Bill C-28 (Historical)

Budget and Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2007

An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 19, 2007 and to implement certain provisions of the economic statement tabled in Parliament on October 30, 2007

Part 1 implements goods and services tax and harmonized sales tax (GST/HST) measures proposed in the March 19, 2007 Budget but not included in the Budget Implementation Act, 2007, which received Royal Assent on June 22, 2007. Specifically, the Excise Tax Act is amended to
(a) increase the percentage of available input tax credits for GST/HST paid on meal expenses of truck drivers from 50% to 80% over five years beginning with expenses incurred on or after March 19, 2007;
(b) increase the GST/HST annual filing threshold from $500,000 in taxable supplies to $1,500,000 and the annual remittance threshold from $1,500 to $3,000, both effective for fiscal years that begin after 2007;
(c) increase the GST/HST 48-hour travellers’ exemption from $200 to $400 effective in respect of travellers returning to Canada on or after March 20, 2007; and
(d) implement changes to the rules governing self-assessment under Division IV of Part IX of the Excise Tax Act to ensure that GST/HST applies appropriately in respect of intangible personal property acquired on a zero-rated basis and consumed in furthering domestic activities, applicable to supplies made after March 19, 2007.
Part 2 amends the non-GST portion of the Excise Tax Act to implement measures announced in the March 19, 2007 Budget. Specifically, the excise tax exemptions for renewable fuels, including ethanol and bio-diesel, are repealed, effective April 1, 2008.
Part 3 implements income tax measures proposed in the March 19, 2007 Budget but not included in the Budget Implementation Act, 2007, which received Royal Assent on June 22, 2007. In particular, it
(a) introduces a new Working Income Tax Benefit;
(b) eliminates income tax on elementary and secondary school scholarships;
(c) eliminates capital gains tax on donations of publicly-listed securities to private foundations;
(d) enhances the child fitness tax credit;
(e) expands the scope of the public transit tax credit;
(f) increases the lifetime capital gains exemption to $750,000;
(g) increases the deductible percentage of meal expenses for long-haul truck drivers;
(h) provides tax relief in respect of the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games;
(i) allows for phased-retirement options for pension plans;
(j) extends the mineral exploration tax credit;
(k) enhances tax benefits for donations of medicine to the developing world;
(l) streamlines the process for prescribed stock exchanges;
(m) introduces an investment tax credit for child care spaces;
(n) introduces a new withholding tax exemption with respect to certain cross-border interest payments;
(o) prevents double deductions of interest expense on borrowed money used to finance foreign affiliates (the Anti-Tax-Haven Initiative);
(p) eases tax remittance and filing requirements for small business;
(q) introduces a mechanism to accommodate functional currency reporting;
(r) provides certain tobacco processors that do not manufacture tobacco products with relief from the Tobacco Manufacturers’ Surtax; and
(s) provides authority for regulations requiring the disclosure by publicly traded trusts and partnerships of information enabling investment managers to prepare the tax information slips that they are required to issue to investors on a timely basis.
Part 4 implements the disability savings measures proposed in the March 19, 2007 Budget. The measures are intended to support long-term savings through registered disability savings plans to provide for the financial security of persons with severe and prolonged impairments in physical or mental functions. Part 4 contains amendments to the Income Tax Act to allow for the creation of registered disability savings plans. It also enacts the Canada Disability Savings Act. That Act provides for the payment of Canada Disability Savings Grants in relation to contributions made to those plans. The amount of grant is increased for persons of lower and middle income. It also provides for the payment of Canada Disability Savings Bonds in respect of persons of low income.
Part 5 implements measures that provide for payments to be made to provinces as a financial incentive for them to eliminate taxes on capital under certain circumstances.
Part 6 enacts the Bank for International Settlements (Immunity) Act.
Part 7 amends the Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985 to permit phased retirement arrangements in federally regulated pension plans by allowing an employer to simultaneously pay a partial pension to an employee and provide further pension benefit accruals to the employee. These amendments are consistent with amendments to the Income Tax Regulations to permit phased retirement.
Part 8 authorizes payments to be made out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund for the purpose of Canada’s contribution to the Advance Market Commitment.
Part 9 amends the Canada Oil and Gas Operations Act to authorize the National Energy Board to regulate traffic, tolls and tariffs in relation to oil and gas pipelines regulated under that Act.
Part 10 amends the Farm Income Protection Act to allow financial institutions to hold contributions under a net income stabilization account program.
Part 11 amends the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act to provide for an additional fiscal equalization payment that may be paid to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador. This Part also specifies the time and manner in which the calculation of fiscal equalization payments will be made and it amends that Act’s regulation-making authority. In addition, this Part makes consequential amendments to other Acts.
Part 12 amends the Canada Education Savings Act to clarify the authority of the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development to collect, on behalf of the Canada Revenue Agency, any information that the Canada Revenue Agency requires for purposes of administering the registered education savings plan tax provisions.
Part 13 authorizes payments to be made out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund to an entity, designated by the Minister of Finance, to facilitate public-private partnership projects.
Part 14 implements tax measures proposed in the October 30, 2007 Economic Statement. With respect to income tax measures, it
(a) reduces the general corporate income tax rate;
(b) accelerates the tax reduction for small businesses;
(c) reduces the lowest personal income tax rate, which automatically reduces the rate used to calculate non-refundable tax credits and the alternative minimum tax; and
(d) increases the basic personal amount and the amount upon which the spouse or common-law partner and wholly dependent relative credits are calculated.
Part 14 also amends the Excise Tax Act to implement, effective January 1, 2008, the reduction in the goods and services tax (GST) and the federal component of the harmonized sales tax (HST) from 6% to 5%. That Act is amended to provide transitional rules for determining the GST/HST rate applicable to transactions that straddle the January 1, 2008, implementation date, including transitional rebates in respect of the sale of residential complexes where transfer of ownership and possession both take place on or after January 1, 2008, pursuant to a written agreement entered into on or before October 30, 2007. The Excise Act, 2001 is also amended to increase excise duties on tobacco products to offset the impact of the GST/HST rate reduction. The Air Travellers Security Charge Act is also amended to ensure that rates for domestic and transborder air travel reflect the impact of the GST/HST rate reduction. Those amendments generally apply as of January 1, 2008.

Budget and Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2007

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

I thank the hon. member for Selkirk—Interlake. There is one minute left to the hon. member for Sault Ste. Marie and I am sure he will get back to the point.

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

Mr. Speaker, the member has been getting up all day accusing the New Democrats of filibustering. We call it doing our work. We call it showing up. We come here with our lunch pail every day and we put in a full 12 hours.

The Liberals and the Conservatives are in a big hurry to get home for the Christmas holidays. We say we have work to be done. I speak in this place every day on behalf of people who have no voice here. Their perspective on this business may be different than the Conservatives. They may see the essence of the bill differently, so we speak to that.

As I was saying, the Canada assistance plan started there. Then the Liberals tried to convince the provinces that this was a good idea. What they were trying to do was reduce the amount of transfers by some $7 billion or $8 billion. The tool box they gave the provinces to reduce that transfer by the $7 billion or $8 billion was the Canada assistance plan.

If we put the reductions together with the elimination of the Canada assistance plan, we see the beginning of what we now experience in our communities across—

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

As much as I hate to interrupt the hon. member, the hon. member for Hamilton East--Stoney Creek now has the floor, in resuming debate.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-28 one more time and I do so because of the significance of the implications for my riding of Hamilton East—Stoney Creek. Clearly Hamilton East—Stoney Creek and the entire community of Hamilton have a lot vested in the budget document, more because of what it does not do than what it does do.

Before I comment directly on Bill C-28, I will like to take a few moments in response to—

[Jim Flaherty, Conservative, Whitby—Oshawa, ON]

What have you got against people with families? What have you got against people with disabilities?

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

I will not respond to that. It is beneath contempt.

I will take a few moments to comment on the remarks that came from the Conservative member for Macleod this morning. He spoke to the positives he saw in Bill C-28. I understand his perspective. It is the government perspective and the benefits as he sees them. He advised the House, as we heard again in question period, of 388,000 jobs, mostly full time he said, created in the country this year.

To me that begged the question. In which sectors was there this exciting job growth and could the people in the companies of the manufacturing sector expect a plan from the government to protect the existing jobs and to help create new ones in one of the core sectors of Canada's economy? To the present time, I have not been informed as to where these jobs have been created and in which sectors. I look forward to hearing that news at some point.

However, during the remarks by the member for Macleod, he offered the words to the effect that the Conservative government had taken a decision not to favour one sector over another to provide tax relief to address growth in all of Canada.

I nearly jumped out of my chair at those words. The manufacturing sector in Canada, particularly in my community, is in crisis. We are being told that they are not being favoured. We never asked to be favoured. We have asked for a plan for a strategy from the government to address the needs of this core sector of our economy to assist them and their companies.

In this modern age we often hear the words “a holistic approach to issues and problems”. Quite often that refers to health, but I suggest this is what is needed relative to dealing with our manufacturing crisis today.

The Conservative government simply has to get with the times. If it believes it can deal with our economy solely by tax cuts and then let the chips fall, Reaganomics, or the economics of trickle down, has been discredited and has been branded a failure worldwide. The government must step back from this simplistic approach to economics, step back from the tax cuts for the rich corporations, hoping something trickles down to the ordinary hard-working Canadian.

The government must move to a place where it begins to operate with that holistic view of running the country, an approach which ensures everyone benefits together, not the rich first and something else for the rest at another time, but to where everyone together benefits from the great wealth of the country.

Twenty per cent of my community live in abject poverty. They want to work but do not have a job and cannot even begin to find one. They know the bill does not one thing for them. The question is this. Who are these favoured companies and favoured corporations referred to by the member for Macleod. Without reading a single word of this statement, without a single economics course, because they have been well trained by previous Liberal governments, Canadians can tell us that it is the banks and big oil and gas companies that will reap the benefits immediately from Bill C-28, just like they did for years under the Liberals.

The member for Macleod also talked about the NDP mended Liberal budget of 2005. I did say mended, not amended. That is because we mended it by taking $4 billion plus from the corporate tax cuts and forced the Liberals to put these saved dollars, saved fiscal capacity, into transit, and I see this in Hamilton today with new ecobuses on the street, into education and into housing, the same housing we heard the Conservatives taking credit for just earlier today in the House.

Now the Liberals, who are finally seeing the dollars put together in the budget for their corporate friends, are going to sit on their hands. They are not going to stop this.

The needs today are pressing and will worsen in the future. What is missed by so many here, or they are at least hiding from it, is the lost fiscal capacity of the country. What I found interesting was seeing the government members spend so much time this spring taking credit for the dollars flowing from that NDP modified budget. Again, we heard that repeated in the House earlier today.

With Bill C-28, as with the previous Liberal government, the Conservatives are continuing their corporate welfare program, with large corporate tax breaks very similar to the ones proposed in 2005 by the Liberals. It is estimated that these corporate tax breaks will reduce tax income for our country by $14 billion a year.

This obvious concern should arise for the Liberals. As I said, what about the lost fiscal capacity of the federal government in years to come? We know and members will have heard repeatedly throughout this debate that Canadian cities are facing a huge infrastructure problem.

I want to reiterate that the Federation of Canadian Municipalities demonstrated in its recent report that there is an infrastructure deficit of $123 billion. I have not heard one word in the House to refute that report. Nobody is saying that it is inaccurate. Nobody is saying that it is not true. In fact, it is almost like it does not exist. I cannot understand how the Conservatives can ignore it. How can the Liberals let them? This is beyond belief.

I am going to take a moment to offer a suggestion to the government. I have already spoken about the common sense of Canadians and how a number of them in my riding of Hamilton East—Stoney Creek have been quick to point out to me their surprise when they see that the Conservative government, with its surpluses, is not prepared to invest in my community's needs and community needs across the country.

The government is not prepared, in the words of my constituents, to use common sense to prepare for our future and to repair some of the infrastructure from our past. The people of my riding understand the need to pay down debt, but they cannot begin to understand why such huge payments are being budgeted when there is already so much need in the country.

There is the need to address the infrastructure problem. There is a need for affordable housing. We heard the member for Sault Ste. Marie talk of the tragedy of homelessness across the country. We have heard that 42 people died last year as a result of homelessness. There is also a need for a national drug program.

However, the embarrassing level of poverty in the country is the one piece that should be the catalyst for anybody and any government to act. I have offered that small piece of advice to the government.

Another small piece that I would offer is the need to deal immediately with the $500 per year mistake. Senior are owed that. I think it would be incumbent upon the government to act on that immediately and pay seniors what they are owed.

If there is any reason to redirect the wealth of the country into new programs aimed at eliminating poverty for thousands of men, women and children, I would have to say that this is the reason I stand in the House repeatedly on Bill C-28. In many cases, I am repeating many of the words I have said before, but they have to be repeated over and over again until the shame of poverty in Canada is eliminated.

I had breakfast today with the High Commissioner of India. Many Canadians have a view of India as a desperately poor country, but that country has a strategy such that it is setting about the elimination of poverty in India by the year 2020. Whether it succeeds or not, the very fact that India has that concerted effort is an example that this country must follow.

We had the grand vision of eliminating child poverty by the year 2000. We need another grand vision for Canada. We need leadership from the government and we need it to address poverty now.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my colleague from Hamilton East—Stoney Creek.

I am glad the member mentioned the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and its work on the infrastructure deficit in Canada. In its report, “Danger Ahead: The Coming Collapse of Canada’s Municipal Infrastructure”, the FCM talks about the fact that there is an infrastructure deficit in Canada of $123 billion.

The FCM breaks that down into separate categories. It says: water and waste water systems need $31 billion; transportation needs $21.7 billion; transit needs $22.8 billion; solid waste management needs $7.7 billion; and community, recreational, cultural and social infrastructure needs $40.2 billion

All of those are services and facilities that none of us are going to be able to build unless we cooperate, unless we do them collectively. Saving $100 a year on our income tax is not going to help us build a waste treatment plant in our community. It is not going to guarantee clean drinking water in our community unless we work together and pool our resources to make sure those kinds of facilities are built.

I know that member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek has a particular interest in sport and recreation in Canada. The recreation deficit is particularly troubling given that a lot of the recreation facilities in Canada that are part of our cultural life and keep us healthy, and which have a lot of community-building activities happen in them, are aging now. Many of them were built as centennial projects and are wearing out. They have had important maintenance deferred over the years and they are crumbling as we speak. This is an important aspect of the infrastructure deficit.

I wonder if the member could talk to us about the importance of including infrastructure funding in this budget and why it is not there to do these important things as pointed out by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, prior to answering the direct question, I would like to speak about my community for a moment. Hamilton itself has an infrastructure deficit of $4 billion. We have a very old sewer system that is in significant trouble and is causing us huge problems each and every year.

However, let us take a look at the deficit in sport, whether it is in the physical structures, where we could invest in and build those facilities to encourage youth to come back and take part in day to day activities, the kinds of structures that help our athletes when they are planning their goals. We have the Beijing Olympics before us and the Winter Olympics are coming up. There is so much investment needed for the actual athletes themselves in their preparation.

As for those programs that we draw from and in which we develop those athletes to give them that opportunity to represent Canada on the world stage, all of that has gone by the way. The fiscal capacity has been reduced to the point where, if we are not investing in our sports facilities and our sports individuals at this time, the crisis that is going to happen will push this even further down the list. It is a tragedy to see the loss of that fiscal capacity.

[Joe Comuzzi, Conservative, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I compliment the member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek. He started his speech by saying that there was, and I wrote it down, a deficit in sport in Hamilton. I thought immediately that he was going to refer to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. I would like him to comment on that, because he did not even mention them and I think that was a deficit in the Hamilton sports scene.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would be glad to comment on the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. When we are talking about the realm of investment, it is not investment from this federal government, sad to say. The owner, Mr. Young, has made a significant investment in the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and we look forward to the Grey Cup coming our way soon.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted that the member ended his statement by saying we need a new vision for Canada related to fighting poverty, because that is exactly what the leader of the Liberal Party announced a few weeks ago.

His is the only comprehensive platform in Canadian history, by a government or an opposition, that is so detailed and goes to such lengths, with the targets of reducing poverty by 30% in Canada in the next five years and for Canadian children in poverty by 50% in the next five years. He would make the tax credit for children refundable. There is the expansion of another benefit for children. He would make provisions for the working poor so they can get off social assistance and back to work without being overly penalized.

There also are provisions for seniors so that qualified seniors who want to get back in the workforce are not penalized too much and do not lose too much from the pensions they are now receiving. Also, there are provisions to increase the income for very poor seniors.

All of this will lead to these specific targets. As we know, the Conservative government is not too keen on targets, certainly those related to climate change. Again, the targets are that 30% of Canada's poor will no longer be poor in five years, nor will 50% of the children who are now poor.

As the member said, this is something that is very much needed in Canada. It is an anti-poverty strategy. This has very exciting potential for the future should we form the next government.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that lights a spark, because that member with that plan had a plan for Kyoto too and that did not work out so well for our country. That was the government across the way, which for 13 years practically destroyed the Canada health and social transfer system.

The Liberal government destroyed EI. It was changed from unemployment insurance that people could count on, whereby 85% of the workers who were laid off and lost their jobs could count on something to help them. Now we are at a point where that is at 40% nationally. In Hamilton, we are running at 22%. That is a disgraceful record.

I anticipate the same failure the Liberals had with Kyoto.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, obviously Bill C-28 is an important bill because of what it does not do.

It does not address the crisis in homelessness and poverty.

It also does not address the crisis in our employment insurance program. As the member quite rightly pointed out, it was gutted by the previous Liberal government to the point where in my own city of Toronto I know that almost 80% of unemployed workers do not get employment insurance. That is where we are today. It used to be that about 80% of unemployed workers got EI.

Could the hon. member comment on the failure of both the current and the previous government to address the crisis of poverty but also on the contribution that the devastating changes to the employment insurance system have made to that crisis?

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the question goes to the heart, I think, of one of the significant reasons for poverty in Canada. When a person has had the good fortune, the luck--because it is not due to the rules any more--to actually make it onto employment insurance, the number of weeks have been cut back. The end result is that those people who are unable to move on at some point wind up on welfare. They end up on social service assistance programs.

One of the reasons it is not spoken about that often is that the change was part of the offloading. The Liberal plan was to offload responsibilities for certain services. This was done to move the burden from the income tax base and put the load on the property tax base. As a result, we see the municipalities bearing the burden.

However, those people who are on social assistance do not count toward the unemployment figures because they are not looking for work. In the scheme of things, if we were to really look at the unemployment numbers of our country, we would see that they are at least three times higher because of those who are not measured.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-28 and to express my opposition to it.

It is a fundamentally wrong direction for Canada. It is explicable that the Conservatives, who tend to take us in the wrong direction, could present an economic statement of this manner to the people of Canada and therefore bring in this bill, but it is impossible for me to understand how the opposition could de facto support this direction, which is absolutely the wrong one for Canada. I want to elaborate on my concerns about this statement and why I believe it is the wrong direction.

As I said earlier, one of my major concerns is around the tax cuts and what they mean in terms of eroding the resources that we need collectively to build this country. If we want to not only maintain our standard of living, maintain our industrial sector, maintain a level of civil society, but also to improve all of those things, and improve the environment and improve our social climate, and deal with the major issues facing us today, and improve our economic standing in the world, then gutting our fiscal capacity to act is not the way to do it. I want to address the very serious issue of tax cuts.

This statement continues not only the present government's but also the previous Liberal government's mistaken path of huge corporate tax cuts and other tax cuts. It takes us down the wrong path for Canada. Over the next five years the revenue that pays for the things Canadians say they want, the programs and services, and all of the things we tell each other we want, will drop by $60 billion based just on this economic statement.

I remember when there was a huge debate because the previous government failed to bring in a national child care program that was going to cost us $2 billion. What a terrible shame that with all of these resources we have failed to invest in our children.

There are cuts to the GST, to personal income taxes and to corporate income taxes. The latter, which by 2012 will drop to 15% from 21% today, is really an outrageous corporate giveaway. This notion of having to attract investment, cut taxes lower and lower and do away with more and more for the people of our country is nothing but a race to the bottom. It really is quite unworthy of a developed country such as Canada.

As I said earlier in the House, this latest economic statement really is the continuation of a 20 year race to the bottom in terms of trying to cut our way to prosperity which clearly has not worked. It diminishes our country.

There has been a conscious plan by the current Conservative government and previous Liberal governments over the last 20 years. They were supposed to have been looking out for the interests of our country and yet they have cut $250 billion out of the fiscal capacity of this country, out of the revenue we need to act on behalf of Canadians and in fact build our country.

I ask Canadians to think about the difference this revenue would have made in our country and the kinds of things Canadians say they want. Canadians are repeatedly frustrated that their politicians are not acting on the things that we have forgone because of these tax cuts. I want to list some of them.

One of them is a national child care program to invest in our children, a program that invests the money where it counts most, in the very early years of our children's lives.

Another is a national pharmacare program. Yes, we have a medicare program thanks to Tommy Douglas and the NDP, but no one's health should be jeopardized because they lack the funds to pay for the pharmaceutical drugs they need.

Yet another is a home care program. Whether it be disability, illness, age, whatever the cause, people are best cared for in their own home. They should have the care they need to be able to stay in their home. It is more economical for society. It is better for the person to be able to stay in familiar surroundings. It is the best kind of care we can deliver for people who want and need to stay in their home. We have failed in this area.

Another is social housing. I have spoken many times in this House about people in my riding of Parkdale—High Park who have fallen through the cracks because of the high cost of housing in the city of Toronto. There are many people who work below the poverty level. People who work for less than $10 an hour simply cannot afford the level of private rental housing that is available in the city of Toronto.

I am very proud that in our community as a result of a community initiative a very small housing facility just opened last weekend, thanks to the help of the United Church. We are so far from being able to address the needs of Canadians when it comes to affordable housing. It is quite shocking. In my city over 75,000 families are on the waiting list for affordable housing. These families are not going away. Their lives are not improving. They are not getting off the list. The list just keeps getting longer and longer. Even those families who are not on the list for affordable housing are often paying a greater and greater amount of their income for their housing needs. Many working and middle class families are getting dangerously deep in debt. They are very concerned about what any change in interest rates could mean for their finances. There is a huge stress on families today because of the lack of affordable housing.

Add to that the challenge of tuition fees for young people who start out in life with tens of thousands of dollars in debt heaped on their backs. What a way for young people to start out , to look at building their career. It is a time when they want to take chances, to travel, to try new things, to learn new things. Instead they are saddled with phenomenal debt because of the lack of investment in post-secondary education by a government that would prefer to give it away to very profitable corporations.

I must speak to the staggering infrastructure deficit in our country. It is huge. It is getting bigger, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. We are falling further and further behind each and every year because of the lack of investment by the Conservative government and previous Liberal governments to maintain, improve and grow our infrastructure. Whether we are talking about water and sewage, roadways, transit, social and community infrastructure, the lack of investment means that our cities are in very poor shape.

We have seen bridges fall down in Quebec. We have seen drains break in the middle of winter in downtown Toronto, which have to be repaired on a case by case basis, at a huge extra cost. We see gridlock on the streets of our major cities. Someone has to explain to me how this is good for business. How does this gridlock in our crumbling infrastructure make Canada a more competitive country? How is that good for business? It is not.

Whether it is the board of trade or other business organizations, right across the country everyone knows it is bad for business. It is a drag on our competitiveness as well as being a terrible drag and a terrible burden for people who live in our communities who are trying to go about their daily lives.

The lack of transit infrastructure means that people spend hours stuck in traffic. People are moving further and further afield from the centre of our major cities which means they have longer commutes. They get stuck in rush hour traffic. It is a vicious cycle which the current government is doing nothing to help, and the Liberals when they had the chance with many surplus budgets did nothing to help. We have to address the issue of infrastructure in our cities.

It is tragic that we have had the opportunity because of surplus budgets to make these investments but have not done so. I see a lot of back patting by the Conservative government and by previous governments about how deficits and debt have been reduced. What I see is that the debt and deficits have been pushed off the plate of the government and on to the back of individuals.

I see people with more and more personal debt. I see people in my community going to payday lenders and rolling over debts week after week. They are spiralling further into debt. I see that anxiety about how to make ends meet being shuffled off to the individual. It is the least efficient way to deal with collective needs.

I cannot go out and buy my own piece of subway or road. I guess I could buy my own personal swimming pool, but I would rather invest in our community facilities, our community swimming pools, our community child care centres and schools. These are the things that we build together. When we put our tax dollars together we can build so much more than if we each take our own little piece and try to scratch and scramble and invest it ourselves.

We see so many people who believe the advertising of the investment companies and they put their money into mutual funds. People throw their lot in with the market and then find that when they need the money it is not there for them, that the money is lost because it has been gambled away. What we really need are secure retirement incomes. There is no better system than the Canada pension plan, where we all pool our money together so that everyone's money is secure and it is there for seniors when they need it.

If we want to take some of the $250 billion that the government has forgone through tax cuts, why not invest more of that money and make life better for seniors? Why not give more of that back to seniors?

By the way, the billion dollars that the federal government has shortchanged seniors by miscalculating the cost of living could be given back to seniors too. That is another billion dollars that seniors would be very glad to have.

The argument for cutting taxes is that it will make companies more competitive. I think it is important that we do well in the economy and that businesses be competitive and do well in the world, but I would argue that even on the basic grounds of making Canada more competitive, I do not think this tax cut agenda is doing it.

In 1999, the year before the previous prime minister, the member for LaSalle--Émard, introduced his huge tax cuts, Canada was fifth in the world in competitiveness and--