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

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, if you want me to name the hecklers, I can certainly do so because it was very loud from the other side at the beginning of the speech.

The member for Davenport gave a well thought-out speech on the tactic that the government is using here to insert draconian immigration measures into a budget bill to avoid debate.

However, with the heckling and some of the other tactics by the government, is it not true, I would ask the member for Davenport, that the government attacks rather than explains itself? We are seeing that on the Wheat Board, the immigration bill, on the trusts the Conservatives have set up and on the farm issues.

I wonder if the member would want to comment on the fact that it is the tactic of the government to go as far as attack personalities to avoid getting in-depth into the issues so that the people of Canada cannot really understand what the government is trying to do.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I quite agree with the comments of the member for Malpeque and his assessment of what took place. It was extremely difficult to say what I had to say, what I thought was very important to my constituents and my city of Toronto when there was constant heckling from the government benches. In many ways it is an attempt to silence members of the House, to prevent them from saying what they feel is important to their constituents, the citizens of this country.

I said over and over again in my speech that the immigration policy being put forward by the government in Bill C-50 is being brought in through the back door. We need to have immigration reform. I am one of those who has always felt that there are things in the immigration system that need to be reformed. We do need a study of immigration policies. We need to hear from the public. I find it highly regrettable that the government has actually attached this to a budget vote and made it a vote of confidence.

[Wajid Khan, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the member for Davenport that the labour shortage in Toronto is important. That is exactly what Bill C-50 addresses. I also agree that there is a significant impact on the lives of immigrants. This bill will make that impact much better.

The Conservative government brought in the last remaining residents who would join their families. The Liberals did away with it. The Liberals also brought in the $975 landing fee and then they opposed the reduction of the same. Right now it takes skilled workers six years and if we do not change the regulation it will take ten years to come in.

They may not agree with the policies and they want to criticize them for the sake of criticism, but I thank them for showing their confidence in the Prime Minister and the Conservative Party by supporting all our budgets and everything else. However, how does the member justify keeping people in their countries so that they are not able to come to Canada? He may not care for them, but does he not at least care for the Canadian economy? Does he not agree that a 20% to 40% faster reunification of families is a good thing for the country? His own deputy leader agreed that the Liberals did not get it done on immigration. I would like to hear his comment on that as well.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there is a point here that is missing, that if we are talking about immigration reform, there is in fact a need for it, the need for a proper study and proper process to do it. Should it come through a budget bill? I do not think so. I think even my hon. colleague would agree that this is terrible and bad judgment on the government's part. It is bad politics in fact to tie immigration reform to a budget bill and make it a vote of confidence. The government so wants to be defeated, it is actually becoming quite laughable, because it attaches everything to a vote of confidence. I do not think this is the way that Parliament should work. It certainly is a waste of our time. It is a waste of the resources that we could be putting forward in a more effective way.

If we are going to have immigration reform, we need to do it in a cooperative way. We need to make sure that it is also done in a correct way. I do not agree with the way in which it has been handled by the government and I think most Canadians do not agree with it.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-50, the budget implementation bill. I will use my time to speak generally of my opposition to both the Conservatives' and the Liberals' policies since they appear to form a majority government as it concerns this bill. I am also going to take some time to identify some of the glaring gaps that I have seen in the bill.

As I listened to the debate last week, I was struck by the new Liberal MP for Toronto Centre's somewhat arrogant comments that New Democrats are against companies making profit. Maybe that is what he believed when he was premier of Ontario and that is what gave them the enormous success they had, or perhaps as a new member he is just trying to explain why he switched parties. Whatever the case may be, the comments made by the member certainly do not represent the beliefs of the NDP.

In my community of Victoria I have had the opportunity to work with a large number of young business entrepreneurs and established businesses. I have whole wholeheartedly supported and encouraged them in many ways to continue their successful initiatives.

We on this side of the House support responsible governance, offering a triple bottom line approach to government policy. That is largely absent from the policies of the Liberals and the Conservatives as is evidenced in this bill.

Tax incentives to large oil and gas companies like accelerated capital allowance have been an intrinsic part of the Liberals' and Conservatives' policies. What we do not support is the focus on corporate welfare that has characterized the economic policies of both parties.

When the Liberals say that contrary to the Conservatives they balance social and economic policies, how is it then that an estimated 3.4 million Canadians, about one in 10 people, now live in poverty? How is it that about 800,000 of them are children? Why is it that more Canadians each year are reduced to holding precarious jobs, sometimes two or three jobs at the same time just to make ends meet?

Other pertinent and pressing questions for Liberal and Conservative members of this House include why is there still no nationwide system of affordable child care in Canada? Why have university fees skyrocketed out of control since the early 1990s? Why has our environment continued to suffer degradation with the sharp increase in pollutants and toxins and a rise in greenhouse gas emissions?

The answer is that all these societal problems are the product of years of single bottom line thinking. It is not that the New Democrats are against corporate profits, but rather it is that we believe in a triple bottom line approach integrating social, economic and environmental factors.

I would also like to consider some of the specifics of this budget implementation bill. In giving $60 billion worth of tax cuts, mostly to large corporate interests, the Conservative government has robbed the cupboard bare. With an economic downturn lurking over our shoulder, the federal government has seriously compromised its ability to help Canadians weather the impending storm.

We had high hopes, for example, of seeing significant changes in the area of post-secondary education before the release of budget 2008. We are pleased to see that the government did establish the first Canada-wide student grant program. However, many fundamental structural problems with the current system of post-secondary education have not even been considered or addressed.

There is nothing to suggest that the government has acknowledged the crushing levels of debt faced by young graduates. As a result of the deregulation of tuition fees throughout the 1990s, many young students and graduates are disappointed that the government has not even reduced student loan interest by a token 1%, not even to give them the nod that this is a problem that is putting them in debt and seriously impacting their life choices as they set out in life and in their careers.

We are pleased, though, that this bill acknowledges the challenges faced by part time students and seeks in some small measure to remedy them.

We have also noted that the statements of student loan accounts will now be available online. However, this measure should never have been in question since it is the right of every borrower to have a clear statement of how much is owed. Interestingly, this has been denied to students. They have had difficulty finding out how much they owe.

Again on post-secondary education issues, although the bill deals with severe permanent disability, it still makes no mention of what has been acknowledged as a policy gap, something called “episodic disability”, such as mental illness or cancer, illnesses that are clearly debilitating but do not necessarily fall under the definition of “permanent disability”. We know that their lack of ability to access relief makes their difficulties even more severe.

There is also no mention whatsoever of a student loan ombudsman. This would have been an easy measure for the government to take, a position which the NDP and many student groups have been calling for.

In all, this bill provides a small measure of progress while neglecting some of the most important issues facing students today.

Another issue is housing. In my region housing prices have gone through the roof and have left many people under-housed or on the verge of homelessness. The gap in this bill with respect to housing is absolutely unexplainable. Cities are experiencing serious funding shortfalls in dealing with the lack of housing. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities estimates that it will take an injection of $3.35 billion annually to end homelessness, build new affordable housing units and rehabilitate and renovate existing units.

The federal government must be present at the table to discuss a long term national housing strategy. Otherwise, cities that do take measures to address their housing problems could find themselves overwhelmed by people from another region. This highlights the need for the national government to be at that table.

I would also like to briefly talk about the environment.

The federal government has adopted a business as usual approach to the most serious problem we have ever faced, that is, climate change. Carbon sequestration, which is mentioned in the budget implementation bill, is certainly part of the solution but it is simply not enough.

In this budget bill, the government could have established targets, for example, to retrofit thousands of homes and buildings to allow Canadians to make the necessary changes to adapt to current environmental realities.

It is not only a question of inadequate policies, but the government is taking us in the wrong direction. We have been embarrassed internationally by the government's inability to take up the challenge on basic human water rights. Canada emerged as the pivotal nation behind recent manoeuvres to block the United Nations Human Rights Council from recognizing water as a basic human right according to international observers.

That is where this government is taking us, and that is unacceptable. I hope that it will go back to the drawing board, listen to Canadians and come up with real solutions, which Canadians have been waiting for on these issues.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, there are some good things for the north in the budget, but there are two problems.

One is that the Prime Minister promised two icebreakers to the north and has totally broken that promise. It looks like it may get one many years down the road. The second problem is in the budget implementation bill, Bill C-50, it explains that police and transit will be allocated on a per capita basis, with about $160,000 for each territory. How many policemen with their attendant costs could we hire? We could hire maybe one or two at most in a territory as big as any country in Europe.

Could the new EI fund invest in certain things? I have heard concerns about that. Will the member follow in what that fund invests? Also, now the Bank of Canada can have more liberal investments. Is she concerned about what those investments might be?

Does she think the government ever expects to get another vote from Ontario after owing it hundreds of millions of dollars, allocating it less seats than is fair in its allocation proposal, implying Ontarians are the little people of Confederation and suggesting that Ontario is the worst place in which invest? It is incredible. The Premier of Ontario is not the only premier to be upset. Other premiers are also very angry.

Finally, everyone admits, even the Conservatives, that there are major changes in immigration. Does the member think it is enough in the budget bill for the government to say it is changing the Immigration and Refugee Act to improve and speed up the application process? Everybody agrees that these major changes should have been explained to Canadians.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know if I can answer all my colleague's questions in the time I have left, but I will at least deal with the employment insurance and immigration questions, which are very significant ones.

We all know that $57 billion have disappeared into general revenue, while the criteria for eligibility have been tightened progressively, to the point where workers cannot claim employment insurance. The new agency the government would create would do nothing to increase accountability. In fact, it would undermine the principles of parliamentary accountability for employment insurance.

The NDP does agree, and has long agreed as a party, that EI should be separate from general accounts. In fact, I believe a number of bills and recommendations have been made to that effect in the House by some of my colleagues who have worked on this issue. It is not yet clear how the government would structure this new agency or how representative it would be.

On the immigration issue, this is a very serious concern to the NDP. First, hiding this major change in the budget bill was really a show of lack of respect in the House. It also would give the minister or cabinet discretionary powers for decision making behind closed doors on setting priorities, a responsibility that should rightly belong in the House. It is very worrisome if this is allowed to proceed. In fact, my colleagues and I will not allow this change to proceed.

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise and speak to the budget bill as it relates to values behind decisions that are made and how they relate to the city of Surrey, which is now 400,000 people.

I talked with officials of the city of Surrey before the budget was brought down. I asked them what they saw as being legitimate needs in Surrey, things for which they had asked the federal government, things that would make a significant difference in the quality of life of the near 432,000 people of Surrey. Incidentally, we have more babies every day at Surrey Memorial Hospital than I think any other hospital in Canada. There were a number of things both for B.C. and Surrey that were particularly important, but we did not see them in the budget.

As always, we wonder whether people who prepare the budgets can see south of the Fraser River. In this case, let me use a couple of examples.

The city of Surrey is a growth city both residentially and business-wise. It was very important for it to have transportation so people could either live and work in the community of Surrey, or perhaps live somewhere else and work in Surrey, or live in Surrey and work somewhere else.

While there was a significant amount of money for the Skytrain on the north side of the Fraser River, Surrey needed about $5 billion to invest in a provincial transit plan that would bring transit equality just to Surrey in terms of the number of buses needed. For a young mom or dad to get their child from Cloverdale to the hospital and to a specialist is truly an all day outing in our community. That money was not there. There was no real indication other than a few new buses. that people recognized that a the city is big and growing quickly. It is an economic driver. People need to recognize the kind of transportation needed for a city of Surrey's size. It also has a new university.

Surrey is quite a wonderful and interesting city. It is very urban and residential. There is lot of industry, but we are also very blessed to have a large amount of agricultural land reserve. We desperately needed and asked for infrastructure dollars from the federal government for flood work. Money needs to be spent on dikes to protect the riverbanks so farmers' fields will not be flooded. That money is not there either.

It is as if a message has been given to Surrey that the government has recognized other people, but Surrey is still this little growing community and it does not think that it deserves that kind of money.

In terms of policing and what that means to the city of Surrey, the 2,500 new police officers who we keep waiting to see, the budget states they are to be front line officers. The city of Surrey, the city of Delta and others have spoken very strongly of their needs. We could all use more police officers everywhere, but in the Lower Mainland we have a number of integrated teams, drug teams, gang teams, homicide teams and child exploitation teams. We need the dollars to support those teams so they can do their work.

It is as if the federal government is saying that it knows better, that these officers should be used as front line officers and the integrated teams can find money wherever they can. However, much of the Lower Mainland has said that those integrated teams work well and it needs more support for them. We have not seen that.

It is a very small program, but the federal government has put money into it before but has decided not to it this year. It is called SHaRP, or the salmon habitat restoration program. It has employed 180 post-secondary students who have been able to save money to go to post-secondary education or to reduce their enormous debt load. They have done riparian work. They have repaired not only the riverbanks, but the bottoms of the river for the salmon. The program has done superb job. It has been written about across the country. As a result of the federal funding not being there, although it was requested before the budget, it will be unable to function this year in the way that we had hoped. Again, it is another example of being unable to see the local needs or having someone in Ottawa make a decision about what the local needs might be.

People across the country talk about homelessness. The issue really is not homelessness. The issue is where do people live long term. We can build more homeless shelters, and I have no doubt that we will and that they will be full. However, where do people go when they leave a homeless shelter? There is no such thing as affordable market housing in the city of Surrey, where an average apartment is $800 to $900 a month.

Many people living in our homeless shelters are working full time. They cannot afford to pay rent in the city of Surrey. They live in a homeless shelter. They get up in the morning, go to work, work all day, do something for a couple of hours until the shelter opens, then they sleep at the shelter, sometimes sitting up, and go back to work in the morning.

It is not that these people are not trying; they are. Until the federal government looks at a national housing strategy, not homeless strategy, we will simply build more homeless shelters, but people will not in any way be able to put down long term roots either for themselves or, heaven forbid, afford to support a family.

The gasoline tax is now being returned to the city, and I give people credit for that. The Conservative government has done that. It has been lobbied very hard by many cities and by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. It does make a difference.

Other people have spoken on the issue of child care. However, the $100 a month does not make a difference for child care. One cannot find any kind of child care, one cannot probably even find child care for a day a week or a day and a half a week for $100 a month. Children who are eight and nine years old come home after school by themselves. Children from zero to five, for whom that $100 applies, are in child care where parents have no idea what goes on because it is not licensed and they are not sure it is safe. It is the worst feeling people can imagine.

People can say, “Stay home with your children”. I am sorry, at $8.35 an hour to pay rent and buy groceries in an urban area that it is not possible without support for children. This has been completely ignored. Not only is it ignored, but the position the Conservative government has taken about child care has been very deliberate.

We were hoping very much to be able to have some money for the World Police and Fire Games in British Columbia this year. Some of the sites are in Surrey. There was a significant amount of money put into the World Police and Fire Games when they were in Quebec. Now that they are in British Columbia, there is no contribution from the Conservative government for the World Police and Fire Games, which bring almost as many people as the Olympics do.

We also look for support for softwood. People think about manufacturing jobs as being cars, and it is very critical in Ontario, but softwood as well is a manufacturing industry. We saw no money whatsoever for the tragedy of the pine beetle that is destroying the trees in British Columbia forests.

For the city of Surrey and the goals that we had for this budget, the hopes we had for this budget, the lobbying that had gone on from our council, we do not see very many initiatives that will make a difference in the everyday lives of people who live in our city.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to the member for Surrey North and she mentioned some of the programs that were cancelled, the SHaRP being one, and the need for a national housing strategy. I do not imagine in her wildest dreams she would ever expect to get that out of the government.

She also mentioned child care, as did the member for Victoria before her. In fact, the member for Victoria, after going on a little rant against the Liberals, asked the question of why there is no system of early learning and child care in this country. To both members, the answer to why there is no early learning and child care in this country is quite simple.

It was implemented by the last Liberal government. It was signed with the provinces, but the leader of the NDP, in his wisdom, got into bed with the leader of the Conservative Party and decided to bring the government down. That is why there is no early learning and child care. That is why there is no real chance of getting economic and social policy that means something to ordinary people again.

These are the bedfellows of the leader of the NDP over here. He is the leader who made it possible for that crew to form the government. That is the reality.

Why does the NDP not at least be honest and admit the facts, that it is responsible for the lost program in terms of early learning and child care, and indeed for the lost opportunity to have social and economic policies that matter to ordinary people?

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would remind the member that when the government was defeated, the Liberals said that they were about to call an election 42 days after that. In 42 days, they were going to do child care? In 42 days?

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

It was already done and signed.

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

No, it was not. The member is shouting that it was already done.

I carried portfolios for child care through four portfolios in the B.C. cabinet and in point of fact, the Liberals had 13 years in government to put in child care with deep roots and sustainable funding that could not be pulled out by a government that suddenly was defeated 42 days early, so that is absolute nonsense. I have heard all of this before.

The NDP defeated the government and it would have been a miracle, in the time that was left, that all of these things that they talk about wanting to do and believing in would have been done in four, five or six weeks. That is foolish and I do not think people believe that.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the comments of the hon. member and of the member who spoke before her, the hon. member for Victoria. I was particularly interested to hear the long list of big programs that they would like to see funded by the federal government.

What I would like to know is when we can expect to see a costing of all of those promises to the dollar, and maybe a list of the tax increases that would be required to pay for those promises.

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the programs I spoke of from the city of Surrey were all costed. The costs were submitted to the federal government when the information was submitted. They were not programs outside the realm of the federal government as much of that was infrastructure money. Those programs were all costed when the submissions were made.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak today on the budget bill as well as the immigration changes included in the bill.

Let me be clear. We in the NDP were attempting to negotiate with the Liberals to keep them in government with our deal on health care but they refused. We actually extended the opportunity to change the path they were moving toward and they refused to negotiate. They were behaving like the current administration.

When it came time to vote in the House of Commons, there were not enough NDP votes to prop up the Liberals because independent members voted against them. The Liberals cannot even do simple basic math. Surprise, surprise.

Liberals members want to blame everyone else for their misfortunes. At the end of the day, Canadians defeated their administration because they were sick and tired of the constant empty promises and most importantly, because they were sick and tired of the Liberals ignoring the greatest needs of Canadians.

We have been left with the current environment of Liberals continuing to feel sorry for themselves. They expect some empathy from Canadian citizens but at the same time they prop up the current administration for their own benefit without any type of hesitation whatsoever. They have been explicitly doing that under their current leader and will probably still do that under their new slate of leaders now sitting in the House. Liberal self-interest always comes first. Nothing has changed over there.

I once again remind the Liberals that they did not actually work in a forthright way to negotiate a change in health care. They brought themselves down.

I do want to speak to the government's current fiscal plan, which is a clear gutting of Canada's capacity. The slew of corporate tax cuts are once again being supported by the Liberals. This was originally started by the member for LaSalle—Émard, who is always missing from the House of Commons.