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

[Rob Merrifield, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to speak on behalf of the constituents of Yellowhead with regard to this piece of legislation, if we can call it that. Before we can get into a serious dialogue with regard to this two page $4.6 billion disaster, we have to understand exactly how we got to the point where late on a June evening we are speaking to a piece of legislation that was brought forward in such an unorthodox way.

I listened intently to my colleagues from the other parties speak to this legislation. I do not for one minute believe the reason we are talking about it today is the $4.6 billion or all of the noble things the bill is supposed to provide to the Canadian people. This 400 word document was cooked up in a backroom of some hotel in Toronto by a labour party organization, a desperate Prime Minister and the leader of the NDP. We have to examine what really went on and why it came forward in the first place.

It certainly was not a noble plan that was decided upon because of astute people thinking this was the appropriate thing to do. It was actually a sellout by a desperate Prime Minister who would do almost anything to stay in power because of the scandal his government was caught in. Not only is it the scandal of the decade, but I believe it will go down as the worst thing in Canadian history that we have seen in the House.

It has created a considerable amount of cynicism among the people in my riding and across the country. They see what is going on in this place and ask if that is what federal politics and the federal government have really boiled down to. Has it gotten to the point where it is all about cooking up a backroom deal to try to save one's political hide and stay in power illegitimately?

That is really what this $4.6 billion is all about. That is what the deal was all about. It was the price the NDP charged the Liberal Party for garnering the NDP's 19 votes to support a corrupt government and allow it to stay in power.

If that were not bad enough, the government over the last decade did the same sort of thing for the province of Quebec. It tried to prop up the Liberal Party of Canada illegitimately through the abomination of the ad scam. The Gomery inquiry has allowed Canadians to examine very clearly and understand in a more fulsome way than ever before just how terrible it was, what went on behind the scenes and the amount of corruption involved. Millions of dollars were being passed around in brown envelopes to try to prop up the Liberal Party. That scandal makes the Watergate scandal in the United States a few decades ago look like child's play. Canadians look at this and become very cynical.

It is amazing when one sees what is actually happening in Quebec. No wonder the Liberal Party has absolutely tanked in the province of Quebec. The writers of soap operas would have to work overtime to keep up with the drama that this place has provided for the people of Quebec as they watch the amount of corruption. Sex, war and violence make for a good soap opera and it seems we have had that here in the last few months. That absolutely has to stop. It is almost at the point where members of Parliament on this side when they go home on weekends have to take multiple showers just to clean the sleaze off from what we see in the House.

I put my name on a ballot to try to garner the support and trust of the people in my constituency of Yellowhead. I took that on as a very important and honoured position. I have come to the House to represent them in way which allows them to hold their heads high.

I think each member needs to understand that we are here not because of our self-interest but because of the interests of the people we represent. Too many members forget that too quickly after an election. We had an election a year ago. We have seen what it will take for a party to try to stay in power. I find it absolutely amazing when I see that happen.

Let us get on to the actual piece of legislation. Before we get to Bill C-48, we have to talk about its precursor, which is Bill C-43, and understand how it came about.

Bill C-43 is the biggest spending budget we have seen in a decade. An amazing amount of dollars is in Bill C-43. When the budget was first handed down, it went through a process as normal budgets do. There was a lot of consultation, a lot of input. In a minority government it is very important that the government sit down and talk to all parties intently to have their input into the budget. Bill C-43 had a fair amount of that, more than we have seen in other budgets. The House can understand that because it is a minority government and we need to respect that.

When Bill C-43 came forward, although not everything was in the best interests of Canadians, we thought there was certainly enough there that was better than we had seen before. There were some things that needed to be changed in committee. We sat on our hands for the first vote to get the bill into committee so we could address some of the serious problems.

We certainly needed to deal with the CEPA amendments. We certainly needed to deal with making sure that the budget represented the population and that it was in the best interests of all Canadians.

We have to understand what the finance minister said about the budget . He said that we could not run this country by one-offs, that we could not just cherry-pick and apply money illegitimately, without a plan or a purpose and without full consultation. What we saw coming out of this budget was exactly that because the government not only tried to stay in power illegitimately after the NDP budget, which is Bill C-48, but it tried to stay in power through Bill C-43.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am glad the member asked those questions; however, I regret that he had to do it in such a patronizing manner. I do not think that kind of attitude is called for in this House, but we are getting used to that from Conservatives.

The Conservatives, throughout this debate, have wanted to suggest that there are no details in this bill, that there are no plans. They do not dare mention that Bill C-43, which just passed and which they supported, contains the same kind of language, just like every bill that ever goes through this House. All bills say the government may spend in these areas and that it may do this with the scrutiny and oversight of Parliament. That is how this place works.

I think it is important to respond to this member by telling him that we have done something important for Canadians. He is suggesting that putting money into public transit, affordable housing, clean environmental projects, retrofitting of homes or foreign aid is frivolous. These members here are suggesting that these kinds of projects are frivolous and we should instead be allowing for more corporate profits, even though they are awash in profits today and not putting our money back into our economy.

The question here really is, how can the Conservatives and the Bloc not support something so basic that Canadians so desperately need. It is in the form of help for housing, education and clean air, and support for people around the world, so that we can all live and grow in an atmosphere and a society of decency, where all human beings are able to pursue their dreams and aspirations to their fullest potential.

[Monte Solberg, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Mr. Speaker, just to assure my friend across the way, I do think the government is corrupt. In fact, I think most Canadians think it is corrupt. In fact, the polling I have seen suggests that people think the Prime Minister is largely responsible for the sponsorship scandal and frankly, I agree.

My friend across the way has asked me to comment on the contingency aspect of the spending. I would be happy to do that.

It is also true that as a member of the finance committee the parliamentary secretary knows there is a very high likelihood that we will be running surpluses next year of a magnitude that will allow the government to meet its commitments to the NDP. This means that this is contingent only on paper. The reality is that this money will be spent. The question is, is this the proper way to spend it?

I want to take a moment to address that. As the parliamentary secretary knows, we went around this country listening to Canadians before the last budget came down. We had a prebudget review so that we could provide the finance minister with guidance on how to spend this money. That was reflected in Bill C-43. What was not reflected was a $4.6 billion deal cut to save the hide of the Liberal Party which was under fire for the worst corruption in Canadian history, aided and abetted by the NDP. That is so wrong.

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

Mr. Speaker, the late great Yogi Berra would say that that speech sounds like déjà vu all over again. I suspect we are going to have a fair bit of déjà vu all over again because there are very few, if any, of the arguments put forward by the hon. member that have not already been heard in this House and outside this House dozens and dozens of times.

He started off by saying that the Conservative Party thinks that it can do better. Unfortunately, he does not seem to acknowledge the fact that the Canadian people do not agree with him. He has given a classic demonstration of why his party has been in opposition for 12 years. It is probably destined to spend at least another 12 years in opposition telling itself that it can do better. Apparently it cannot do better.

I want to make sure that people who might be listening to this debate know that the tax cuts that are proposed in Bill C-43 are being restored by way of a separate legislative initiative and that initiative has been put on the order paper.

What I do not understand is the hon. member's dodging around corruption. If his argument is that this government is corrupt, then his party for some bizarre reason supported a corrupt government by voting for Bill C-43. I do not see how he can say that his party has done anything other than support a corrupt government, or maybe he does not really believe that this is in fact a corrupt government.

I want to put to the hon. member that in his speech he neglected to mention that this is in fact enabling legislation. Will he acknowledge that the government may spend in these areas in the event that at least $2 billion in surplus is realized? Will he at least acknowledge that this money is not committed until those contingencies are met?

[Monte Solberg, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to address Bill C-48.

I want to say at the outset that the Conservative Party of Canada believes that Canada can do so much better than we have done up until now. We are a land that is blessed with tremendous resources. We have access to the richest market in the history of the world and yet our standard of living languishes. Too many people cannot find jobs today or, if they can find a job, they are not the types of jobs that can pay them a wage that allows them to look after their families and ensure that they can send their children off to university. We think we can do a lot better and that is why we are so opposed to Bill C-48.

We think Bill C-48 represents a government that has completely lost its vision, if it ever had any vision. We argue that there is a much better way to proceed, which I will speak to in a few minutes.

I want to say a little about Bill C-48 at the outset. We need to correct the record about some of the things that my hon. friend has said. I think he is completely misleading Canadians about how this came about, about the nature of Bill C-48 and the nature of the spending that is planned in Bill C-48.

I want to remind my friend across the way that when the budget came in back in February there were a number of things in it that our party supported and some things on which we had some concerns but on balance we found it supportable. We did want to change some things and ultimately we got some of those changes.

We received some of the tax relief that we had been seeking but it was very minimal. After we had pushed the government quite hard, Canadians will receive $16 in personal income tax relief, which, I agree, is not very much. In fact it is a lot less than the millions of dollars that Liberal friends received through the sponsorship scandal in paper bags passed across tables at restaurants and suitcases full of money, but nevertheless we felt that the government was moving a little in our direction.

One of the key elements of Bill C-43, the budget legislation that came down, was a commitment to cut the taxation on large employers. We have been pushing for this for some time because that kind of tax reduction is important to ensuring that the productivity of Canada improves. When productivity improves it means that businesses can hire more workers, they attract more investment, more jobs are created and, as a result of that, more revenue starts coming in to the government. We really pushed that and we were happy to see that the government was doing that, although it was too far down the road.

We have this big productivity challenge in front of us today and the government wants to delay bringing in this tax relief for large employers, even though we face huge challenges today from countries like China, soon India, and basically every other country in the world. We are facing some big challenges but we said that it was okay because at least the government was moving roughly in the right direction.

We had some concerns about some of the environmental provisions of the bill. Part 15 of the bill dealt with regulating large final emitters for companies that emit CO

2

. The government wanted to do that through CEPA, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. We did not like that and just about every party in the House thought that was a bad idea and argued that should not be done. However the good news is that we were able to get some amendments to Bill C-43. We got rid of the CEPA provisions. We were able to make some other changes to greenhouse gas technology funds that made sure it was a little more flexible so that businesses could use it and make it work for them.

We got some changes when it came to transparency on Bill C-43 and ultimately we did support Bill C-43, as the member knows. It is not perfect and it is a long way from perfect. It is not what a Conservative government would do. It is a tepid approach, in our view, but it is a step in the right direction and we did support it.

However, where we thought the government went way off the rails was on Bill C-48. I want to remind the parliamentary secretary that there were NDP members standing in this place until a day or two before the Prime Minister and the leader of the NDP met in a hotel room in Toronto with Buzz Hargrove, the union leader, to cut a deal that was a long way away from this place and from the scrutiny of Canadians. In fact, it was a political deal. It was cut because the government was worried that it would fall with the revelations that were coming out of the Gomery commission, revelations that shook the faith of the country in this government.

Guess what? Despite what the finance minister had been saying in this place about how what the NDP was proposing was outrageous and that “You can’t go on stripping away piece by piece by piece of the budget...You can’t...begin to cherry pick”, two days later his Prime Minister cut a deal with the leader of the NDP to save the hide of the Liberal Party. It was facing these unbelievable charges coming from executives within the Liberal Party talking about millions of dollars being passed to ad executives in suitcases and in paper bags. It was outrageous.

The NDP supported a corrupt government, the most corrupt government in the history of the country, in order to get what it wanted. That is how this all came about, in case people forget. I wanted to set the record straight.

The problems with Bill C-48 go way beyond that. I want to address some of those issues right now.

When the budget came down, the government argued that it needed to have a particular fiscal framework to ensure that we had stability down the road. It wanted to make sure that there was always enough money to ensure that the country did not go into deficit and that there was a minimal amount of money that would go toward debt repayment, which is a good idea. In fact, our party has always supported that, as did the Liberal Party until it struck its deal with the NDP.

In striking that deal, the Liberals took the minimum amount of money that would be used as a buffer to ensure that they did not go into a deficit and if it was not used it would go toward debt repayment. They took it from $4 billion and now it is down to $2 billion under Bill C-48. What does that mean? It means that the amount of money that is used to retire debt is less now, meaning that down the road we will pay more in interest. We will not have the same kind of savings that we would have had if we still had that $4 billion cushion.

I want members in the House to think about what that means. It means that for every $1 billion that we pay toward the debt, and let us assume the interest rate is at 3%, we would save $30 million a year in perpetuity from now until forever. If we were to pay down $2 billion, like the government is now proposing since it struck its deal with the NDP, that would be $60 million in perpetuity that we could be using to fund things like social programs down the road.

I see my friends in the NDP are very agitated about this but I think I am telling the truth about this. I think they are concerned that I am revealing how damaging their deal is to the social safety net of this country, which they should be concerned about because it is damaging.

My point is that the difference between $4 billion and $2 billion means tens of millions of dollars a year cannot now be used to fund social programs down the road, especially when Canadians who are starting to age today, the baby boom generation, hit their retirement years. We expect that when we hit around the year 2030 we will have double the number of seniors than we have today. What will we do then with a much smaller tax base to fund all those seniors? One thing we could do is pay down the debt so that we have more capacity down the road to fund big social programs like health care and seniors pensions.

We are making a grave error. We are making the error of political expediency. The government is selling out the country today to save its own political hide. It is putting the pensions and the health care of seniors at risk down the road. That is what this amounts to and it is reprehensible. That is what the government has done.

There are more problems with Bill C-48. One of the big problems with Bill C-48 can be seen when one picks it up. I do not have a copy of it here, but it is two pages long, a bill that is spending $4.6 billion. One would expect that when talking about amending a budget to include an expenditure of $4.6 billion, one would get a document that not only laid out exactly where the spending would occur, but what the objectives are, what the government intends to accomplish, the mechanisms it would use to accomplish the objectives, and the safeguards in place to guarantee that the money would not be misspent. That is what one would expect when talking about an expenditure of this magnitude, but that is not what we got. We got a 400 word bill. It is one of the most pathetic pieces of legislation I have ever seen in my life.

I see my NDP friend over there wagging his finger at me, criticizing me. Well, let me address one of my concerns when it comes to this issue. In this legislation the government is proposing to spend money on post-secondary education, which is laudable. We all want to do that, but we want to do it in a way we can afford so that down the road we can ensure that we can do it for all Canadians, not just in the short term for the political gain of the Liberals and the NDP.

One of the things that my friend from Portage--Lisgar raised was that in 2000 the Auditor General raised concerns about spending on post-secondary education for aboriginals. This was in the year 2000. In the fall of 2004, the Auditor General said that four years earlier her department had raised those concerns and it still had not had a response from the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs about how the money was being spent. Now the government wants to spend $1.5 billion on post-secondary education, some of which would go to the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs for post-secondary education for aboriginals. The Auditor General still has not received a response, but those members do not care. They do not care that the Auditor General of Canada has grave concerns about the accountability of this money.

The NDP wants to go ahead and spend that money without having that response from the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs. The Liberals, of course, do not care. They never have cared about these things. That is why we have problems like the sponsorship scandal. That is why we have problems like the firearms registry.

Frankly, it is why we have problems like one of the worst scandals I think I have ever seen in Indian affairs, which was the whole issue of Davis Inlet. I know that Liberal members and certainly the NDP equate how much one spends with how much one cares. The more money one spends, the bigger one's heart. That is the view of those members. It is not about results for them; it is about how much money they spend. There is no better example that I can provide than how the government handled the problem at Davis Inlet.

I want to remind people in the House and people who are watching this today what occurred. We were all horrified as a country when we saw on television young native children staggering around under the influence of gasoline that they had been sniffing. The prime minister of the day, Jean Chrétien, was horrified. We all were. It was unbelievable that in a country that provides opportunities to so many people, those people at Davis Inlet did not have that opportunity. We saw this absolute social pathology at Davis Inlet, where so many young people basically were throwing away their lives because they were doing this. What was the government's response? The government's response was to throw bags of money at the problem.

Anyone who doubts for a second that is true only has to look at what happened to Davis Inlet after the government intervened. What happened was the government spent $360 million on Davis Inlet, a community of 900 people, which amounts to $400,000 a person. The government moved the whole community down the road, and put the people in new housing and provided new facilities for them, water and all the rest of it.

Predictably, all of the problems went with those people, because the government equates how much money it spends with how much it cares. It equates how much money it spends with getting results and the two are not necessarily connected. The Liberals had no plan on how to spend that money to ensure they got results. The result was that those 900 people took all their problems and misery with them 20 miles down the road and they are in the same position today. That is a disgrace.

We will replicate that, I am afraid, with the NDP budget Bill C-48, because the government is moving forward at lightspeed on this with no plan. There is not one detail in the bill as to how the money will be spent. It just says it will go into certain areas. The government did not list the programs. It did not lay out the objectives. We don't know precisely how much the government wants to spend in each particular area. What the Liberals want to do, and the NDP members are prepared to go along with it, is they want to give authority to the governor in council, in other words to give broad authority to cabinet, to decide how the money is spent.

The Conservative Party moved amendments asking that the government provide plans, and I do not understand why it would not agree to it, by December 31 of this year, laying out how the money would be spent. It did not seem to be a very high hurdle to jump over, but the government could not even agree to that. It would not even accept that amendment. I am horrified that the Liberals would not do that when we are talking about such a major expenditure.

I am running out of time and there are a couple of more things I want to say. There is a better approach. The better approach is to figure out what we want to achieve and make sure that we have programs in place that help people realize their dreams. A lot of times it is not the government that does it. A lot of times it is families that do it.

Let us leave that money, where we possibly can, in the pockets of families. Families know better what is right for them and their children than bureaucrats and politicians do. When there is a doubt about what to do with $4.6 billion that the government has lying around, leave it in the pockets of Canadian taxpayers. They will use it wisely.

My time is running out, so I had better get down to business and move this amendment. I move:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following therefor:

Bill C-48, An Act to authorize the Minister of Finance to make certain payments, be not now read a third time, but be referred back to the Standing Committee on Finance for the purpose of reconsidering all of its clauses with the view to incorporate recommendations regarding tighter controls on discretionary spending.

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

Madam Speaker, as the member well knows, and certainly the people on this side of the House well know, we cannot do any kind of social investing unless we have our fiscal fundamentals right.

We are in a very advantageous position in this country. Our fiscal fundamentals are right. Bill C-43 represents the eighth balanced budget in a row. It also anticipates that going forward we will have a further five balanced budgets in a row. That, in turn, leads to some very happy results. It leads to some pretty low interest rates and some good inflation bands. We are within a band of one to three and that is acceptable to the minister and to the government.

With low interest, low inflation, balanced budgets and paying down debt, we then can dream a few dreams. Bill C-48 allows us to think in terms of what we would do in the event that we continue to have these surpluses. In the event that we do have these unplanned surpluses, we will invest in these areas.

Bill C-48 is rather interesting legislation in that I do not ever recollect this government, let alone any other government, actually tabling on the floor of a legislature what is called unplanned surplus legislation. This is an interesting way in which to indicate to the people of Canada and to the markets generally this is what we would do with any surplus beyond what we see coming forward.

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

Madam Speaker, there is a great deal that is a mystery to the hon. member opposite. I hope in answering the question that in some manner or another I might help him with his limitations.

The initiatives that Bill C-48 represents build upon previous initiatives of the Government of Canada.

As I said during the course of my speech, there are things that we can do in a budget and Bill C-43 represents those things that can be done in a budget. It represents a fiscally sound plan, and I note members opposite initially sat on the first vote. Then on the second vote, after their polls changed, they voted against the budget. After things changed again, they supported the budget, Bill C-43.

It seems somewhat disingenuous on the part of the hon. member opposite who has caused the reconfiguration and created this difficulty for us all.

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

Madam Speaker, I suppose that at some point we should ask whether we could get this through immediately.

I do not know whether this is the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning. We have been at this bill for quite a while, quite number of months. We have been debating the bill for hours and hours in the chamber. We have been at the bill for hours and hours at committee. The vote the other night was a close vote, but nevertheless I think Parliament spoke. After that vote there appears to be a sense that the bill in fact should pass. I hope hon. members will see it that way at the end of my speech.

The bill proposes a number of social priorities, which I would submit are consistent with the wishes of Canadians. Canada's social foundations are fundamental to who we are as Canadians. We are recognized internationally as a country that gives everyone an opportunity to participate in our society and to succeed in our economy. We pride ourselves on being a country where everyone has an opportunity to succeed.

Indeed, Canada is a prosperous country. Members will know the statistics well because they have heard them repeated many times in the chamber. They have heard about our current fiscal situation, which is possibly the most advantageous of any country in the G-7 and possibly in the OECD as well.

We certainly are in a situation where Canadians can begin to dream their dreams again. The dark nights of deficits, high interest rates and spiralling unemployment were to some measure diminishing the dreams of Canadians. We are now back to a situation where we are in fact the envy of the world.

Bill C-48 proposes to share somewhat more in that prosperity as reflected by this government's support of Canada's social foundations. I am sure that notwithstanding a lot of the rhetoric from the other side of the House there are very few members who actually oppose the four initiatives proposed in the bill itself.

I would like to remind hon. members of just how this government's investments in social programs have contributed to the improved quality of life for all Canadians. Past budgets have in fact established a solid base on which the government continues to move forward with its commitments.

We made major investments where they are needed, health care being number one on the list. Again, I need not remind the House of the historic meeting between the Prime Minister and the premiers in the fall of last year where an additional $41 billion over the next 10 years was committed to the provinces in order to assist with their health care needs.

Budget 2005 in fact added to that $41 billion commitment in the amount of $805 million over five years in direct federal health investments. As we know, not all Canadians are covered by provincial plans. For instance, people in the military and aboriginal people are covered by the federal government in the delivery of health care. This is money that parallels the investments that were committed to by the Prime Minister to the premiers last fall.

The government recognizes that health care is a major priority for Canadians, but there are also other issues that Canadians wish to address and to which they attach utmost importance. May I suggest that at least four of those are in Bill C-48? I would say that this is not an exhaustive list, but this is the list in Bill C-48, which includes the environment, social housing, foreign aid and post-secondary education.

Indeed, as the finance committee travelled, although this year it did not travel as much as it normally does, certainly representations were made from all over the country to the finance committee with respect to a whole variety of initiatives that the government was asked to undertake on behalf of Canadians.

In fact, quite a number of them found their way into budget 2005 in the form of Bill C-43. That in and of itself was not an exhaustive list of initiatives. Certainly representations were made on a whole variety of other initiatives that Canadians wished us to take, but a budget is, by definition, trying to balance the fiscal capacity of the government with the priorities as identified by Canadians.

Bill C-48 extends those priorities. In these four priorities that I have identified, we have in fact tried to reflect some other initiatives that Canadians wish the government to invest in. The bill will commit, in the event of certain contingencies being made, an additional sum of $4.5 billion, plus another $100 million for another initiative, for a total of $4.6 billion in these important priorities that Canadians have identified to us.

Let me speak briefly about these four initiatives. As the House knows, possibly the biggest concern after health care that was identified to us at the committee, and is identified to us by constituents, is the concern about the environment. It is not merely Kyoto related, where we are talking about C0

2

emissions, but it is also about smog, particulates in the air. We have had some days even in this part of the year with situations where people are finding it difficult to breathe.

However, it is not only about air; it is also about the quality of our water and the quality of our environment generally. Bill C-48 goes somewhat toward addressing that issue. Canadians do want to ensure that future Canadians not only have the health care they want but also have a safe and healthy environment.

We have before us today $900 million for environmental initiatives, the bulk of which will be aimed at public transit in our cities and communities.

I know, Madam Speaker, that both you and I share a constituency in Toronto. It is a great honour to represent people in Toronto and I know that the mayor and the council are extremely interested in seeing the passage of Bill C-48 so that this particular initiative will find its way into the budget of the city of Toronto. You know the subway system and the transit system as well as I do, Madam Speaker, and you know that it is in serious need of additional funds.

This is in fact the government stepping up to the plate and contributing a significant sum of money, not only to the city of Toronto but also to the city of Montreal, the city of Vancouver and a whole variety of large and small communities in between those major cities. This money can be used to encourage public transit systems and therefore reduce traffic congestion.

Madam Speaker, you and I also know about the 401 highway across Toronto, which has become at times nothing more than a glorified parking lot. It seems that rush hour starts at 4:30 in the morning and ends some time around 12:30 at night. Presumably, if these moneys are deployed in a correct fashion, the difficulties with the 401 and other major arteries will in fact be alleviated by virtue of the creation of public transit systems and the increased desirability on the part of Torontonians and others of using the public transit system. I am sure there are other members in the House who could speak to their own congestion problems that occur in their cities.

Part of the funding for the environment is contained also in supporting new low income housing retrofit programs. Hopefully that will benefit low income families. As members have probably observed in their own heating bills, the costs are going through the ceiling, literally and figuratively. I think that this in and of itself may well be a significant saving for low income Canadians.

Speaking of housing, Madam Speaker, you and I share a keen interest in affordable housing. Currently the government spends something in the order of $1.9 billion on an annual basis toward homelessness and affordable housing. That addresses about 640,000 families who live in existing social family housing units. The bill proposes a further investment of $1.6 billion in affordable housing construction. That will be a welcome initiative not only our my communities but right across the nation.

It is important to emphasize that this new money is unlike other moneys which have required matching initiatives from either provincial or municipal or private sector partners. In this case there will not be a tie to matching funding from provinces. Some of the money will be redirected to first nation reserves where there is a shortage of social housing. That shortage on some reserves is at a critical stage. We are anticipating some of that money will be redirected to aboriginal housing.

These initiatives reflect well upon the government's $1.9 billion commitment that already exists. We predict that as this initiative spreads out over the number of years anticipated, it will have a direct impact on quite a number of families.

As we well know, Bill C-48 is not the only thing that the Government of Canada has been doing. In budget 2001 it started the affordable housing initiative with the funding of $680 million over five years to help increase the supply of affordable rental housing.

People have heard me comment on other occasions that this money plus the fiscal management of the government's finances has contributed directly to an increase in supply of not only rentals but affordable housing that is available for purchase. The interest rates are at virtually an all time low. A lot of people who live in apartments have been renting for years. From time to time they wish to move out--

Extended Sitting Period

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

I do like it. I just do not see the urgency for any of it.

My hon. colleague from the NDP said that he thought I would like that. Of course I like it. Anything that would bring any degree of financial credibility to the government and to its spending habits would be a good thing. I think it is great that the Liberals cannot spend themselves into deficit, although I wonder whether that is exactly the route we are headed for now, despite their pleas to the contrary.

Here we sit today and Bill C-43 sits in the Senate while the government holds us to ransom and tries to blame it on the Conservatives. Conservative senators are ready to expeditiously pass the bill so the money can start flowing to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador for the Atlantic accord and to municipalities all across the country for badly needed improvements to infrastructure, but it just sits there because the government wants to, as I have said, hold us to ransom until it gets this piece of legislation through.

Why it wants to is completely beyond me, when the bill will not come into effect until we know what the financial situation of the country is almost a year from now. The fiscal or financial year end for our country is March 31. Until we get to next April fool's day, we will not know whether there is enough money to spend on these so-called priorities, so what is the urgency?

Why would Bill C-48 be the urgent legislation that the government House leader states it is? Here is what he has said about Motion No. 17. If it fails, if we vote it down, if there are sufficient members of Parliament in the chamber who say it is not urgent enough to extend the sitting into July, with the accompanying costs--and why would it be?--he has actually said that he will go to the Speaker and request that Parliament reconvene after its adjournment. Let us just think about that.

There is a mechanism in our democracy whereby, if it is necessary, a government can recall Parliament in times of great peril when the House is in a recess period. Every Canadian would support this, because we do not have a crystal ball with which to look into the future.

We do not know what would happen if suddenly we were in a situation where some country declared war on us or if there were some horrendous natural disaster, like an earthquake or something, that required the urgent and timely intervention of Parliament. All sorts of crises might occur and they might not be so accommodating as to occur when the House is in session, so, of course, we need to have that mechanism in place. No one disputes that.

However to have a government demonstrate the arrogance that this legislation, along with Bill C-38, the same sex marriage legislation, are of such urgency that it would go to the Speaker and request that he recall Parliament to deal with it, is nothing short of unbelievable. I have never heard of such a thing.

If this unfolds, think about the precedent this sets. I would suggest that there is then no need to even worry about having a calendar whereby members of Parliament of all four parties can try to plan their lives, their commitments to their constituents and the events in their ridings.

As I said at the outset of my remarks, I know there are many members in all four parties who have important events planned in their ridings that allow their constituents personal access to their member of Parliament.

All too often we become so taken up with events in this place that it is all too easy to forget about how important that personal interaction with our constituents is. There are a few people who forget that at their peril and they will be reminded at the time of the next election. All of us have seen that happen.

I cannot and would not want to downplay how important this upcoming recess is for members of Parliament to be able to interact with their constituents.

While I am on the subject of this urgent nature, I just want to briefly refer to Bill C-38, the other piece of legislation that the government says is of such urgency that it has to get it through before we recess for the summer.

One of my colleagues makes a good point. Why did the Liberals not bring it through earlier if they wanted it? Why was it that in the entire month of May, the only day that we had for an opposition supply day was the last day of May. However in order to fulfill the requirement for the supply period, the government was forced to do exactly what I said it would be forced to do when it started down that road in late April, which was have all of the remaining six opposition supply days in early June. It took up a lot of time in the chamber but the government had to give those days to us finally, otherwise it could not have gotten its supply, which is its funding for the upcoming year. It had to complete that.

Now we are in a situation where the Liberals have determined that these two pieces of legislation are urgent: Bill C-48 and Bill C-38. I have already addressed the so-called budget companion bill, Bill C-48, so I will now turn to Bill C-38.

The reality is that we on this side believe that Canadians have some very deep reservations about enacting into law for the entire country same sex marriage. We believe the majority of Canadians have some very serious reservations about a government that is proceeding down that road. Many of these reservations came out in the debate that took place in the special legislative committee that was struck to deal with the legislation following second reading in the House.

The committee, however, certainly did not do the job that my colleagues, led by the member for Provencher who I know tried to ensure that the committee would travel to give Canadians better access. I spoke earlier about access to members of Parliament. He wanted to ensure that Canadians had access to discuss that face to face with the committee.

The Prime Minister promised at one point that the committee would ensure that Canadians did have that access and yet they did not. For my colleagues, the four Conservative members of Parliament who sat on that special legislative committee, it was a huge fight for them to even get the reduced list of witnesses who would appear. The government just wanted to fast-track Bill C-38 through that process. I say shame because there are some reservations.

However, even in that short period of time, it belatedly became obvious to the government, at the 11th hour, that there were some real legitimate concerns about the protection of religious freedom in this country. Even then, the government missed the deadline for putting forward its amendments at committee. This is how inept the government is; it missed the deadline for putting forward its amendments.

It had to be through negotiations with the Conservative members on that committee that concessions were made. However we have very serious reservations about the strength of those amendments and whether they will really do the job of protecting religious freedom and freedom of religious expression in this country.

We heard again today, in his brief remarks to Motion No. 17, the government House leader reading an editorial from the Globe and Mail that said that there had been enough talk about this, that it should just go to a vote and get it over with. In other words, we should just rush it through and never mind that there may be people hauled before courts or tribunals and punished if they question homosexuality. We constantly hear that there is enough protection. We have heard those words before, as have Canadian.

Why is there this urgency? Gays and lesbians are getting married in Canada. What is going to change if Bill C-38 passes through the House? I would seriously doubt it will pass through the Senate before the Senate rises for the summer. What difference does it make to the government whether Bill C-38 sits in this place for the summer or sits in the other place for the summer?

Only one thing comes to mind and it is that Liberal members of Parliament, when they know that the majority of their constituents are opposed to same sex marriage, do not want to hear about it all summer as they are out in their ridings interacting with their constituents. They are hoping that if we can deal with it, pass it and get it shuffled over to the Senate, that somehow that will take it off Canadians' agenda.

It might come off the agenda of the House of Commons but I can say that there is no hope in hell that it will come off the agenda for real Canadians in the real world. However supposedly this is of great urgency.

What is our position? We are not opposed to hearing an hour or two of report stage of Bill C-38. I conveyed that on behalf of my Conservative colleagues over a week ago to the House leader but the government wants the bill completed.

My position and the position of the Conservative Party of Canada was that given the very serious reservations that Canadians have about the protection of religious freedom of expression surrounding the bill, why would we not want to take those amendments, the ones which we and many others believe are too weak, out into the real world and ask Canadians what they think? What would be wrong in doing that for the summer if the bill is still here at report stage?

For those Canadians watching today, report stage is that stage of the legislative process where a bill can be amended. It can be improved and fixed. That was our position and it remains our position.

The majority of us do not believe that the bill is fixable but we do believe that at a minimum it could be improved before we send it on to the other place. We would like to get the opinion of Canadians over the summer as to whether they feel any cold comfort whatsoever with the amendments that have been put forward, both at committee and now put forward for report stage, if indeed those are not ruled out of order the way the vast majority were when it was at the special legislative committee.

The two pieces of legislation that the government says are so urgent that they require either the passage of Motion No. 17 or the extraordinary step that has only ever been taken in times of national emergency of going to the Speaker this weekend and telling him that we must reconvene Parliament next Monday, I would argue that I have just successfully disputed whether there is any urgency whatsoever.

In the lives of real Canadians outside of this place, nothing is going to change whether we pass Bill C-48 or Bill C-38.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

As did the other two opposition parties. I should not say that. What I should say is that the one other opposition party and the coalition partner also supported the initiative to try to get that done, but the government refused. It said no, that it was all part of the package.

Time after time we heard in this place that we should pass Bill C-43 and get the budget through, that if we wanted the Atlantic accord we should get the budget through. How many times did we hear that? Now it is sitting in the Senate. It is going to be held for ransom until the government gets Bill C-48 through.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

And the Atlantic accord as well. I will get to that in a second. I know the member was worried that I had forgotten about that. I had not.

I want to point out that there are good things in the budget. On balance, that is why, when we assessed it, we supported it. It is important that people in the real world outside of this bubble that sits over Parliament Hill understand this.

Bill C-43 is sitting in the Senate. Why would that be? The government says it is of an urgent nature and is quick to try to condemn the Conservative Party even though, as I have just laid out, it abstained on the original budget vote and has supported it twice since and ensured its quick passage.

In fact, let us talk about the Atlantic accord. The Conservatives wanted to expedite its passage. Time and time again my colleague from Newfoundland raised the issue and pleaded with the government to expedite it, to carve off the Atlantic accord from Bill C-43 and get it through this place.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Money was blown on Shawinigate. I thank my colleague for the reminder. The past prime minister, Jean Chrétien, interceded to secure a loan for a golf course and a hotel that he had an interest in.

There was also the spending on Challenger jets. My colleagues are feeding me information here to make sure that I do not forget, because so many scandals have rocked this government over the last 12 years that it is just unbelievable.

And this is the government that has the audacity to come to this place with a bill like this and expect all members of Parliament from all parties to approve it. Bill C-48 was illegitimately conceived. I would suggest that it is the illegitimate child of that union in the Toronto hotel room. The government has brought this bill before the House and expects all parties to fall all over themselves because of all the great and wonderful things it is going to address.

We are not saying that the issue of foreign aid does not need to be addressed. We are not saying that the issue of homelessness does not need to be addressed. We are not saying that there does not need to be greater emphasis on public transit. We have never said those things. Those things have always been part of our agenda, but they should not be dealt with like this.

Canadians understand that. My constituents understand that. This is no way to draft a budget. Canadians put more effort into drafting their household budget on a weekly basis than the government put into drafting this bill.

No one in Canada is fooled when told that this is somehow urgent business, that it needs to be addressed immediately and needs to be passed to the extent that we extend a sitting of Parliament to accomplish it. No one is fooled by that.

People know what Bill C-48 is: desperation in the extreme. This was conceived at a time when the Prime Minister knew that his minority government was in desperate shape and was about to fall if he did not do something. The only thing that kept his government alive in February and March was our party, because, as I said earlier, we assess each piece of government legislation and weigh it on its own merits.

We assessed Bill C-43, the original budget implementation act. We felt that there was enough good in it to support it. We took the unprecedented step, never before done in the 138 year history of Canada, of abstaining on the original budget vote. If we had voted as most opposition parties normally would have, the government would have fallen then. The NDP voted against it. The Bloc Québécois voted against it; to the Bloc's credit, at least it is consistent. The government would have fallen. We would have been in an election in March. We did not do it because we weigh legislation based on its merits and on whether we believe we can improve it.

We believed that the flaws in Bill C-43, such as the CEPA amendments to implement parts of the Kyoto accord, could be taken out. We believed that the bill could be improved and amended, so we waited, on balance, and decided to take an unprecedented step.

At that time, the NDP criticized the Conservatives for this. The leader of the NDP went to the television cameras and dumped all over us and all over the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. He said it was unbelievable that the Conservative Party and its leader would abstain and allow the survival of Parliament.

Let us be clear on that point as well. The Conservatives did not support the budget that night. We did not support a corrupt government that night. We allowed Parliament to survive. We were very clear on that. We allowed to Parliament to survive because we believed that this particular piece of legislation, Bill C-43, could be amended and on balance could ultimately be supported. And we ultimately did. We supported it on May 19 and again on June 15.

It strikes me as more than a little odd that the government House leader moments ago said that this legislation, Bill C-48, the NDP budget, is of an urgent nature. Yet Bill C-43 has been passed to the other place. That is the budget, not this. Bill C-43, the original budget implementation act, was supported by the official opposition and the New Democratic Party and went to the other place on June 15. I have been informed that there it sits.

Conservative senators are ready to pass it because it contains things that all of us are under pressure to implement. It does not matter whether we are Conservative members of Parliament or Liberal, NDP or Bloc. We have all heard from our municipalities in our ridings, from our mayors, city councillors, regional district directors, reeves, et cetera. They are all of the opinion that they want Bill C-43, which contains the gas tax transfer of money to the municipalities, passed as quickly as possible into law so that money can start flowing.

[Tony Valeri, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will respond directly to the hon. member's question. When he makes reference to a budget implementation bill that just passed the Senate, what he is referring to is a budget finance bill which contained housekeeping tax measures. The budget implementation bill from budget 2004 passed within months, not a year. In fact, it was presented in March and passed before the House recessed in June of last year.

I must correct the member. While he makes his argument, the argument is incorrect. I would also encourage him to look at the facts to see that the budget implementation bill itself was passed quite expeditiously, much along the same lines that Bill C-43 was passed. We hope to have Bill C-48 passed expeditiously.

With respect to disagreeing with Bill C-48, I accept the member's ability and right to disagree on legislation. I have no qualms with that at all. That is what this House is about. I think that debate is about changing minds. I do not think the debate should be about stalling the question so Parliament can decide, and the opposition members have done a very good job of trying to do exactly that.

Editorials across the country are asking why members continue to stall, why they do not allow the question and why they do not allow Parliament to decide. That is democracy in action. Members should be able to oppose, but I do not think they should be able to use debate just to delay.

[Leon Benoit, Conservative, Vegreville—Wainwright, AB]

Mr. Speaker, everyday I see the government stooping to new lows. Today we see threats against members of the House of time allocation and using closure to prevent appropriate debate. It goes on and on and it is getting worse, quite frankly.

The member is talking about Bill C-48, which was so unimportant to the government that none of it was put in the original Liberal budget bill. We are talking about the NDP-Liberal budget bill. Now the Liberals have to ram it through somehow. Besides that, the budget implementation bill for last year was only passed in the House a couple of weeks ago.

As my hon. colleague has already pointed out, none of the spending in the bill would take place immediately. It would be at least a year from now before the Liberals could calculate the level of surplus, overtaxation and increase in tax and spending that the government has gone through in the past few years which makes it difficult for my children and the children of people across the country to make their mortgage payments and pay off their students loans.

The Liberals keep taxing and spending more and more and now they want to spend this extra $4.5 billion that would be added on to their insane increases in spending in Bill C-43. The member should reconsider what he is trying to do. He should in fact back off on this. I am sure that is exactly what the House leader will do.

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

[Jeremy Harrison, Conservative, Churchill River, SK]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Regina—Qu'Appelle is correct. The leader of the NDP, when he was a council member with the city of Toronto, put forward a bill that would have essentially confiscated every gun in the communities of that area.

If we want to talk about a radical extremist, we can look at the leader of the NDP. The NDP members voted for over $200 million more for the gun registry in Bill C-43 and at the same time the Liberal government is shutting down police stations in rural parts of Saskatchewan. The government shut down a police station in the community of Goodsoil in my riding in northern Saskatchewan. It is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the gun registry. It is madness. Where are the priorities?