This bill is from the 39th Parliament, 1st session, which ended in October 2007.
Jim Flaherty Conservative
This bill has received Royal Assent and is now law.
This is from the published bill.
Part 1 implements income tax measures proposed or referenced in Budget 2007 to
(a) introduce a tax on distributions from certain publicly traded income trusts and limited partnerships, effective beginning with the 2007 taxation year;
(b) reduce the general corporate income tax rate by one half of a percentage point, effective January 1, 2011;
(c) increase the age credit amount by $1,000 from $4,066 to $5,066, effective January 1, 2006;
(d) permit income splitting for pensioners, effective beginning in 2007;
(e) introduce a new child tax credit of $2,000 multiplied by the appropriate percentage for a taxation year, effective beginning in 2007;
(f) increase the spousal and other amounts to equal the basic personal amount, effective beginning in 2007;
(g) increase the age limit for maturing registered retirement savings plans, registered pension plans and deferred profit sharing plans to 71 years of age, effective beginning in 2007;
(h) expand the types of investments eligible for registered retirement savings plans and other deferred income plans, effective March 19, 2007; and
(i) increase the contribution limits for registered education savings plans and expand eligible payments for part-time studies, effective beginning in 2007.
Part 1 also amends the Canada Education Savings Act to increase the maximum annual grant payable on contributions made to a registered education savings plan after 2006.
Part 2 amends the Excise Tax Act to clarify the legislative authority that allows the Canada Revenue Agency to pay refunds of excise tax directly to end-users, where fuel subject to excise has been used in tax-exempt circumstances. It also amends that Act to repeal the excise tax on heavy vehicles and to implement the Green Levy on vehicles with fuel consumption of 13 litres or more per 100 kilometres. It also provides an authority for the Canada Revenue Agency to pay a refund of the Green Levy for vans equipped for wheelchair access.
Part 3 implements goods and services tax/harmonized sales tax (GST/HST) measures proposed or referenced in Budget 2007. It amends the Excise Tax Act to exempt midwifery services from the GST/HST and to zero-rate certain supplies of intangible personal property made to non-GST/HST registered non-residents. It also amends that Act to repeal the GST/HST Visitor Rebate Program and to implement a new Foreign Convention and Tour Incentive Program, which provides rebates of tax in respect of certain property and services used in the course of conventions held in Canada and the accommodation portion of tour packages for non-residents, and establishes new information requirements in the case where rebates are credited by the vendor.
Part 4 implements other measures relating to taxation. It amends the Customs Tariff to increase the duty-free exemption for returning Canadian residents, from $200 to $400, for absences from Canada of not less than 48 hours. It amends the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act to clarify that when a federal corporation listed in Schedule I to that Act pays provincial taxes or fees, wholly-owned subsidiaries of that corporation also pay provincial taxes or fees. It also authorizes the Minister of Finance to make payments totaling $400 million out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund to the Province of Ontario to assist the province in the transition to a single corporate tax administration. This last measure is consequential to the October 6, 2006 Canada-Ontario Memorandum of Agreement Concerning a Single Administration of Ontario Corporate Tax.
Part 5 enacts the Tax-back Guarantee Act, which legislates the Government’s commitment to dedicate all effective interest savings from federal debt reduction each year to ongoing personal income tax reductions. That Part also commits the Minister of Finance to report publicly at least once a year on personal income tax relief provided under the Guarantee to Canadians.
Part 6 amends the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act to set out the amounts of the fiscal equalization payments to the provinces and the territorial formula financing payments to the territories for the fiscal year beginning on April 1, 2007 and to provide for the method by which those amounts will be calculated for subsequent fiscal years. It also authorizes certain deductions from those amounts that would otherwise be payable under that Act. In addition, it makes consequential amendments to other Acts.
Part 6 also amends that Act to provide increased funding for the Canada Social Transfer beginning on April 1, 2007, and to provide for the method by which the Canada Social Transfer and the Canada Health Transfer amounts will be calculated for subsequent fiscal years, including per capita cash allocations. It also provides for transition protection.
Part 7 amends the Financial Administration Act to modernize Crown borrowing authorities.
Part 8 amends the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Act to permit the Minister of Finance to lend money to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
Part 9 amends the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation Act, the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act, the Payment Clearing and Settlement Act and the Winding-up and Restructuring Act to allow the Governor in Council to prescribe the meaning of “eligible financial contract”. Those Acts are also amended to provide that, after an insolvency event occurs, a party to an eligible financial contract can deal with supporting collateral in accordance with the terms of the contract despite any stay of proceedings or court order to the contrary. This Part also includes amendments to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and the Winding-up and Restructuring Act to provide that collateral transactions executed in accordance with the terms of an eligible financial contract are not void only because they occurred in the prescribed pre-insolvency or winding-up period.
Part 10 authorizes payments to provinces and territories.
Part 11 authorizes payments to certain entities.
Part 12 extends the sunset provisions of financial institutions statutes by six months from April 24, 2007 to October 24, 2007.
Part 13 amends the Department of Public Works and Government Services Act to provide the Minister of Public Works and Government Services with the power to authorize another minister, to whom he or she has delegated powers under that Act, to subdelegate those powers to the chief executive of the relevant department. That Act is also amended with respect to the application of section 9 to certain departments.
Part 14 amends the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada Act to allow the Minister of Finance to provide funding to the Agency for activities related to financial education.
All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from the Library of Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.
Bill numbers are reused for different bills each new session. Perhaps you were looking for one of these other C-52s:
Budget Implementation Act, 2007Government Orders
The Deputy Speaker Bill Blaikie
Order. The hon. member got two minutes out of the five and there are other people wanting to ask questions.
I will go to the member for Vancouver Island North.
Catherine Bell NDP Vancouver Island North, BC
Mr. Speaker, I would remind my hon. colleague of the many things in our communities that ordinary Canadians were calling for, such as money for housing. There is a huge crisis across this country when it comes to housing. Whether people have jobs or not, it does not matter; they are having a hard time finding places to live.
There are people in my community who are living in campers in the park waiting for rental houses to become available because the vacancy rate is so low. My community is a small one. In other communities in my riding there are people who are in the same sort of situation. I hear on a daily basis from my colleagues across the country about the housing issues in the inner cities and larger communities, cities and towns. There are people who cannot find places to live. That has so many other implications for families.
For the government to completely ignore housing in the budget is outrageous. It has been such a big issue. People are calling for a national housing strategy. That the government left it out of the budget is beyond words.
Guy André Bloc Berthier—Maskinongé, QC
Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague and I agree with some of the points that she raised about this budget. She mentioned the absence of numerous social programs and policies. There is nothing for employment insurance. For many years now, we have been calling for improvements for people in need, and there is nothing about that. There is nothing either to help older workers, and nothing to support our industries. For example, Quebec has lost 100,000 manufacturing jobs since 2003. There is really nothing, no real measure to support that industry.
So there are shortcomings. We voted in favour of the budget because it marked a step forward in addressing the fiscal imbalance. I call it a step forward but the problem still has not been resolved.
In her remarks, my colleague barely mentioned the federal spending power. At present, large sums of money coming from the federal government are spent in areas that fall under provincial jurisdiction, such as health care or education. That leads to all kinds of duplication of services, infrastructure and bureaucracies. This waste of federal money directly prevents the public from receiving proper health care and education services.
I would like to hear my colleague's views on federal spending power and ways of limiting that power.
Catherine Bell NDP Vancouver Island North, BC
Mr. Speaker, I disagree with my Bloc colleague's comments about federal spending.
There are a lot of programs that the federal government should be delivering across the country, such as a national child care program. Quebec has a wonderful program. The rest of Canada would like to have that too. It would go a long way toward helping working families and single parents, moms and dads, to alleviate some of the costs that they face in bringing up their children when they have to go to work.
There are a whole lot of other things that I did not get to talk about with regard to spending that the government has failed on, such as foreign aid. We have actually seen the commitment to foreign aid drop. It is an embarrassment on the world stage for Canada when we said we would live up to a commitment of 0.7% of the GNP for foreign aid and we have actually decreased our foreign aid spending. It is a sad thing for Canada.
John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak once more to the budget. I thought I would use my time to focus on two items in the budget, which have been the recent focus of attention, income trusts and the interest deductibility provisions. I also want to use part of my time to show the linkages between those two.
The first point to make, which has been made before but it is so fundamental that it cannot be said too often, is that the income trust tax was a massive broken promise. The Prime Minister said, in words that could not have been clearer, during the election that he would not tax income trusts. On the strength of that solemn declaration, hundreds of thousands of Canadians took the Prime Minister at his word, put their life savings into income trusts, knowing that there were market risks but confident that there were no political risks, because the Prime Minister of the land had committed himself in unequivocal fashion to not tax those income trusts.
On Halloween of last year, when he absolutely and totally broke that promise by imposing a draconian 31.5% tax, he cut all those people off at the knees, caused a $25 billion meltdown of the hard-earned savings of those Canadians, many of whom are seniors who depend on the proceeds of their savings to pay the bills. The error was not simply the broken promise, but it was the incompetence of the manner in which that promise was broken. This is the first parallel between the income trust decision and the deductibility decision.
The finance minister has a tendency to go nuclear. When he sees a problem that might be a little problem, his tendency is to drop a nuclear bomb on it. He does not consult, he just drops the bomb and then finds out afterward what happens. A far more sensible approach would be a surgical approach; look at the problem, isolate the problem, consult before acting and think before acting. He does not think it through, but drops a nuclear bomb, lets it explode and then deals with the consequences thereafter.
Just yesterday he said, on the subject of deductibility, that he would spend some time on it now, some weeks after the budget. Why did he not spend some time on it before he made that decision? Instead of destroying $25 billion of consumers wealth, why did he not spend some time on thinking it through before he took that ill-fated action last Halloween? It is a bit late to start to spend some time on it now.
My point about the surgical nature of the operation in the case of income trusts is that what he should have done, and he had the information at his disposal, was to follow the Liberal plan, which says not to impose a 31.5% tax. That is absolutely unnecessary, draconian and it causes a $25 billion meltdown in Canadian savings. What we would do, and what we will do if we come to power, is impose a 10% tax, not a 31.5% tax and our tax would be refundable to all Canadian residents except non-residents who would have to pay the tax to ensure that they would pay a reasonably full share of the tax burden.
There are three positive effects of this alternative Liberal policy. Some intelligent people in the finance department could have told the minister this. It is not rocket science. Had he done our much more moderate, surgical, non-nuclear approach first of all, some two-thirds of the $25 billion lost to ordinary hard-working Canadians would have been returned to them through the markets under this Liberal plan.
Second, seniors in particular, who have need of a high yield instrument in order to get a return from their savings to pay the bills, would not be deprived of this income trust instrument, which is what is in the process of happening under the government's budget.
Third, the energy trust sector, which was a vibrant sector contributing to the nation's productivity according to the governor of the central bank, would have been allowed to continue to thrive under the Liberal plan.
Before Halloween, the energy trust sector was repatriating foreign capital. It was a net acquirer of foreign assets. Right now, it is sitting on its back, at bargain basement prices, being gobbled up by U.S. companies that are still subject to the tax rules that our Canadian energy trust was subject to prior to Halloween.
This is hugely damaging to a vibrant, highly productive sector in Alberta and it is hugely counterproductive to thefinance minister's stated goal. The finance minister's stated goal was tax fairness, that ordinary Canadians should not pay more than their share of taxes.
Let us think through, logically, the consequences of his actions. It was imminently predictable at the time of his decision that these energy trusts in Alberta, and other income trusts, would be for sale at bargain basement prices and that foreign entities, notably private equity companies, would come in and buy them up.
What does that do to the necessity for ordinary Canadians to pay taxes? Logically, it means that ordinary Canadians will have to pay more tax, not less tax. Why? Because under the previous structure, income trust holders were paying a lot of personal tax. Now what has happened is these private equity foreign companies come in, buy the assets and structure those purchases in such a way that they pay no tax. How does that save tax money? It does not; it does the opposite. It is not rocket science.
Previously, income trust unit holders were paying a lot of tax. Now the foreign entities come in, buy out those income trust holders and pay no tax. The net effect is the income trust sector is paying way less tax, and in many cases no taxes, than they were before. The public at large is going to end up footing a larger tax bill, not a smaller tax bill. Therefore, the fundamental objective of the policy, as stated by the finance minister, the opposite is in fact what is going on today.
There is a second way in which this is not fair.
First, the ordinary Canadians pay more tax because of the policy. Second, in the good old days, the pre-Halloween days, ordinary Canadians had access to this relatively high flow of income arising from the energy trust sector. Now the government says, no, that ordinary Canadians can no longer go there, ordinary Canadians can no longer participate in this revenue stream that is so important for seniors. However, the people with deep pockets can. If we had enough money to buy an oil field, we could still get those same benefits. Large pension funds can acquire those assets. Large private equity enterprises from the United States can achieve those same income streams, without paying any tax at all. That is unfair.
It was a revenue stream that was available to all Canadians, some with modest incomes, some with less modest incomes, in a democratic way. Ordinary Canadians cannot go there any more. Only the entities with the deep pockets and the big wallets are allowed to go there.
I will now come to the important point about interest deductibility.
This is a very important parallel between these two policies. What the government is doing with the interest deductibility prohibition is it is tilting the playing field in favour of foreign companies and against Canadian companies. Whether we look at Europe, the United States or Japan, all those jurisdictions have equivalent policies. Their companies, when they go abroad, can deduct the interest on debt. Canada's companies can no longer do that. Our companies are weakened relative to companies from the U.S., Europe and Japan.
Why would the Minister of Finance and Prime Minister wish to tilt the playing field in favour of the foreign companies and against the Canadian companies? It is a totally erroneous policy. It is anti-competitive. It is exactly the same as what the government has done with the energy trusts. The U.S. equivalent of energy trusts have the same favourable tax treatment.
The government has tilted the playing field in favour of the U.S. companies both for energy trusts and in general. It has moved against Canadian companies. Canadian companies for competitiveness, for jobs, for prosperity need to expand abroad and the government has attacked that ability to the gain of foreign companies.
I do not have to remind the House of that great Progressive Conservative Peter Lougheed. He has spoken out against the dangers of the hollowing out of Canadian companies, a message that the government has totally ignored.
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise and debate this with my colleague from the other side.
The Liberals voted against the ways and means motion. They are probably going to vote against the budget as it goes. I want to point out that the Liberals are voting against the new working income tax benefit the working poor, the new $2,000 child tax credit, the $16 billion in new infrastructure funding, the $1.5 billion for the provinces and the territories to help develop environmental measures, $600 million to reduce patient wait times, $300 million to combat cervical cancer, $1 billion in tax cuts for seniors, a 40% increase in post-secondary education transfers to the provinces and $20 million in establishment. There are a few more things I could go through.
He spent all that time on income trusts, but the member across was quoted as saying on Question Period on CTV, November 5, 2006, the following:
It was absolutely the right thing, and we had started on this track to protect the tax base, to ensure tax fairness and to work for the productivity of the nation.
Did he or did he not say that on national television on a Sunday morning on November 6?
John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives love that quote, but they always leave out the following six or seven words that I said, and that was they were wrong because they used a nuclear approach when the surgical was required. This is what I continue to say to this day. If they would look at the full transcript, they would see that.
Let me speak to one of the measures referred to by the member, the working income tax benefit. That is a really meanspirited working income tax benefit. It is very miserly. It has half the value only of the previous Liberal version.
My contention is the government really only wishes to appear to care about low income working Canadians. The measure that it has adopted is so miserly and ungenerous. It will only help a person get a few feet up the welfare wall. It will do nothing to help them get over it. This is what the Conservatives bring out at every opportunity to pretend they care about poor people, but they do not care about poor people at all because those are not the Conservative constituency.
Michael Chong Conservative Wellington—Halton Hills, ON
Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member for Markham—Unionville. I think some of what he has said is quite interesting with respect to the hollowing out of corporate Canada.
The new position of the Liberal Party to oppose foreign direct investment into Canada is very interesting to me. The way the member was talking in the debate, it sounded as though he actually opposed the idea of foreign direct investment of foreign capital coming into Canada, making investments into Canadian businesses and enterprises. This is something this government supports. Our government believes this has contributed greatly to our prosperity and productivity.
Is this a new position of the Liberal Party, that it will now oppose foreign direct investment into Canada? The Conservative Party believes this is very good for the Canadian economy.
John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
Mr. Speaker, the hon. member question is a far more sensible question than that of his predecessor. It is a good question, but it is not right.
The Liberal Party is not opposed to foreign direct investment. I agree with the hon. member that foreign direct investment brings many benefits. We are in favour of foreign direct investment by foreigners into Canada and by Canadians to other countries. That is a part of the world in which we live.
What we oppose is when government policy tilts the playing field to favour the foreigners at the expense of Canadians. This is what the interest deductibility thing does. We want Canadians to be able to compete with foreigners on an equal footing, on a level playing field. The minister's policy, by removing that privilege from Canadian companies, while companies of other countries retain it, has favoured those other countries at the expense of our companies.
He is creating not a Canadian advantage, about which he likes to talk. He is creating a Canadian disadvantage in favour of foreigners. That is our problem. Our problem is not foreign investment per se. Our problem is creating a playing field where the government, whether by error or by whatever reason, not thinking it through, has worked in favour of foreign companies and against Canadian companies.
Irene Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this time to talk about the impact of the budget on the housing crisis in Canada and its impact in my riding of London—Fanshawe.
With the growing homeless crisis in this country and the cost of housing on the rise, there is a definite need for more investment in affordable housing. With over $9 billion in budgeted corporate tax cuts, we know that there is money available and that it should be available for the vulnerable of this country but, sadly, there is no new money for affordable housing or homelessness in the recent federal budget.
The budget made it very clear that the housing of our citizens is not a priority for the government. In fact, the number of times homelessness was mentioned in the budget was zero. This is shameless. With over 200,000 homeless people in this country, there is not a single mention of their plight. How can we begin to address the problem when it is clear that the government does not even acknowledge that there is one?
We should just imagine having no family support, no income and no place to call home. The bag containing all of our worldly possessions was stolen last night. We are too sick to get a job. We have been abused and rejected. Our last meal was a bowl of soup two days ago. We do not know where our next meal is coming from. We have not had a change of clothes or a warm bed for a week. The Conservative budget does nothing to help the most vulnerable. There is no money for housing.
In the current federal spending estimates, overall spending on housing and homelessness by Human Resources and Social Development will drop in 2007-08 by more than $44 million from the spending of 2006-07. In the federal spending estimates, funding for assisted housing will drop by $391 million. Again, in the same federal spending estimates, funding for affordable housing dropped from the $800 million budgeted last year and put in trust for the provinces, to $92.8 million this year.
There is no new money for northern housing or off reserve housing in the 2007-08 budget. The budget document only highlighted the $300 million for northern housing and the $300 million for off reserve aboriginal housing that the NDP secured in the 2006-07 budget.
New Democrats want a real, substantial investment in affordable housing and we need to see investment in our current housing stock. We can easily create more affordable housing by increasing federal support for co-op and non-profit housing that already exists in Canada. This investment will provide an opportunity for co-ops to offer more subsidized units, complete much needed maintenance for current units and to proceed with purchasing or building new affordable housing units.
In addition to the current spending, we also need a federal housing program with secure ongoing funding every year. This program can be funded in part or in whole by the surplus generated from the mortgage insurance collected by CMHC. What is needed to truly address our housing crisis is an investment of $2 billion in a federal program each year and the CMHC surplus can achieve this.
An investment in long term core funding would benefit communities across Canada. In my riding of London—Fanshawe, the need for core funding is critical. Over the past year I had to write letter after letter and request meetings with the minister to alert that minister to the fact that organizations that assist homeless people or those at risk of homelessness were closing down. After much pressure, the government started to approve programs.
As we neared the end of the year, organizations again started to scramble as the main funding program, SCPI, was about to end. After many more phone calls and letters, a new program was finally introduced and, with further pressure, SCPI was extended for another six months.
The problem now is that organizations and programs are facing closures. Federal dollars for homeless programs have been so poorly administered by the government and so lacking in long term commitment that local service providers and community members are forced into a cycle of crisis management.
Under the new program, there will be far less money for London area organizations. It is not clear what the new program will look like or if organizations that received SCPI in the past will qualify for the new program funding. As it stands, eight projects addressing homelessness and poverty in London may soon be closing and over 2,000 of our most vulnerable citizens will be put at risk yet again.
The worst has happened for some and the clock is ticking for others. This includes the following programs.
Street Outreach London East will no longer be picking up messages. As of March 31, 2007, it had to shut its door.
The London Housing Registry can sustain one full time staff person until September 30 and will not be able to provide the housing access services that it once was able to offer. Its operating budget has been affected by unstable funding.
The bridge funding and donations My Sister's Place has received will only hold the agency over until September 30. After that it will need to close its doors. It will continue to generate some revenue from donations but it is not enough support and no one can depend on it.
The money the AIDS Committee of London will receive will hold it over and its “closet for tears” program for three to four months. The program, which services at risk youth and those at risk of homelessness, will shut down at that time. Eliminating this program will put more vulnerable young people at risk of contracting AIDS.
The Youth Action Centre organization offered an outreach program for homeless youth and those at risk of homelessness. This program is due to shut down September 30 and the single staff position eliminated.
Because the funding took so long to come for Nokee Kwe during the 2006-07 fiscal year, it had to cut back two of its three staff. The organization is down to a single person and, with its current funding, can only hope to survive another six months. After that program shuts down entirely, the outreach, prevention and advocacy for homeless aboriginal people in London ends.
The bridge money for the London Community Resource Centre will only help sustain the program cultivating communities for another three months. This program sets up collective kitchens and community gardens, relying on student involvement from the community college to run the program as it has not been able to find money for a full time development position. This, of course, will make it very difficult to sustain the project on a long term basis.
All of those organizations run on a shoestring, with skeleton staff. In the past year they have been given the runaround and left in limbo. This adds unneeded stress on the staff and leaves less time for them to do the actual work of helping others in the community. How on earth are they supposed to be effective and efficient? How are they supposed to plan for the future? How are they supposed to help people when they are spending all their time worrying about an imminent shutdown?
We all know that a good business model has planning and efficiencies built in. It is the government funding formula that is preventing this good business practice. People are spending more time filling out forms for funding than doing the important work that they set out to do, the important work that alleviates suffering and strengthens our communities.
This budget clearly does not address any of the problems faced by these organizations. In London and in other communities across Canada, we face the same challenges. The government has not and does not put enough funding into securing adequate housing for Canadians, nor does it sufficiently fund homelessness prevention. Instead, the government makes what little money it makes available to address homelessness almost impossible for organizations to access and use efficiently and effectively.
The budget not only fails Canadians, it fails the homeless. It is time that the government remembered that it was elected to serve Canadians, not the bankers, not the corporations, not its well-heeled cronies, but the hard-working and deserving people of this country. I truly hope the Conservative government comes to realize this soon for the sake of constituents, for the sake of our communities and for the sake of all Canadians.
Michael Chong Conservative Wellington—Halton Hills, ON
Mr. Speaker, I was listening to the speech by the member from the New Democratic Party and it was full of factual inaccuracies.
One of the things she stated was that housing was not mentioned in the budget. I have the budget document here, budget plan 2007, and on page 91, just one of our many initiatives, the section titled “Housing in First Nations Communities”, it reads, “Safe and affordable housing is a basic need for all Canadians”. It goes on to state, “To this end, $300 million will be dedicated to the development of a housing market in First Nations communities”. That is the first factually inaccurate statement she made in her debate.
The second inaccurate statement was that the budget was full of “corporate tax giveaways”. That too does not make any sense to me because here we have the Liberal opposition criticizing our budget for putting a tax on income trusts and removing the deductibility of money borrowed by Canadian corporations for their operations abroad. We are receiving criticism from the Liberal opposition for other tax measures, such as the elimination of the accelerated capital cost allowance for the oil sands. These things are, in fact, not tax giveaways but quite the opposite. They are good for the Canadian economy, which is why we have acted.
I want to address the main point of her speech which was housing. As she knows, coming from London, Ontario, much of the housing is driven by municipal governments, locally owned and run, whether cooperative or non-cooperative developments, and many of these programs are facilitated by provincial governments in terms of affordable housing programs. To that end, our government has invested $39 billion in transfers to this.
Irene Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
Mr. Speaker, it is interesting that the member made reference to housing for first nations. That is old money. There is absolutely no mention of money for new housing initiatives. I stand by my statement. The government has no interest. It is trying to recycle money that was available because of the hard work of New Democrats.
In terms of income trusts, I am sorry but that was Halloween and I am talking about a budget that was delivered in February.
In terms of the government's cronies in the oil and gas sector, I am sorry but they made significant profits. It seems to me that last year they made $25 billion in profits. They do not need any welfare from the government. They do not need any more assistance. If the member does not know that, he should ask the hard-working men and women in London--Fanshawe who have written to me over and over again about how they are getting gouged at the gas pumps because the government does not know how to deal with the oil and gas sector.
Every community organization that I mentioned in my remarks are suffering. Their funding has been cut in half. They have no idea how they will manage. I am talking about vulnerable people like the people at My Sister's Place. Aboriginal youth have actually spent the winter sleeping outside because the government could not find the money to address homelessness in this country, in my community and in every community.
Shame on the Conservatives and shame on their corporate welfare. Shame on them in this House and shame on them from now and into the future.
Paul Szabo Liberal Mississauga South, ON
Mr. Speaker, the member has actually painted a bit of a picture about this budget. It is a budget that does not seem to address the needs of Canadians who are in need. That is the difference. It helps high income seniors because it allows income splitting for people who have big pensions.
What does it do for the homeless? We do not even see anything in the budget for international aid, et cetera.
I want to give the member another opportunity simply to point out what is not in the budget, which is almost as important as what is in the budget.
Irene Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
Mr. Speaker, I am a member of the status of women committee and interestingly enough there was a discussion about income splitting and pension splitting. A group brought a rather fascinating chart to our attention. It showed the effects of income splitting on seniors. The interesting part was that for a senior couple making $21,000, there was absolutely no tax benefit, nothing, but a couple who made $121,000 a year received a tax benefit of nearly $9,000.
Where is the justice in that? How on earth does a couple, seniors who have given all of their lives to this country, who have built the community, manage on that kind of pittance? What kind of message is the government sending to those people when it behaves in this manner and makes sure that those who have continue to get, and those who do not have are completely forgotten?
Raymond Simard Liberal Saint Boniface, MB
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-52, the budget implementation bill. It is always a pleasure to speak on a budget because when a government tables a budget, it affects all Canadians, obviously, but it affects directly people in a member's own riding.
The first thing I would like to do is to dispel a few of the myths around the Conservative government. I know that the Conservatives have been going around talking to people and telling them what good money managers they are, how fiscally responsible they are. The reality is that it was the previous Liberal government that cleaned up Mulroney's mess and got this country back on a solid footing.
I know that we keep coming back to the $42 billion yearly deficit but that is a reality that we picked up in 1993, and it is a reality of which Canadians are aware. However, when we left 13 years later, and I know they keep talking about our 13 years in government, we left the government with a $13 billion surplus and we set the basis for a second solid surplus this year. Even the Conservatives seem to be ashamed of taking credit for it because they know that it will not work. They know that Canadians know that the basics were set up by the previous government.
Prior to the last two surpluses, when was the last time that a Conservative government had a surplus? This is really interesting. Mr. Mulroney was in government for nine years. One would think that in nine years with a solid majority government he would have had an opportunity to do what he had to do and basically come up with a surplus, but not at all.
Let us go back to 1958 and the Diefenbaker sweep. Mr. Diefenbaker swept the country. I am sure that he had an opportunity to get the House in order and have a surplus, but no, absolutely not. In fact, the last Conservative surplus was in 1912 under Sir Robert Borden, before the first world war.
The myth the Conservatives are trying to portray out there is that they are good fiscal managers, but I think that puts that to rest.
The Conservatives keep talking about the last 13 years of Liberal government. In the last 13 years of Liberal government we had seven consecutive surpluses. I could enumerate all the other amazing things that were done in that period to put Canada on a solid fiscal footing, which everybody in the country realizes.
The second myth is that they control spending, that they have really tight reins on spending. The Conservative Party has been spending like a drunken sailor. It is absolutely incredible what has been going on.
When the Conservatives were planning their budget they basically eliminated the $3 billion contingency that our party used to put in place when we were doing our budget planning. Old habits die hard. They are very close to incurring deficits. It looks like a return to the good old Mulroney days is just around the corner.
When it comes to announcements, and I think it is important to talk about them, I remember that a year and a half or two years ago, they were always saying how the previous government was making announcements and throwing money around. In the last little while in Manitoba it has been a whirlwind. People in the Conservative Party have been tripping over each other to make announcements. I have never seen in my five years here in Parliament so many announcements in so little time.