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

[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.

[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.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-50, 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, be read the third time and passed, and of the motion that this question be now put.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, in speaking to the bill today I want to highlight not only what my concerns are about some of the things contained in Bill C-50, but actually about some of the things that should be and are not.

I want to begin, for instance, with the millennium scholarship fund, the cancelling of the fund, and the current redistribution of the money to students.

On the surface, this seems like a very good thing, but the point is it was not made stable. The millennium scholarship fund had been there for 10 years. This new fund is now there for who knows how long. The Canadian Alliance of Students Associations said that part of the budget for students lacked any sort of long term vision. Putting in little bits and pieces that may sound good on the surface on a one shot deal quite often is of great concern, when we think that the issues of productivity and competitiveness in this country will have to do with skills and training, and an educated labour force.

The fact also that the fund will now be distributed mainly as an income-based fund and not a need-based fund makes a big difference. We cannot expect this party to understand that difference, I understand, but when we look at the millennium scholarship fund, it used to be based on cost of living, tuition, cost of books and was based on student resources and need regardless of income.

The Education Policy Institute in Quebec noted that this seemingly simple shift in language could create a loss to Quebec students of over $80 million a year since the Quebec system is based on need.

Here we have a system again that had been changed. I do not know why, but the government did not give much thought to what the consequences would be. We now have a province that is going to have a problem with its own students having the ability to access the funds.

The new student fund also seeks to increase the number of students who will get the grants that the millennium scholarship fund used to bring forward. However, we now find that this could create larger numbers of students getting perhaps $2,000 instead of $3,000, and for a student a thousand dollars less a year is a lot of money.

The other thing is that this has been taken away from the arm's length body that used to manage the millennium scholarship fund and it has gone now directly to HRSD to be looked at, and we have seen what happens when programs go directly under HRSD. The summer student program fiasco last year had the government scrambling to do damage control and it did. However, again, it was short term, one year, damage control.

This year, we see the same thing happening. I am getting letters and I am getting calls from many NGOs who cannot get students this year, never mind the fact that students are being deprived of the ability to have that apprenticeship experience in their field of studies. Once again, we see this kind of one shot deal, this kind of shiny object in the window that happens for a year but does not have any substance to it that can actually achieve a long term objective of having more students accessing education.

The MSF is only one example of how the government is very good at playing with language which is designed to fool the people. It is the old Harris trick. The problem is that citizens actually get hurt in the end.

We need to remember that the strengthened plan for students' access to post-secondary education brought forward in the Liberal fiscal plan of 2005 and the fiscal update brought in by the then finance minister was hastily tanked by the NDP who love to speak about students and its wish to help students. In its rush to get to the polls to gain a couple more seats, in spite of the fact that it had been asked to wait until February or until a budget came forward that would actually cement in place some of the excellent policies that were coming forward with the then Liberal government, such as a national housing strategy, a national child care program, the Kelowna accord, and all of those would have been enshrined in the budget, the NDP put at risk and eventually allowed the cancellation of some extraordinary programs. One of them was for students, as we can see.

Now we have proposed legislative changes, for instance, in the bill to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. It is buried in a budget implementation bill. I put it to the House that this is a way of bypassing due process that would have allowed real input by the Canadian public, by trade unions, by trade councils, by business communities, and all of these stakeholders and players. We would have been able to look at where we need to go as we are poised on the brink of 2011, a year in which we are told we are going to be dependent for 100% of our net labour force on immigration.

Everyone knew this was coming. The last Liberal government, over the course of two years, had begun to plan with the provinces on how to deal with this and what the essential costs of changing the system would be, so that we could deal with the need for a labour force, at the same time remembering that immigration is far more than merely a tool for accessing a labour force.

However, we had put in an effective strategy. We had talked to the provinces. A plan was in the works. The then immigration minister had put in $700 million to help with integration, to help with retention of people in areas and helping to deal with cutting down the long waiting list, which as we hear is the reason why the bill was hastily pushed into a budget implementation bill without due process. All of those things were there. They were in the works. What happened to that? What happened to the $700 million.

The minister is putting in $60 million. Great. We used to have $700 million targeted. What happened to the other $640 million? Where did it go? These are questions that we really need to ask.

If the government really cared about the issue of labour force, if it really wanted to look at how immigration in Canada could actually be preparing Canada for the 21st century, then we would have done it the right way. The Conservatives would have been able to bring this forward as an appropriate bill under the appropriate minister. They would have been able to let the bill go to the citizenship and immigration committee. There would have been the usual travelling of the committee, getting input, getting information from all of the players, so that we could have had a substantive bill that would have been a vision implementation, building for perhaps the next 20 years in terms of a solid way of looking at immigration and refugees in this country.

However, that was not done. What we now have instead is this little fly-by-night thing, an edge through, put in with the right words and put into a sort of trap in which it is left in a confidence motion in the budget, so that nobody really has any input, but with the threat that if we do not pass this, then we will bring down the government.

This is a sort of cheesy kind of flouting of the democratic process that actually bothers some of us across the aisle because it really is not about something substantive. It is really just about cheap political tricks.

I want to speak a little bit about why the government did not go through the process. Why did it not do the proper consultation? One of the things we see is that the minister would now be the only person, the point of entry and the point of exit into the system.

The department will be the only place people can go if they seek to come here as immigrants to this country. Everyone used to know what the rules were. They applied according to the rules and then they went through a process. There were appeals built into the process. That is now gone. There is one judge and one jury, and that happens to be the minister, who will decide who will get in, with no accountability.

Again, we see, and this is a problem surfacing every day in the House, a lack of accountability of the government for the things that it intends to do, a lack of process and structure that would allow the Conservatives to explain to Canadians what they are doing and why they are doing it, and then to be accountable for whether it worked or it did not work. That has gone.

What we see now are some problems that will create issues. Suddenly we bring in labour market immigrants. They come in and they are unable to have access to jobs because it is not just getting into the country that allows a person access to a job. There are many barriers in the way and there is nothing put in place to deal with those barriers.

This is what I felt was very interesting. Currently, we have about 500,000 internationally trained workers in this country who are unemployed or underemployed with regard to work in this country. It is not because no one cares.

In 2004 I was given the job by the then prime minister to set up an immediate medium and long term plan to deal with the internationally trained workers, not only the people who were here and who could not get jobs, but the people who would come into the country in the future.

We recognize that there were a number of barriers. It was not a one shot deal. People walk in and what happens? They get a 1-800 number to call, which is the government's answer to an internationally trained worker. Give people a 1-800 number, call the government, and what will it do?

The point is, it cannot do anything because it is multi-jurisdictional. When we set it up, and we did set up a long term plan for this in 2004, we put money into the top priority, which was getting internationally trained physicians to work in this country because we realized that was a crisis situation at the time. In 2005 enough money was put in to deal with the other issues, and what were the issues?

First and foremost, the government cannot make someone have a job. One must become accredited and have one's papers assessed. This is a provincial jurisdiction. One has to work with the provinces. One has to be able to work with the credentialing bodies under provincial legislation. Do those bodies believe that the person has the right skills, has the right education to be able to do the work according to Canadian standards? These are questions only credentialing bodies can answer, so one has to work with the credentialling bodies.

Second, in some sectors language is a huge issue. If someone does not have an enhanced or an expanded access to language and an understanding of the depth of language, like a physician or a nurse or a social worker, they cannot actually deal with the Canadian population in English or in French. Language training was a huge problem and our government put forward $20 million a year under the minister to give access to that kind of enhanced language training.

What is happening to that? Where is that money? Is it happening?

The third problem that we found was that immigrants came to this country and they went to three cities: Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. The jobs were not there, yet the immigrants stayed there. They could not get the jobs and we tried to get them into other provinces, working with the provinces as we did. We tried to get them into rural areas where they would leave at the end of a year, and so retention became a problem. The former Liberal immigration minister had put in a substantial amount of money to deal with the problem of retaining people in areas where they were needed.

Finally, there is the issue of apprenticeship. Some people who come to Canada may have the on-paper training, but they do not have the Canadian experience. In our plan, that the Liberals tabled, we were going to give them apprenticeship training, help them to work in areas where they could get the kind of Canadian experience that they needed.

This was not a simple thing. It was a complex plan. It took us a year to set up and we began to roll the plan out, and I am asking this question. What is the minister going to achieve by allowing internationally trained workers to come into this country without a plan that was an extremely costly plan when we put it forward?

It was the beginning of a five year plan. Without that plan in place, people would just be left, as I said earlier on, calling a 1-800 number and nothing would be solved at all, because this is not something that the federal government can do alone.

My question is this. Where is our plan that we tabled and where is the money that we had put in, in the first two years to implement that plan? We do not know where it is. Therefore, we have again this sort of sleight of hand, of bringing in what sounds like a choice piece of legislation or amendments into an act which does not really deal with the problem at all and which is done by stealth, putting it into the wrong bill.

Not only that, we talked about the labour force, which we all know is an issue that we need to deal with. However, how could the minister bypass the provinces that have a provincial nominee program, and that have been involved in deciding what they need in their diverse areas for their workforce? That has not been done. Suddenly, the federal government has taken it all over and there has been no consultation with the provinces and no ability to work with the provinces.

All the work that had been done by the Liberal government has been thrown out the window and we are starting from scratch with no plan and no money.

At the same time, immigration is not only about the labour force. Many of us who have come to this country over the last 300 years came here not merely to find work but to find freedom, to find opportunity, and to build a nation. Immigration is about nation-building and when all we do is set it up to be something that is an in and out scheme to get workers in and nothing more, we do not take into consideration that if people are going to put roots down, grow families and build a nation, they are going to need a family class. They are going to need to be able to bring their families and have a vision for this country, and truly belong.

None of that has been taken into consideration in this immigration amendment that we see.

I said that I would talk about the things that concern me. Those are some of the things that concern me, but I also want to talk about the things that are absolutely not present and that should have been done.

We know that productivity and competitiveness is a huge problem right now in this country. There is no vision for this. We see manufacturing jobs being lost. There was an opportunity here. The government had three budgets in 2006, 2007 and 2008 to set down a plan for productivity and competitiveness, for the forestry sector a real plan, an action plan, not merely words that have not really resulted in any change at all.

Workers in the automobile and manufacturing sectors are losing their jobs. Not a single idea has been put forward. There was an opportunity to do it in the budget. The opportunity was lost.

The Minister of Health stood in the House and said he was concerned about the rising epidemic of obesity in the country. In fact, the minister then said that the government had put forward a $5 million plan. The $5 million came out of the money that the Liberal government had allocated to deal with community participation.

In a $140 million budget, $5 million was taken out of it for ParticipAction. ParticipAction, as devised by the government, is a television ad and that is it. We found out that the reason young people were not participating, even though there was community program money for them to play sport, was they needed places to play. It is called sports infrastructure, like gyms, having coaches helping children to learn to play a sport that would result in better physical activity and better health for the children.

None of that was put in the budget. Our Liberal government had in place an infrastructure fund specifically for community sport infrastructure. Where is that money? Where did it go? A $5 million TV advertising program does not even hope to touch that.

Talking about immigration and the international trade worker initiative, we read in the newspapers that more and more Canadians are having less and less access to health care. We all know the Canadian Medical Association and other bodies have studied this. They tell us the reason people are being denied access to health care is the lack of health human resources such as doctors, nurses and lab technicians.

The government had a huge opportunity to deal with the health human resource crisis, with the lack of physicians. In 2005 our government had allocated money to bring in 1,000 new family practitioners. What happened to that money? Where did it go? What happened to the 1,000 new family practitioners? What happened to that plan? No wonder there is no access almost three years later and things are going downhill. It is about opportunities missed.

Government is about a vision for a nation, not just little one-shot, one-off deals where the government thinks it can fool the people of Canada. The people of Canada are too smart to be fooled. They see the results of a lack of a plan and vision. This is what we are talking about, opportunities missed, opportunities lost on the ability to build a nation, to look to the future, to protect jobs, to find new creative and innovative ways of bringing Canada into the 21st century and to compete in a global marketplace. None of those things have been in any of these budgets. In this budget there was a hope something would to deal with some of these issues, but was nothing.

We talk about all the little pieces of programs here. Government is about vision and looking to the future. With only 32 million people in our country, we do not have the ability to compete in numbers with Asia, China, India and other populous countries, countries with large populations like Europe and even the United States to the south of us. Even if we double our population by some magic figure in 10 years time, we will still be a small country, so we need to have the best, brightest and most trained workers.

We have to foster innovation and creativity in the country so companies want to come here because they can get good workers and people who think outside the box. It should be about looking at ways to deal with energy, the environment and creating a Canada that can stand tall in the world.

In 2004 we were number one in the world. We had taken a country that was almost a developing country with a huge $43 billion deficit, with no jobs, with people losing their mortgages and we built it with a vision, not just with one-shot deals, into a nation that was holding its head high above the world. We had nine balanced budgets and a huge surplus. We are now looking at a deficit and the possibility of a recession. Jobs are being lost. This is what happened in two years under the Conservative government and that is because it has no plan, no vision and it does not even understand what our country is about.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, yes, I definitely share that concern as well. The purpose of this fund is to have it during the ups and downs in the economy, which happened to be doing very well in recent years. However, all of a sudden we have this downturn that could cause a huge number of people having to apply to this fund. There certainly should be sufficient latitude in that fund to deal with those types of contingencies.

I went to the briefing on Bill C-50, the finance bill, and there were a couple more esoteric points I had related to this fund and also to the changes to the Bank of Canada financing. What I am worried about is taking the investment ability and distancing it into this agency from the Government of Canada.

We have had a crisis lately related to asset backed funds. If we take the investments at more arm's length from government, how do we know what these investments might be in? How do we have government control? We, of course, want safe investments and socially acceptable investments with these funds.

It is the same with the Bank of Canada. Some provisions in this bill, which I am not sure have been talked about in the debate at all, that would increase the latitude and the mechanisms the Bank of Canada has in investing the money that it happens to have at a particular time.

I do not have a problem with modernizing the investment procedures to fit modern instruments, et cetera, but in this time, when we have had some great crises, in fact we have had a committee hearing specifically on this crisis of failures in certain types of assets, I think we should give particular concern to watching the latitude or the distancing of government investments. We need to keep that very close at hand and ensure, as people always expect, these are safe investments. People do not expect the government to be making huge profits but they do expect it to be investing in things that will never lose their money.

I think those are two important items that, as these things are implemented in the future, we should keep very careful watch of. I know members of the various opposition parties will be watching these items.

The House resumed from June 3 consideration of the motion that Bill C-50, 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, be read the third time and passed, and of the motion that this question be now put.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

I would like to advise the hon. member that when we come back to the study of Bill C-50 he will have 2 minutes left in his debate and 10 minutes under questions and comments.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand in the House to oppose Bill C-50, the budget implementation bill.

I can assure members and the people of Nanaimo—Cowichan that I will actually be in my seat and will vote in the House when Bill C-50 comes before the House. Not only will I speak in opposition to the bill, but I will actually vote in opposition to the bill, unlike some members of the Liberal Party.

There are many good reasons to oppose the bill. On one of them, I will come back to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, which has issued a paper called “A Budget Canadians Can Count On”. In the paper, the centre says:

The legacy of this minority government is one of neglect: the Conservative government has failed to address some of the most pressing issues of our time....

Canadians are working harder but they are struggling to afford the basics: housing, child care, post-secondary education. There has been nothing in the previous two Conservative budgets to address these issues. Canadians have not been able to count on their government to get them through shaky financial times.

The centre goes on to state:

This, for a minority government, is shocking. Its tax cut agenda to date reduces Canada's fiscal capacity by close to $190 billion over the next six years. That $190 billion could, and should, fund programs and services that all Canadians can count on but within a matter of years--the blink of an eye--it will have disappeared with no lasting investment in this and future generations of Canadians.

That in itself is a very good reason to oppose the budget implementation bill.

Over the last several months since the budget came out, we have seen increasing joblessness in Canada. A CBC story dated May 9 talked about the fact that manufacturing continued its decline in April, with losses in Ontario and British Columbia. The number of factory workers has decreased by 112,000 since April 2007, according to Statistics Canada. Recently, of course, we have heard of more layoffs in the auto sector, and certainly forestry is reeling.

In my province of British Columbia and my riding of Nanaimo—Cowichan, we have seen hundreds of jobs disappear over the last six months. We have heard nothing but absolute silence from the government. We have called on the government to institute a national forestry strategy and a national auto sector strategy. The silence is deafening.

The Financial Post of Saturday, May 10 said:

B.C.'s forestry industry has experienced hard times before, but nothing close to this. As long as fallers worked the forests, and truckers hauled their logs, and sawmills produced lumber, and pulp mills turned their waste to paper, the whole system, while precariously co-dependent, seemed to work.

With three production lines capable of producing 400,000 tonnes of pulp product a year, Harmac was the industry's Hercules. It was ageing, and not terribly efficient and probably in need of a major overhaul. But the mill was always counted on to chug along...

This week was black. A sawmill near Campbell River, on Vancouver Island, was scheduled to permanently close. Its owner, Vancouver-based TimberWest Forest Corp., had been trying to sell the Elk Falls plant since 2005. Another 257 jobs, gone. Production stopped this week at Harmac's sister pulpmill in Mackenzie, a town in the B.C. interior, putting 260 more people out of work. A thousand loggers and contractors on Vancouver Island were laid off this week by Western Forest Products Inc., a leader in the industry.

Trees are still being felled in B.C. forests, but more and more, logs are loaded onto ships and delivered, raw and cheap, to such countries as the United States and China, where they are processed. Trucks used to haul logs and wood products around the province are sitting idle.

The result: Mills are starving...A sawmill in Ladysmith, near Nanaimo, closed indefinitely in April. More than 80 workers just lost their jobs at a mill in Crofton, down the highway. Almost 150 people were told not to return to a papermaking plant near Campbell River.

According to the Forest Products Association of Canada, there have been 46 mill closures in B.C. since January, 2007, and 5,747 jobs lost. There is no fix on the horizon...

Nanaimo lost something integral. The city, a thriving, busy hub of shopping malls, new housing developments and myriad services, is at heart a mill town.

All of that was from the Financial Post, but I want to now put some names and faces to this, because this is not just about numbers. This is about people. It is about their families. It is about their children. It is about their grandchildren.

I want to talk a little more about what the article says about how this impacts on people's lives. The article states:

“We thought it would go on forever,“ said John Kloppenburg, 53, one of the few men who did stop to talk outside the mill on Wednesday...“It was my bread and butter for 34 years. And now...” His voice trailed off. “Now I feel lost.”

Further on the article states:

“Guys are looking for answers, they are trying to figure out how they are going to put their lives together,” says Gerry Tellier, president of president of the Pulp, Paper and Woodworkers Union, Local 8....His father, Louie, started at the mill in 1951, three years after it opened. “He told me that if I was going to work for a living, I might as well work for a big company that's going to pay well, because they are likely going to stay around forever,” Mr. Tellier recalls.

He took his dad's advice, and signed on at Harmac in 1966. He passed the wisdom along to his own son, Trevor, who went to work at Harmac 20 years ago.

There are three generations of the Tellier family who worked at Harmac. Now they have lost their jobs and they are being forced into leaving the community where they grew up, a community which they love and which they contribute to in so many different ways.

Another person from my constituency, Laura Bohun, in writing on behalf of her husband, said:

As a voting taxpayer in the degenerating province of British Columbia, I feel I must call on you to address the issue of Employment Insurance. My husband is one of the many thousands of men across the country that lost long term forestry employment as a result of the criminal changes made to our forestry code by provincial government, ignored by federal Ministers....The rape of our forest communities continues the sell off of raw logs to the U.S. while forestry communities are dying.

After 26 years of employment at the Ladysmith Western Forest Products Mill (formerly known as Domans) he was given a one week notice (on April 17, 2008) and told that the mill was shutting its doors indefinitely, at least one year minimum. Since January of the same year, my husband only worked every other week on an on call basis. Never enough time off to apply for EI benefits until the mill shut down on May 5th.

She goes on in her letter to talk about the fact that her husband is going to face an unconscionable delay in even getting a decision about whether he qualifies for EI benefits. She recognizes the fact that there are surpluses, excuse me, that there were surpluses. She said:

I implore the powers that be to take some of this EI surplus and use it for the purpose it was intended to serve. How...are ordinary working class people supposed to stop paying mortgages and buying food while we wait for the government to give us back money they failed to disburse to us?

She goes on to talk about the fact that there are 10,000 other unemployed skilled workers in B.C. and that work is very hard to find, and that no one who makes $10 an hour can afford to own a house.

That is a critical point because in Bill C-50, there is a clause to actually set out the EI fund at arm's length to the government. Although there is nothing inherently wrong with setting the EI fund at arm's length so that successive governments cannot pilfer the fund, what we are really concerned about is that over $50 billion has disappeared from the EI fund. This is money that could be used to help workers in transition, to help them with bridging into other employment, to take a look at reinvesting in communities so that communities can diversify and make sure that families get to stay in their own communities instead of having to move somewhere else.

On March 5, the member for Acadie—Bathurst in a question put to the minister responsible for the EI fund, said:

Why does the reserve fund of the new crown corporation not contain the entire $57 billion that belonged to workers?

Fifty-seven billion dollars. The Minister of Human Resources and Social Development responded by saying:

Mr. Speaker, there is no question the Liberals did raid the EI account to the tune of well over $50 billion.

The minister acknowledges the wrong that was done by the Liberals but does nothing to rectify it. We are telling Canadians it is perfectly okay for the previous government to take $50 billion of workers' money, money that workers have paid into a fund for decades and never collected, and then when it is time to actually make sure that workers have that social safety net in place, the government says it is too bad. The money was pilfered by the Liberals, but the government is not going to put it back in the fund where workers can actually take advantage of that fund to make sure that their communities stay viable.

Mr. Speaker, I am very aware of parliamentary privilege and that we have to be very careful about how we talk about funds that go missing, but the member for Halifax today talked about a former finance minister and about misappropriation of funds. I would argue that when workers pay into a fund and expect it to be there and the fund disappears, that sounds like misappropriation.

We know that the previous Liberal government gutted the EI fund anyway. The Liberals took the money out and made sure that only one in four men and one in three women who were working could actually qualify. The Liberals reduced the amount that people would get to 55%. The benefit rate is now only 55% of their earnings. They made the number of hours much higher so that people would have more difficulty in qualifying.

What is happening right now in Nanaimo--Cowichan is that people who had worked for decades in the forestry industry, after five or six months on EI, are told that their benefits are running out because Nanaimo--Cowichan's unemployment rate is tied to that of the Lower Mainland, a completely different labour market. When we followed up to find out if there was anything that could be done about that, we were told that the regions are reconfigured every so many years and it is just not time. We wrote to the minister saying that these are real people who are worried about paying their mortgages, about sending their kids to college and could something not be done. The response to date has been silence.

Those 1,500-plus workers who have lost their jobs over the last six months, whether it was at Munns Lumber, Ted LeRoy Trucking, Catalyst Paper, Harmac Pulp Mill or Western Forest Products' Ladysmith mill, whatever the company, are all people who have homes in our communities, who pay taxes in our communities. Not only are those workers worried about whether or not they are going to have a future in our communities, but the municipalities are also worried about it. They are losing a good tax revenue source as these companies close. The very health and vitality of Nanaimo--Cowichan was the forestry sector. People are wondering what the future holds for them.

There are some very good reasons, just on the forestry sector alone in Nanaimo--Cowichan, British Columbia and across this country, for opposing this bill. This bill holds nothing for forestry. It holds nothing for the EI fund in terms of making sure money goes back to the workers who actually deserve it.

On another note, as the aboriginal affairs critic for the New Democrats, I have to draw attention to the shocking absence in the original budget speech and now in the budget implementation bill of meaningful measures for aboriginal people.

I have spoken many times in this House about the desperate poverty with respect to many first nations, Métis and Inuit, but as a reminder, 41% of aboriginal children under 14 were living in poverty nationally in 2001, rising to 51% in Manitoba and 52% in Saskatchewan. Those are shocking numbers. In Canada in this day and age we should not be talking about how poor the first nations, Métis and Inuit children and their families are, but sadly all we see is the government's inattention and neglect in such matters as education, housing, clean water, and many of the initiatives in early learning and child care that would actually help lift first nations, Métis and Inuit out of poverty.

We all know from the many studies that have been done that education is one of the tools that can be used to make sure that people have access to employment. In some areas there are skills shortages, for example, apprenticeable trades, physicians, medical technologists. There are many, many occupations where there are skills shortages. It has been studied to death, whether it was in the aboriginal affairs committee or the human resources committee, and the recommendations have consistently been to put more money into education. It is simple. The second piece of that is to make sure that first nations, Métis and Inuit are involved in designing, developing and delivering that education.

I have spoken about the First Nations Technical Institute many times in this House. We recently received a letter from the minister indicating that although the First Nations Technical Institute got some additional money this year, it is not likely to happen in future years. In fact the letter stated:

--the Department's preferred focus is on transferring tuition dollars directly to learners. As a result, 2007-2008 is the last year the Department will provide transitional funding to the First Nations Technical Institute.

This flies in the face of so many reports that have talked about the importance of indigenous control of education. The First Nations Technical Institute graduates high numbers of students. The students have a very high success rate in terms of placement in employment or further education. What we are hearing from the minister is, “Too bad. You have the results. You are performing, but too bad. You have to find some private money from somewhere”. First nations post-secondary students have to go to institutions that are privately funded from somewhere else. We do not ask other students in Canada to do that. Why would we ask first nations students to do it?

While I am talking about schooling, the member for Timmins—James Bay has been tireless in bringing forward the shameful fact that Attawapiskat children do not have access to a clean, safe public school.

We did a bit of research. We asked the Library of Parliament to do an analysis. The analysis showed that there was roughly $56 billion in federal corporate tax cuts from 2001 to 2007. Based on that amount, we could build every pending school project 177 times.

When we tried to get a list of what schools were pending for construction or renovation we were able to get the names of 39. We know the number is substantially more than that because of an access to information request. Based on 39 schools that needed renovation or construction, that would total $315,833,000. From the billions of dollars that were used for corporate tax cuts, surely we could have found $315 million to build schools to provide education for first nations children. Without proper education, first nations children will continue to face the wall of poverty that their mothers and fathers faced.

Officials from Indian and northern affairs appeared before committee. I posed a question to them around the funding issue. There are a couple of issues here. There is something called the band operating funding formula which allows the schools to continue to operate. We found that they received exactly the same money as they received last year even though we know that was substantially less than what is needed to operate the schools.

On reserve schools are substantially underfunded compared to schools off reserve. Does this mean a first nations child does not deserve the same level of education as an off reserve child? First nations children do not have access to computers or other technology or libraries. They do not have access to special needs programs or a speech therapist because they live on reserve and they are a first nations child.

I asked the associate deputy minister about the funding and he said that K to 12 funding is still part of the 2% funding cap and that is a challenge. It is a bit of an understatement to say that it is a challenge. The Auditor General has identified population growth at around 11% and yet funding has been less than 2% when a bunch of other elements are factored in, such as the cost of living and those kinds of things.

The 2% cap was put in under the previous Liberal government in 1995-96 as a cost saving measure despite the fact that it knew that the population was growing. The Conservatives have maintained that 2% funding cap despite all of the reports, including the Auditor General's report, that talk about the serious underfunding crisis in education, in housing, in health care.

I want to put a couple of faces to this issue.

The member for Timmins—James Bay has done an excellent job in raising the issue around Attawapiskat. Canadians from coast to coast to coast recognize that the children from Attawapiskat articulately talk about what it means for them to go to school.

The Canadian Press on January 24 published a report, “Funding crunch affects native schools”, which states:

“They've put a freeze on even our renovation dollars,” said the co-director of education for the Prince Albert Grand Council in Saskatchewan. It's one of the largest tribal councils in Canada, representing 12 bands and 26 communities.

Hill said at least a quarter of the council's 29 schools need major repairs.

Sometimes there isn't even a building. A school at Deschambault Lake in northern Saskatchewan hasn't been replaced since it burnt down in 2004.

That was four years ago. For four years those kids have been shipped all over their community, taking classes in basements and wherever else that space could be found. I would argue that in any community off reserve it would not take four years to get a school back on the ground; in fact, I know it would not. In other communities where schools have burned down, they have been rebuilt within two years.

The member for Timmins—James Bay did an access to information request on the state of school construction projects. I could not even find that one on the list.

We talk about the importance of education, yet the government keeps shovelling money away from education. It has underfunded so many projects. In the period 1999-2000 and 2006-07, a total of $72 million per year was reallocated internally from the capital facilities maintenance program to address the pressures in other areas.

When we are trying to fund schools, there has to be a dedicated pot of money that puts children first. We need to make sure that first nations kids on reserve have the same access to education as has every other off reserve child in this country. It is criminal that children are not getting that education.

We in the NDP will be opposing this bill on principle.

[Louise Thibault, Independent, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know if it is possible, but I would suggest, quite frankly, that my colleague put aside all partisanship, disregard all of the parties in the House and respond simply as an elected representative of the people and his constituents, just as I am.

He spoke very eloquently about immigration. I myself spoke yesterday about part 6 of Bill C-50. When it comes time to vote, at the end of debate on this bill at third reading, why would he not actively vote in the interest of his constituents of whom he so eloquently spoke? Why would he not speak out against this bill? As far as I understood, the member expressed nothing but concerns, just as I did in my speech yesterday.

Why would he not rise in this House to vote against this bill that he is criticizing? That is how I see it.

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

Mr. Speaker, almost two months ago, I rose in the House to discuss the serious concerns my constituents had about the proposed changes to Canada's immigration laws in Bill C-50.

It is with great frustration that I rise in the House again with the same concerns.

The government has had ample time to listen to the many people who have spoken out on this issue and to the changes that it wants to make, yet it has refused to listen. The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration was recently in my riding. Instead of listening to my constituents and instead of bringing the message from my constituents of Newton—North Delta to Ottawa, she tried to impose the orders from Ottawa on those constituents. In fact, she did not even care to meet the general public there. She only met her Conservative loyalists to relay her message and to look good.

It is not only my constituents of Newton—North Delta who are concerned. In fact your constituents, Mr. Speaker, of Ottawa—Orléans are feeling the same way. They want you to bring the message from the grassroots to the House of Commons, not the other way around.

Another incident happened. When the minister was to meet the South Asian media on this issue, some people gathered where the minister was supposed be so they could express their concerns to her. What happened? As usual, following the Conservative policy and plan, the minister cancelled the event to meet with the media because she did not want to face those constituents. She met only with her preferred people and left out the South Asian media.

On another issue, when an election spending scandal issue was in the House, the Prime Minister did the same thing. The minister is following the lead of her leader.

We should be clear that the government has never tried to make an honest, open attempt to improve our immigration system. The Prime Minister has always wanted to sneak these changes through the back door by including them in the budget implementation bill, a confidence measure.

Those who had hoped for a change of heart over the past two months have been sorely disappointed. There was never any public consultation on these changes before they were introduced in the House of Commons. The only real public consultation these changes received was from the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

The committee heard from a number of witnesses over extended meetings last month. Its conclusions were disheartening.

First, the committee reiterated how fundamental changes to our immigration system should be made. Changes need comprehensive and meaningful consultation. That did not happen. Changes should be introduced in stand-alone legislation. That did not happen. The committee should be given clear and detailed explanatory information. That did not happen. It is almost as if the government is trying to prove that these changes are being made in bad faith.

Nonetheless, the committee continued its work, and I commend its well thought out conclusions. The committee concluded, as I have, that these changes would not fix the backlog of applications. The changes would only apply to the applications and requests made on or after February 27, 2008.

The changes will not speed up the processing of the 900,000 applications made before then. This point is worth repeating. The government claims that it introduced these changes to reduce the backlog but they will do no such thing. Even when we look at the record of the government on reducing the backlog, the record is very clear. Under its administration, the backlog of applications has increased by 125,000 applications. The changes could even result in longer waiting times for these people as new applicants are prioritized.

The committee also found that the proposed changes cut at the heart of Canadian values. Canada is known around the world for its commitment to fairness and equality and yet these changes jeopardize the predictability and fairness of the current immigration system that we have in place.

The changes would give the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration discretionary powers to prioritize who will get into Canada and to direct which category of applicants may be returned without even being processed. This discretion lacks transparency and creates uncertainty for prospective immigrants. It takes oversight and accountability away from Parliament. That is not unusual when it comes to the accountability of the government. On every issue the government has failed to prove that it is accountable to Canadians.

No person should be subjected to that kind of arbitrary power, which the minister is trying to skew. People are worried that they could do everything right and obey every law but still be rejected out of hand. The minister claims that the intent of these changes is more modest. The problem is that our country is ruled by law, not intentions.

We are opening the door to the kind of abuses that are completely unacceptable in a country like ours. If we open the door to these abuses, where will it stop? Even the attempts at openness proposed in the new law are nothing more than red herrings. The Conservatives say that the government will publish new instructions for prioritizing applications in the Canada Gazette, but publication will only occur after the instructions have come into effect, leaving no opportunity for consultation.

It is sad that the government did not try to hold a consensus among all parties to reform our immigration system. We all agree that the system is in dire need of reform. We have a backlog of more than 900,000 applications of people who want to immigrate to Canada. This backlog leaves applicants waiting for years to hear back from us.

At the same time, many parts of Canada also have severe labour market shortages. Within the next decade, British Columbia will face a potential shortfall of 350,000 workers. Even though the government is trying to bring in the temporary workers to fill those positions, it is not working.

Every day in my riding of Newton—North Delta small business people come to my office with complaints and getting frustrated with the government's policy because only one out of ten applicants are successful in coming here as a temporary worker.

Small businesses, particularly manufacturers, are facing competition from giant forces like India and China. They cannot compete when it comes to the labour force. On top of that, they have a shortage of people. They have spent millions of dollars in capital investment but the government is doing nothing to help them with the shortage of labour they are facing.

The record on that one is very clear as well. If we look at the government's record over the last two years on bringing immigrants into this country, it brought in 36,000 fewer immigrants to meet the needs of those businesses. It is very important to have those permanent immigrants coming into this country because in the next decade the only way we can meet that demand is from those permanent immigrants. Those are the ones who will create the local economy. On the other side, temporary workers will come in for eight months, earn money and then go back to their countries. They will not be contributing anything to the local economies.

Over the next decade, particularly in British Columbia, over $100 billion worth of new infrastructure projects are planned or under way in British Columbia but many are delayed due to the lack of workers. The opening of Cloverdale Trades and Technology Centre at Kwantlen University was delayed because it could not find enough tradespeople to finish the job. It is hard to believe that a trades school could not find enough trades workers to finish its own building. This is how bad the situation is and the minister and the Conservative government are not waking up to this issue.

On top of that, our aging population makes these challenges all the more important. For the first time ever, over half of our workers are over 40 years of age. The ratio of those aged 65 and over to those of working age from 18 to 64 will start rising from the current level of 20% to 46% by 2050. The bottom line is that Canada cannot survive without immigration. All of our population growth and labour market growth will come from immigration over the next two decades. Without immigration our economy will collapse.

This is not rocket science. Canada should match its labour market demand with the labour supply that is waiting to immigrate. The backlog represents a tremendous opportunity to do that. There are two ways to actually solve the backlog. We can either eliminate applications or add more officers to process them faster.

The choice is very clear. Does the minister want to eliminate the applications to catch up with the backlog instead of hiring more immigration officers to process those applications expediently so we can bring in those immigrants and meet the demands of the labour shortage in places like British Columbia and Alberta?

The government has the money to hire more officers but it has been unwilling to do that. The government found money for boutique tax credits, money to reward their friends and money to bribe voters in swing ridings but it cannot find the money to bring in immigrants to meet our labour market needs and meet the needs of small businesses that are going out of business because they cannot find competent people right here in Canada.

It is not that the government cannot invest more money into the system. It is that it has chosen not to do that. This is the right time to make that investment and for the government to listen to the opposition members in this House and to those businesses and Canadians who know exactly where the problem is, not the minister who has no clue what she is trying to get into.

If the government had any integrity, it would withdraw section 6 of Bill C-50 and begin a real consultation on a different way to fix the challenges facing our immigration system, but I do not think it will, and I cannot support that.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to speak to Bill C-50. I want to touch on a number of issues, one relating to the widening income gap that we are seeing in Canada. On another issue, I want to touch on some solutions that my colleagues and I have proposed.

I also want to talk about what the government could have done with some of the money received from Canadians other than continuing to subsidize large oil and gas companies and other big corporations. I also want to speak about the changes to the immigration act, as they will really touch some of my constituents who come into my office to speak to me.

The latest census figures paint a grim picture of our economy. While incomes for the richest 20% of Canadians have increased, the poorest have become poorer and meanwhile the incomes of those in the middle have just simply flatlined. This is according to the recent Statistics Canada report.

This corporate wealth grab is the result of a well orchestrated partnership with neo-liberal governments of past decades. The Thomas d'Aquinos have syphoned off all the benefits. We hear a lot about the trickle down effect. I am sure that it might make sense if it were not for the sponges at the top that are preventing any kind of trickle down.

In Victoria alone, according to recent research published from a “Quality of Life Challenge” report, parents need to make almost $16.50 an hour just to earn a basic living wage. It reports that 27.2% of families in B.C.'s capital fall below the acceptable living standard line. What is more alarming is that the research reveals that the majority of parents had 70 hour work weeks, the equivalent of two full time jobs. This is up 10 hours from last year.

What we see also are young people, aboriginal and immigrants, who are marginalized and trapped in part time, unstable, low paying McJobs, despite the government's rhetoric about job creation.

It is important for all of us in the House to talk seriously about the living wage. Victoria's housing costs are among the highest in the country. While the unemployment rate is the lowest in nearly four decades, I concede, employment trends are toward more low wage, part time and more insecure jobs that support the service sector, including tourism.

The labour pool will continue shrinking as the boomers retire and not many families with children can afford to live in Victoria. Only a small number of new immigrants make their homes in my riding. Young people tend to move away.

When more people are paid a living wage, the quality of life in the community improves. That is well known. A healthy economy attracts families, businesses and tourists. A living wage begins to close that income gap that we are seeing and reduces the number of people who are disadvantaged because of poverty.

In the study that I mentioned, expenses for a family of four were calculated on approximately $4,600 income per month. The rent took the largest bite with about $1,300, approximately 28% of costs, but it was closely followed by child care which amounted to approximately $1,000 a month, and then food and transportation costs. However, we know that food prices are rising exponentially.

This is where the government's neo-liberal approach is failing Canadian businesses and families. The federal government's absence from the table to make housing more affordable in Canada is inexcusable. The government's inaction in establishing national standards for child care and providing multi-year funding is adding to the crisis that families face.

These are all actions that we know would help working families and small businesses.

A couple of months ago, I met with some mayors of rural communities in the province of British Columbia. They told me that the absence of a national child care system and stable multi-year funding from the federal government were creating serious problems for those communities' ability to attract new businesses, because business owners know that they will not be able to attract employees.

High living costs are impacting businesses as well. They are having difficulty in attracting employees to our own high priced city and retaining them. Despite historically low unemployment and new sources of wealth creation, poverty in British Columbia's capital region, particularly among the working poor, is unacceptably high.

I was intrigued to read in the Statistics Canada report a couple of weeks ago that in 2007 British Columbia had its second best year for retail sales since 1995. That was a 6.7% increase over the previous year in Victoria, yet Victoria's downtown shopping centre, with its report of double digit sales growth for most of 2007, showed that the actual number of shoppers going through its doors was flat.

There is something wrong there. Or if it is not wrong, it is at least interesting that businesses have higher sales but fewer shoppers. Perhaps this indicates that fewer shoppers were simply purchasing more. This could be explained by the fact that in Victoria more than 30% of residents live below the poverty line and are unable to shop for anything beyond the very basics of food, transportation and so on.

This percentage could be reduced if more people who want to return to work were able to do so. At the moment, they are hampered by the fact that affordable day care, for example, is simply not available in the capital city of British Columbia.

Another recent report, from the University of British Columbia's Human Early Learning Partnership, highlighted an immediate need of 13,000 child care spaces for children from infant to school age. These numbers clearly cry out for a high quality national day care program to be put in place.

Along with high quality child care, education and skills training must be the starting point in breaking the cycle of poverty and illiteracy and ensuring Canada's competitiveness in the knowledge economy. Yet since 1995, when the then Liberal government initiated devolution for training to the provinces, Canada has remained leaderless in setting national standards or certification and qualification systems.

An OECD report,“Beyond Rhetoric: Adult Learning Policies and Practices”, states:

Governments' influence over national legislation and public resourcing policies is perhaps the most important way it can express clear commitment to supporting integrated policies for adult learning.

We need government policies, legislation and regulation that facilitate adult learning. We need financial incentives that encourage firms to invest in their workforce or incentives for individuals to engage in learning. All of this was cut by the Conservative government in last year's budget, at a crucial time when we know that many Canadians still lack the fundamental skills they need to move ahead.

Basic skills training and equitable access to education obviously remain a low priority for the government. Many Canadians come to my office and tell me about training needs and the difficulty in accessing programs. According to a recent Canadian Council on Learning report, 30% of Canadian workers reported in 2002 that there was job related training they needed or wanted to take, but they were unable to do so.

Although I realize this represents partly the former government's under-investment in training, important issues remain. Not enough is being done, and certainly not in this budget, to address the problem nationally.

Along the same lines, many families have spoken to me about the high cost of education. Without a meaningful investment in student grants for students of low income and middle income families, the Conservatives' transfer of funds from the Millennium Scholarship Foundation to a government-administered grants system will do nothing to improve access. If it is essential to our prosperity, why are we not doing more?

Not only does the lack of skilled workers affect ordinary Canadians' ability to cope, but it is impacting businesses. Small and medium-sized enterprises, which make up Victoria's business community, face greater barriers. Some small business owners have told me that poaching is a real problem for them. If the Conservatives chose to act on the employability report recommendations, it could help address these issues.

The employability report was tabled several months ago. If the government decided to implement these recommendations, it could help reduce the problems associated with poverty and also help small and medium-sized enterprises. I would like to mention a few of these recommendations. One of them recommends:

that the federal government provide funding to assist individuals who agree to relocate to enter employment in occupations experiencing skills shortages.

That is exactly the type of recommendation submitted by my colleague for Hamilton Mountain to the government. Another recommendation proposes “a national agency for the assessment and recognition of credentials, especially foreign credentials”.

Yet another calls on the government to consider:

expanding and restructuring the apprenticeship job creation tax credit and the apprenticeship incentive grant to encourage growth in apprenticeships and the completion of apprenticeship training generally.

Several recommendations seek to make access to education more equitable. At present, low to middle income families find it quite difficult to pay the very high tuition fees charged by Canadian universities.This employability report recommended that the federal student loan interest rate be considerably reduced or simply eliminated.

At present, students from low to middle income families have less access to education than students from rich families. Although the government has announced some changes and improvements to the administration of the student loans system, which I certainly applaud, there remain many bureaucratic and administrative problems to be resolved. We recommended the creation of an ombudsman for student loans to promote the better use of the loan system.

Various recommendations of this type would help solve the problems faced by many Canadians with respect to precarious jobs and would also help small businesses facing labour shortages.

I also wish to take a few minutes to speak about the changes to the immigration act that the government has proposed. These changes are going to encourage queue jumping. They are going to make family reunification more precarious and that is of serious concern.

I want to give members two typical cases. I could give many cases, but these two really illustrate some of the basic problems.

We are all aware that there are problems with the huge backlog of applications that has accumulated over the last decade, and these problems must be solved. However, they should not be solved by simply accepting that we have an immigration policy that becomes totally arbitrary, withdrawing it from the purview of Parliament and putting it in the hands of one person, the minister.

The son of one of my constituents, for example, still has not received a visa after many years. We have contacted the Canadian embassy in Nairobi. When it did not respond to our emails, I called the ministerial inquiries division and asked it to check into the situation. I was told that Nairobi was waiting for the medicals to arrive from the doctor, but when we spoke to the constituent, she said that she had called the doctor's office and had not heard back.

The message is that this reunification of a mother and a son has taken an unacceptably long time. This is not a problem that we will solve by simply making the kinds of changes that render our immigration policy totally arbitrary.

We need that family reunification clause. It is an important aspect of our policy, a longstanding policy that Canada offers to families we welcome in our country to allow them to better settle here.

I would like to give a couple of other examples. Back in 2004, one of my constituents and his wife began the process of applying to sponsor her parents from the Ukraine. It took two years before the application was actually received in the embassy in the Ukraine, which was November 2006. They continue to wait. My question is, why does it take so long to reunite a family?

I see that I have a couple of minutes left and would like to end by touching just briefly on the environment. The 2008 budget does not take decisive action to tackle climate change. It continues to reflect a regressive approach to the issue, focusing on such measures as carbon sequestration to further increase the development of the tar sands rather than a comprehensive program to reverse climate change.

Just in the past few days, we have seen Ontario and Quebec get together to put in place measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions, as have B.C. and Manitoba. As the Globe and Mail stated, the country's most populous provinces “are turning their backs on Ottawa” by setting up a cap and trade system.

Faced with the government's inaction, Canadian premiers are giving up on Ottawa. For example, Quebec's and Ontario's use of 1990 emission levels as a baseline for setting caps contrasts with the government's baseline, which is 2006.

The Minister of the Environment said just today in the House during question period that Canada must actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I wish he would actually take action to do that rather than maintain the Conservative government's intensity based targets--

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to look back to December 2005 when a choice had to be made. At that time the NDP and the Bloc joined forces to bring down the then Liberal government. This was done after ignoring the pleas of most progressive forces in this country, be it the Sierra Club, environmentalists, child care advocates, first nations, and the list goes on.

The Liberal Party is opposed to Bill C-50. My party is also cognizant of the political reality that the Conservative government wants an election on Bill C-50, particularly as it relates to part 6.

Conservative members observed what happened in the last provincial election where the ADQ used immigrant bashing in the province of Quebec and almost formed the government. We saw that intolerance generated during the course of the reasonable accommodation debate. Make no mistake about it, the Conservative Party had this very much in mind in terms of trying to trigger an election on Bill C-50.

The decision to trigger an election belongs to the official opposition because without it there will be no election and our leader is cognizant of that. As much as I counselled our leader at the time of the Throne Speech and on numerous other occasions that we should go to an election, thinking better now than letting the Conservatives do any damage, I have to be cognizant of the fact that we have a responsibility to make sure that those folks across the way, the neo-conservative party in the House, never form a majority government.

It is the job of the leader to frame the question on what the next election is going to be fought on. That day is coming. I see an election being called around the issue of the carbon tax because most opposition parties want to reduce our carbon output. It would shift the economy to reward things that are good and would penalize things that we want less.

I am not the leader of my party, but I do have a strong interest in citizenship and immigration and issues related to the charter. I do occupy a place in the House that no member with my years of experience occupies. This gives me a good view of what is going on and it also affords me the opportunity to get a bird's eye view not only of all members from the backbenches forward but in the opposition as well.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my hon. colleague. I appreciate the sacrifices that he has made. He was the only member of the Liberal Party, aside from a small group of the leadership, who actually voted against Bill C-50 and for the NDP amendments that would have taken out the most egregious aspects of the immigration changes and the theft from the employment insurance fund. Essentially, he was the one Liberal who said, “I am going to vote along with the NDP for these amendments and I will vote against Bill C-50”.

The appalling results last night were that aside from the hon. member, there were only 11 other Liberals who were in the House and Bill C-50 was allowed to move from report stage to third reading. Because somewhere around 84 or 85 Liberals were absent last night, that essentially allowed the Conservative government to move forward with an agenda, which the hon. member has said very clearly is not a good agenda for Canada, and I admire him for it. I realize he has been punished by his leader for having spoken up. I am grateful that there is one Liberal who is willing to stand up in the House and show some backbone.

My question for him is very simple. What can he do when his own leader refuses to stop any aspect of the Conservative Party agenda? For over a year now in confidence vote after confidence vote we have seen Liberals endorsing the Conservatives' agenda. Every single time, all the Conservatives have to do is mention the “c” word, confidence, and the Liberals and the Liberal leader automatically vote for whatever it is, regardless of the consequences for the country, regardless of what it means for ordinary working families.

How does the member feel about his own party simply not standing up for the principles that he has enunciated in this House and for which he actually voted last night, principles on which the NDP has led, amendments to this bad, bad bill in order to move forward with a budget that actually would do something for working people? When his own party has left him, where does that leave him?

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to engage in the debate on third reading, particularly as it pertains to section 6 of Bill C-50, which deals with the changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

The changes that are being proposed are major structural and draconian changes to our Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. To put such important structural changes in conjunction with a budget implementation bill shows the government's contempt for the institution of Parliament, the citizenship and immigration committee, new Canadians and all Canadians.

I need not remind the government that immigration has been the lifeblood of this country, that immigration is the lifeblood of this country and that immigration will continue to be the lifeblood of this country.

Any thoughtful person in Canada knows that we are faced with serious demographic challenges. Within the next four years, 100% of our net growth in labour will be met through immigration. This issue is one of great importance to the future of our country.

When section 6 was put into the budget implementation act, it is amazing that no reference was made by the government to the citizenship and immigration committee. The reason we have standing committees of Parliament is to hold the government, the minister and the bureaucracy accountable. That is the very basis of our parliamentary system. The government tried to bypass that process and, to a large extent, it has bypassed the process.

It so happened that the finance committee of this House of Commons referred a question pertaining to changes to the Immigration Act, section 6, over to the citizenship and immigration committee and asked us to respond to it. In considering the changes, the committee tripled its number of sittings. It held extraordinary sittings to ensure we could hear from Canadians.

I will tell members what happened. When the government announced Bill C-50, the committee was just starting to undertake a cross country consultation in every capital city on the issues of undocumented workers, temporary foreign workers and immigration consultants. The Conservative members on the committee would not allow us to talk about Bill C-50 as it pertained to the changes to the Immigration Act.

Members can just imagine the incredible wasted opportunity we had at that point not to be able to talk to Canadians. Every time we got into the issue of witnesses trying to make representation on Bill C-50, the parliamentary secretary objected very strongly.

We need to revisit the rules because it puts us in disrepute as a parliamentary committee conducting consultations across the country and we are not talking about the most important issue on the parliamentary agenda, which is section 6 of Bill C-50. However, as I mentioned, we did the best we could. We held hearings and extended the hours of those hearings.

I want to share with members of the House what one witness said to the committee. The name of this witness was submitted by the parliamentary secretary as being someone who should be speaking to Bill C-50.

Mr. Warren Creates, head of the Immigration Law Group with Perley-Robertson, Hill & McDougall, said:

Thanks for asking me to participate in this important piece of your parliamentary business.

When this legislation was introduced on March 14, I was on national television that night--it was a Friday--speaking in support of it. With reflection and in the fullness of time, I have considered it more carefully and want to share my thoughts with you.

The minister announced on that day that this legislation would reduce the backlog; would restrict the size and cost of maintaining a large and outdated inventory; would result in faster processing; would result in improved service--or, as she was quoted saying, just-in-time inventory--aimed at reducing the wait time to an average of one year; would make the system more responsive and nimble to immediate regional economic needs by listing and selecting strategic or priority occupations; and really, we couldn't continue to build a warehouse that would occupy these hundreds of thousands of applications, when every year we were selecting only about 250,000 to get visas.

Those were the political comments made at the time in support of the legislation, and I was one who then supported the initiative. Now I'm a very different person as I appear in front of you today. I've gone 180 degrees, because it's clear to me now what effect this legislation is going to have.

First of all, it's going to move some categories of applicants to the front of the line and delay other categories. As the minister continues to move categories to the front of the line, including the Canada experience class that we'll see at the end of this summer, there is no front of the line any more. There are so many priority silos in the business of this government now. I'll list them for you: interdiction, enforcement, refugees, visitors, students, work permits, spouses, children, provincial nominee programs, and soon the expanded Canada experience class. It's not going to be possible, with this legislation and the existing platform of resources, to deliver the promises of this minister. There is no front of the line.

What I find particularly heinous or egregious is proposed subsection 87.3(2), which talks about the opinion of the minister. The legislation says:

The processing of applications and requests is to be conducted in a manner that, in the opinion of the Minister, will best support the attainment of the immigration goals.

Since when do we live in a country where the minister decides what happens with something as important as the immigration program?

Our immigration officers in Canada and outside Canada should never be accountable to the minister. They should instead be accountable to our Constitution, our charter, the legislation and laws of this country, this House, and this parliamentary process that gets the views of stakeholders. That's what's important.

We're going to see in this legislation the erosion of the sacred rule of law principle that this country is built on. Democracy is shrinking because of Bill C-50. Processing priorities, which we have already decided by a tried, tested, and true established and transparent parliamentary procedure for both legislative and regulatory change, will now be reduced to stakeholder input.

I will not read any more of that but I will say that this person, when he first heard the announcement around section 6 of Bill C-50, stood and applauded it and supported it. As soon as he was able to examine what it really meant we see the results. That is what I quoted and he was very much in opposition.

Another issue which the person talked about, and it should be talked about, is what the government claims it was going to accomplish.

The government has taken the unprecedented step of spending $4 million to spread misinformation to Canadians, by buying ads in the ethnic media. It is making the same kinds of claims that were made to that gentleman, who is a lawyer and who, upon examination, rejected those claims. The minister said, and this is an important issue, “Currently, the immigration backlog sits at 925,000 applications. This means that the wait time for an application can be as long a six years”.

The skilled workers class, which is essentially where the growth happened, had a waiting list of 615,000 at the end of 2007. This is essentially the backlog. Those are the numbers that are important in this debate. It so happens that since the Conservatives have been in office, they have grown this category by over 100,000 in two years. The minister is responsible for 85,000 of that growth. Here we have a minister saying that she is going to reduce the backlog, but the reality is that it was on her watch that the backlog grew.

Regarding the claim made by the Conservatives in terms of dealing with the backlog, let us take a look at another standard of performance. What has happened to the backlog at the Immigration and Refugee Board?

When the Liberals left office, there was a backlog of less than 20,000. The processing time was being reduced. It was less than a year and we had hoped to get it down to six months. For the first time we had turned the corner on the program. It had been put in place initially by the Conservatives under Brian Mulroney and actually was a beehive of patronage appointments, but we changed it to a merit based system and the Liberal government did not interfere in the appointment of IRB members.

The Conservative government came in and it failed to fill the vacant positions. Of a 160 member Immigration and Refugee Board, there were about 100 members. The Conservatives grew the backlog from less than 20,000 to about 45,000 today, which is going to hit 60,000 or 62,000 by the end of the year.

The time to process the claims has increased to 18 months and that is if there is no appeal. If there is an appeal, because of the shortage of IRB members, they cannot even take time to make a booking because they just do not have the people power to process it.

That is one claim the minister made. I think I have shed some light on the fact that the rhetoric does not meet the record of the government.

The government in this ad, upon which the government is in the process of spending $4 million, promises more resources. It states, “More resources: An additional $109 million to speed up the application process”. That is over five years. That works out to something like $22 million a year. The Liberals put in $700 million, which breaks down to $140 million a year to deal with the backlog and make the system more efficient. The Conservative government got rid of the $700 million and put back $109 million. That is a cut of $600 million.

The government is promising faster processing times. We know the reality. The processing times have gone up under the Conservative government's watch. While I talk about the processing times going up, I might also mention that the government missed the number of immigration landings that the Conservatives themselves promised would take place in 2007. This was the first time in the past decade that the targets were not met.

The government talked about complete processing, that all applications currently in the backlog would be processed. There is really no credibility in the claim by the government. It is really an insult to all parliamentarians, to this institution itself, and to Canadians that the government would do advertising on legislation that still has not been passed. I can only say that we expected better from a government that promised transparency, that promised to do things differently, that promised accountability, that promised parliamentary reform. What we have are promises upon which the government has not delivered.

In closing, the open and transparent process of objectively selecting immigrants coming to this country was pioneered by Canada. It is a process that has been copied by Australia, by New Zealand and by many nations in Europe. The United States Senate is studying it because it looks to us as the leaders in this area. What we are doing is walking away from that process.

The reason we have that process is steeped in our history. It is steeped in the reality of the evolution of this country. I remind the House of the Asian exclusion act, the Chinese head tax, the internment of Ukrainians, the Komagata Maru, the SS St. Louis. I remind the House of a time when immigration policy essentially discriminated against people from various countries because of the colour of their skin or because of their religion. That is why, because of our sorry history and the sufferings of many Canadians, we pioneered a process that was open and transparent, where it was done objectively. The Conservative government is walking away from that process, a process that we should be proud of. We pioneered this process.

What do we have? We have a Conservative government which, when it came into office, did it reach out to a member of its party who is competent and knowledgeable on these issues to help with the necessary reforms? The member for Calgary—Nose Hill is a very experienced member. She served on the citizenship and immigration committee. She knows the portfolio. Did the Conservatives appoint her? No, they appointed a rookie minister who has no previous experience in the immigration and citizenship portfolio, none, zero, zilch. That person was in office for less than a year and the Conservatives replaced him. Did they replace him with someone who is knowledgeable on the portfolio, such as the member for Calgary—Nose Hill? No, sir. They replaced that person with another minister who has absolutely no understanding or knowledge of citizenship and immigration, but who gets high ranking in the Conservative hierarchy because her husband happens to be a major organizer for the Prime Minister, the leader of the Conservative Party.

As I said before, immigration has been, is and will continue to be the lifeblood of this country. I call upon the government to come to its senses and make the necessary changes that we can embrace in order to maintain objectivity and transparency. Let us continue to be leaders.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his dissertation on Bill C-50. It is certainly one that we have spoken to many times in the past in the House.

When we look at the state of economy that we have heard coming forward in the last report on the gross domestic product, for instance, which has slipped by 0.3% over the last three months, even at a time when our resource profits and the huge increase in the price of oil and natural gas have occurred in the country, one would think that these types of activities in the economy would by themselves create a positive nature in the gross domestic product. However, we are seeing a drop.

Quite clearly, the losers are losing and the winners are winning very strongly with this budget. Where is the fairness in the budget, in the corporate sector at least, where so many companies that are trying so hard now to remain afloat are having such great difficulty?