Bill C-51 (Historical)

Economic Recovery Act (stimulus)

An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on January 27, 2009 and to implement other measures

Part 1 implements income tax measures proposed in the Budget tabled in Parliament on January 27, 2009 but not included in the Budget Implementation Act, 2009, which received royal assent on March 12, 2009. In particular, it
(a) introduces the Home Renovation Tax Credit;
(b) introduces the First-time Home Buyers’ Tax Credit; and
(c) enhances the tax relief provided by the Working Income Tax Benefit.
In addition, Part 1 extends the existing tax deferral available to farmers in prescribed drought regions to farmers who dispose of breeding livestock because of flood or excessive moisture and sets out the regions prescribed either as eligible flood or drought regions in 2007 to 2009.
Part 2 authorizes payments to be made out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund for multilateral debt relief and in relation to offshore petroleum resources. It also makes the following amendments:
(a) the Bretton Woods and Related Agreements Act is amended to implement amendments proposed by the Board of Governors of the International Monetary Fund;
(b) the Broadcasting Act is amended to extend the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s borrowing limit to $220,000,000;
(c) the Budget Implementation Act, 2009 is amended to clarify the purposes for which payments may be made;
(d) the Canada Pension Plan is amended to
(i) remove the work cessation test in 2012 so that a person may take their retirement pension as early as age 60 without the requirement of a work interruption or earnings reduction,
(ii) increase the general drop-out from 15% to 16% in 2012 allowing a maximum of almost seven and a half years of low or zero earnings to be dropped from the contributory period and to 17% in 2014 allowing a maximum of eight years to be dropped,
(iii) require a person under the age of 65 who receives a retirement pension and continues working to contribute to the Canada Pension Plan and thereby create eligibility for a post-retirement benefit,
(iv) permit a person aged 65 to 70 who receives a retirement pension to elect not to contribute to the Canada Pension Plan, and
(v) have the adjustment factors that apply to early or late take-up of retirement pensions fixed by regulation after December 31, 2010 and have the Minister of Finance and the ministers of the included provinces review the adjustment factors and make recommendations as to whether the factors should be changed;
(e) the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board Act is amended by repealing section 37 and by permitting the approval of regulations made under subsection 53(1) before they are made;
(f) The Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Resources Accord Implementation Act is amended to provide for Crown share adjustment payments to be made in accordance with an agreement between Canada and Nova Scotia;
(g) the Customs Tariff is amended to change the conditions relating to containers temporarily imported under tariff item 9801.10.20 and to add new tariff item 9801.10.30 relating to temporarily imported trailers and semi-trailers;
(h) the Financial Administration Act is amended to require that departments and parent Crown corporations cause quarterly financial reports to be prepared every fiscal quarter and to make them public; and
(i) the Public Service Superannuation Act is amended by adding the name of PPP Canada Inc. to Part I of Schedule I to that Act.
Part 2 also amends the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and chapter 36 of the Statutes of Canada, 2007 to correct unintended consequences resulting from the inaccurate coordination of two amending Acts.

Economic Recovery Act (Stimulus)

[Gerard Kennedy, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to the question. I can understand the member is a little reluctant to address directly why he is planning to vote for the government on stimulus. He would like to change the subject to the HST.

I am not sure if he is going to vote for the government on this, but let me just say we are not. We are not voting for the government on those measures.

On measures of finance and confidence, when the government betrayed and breached the trust of the Canadian people, even before it became widely known, and we are going to make it widely known, that was the turning point. There is a very thin line linking us across, but it was the principle of whether they would put Canadians first. According to this member, I believe, there are several tests.

If members pick the test that they like and if it is one that they are comfortable with, then it allows them to vote for the government. That is not how we feel, not at all. In fact, the only championing we are doing here is the championing of Canadians' interests.

It has been such a colossal failure that I do not see where members opposite find that wiggle room. It is very artistic. The member has been here longer than I have. Maybe there are methods, means and devices one uses to go to sleep at night, but frankly when there has been a failure of this size, it is catastrophic for Canadians and it is important that they get the message that it is not being condoned by other parties.

[John Cannis, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, before I make my comment, the NDP members can be assured that we will tell Canadians how they betrayed them.

The member for Parkdale—High Park talked about the Prime Minister making announcements during the campaign and so on. There was all this money that was supposed to be put out. As I recall, and perhaps the member can correct me, at the time the Prime Minister and the finance minister were campaigning, and even right after the election, they were telling Canadians, “Don't worry. Be happy. There is no recession. We don't have to worry about anything”.

Could the member take us back to those comments and to what the Prime Minister said at that time? The member referred to how the Prime Minister misled Canadians during the campaign. Could he touch upon that?

[Gerard Kennedy, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I can.

I cannot understand, on the basis of this question, how it is that the members opposite abandoned their principles. They think that because misdirecting the Canadian public and telling them what they want to hear instead of what is really happening has worked before that it can work again and again and again.

The last election, which should have been about the economic future of the country, was instead about a government denying, from its official position, what it could clearly see, that the recession was upon us. Every other objective authority said so.

There is nothing wrong with a government changing its mind if its actions match its words.

What I am saying today is that the evidence is very clear. In the stimulus package so far, the money has not been spent where they promised it would be. Therefore the jobs have not been delivered. The government has pretended otherwise and the jobs instead have been put on a future promise, mainly where the government thinks they will do it some partisan good.

That is a debasement of the promise just as what the Prime Minister said is a debasement, not a change of heart, not a healthy change, but rather a debasement, of the whole way we do politics and interact with the public.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is quite clear that the member of Parliament over there is angry. He is obviously angry that we worked together closely with our provincial partners, a government that he once served in. He is angry that we worked with our municipal partners, the mayors and councillors across the country. He is angry that university presidents and college presidents support our initiatives.

He is obviously angry that the Governor of the Bank of Canada has suggested that 1.2% of our economic growth in the third quarter was as a result of the government's interaction with the economy.

He is angry that thousands of Canadians have taken advantage of the home renovation tax credit, which he did not support and clearly will not support.

However, I wonder if the member will have the guts to stand up in this place today and be honest with the people that he represents. Is he now suggesting that he wants the government, he wants the province in which he was once a member of the government, he wants the city of Toronto to stop construction of a subway? Does he want them to stop construction of the Sheppard Avenue light rail transit? Does he want to stop the construction of the reference library? Does he want to stop the expansion of the Boys and Girls Club of Scarborough? Does he want to stop the expansion of Seneca College? Does he want to stop the expansion of Centennial College? Does he want to stop the emergency measures centre in my riding? Does he want to stop the construction of the new arena in my riding? Does he want me to go back and take away all--

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Order. The hon. member for Parkdale—High Park.

[Gerard Kennedy, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry that the member was cut off in mid-sentence because his enthusiasm shows how desperate he is. The provincial government in Ontario did not take political advantages. There is an analysis in the paper today showing that they did not do what your government did. Municipalities had no choices. They put in their projects. You chose the ones you wanted. You put them over a barrel. You made them do it, and look at the result. It is clear.

The universities receive funding on a per student basis--

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I know that the debate is quite heated, and I know this is obviously an issue the member is trying to score some points on, but you would know and he should know, not only as a member of this House but as a previous member of a legislative body, that all questions and comments should be directed through the Chair.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Thank you, and I would remind all members that all comments ought to be directed to the Chair.

The hon. member for Parkdale—High Park to finish his answer.

[Gerard Kennedy, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, university presidents are going to say thank you even when they get less on a per capita basis if they happen to be in the riding. Forty per cent more money goes to Conservative ridings. The thumb is on the scale even there, even for students, even for people we should look to because they do research and so on. There is 40% more.

As far as the idea goes that we would somehow stop projects, they have to be started first. When was the Spadina subway promised by the government? It was in 2007, two years before the recession started. The government stands up again and again and pretends there is fairness. Eight billion dollars' worth of transit is planned for the Toronto area and only 10% will be paid for by the federal government. That is the lowest amount by any federal government for a major transit expansion in the country.

There is no fairness. There are no jobs being created. There was a colossal failure and a colossal cover-up and each member opposite unfortunately knows that and chooses to do nothing about it.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to rise and speak on Bill C-51.

I know that some children come home from school and rather than watch Hannah Montana, they watch the Parliament of Canada and hope to learn something. Just for the youngsters at home, “No, you did not fall through the rabbit hole and you are not sitting and having tea with the Mad Hatters in the Liberal Party.”

We are talking about the implementation of a budget that was decided last spring. For the youngsters back home, I will just put it in context so that we are very clear about what this is about. The Budget Implementation Act that is being examined now includes some of the key elements that were in the Conservative budget back in the spring.

The New Democratic Party will be supporting this implementation because there are some key elements of the budget that we think will be very important for Canadians, for example, the home renovation tax credit. That was promised to Canadians in the spring. Canadians went out and spent money based on the belief that when tax time came around, they would be able to make the most of the home renovation tax credit.

Our colleagues in the Liberal Party, however, are telling Canadians “No. Do not look to the home renovation tax credit. Look to giving us government. If we are given government, then down the road we will implement the home renovation tax credit.” It is the Liberal Party putting themselves and their power ahead of average Canadians.

It is the same thing for the first-time homebuyers' tax credit. It was in the budget. Canadians who believed it would help them went out and bought homes. The leader of the Liberal Party said, “No, little people wanting to buy your first homes, you are not going to get that until we get government.”

We see the issue of income deferral for farmers breeding livestock in drought conditions. Anybody who represents a rural riding knows the crisis we are seeing in agriculture. That is something we in the New Democratic Party would support.

There are changes to the working income tax benefit.

These are elements that will help average Canadians. Again putting this in the context of last spring's budget, the Liberal Party supported the budget, and we are going to work through how it was that they supported the budget. The New Democratic Party at that time opposed the budget because we felt that the government was on a very rocky and erratic course in terms of Canada's economy.

I am going to go back to how that budget came about, but I want to say that at this point in the life of this Parliament there are elements in that budget, the overall vision of which we opposed, that will help average Canadians. Our job as members of Parliament, especially in a minority context, is to examine the various pieces of legislation and say, “What is the overall impact? Will it help or will it hurt?”

In terms of the overall implementation of these key areas, we support that. It does not mean we support a blank cheque to the Conservative Party to carry on as they have.

Let us go back for the youngsters at home who are watching, just so that they get a sense of how things unfolded here. Some day in a history lesson they will probably read about the famous finance minister's fiscal update when he came into the House soon after this Parliament was reconvened and said he was going to bring an economic update. Now, that economic update was happening as the world economy was melting down.

We had seen the warning signs in the U.S. for some time with the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market. We saw the U.S. market going south long before it happened in Canada. As the stock markets began to crash, and Canadians' private equity and savings were eaten up at a staggering rate last September, our Prime Minister was saying there were going to be lots of good bargains out there and that people should pick up some good bargains.

I am sure that if Canadians had taken the Prime Minister's advice then, they would have seen what savings they had disappear even further. This was the sense of bizarre unreality that the Conservative government had.

In November the government came in with its economic update. Now, of course we put this against the threat of a complete global meltdown and what do we have? Well, it said we were in surplus and would remain in surplus. We now know that the government was already $10 billion in the hole because of its bizarre spending habits in terms of giving everything over to the corporations in tax cuts. So we were already in the hole, and the government said that in order to get out of any further holes, it would just sell off all our public buildings, which we know is a fundamental action of these free marketeers.

However, in terms of the November economic stimulus plan the government had four key elements. It was going to cut pay equity. How that was going to help the economic stimulus, I do not know. It was going to strip environmental protections on our river ways and waterways. How that would help the economy, I am not sure. It was going to cut the rest of Kyoto. We know that party basically exists to protect the tar sands. It was going to cut funding for the political parties of Canada.

For those back home who are paying attention, there were four issues the Liberals could have stood up on: cut pay equity; strip environmental protection of river ways; gut Kyoto; and cut funding for political parties. What did the Liberal Party decide to get up on its hind legs over? It was not about pay equity. The Liberals stood with the Conservatives and supported it. It was not about protecting the acts that were in place to protect our river ways. The Liberal Party said there was no problem with that. It was not about gutting Kyoto. The former leader of the Liberal Party almost had to put down his dog named Kyoto. The Liberal Party supported the government.

However, when it came time to rolling over about the funding for the Liberals as a political party, that is when the Liberal Party said no, that it would form a coalition.

The Conservatives were howling in outrage. I remember some of my dear colleagues over there said that I should be taken out and hung for providing an alternative such as a coalition. They were howling at the moon. They were pounding their chests. They were saying that this was unconscionable. However, we knew the Liberals were not going to follow through because the Conservatives rolled over and said that they would not take our electoral funding away. At that moment, it became okay for the Liberals to back everything that was in the budget. They were fine with that.

For the folks back home, I noticed all day long the Liberals have kept referring to themselves as the official opposition. Because branding is so important in politics, I think they are concerned people will forget exactly who they are. Seventy-nine times in a row, they did whatever the Conservative Party wanted until this last September.

Again, we will jump forward to another piece of very strange political history, about which I am sure the future Pierre Bertons will talk. It is that famous weekend in Sudbury, when the Liberals decided they were once again, and I do not know how many times they decided to do this, going to reinvent themselves. Going into that caucus meeting, they were saying that people did not want an election, that they had to get this thing through and that they had to stay stable. Nobody had heard from the great Liberal leader for some time. He had been off at his cottage, thinking great thoughts. He came out and said that from now on the Liberals would oppose everything. It did not matter, but they had to reassert themselves because they wanted the government.

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

Your time is up.

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

He said, “Your time is up”.

I have to admit I thought it was a pretty bizarre and erratic piece of behaviour from the Liberal leader, but, no, his troops got their marching orders. When we came back to Parliament, the NDP said that we needed some action to help the unemployed. The Conservatives said that they would move forward with the 15 to 20 weeks extra. However, the Liberals said that the unemployed could wait. It was about them forming government.

Now we have a bill that would bring forward the home renovation tax credit. It would bring forward support for farmers in drought. However, the Liberal Party is saying, “You little people, you peons, you have to wait till we get government again”.

I find that absolutely unconscionable. However, it speaks to the erratic nature of our Liberal leader. There is this myth that the Liberals always used to put out there that they some how embodied the best of what Canada was, they were somehow the vision of Canada. However, when we read the writings and we hear the speeches of the Liberal leader, we wonder what the Liberals were they thinking.

For example, let us talk about arts. The Liberal leader, when he was a writer in England, was asked how he felt about state support for arts organizations. He said. “While the level of arts funding was miserly in Thatcher's Britain, the principle of weaning the arts of public subsidy to the greatest possible extent was surely right. After all, the moral independence of culture” itself depends on it.

Here is a man who quotes Maggie Thatcher about arts funding. This is the same man who was basically a front piece for George W. on the invasion of Iraq.

I have looked at our present Prime Minister. I have looked at all the crazy crackpot things that came out of the National Citizens Coalition. Even with him, I cannot find anything where he says that we should starve the artists for moral independence. I know some of his backbenchers probably believe that. That is red meat to some of the old Reformers. They go home to their summer barbecues and say that when they get a majority government, they will starve those artists and it will teach them to be morally independent. They could look to the Liberal leader and say that here is a man who has stood up to say it.

This is the kind of erratic nature of the Liberals. They elect a guy to be their leader who will say things that the Prime Minister would never have the guts to say in public. Maybe he would say it if he had a glass of sherry on his own, but the Liberal leader did.

I want to stay on this because this is about what happened with the budget and the erratic nature of the Liberals now coming in and flipping themselves inside out, saying that they have to stand up against the home renovation tax credit, that they have to stand up against EI. Why? Because they want to be government again. It is erratic. They have to call themselves the official opposition because people do not really know where to place them in any political panorama.

I would like to continue with a bit of history.

On the same day that the horrors in Abu Ghraib were exposed to the world on 60 Minutes, which was April 28, 2004, the present leader of the Liberal Party was being interviewed on Charlie Rose. The same day the stories of the horrors of Abu Ghraib were broken internationally, he was speaking about being able to draw clear lines between stress and sleep deprivation, not called torture. He said that it was okay, as long as some basic rules were set on how to mistreat these people, they would not be mistreated too much.

That same day that the story of Abu Ghraib broke, he talked about the need for target assassinations, as long as it was done in a democratic context. I am not sure what the backbenchers of the Reform Party might say at a barbecue function in the summer, but I have never heard the Prime Minister stand and say that as long as the government brings to Parliament a list of people to be shot, targeted assassination is okay. However, the man who is now leading the Liberal Party said that on Charlie Rose on the same day that the whole world was recoiling in horror, regardless of one's political stripes, of what was happening at Abu Ghraib.

In terms of a foreign policy vision, the same day that he was on Charlie Rose, he was trying to explain what went wrong in Iraq. He said that we should go into Iraq. He believed in it. He said that he thought the Iraqis would greet us as liberators. A lot of other people in the world did not think that, but he said that he believed the invasion was worth it. He tried to explain why there was a sudden backlash against America for the invasion of Iraq. He said, “America is deeply hated because we are supposed to have magical powers. The assumption is that the minute we take over a piece of real estate like Iraq, the lights are supposed to go on”.

The world was not angry at George Bush because he took over a piece of real estate. The world was justifiably outraged that the U.S. believed that a sovereign country, anywhere it was, regardless of whether it was run by a tinpot dictator or not, was treated as a piece of real estate. Yet this is the view of the present Liberal leader. I would think those views are very erratic. They have been proven very wrong and they are deeply out of touch with what average Canadians feel.

We are on Bill C-51, the budget implementation bill, and that party, which has never stood up on anything that I can recall, is now suddenly standing up to fight the home renovation tax credit. I wish those members good luck. How do they explain that to average Canadians? Good luck in telling farmers that the deferrals they are asking for after the drought can wait because it is more important for him to be leader than for them to get support.

Once Canadians begin to realize the erratic views, and frankly very outrageous views, they will think twice about accepting the piece of advice that we should vote down support for EI because it is inconvenient, because we should be supporting the Liberal return to power.

I will not gloat, but in the recent byelections the Liberals were fighting with the Green Party to get their deposits back in some ridings. I do not think average Canadians are falling for it either. What we are supposed to do if we are politicians and we have hit a dead end is to go back and revitalize ourselves. We need to start being honest. We need to look in the mirror. That is something the Liberal Party could do right now.

There are a lot of serious problems with the Conservative government. There is a serious lack of vision on the environment, of where we go with Copenhagen, of how we deal with the tar sands, of how we deal with the fact that we are now some $50 billion and climbing in structural deficit and how we get out of it. However, I do not think we can sell to the Canadian people that the best way forward is to oppose measures, which the Liberals have already supported, that will actually help them. That is not being an effective opposition. That is being erratic. We have to move beyond that.

The New Democratic Party, in terms of the House and this parliamentary minority situation, is continuing to look for the opportunities, regardless of political stripe or party, to move forward an agenda that benefits Canadians.

Right now there is deep unease in the country about pensions. People are worried. They are frightened and they are justified in being frightened. We need to move forward an agenda on pensions. We have been trying to do that. There is serious unease about EI reform. I believe the New Democratic Party has 12 bills that try to address the various shortfalls in EI. We recognize the importance of getting a win in one area, taking it and continuing to advance the cause. Our Liberal colleagues are saying that it does not matter. If there is one element of the government's offer for EI, they will reject it all unless they get the whole enchilada. They know very well they will not get it. That is not being an effective opposition.

We are continuing to work on the areas of pensions. We are working on the issue of seniors. Too many of our seniors live in poverty. We want a green strategy, so that at the end of this, Canada is not just like the hangover after all the wild spending by the Conservatives. There needs to be a plan to retool our economy, to rebuild our cities, our municipalities and our rural areas. That is where the green strategy is so important, the need to have a vision so what we are spending money on today, which is putting us into structural deficit, is going to create benefits down the road.

I would not be one to stand up in the House and say that I think the Conservatives have had this vision. I do not believe they do. They have made serious mistakes on how they have spent the money and how they will spend the money. We will continue to hold them accountable for that.

However, on the basic issues of what is in this budget implementation bill, the home renovation tax credit, the first-time home buyers tax credit, the revenue-sharing agreements with the province of Nova Scotia, which includes $175 million payment, and drought relief for livestock owner, these are elements we will support because they will help average Canadians.

As elected representatives of our people, how can we go back to our ridings and say that we are sorry, that we had the chance to get them help but we decided to take the advice of the very erratic Liberal leader and jump off the political edge with him. That is not our job. Our job is to fight for clear, winnable goals and we will continue to do that.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Madam Speaker, it was with great interest that I listened to the comments of my New Democrat colleague. He was speaking about being erratic and the importance in opposition to be constructive and to support the government, when necessary, to advance a good policy.

I can remember when the member's party and his leader voted against the throne speech and wanted to defeat the government three weeks after the last election. In fact, I remember the hon. member and his leader speaking and voting against the government last January during the budget when many of these measures were proposed during the depths of a global financial crisis.

I can remember 79 times that the member, his leader and his party voted against the government on the basis that it was the government proposing legislation and they were going to vote against it. Now he is saying that the government is good, that he and his party will support and work with the government.

It is like he considers the Prime Minister and the government like a wine that will age well. He may view the government as some nice Bordeaux but I think it is plonk and aging very badly. Only good wine ages well but he may not understand that.

My point is that I would like him to explain why his party and his leader voted against the government's throne speech and wanted an election three weeks after the last election if his party is sincere about being constructive in opposition. Or, is his party simply playing political games?

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

Madam Speaker, I do not know if my hon. colleague is in his cups with his references to wine, but I am glad that he mentioned the 79 times that the Liberals rolled over, because hey got nada, nothing. They were not interested in getting anything. They were just trying to buy themselves some breathing space.

When it came to cutting pay equity for women, the Liberals rolled over. When it came time for cutting Kyoto, the Liberals rolled over. When it came time for cutting the waterway protections for Canada, the Liberals rolled over. They rolled over again and again and again.

Suddenly money is being put on the table for EI and they are saying that they need to take a principled stand and stop these monsters. Suddenly there is a home renovation tax credit and the Liberals are standing up. Why are they suddenly standing up when they never stood before? It is because their erratic leader said that he could not stand sitting at the cottage all summer with nothing to do and that he wants to be prime minister. That is not a principled position. That is absolutely crazy.

I would suggest that the member lay off the Liberal wine for a while and get some political sobriety so he can really see what is happening to his party.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is very hypocritical, regardless of whether we are on that side or this side, to listen to a party that defeated the opportunity to have an early learning program that the Liberals had put on the table.