Bill C-52 (Historical)

Budget Implementation Act, 2007

An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 19, 2007

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.

Budget Implementation Act, 2007

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

Signifying so little.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Signifying so little, exactly.

I was just wondering why the Conservatives continue to call themselves Canada's new government. It just bothers me. After a year and a half, why would they do that? I think I have come up with the answer. They want to distance themselves from the Mulroney government. They want absolutely nothing to do with those people, which is understandable.

The income trust fiasco is another issue. A lot of members have spoken about it today. In my riding it has been a huge issue. People in my riding, most of them seniors, have lost from $50,000 to $80,000. This will go down as the biggest scandal in Canadian history. People may not realize it right now but $25 billion lost in a matter of hours is something that had been absolutely unseen before. Down the road historians will say that it was an absolutely horrendous move.

The Minister of Finance had all kinds of options but the Conservatives were in such a hurry to make a move on this that the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance did not look at the options. All they wanted was to achieve their majority and do whatever they had to do to achieve that. Who pays for that? It is the 1.5 million seniors who were affected by it and who lost huge sums of money after the Prime Minister broke his promise on this.

The hon. Liberal member before me spoke to the fact that a lot of the income trusts were severely weakened and are now takeover targets. Normally there would be Canadian companies purchasing companies overseas and in the U.S., and there would be the reverse happening as well, other companies buying here in Canada and there would usually be a balance. We are told that in the last little while the imbalance is actually $100 billion and it is not on the right side. It is on the side of foreigners purchasing our companies. The Conservatives' policies are certainly impacting our country negatively.

Often, budgets are criticized for the things they contain. Some things were not in the budget and, in my opinion, that is often just as important.

I would like to say a few words about the court challenges program. In Manitoba, we were able to obtain the management of our schools and our own school divisions because of that program. Mr. Speaker, you are from Manitoba, so you will know that is important. It was only 11 years ago. In the riding of the President of the Treasury Board, there are tens of thousand of Francophones, and he was not even aware that that program was used to defend the rights of Francophones and official language minorities in Manitoba. Ever since the vibrant French-speaking community in Manitoba has taken control of its own curriculum. That is an important step that should be highlighted.

There was nothing for literacy in the budget. Some $18.5 million was cut and those funds have not been restored. In Manitoba’s Francophone communities, 11 literacy centres were closed and organizations such as Manitoba Literacy Partners are in jeopardy today. I find it insulting that the Minister of the Environment would say we should not repair something that is broken. We are talking about people here, not cars. Some people have not had the chance to learn to read or write. We cannot talk about people in those terms. I find that very insensitive on his part.

I could also talk about women’s groups, as well as the $10 million for “Santé en français,” a program that was not renewed, even though it had produced absolutely extraordinary results. They added $30 million to the total budget for official language minority communities. That is ludicrous. There are nearly two million Francophones living outside Quebec. They are making a laughing stock of our communities.

I would also like to point out that there was a reference in the budget to an official languages action plan with $642 million over five years. However, the official languages action plan should receive $750 million over five years. I hope that was a typo and not a $100 million cut that they tried to slip through. I would very much like to hear the government clarify its position on that subject.

On the environment, the Conservatives until a few months ago did not believe the science of climate change, until they saw the polls of course. All of a sudden, there was an instant conversion. The new Minister of the Environment bought a green tie. He thought that would do it. He thought that was enough to convince people that he had totally made the conversion. He ran over to Europe to tell our friends overseas that the Conservatives had seen the light, that the environment was suddenly important to them. The Europeans did not buy it and Canadians did not buy it.

An example of the Conservatives' false commitment to the environment can be found in Manitoba where their budget sprinkled $6 million over two years to clean up Lake Winnipeg. We cannot rake the sand on Lake Winnipeg for $6 million. This is absolutely ridiculous. What we need to clean up Lake Winnipeg, we are told by experts, is $120 million, and the last government had projected that in the last platform. That is the kind of commitment that needs to be made. The Conservatives cannot just say they are going to invest $6 million when they know it is not going to do the job. It makes one wonder if the Conservatives had a majority government whether they would even bother to show this newly found commitment to the environment.

There was not a word on the aboriginals in the budget. There was not a word on the Kelowna accord.

The Conservatives did do some things well. I think allowing corporations to write off their equipment faster is a good idea. I support increasing the capital gains exemptions to $750,000.

The Conservatives' best initiatives are when they basically reannounce past Liberal programs: EnerGuide; reintroducing the same funds promised on the Red River floodway; reintroducing the funds on the Sydney tar ponds; reintroducing the Liberal homelessness initiative under a different name; reintroducing $755 million to grains and oilseeds producers.

Overall it is a very frustrating budget for Canadians. It is a budget targeting their support for a majority government but not in the best interest of Canadians.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I was listening to the member from Saint Boniface and I have a couple of comments.

I heard a similar refrain in this debate by the member for Markham—Unionville. It seems that the Liberal Party may be changing its position on foreign direct investment into Canadian companies and enterprises.

I heard him say, in a castigating way, in a way that was negative, that there was an imbalance, that over $100 million in net money had been invested in Canadian enterprises and businesses in the last while and that this was somehow a bad thing.

The Investment Canada Act is the act that governs investments by foreign companies and by foreign individuals into Canadian enterprises and companies. It has allowed for a significant amount of capital inflows into our economy, allowing for investments into plant, capital and equipment, and has really driven the Canadian economy.

I am wondering if the Liberal Party is now opposing the idea of Canadians investing in enterprises abroad and the idea of foreign individuals and foreign corporations investing in Canadian enterprises and businesses.

The second thing I want to point out with regard to the member's speech is the environment.

When I was 18 years old, I moved to Toronto in 1990. In 1990 and well into the early nineties, 1993, we had no smog days, none. Today in 2007, smog days are, day in and day out, a huge concern, as they were in 2006 and in 2005. There are dozens of smog days. The deterioration in the quality of air in Toronto happened under the watch of the previous government. All the while, while I was in Toronto I never saw--

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

Order, please. The hon. member for Saint Boniface.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry but I did not hear the second question.

With regard to the first question, no, we have not changed our position on this at all. We have always been in favour of companies purchasing Canadian companies and vice versa. What we do not want to do is handicap our Canadian companies in that process. When the government puts income trusts on their knees, when it devalues their worth and make them vulnerable to foreign takeovers, that is a totally different thing. That does not mean that we do not encourage purchases on either side.

I have a couple of quotes that are very telling from people who are very important. Allan Lanthier, retired senior partner of Ernst & Young and immediate past chairman of the Canadian Tax Foundation, said, “...the single most misguided policy I've seen out of Ottawa in 35 years”.

That is what we are against. We are not against the policy. We are against what the government has done to handicap our companies.

Mr. Claude Lamoureux, chief executive officer of the Ontario Teacher's Pension Fund, has indicated, “This is unbelievable. I don't know who in finance looked at this. I can't believe any sensible person would do this”.

Therefore, it looks like we are not the only ones who have a concern about this. We have put our companies on their knees. We can no longer compete fairly. Those are the things we are against. We are not against fair trade.

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

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the hon. member, who has made a very fine speech with respect to income trusts and interest deductibility, would comment on the article in The Globe and Mail this morning which reads, “Foreign money snags 3 more trusts”. The article reads:

Three more income trusts were thrust onto Canada's endangered list in less than three hours yesterday, raising to 16 the total number of trusts set to disappear with a value of more than $9-billion since Oct. 31.

Can the hon. member, other than the interest deductibility clause issue, think of a more wrong-headed policy with respect to this particular issue?

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I can think of several companies in Winnipeg that are very successful because of the income trust format. Let me say that they are concerned right now. They are the pride of Winnipeg. Some of these companies needed the initial capital to get started. They have grown on their own because of their own initiatives and have grown very well.

If we would lose these, and I hope they are not part of the 16 that are now disappearing from the Canadian landscape, it would be sad. These are heroes. These are people who have worked hard to maintain their Canadian citizenship and Canadian ownership.

I think my colleague is absolutely right. It is wrong-headed. Canadians in the end will pay for this. More American firms will be here and more overseas firms will be buying Canadian businesses. It is a sad day for Canada.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for this opportunity to speak to the budget.

I profoundly believe that government budgets should tell Canadians much more than just dollars and cents. Budgets should also articulate and echo a nation's vision and values. We should spend and save according to our priorities as a country and as a people.

I must say at the outset how profoundly disappointing this budget is as a document for stating the priorities for a Canada that was built on rights and opportunities for all.

The Conservative budget has actually reminded me why I am a New Democrat. New Democrats believe in an ethic of care, compassion and justice for all. The Conservative spin doctors said that their budget was a family budget for the kitchen table, not the boardroom table. They certainly were not talking about most families or kitchen tables I visited in Sault Ste. Marie and Algoma.

Both in the last Parliament and in this Parliament, it has been my privilege, first as my party's child care critic and now as social policy and poverty critic, to travel across Canada and listen to people. In this past year I travelled across Canada to conduct a series of poverty forums that shine a light on the growing prosperity gap that divides our society and our people.

On a positive note, I have been impressed in communities by the deep level of compassion and caring that exists. However, people are increasingly uneasy about the disparity they see around them and their own tenuous grip on some security for themselves and for their families. Too many hard-working people and their families find themselves only one or two paycheques away from poverty.

People tell me they remember a time when community mattered and government could and did make a difference. People are looking for a vision consistent with the Canadian story where we together wove a safety net of basic income, health care, education, unemployment insurance and pensions for all.

Frankly, we will need more from the government than its tinkering here and there to fix our problems. We need more than the budget's baby steps forward on a working tax benefit that will not offer one cent to people on minimum wage who work full time.

We in my party are calling for a national anti-poverty strategy. I want to speak today about what the elements are for such a strategy. It would require the challenge heard by the Newfoundland and Labrador government in its poverty reduction consultation, a challenge to produce money and guts from elected officials.

We will not have to reinvent the wheel here. Jurisdictions in the European Union and elsewhere are proposing national plans to combat poverty. They are doing this with noticeable early success. In Ireland, for example--and there was a wonderful article in the weekend Toronto Star--the rate of people experiencing consistent poverty dropped from 15.1% in 1994 to 5.2% in 2001. The United Kingdom has taken a million pensioners and 800,000 children out of relative poverty since 1999.

Here in Canada there are promising initiatives in Quebec's anti-poverty law with a goal to achieve one of the lowest levels of poverty among industrialized societies by the year 2013.

Newfoundland and Labrador's poverty reduction strategy has a goal to have the least number of people in poverty in the country. In Newfoundland, a recognition that a poverty reduction strategy included but meant much more than just creating jobs. They looked at three key outcome areas: general well-being, employment and economic security and community stability.

For well-being, we are looking at health status in a the family: adequate nutrition; economic security; safety; access to early childhood programs, services and schools; post-secondary education and education status; and literacy. They will look at the redesign of policies and programs deliveries. They will look at income support; drug cards and who gets them; disincentives to work; coordination with federal policies; discrimination facing specific groups: women, persons with disabilities, seniors, immigrants, youth and aboriginals; and poverty influenced by the broad policy framework of government, federal, provincial and municipal governments.

The current framework creates disconnects in the continuum of supports as well as an imbalance of effort directed toward fixing problems rather than focusing on poverty prevention.

In Newfoundland there will be a new commitment to review every new piece of legislation or policy from a poverty reduction strategy lens to identify what works; sustained, stable, multi-year funding; universal access to programming; policy changes that remove barriers to support; accountability frameworks in federal-provincial-territorial agreements so policy intent is achieved to take in development and sustainability of rural communities; and disability related supports.

Even the World Bank has articulated a poverty methodology. Its major components are to explore individual and community well-being, to give priority to the poor in policy, to include institutional analysis and to always include a gender analysis.

In Canada there is a new movement across the country called “the vibrant community initiative” which has undertaken a significant poverty reduction strategy to create and grow a movement of diverse leaders and communities from across Canada who are committed to exploring, challenging and testing ways to unleash the potential of communities to substantially reduce poverty and ensure a good quality of life for all citizens. It is engaging business, citizens, groups and governments to examine alternative approaches to conceiving poverty and poverty reduction in order to strengthen the capacity of communities to make choices about how best to frame, unfold, measure and communicate about local poverty reduction efforts.

We as New Democrats have been looking at this issue of an anti-poverty strategy for quite some time. In partnership with the work that I am doing crossing the country and talking to people, we have a number of my colleagues in caucus who have critic responsibility in areas of housing, employment insurance, child care, post-secondary education, seniors, and the list goes on. Each one of those individuals are working with their communities and within their communities of interest to devise strategies that we can bring forward to the House, and we do that on a regular basis.

A skeleton for a comprehensive anti-poverty strategy, according to our caucus and the New Democratic Party in Canada, is already well on the road toward this with some of the following initiatives that we have laid out here in the House. We introduced private member's bills to begin the discussion. I myself led the discussion here on an opposition day only a month ago talking about the need for a national anti-poverty strategy beginning with the raising of the federal minimum wage to $10 an hour.

We are talking about EI reform, something that my colleague from Bathurst has talked about so passionately since he came here in the late nineties. We are talking about income security and the federal minimum wage. We are talking about child and family poverty initiatives. We are talking about seniors and a caregivers campaign.

We are talking about affordable housing and confronting homelessness, a problem that is becoming more and more alarming across this country and in places we would never expect, places like Calgary and Victoria for example, where the economy is doing well, where business is booming. We have a growing underbelly of homelessness that is alarming and it is creating great difficulty and challenge for those communities as they try to tackle it with little or no help from the federal government.

We are talking about affordable post-secondary education. We are talking about gender equality. We are talking about helping our veterans and their families. We are talking about persons with disabilities and introducing initiatives that will be helpful to them.

We are talking about our first nations, a group of people who we must fundamentally right our relationship with if we are going to develop a vision for this country. We need to honour our obligations to the Métis and Inuit.

We are talking about immigrants and overcoming the low income gaps that exist in our country. In that speech that I made about a month ago, I asked the House to entertain and to drive the development of an anti-poverty strategy and that we need to work together on this.

Too many of our friends and neighbours, too many of our fellow citizens out there, are counting on us to give leadership and to drop some of the partisan wrangling that has been heard here this afternoon and that so often takes over this place. We must work in concert as a team, together, as a government, to eradicate once and for all this terrible blight on our society, the blight of poverty.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the question to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment is as follows: the hon. member for Mississauga—Erindale, Foreign Credentials.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the speech of the member for Sault Ste. Marie. While I do not agree with a lot of it, I have to commend him for the well argued and articulate program that he has outlined.

In particular, I was interested in hearing his discussion about the initiatives that the government of Newfoundland and Labrador is undertaking with respect to poverty. Could he tell us a little more about that? Specifically, what moneys has that government allocated to this program and what timeframes does it have to roll out this program?

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member's question is indeed a good question. In fact, all of us should really take a close look at this. Newfoundland and Labrador has taken a very proactive and aggressive approach to the reduction of poverty in its jurisdiction. I must say to the member that I will have to get back to him with some of the details he has asked for, but I will be happy to do that.

All I know is that the government of Newfoundland and Labrador initially has taken on and put the money behind a very comprehensive consultation process to hear from people across the province. What the government is hearing is that people want guts and money. People want the politicians of Newfoundland and Labrador to have the guts to respond to the reality they hear and to put the money behind the initiatives that the people being consulted and the government decide to take on together to reduce poverty in that province.

I believe from what I have read that they want to do this now. They do not want to do it 10 or 20 years from now. They want to get it done. The government wants to hear from people, get this program on the road and get poverty reduced in that province.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member from Sault Ste. Marie for his discussion today, while, as my colleague from Wellington—Halton Hills said, I do not agree with everything the member has said.

There is one thing I want to point out to the House and I am going to ask the member to comment on what his party's position is on it. I was very proud of the Conservative government and the budget in introducing a savings plan for those who have children with severe disabilities.

In my other life, I worked for Easter Seals, which provides services to children with physical disabilities.There are many challenges for parents who have children with a disability and for grandparents too.

This plan will allow them to invest in a program so that once parents are unable to care for their child because they have moved on, the disabled person will be able to access those funds and will be able to carry on with their living environment. I would appreciate knowing what the NDP's position is on that piece of legislation in this budget.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Mr. Speaker, because I have heard it twice now from the members who have just asked me questions, I want to ask what it was about my speech they did not agree with.

Do they not agree that there is poverty in the country? Do they not agree that we need a national anti-poverty strategy?

As for the specific question in this instance about what the NDP thinks of this new disability tax credit the government is rolling out, first of all, again it will be something that those who have money will be able to afford and those who do not have money will not.

What we actually need is billions of dollars across this country for the literally hundreds of thousands of disabled people in every province who right now are struggling to make ends meet. Disabled people make up one of the groups that live in poverty in this country, groups that just cannot find a way to pay the rent, feed themselves, look after their children and live a dignified life in their communities.

They are crying to us as government. No matter where I went across this country to talk about poverty, one of the groups that came forward and spoke with me very passionately and knowledgeably about the challenges that face people in poverty in this country was the disabled group.

So yes, on the one hand, I would say good for the government for a tax credit program to help disabled people once a family moves on. On the other hand, with the billions of dollars we have in the surplus, why as a government are we not doing more for the disabled people living in poverty right now in Canada?

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative budget is going to be remembered for a number of things.

Canadians are not going to forget the fact that the promise of large scale tax relief never materialized, amounting to a paltry $80 per taxpayer.

Canadians are not going to forget the government's failure to act on the environment by choosing to instead offer tax breaks and reductions in funding that will grow Canada's greenhouse gas emissions.

Canadians are also not going to forget the fact that federal program spending will rise by nearly 14%, or $24 billion, over the first two fiscal years of the government.

Today I want to talk about how this budget is the worst in a generation for the province of British Columbia and my constituents of Newton--North Delta.

The Conservative government has broken its promise and short-changed the Pacific gateway project by $44 million.

It has failed aboriginals by offering an insulting $21 million in new spending for the serious problems of poverty, substance abuse and widespread unemployment.

However, the action that is going to severely penalize British Columbia's exceptional growth is the new equalization formula for the provinces.

As a result of the budget, B.C.'s skyrocketing property values are now going to be included in the equalization calculations. My riding of Newton--North Delta, which is part of one of the fastest growing municipalities in Canada, is witnessing the trends that are going to make this single change punish B.C. for many decades to come.

In the recently released assessments of British Columbia property values, the city of Surrey's total assessment roll increased from about $50 billion in 2006 to $64 billion in 2007, a whopping 28% increase. In Delta, the total assessment roll rose by 21%.

British Columbia is experiencing a golden decade, and in the lead-up to hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics the province has become an engine that, along with provinces like Alberta, is helping to drive the Canadian economy.

However, as we all know, growth cannot continue forever, and there will be times in British Columbia's future when the prospect of an economic downturn becomes the new reality. Economies move in cycles and no province or territory is immune to these fluctuations.

In fact, this is precisely why the equalization payments exist: so provinces can be assured that regardless of the differences in annual tax revenues, program costs or economic slumps, every Canadian can expect a comparable quality of life.

Because British Columbia now has its property values working against it, that guarantee of equality is essentially over. Why? Because property values are continuing to rise at such an exponential rate, irrespective of the rate of growth in the province.

What this means is that B.C. will now surpass Ontario on the equalization ladder and will likely not be eligible for equalization payments ever again, not even in the worst of times.

British Columbia is being punished for its success by the Conservative government. It is clear that those on the other side of the House have absolutely no concern for this detail as long as they can achieve the political gain they seek so desperately by using the taxpayers' dollars.

But at what cost is this being accomplished? The Conservative government has carved this country up like a chessboard, picking winners and losers based on what will get it the most votes.

The fact is that the provinces are being pitted against each other as combatants. The fact is that inequality is being entrenched into the program that is supposed to ensure opportunity for all.

The fact is that this country is becoming a loosely constructed group of regional interests.

The fact is that this government just does not care.

In the budget speech, the finance minister made the following statement, saying that “the long, tiring, unproductive era of bickering between the provincial and federal governments is over”.

I am here to tell him that British Columbians wish this statement were true. Unfortunately, however, the short-sightedness of a government concerned with maintaining power at all costs has made that dream impossible.

The Conservative era of inequality and regional competition has just begun.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think this is a great budget for British Columbia. I do not understand why the member for Newton—North Delta would portray it as being anything but that.

We have made record investments in British Columbia, especially in the Asia-Pacific gateway and corridor initiative. The budget brings the total investment for the Government of Canada to $1 billion for this very important initiative.

This money is being and will be used to upgrade roads, highways, road grade separations, rail grade separations, the Deltaport connector, the Mary Hill interchange, and the Pitt River bridge. There is $1 billion in the coming years, by 2014, for this investment so that Vancouver can be a true gateway to the Asia-Pacific. Also, we have invested $550 million into the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and Paralympic Games.

Those investments alone total over $1.5 billion between now and 2014 for the Vancouver mainland, which is great news for British Columbia and for everybody living in that beautiful province.