDP's budget wish list, is a conditional expenditure that triggers only beyond a $2 billion surplus. It does so no sooner than 18 months from now.

A national crisis could emerge. There would go the surplus and the NDP's Bill C-48. We could have downturns in the economy, which could eat up that fiscal room. We could have further provincial demands that need to be satisfied.

Corporations like General Motors, Chrysler and Ford need guaranteed relief to keep jobs here in Canada. They need to know that a guaranteed expenditure is coming to help them so they can plan to stay here and keep jobs in Canada. The NDP is promising, with smoke and mirrors, something that may not even come true.

The NDP will argue that there is plenty of fiscal room and says not to worry about it. The NDP also wants a child care system that would cost $10 billion a year more than the Liberals are currently funding in Bill C-43. That will mean a disappearance of any fiscal room and more. That will necessitate increased taxes, and there may be program cuts from health care and education in order to reallocate money to this national day care.

Or there may be deficit spending. We had plenty of that in Ontario. We remember Bob Rae. We certainly remember the $11 billion deficits that were run in the province. We remember Rae days, on which people could not visit their doctor because the doctor's office was closed that day. Why? There was no money for the doctor to get paid that day. That is what we remember about New Democratic fiscal prudence, or what they like to call fiscal prudence.

This means that maybe child care is on the mantel, to be chopped off. Maybe child care will not be pursued. Where are the dollars going to come from? Will they go to fund Bill C-48? Will they go to fund national day care? They cannot do both with the same fiscal surplus.

Let us look back in time. We have had $90 billion in unplanned surpluses since 1997. The actual surpluses were astoundingly higher, but the Liberal government made an art of end of the year, empty the cupboard, politically driven spending sprees to shrink surpluses so Canadians would not be so alarmed by their size.

I see a train wreck coming for the New Democrats, who actually think they may get something with Bill C-48. They are not likely going to see a dime go to funding their priorities when their Liberal cousins empty the cupboard by year's end. They have been duped. Either that or they are trying to dupe Canadians into believing that something will be there. They know it will not be. The NDP has been keeping the Liberals afloat and the NDP gets nothing. That is a raw deal and those members do not even see it coming.

Let us talk about corporate tax cuts for a moment. The NDP has been claiming that corporate tax cuts simply benefit the rich while claiming that New Democrats are helping regular Canadians.

First, the Conservative Party believes in tax relief, not simply tax cuts. Canadian families,along with corporations having trouble competing because of the high dollar and other reasons, need relief now, and not just a simple one time tax cut. They need sustained relief in taxation. Real people struggle every week to make ends meet. They deserve tax relief.

Second, tax relief for corporations actually benefits Canadians in the workforce. I am Parliament's first auto worker. Let us talk about auto workers for a moment. Having our dollar going up in Canada is hurting our exports. Canadian auto companies' productivity is being hurt. Their ability to compete globally from here in Ontario is being hurt.

Massive layoffs have begun in the United States. We have seen layoffs in my community of Windsor and in the communities in the riding of Essex. We have seen them across Ontario. This is happening not just with Ford, Chrysler and General Motors, but with our parts makers and parts suppliers and our tool, mould and die sector, which has had a 38% attrition rate in Essex county in the last decade under the Liberal watch. Those jobs have gone to foreign labour markets such as China and the United States.

Buzz Hargrove, a friend of the New Democrats, the one who actually helped them cut this backroom deal, says that these layoffs are coming to Canada soon with the trickle-down from the 25,000 layoffs that GM has announced in the United States. The NDP wants to get rid of tax relief for Ford, General Motors and DaimlerChrysler right at a time when they are losing the ability to keep auto workers employed here in Ontario. Those are Canadian families at risk of losing their jobs right at a time when that party, which says it likes to fight for auto workers, is getting rid of that tax relief.

Every auto job supports six other jobs. Five hundred thousand regular Canadians lose their jobs when auto jobs head to cheaper foreign labour markets like China or to lower tax jurisdictions such as Georgia, Alabama or South Carolina.

No, tax relief benefits real Canadians on main streets, not just in urban centres but in rural towns, villages and hamlets. The NDP just does not get it. It is no wonder that the first auto worker in Parliament elected by regular Canadians is a Conservative from Essex and is not from the NDP, the CCF, the Liberals or anybody else.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad the hon. member left me a few moments to respond, although he ate up more than half the available time with his question by repeating several points over and over again.

Let me start with his question regarding whether there are Progressive Conservatives still in this party. I am looking around the room right now. The House is not as occupied as it often is, but nonetheless I see a former president of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, one of my hon. colleagues who has been listening with rapt attention to every word the hon. member for Yukon said, one of the men with whom I helped negotiate the merger of the two parties, the hon. member for St. John's South—Mount Pearl. He would never have joined a party or reached an agreement that did not take into account very seriously the values of the party that he then represented. I could go on and on.

With regard to the issues that the member points to, housing, education and so many other excellent priorities, I have two thoughts. One is, if these are such important values, why were they not in Bill C-43? Why was it that the New Democrats had to impose them on the government? That would be a legitimate question for a New Democrat to be asking me. Perhaps if one of the New Democrats had raised that question, he would have a point.

The fact is that this was forced on the Prime Minister, who was desperate to save his government and did not give a hoot for any of these priorities a few months ago. He only developed this exquisite concern he now has after he realized that it was his ass on the line. I think we should not get too high on our horses about these being high Liberal priorities. They were not priorities of the Liberal Party at all.

Let me add the fact that the reason there is a shortage of funding for some of these priorities, all of which are in provincial jurisdiction, is that the government took so many billions of dollars out of the hands of provincial governments over a period of a decade while the current Prime Minister was the minister of finance. The Liberals should hang their heads in shame for the mess they made of this nation's finances.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will speak about Bill C-48 and how it represents an abandonment of traditions and the traditional roles of government and is a step in the wrong direction.

Before I do that, I want to take just a moment to respond to the remarks of the parliamentary secretary with regard to his complaint about how, after all, Bill C-48 deals with four areas and why it was not dealing with many other areas that the federal government could have dealt with. He has a point. Bill C-48 could have dealt with a great number of other areas and there is certainly a large number of areas which are sadly lacking from the agenda of the government.

There is obviously one that comes to mind because of the fact that I represent a rural and largely agricultural riding, one in which in particular there is a lot of farming. In fact, there are more beef cattle than there are voters in my constituency. What comes to mind is the complete absence of any provision in Bill C-48 that deals with agriculture, that deals with the crisis in Canadian agriculture and particularly that deals with the crisis in the Canadian beef production industry.

That absence is really striking. It is all that much more striking because of the absence of an adequate mechanism in this country to provide Canadian product, of which there is so much, to Canadian consumers, of which there are so many. There are so many willing consumers for Canadian beef, which as we all know is the best quality beef in the world, but we cannot get that beef from the hoof and from the farm gate to the consumer if we do not have the slaughter and processing facilities, given the fact that we cannot take that beef across the border into the United States even for the purpose of having it slaughtered and returned it to this country.

The CFIA, the Canada Food Inspection Agency, has been unwilling to license new federally inspected slaughter and processing facilities. Indeed, it is taking very inadequate measures. In fact, over a period of time, the past decade, it has reduced the number of facilities that are available in this country. It seems to me that this is an area that could have been and indeed should have been dealt with in this budget.

The government had two tries at this: Bill C-43 and Bill C-48. The Liberals could definitely have found some time in their busy labours to have accommodated these needs. Bill C-48 is essentially a package of amendments to Bill C-43. Given the Liberals' enthusiasm for amendments, they could have amended it to take into account this pressing need of beef producers and, indeed, of Canadian consumers. They could have done a great deal of good for a sector of the economy that is, after all, one of our key export sectors and one of our most productive sectors. That is a general comment with regard to the observations of the parliamentary secretary.

Let me now turn to the theme I wanted to dwell on this evening. Bill C-48 represents the abandonment of a very important part of our Constitution and our tradition regarding the control by the House of Commons over the spending of the ministry, the Crown, the executive.

We see the government in many areas abandoning or rolling back the traditional protections we have enjoyed. Canada's constitutional structure is in part modelled on the written constitution that was pioneered in the United States and that has been copied in other countries, such as Australia, for example, with the idea of a written constitution with firmly laid out jurisdictions and boundaries.

It is also partly a structure that is based on the British constitution. Of course, our Constitution Act of 1867 makes specific reference to being similar in spirit to the constitution of the United Kingdom, that is to say, to the unwritten constitution of the United Kingdom. The protections that are in the British constitution are based primarily upon conventions, traditions and a respect for a way of doing things that has been proven through time and usage. We see the Liberal government moving steadily away from this. In all fairness, we also see the Liberal government being increasingly disrespectful of the written Constitution as well and of the jurisdictional boundaries in the written Constitution.

I do not know of one area of provincial jurisdiction in which the federal government does not feel it can intrude, and ideally, from its point of view, by offering enough dollars to cause the provincial government to shift its spending priorities in order to capture federal matching funds. After having roped the provinces into making expenditures, which they would not otherwise have made, which means moving expenditures away from areas where they might more productively have been made, it then over time rolls back those expenditures.

Even when the initial expenditure is in a very worthwhile area, such as health care, the federal government, nonetheless, has a tendency to reduce its expenditures very substantially as a proportion of those in that area of provincial jurisdiction.

The government is into all kinds of areas of provincial jurisdiction and no doubt when government members get up to ask me questions, as they have been doing, they will ask me whether I approve of this kind of spending, that kind of spending or some other kind of spending. However all this spending will be in areas of provincial jurisdiction, areas which are underfunded because of the actions of the government.

It is a phenomenal fiscal disequilibrium that exists between the amount of money that the federal government raises and the amount of money that falls into the areas of its jurisdiction, and the amount of money available to the provinces after the federal vacuum cleaner has come out and sucked the money out of Canadian pockets and the very considerable responsibilities that fall under provincial jurisdiction under our Constitution: education, health and so on. It seems to me that this is a mark of disrespect for our written Constitution.

With regard to the unwritten Constitution, the conventional part of our Constitution, the most important of our conventions in this country and under the Westminster system of government is the convention that the government is responsible to the House of Commons. This is a convention that was established following the glorious revolution of 1688 in which it was established that the King could not expend funds without the approval of the House of Commons.

What we see the government doing is rolling back this convention and refusing to recognize that the House of Commons determines which party should be the government.

We saw this most spectacularly and most egregiously last month when the government, having failed to demonstrate that it had the confidence of the House, proceeded to hold off any confidence votes through a variety of technical means, and we are familiar with what those are, until such time as it could secure a majority or a tie vote based upon offering inducements, successfully to one member and unsuccessfully to a number of others, to either cross the floor or at least sit on their hands.

Leaving aside the merits of what went on with the current Minister responsible for Democratic Renewal, for which I am the critic, nonetheless I think it is clear that it held off on a confidence vote for a long period of time. The argument that was made by the House leader for the government was that they would allow the House to vote when the conditions were appropriate and the questions were appropriate.

That suggests that the government has the authority to decide whether or not the House of Commons is allowed to vote on whether it has confidence in the government. That was an egregious breach of convention and one that I think will be looked at with great dismay by constitutional scholars for many decades to come.

The other convention that is being shattered here, and this is in Bill C-48, is the convention of the House controlling funds. Let us take a look at this very small bill. It is a parody of a government budget bill and is two pages long. It contains a number of vague spending proposals. An example of one would be the proposal for affordable housing, including housing for aboriginal Canadians, in an amount not exceeding $1.6 billion. It is great but it is very vague. We see that for foreign aid the amount is not to exceed $500 million which is again an awfully vague promise.

We then get down to the actual operative part of the bill and it is all about the power of the government to spend this money as it sees fit, notwithstanding the vague promises made earlier. Clause 2 states:

(2) The Governor in Council may specify the particular purposes for which payments referred to in subsection (1) may be made and the amounts of those payments for the relevant fiscal year.

Clause 3 states:

For the purposes of this Act, the Governor in Council--

--that means the government--

--may, on any terms and conditions that the Governor in Council considers appropriate, authorize a minister to

(a) develop and implement programs and projects;

(b) enter into an agreement with the government of a province, a municipality or any other organization or any person;

(c) make a grant or contribution or any other payment;

(d) subject to the approval of Treasury Board, supplement any appropriation by Parliament;

(e) incorporate a corporation--

This is all about simply creating a pool of money and then spending it in the manner the government sees fit on its own timetable. This is not a budget bill. This is about freeing the government from parliamentary and legislative control. Frankly, it is something which I think all parliamentarians who care about House of Commons control should oppose.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to correct a couple of things from the hon. member's speech.

First of all, with respect to enabling legislation, he gave a commentary on the issue that the legislation enables the finance minister to spend in these particular areas. I am sure that if the member reviews the language in Bill C-48, he will find parallel language in Bill C-43. He will find parallel language in Bill C-33. He will find parallel language in Bill C-24. All finance bills are phrased such that the minister “may” spend in these particular areas. I just wanted to correct this impression that he may have inadvertently left for people who are still listening, although I cannot imagine why, at 11:30 at night, people are still listening to this debate.

The other thing that troubled me about the hon. member's speech had to do with the other areas which the bill did not deal with. It is true that the bill deals with only four areas. That therefore means there are a whole bunch of other areas that it does not deal with, but that seems to me like complaining to Moses himself. The 10 commandments are only the 10 commandments; they are not the 20 commandments or 30 commandments or 40 commandments. There are only the 10 commandments.

I do not understand why the hon. member is complaining about Bill C-48 covering only four areas of anticipated spending as opposed to 40 areas of anticipated spending, let us say.

[Inky Mark, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River, MB]

Again, Mr. Speaker, it is not so much about the money but about the trust that something will actually get done.

I have a riding with 13 aboriginal reserves. Aboriginal housing is crucial. There is a shortage of housing. The fact remains that for 12 years we have been talking about this. Is it going to happen simply because it is in Bill C-48? I do not think so. Education and training are also very important. No one disputes the content of the bill. I think what is in dispute is why it is in this bill and not in Bill C-43. Why does the government need this bill to make it work?

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member's conclusion that “it ain't the right bill” is an opinion that he has, and I respect his right to have an opinion. I am a little bit concerned about the conclusion he has reached and how the vote has gone on Bill C-43 and is intended to go on Bill C-48.

The spending with regard to Bill C-48 involves an increase in overall spending of 1%.

If the Conservative Party members voted in favour of Bill C-43 for the spending plan for the ensuing fiscal period and they were not outraged, how is it that they are now outraged at spending on post-secondary education, foreign aid, affordable housing and environmental improvements? How is it that this additional 1% tips the balance on four issues which I am sure this member himself in fact would be supportive of? How is it?

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Athabasca, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have good news for the member. It just so happens that all those wonderful initiatives that he has brought forward have already been passed in the form of Bill C-43 and with the full support of the Conservative Party. I am wondering what his question is about.

Quite frankly we have been living in a nightmare and I am hoping that the people of Canada will see the dream possibilities for our future with a Conservative government. I hope that answers my friend's question.

[Loyola Hearn, Conservative, St. John's South, NL]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to say a few words in the debate tonight.

People watching think we are debating the budget, but that is not factual. The bill implementing the budget has already passed through the House and is in the Senate. Hopefully, it will receive royal assent shortly because it contains a lot of good things.

I would like to give the House a bit of history. When the government was elected last fall, it found itself in a minority position. It then brought in its budget, which was carefully doctored around the concerns of the opposition. All parties in the House can take credit for suggesting, pushing and ensuring sure certain items were included.

The Atlantic accord was a Conservative initiative, a Conservative commitment. It was included in the budget. We were the ones who pushed to get it in there. We had tax cuts, with which the government played around, that would stimulate the economy, create jobs, employ people, bring in more taxes and put money into social programs, all indirectly. We had included help for the homeless, an issue about which every party in the House talked. Generally it was a budget to satisfy everybody. It was not a Liberal budget. It was a parliamentary budget.

Consequently, the Liberal Party voted for the budget. The official opposition did not vote. If we had voted against it, we would have sent Canadians back to the polls. The NDP and the Bloc voted against the budget. Thanks to the official opposition, the government survived and things began to progress.

As things were progressing here, they were also progressing at the Gomery commission. We heard very heated and pointed testimony, pointing clearly to the involvement of the Liberal Party and high profile Liberals in the scandalous operations during the sponsorship time in Quebec. Unfortunately, the people of Quebec grew tired with a lot of the accusations. We have said many times that it was not a Quebec scandal; it was a Liberal scandal.

As a result of that, the government found itself in a very precarious position. People across the country were getting upset. Pressure was put on opposition parties to get rid of the government, to make changes. Liberals being Liberals, hanging on by their fingernails, tried to find ways to stay in power.

One of the members just asked if that was not what minority governments should do. He asked if we should form coalitions to try to beef up support to stay in power. My answer to that is yes. A government gains the support of other parties in the House, whether it be a four party system, as we have here, or a 25 party system as we see in other places, by being responsible, by providing good government and by being the type of government that opposition parties, especially fringe parties, can feel proud to support and keep in power. Is that what happened here? Not at all.

In trying to find ways to hang on to power, the Prime Minister knew he could not get support from the chief opposition party. He knew he could not get support from the Bloc after what the Liberals had done to the province of Quebec. His only choice was to try to buy out the NDP. Therefore, there was a hurried meeting in a hotel room.

Let me tell the House how hurried it was. The topics that were mentioned were the environment, public transit, energy efficient refits of low income housing, training programs, access to post-secondary education, including aboriginals, affordable housing, including aboriginals, and foreign aid.

It seems that there must have been a rapidly called meeting and the leader of the NDP must have rushed there not knowing what it was about. When the Prime Minister said that he wanted to make a deal with him, he must have had a copy of the budget. Trying to come up with a quick answer to satisfy the Prime Minister, he rattled off these topics because these very items are well spelled out in Bill C-43, the budget.

It talks about the implementation of a tax exemption for employer provided transit benefits, investment in communities, sharing gas tax revenues for sustainable infrastructure, and the amount of $5 billion over five years for public transit et cetera. In large urban areas investments would target one or two of the following priorities including public transit.

Then we go to renewable energy and we talk about capital cost allowances for investment in efficient and renewable energy generation.

When we look at the post-secondary scholarships for aboriginal Canadians, there is a $12 million endowment, $10 million more for a post-secondary education program administered by the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation. Then we talk about affordable housing with $340 million over the next five years for first nations housing on reserves.

On foreign policy, there is $500 million over five years, and I could go on, but these are items that are in the budget, Bill C-43.

If these items were there with a plan to spend x number of dollars over x number of years, why would the leader of the NDP say that we needed to put money into these five or six areas? They are already there. He says and the NDP will say that it is to up the ante; it is to sweeten the pot.

If we look at Bill C-48, we will find that this extra upping the ante only kicks in if there is a $2 billion surplus which the government will not know until August 2006.

Justice Gomery is supposed to report in November with a final report in December. The Prime Minister said that he would call an election within 30 days of Gomery reporting. Therefore, somewhere between now and August 2006 we are undoubtedly going to have an election which means that the promises to the NDP mean absolutely nothing. Am I the only one saying that? No, not at all. Let me read what the NDP member for Winnipeg Centre said:

It is my personal belief that the Liberal Party of Canada is institutionally psychopathic. Its members do not know the difference between right and wrong and I condemn them from the highest rooftops. But before the last Liberal is led away in handcuffs, we want to extract some benefit from this Parliament and that means getting some of the money delivered to our ridings before this government collapses.

That is what he thinks about the party opposite. Perhaps I should read what the member for Vancouver East said. She said, when asked if she believed the Liberals were going to deliver, “Who does one trust? How do we trust someone? We are adults. There is no perfection in those guarantees for sure”. The NDP members do not even think they are going to get the money. They just said that they made a point. They did make a good point and I congratulate them for it.

However, the whole thing is a sham and we are here debating a bill which is nothing but a sham. This bill will deliver nothing to anyone in the country. The main components are already in Bill C-43 which has passed.

How can the members stand and ask the people of the country to support this ill-conceived bill, completely outside the budgetary process, listing items that are already in the main budget, and with no intention of delivering the promise? It is just a matter of sucking in the NDP, like the Liberals tried to do with the people of Canada.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think what the member asked for is called the wondrous cross. Very briefly, the member used a line that many of his colleagues have used tonight about making a deal with the NDP simply to maintain control of the government.

We remember what happened to Joe Clark in 1979, the last minority government. He indicated that he would govern a minority government as if he had a majority. We know exactly what happened. He lost the vote and lost his government.

Does the member not think it is important that in a minority scenario all parties have to seek ways in which a minority government can work? More specific, since the Conservative Party voted in favour of Bill C-43, the principle budget implementation bill, why would it vote against Bill C-48, defeat the government and, therefore, throw out Bill C-43 and go into an election that Canadians do not want? What is the explanation?

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West—Glanbrook, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member raised a couple of interesting points to which I would like to respond.

The first one was about the implementation of this $4.5 billion ad hoc deal. The concern we have is that when the government went through the original proposal with Bill C-43, there were all kinds of discussions and consultations. The Liberals were very clear when we talked to them after the budget that there could be no tinkering, that there could be nothing done with this budget, that it would be absolutely unreasonable, it would be reckless. The finance minister said that there was no flexibility in looking at trying to change in the budget. I find it somewhat ironic today as we stand here to debate this additional ad hoc deal. We all know that the real reason this has happened was just to save the political hide of the Liberal Party, for it to continue to stay in power.

I guess the real question will probably be what will happen next when the NDP is done propping up the Liberal government. Will there be more reckless spending? Will the honeymoon be over and will we be back at the table?

The next point the member mentioned was that so many people support this bill, that so many people are in favour of it and they have done a good job. What we have in Canada in terms of where we are right now and where we have been for the last 12 years is missed opportunities. We have had tremendous opportunities. We could have done a lot better than we have done so far.

The analogy I use when I talk to people is that they have a case of beer in the fridge, but what they do not realize is they could have had a couple of cases of beer in the fridge. At some point in time we will have missed our opportunity and they are going to open the fridge and there will be no beer in there at all and then they will be very disappointed with what has happened.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is talking about how the NDP sold its soul. What does my colleague have to say about the Conservatives who voted for Bill C-43? Where does he see a plan in Bill C-43? He is saying that Bill C-48 does not have a plan. Where does my Conservative colleague see a plan in Bill C-43?

The leader of the Conservatives walked out of the House before the Minister of Finance even finished his speech and said that there was no way that he could not vote for this budget because it was something that he could agree with.

I do not see a plan in Bill C-48. I would like my colleague from the Conservative Party to tell us if they were blind when they agreed with Bill C-43.

The Conservatives talked about the NDP voting with a corrupt government. Where were the Conservatives on Bill C-43? Could my colleague explain? I have a hard time to understand when they say that Bill C-48 is the worst budget that they have ever seen, but Bill C-43 is all right because we are giving money to the big corporations, but not for affordable housing, not for students who are in debt, not one extra cent to the municipalities. The Conservatives said that the municipalities were left behind. I would like to hear my colleague's comments on why they voted for Bill C-43 with no plan.

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I was a little nervous as the member was speaking because she was trying to convince me and talk me out of the fact that I voted for Bill C-43 by saying there was less detail and less concrete things in it. I will not be quite persuaded of that this evening, but I will reiterate what I said before, we have a concern with Bill C-48 because there is very little attention to detail in respect to these things.

I have been, as a student for many years, in the realm of needing assistance with respect to loans and grants and those kinds of things. It took many years to pay it off. We do need dollars in those areas, but we must ensure that we get those dollars to the students. I am not convinced by what I see in respect to the details to which she speaks on those particular items that it is in fact going to get through to those who most need it as well as the environment, housing and the other areas. We do not have concrete details to actually even suggest that it will get through.

I would suggest that it will be a matter of promise made, promise broken between these two parties. It is a coalition that will make a promise, but also break it as readily.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would suggest to my hon. colleague from the Conservative Party that he might want to read other budget bills and begin with the one he just supported, Bill C-43. In that bill many of the clauses requiring allocation of very large sums of money have even less detail than that entailed in Bill C-48.

For the information of the member, he should know that it is not uncommon to actually spell out in broad terms the provisions, knowing full well that it is this Parliament that will hold the government to account and scrutinize spending.

I would suggest in fact that the Conservatives are in so desperate need of an issue that they are prepared to gloss over the facts, misrepresent the actual situation and provide a lot of innuendo and hearsay, none of it having any basis in truth.

How does the member feel about the $50 million that was allocated in Bill C-43 to the Cattlemen's Association without any specific details in terms of how that money should be spent? Does he have the same concerns about many provisions in other budget bills as he does with respect to Bill C-48, or is it the fact that he just does not like to see any money going to students who are trying to get an education, or to families who are trying to deal with smog and pollution, or to people who just want to get--