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)

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

Mr. Speaker, that is a mystery to all of us in the House and it may be a mystery to some members of the Liberal Party.

As I indicated, I listened to my good friend from Mississauga South the other day when he spoke to this very bill. I do not recall him at any point indicating that he was going to be voting for the bill or against the bill. I expected there would be a nugget somewhere and that he would let us know, but he kept us in a state of mystery for his entire 20-minute speech and the 10 minutes of questions and comments. If somebody could get the answer for me, I would sure like to know what it is. Other Liberal members have indicated they will be voting against the bill. There is still a long time between now and the vote on the bill, so there is some potential for them to change their minds.

Just think of all those ten percenters. My riding has already started to sink under the weight of the ten percenters sent out on the gun registry alone. I supported the bill, but I was going to support it anyway. They did not have to send out any ten percenters. They did not have to advertise on radio stations. I am glad they did as it has made me very popular with the duck hunters in my area.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I was particularly interested in my colleague's comments with regard to the CBC.

This evening people from ACTRA will be in Ottawa. A number of us will be meeting some very significant and talented people, many of whom have worked on CBC productions. The programs the CBC produces both on television and radio are our voice. The CBC is the voice of Canada. It tells our stories. The CBC is essential to our culture and to the continuance of that culture.

I would like my colleague to comment on the importance of the extension of the financing for CBC and how it will impact all of our communities.

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

Mr. Speaker, that is a very important question. The member knows the hacking and slashing of the CBC did not start with the Conservatives. That was well under way a number of years before that under the Liberals.

There has been a battle within the country for a large number of years where the private sector feels it is coming of age and wants to be given all the cream and gravy associated with the advertising revenues available in this country. By the same token, it does not want to have to provide any service to areas where there is not a large listening audience. It expects the taxpayers of the country, through the CBC, to provide programming to sparsely populated areas where there is really not a lot of advertising revenue. Yet it would like to have almost exclusive rights to the heavily populated markets that have huge amounts of advertising revenue. That is basically the way businesses operate. They want to take the cream but they do not want the responsibilities for the poorly serviced areas in the case of the television business.

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

Mr. Speaker, the member for Elmwood—Transcona talked at length about the home renovation tax credit.

In my own riding of Nanaimo—Cowichan there are many challenges facing people who cannot afford to buy their own homes. Many often live in substandard rental accommodation. There is no way for those in rental accommodations to get the benefit of the home renovation tax credit that could make their accommodations more energy efficient. I wonder if the member could talk about that gap in this program.

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

Mr. Speaker, that is a very important question. I indicated in my speech that while the home renovation tax credit is a very good program, it is a copy of other programs that have operated very successfully over the years under governments of different stripes.

When the government retools the program and re-announces it, it should be looking at the different aspects. The government should be asking the opposition for input to improve the program for next year to get even more bang for the buck.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-51, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on January 27, 2009 and to implement other measures, be read the third time and passed.

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

When the matter was before the House for debate the last time, the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona had the floor for questions and comments consequent upon his speech. There are four minutes left in the time remaining for questions and comments.

The hon. member for Mississauga South.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, one of the aspects of this bill has to do with extending the borrowing authority of the CBC to what I believe is $220 million from a nominal amount. I thought it was something like $2 million.

In any event, this appears to be simply a facility for the CBC to be able to discount a future revenue stream from rental payments on buildings that it owns but does not use. In effect, I believe it represents that the CBC is mortgaging its future even further as a consequence of not being able to get the support from the government for its operations during this difficult time.

I would like to ask the member whether he shares my concern that we are hurdling toward the privatization of the CBC at fire sale prices?

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

Mr. Speaker, the member is probably accurate in his assessment. Even under the previous Liberal government, the CBC was downgraded somewhat and being forced to rationalize its services, I thought in the interests of having the private sector move into the more profitable parts of the business. Certainly, with a Conservative government in place, that is even more cause for alarm because of its propensity to sell off crown assets.

In particular, the member will recall that last year the government made a statement that it was looking at selling off crown assets. It did not give a list of crown assets. The government did not decide to start selling off crown assets in 2006, 2007 or 2008 when the market was in pretty decent shape. It waited until Iceland declared bankruptcy and the world is in the worst recession in many years. All of a sudden, surprise, there is a list of government assets that it might be willing to sell off.

That gets to the question of the member's reference to the issue of a fire sale. Many people would support the government selling crown assets under certain conditions. However, Conservative governments always tend to sell public assets at fire sale, cut rate prices.

If I had time, I would explain what happened with the sale of the Manitoba Telephone System in Manitoba. The government, under Gary Filmon, valued the shares at half their price and sold them. Shares which were worth around $23 a piece and even today are trading in that vicinity were sold for $13 and half of that $13 was subsidized. That is exactly what happened. It was a big reward to the government's friends in the investment business.

So yes, the member is absolutely right.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the home renovation tax credit is pretty popular, but there are many small mom and pop businesses in Canada and these small businesses have not been included. I would like the hon. member to tell me, if this temporary renovation tax credit were expanded, should the mom and pop businesses across Canada be included so these businesses could be renovated to be more energy efficient?

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

Mr. Speaker, as we have said many times, the home renovation tax credit program is extremely popular, but it is not a new idea. Governments of all stripes have brought out programs like this over the years.

We think the government is about to announce the launch of an extension of the program into next year. We would hope that before announcing the program it would have the good sense to come to us in the opposition and ask for ideas.

The idea put forward by the member for Nickel Belt is an excellent idea. It is something that the government should consider. It should consider expanding the program to include small businesses and also look at applying the program to people at the low end of the economic scale through a tax credit system.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to explain to the House why the Liberal Party voted in favour of the first budget bill but will vote against the bill that is now before the House.

If we go back to the budget last January, we will recall that the Canadian economy was at the height of fears of recession and that the G20 had agreed that all countries should do fiscal stimulus to help to protect and save jobs. Moreover, unlike what it did last November when it had an absolutely disastrous economic statement that actually cut spending, the government in January at least proposed to expend many billions of dollars on infrastructure and other measures to support the economy and save or create jobs.

Given that we were at the height of fear and concern about the economy, it was our view that while the budget was highly imperfect, it would nevertheless have been irresponsible to provoke an election by bringing the government down, thereby delaying fiscal stimulus for at least a couple of months. That is why, notwithstanding some flaws in the budget, the Liberal Party decided to support it.

If we flash forward 10 months to today, why does it appear that we have changed our minds and decided to go against the budget? It reflects a triple-failure in implementation of this budget on the part of the government.

First of all, there is a failure to get the money out the door. This is important. We can have a stimulus of $50 billion or $500 billion, but if we do not get the money out the door, we stimulate nothing and create or save zero jobs. Therefore, the first failure is that the government did not get nearly enough of this money out the door to actually save or create jobs.

Second, and this point has been emphasized by the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the government failed in its responsibility to be accountable to Canadians for how taxpayer money is spent.

The third failure is the government's failure in managing the nation's finances.

Let me take each of these three failures in turn. At the time of the finance minister's budget, he said that to be effective the stimulus had to be out the door within 120 days. We are now approximately 300 days since the budget. The construction season is coming to an end. Therefore, one would have hoped that the vast majority of funding for infrastructure would long have been out the door and at work for months in terms of shovels in the ground and the creation and saving of jobs.

Far from it, the fact of the matter, thanks to research done by our infrastructure critic, is that only 12% of this fiscal stimulus is out the door and put to work in the form of actual jobs, actual shovels in the ground, and actual jobs being saved or created. Only 12% of the money is out the door some 300 days after the budget, despite the finance minister having said that the money had to be at work within 120 days.

That is entirely unacceptable. That is a big, fat juicy F for failure. The recession is now. The job losses may still increase in the future, but they have occurred in large numbers in the last 12 months. The fact that some 300 days after the budget only 12% of that money has been put to work illustrates and proves a lamentable failure of execution and implementation.

The second failure is one of accountability. This government makes a big deal about accountability, but it has been extraordinarily unaccountable in explaining to Canadians how their taxpayer dollars are being put to work. The government uses words like “implement”, but their website and their reports say nothing about money actually out the door and put to work.

That is why our infrastructure critic had to get the information directly from the mayors. The government refuses to provide this information to the Parliamentary Budget Officer. It has pulled off a stunt of dumping some 5,000 pages of information in his office as if we were in the 19th century rather than the computer age. Day after day, the government has stonewalled and refused to give the most basic information to Canadians on what it is spending Canadians' money on.

Compare this with the United States, where citizens can go onto the U.S. government website and find out, in huge detail, in exactly what states and regions and on which programs the stimulus money is being spent and how it is being put to work. It is unclear to me why Americans are deserving of so much information, accountability and transparency from their government while Canadians, it would appear in this government's view, are undeserving of the kind of information our neighbours to the south are being provided with.

The third source of failure amounts to the government's management of this nation's finances. One year ago, at the time of the November statement, the government actually said this country would run nothing but a long string of surpluses. Then it was $34 billion. Next it was $50 billion. Then it was $56 billion. I do not know what it will be next, but the reliability of the government's deficit forecasts is about the same as the reliability of its statements on the timing of H1N1 flu shot deliveries; in other words, totally unreliable.

In conclusion, yes, we supported the first budget bill because it was urgent to get the money out the door, but now, with the passage of some 10 months, we have seen this triple failure: failure to get the money out the door when it was needed, failure to be accountable to Canadians, and failure to have competent management of the nation's finances.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Markham—Unionville says that the Liberals are flip-flopping on Bill C-51. First they voted for it and then they voted against it.

The home renovation tax credit is very popular. The first-time homebuyers' tax credit is very popular also. I am not sure if the member has any farmers in his riding, but I know I have, and I know that dealing with drought conditions is also part of this bill.

I would like to know if the member is going to support the constituents in his riding who have renovated their houses and to support first-time homebuyers. Is he going to vote for this bill so they can get the money they deserve?

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

Mr. Speaker, I think it was Winston Churchill who once said, “When the information changes, yes, I change my mind, sir”.

As I explained in my speech, it is not a flip-flop to support something in principle, and then to observe that it is badly implemented or not done, and then to withdraw one's support. That is our Liberal position. That is a perfectly principled position.

The Liberal Party has said many times that we support the home renovation tax credit and that Canadians can be assured that they will get that credit no matter which of our two parties is the government.

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

Mr. Speaker, I was somewhat disappointed today to hear my hon. friend's words, since we share a riding together and many of the same projects that he references.

He will know that across my riding of Oak Ridges—Markham, there are a number of projects that have started, including new ice rinks, and Hoover Park roads, which have been started. Many of the projects that people from his riding have advocated are actually under way, including a skating rink at Markham City Hall and an emergency measures centre. We have a new GO Train parking lot, which a number of his constituents actually use.

Thus I was disappointed to hear about all of the projects he referenced as not having started. I know he spent some time in the riding, because we were together last week at a number of Remembrance Day functions, and I know he would see many of the same projects that have started. But now that he is withdrawing his support, I wonder which projects he will no longer be supporting and if he will be making some suggestions to the mayor of Markham, who has been very supportive of what we have done together with the province.

Will he be making some suggestions as to which projects he would like to see wrapped up and no longer be completed as a result of his party now withdrawing its support for all of these wonderful job creation projects that are happening across my and his riding?