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.

(The House resumed at 12:02 p.m.)

The House resumed from May 30 consideration of 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, as reported (without amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

Budget Implementation Act, 2008

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

It is with regret that I must interrupt the hon. member but it being 1:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.

When we return to the study of Bill C-50 there will be three minutes left under questions and comments for the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre.

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the government member, who has just spoken, a question about Bill C-50. Within Bill C-50 there are very comprehensive and dramatic changes to Canada's immigration laws.

In my community, which is a community of many different cultures now, people are coming from all over the world to live in the lower mainland of British Columbia. We presented the changes that are proposed by his government and they shared with us their concerns from a variety of communities, from the Chinese Canadian community, the Korean Canadian community, the Somalian community, all of whom have sizeable communities in New Westminster—Coquitlam.

They are very concerned about these changes. However, without getting into the detail of the changes that the government is proposing within the budget implementation bill, I want to ask the member this. He made some comments about performing in the House of Commons, doing things in the traditional way. It is not tradition to put massive immigration changes into a budget implementation bill.

Why would you be doing that and not allowing the immigration committee to have an opportunity to study and make recommendations for changes--

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising to speak to Bill C-50, the budget implementation act, and the amendments we put forward to try to bring some rationale to the situation and the future of immigration in this country.

I come from a part of the country which in the past may not have been the prime destination for immigrants to Canada, but over the last number of years that has changed quite dramatically. Immigrants are coming to communities throughout the Northwest Territories. In many cases they face completely different living and climatic conditions. They work really hard to integrate themselves into Canada and into the burgeoning economy in the Northwest Territories. We are grateful that people are coming to contribute to our economy, to live in the north, to work and to support the development of our territory. That is a great thing. In Yellowknife right now there are 27 different ethnic groups. Clearly this is a result of this immigration movement.

It is difficult for people as they have to fight their way through the process to get into the country. We seem to have created a system in which immigrants have to spend much of their time and energy on paperwork, rather than focusing on their goals as immigrants and accomplishing things, like reuniting their families in this country.

My constituency office handles many cases every year. Many of those cases reference the particular hardships that individuals have experienced in establishing their lives in Canada because they cannot get through the system. They cannot accomplish their goals within the system in a reasonable time. The bureaucratic structures are not adequate to give them the support they need to make proper representations in the immigration system. In many cases that leads them to the member of Parliament's office for assistance.

In the Northwest Territories there is only one immigration officer and that person has other duties to fulfill in terms of enforcing other parts of the act. That person cannot act only as a guide to the immigrants within the country who are trying to move forward with their lives. We suffer from a huge shortage of manpower required to make the system work better. That is the case in my riding where we have a total of 43,000 people. Community groups do their best to help out with the situation. We have a structure which I think in some ways is more amenable to supporting individuals, but the fact that this is the situation in my riding suggests to me that it is even more of a problem elsewhere in the country.

Therefore, when we want to propose changes to the Immigration Act, I think it is incumbent upon everyone to get all the evidence. This process that the Conservative Party has foisted on the House to deal with immigration is simply not correct or appropriate for making that happen. It is a back door approach to making changes.

It was outed very early once the bill came forward because of course these things are scrutinized fairly closely. It did not work quite the way the Conservatives wanted, but the opportunities to then work on this legislation were sorely limited because it was handled in this particular fashion.

The changes to the act that in many cases we find most repugnant as Canadians are that we are taking away the democratic nature of the system as it exists now. We are not trying to improve the efficiency of the system or properly build up the resources needed to make the system work.

As well, we are not dealing with the problems we have in many of our embassies in other countries. Rather than utilizing Canadians who are used to dealing with our system in the same democratic and useful fashion, we find that in many cases we are utilizing nationals from the countries where the embassies are located. In my time as a member of Parliament, that has noticeably impacted on the ability of immigrants to acquire visas and move forward in a smooth fashion through the many hoops and stumbling blocks that exist for people who are applying for a visa or trying to be reunited with their families.

These problems are not going to be solved by this bill, because it is going in the wrong direction. At the same time, when we stand to ask for these issues to be removed from this bill, we are by no means suggesting that there is nothing wrong with the Immigration Act. It is just that what is being proposed here does not fit the Canadian model. It does not address the resource issues that are quite clearly dominating many of the problems and leading to these huge backlogs in the system.

The Conservatives, in their few years here, have not been able to even make a dent in that backlog. In fact, the backlog has gotten larger.

Their solution, especially the idea that there will be yearly quotas and at the end of the year all the applications that are not part of the quota will be rejected, is a really bad thing. It will discourage people from coming to this country. It will discourage people from making applications. There will be constant intrigue in the department in regard to trying to find out where these different classifications or directions are going to go.

All of this is going to lead to a complete breakdown in the system and take us away from the values that Canadians have so much pride in. In fact, idealistically, we send our armed forces around the world to try to uphold those values in other countries.

What this bill is doing is creating an arbitrary, authoritarian potential within the department, although it does not necessarily have to be that way. We could argue that the minister could be a most altruistic and wonderful individual who would not use the difference between “may” and “shall” in many of these points to discriminate against applicants. However, human nature being what it is, I think we have found in Canada that the best way to avoid discrimination and maintain a democratic system is to have rules that match up to that.

It is a phenomenon that I see so much in Canada: we do not jump queues in this country. We take our time. We fill the time we have available to us--

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, if we look at the backlog that the government claims the bill will deal with and we look at these provisions in the budget and Bill C-50, it will not help anyone who is presently here. In fact, the government has admitted that.

The government says there is a backlog of 925,000. Earlier today it was calculated at close to a billion, but I understand that was corrected. We are talking about a backlog of close to 925,000 people. The government says that is the case and we will take the government at its word on that. The legislative changes will only affect applications submitted after February 27, 2008. It will have absolutely no effect, zero effect, on the backlog of 925,000.

Not only does this bill not help the people it purports to help, but the government has a problem with acknowledging there is a backlog and it is bringing in these changes to streamline the system. The government should have consulted with the people who know about the system and who work in the system every day. The government would have found that there are other ways of dealing with the backlog that would be less onerous and would actually open up the system and get the people we need to the places where they should be going.

As an example, there is a challenge here in Ottawa to find a family physician. We also know there are 500 foreign trained doctors right here in Ottawa. That study was put together more than a year ago.

The other rationale the government puts forward is that we need to bring in skilled labour, medical professionals, et cetera. Tell that to the people who are driving taxis here in Ottawa, who have their foreign credentials to practise medicine, but sadly they cannot because the government has not figured out how to streamline the system.

My point is that if the government is making the argument that it needs to streamline the system for the backlog, it is not going to work for that, and if it is for skilled workers, we already have the skilled workers here. What is going to change with the system for them? The government simply says it will get more of them in. What happens when they get here?

Until the government deals with that reality, this bill has no place in this place and it has not been thought out. Those provisions need to be removed. That is why these amendments have been put forward.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, certainly we have a very unified position in this party about this bill and about the need to remove these onerous provisions from it.

I want to speak about the backlog of applicants. Is it the reality that there is no backlog for student visas, temporary resident visas and temporary foreign workers visas In Canada? Will Bill C-50 take away the rights of these applicants to be given a visa even when they meet all the qualifications?

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Timmins—James Bay spoke well and forcefully on some of the concerns he has about the budget and how it will affect his region and Canadians in general.

With our amendments to the implementation of Bill C-50, we have tried to put in front of Canadians exactly what is in the bill. It is important to recall that initially when the budget was put forward, Canadians found it was a bit thin, in terms of content, and that was remarked in the media certainly. This particularly had to do with the fact that the government had announced in its fall fiscal update over $50 billion in corporate tax cuts scheduled over the next couple of years. I think the government will regret that in the future, particularly when we look at the tight times in the economy. By the time it got to budget, there was not a lot of material to work with because it had essentially stripped the cupboard bare.

When the budget was introduced, people were looking at little finesses in it. Much to the people's surprise they found, I think, on page 106, of a document consisting of approximately 134 pages, the changes to the immigration act. Talk about non sequitur. The government has taken something that is absolutely critical, something that is the foundation of the future of Canada, and that is important facets of our immigration system, and has hidden them in the budget. We have been proud as Canadians to have had a fairly progressive immigration system.

What is so distressing about this is the government either is trying to be strategic to get this thing through and hope that no one will notice or it honestly does not understand how to make policy and where policy belongs in its formation.

If it were a case of trying to pull a fast one, the government clearly did not get away with it. If it were a case of the government wanting to take immigration changes and put them into the framework of the Department of Finance, hopefully it learned the lesson that it was not appropriate.

I will give the example of what happened when I brought forward the proposed changes to my community.

Soon after the budget was announced and it was discovered that the government was trying to pull a fast one, or maybe make policy through the Department of Finance, and either way we look at it, it is the wrong direction, in my opinion, I brought forward the proposed changes to members of my community. I called all the people who worked with immigrant communities, the Catholic immigration service in Ottawa, the OCISO, a wonderful group that deals with issues of resettlement, language training and foreign credential recognition, et cetera, the Jewish family services, which does an excellent job with integration and supporting newcomers, as well as other groups and individuals. I explained to them the proposed changes. The first question was, “Why didn't the government consult us?” I did not have an answer for them because the government did not consult anyone on the bill.

It was more than passing strange that the government would bring in such aggressive changes to the immigration act without consulting anyone. In fact, all it did was come up with this idea, its own brain trust, and popped it into the budget bill, the details of which I will get into in a minute.

However, let us stop right there and consider this. The government brings in these very aggressive changes to the immigration act without consulting the people who work day in and day out to ensure the people who are affected by issues of immigration and settlement will be represented. Many of them are volunteers and they do it because they care about immigration and settlement and want to ensure it is done right and done responsibly. It is more than bizarre. It begs the question, what is it the government is trying to achieve?

If we look at the provisions within the immigration changes that are in Bill C-50 and why we are proposing these amendments, we will find the direction of the government on immigration. The government wants to ensure the ability of the government to bring in temporary workers so that they can be used, and I use that word deliberately, for a short period of time and then get them out of the country.

We only have to hear the stories of people presently working in the tar sands, people who are working in agriculture in British Columbia and other places, people who are working in mining, to know that these jobs are extremely dangerous. They are ones that require robust health and safety provisions. They should have fair wages. What the government has been able to do is meet the needs, not of new Canadians, but of fairly substantive economic interests in this country that will benefit from cheap labour. They will benefit from the fact that the government will bring in people quickly, use them up and then not have them stay around much longer.

What is so distressing is that the government wants to make these changes, just after the government did what I believe is the right thing. We on this side of the House applauded the government when it actually made amends and apologized for the Chinese head tax. I remember well the speeches by members on both sides of the House, by the leaders and the Prime Minister. It was a good day for Canada. I remember going to the Yangtze restaurant in Ottawa's Chinatown. We had a great celebration party. I believe you attended that, Mr. Speaker, and I think you spoke in Cantonese. It was a great day.

It saddens me and it saddens the community in general that soon after that acknowledgement and apology, the government is replicating in the 21st century what was done in the 18th century, which is to bring in temporary workers simply to use them, and when it is finished with them to send them back. That is the problem with Bill C-50.

We have to consider what we could have done. Everyone would argue that we should deal with the backlog in the immigration system. People who work in immigration settlement will tell us to put more resources overseas to make sure that when people apply for landed immigrant status and go through the points system, they know exactly what the situation is going to be when they come to Canada. They will tell us to make sure that rather than having just websites, there be actual human resources deployed overseas to help people with the process. They will tell us to ensure that when people are applying for landed immigrant status, they have all of their background documents in place and to support them in doing that. That would shorten the time period. On the other side of the equation, we have to make sure that here in Canada we have the requisite resources to ensure that we can streamline the system.

As an aside, it is interesting that when the Minister of Immigration brought forward these proposals, strangely enough in Bill C-50, as this is the budget bill, she said that the government had made great progress in streamlining the application process. She said that the department was able to process 40% more of the applications. She said that on the one hand, but on the other hand, she said that the system is so bungled up and has such weight on it that extreme changes have to be made.

It does not balance to say on one hand that her department is making this great progress, lauding herself and her ministry, and on the other hand that things are so grave and awful that we have to make these extreme changes to centralize power in the minister's office. When we look at Bill C-50 and we look at this kind of doublespeak of the government, one has to look at what the government is trying to achieve here. It seems that the government is trying to achieve a fast one, as I said before.

In the end, these amendments we have put forward should be passed so we can make sure we have a fair system for all.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the New Democratic Party has very serious concerns about Bill C-50 and in the way it is being brought through the House.

The issue of an immigration policy and how we will move forward as a country is a crucial debate and discussion that needs to happen with all parties working together. It is not the kind of issue that can be slipped in through a confidence bill, in a budget bill, to basically stare down other members of Parliament, to try to sneak through, without proper scrutiny, and then to use the issue of the budget as a way to attack parties like the New Democratic Party, which is saying that this is an issue that needs clear and informed debate.

My family comes from the mining regions of northern Ontario and we were the multicultural society long before the urban centres were called multicultural. In those days, if a person was an immigrant, the person was brought over to Canada on short term work contracts to work the mines and to work the lumber camps.

It was well-known in the early days when my grandparents came from Scotland that they did not want to hire Canadian workers to work in the mines because of the accident rates and the pressures. They were having a 75% turnover at any given time in any of the hard rock mining communities, whether it was Kirkland Lake, Rouyn Noranda or Timmins.

During those times, short term work contracts were given to the Ukrainians, the Bulgarians, the Italians and the Croatians. These men were brought over separate from their wives. If they complained about conditions, they were deported. If they were sick because of their work in the mine, they were sent back to their countries to possibly die there.

The historic records in the north are heartbreaking stories of families, of men. The average life expectancy for a Ukrainian or Croatian man working in Timmins, Ontario up to the 1950s was 41 years of age. These men worked hard and they died.

At certain points in the history of the north, the immigration policies allowed some of the families to come over. We all understand that the immigrants who built this country played an important role, but it was their families who made Canada. It was the women coming over who actually built communities.

We have so many great people in our region. The immigrant women who came over could not speak English. Their kids went to school not speaking English or French, if they were in the Rouyn Noranda mining camp. However, they came here and learned the language. They became part of the community and they built the identity, the wonderful identity that we have in northern Ontario.

We have a long memory in northern Ontario of the exploitation that these families suffered. Anybody in Timmins will tell us about the mining widows, the women who were left basically destitute on the streets when their young husbands died in accidents. They were immigrants and could not speak the language. My grandmother, who was a mining widow, raised me and told me the stories of what they went through.

We are very concerned when we see a dramatic change to immigration policy in Canada that says we need to fast-track these temporary workers into Canada and get them into lower paid jobs so we can basically hyper-fuel an economy without a long term plan.

We all know that the government is here for one reason and one reason only. It is here to ensure that the Athabasca tar sands expands as fast as possible, as destructively as possible and with as much profit for the Texas oil companies as possible.

We are looking now at a shift where we are not talking about bringing in families and building immigrant communities that will actually develop the Canada of the 21st century. We are talking about the short term gain for the long term pain that our country will suffer and these immigrant families will also suffer.

We have a backlog of some 900,000 people who have followed the rules and who have gone through the process to prove they can be proud citizens like anyone else. These people will all be shunted to the side so that we can start to fast-track the workers coming into this country.

As an example, in my region, we are still very dependent on mining, forestry and long haul trucking. A trucker called me and told me that the federal government was bringing in foreign truckers, because with the rates they were being paid nobody could feed their family. Therefore, the government decides to create a special program and starts bringing in immigrant workers to undermine the long haul truckers in our country.

This is not the way we build an economy. It is certainly not the way we build community. That is how we undermine community.

We have seen the government use the threat of non-confidence again and again to bully its friends in the Liberal Party into submission, although I do not think it had to bully too hard. However, we will not bend on the issue of immigration. We will not simply roll over and play dead because the government huffs and puffs and tells us to.

There are so many fundamentally wrong things in the budget beyond this attempt to sneak the immigration bill through. For example, in my region I have two communities where there are no schools. We have a government that says “too bad”, that it does not have money to build first nations schools. This is a government that can buy helicopters to ship to Afghanistan. This is a government that can send money all over the world any time it wants. This is a government that when any of its friends ask for help, the help is there. Yet children of so many communities, whether it is Kashechewan, or Fort Severn, or Attawapiskat, or North Spirit Lake or Cat Lake, are going to schools that are held in former maintenance sheds.

Whenever I raise in the House, I always hear the chuckle of smug satisfaction from the Conservative members. They think it is absolutely absurd that this issue is raised, as though how dare we raise the issue of children in our country who are denied the most basic education rights.

Education is a fundamental human right. When I say it is a fundamental human right, it is not an airy-fairy concept. As defined by the United Nations, a country has to have a plan for education. Even third world countries have plans for education. Yet we see the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development's absolute disinterest in the issue of building schools. He cannot point to a school he has built. He has taken the money from the budget, a very underfunded budget for Indian Affairs, and spent it elsewhere. He tells 13 year old children that some communities are worse off than them, and that is supposed to be some kind of response.

That is not a response. A response is to say that there are 20, to 30, to 40 communities without schools and that we need a plan. That is what a leader does. A leader says how do we address this and a plan will be set up to do so, but not the government.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Laval because I know she holds the same views that we do on this bill, which is that it should be defeated. I know she speaks with compassion. I thank her for using the example of Insite as another example of how callous the Conservative government is toward people.

One of the disturbing things in Bill C-50 are the immigration changes and the way it escalates the use of temporary foreign workers.

Working with the labour movement, we in the NDP have been very concerned with the rate of exploitation that is taking place. People should be coming to Canada as permanent residents. A proper process should be in place.

The idea that the government is trying to deal with the backlog is not correct. What it is doing is shifting the system from the reunification of families and is creating a whole new class of temporary foreign workers, which makes it open season on exploitation.

I would like the member's views on that. I think it is something we need to monitor carefully. We know there are workers who have had a serious loss of rights and some workers who are being paid less than the minimum wage. We also know that some workers are being exploited by their employers and some workers have died because they are not aware of health and safety provisions.

This is a very serious situation that is taking place. It started with the former government and it is escalating with the current government. It is an indication of what is taking place in our immigration system.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for that lovely compliment. It is rare to receive compliments in the House. I very humbly accept it.

It is my great pleasure to rise to speak to Bill C-50, particularly part 6, which would introduce immigration measures that I find somewhat unusual because they would give significant additional powers to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.

The government is trying to bring in these measures as part of a budget bill. If we agreed with the bill, we could let it go through, no problem. However, we do not agree with it, because it does not meet our fellow citizens' needs. As everyone knows, the people asked us to request a number of things for Quebec, and we submitted those requests.

What is even more unacceptable is that the government is trying to include these measures in bills that are not intended to change procedures within various departments. That is what part 6 of Bill C-50 attempts to do: change the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act significantly. This bill would give the minister the power to give some people priority over others. The minister would also have the power to refuse entry to some people without having to justify his or her decision.

This is troubling, particularly since we have a government that is known for breaking its promises to people. It broke its promise to women on equity and equality; it broke its promise to seniors on the guaranteed income supplement; and it broke its promise to veterans. Spouses and widows of veterans do not all have access to various programs offered by Veterans Affairs Canada to returning war veterans. All in all, this government was elected because of promises it made on major issues—promises that, for the most part, it has not kept.

We have to wonder what would happen if these measures in Bill C-50 were passed. Imagine for a moment that the ousted minister of foreign affairs became the minister of citizenship and immigration. Who would he give priority to? Who would he deny entry to? Many worries come to mind, even more so given that the minister would not have to answer any questions or provide any justification.

Conservative Party members have also made disconcerting statements about immigrants of certain ethnicities. What would happen if one of these members were appointed minister of citizenship and immigration? I would be worried about giving a minister the sweeping power to decide the validity of an application from someone who wanted to immigrate to Quebec or Canada. I find that very serious.

I even find it a bit immoral that these measures were introduced as part of a budget bill, and I wonder how many others feel this way. At the very least, we know that all of the organizations involved with newcomers, be they refugees or immigrants, are opposed to these measures, and with good reason, I might add.

We know that the committee has also made its views known. It is important to remember that the committee is not necessarily against amending the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

But if amendments are to be made, they must be done properly, through the usual channels. This means introducing bills, having them examined in committee, and hearing witnesses in committee to explain different parts of the bill. This did not happen here.

This amendment to the Immigration Act was sneakily included in Bill C-50, in the same way that a censorship measure was included in Bill C-10 without anyone noticing. We can see the effect that one has had, and the shock waves it has sent through the film community, in terms of copyrights and so on. Members must remember all of that and be very careful before passing Bill C-50 if it contains part 6. Giving a single person the authority and power to determine who will have the right to enter the country is inconceivable. The same thing happened with the Minister of Health with respect to public safety and quarantines. The government did not even keep its promises to those suffering from Hepatitis C. People are dying every day without receiving a cent from the government. This is a right-wing government if ever there was one.

That scares me. When a government that is so far to the right wants to introduce such measures in a bill, I believe that there is more to it than meets the eye. I do not want to have any part of it and I do not accept it. My party does not want to say yes to that. We will definitely vote against the bill. We cannot allow ourselves to give such rights to a party that has already shown its bad faith and ill will.

That was the case for Insite, in Vancouver. They prefer to let people die rather than helping them to obtain services in a place where they felt safe, where they could make important contacts and get help. They would rather let people die. And now they would like us to believe that it would be a good thing to give the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration the power to decide who can enter Canada. They should not take Canadians or Quebeckers for fools. We see the government's game plan very clearly. We know that the only reason this government wants to introduce this amendment to the Immigration Act is to have even more power and to decide what kind of immigrants will build Canada.

Some 900,000 men and women have been waiting for years to become Canadian citizens. They have been waiting patiently. They have gone through all the steps. They are entitled to be treated with dignity and respect by a government that follows the rules, not a government that changes the rules to suit its ideology and philosophy or to please voters of the same bent.

The House proceeded to the consideration of 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, as reported without amendment from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West—Glanbrook, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the New Democratic Party is willing to resort to old political games and has announced it will attempt to stonewall Bill C-50 in an effort to prevent it from passing before the summer recess in June.

In doing so, the NDP is knowingly putting $1.5 billion in important federal funding at risk, including $500 million to help improve public transit, $400 million to help recruit new front line police officers, nearly $250 million for carbon capture and storage, $110 million for the Mental Health Commission of Canada, and much more.

These tactics by the NDP could even delay the implementation of the highly touted tax-free savings account that would allow Canadians to save up to $5,000 every year tax free for life.

These cheap political games prove that the NDP's priorities are different from those of most Canadians, again demonstrating why an overwhelming majority of Canadians will never ever take the NDP seriously.

It is time for the NDP to stop its political posturing, start listening to Canadians and help pass Bill C-50 before the summer recess.

Motions in Amendment

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to the member as she spoke about what she claimed was propaganda. I have not heard as much propaganda in as short an amount of time as I have heard from her.

Let me tell members about propaganda. She says the government, by stealth, is bringing in Bill C-50. But just before that she said that we were advertising in newspapers some of the changes we want to bring in. How could we be acting by stealth and advertising in newspapers? I guess that is NDP propaganda.

Also, this member and her party voted against every single budget this government has brought in: budgets that have helped seniors; budgets that have helped homeless people; and budgets that are helping veterans today. She and her party voted against low income Canadians. More than 600,000 low income Canadians have been taken off the federal government tax rolls. Yet, she and her party claim to be for the working class.

Yesterday, we were discussing her leader's bill. I believe it is Bill C-377. People working in the auto industry and people trying to earn a livelihood who work in the auto parts industry in my riding, including the CAW, are fearful of that bill.

We heard from witnesses from that industry at the environment committee who said that bill that her leader is trying to bring in is going to kill their industry, an industry that is already in trouble in our province. It is one of the hugest income generators in our province.

How can she say some of the things she is saying when in some parts of her statements she is arguing against herself? There are words for that, but they are unparliamentary. I would like her to respond.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to rise in the House today to speak to the report stage amendments of Bill C-50. I thank my colleague from the Bloc for bringing some of them forward because the NDP also supports these motions that would delete clauses 116 to 120 from Bill C-50.

The first point that I want to make is that it is really quite outrageous that here we are debating a budget bill, which of course is a core of any government's agenda, and within that government bill, that budget bill, there are significant changes to our immigration system.

There is no question that the Conservative government tried to quietly slip these major changes through the back door in a budget bill. I think they have been probably quite astounded by the reaction of Canadians and communities across Canada.

In fact, the Conservatives are so worried about the backlash that these proposed changes contain that they have now gone to the extreme of running advertisements in ethnic papers across the country even before this bill has been approved. That is something that is quite unheard of, to put out propaganda and information about a bill that has not even yet been approved.

I think it is very good evidence of the concern that the Conservatives have that the message that they hoped they were getting out there, that they were somehow fixing the immigration system, is very far from the truth. In fact, what we are dealing with in this budget bill are significant changes to the immigration system which will undermine the kind of process that we have had in this country for dealing with immigration and refugees.

One of the deletions that has been put forward for the bill today deals with clause 116. Under the current provision of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, subsection 11(1) currently says:

The visa or document shall be issued if, following an examination, the officer is satisfied that the foreign national is not inadmissible and meets the requirements of this Act.

With the changes in this bill, which we are now hoping to delete, it would now say that the officer “may” issue a visa even if the applicant has met all of the criteria as set out in the immigration regulations.

The same is true for clause 117, where under the existing process in regard to humanitarian and compassionate applications, it says that the minister “shall” examine these applications. Under the proposed changes it would say that the minister “may” examine these applications.

These are only two of many changes that are included in this bill. We think they are very substantive and we think it is quite shocking that these immigration changes would be contained within a budget bill. It should be part of a stand alone bill. It should have gone to the immigration committee. There should have been hearings through the immigration process so that people could comment on it, but none of that has happened because the government, by stealth, is trying to put these changes through in a budget bill.

I must say that I listened with some surprise to the Liberal member for Markham—Unionville when he spoke so vociferously against the budget bill and against these changes, and yet we know the Liberals are going to support it. How does one reconcile this?

The Liberals get out there and they hammer the bill and say how bad it is, and in committee when there is a chance to vote they vote with the government. Here in the House when the Liberals have a chance to vote against the government, they either sit on their hands or they do not show up and they do not bother to vote.

The same will now be true with these immigration changes. Is it any wonder that people feel so disillusioned about the official opposition members as they are about the government? Here they are hand in glove working together to get through these significant changes.

I am very proud that in the NDP we have taken a strong position, not only against the budget bill on the provisions as a budget bill but also because of these immigration changes that are included.

One of the things that we are most concerned about is that in Bill C-50 there is a shift in emphasis from family reunification, from bringing people to Canada on the legitimate process of a point system, to in effect a dramatic increase in the temporary foreign worker program.

We have seen more than a 100% increase in the number of applications and people being processed through this system. We have seen people brought to this country, who come here as temporary foreign workers. They are working in the tar sands. They are working in the agricultural industry. They have been working on the Canada Line in Vancouver.

These are workers who come here and often end up in terribly exploited situations. They have no rights. In some situations we have had cases where workers were being paid less than the minimum wage for the work that they were doing. It is only because of the advocacy within the labour movement that some of these cases have been taken up and brought forward before the B.C. Labour Relations Board.

Therefore, we are very worried that the changes in Bill C-50, including the immigration changes, are basically giving a signal of this very dramatic change in the way immigration will work in Canada.

Historically, we have seen an emphasis on family reunification. In fact, on the Government of Canada immigration website it was always listed as one of the key goals for our immigration policy. Somehow that has disappeared. It is not even on the website anymore, so this should be sending off alarm bells for people.

We know that organizations like the Canadian Bar Association are concerned. Stephen Green of the Canadian Bar Association said:

Bill C-50 would return Canada to a time when visas were given out on a discretionary basis, without sufficient objective criteria.

The YWCA in Toronto has called on the government to not proceed with these dramatic changes for immigration under Bill C-50.

I know in my own community of East Vancouver we have many people who are recent newcomers to Canada. They came through the immigration system. We have many organizations that work as advocates and help people with their processing for immigration. In a forum that we held just a few weeks ago people were very concerned about what these changes will mean and the fact that it will give so much discretion to a single person, and that single person being the minister.

Why would we want to have a system that allows that kind of power to be conferred on one person? This is something that we should be very opposed to and that is why we are standing in the House today making it very clear that we are opposed to these changes.

We have heard from the government today that this bill and the immigration changes will allow more people to come to Canada and it will be a responsive bill, as I think this is what the parliamentary secretary said. We are also told that somehow these changes will deal with the backlog of 900,000 people who are waiting to come to Canada.

However, the fact is the changes that are before us will only affect applications that are submitted after February 27, 2008. Therefore, in actual fact they will have no impact whatsoever on the backlog that the government claims it is trying to deal with.

We agree that the backlog is there and certainly the lack of support and resources for our immigration system and processing in the previous government created that backlog. That is not an issue. What is at issue is that these proposed changes will not deal with that backlog and will give enormous discretion to the minister which we think is patently undemocratic and unfair.

That is why we are supporting these motions today to delete these clauses in the bill. We will have other deletions as well later on today. We hope that the bill will be defeated. I would implore Liberal members across the way to rethink their position. They cannot go out and tell people they are opposed to these changes, they are opposed to the budget, and then come back to the House and vote for it, and give the Conservative government a majority in that regard. This is something that is quite unconscionable, so perhaps they need to rethink their position.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the report stage debate on 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.

What concerns me a great deal about the budget is its forecast. As recently as two days ago, the finance minister stood in this House and told us that he stood by the government's forecast for GDP growth this year of 1.7%. Never mind that exports are falling and manufacturing jobs are disappearing daily and never mind that the Bank of Canada revised, dramatically downwards, its own forecast. The finance minister is just going to bury his head in the sand and pretend the economy is doing just fine.

The finance minister is no Pierre Trudeau but he does have one thing in common with Pierre Trudeau. In 1972 some members may remember that Pierre Trudeau ran an election campaign on the theme “The Land is Strong” but he did not do that well. Now, the finance minister, in a similar vein, is saying that we should not worry because the economy is sound and the fundamentals are sound.

That does not surprise me because the finance minister is a person who is out of touch with Canadians. I imagine he could attend a news conference about a factory closure, puff up his chest and say that the Canadian economy is strong without batting an eye.

The problem is that while the finance minister can repeat that the economy is strong a thousand times, it just does not make it true.

Do members know what happened this morning? Statistics Canada released a growth estimate for the first quarter of 2008 which shows that the Canadian economy shrank by 0.3%. This is the first time we have had a quarter of negative growth in Canada since, I believe, five years ago during the SARS crisis.

We have the finance minister saying that the economy is strong and that we should not worry, but we get numbers showing that for the first time in five years, in the first quarter of this year, the Canadian economy shrank.

Do members know what else is interesting about that? The U.S. economy, in the first quarter, grew. The Canadian economy shrank by 0.3%, while the U.S. economy expanded by 0.9%. What does that do to the finance minister's story that his policies are so wonderful and his stewardship is so great that Canada is doing so much better than the United States? It is simply not true according to the numbers we saw this morning.

Indeed, Canada ought to be doing better and, in some respects, Canada is doing better. We have a large resource sector and oil prices are very high. We have people who are somewhat less risk-taking in the financial sector than down south. We do not have the subprime mortgage crisis. We should be doing better, and we are, in some respects, doing better, and yet the news this morning that the Canadian economy has shrank while the U.S. economy has expanded, sends a message to the finance minister--