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)

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

A small business owner in my riding wants to make renovations, but there are no provisions in here for a small business owner. I would like the hon. member to tell me if this is something that could be added.

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

The hon. member for Vancouver East.

I would ask for a little more respect while the member raises a point, to allow him to ask that question without being interrupted by questions nearby.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Hear, hear, Madam Speaker. The home renovation tax credit has been very popular and so the question arises as to what will happen after the years 2009-10 when presumably it will be over. It is a very good example of how the economic stimulus package has been designed in a way that is very short-sighted and there are many things that could have been done in a more structural way in terms of our income tax system and providing tax credits. I have already talked about the housing program.

This could have been a piece of a much more comprehensive program around housing affordability and allowing homeowners to do renovations but also ensuring that low-income people would be able to qualify, particularly for energy retrofit, where they are facing housing that is very unsafe or unhealthy. People are facing moulds and heating systems that are way out of date, and it is very difficult for them to find the financial resources to deal with those.

With regard to small businesses, this is a very interesting point. We often do not speak enough about what small businesses contribute to our society and the jobs they provide and the enormous time, energy and hours small business owners put into their operation. Often it is a labour of love, and they do not get paid a lot. There could have been a program based on a green energy outcome that might have addressed their needs in terms of the building they own or in which they operate. I am sure there are millions of small business operators who would have taken advantage of something like that. I think these are very good suggestions from the member, but they unfortunately point out that although we are supporting the bill before us as far as it goes, it could have done so much better.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I would like to suggest to the member that if the program is extended by the government, which I think is probable given the budget and possible election in the spring, on July 1 next year the HST is going to kick in. Is there not a question here about whether or not this will just be a wash? Any benefits that people would get by hiring renovators to renovate their houses will be taken away when the HST is put on all those renovation contracts.

The second point I would like the member to deal with is the whole issue of the program itself. Perhaps if the Conservatives do announce an extension of the program next year, they might look at some sort of tax credit system for people of low income so that the program could be expanded to apply to even more people who could use it.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Madam Speaker, very good suggestions are being made here. I know that the NDP has proposed a retrofit program for lower-income Canadians who are living in housing that needs to be fixed up, whether they own it themselves or whether it is part of a not-for-profit housing system. This is something that we have actually advanced as a very sound economic and environmental investment.

Again, the member is pointing out the stunning sort of ironies such as on one hand giving people a small credit while on the other hand immediately taking it away by increasing the taxes they will pay on the products they need to buy in order to get the credit. Go figure.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, I vaguely remember hearing a statement, something to the effect that we are getting the job done. I think thou dost protest too much, because that is as far from the truth as we can get.

For the financial year that ended March 31, 2006, the Government of Canada had a $13 billion surplus, which was used to pay down the debt. The current government came into power and we started sitting in Parliament one month later, in April 2006. What has happened between April 2006 and today? It is all in the numbers. By the following September the government was saying we would not be in a recession. In October--

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I think we had a discussion earlier today about relevance. We all know that at third reading, the speech one gives must reflect a certain importance and at least a semblance of relevance to the piece of legislation we are dealing with. Therefore I will leave it up to you, Madam Speaker, to advise the hon. member that he might even reflect on what we are dealing with here today rather than ranting about who knows what.

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

I thank the hon. member for the point of order. We are reviewing the bill on so-called economic recovery stimulus, or entitled economy recovery (stimulus). I would ask all members to bear in mind that we are at third reading and we should focus on the provisions in the bill and focus our comments on those.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, I should have indicated that I was leading up to the reason we needed a stimulus and the magnitude of the problem we have to deal with, but I could go right to it.

We went from everything being rosy to all of a sudden looking, since the fall update, at a $56 billion deficit. The experts are saying that we have a technical recession. The projections are that in 2013-14 we will still have an annual deficit of $20 billion. I can imagine what that will do. The government undoubtedly will have to continue to increase taxes and peck away at the pensions of Canadians. I wish I had time to talk about Nortel.

The bill is supposedly about stimulus. I think everyone in this place would agree that what we needed to do when the financial difficulties started to emerge was to pay lots of attention to this. At the time, the discussion was about what we needed to do, and everybody agreed that was to make strategic injections into those areas where we could save the greatest number of jobs, to provide where there were existing jobs. That is probably the most efficient, most effective use of money: to save current jobs and mitigate the loss of jobs.

The second part was to stimulate the economy in those areas where we believed we had the best chances of creating new jobs, new productivity. Canadians can do that. We needed that injection, and one of the aspects of that was infrastructure funding.

I know that in the last fiscal year, although we were already talking about needing to get these infrastructure programs going, and members may recall the term shovel-ready, it made sense that we had to have shovel-ready programs, and so what has happened? Over $3 billion of infrastructure money was all ready for approved projects, ready for the cheque to be cut, and the Conservatives let it lapse. The money just went back into the Treasury. Those projects did not happen. They are coming back now because they have been re-announced. Now we see that only 12% of the announced projects actually have a shovel in the ground right now. That is 12%.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Next year will be a big year then, won't it?

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

I thought that we were talking about saving current jobs. We have over 100,000 construction workers out of work. Why is that? Talking about employment, in October, it was just announced, we lost another 43,000 jobs. We now have the highest rate of unemployment in 11 years.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

What happened last month? Where were you last month?

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

Order, please. I would ask hon. members to restrain their comments until questions and comments.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, I suppose it is fair to say that the government really does not like to hear the facts. Conservatives react. I am encouraged by the fact that they like to shout me down when I put the facts on the table. That is okay. I will carry on and see how they perform.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer provides independent financial expertise to Parliament and lets members of the House know whether the projections the government puts on the table are reasonable.

Why does the position of Parliamentary Budget Officer exist? Because when the Conservatives were in opposition they said that the Liberals kept having surpluses but their budgets were not showing that high of a surplus, so we were obviously cooking the books. Each and every year there was a $3 billion contingency in Liberal budgets. If there were no extraordinary, unforeseen circumstances, there would be a $3 billion surplus, although the budget showed balanced books.

There also was a performance reserve. The government used the average of the economic forecasts for growth and interest rates, but it also took the low end of that so it was a conservative, cautious projection of how we would perform. If we achieved those targets, if it was as good as we thought, then the reserve would be used to ramp up additional programs on behalf of Canadians.

What has happened to the Parliamentary Budget Officer now? In the last article I saw, he said “Fund me or lose me”. The government has—

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. At the risk of sounding repetitive, the hon. member is talking about the Parliamentary Budget Officer. If he has read Bill C-51, he would know that the Parliamentary Budget Officer is not even referenced in it.

With all due respect, I wonder if the hon. member has even mentioned Bill C-51 in his comments. There is some relevance. Is it because the Liberal Party has no position on the bill? Is that why those members are skirting around it, not even speaking to it or against it?