This bill is from the 39th Parliament, 2nd session, which ended in September 2008.
Jim Flaherty Conservative
This bill has received Royal Assent and is now law.
This is from the published bill.
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.
All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.
Bill numbers are reused for different bills each new session. Perhaps you were looking for one of these other C-50s:
Budget Implementation Act, 2008Government Orders
Some hon. members
Question.
Budget Implementation Act, 2008Government Orders
The Speaker Peter Milliken
The question is on Motion No. 1. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?
Budget Implementation Act, 2008Government Orders
Some hon. members
Agreed.
No.
Budget Implementation Act, 2008Government Orders
Budget Implementation Act, 2008Government Orders
Budget Implementation Act, 2008Government Orders
Budget Implementation Act, 2008Government Orders
The Speaker Peter Milliken
The recorded division on the motion stands deferred. The recorded division will also apply to Motions Nos. 2 to 5.
I will now propose Motions Nos. 6 to 20 in Group No. 2.
Libby Davies NDP Vancouver East, BC
moved:
Motion No. 6
That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 121.
Motion No. 7
That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 122.
Motion No. 8
That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 123.
Motion No. 9
That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 124.
Motion No. 10
That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 125.
Motion No. 11
That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 126.
Motion No. 12
That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 127.
Motion No. 13
That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 128.
Motion No. 14
That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 129.
Motion No. 15
That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 130.
Motion No. 16
That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 131.
Motion No. 17
That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 132.
Motion No. 18
That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 133.
Motion No. 19
That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 134.
Motion No. 20
That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 135.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to these amendments at report stage of Bill C-50. My colleague from Acadie—Bathurst is the NDP EI critic, and all of us in the NDP caucus are very concerned and disturbed about what is taking place in Bill C-50, and the significant changes that are taking place to the employment insurance system.
We have previously debated changes that would take place to the immigration system and we had a lot of concerns about that. Certainly, on the amendments that are now before us, which will delete sections from the bill that have to do with setting up the new corporation for crown corporations, we think this is a wrong move by the Conservative government.
When we look back over the last 10 or 15 years, we see how much the employment insurance system has changed. It is very frightening. When workers in this country go to work, their EI deductions are made and employers pay their premiums. It is a system that workers believe in and feel they should be able to have faith that the system will work for them, that it will be there to help them through difficult times of being laid off or unemployed, particuclarly if they are seasonal workers.
That system previously worked. That system is paid for by employers and workers. There is not a penny of public funds or a penny from the government coffers in that system. It is a system designed to protect the interests of workers.
We know that today only about four in every ten male unemployed workers are collecting EI benefits at any given time. That is down from 80% in the 1990s. It is now down to 40%. It is even worse for women. Only one in three unemployed women are collecting benefits at any given time. That is down from 70% in 1990. Only 20% to 25% of unemployed workers in most major urban centres like Toronto or the Lower Mainland in Vancouver now receive benefits.
These are the statistics, but what is behind those statistics are the unbelievable hardship cases. People who, in good faith, work and pay into the EI fund and then when they apply for coverage because through no fault of their own they are laid off or unemployed, they find out suddenly that this system has, in effect, crashed. It is a system that does not work for them any more. In my own riding of Vancouver East there are many cases involving employment insurance. People come to my office who cannot understand why it is so difficult for them to get benefits and why they do not qualify any more.
Clearly, what has happened since the 1990s is that coverage has shrunk because there have been so many changes in the program rules. It began with the Liberal government and has now continued with the Conservative government. They are changes that have made it near impossible for workers to collect something that is their right, which is their unemployment insurance earnings.
In all urban centres, except Windsor, people now require 630 to 700 hours minimum to claim for 22 weeks or less. The threshold for new entrants is even worse. They need 910 hours and that really impacts young people, recent immigrants or women who are returning to work. All of these barriers exist to collecting something that people should have by right.
Under the current system, the basic benefit that is paid is 55% of the insured earnings, with a level of insured earnings averaged over a 26 week period, to a maximum of $423 weekly. That is not enough to live on. Is it any wonder that the income gap is growing between people who are affluent and doing very well and people at the bottom, working people particularly, who are really struggling? People who go on to EI basically live below the poverty line. They struggle to support their families and then end up going to food banks. These are the kinds of cases I have seen in my riding.
We know that the replacement rate for insured earnings was cut in 1996 from 57% to 55%, itself the result of a cut from 60% in 1993. That was a cut from 66% in the 1970s.
We can see that we have an insured earnings rate that went from 66% down to 55%. These are really appalling figures and they really tell the story of how bad things are under the EI system.
We want to bring this to light and to show how this is impacting millions of workers in this country. I want to congratulate the Canadian Labour Congress and many affiliates of the CLC who have valiantly kept pace, done the tracking, and done the monitoring of what is happening to the EI system. Many of these figures come from the Canadian Labour Congress. If we did not have that independent research being done, I do not think we would have any idea just how bad things have become.
We know that in this budget bill the government created the Canada employment insurance financing board act. We know that it has set up this separate crown corporation, but to add insult to injury is the fact that the surplus in the EI account is now at $54 billion. I cannot visualize that amount of money, but I know it is money that is being robbed from workers. I know it is money that has gone into general revenue that is being used for other purposes. Again, the previous government started it and the current government is continuing it. There are so many questions about what it will mean in terms of this new crown corporation.
One of the basic questions we have is, why is it that this crown corporation has only been set up with a fund of $2 billion, when even the Auditor General of Canada says that what is required for insurance purposes is closer to $10 billion to $15 billion? We are very concerned that not only has the system so fundamentally changed in Canada over the last 15 years but even this new setup that we are dealing with today is going to do a great disservice to workers.
It is going to be a situation where yet again workers get cut out. Workers lose entitlement and rights and there will be no oversight from Parliament. At least now we have had some parliamentary oversight of the goings on and the scandal really, and I do call it a scandal, of what has happened to EI. Now with this arm's-length crown corporation, where will that parliamentary oversight be?
We are very concerned about these changes in the budget implementation bill. Our leader, the member for Toronto—Danforth, when he was at the Canadian Labour Congress convention just last Thursday, spoke on this issue to the 1,800 delegates who were there representing all of their affiliates across the country. He pointed out that the former government treated the money in the EI fund like money that it found and could use it however it wanted. He pointed out that the $54 billion from the EI fund was used to pay down the debt. That was money that was owed to workers. That is money that belongs to workers.
We see this as the biggest theft in Canadian history. There is a great deal of anger among working people within the organized labour movement about what is taken from EI. I want to assure the affiliates of the CLC and all of the labour partners that we are not going to let this issue go. We are going to fight this tooth and nail because we think it is pretty scandalous the way workers are being ripped off in this country.
I know for example that the building trades, at their recent policy convention here in Ottawa, raised the issue of EI. The Liberals did not have any answers for them. The Conservatives did not have any answers for them even when they asked basic questions as to why the new board would only be allocated $2 billion.
We have made these amendments today under Bill C-50 because we are so outraged about the budget bill generally, how it is really robbing workers of very basic entitlements: to feel secure, to feel safe, and to feel like they have something that they can rely on when they are hit by hard times.
I know that all of us in the NDP will be fighting these changes and I hope that other colleagues in the House will rethink their position. It is pretty appalling that the Liberals are willing to sit on their hands and to let this terrible bill pass through the House. That is what they have done before and that is what they are prepared to do again today. It is pretty appalling that they are going to let workers down that way. We should be fighting for these rights. That is what we intend to do.
Yvon Godin NDP Acadie—Bathurst, NB
Mr. Speaker, the member for Vancouver East explained it very well in her 10 minute speech about EI and what has been created across the whole country.
At one point in time we did ask to have an independent fund to ensure that we took it away from the general fund and had a fund set aside, but surely we are not talking about a crown corporation where we cannot question it anymore. That is the difference between having a separate fund from the general fund and a fund that is a crown corporation, that when we raise a question here in the House of Commons about the fund, the government will say, “Go ask the crown corporation. It is not legislated by the government and we cannot answer anymore”. Does she worry about that? That is one thing.
The other thing is that the Auditor General has said before that we should have about $15 billion in the employment insurance fund set aside. Now there is only $2 billion and I would like to hear what she thinks about that.
With Bill C-50, on which the Liberals tonight will not get up and vote, or just walk away like they usually do, they should lose their pay, because when workers walk away from their jobs they do not get paid, and the Liberals have been doing it pretty often lately.
With the $2 billion that will be in this fund, this crown corporation, if the workers run out of money and they need more because of downsizing in the economy, they will have to borrow it from the government and there will be interest charged to them. The government already has a $54 billion surplus and the workers will have to pay interest on their own money. What does the member think about that?
Libby Davies NDP Vancouver East, BC
Mr. Speaker, those are all very good questions.
There is no question that the Auditor General has said that there needs to be between $10 billion and $15 billion in that fund to provide enough of a cushion for when things get really rough, as they may well do, so why was it set up with $2 billion?
I do not know if many people know that the member for Acadie—Bathurst has presented 13 bills on EI reform. He has done an incredible job on his own of bringing forward individual bills to try to fix this system that has been deliberately broken by two successive governments. We are very respectful and we admire his work very much, that he has taken the time to research what has gone on and to bring forward bill after bill to bring back the changes that are needed to create fairness for workers so that they can have access to this fund that they paid into.
The member raises some very important questions in terms of the set up of this new crown corporation, the fact that it will not have enough money, there will not be any parliamentary insight, and that with this new system, workers are still going to get ripped off. They are not going to get any more money. They are not going to get any better benefits. They are not going to get longer insurance.
This is just such a basic part of what we consider to be our social safety net in Canada. This is one of the things we are proud of as Canadians and it has been completely ripped to shreds by the two governments that we have had, so we really want to stand up to this and say that this should not be allowed to happen.
Andrew Telegdi Liberal Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
Mr. Speaker, I want to get back to the debate on the sections of Bill C-50 that affect the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
The reason I want to do that is because we are making fundamental changes to the act, and instead of doing that through the front door by sending proposed changes, and changes are needed, to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, so that the committee can conduct--
Budget Implementation Act, 2008Government Orders
Yvon Godin NDP Acadie—Bathurst, NB
Mr. Speaker, I believe we are on EI now. The debate on the motions in group one, which were on immigration has passed and now we are on employment insurance.
