Bill C-50 (Historical)

Budget Implementation Act, 2008

An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 26, 2008 and to enact provisions to preserve the fiscal plan set out in that budget

Part 1 enacts a number of income tax measures proposed in the February 26, 2008 Budget. In particular, it
(a) introduces the new Tax-Free Savings Account, effective for the 2009 and subsequent taxation years;
(b) extends by 10 years the maximum number of years during which a Registered Education Savings Plan may be open and accept contributions and provides a six-month grace period for making educational assistance payments, generally effective for the 2008 and subsequent taxation years;
(c) increases the amount of the Northern Residents Deduction, effective for the 2008 and subsequent taxation years;
(d) extends the application of the Medical Expense Tax Credit to certain devices and expenses and better targets the requirement that eligible medications must require a prescription by an eligible medical practitioner, generally effective for the 2008 and subsequent taxation years;
(e) amends the provisions relating to Registered Disability Savings Plans so that the rule forcing the mandatory collapse of a plan be invoked only where the beneficiary’s condition has factually improved to the extent that the beneficiary no longer qualifies for the disability tax credit, effective for the 2008 and subsequent taxation years;
(f) extends by one year the Mineral Exploration Tax Credit;
(g) extends the capital gains tax exemption for certain gifts of listed securities to also apply in respect of certain exchangeable shares and partnership interests, effective for gifts made on or after February 26, 2008;
(h) adjusts the rate of the Dividend Tax Credit to reflect corporate income tax rate reductions, beginning in 2010;
(i) increases the benefits available under the Scientific Research and Experimental Development Program, generally effective for taxation years that end on or after February 26, 2008;
(j) amends the penalty for failures to remit source deductions when due in order to better reflect the degree to which the remittances are late, and excuses early remittances from the mandatory financial institution remittance rules, effective for remittances due on or after February 26, 2008;
(k) reduces the paper burden associated with dispositions by non-residents of certain treaty-protected property, effective for dispositions that occur after 2008;
(l) ensures that the enhanced tax incentive for Donations of Medicines is properly targeted, effective for gifts made after June, 2008; and
(m) modifies the provincial component of the SIFT tax to better reflect actual provincial tax rates, effective for the 2009 and subsequent taxation years.
Part 1 also implements income tax measures to preserve the fiscal plan as set out in the February 26, 2008 Budget.
Part 2 amends the Excise Act, the Excise Act, 2001 and the Customs Tariff to implement measures aimed at improving tobacco tax enforcement and compliance, adjusting excise duties on tobacco sticks and on tobacco for duty-free markets and equalizing the excise treatment of imitation spirits and other spirits.
Part 3 implements goods and services tax and harmonized sales tax (GST/HST) measures proposed or referenced in the February 26, 2008 Budget. It amends the Excise Tax Act to expand the list of zero-rated medical and assistive devices and to ensure that all supplies of drugs sold to final consumers under prescription are zero-rated. It also amends that Act to exempt all nursing services rendered within a nurse-patient relationship, prescribed health care services ordered by an authorized registered nurse and, if certain conditions are met, a service of training that is specially designed to assist individuals in coping with the effects of their disorder or disability. It further amends that Act to ensure that a variety of professional health services maintain their GST/HST exempt status if those services are rendered by a health professional through a corporation. Additional amendments to that Act clarify the GST/HST treatment of long-term residential care facilities. Those amendments are intended to ensure that the GST New Residential Rental Property Rebate is available, and the GST/HST exempt treatment for residential leases and sales of used residential rental buildings applies, to long-term residential care facilities on a prospective basis and on past transactions if certain circumstances exist. This Part also makes amendments to relieve the GST/HST on most lease payments for land on which wind or solar power equipment used to generate electricity is situated.
Part 4 dissolves the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation, provides for the Foundation to fulfill certain obligations and deposit its remaining assets in the Consolidated Revenue Fund, and repeals Part 1 of the Budget Implementation Act, 1998. It also makes consequential amendments to other Acts.
Part 5 amends the Canada Student Financial Assistance Act and the Canada Student Loans Act to implement measures concerning financial assistance for students, including the following:
(a) authorizing the establishment and operation, by regulation, of electronic systems to allow on-line services to be offered to students;
(b) providing for the establishment and operation, by regulation, of a program to provide for the repayment of student loans for classes of borrowers who are encountering financial difficulties;
(c) allowing part-time students to defer their student loan payments for as long as they continue to be students, and providing, by regulation, for other circumstances in which student loan payments may be deferred; and
(d) allowing the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development to take remedial action if any error is made in the administration of the two Acts and in certain cases, to waive requirements imposed on students to avoid undue hardship to them.
Part 6 amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to authorize the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to give instructions with respect to the processing of certain applications and requests in order to support the attainment of the immigration goals established by the Government of Canada.
Part 7 enacts the Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board Act. The mandate of the Board is to set the Employment Insurance premium rate and to manage a financial reserve. That Part also amends the Employment Insurance Act and makes consequential amendments to other Acts.
Part 8 authorizes payments to be made out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund for the recruitment of front line police officers, capital investment in public transit infrastructure and carbon capture and storage. It also authorizes Canada Social Transfer transition protection payments.
Part 9 authorizes payments to be made out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund to Genome Canada, the Mental Health Commission of Canada, The Gairdner Foundation and the University of Calgary.
Part 10 amends various Acts.

Budget Implementation Act, 2008

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

Mr. Speaker, I was very interested to hear the remarks of the hon. member for Vancouver Centre. It is interesting to hear a rehashing of the program of the Liberal government. It is something that I was critical of in my day, and I could be today as well. However, that is not where I want to go with this question.

The member was rightly critical of the direction of the Conservative government on issues of immigration. She went through a number of them. She has been supported by the former minister in his question a moment ago.

The Liberals say that there are no answers to the questions they raise, that there is no program from the Conservatives, that there is no money, that the money dedicated to important programming under their plan has somehow disappeared, but they have no plan. Yet, when push comes to shove, the Liberals are not prepared to hold the government accountable for not having a plan, for not having any money for these things, for not having any programs. Yet the moment when accountability, which is the job of the official opposition, comes to the fore, they disappear and do not vote to bring down the government.

If immigration is so important to the Liberals, why do they refuse to hold the Conservative government accountable for all these missteps, for this lack of progress and for this terrible bill before the House of Commons?

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question. If people believe a government is on the wrong track, if they believe the vision is not there and if they believe the decisions being made are not good ones and do not wish that government to remain, then new government should be brought in to do the right things.

It is not about what NDP members did in the last session, when they brought down a government in such undue haste that they undid all the things they said they wanted. It is not about hastily calling an election. It is about a strategy to ensure there is going to be success. On this side of the House, we think that is a government with no vision, with no plan, with no ability to move the country forward at a time when it is on the brink to be the most competitive nation in the world, given such a small number of people.

It is not about the cheap shots of saying “let's quickly call an election” without thinking of the consequences. One has to have a plan that will succeed. What is the point of having a plan of action if it is only about an empty shell, a piece of political rhetoric, which does not achieve the objective that we want?

We will achieve our objective in our time.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in the 2006 election one of the promises made by the government had to do with guaranteed wait times. That seemed to fall by the wayside. There has been a lot of hemming and hawing, yet the Conservatives continue to take credit. Even today in question period, the Minister of Health made a statement about “we delivered on wait times”.

Could the member advise Canadians what the real situation is in terms of health care wait times for Canadians.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as a physician, I can say that wait times was a priority for us. We did move in our government to look at bringing forward, within about two years, 1,000 new family practitioners.

Five million Canadians do not have family doctors. This is the heart of health care access. If people cannot see a physician, they cannot have access into the system. The government has been repeatedly told that health human resources is a huge issue and it is a problem that must be resolved.

We had that in our wait times initiative. In 2004 we had agreements with the provinces of bringing in health human resource changes, of bringing in the physicians, the nurses, the technicians and the technologists who would allow access to the system to occur. Again, I asked a question on what happened to that plan and the money that was set aside for it.

When the Minister of Health stands up and says that the government has been doing something, it is like his argument—

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order, please. I advise hon. members that we are now entering the portion of the debate where the speeches will be 10 minutes with 5 minutes of questions and comments.

The hon. member for Scarborough—Rouge River.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will have to compress my long and witty speech into 10 minutes now.

We are debating the budget implementation bill, Bill C-50. It is a bill that would implement the recent budget, but it also has some other legislation piggybacking it in a way that, for the most part, the official opposition objects to, and I will explain why.

Taking a broader look at the economy, there has been a lot of talk about whether the economy is doing well or not. I am actually a bit more positive about the economy. To be sure, there is a huge difficulty involving manufacturing. In central Canada it has severely impacted a number of localities and there may be more impacts. Generally across the country, however, the country is making jobs.

I took a look at the economic data for the area I represent in the greater Toronto area and Ontario and the statistics are pretty good. For the last month that we looked at, employment was up; the participation rate in employment was up; the unemployment rate was down; the number of social assistance cases in the greater Toronto area was down; inflation is down; the prime rate is 5.75%; commodity demand, all up. For a buyer that is not so good. For a seller, and generally Canada is a seller of commodities all around the world, those prices are up. There are a lot of good things to say about the economy.

I am not a doom and gloom type speaker at this point in time, but I will say that at this time of low interest rates and low inflation, it is absolutely the best time for the government to be showing leadership in investment and reinvestment in our economic sector, particularly the manufacturing sector. I am not seeing any leadership at all with respect to this particular issue.

The bill has provisions governing capital cost allowance. This is an incentive for business generally to reinvest in plant and equipment, but there is no leadership being shown by the government. There is no focus being brought to bear. It is simply scattering the crumbs across the barnyard and saying, “Here. Fend for yourself”.

I accept that our business does well when our entrepreneurs, our business leaders and our workers get together, focus themselves and bring about those good economic investments and impacts. However, there has hardly ever been a time in this country when the Government of Canada did not show leadership in this envelope. All of our major economic activity centres today bear the thumbprint of government leadership at some point in our history, whether it is transportation, or communications, or pharmaceuticals, or electronics, or technology, or research. All of these economic activity areas have had specific government leadership in the past that have made them successful and what they are today, and I do not see that leadership now.

The second thing I want to talk about in this bill is the Canada employment insurance financing board provisions.

I have heard in this debate, incessantly, the New Democratic Party trying to tell us here and Canadians that somehow our governments have been whacking away the money that has been contributed into the EI fund by workers and employers. I point out that the fund is not owned by, but was contributed to by, employees and employers. In fact, employers have put in a slightly greater share of that money. That fund is there; it is intact.

I am very disappointed to hear the New Democratic Party incessantly suggest to Canadians that somebody somewhere in government has stolen this money, so I thought I would look at the Public Accounts of Canada just to check. I am just one MP. There are 300 or so of us here. The taxpayer allows us to spend all this money on printing every year so that we can see the Public Accounts of Canada. There are three volumes. I thought I would go back nine years to 1999.

Where is the fund? How much money is in it? Does it exist? Did somebody steal it? How was it managed? Those who are interested can go to page 4.19, the Public Accounts of Canada, Volume I, 1999 and there it is with a surplus shown in the prior year, 1998, 10 years ago, of $13 billion and change. In 1999 it is $20 billion and change. I looked at the notes to the financial statements just to make sure it was the way it looked. There is was. It even talks about the Government of Canada paying interest into the fund at 90% of the T-bill offering rate. Every year the government under the watchful eye of the Auditor General of Canada accumulates the money in this account. It is a conceptual account but it is real. The government pays interest every year on the EI account as it accumulates. That was 1999.

I thought maybe it had changed in the interim years. I looked at 2005 and there it is, the same fund, alive and well, moving up to $48.5 billion with the same interest being paid every year. It shows the interest being paid. It shows the money being paid out in premiums and the money being paid out in employment programs. There are revenues and expenses to the program and a balance of $48.5 billion.

Then I went to last year. The NDP members have been talking about this. I thought, they have to be misleading us; this is not correct. There it is again, the EI fund. The surplus has moved from $50 billion to $54 billion with all that interest being paid every year. The interest paid in 2007 was $1.9 billion. The Government of Canada, the taxpayers of Canada, have allocated $1.9 billion to be added to this fund.

I am saying to the House that members can simply not accept the NDP members' statements at face value. They are weak on facts. It is misleading. There it is for everybody to see. That again is in chapter 4 of the Public Accounts of Canada, in case anyone wants to look at those.

I still say that this is the perfect time for the Government of Canada to be investing in employment programming, training and in manufacturing, to be leading in that for the benefit of Canadians.

The next thing I want to address is the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act sections. I am one who believes these provisions should not have been piggybacked on the budget implementation bill. There are four sections. There are a couple of legislative tweaks which I will not go into because they are fairly technical, but the ones that have caught the most attention have to do with the desire of the government to give the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration the legal ability to issue what are called instructions. I have served in the House for 20 years and I have never seen anything called an instruction. It does not exist. What is an instruction? Is it a letter? Is it a phone call? is it a communication? Is it an email? Is it a text message? We do not know but the government, with the collaboration of the department, wants to use a new statutory instrument called an instruction.

I have only one minute left. The time has gone far too quickly, so I will cut to the chase here and say that the government has chosen a very poor form. It is not a statutory instrument. It is not a regulation. It is not pre-published. It is not reviewed by any of the committees of the House as a regulation and it is not consulted on before it is done. It is a huge variance from the rule of law, a huge variance almost to the point of impinging on what is called the pretended power of dispensation which is part of our early parliamentary and constitutional law. The government is at huge risk in using this instrument, and so is Parliament and so are Canadians. I certainly oppose those sections of the bill.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment my colleague on fulfilling what he indicated he would do and that is to speak with wit and wisdom. I want to touch on a couple of things so that he can continue to complete his thoughts. I am glad that he pointed out that the NDP, that never-ending disseminator of poo, has been unveiled for what it really is. I compliment him on pointing out just what the EI fund does and how it is accumulated.

I have been here with him for many years and I share his concern about the fact that this is a most opportune moment, given the economic climate, to make investments in those areas that render both short term and long term benefits in the research and development area. Specifically, I think he mentioned the pharmaceutical sector, the aerospace and auto sectors, and of course the transportation sector. All of them are absent from the budget.

He touched on something else as well. He went from the substance to the process. The process is there are changes to the way we govern that are encouraged by this bill and which should never see the light of day in a parliamentary environment. I wonder if he will take whatever is left of his time to illustrate that matter further and to do it with the kind of expertise that he has on parliamentary process.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, at the end of the member's comments, he referenced the parliamentary procedures involved here. I take such strong objection to the use of “instruction” in this bill, I would almost stop at nothing to nuke it. I will also say that in another bill, Bill C-10, which passed late last year, there was another device called a “direction” which the government could give. This had to do with directions involving the production of Canadian films under the Income Tax Act.

With this whole business of finding these little directions and instructions, what is next, a phone call, or a message, or a letter? What other device is the government going to invent so that the rule of law scrutiny of the regulatory process is avoided? This is a very unfortunate step and the record ought to show that very clearly.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, the member is an expert in parliamentary process and I want him to speak in stronger terms about the government's sneaking immigration issues into the budget implementation bill. This is an affront to democracy. What is a budget? The money that is needed to run the country. Are we going to be able to stop that? The country has to run. So, if the government wants to make a policy change that is unacceptable to most Canadians, the government sneaks it into a bill where the people have to vote to run the country. This is unheard of. It is unparliamentary. There were no excessive details in the budget, just a very veiled reference in the budget. Then the budget implementation bill came out. To me that is just not kosher.

I know the member takes great pride in process and I would like him to comment on that further.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, arguably, the process being used here is insidious. First of all, the government is burying this new concept called an “instruction” in a budget implementation bill. It is burying it in this bill. Second, if this provision is implemented, the instruction is going to be something maybe on a piece of paper sent out overnight. We do not know. This provision will give the minister authority to bury the instruction.

It is true that the bill says the instruction will be published in the Canada Gazette, and that is pretty public, but that happens after the event, not before, not even simultaneous with. The government is burying the proposed new procedure, which is unprecedented, in a budget implementation bill and then it has invented this cutesy little instruction which is going to be flown by night courier to immigration posts wherever immigration applications are being processed. No wonder immigration applicants are a little nervous right now. No wonder they are fearful that the government has a hidden agenda. These devices, these concoctions developed in this bill do not say what they really are or what they are really intended to do.

When we in this House have to look at the actions taken under these new provisions after the fact, we have to try to infer why Parliament gave this authority in the first place and what it is being used for. There actually is no mechanism because under the bill, once an instruction has gone, that is the end of the story. That is not a very good way to run a country. That is not the rule of law.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on the budget, Bill C-50.

When I became a member of Parliament in 1993, the new Liberal government inherited, to be quite frank, a fiscal mess. The expenses exceeded the revenues of the government by some $42 billion in that year ending in March 1994.

It is a situation that members will know. The accumulated deficits of the country had built up to some $500 billion, actually peaking at about $524 billion. It was untenable. We were basically compared to third world countries in terms of our fiscal health.

As debt increases, the cost of borrowing increases and that means that the ability to meet the needs of Canadian citizens is put under pressure and services have to be cut. It was very important and, for the Liberal Party, our first priority was to get our fiscal house in order.

That took some pain. Canadians will remember that there were very significant cuts, not only to the operations of government but cuts in programs, important programs that Canadians needed, but there were some cuts. Everybody had to bear that burden. It was a tough decision to make but governing is about making tough decisions.

Finally, in 1997 we had whittled down that $42 billion deficit and finally balanced the budget. Throughout the 13 years, it was a tough governing period but we continued to pay down debt, to restore the level of services and, in fact, start increasing the level of services provided to Canadians, to the point that when the 2006 election came around, there was fiscal room to meet the need of paying down debt, to meet the need of providing additional services and programs to Canadians, particularly looking at areas of health care and the needs of seniors, of our aboriginal and first nations people, some very important areas, areas of poverty and areas to do with children.

Those were important programs and those were the kinds of things in which we were investing in.

However, just like people who have a house with a mortgage, Canadians expect to continue to make regular payments on that mortgage and save interest.

I can recall when some 40% of every dollar collected by the government in taxes was used to pay down the cost of borrowing money to finance the excess of spending over revenues of the government.

When this budget came out, it made me reflect on where we were back in 1993 after almost nine years of the Brian Mulroney government, where not one year was a balanced budget. Every year, year after year there were deficits. The debt was being built up and Canadians let the Conservatives know how they felt about the fiscal mismanagement in that election in 1993. They reduced that party from a majority government to only two seats in the House of Commons.

That is how significant this matter is in terms of how Canadians feel about whether or not a government can be a good fiscal manager, because if we do not take care of the finances of the nation, we do not take care of the people of the nation.

We saw in the budget that there was, as a result of inheriting the fiscal position that we had, a good, healthy position, that the government enjoyed a $13 billion surplus in its first year. It has gone down a little in terms of the projections, but what concerns me is that two major decisions were taken by the government and they were on the same item. It was the cut to the GST.

Providing Canadians with tax relief is always important when it is earned, but we must remember that there is a difference between giving someone something once and giving to people year after year the same amount.

If we take some $5 billion to $6 billion a year for a one percentage cut in the GST and then we do a second cut, all of a sudden, $10 billion to $12 billion of the annual surplus that we were enjoying to be able to pay down debt and to invest in Canadians, is gone. In two years out, looking from that budget, the surplus projected by the government will be less than $2 billion.

All of the hard work was to establish the security that we need to deal with fiscal challenges that are unforeseen. A prudent government says that we should not play with a zero balance in our bank account. We need to keep some savings there. We need to ensure there is a bit of latitude to deal with the ebbs and flows of the economy.

Now we are facing situations where it appears that we have already had one quarter where we had a decline in growth. It appears that Canada may very well go into a recession.

We have seen it, particularly in terms of the manufacturing sector. Jobs are being lost and people are becoming concerned. The confidence level in the government is dropping and it is all because of economic certainty or uncertainty. People care about their jobs and they care about paying for that next bill.

The government had better be there to take care of those needs because we do not know how protracted an economic downturn may be. We do not know what will happen in the U.S. but we do know that we are inextricably linked to their economy.

When we take over $10 billion out of the financial flexibility that a government has, we have no flexibility and no latitude to deal with the unexpected.

The government has not used prudence in its forecast. It has not used a contingency fund to provide for the eventuality of a thing like a SARS epidemic, which cost a very large amount of money.

I wanted to make that point only from the standpoint that it appears that we have come from a period of the last Conservative government that was in power up to 1993, passing off a $42 billion annual deficit, spending $42 billion more than it took in.

We came back with financial health under the Liberals and now the curve is going down again. It appears that we are going back to being at risk of going into deficit yet again. This is of concern to Canadians and it should be of concern to all parliamentarians.

The other matter I would like to briefly talk about is an item in the last budget called the tax-free savings account. My first reaction as a chartered accountant was that this was another administrative burden, a tax gimmick, that sounds good but that will not translate or deliver what it seems to be.

The Conservatives say that this tax-free account will allow people to put $5,000 a year into the account and anything they earn on that, whether it is interest income or dividend income or whatever, they will not have to pay tax. It will be a tax-free account. That sounds really terrific, $5,000 tax free. However, that $5,000 is not tax free because that is tax paid money. A person has to earn the money and have $5,000 of tax paid money to put into the account.

However, because this program has special conditions attached to it, every Canadian who wants to participate in the program will need to open a new bank account. The banks, however, will not do this for nothing. They will charge service charges on a monthly basis. If people want to do a transaction, such as buy stock, commissions are involved. It will be the same for term deposits. Does anyone think these agencies, whether it is an investment house or the bank itself, will provide all these services for nothing? That is not the case.

I just took a very simplistic example. Let us look at a basic savings account where someone was able to invest through the bank in a $5,000 term deposit that earned 5%, much more generous than we could earn today, but as an example, 5%.

If someone was earning $35,000 a year, making 5% on $5,000 would actually save the person $61 in tax on the interest earned. The person's taxes would go up. If the person made $70,000 a year, the person's savings on the same amount would be $88. If the person made $100,000, it would be $108. Those examples are to illustrate that the higher the level of income the more a person can benefit from this instrument.

I believe the instrument missed the target because it skews the benefits to those who have money, not providing a savings opportunity and a tax savings opportunity to Canadians who really could use the help.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask the member to continue his comments on the general fiscal mismanagement of the government, which is so surprising to Conservatives across the country.

We have a government that talks about reducing the deficit so Canadians pay less interest and talks about reducing the national debt, and then it pushes us to the verge of going into deficit.

It is not as though there were not crises such as this in the past. The Liberal government faced a number of crises but it had the contingency fund, a surplus, to deal with each crisis.

The Conservative government has been Canada's largest spender. Conservatives across the country cannot believe that they have the largest spending government in Canadian history which has put the country in jeopardy.

Furthermore, after the Liberal government had the largest tax cut in Canadian history of $100 million, the Conservative government actually increased income taxes. We all remember that from our income tax form. It took the government two years to get it back down to where the Liberals had it before the Conservatives came to power.

This total inconsistency in values and actions has put the government in this position of jeopardy. Canadian families that rely on manufacturing jobs are now in a position of jeopardy because there is no room to manoeuvre. I would like the member to comment on that because I know it is very important in his constituency.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member is quite right. I think this economic situation will be with us for some time. I think it will be with us for the rest of this calendar year because history has shown that as the economy gains momentum there will be some consequences.

We have had some job reductions and a net job loss. We understand that in some of the provinces where they are heavy in resources, they will continue to flourish and do extremely well. We have record high prices for petroleum and oil, which means there will be a lot of revenue and a lot of wealth in resource provinces.

However, we need to realize that 60% of our economy is in Ontario and Quebec. Those two provinces, which represent two-thirds of the population of the country, are the two provinces being hit very hard by the fiscal pressure.

I would indicate that this is not the time to be an alarmist. This is the time to be responsible. Fiscal responsibility needs to be the hallmark.

I think that whichever party forms the next government will be the party that demonstrates fiscal responsibility on behalf of the best interests of Canadians.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have sat here and listened to an hour of this tirade. We will not continue to sit here and listen to the opposition bash the economic engines of our country.

Alberta represents 16% of the manufacturing jobs in Ontario and 1% of the net wealth of Ontario comes directly from the oil fields and the hard-working men and women in the oil fields of Alberta.

My question for the member is very simple and it is in three parts. First, will he vote with the government on the budget implementation bill? Second, will he and his colleagues stick with what apparently they believe and vote against our budget implementation bill? Third, will they, as they have traditionally done, not show up for work and abstain, as they have done over the last six months?

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, if we want to talk about bashing, we just need to think of the most significant example. It really is embarrassing for all Canadians to have a finance minister who not only would bash a province, but his own province, and tell prospective investors not to invest in that province--