Bill C-47 (Historical)

Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act

A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures

Part 1 of this enactment implements a number of income tax measures proposed in the March 4, 2010 Budget. In particular it
(a) allows for the sharing of the Canada Child Tax Benefit, the Universal Child Care Benefit and the Goods and Services Tax/Harmonized Sales Tax credit for eligible shared custody parents;
(b) allows Registered Retirement Savings Plan proceeds to be transferred to a Registered Disability Savings Plan on a tax-deferred basis;
(c) implements disbursement quota reform for registered charities;
(d) better targets the tax incentives in place for employee stock options;
(e) expands the availability of accelerated capital cost allowance for clean energy generation;
(f) adjusts the capital cost allowance rate for television set-top boxes to better reflect the useful life of these assets;
(g) clarifies the definition of a principal-business corporation for the purposes of the rules relating to Canadian Renewable and Conservation Expenses;
(h) introduces amendments that are consequential to the introduction in 2011 of new International Financial Reporting Standards by the Accounting Standards Board; and
(i) amends the Canada Pension Plan, the Employment Insurance Act and the Income Tax Act to provide legislative authority for the Canada Revenue Agency to issue online notices if the taxpayer so requests.
Part 1 also implements income tax measures that were previously announced regarding:
(a) rules to facilitate the implementation of Employee Life and Health Trusts, released in draft form on February 26, 2010;
(b) indexing of the working income tax benefit announced in the 2009 Budget;
(c) technical changes concerning TFSAs announced on October 16, 2009; and
(d) an amendment to the rules regarding labour sponsored venture capital corporations that are consequential to the introduction of TFSAs.
Part 2 amends the Air Travellers Security Charge Act, the Excise Act, 2001, the Excise Tax Act and the New Harmonized Value-added Tax System Regulations to provide legislative authority for the Canada Revenue Agency to issue online notices if the taxpayer so requests.
Part 2 also amends the Air Travellers Security Charge Act, the Excise Act, the Excise Act, 2001, the Excise Tax Act, the Brewery Departmental Regulations and the Brewery Regulations to allow certain small remitters to file and remit semi-annually rather than monthly.
Finally, Part 2 amends the Air Travellers Security Charge Act and the Excise Tax Act to extend the protection from civil liability claims that is already provided under the Income Tax Act and other federal statutes to agents of the Crown who collect the Goods and Services Tax/Harmonized Sales Tax and the air travellers security charge in intended compliance with their statutory obligations.
Part 3 amends the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act to facilitate the sharing of taxes under Part I.01 and Part X.5 of the Income Tax Act with provinces and territories.
Part 4 amends the Bank Act and the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada Act to require that banks belong to an approved external complaints body and to authorize the Governor in Council to prescribe the approval requirement for that body. The amendments also assign the responsibility for managing the approval process and supervising the approved external complaints bodies to the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada.
Part 5 amends the Canada Disability Savings Act to allow a 10-year carry forward of Canada Disability Savings Grant and Canada Disability Savings Bond entitlements.
Part 6 amends section 11.1 of the Customs Act to exempt from the User Fees Act fees that are charged for expedited border clearance programs and that are coordinated with international partners.
Part 7 amends the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act to implement the total transfer protection for 2010-11, to set out the treatment of the one-time transfer protection payment under the fiscal stabilization program, update legislative references made in the fiscal stabilization provisions and give greater clarity to the calculation of the fiscal stabilization payment.
Part 8 amends the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions Act. In particular, the Act is amended to
(a) harmonize the assessment of costs associated with the administration of the Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985 with the regime in place for the assessment of costs associated with the administration of laws governing financial institutions; and
(b) allow the Superintendent to remit assessments, interim assessments and penalties and to write off certain debts.
Part 9 amends the Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985. In particular, the Act is amended to
(a) authorize the Minister of Finance to enter into an agreement with the provinces respecting pension plans that are subject to the pension legislation of more than one jurisdiction;
(b) authorize the Minister of Finance to designate an entity for the purposes of receiving, holding and disbursing the pension benefit credit of any person who cannot be located;
(c) permit information to be provided in electronic form, including information provided by the administrator of a pension plan to members or to the Superintendent;
(d) allow the administrator of a pension plan to offer investment options with respect to accounts maintained in respect of a defined contribution provision or accounts maintained for additional voluntary contributions;
(e) provide rules regarding negotiated contribution plans;
(f) require consent of a member’s spouse or common-law partner before the transfer of the member’s pension benefit credit to a retirement savings plan; and
(g) authorize the Superintendent to direct the administrator of a pension plan that is subject to the pension legislation of more than one jurisdiction to establish a separate pension plan for certain members, former members and survivors.

Jobs and Growth Act, 2012

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.

I would like to seek unanimous consent to move the following motion: that notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice of the House, clauses 264 to 268, related to changes to the Customs Act, be removed from Bill C-45, a second act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures, and do compose Bill C-47; that Bill C-47 be entitled “An Act to amend the Customs Act”; that Bill C-47 be deemed read a first time and printed; that the order for second reading of the said bill provide for the referral to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security; that Bill C-45 retain the status on the order paper that it had prior to the adoption of this order; that Bill C-45 be reprinted as amended; and that the law clerk and parliamentary counsel be authorized to make any technical changes or corrections as may be necessary to give effect to this motion.

We are proposing the motion in order to make sure that the government's proposal to implement electronic travel authorization gets the full consideration it should have. The government has proposed that parts of the bill go to committee but not be amended or voted upon separately. Therefore, this motion aims to correct that gap to allow for full debate and full consideration by providing a separate bill on this important matter.

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

I have the honour to inform the House that when the House went up to the Senate chamber His Excellency the Governor General was pleased to give, in Her Majesty's name, the royal assent to the following bills:

Bill S-3, An Act to implement conventions and protocols concluded between Canada and Colombia, Greece and Turkey for the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of fiscal evasion with respect to taxes on income--Chapter No. 15

Bill S-210, An Act to amend the Federal Sustainable Development Act and the Auditor General Act (involvement of Parliament)--Chapter No. 16

Bill S-2, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and other Acts--Chapter 17

Bill C-3, An Act to promote gender equity in Indian registration by responding to the Court of Appeal for British Columbia decision in McIvor v. Canada (Registrar of Indian and Northern Affairs)--Chapter 18

Bill S-215, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (suicide bombings)--Chapter 19

Bill C-464, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (justification for detention in custody)--Chapter 20

Bill C-36, An Act respecting the safety of consumer products--Chapter 21

Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Old Age Security Act--Chapter 22

Bill C-28, An Act to promote the efficiency and adaptability of the Canadian economy by regulating certain activities that discourage reliance on electronic means of carrying out commercial activities, and to amend the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Act, the Competition Act, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and the Telecommunications Act--Chapter 23

Bill C-58, An Act for granting to Her Majesty certain sums of money for the federal public administration for the financial year ending March 31, 2011--Chapter 24

Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures--Chapter 25

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, Canadian Council on Learning; the hon. member for Vancouver Kingsway, Public Safety.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

I might add that these are very complicated and technical in nature. We have another bill before Parliament, Bill C-47, the indexing of the working income tax benefit, and these are very technical, but if we need an explanation I'm sure the officials could explain it much better than I would attempt to.

Banks

[Jim Flaherty, Conservative, Minister of Finance]

Yesterday, Mr. Speaker, the NDP voted against Bill C-47, which is a budget bill. That budget bill contains important protections for consumers, the highest level of protection that bank customers have ever had in the history of Canada.

However, here comes the NDP. Every time it gets an opportunity to help consumers, it votes against the interests of consumers in Canada.

Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order, please. It being 5:30 p.m., pursuant to order made Thursday, December 2, the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at the third reading stage of Bill C-47.

Call in the members.

The House resumed from December 2 consideration of the motion that Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures, be read the third time and passed.

The Economy

[Jim Flaherty, Conservative, Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, Canada's economic recovery remains our government's number one priority. We must stay the course and pass Bill C-47 in order to ensure that we sustain Canada's economic recovery.

This is a recovery that has been the envy of the world, with over 440,000 jobs created and five continuous quarters of economic growth. What is the opposition's plan? Higher taxes and to kill 400,000 jobs.

[Terrance Carter]

Fine.

In conclusion, the CBA section believes that the proposed Bill C-470, as amended to require the public disclosure of name, job title, and compensation, is unnecessary and misguided. The CBA section therefore strongly recommends that the bill, as amended, not be enacted.

(Bill C-47. On the Order: Government Orders)

November 30, 2010—the Minister of Finance—Third reading of Bill C-47, A second act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures.

Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to be here today to take part in the debate on Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures.

My speech will be very simple; I would like to discuss two main points. First of all, the Conservatives are mismanaging public money, and the way they waste money is shocking. Second, the priorities they set out in the budget do not meet the needs of Canadian families.

Starting with my first point, this is a government of shockingly bad wastage of public funds and mismanagement.

Of course we have heard already from many of the speakers about the record $56 billion deficit. Having been part of a provincial government wrestling down a deficit, which was in place when the government I was part of came in and took responsibility, I know how difficult it is to reduce deficits.

We have a huge challenge over the coming years. This is a government that does not appear to understand the value of money and does not appear to understand the importance of taking every taxpayer dollar extremely seriously and ensuring that every dollar is put to its highest and best use in the public good.

What we are anticipating from the current government's plans is $156 billion in new debt between 2009 and 2014, which would cost taxpayers $10 billion a year. Every single year, each and every year, that is $10 billion that will not be available for all of the many other things that are priorities for Canadians. That money would essentially be wasted. It would be taken out of the productive economy to pay interest costs.

I would ask my colleagues across the way if they actually believe it would be easier for the next generation to pay down this debt that they are incurring on behalf of Canadians as we speak. It will be much more difficult when there are fewer people in the workforce, when there are more people receiving pensions, when there are more people at an age that would put pressure on our health care system.

When we spend tomorrow's money, it has to be very wisely, and that is exactly what the government does not understand. Apparently, wisely for the government is in pursuit of votes and in pursuit of seats. That appears to be the vision of the current government, unfortunately for Canada and unfortunately for Canadians who deserve and need a vision to address the challenges that we have facing us in the future, the competitive challenges, the environmental challenges, the social challenges.

The wasteful spending has become a hallmark of the current Conservative government.

Again and again we have seen evidence that tax dollars are treated as though they are the private preserve of the Conservative members and cabinet.

I would call part of their wasteful spending the P3 plan. I wish the P3 plan were a plan about partnerships to create value for the future, public-private partnerships to build and create. However, the P3 plan of the current government essentially is about the planes, prisons and photo ops. That is the huge commitments of dollars, the billions of taxpayer dollars that are being committed unwisely and wastefully; for example, $16 billion for the stealth fighter planes.

We begin to trip over the word “billion” as though it did not have meaning. A billion is the number of minutes since Christ was born. A billion is a huge number. If one were to plant a tree every eight feet, a billion trees would be a swath of trees around the equator 400 feet wide. That is a billion. That is a huge number. We need to somehow find a way to have the government understand the scale of a billion dollars when it commits $14 billion or $16 billion for a stealth fighter program without a rationale as to why that actually is the equipment that our troops will need and that our government strategy to protect Canada or to protect our Arctic territory will require, when there is no clear rationale.

In fact, there is a refusal to respond to the Liberals' request for a clear rationale for why this particular equipment with this incredibly high price tag is the right one. That was not forthcoming. Second, these planes failed to have a competitive bid and failed to secure jobs in Canada.

It is just one of the reasons why I have to shake my head, seeing a group of members of Parliament who claim to be pro-business using such woefully inadequate practices for making their decisions in such a way that is so wasteful of the public dollars.

Another issue in the P3 program is the prisons, which appear to be heading towards $10 billion to $13 billion in spending of tax dollars at a time when crime is going down, as I want to remind the members opposite. This is a proposal to focus a huge amount of borrowed public funds, which will need to be paid back by workers in the future, on prisons when the evidence is very clear. In California for example, one in ten Californians is in jail. What has that done for the economy of California? It is not a very positive story.

I would ask the members opposite why the Conservative prime minister of Great Britain is coming forward with a goal of reducing the number of prisoners by 50%. He is a Conservative prime minister. Why would that prime minister be looking at reducing the need for prison cells and reducing the number of prisoners? It is because that is good public policy. What the government is doing is the opposite.

Not only is this an expensive use of borrowed public funds, not only is it bad public policy, but the government attempted to deceive the public as to what the costs of its crime agenda, its punishment agenda, would be. The government claimed a certain bill would cost $90 billion and was then outed by the Parliamentary Budget Officer when in fact the tab was some 100 times higher for the projected costs of prisons that the government will be foisting on the Canadian public.

It is wasteful spending on prisons, planes and photo ops. There has been much said about the photo ops. Again, it was $1 billion for 72 hours of the Prime Minister having his face in the newspapers and in the news coverage. Is that really a priority for Canadian citizens?

Rather than more for less, which is what the business community strives to do, more value at a lower cost, this is a government that has been delivering more borrowing and spending for less result and less value. There has been more borrowing to spend $30 million more on a census that is universally condemned across the country and outside the boundaries of this country for what it will do to frustrate researchers who are trying to provide services to Canadians.

There was more spending on a historically high ad budget that is highly focused on partisan signs to promote the government's agenda. There was more spending on the Prime Minister's office, up $10 million, to increase the Prime Minister's ability to control and spin information, leading to another one of the major critiques. For example, the journalist associations from across Canada, in a public letter, have said that our democracy is at risk with this increasingly secretive government that makes information difficult to access, that holds back freedom of information requests and that hides information and makes it unavailable to journalists who are then finding it very difficult to hold the government to account.

The fourth estate is an essential tool of our democracy to hold the government to account and to enable the public to know whether they are being properly served by their elected representatives, on the government side or not.

Journalists across the country are putting up the red flags and sounding the warning bells that the Conservative government is secretive, hiding information and undemocratic.

The second point I want to touch on in my remarks today is about the priorities of Canadian families and the fact that the priorities of the government, with its P3 program and more borrowing and spending for less value, are not addressing the primary priorities of Canadian families.

First there is health care. I would like to emphasize the importance of care to better health.

Care is very connected with health and the government has ignored the needs for care. It has ignored the predicament of people who take care of their chronically ill loved ones or aging spouses and parents. There is no help for them. The government has ignored the gap between the rich and the poor and Canada's gap will only widen under the policies of the government.

I want to underline that this is a very serious proposition for the well-being of Canadians and our country in the future because the research is unequivocal. Countries that have a lower gap between the rich and the poor have better outcomes on an entire range of indicators that have to do with health, happiness and well-being. Countries that have a low gap between the rich and the poor have fewer suicides, lower child mortality, higher happiness of citizens, better health, stronger families and virtually every indicator of health, happiness and well-being. A country ranks higher on those very important indicators of the strength and the resilience of that country when there is a lower gap between the rich and poor.

The government is doing everything it can in its policies to increase that gap. Where is the Conservatives' anti-poverty plan? Nowhere. That is something on which a Liberal government is committed to providing leadership. Where is their housing strategy? Completely absent. It was embarrassingly obvious during the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games that the federal government had completely taken itself out of the business of caring about providing leadership to ensure that affordable housing was available to those who needed it.

Not only are Conservatives not providing leadership to push things forward, they are undermining the leadership that the provinces and municipalities have undertaken to put a safety net under some of the most vulnerable, for example, the Insite facility in Vancouver. All peer reviewed research shows that facility saves lives. That facility puts a safety net under some of the most discouraged human beings in our country. It provides them with a safe place to engage with the health care system, to get the drugs they need to be well when they suffer from HIV-AIDS and to help them prevent passing that condition to others.

It is about compassion, but it is also about preventing the spread of disease and it is about saving lives. The government has gone to endless lengths in the courts to undermine Insite, not to support it, not to partner with the province and the city that support it, but to undermine and eliminate it. It is a shocking abrogation of human responsibility by the government.

These are some of the areas on which the Liberals will provide leadership on: the Liberal family care plan to support those who spend months or years to care for their loved ones, anti-poverty strategy, housing strategy, health care and education.

Education is the foundation of health, success, a wealthy society and a sustainable economy and the solution to the challenges of the future.

Education is very critical and that will be a number one priority of a Liberal government.

The government across the way has chosen to cut dollars for research in the universities, while spending the unimaginable kinds of dollars on signage. Every time the government does anything, it is forcing an expensive sign to be created.

When my constituents drive down the streets of Vancouver and see an economic action plan sign, they think that is another piece of playground equipment that cannot be purchased. The signs are costing an average of $2,000 to $3,000 each. The government wants to advertise its partisan ways using taxpayer dollars.

Why not use it for education? Why not use the dollars for making post-secondary educations more affordable for aboriginal people? Many young aboriginal people have the grades and are eligible but cannot obtain post-secondary educations. This is another equality issue that is tied in with education.

Protecting the environment is not a priority for the Conservatives. On the contrary, they see it as a barrier. They have relaxed the rules concerning the impact of development on the environment.

Shockingly the government is cutting funds for protection the environment. It sees protection as a barrier. Therefore, it is no surprise that it has cut la Fondation canadienne pour les sciences du climat et de l'atmosphère, the very organization that for decades was the steward of climate science. It has had its funding cut and those experiments are now to be abandoned.

They have slashed the energy efficiency program, the only major program for renewable energy.

The government has cut programs and it has cut the climate legislation. This is an uncaring, secretive, controlling, visionless and ruthless government and Canadians are getting tired of it. The bill is just one more expression of the misplaced priorities that ignore the real needs of Canadians.

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

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-47 today, which, once again, is one of the budget implementation bills that we are dealing with before this House.

I have heard a lot of good speeches here today on this particular bill, and a lot of good speeches from the Liberal members as well. However, at the end of the day, the viewing public should know that the Liberal members, regardless of their criticism of this bill, the budget itself or in fact the government, will make certain that enough of their members are not here so that the government does survive. The Liberals have been doing this for the last couple of years, keeping the government in place.

It is great to hear some of the criticisms of the members but the reality is that when it comes time to actually stand up and vote in the House, the Liberals have not had enough of their members consistently here to vote and cause the government to fall.

Regarding Bill C-47, there are a number of implementation issues that are involved with this particular bill. I could get into them one by one, and I am sure there would be very interesting explanations, but I do want to give special attention to one or two items.

One of the big concerns I have coming out of this budget is the increase in the air travellers' security charge by 50%. Up until now, the air travellers' security charge was the second highest in the world, next to Holland. Now, with the 50% raise in the budget, Canada would be the highest taxed in the world for this particular tax.

It only stands to reason that if we are highest taxed in the world, there will be some resistance to that. I will get into what sort of resistance we are finding on the part of the consumers in Canada in a minute. I did want to state that the revenues collected through the tax over the last five years have exceeded the amount spent on security.

Over the last five years, the government has collected $3.3 billion on the taxes, and I think the public would understand if in fact it were spending the same $3.3 billion on airport security. However, that would not be true. The government is only spending $1.5 billion on security. Why would the government increase the tax by 50% when it is only spending a fraction of what it is currently collecting on security in the first place?

What is the result of this move on the part of the government? The result is that the government is turning out to be the best friend of the United States airline industry. We now have information that 50,000 Manitobans are streaming to Grand Forks to fly with United States carriers. I can assure members that 50,000 people are a lot of people.

A very recent article in the Winnipeg Sun detailed what was happening. I have been aware for probably two years now of people driving down to Grand Forks to take flights to Las Vegas and other places. They are finding that the airlines there are able to provide the service for a much lower price.

I have an example for a January 9 flight, a flight that has not even happened yet. The members can simply go out and check their computer and they will find, if there are any seats left, that they can fly from Grand Forks, North Dakota to Los Angeles on January 9, 2011 for $95.98. That is not just the airfare, because the common lead-in with airlines is to give us the low price and then whack us with the taxes. The air fare is $69.99 and the taxes are $25.69, for a total of $95.68.

The equivalent WestJet flight out of Winnipeg is $258 for the ticket and $83 for the taxes, for a total of $341. We can see that is a savings of over $200. If we multiply that for a family of four, we are talking about a significant amount of money. All people need to do is drive the extra two hours to the United States, park their car and fly to Las Vegas or, in this case, Los Angeles.

We are losing business to these carriers and we have a combination of reasons why that is. The strong dollar is certainly an issue here, but we have the issue of the increase in the air tax. Why we do this when we know our tourism is faltering?

We have a Conservative member here who has a bill dealing with a national hunting day. One of the reasons he presented that bill, which, by the way, I hope will get unanimous support in Parliament, is that the tourist operators were complaining. They are suffering. There have been reports of tourist camps that are practically going out of business after being in operation for many years, going through several generations of one family. Now they are having to close their doors because their traffic has dropped off considerably. This is as a result of, once again, the strong dollar, but also the taxation question on the air fares and the issue of passport charges.

This past summer, I happened to be at the Midwestern Legislative Conference. All of the American states are members of various conferences but this conference involves 11 legislatures from midwest states: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin; and three Canadian provinces, Manitoba, Ontario and Saskatchewan. I think Barack Obama was one of the delegates to this conference. I have been there probably six years now and in the first year or two, he was one of the delegates.

This group of legislators, composed of Republicans and Democrats, discuss and pass resolutions at their conventions. I was lucky enough to get a resolution passed this year dealing with a reduction in passport fees. We literally had it unanimously passed. As a matter of fact, one of the Liberal Party MPPs from Ontario was the seconder of the resolution at the U.S.-Canada committee of the conference.

When this resolution was introduced and it went through the committee of the conference, it received instant acceptance. It was the one issue of ten or eleven issues that they discussed in the committee that took up about half the time of the committee, with literally everyone there wanting to speak in favour of this resolution. We had legislators from the United States saying what an aggravation it was to have to go through the passport process and pay upwards of $500 for a family of four to be able to come to the conference. These are the legislators saying this. Can we imagine what the average citizen of the United States and Canada would have to say about this?

Through the security provisions that have come about since 9/11, we have continued to fortify the border and solidify the security around the border. Some would argue that it is questionable as to how more secure the border is as a result, but we certainly spent a lot of money doing this.

In a way, however, we have actually harmed ourselves because, when the Americans established the rule that their citizens needed a passport to get back into their country, they cut a lot of activity along the border. When I talk to the border legislators, whether they be Republicans or Democrats, they are of one mind on this. They accept that the bad guys do not stand at the border to try to get through legitimately. The bad buys simply smuggle whatever they are going to smuggle by going around the border, thereby thwarting these increases.

A politician in South Dakota or North Dakota is getting complaints from constituents about the border issue and about not getting enough tourists doing business in their country. On top of that, on the Canadian side of the border we are getting the same complaints about businesses not getting support from Americans. Americans used to come to Canada regularly for many years and now they are not doing it. The dollar has been strong before. During the Diefenbaker years, the dollar was as high as it is right now.

It is a combination of elements that have come together and conspired to make life very difficult for tourism in this country. Rather than coming to grips with the issue and trying to deal with it, the government is throwing roadblocks in the way. Why would there be a problem with 11 American states, Democrats and Republicans who do not normally get along that well with one another on many issues, getting together in conference and passing a unanimous resolution? Coupled with that, there are Canadians from three provinces, Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats, all agreeing unanimously to call on the Government of Canada and the Government of the United States to do something about this.

This was in August. What has happened with this issue? Why would the Prime Minister not take a moment from his many important international trips and conferences to look at this file and pick up the phone and call Barack Obama? Both of them have received this letter from the legislators conference. It is tantamount to getting a letter from the premiers conference in Canada. I am sure when the Prime Minister gets a letter from the premiers conference in Canada, he does not ignore it. I am sure his office responds to it and tries to deal with the issue.

We have all of these legislators showing interest and passing the resolution. The question is why the Conservatives have not done something at this point to encourage the Americans to pull back on this issue. If they have not done it by now, when will they do something?

Many ideas came out of the conference, and it will be up to the governments to come up with whatever the solution might be, but one of the ideas that has been talked about is a two-for-one passport renewal process or two-for-one passport applications in a limited time. The idea is to get the number of passports up. Only about half of Canadians have passports, but only a quarter of Americans have passports. Unless or until we can get the Americans to respond positively to this, I think we will have this continual drag on business at the border.

There are many things the government could be doing. I recognize the strategy of the government is to marshal its resources in such a way as to give it maximum possibilities for a majority government at some time.

We in opposition know that the cupboard is bare, that the Conservatives are running a $56 billion deficit right now. The projections for the future are pretty bleak, and not only will they not be paying down the deficit anytime soon, they will be adding to it and accumulating an even bigger deficit in the long run to offer the Canadian people enough incentive to vote Conservative in the next election.

If the Conservatives plan to introduce a budget in the next few months, I do not really think they will introduce one that says, “Well folks, there is nothing here. We are not going to offer you anything in the election.” That will not work. It has rarely worked in the past. I would be very surprised if they used that approach. No, they will offer a bunch of goodies to the public to try to get their majority and they will hide the fact that the financial situation is worse than what they say it is. This has happened with many governments over the years. I think in one case it was called the “fudge-it budget”, where the government hides the true financial situation in the jurisdiction to get itself beyond the election, and then, surprise, surprise, things are not what they seem.

Let us look at corporate taxes. There are so many issues that one could deal with here with the government. I recall a Conservative member asking a question about tax reductions, and she is obviously a big supporter of them. She was asking a question of the previous Liberal member who spoke. She was talking about corporate tax reductions. I think she said corporate taxes made up 13% of the taxes collected and rest are personal income tax. I have news for her. I do not have the statistics here right now but I know they are available, and within her lifetime there was a time, not long ago, maybe 20 years ago or thereabouts, where the amount of corporate taxes collected in this country roughly equalled the amount of income tax collected. What has happened through successive Liberal and now Conservative governments is that the proportion of taxes raised by the government through taxes on corporations is actually being reduced, and of course, the shortfall is being made up by the public.

So we could forgive the working person in Edmonton—Strathcona or Elmwood—Transcona or any of our constituencies when they look at this and say, “Well, the government is talking about restraint”. Everybody knows there was a slight blip in the economy and a bit of a recession and we are trying to get out of it right now. I think the average member of the public is prepared to say, “I will give a little if you give a little”. But when the public sees that the initiatives of the government are to lower corporate taxes, what is that all about?

The federal government is just arbitrarily reducing corporate tax, phasing it down to 15%, when the Americans are in the range of 30%. For the Americans, I think it is almost double. What kind of studies were done? What kind of advice are the Conservatives taking that would prompt them to just arbitrarily say that they have to start reducing corporate taxes? We are already lower than the Americans, but we will go ahead and reduce them some more.

When my homeowner, my voter, looks at the statistics and sees that during a recession the banks where he is depositing his earnings made $15.9 billion, and then when he finds out that the bank president, the CEO of the Royal Bank of Canada, Gordon Nixon, and TD Bank's CEO, Edmund Clark, earned $10.4 million, we have to forgive him for being a little bit confused in wondering what this is all about.

We see the same situation in the United States, where the taxpayers have begun to revolt because they see these big corporations being bailed out. The government likes to pretend that it did not happen but we bailed out the banks. We say that we did not bail out the banks. Yes, we did. We underwrote the mortgages. Remember back in the tough times in 2008 when the Prime Minister was campaigning in his sweater and suggesting that his mother treat the stock market downslide as a buying opportunity? At that point in time, the fact of the matter is--

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures, be read the third time and passed.

[John Cannis, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin my remarks on Bill C-47, I want to comment on something my colleague from Mississauga South touched upon with respect to seniors.

I have been in this House for almost 17 years and the one issue to which all of us have been sensitive is how we address our obligations toward our seniors, our men and women in uniform, and our youth, referring to youth programs, youth initiatives, investment in education. After all, we make speeches about the future of our country and it is our youth who need the right kind of education and the right kind of tools.

With respect to seniors and the fiasco that occurred, I am very pleased that my colleague from Mississauga South touched upon it when he was prompted by a question from our hard-working member for Yukon. I am at a loss for words. All I say is, let us give people the benefit of the doubt and let us move forward positively on that.

I am speaking to Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures. The audience can see on the television screen, “Bill C-47, Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act”. With respect to the word “recovery“, given what is going on globally, the whole world is trying to recover from a lot of those toxic packages, to be polite, that we saw coming from the United States to different parts of the world and which affected different countries.

We are fortunate in many ways here in Canada because many years ago a Liberal government, under the prime ministership of Jean Chrétien with Paul Martin as the finance minister, took the initiative to address, for example, the banking issue. This was very instrumental in helping us deal with these very awkward and difficult circumstances today.

There were several questions on this bill. The member for Mississauga South said that it is such a large bill, with 199 clauses. He went into some of the technical details, but the average Canadian listening to this debate or reading about it, really wants to hear about the meat and potatoes, things that affect Canadians on a daily basis.

I had the privilege recently as a member of the international trade committee to speak with our counterparts as we move forward on the Canada-Europe free trade agreement. Common throughout the world is that every nation, in looking toward implementing programs to recover, to get its people working and its economy rolling, wants to trade. That is wonderful, because Canada is a trading nation too. All countries want to sell their goods and services, but in order to sell their goods and services, there has to be an economy somewhere that is able to purchase them. In other words, the countries have to have their finances in order.

We were speaking to our counterparts in England, for example. We were listening on an hourly basis to what was unfolding in Ireland, how it was collapsing and its banking system was to be taken over. There was no money available, et cetera. The IMF and Great Britain were to step in to help Ireland, and so they should because Ireland needs a stable, or at least a sustainable economy to purchase goods and services.

The United Kingdom for example, even though it is going through difficulties, relates to us. I want to touch upon that as it relates to the bill. The new British coalition government is moving forward by taking certain steps. As I was reading about them, I had to smile because it took me back to 1993-94. I was being taken back to the future. What the U.K. is doing today, other nations in the European Community and other non-European countries are doing as well. I will mention some of the things they are doing that were done here as well.

The United Kingdom is experiencing difficult times. It is going through an austerity program, if I can use that word. Some of the areas that are going to be spared from the cuts are scientific research, health, schools, meaning investing in education, international development, renewable energy and large infrastructure projects. Areas that are going to be cut are welfare, social housing, policing, which I thought was wrong, as well as government services, which I think was right.

Why am I bringing this up today? There are areas in the budget that needed to be addressed and were not addressed. I will point out two specifically.

My colleague from Yukon talked about health care. Year after year, for as long as I can remember, health care has been the number one priority for Canadians. Coincidentally, I found an article not too long ago that states that Canadians rank health care a higher concern than the economy. It reconfirms what my constituents have been telling me for decades.

What did the Liberal government do when Paul Martin was the finance minister? It implemented the Romanow report. Mr. Romanow said in an interview with Peter Mansbridge that the Liberals exceeded the recommendations. That was a 10-year commitment.

Why am I bringing it up? The Conservatives, in two minority governments, have not made a single investment in health care. When asked a question, the response on record of the then Minister of Health, who is the Minister of Industry today, was that the government will continue the funding, after last year's budget or the year before. In other words, it would continue to fund the moneys, the $58 billion, that the Liberals put into health care. Health care was the number one issue then and it is the number one issue today.

There is one other area, as I mentioned, that relates to the U.K. investing in scientific research, and that is that there has been very little investment in R and D. Everybody talks about getting their economies going and competing in the new economy by investing in R and D. R and D can only develop new jobs if we invest the money up front. Yes, it costs money initially, but as they say, we have to spend a dollar to make a dollar, and we know very well that the new Conservative government has not done that.

I will refer to an article, the headline of which reads, “Researchers disappointed by funding for innovation. Just keeps the lights on”. I am quoting; I am not being political, which I choose never to do. I choose to refer to statements made by others so people know it is not my biased comments as a Liberal member of Parliament but what Canadians or others, the foot soldiers, in this case the researchers, are saying. The article states:

Peter MacLeod, a fellow at the Centre for the Study of Democracy at Queen's University, says “much of the funding promised to various agencies will do little more than “keep the lights on”.

There was some money; I am not saying there was not. How can we look forward to competing for the jobs of the future when the government budgets have not made any significant investments?

Why are we falling behind? Other nations are making investments and we are failing to do so. Here we are, a country that was miles ahead of all these other nations in terms of eight consecutive balanced Liberal budgets and tremendous surpluses. The last one, if I recall, when the Liberals lost office in 2006 was just over $13 billion.

The government gloats about our economy being in a good state and that we are better off than everybody else. That is true. So why are we not making the right investments? For example, Canada is still lagging quite badly. The United States spent $594 million in 2009, Australia spent $123.5 million, and Canada spent $19 million. How can we compete?

We all know the difficulties the United States is going through. Speaking of the United States, it even went through some updating of its health care system. Even Sarah Palin commented about our health care system. She used it. She got that right. The only thing she got wrong was mixing up North Korea and South Korea. The fact is she confirmed that we do have a better health care system, a system which she and her family used.

If we are not going to make the right investments in R and D, we are going to miss out on the jobs of the future. For example, China, the world's biggest polluter, has now become the world's number one green energy investor. China is putting its money where its mouth is. It is investing. Yes, China pollutes, but it is now saying that it has to address this horrendous issue. China invested $34.5 billion in 2009 on low carbon energy technologies. I applaud China. I am not saying we have to invest $34.5 billion, but surely to God we can make some decent investments.

We are missing out on the jobs of the future because we are not making the right kinds of investments. We see the United Kingdom making these investments, even though its books are in a worse mess than ours.

Of course with the health care system, which I believe needs modernization, that 10-year arrangement is coming to an end and Canadians are going to keep an eye on the government to see what its next step will be. One would think that as we were getting close to the renewal of the agreement, the government would commence discussions with the provinces, with the professionals, with the stakeholders. At least we asked Mr. Romanow to do a study. He delivered his findings and we responded. That agreement is coming to an end and the government has not even begun discussions. I worry about that.

The disappointments with the government are so many that I do not know where to begin.

My colleague talked about the $5,000 tax-free savings account. That is a good initiative, but given the circumstances today, one would ask how many families can put aside $5,000, and those are after-tax dollars. Not too many Canadians can do that because they are hurting. Maybe the very rich can do it and if they can, I have no qualms about it. Good luck to them. It is the right thing to do. The fact is that average Canadians cannot do it and there are no other initiatives to support these families. Why? Job losses are still occurring. Yes, there are little spurts of a few jobs here and there. We know the economy is not really growing. We also know that new jobs are not being created as fast as was projected by the government. The finances of the nations are not where they could be or should be. I will address that as well.

Canadians today do not have the confidence. Why do they not have the confidence? They are being told one thing and others are showing up.

For example, today we are faced with a $56.5 billion or $57 billion deficit from last year. The government actually projected that it was going to be about $52.2 billion or $53.3 billion. The Conservatives were off by almost $2 billion on their projections. At this time of the year, the Conservatives are saying it is going to be about another $55 billion or $56 billion, for a total deficit of about $110 billion. It is unheard of.

All the average Canadian has to do is go back a short 16 or 17 years and he or she will realize that our deficit was $42.3 billion. Seventeen years down the road, the deficit has more than doubled and there is no economic growth. There is no job growth. There is less revenue to pay down this deficit.

The upcoming budget will be the government's fourth one. It reminds me of the Brian Mulroney days. When the Mulroney Conservatives were in government for nine years, they did not meet one budget target.Year after year, they told us what they would spend but never met that target. As a result, the debt kept growing and, in 1993, we did what we had to do. We did the responsible thing, things that the U.K , Ireland and Greece are doing today. We hear that Portugal, Spain and other countries in the European Union are next in line. They are going through these austerity programs. They are doing today what we did responsibly.

Therefore, when the government of today stands and says that we slashed and burned, I want to remind it that the Conservative Harris government of the day and Ralph Klein were doing the same thing. We had no choice. It was sink or swim, as they say.

The fortunate thing is that we made the right investments in the new economy, for example, in R and D. We invested in education. We invested in small and medium size enterprises, which means they started generating jobs. People were paying into the system. Another important thing is that we were lowering payroll taxes.

The government talks about lowering taxes. I challenge it publicly when it says that it lowered taxes because it did not lower taxes. It said that it would raise taxes by 1.5% and then it said that, no, it would decrease that to 0.5%. However, 0.5% is still an increase and the government is trying to pass it off that it lowered taxes. It is still a burden on the employer and the employee. It does not entice employers to invest in new tools, in new equipment or in new hires. It de-motivates them. If Canadians are not working, they do not have earning power nor do they have purchasing power, which means goods and services taxes are not being collected, for example, that would go to invest in health care, in post-secondary education, in housing, et cetera. It is a cycle, if we look at it.

With regard to gas, my constituents are complaining they are paying an average of $1.10 or $1.12 a litre. Just a couple of years ago, the barrel was on the market at about $148 to $150 and gas at the pump was 85¢ to 90¢. Today, my constituents are saying that barrels of gas may be $80 at the most and are asking, why they are paying $1.10 a litre.

The point I want to make on the gas is that the current government also made another promise. It said that anything over 85¢ per litre it would take off the taxes. It has not done so.

Am I leading into promises made and promises not kept? I really do not want to do that. My speech today is not political in any way. It is more so to point out the frustrations of Canadians. What they want to know is how they can trust the government to manage the economy well.

One gentleman said to me that, at the end of the day, the debt is going higher and the deficit is getting out of control. Per capita, we are one of the most burdened nations at about $42,000 per person in comparison to Greece that is at $31,000 per person. That gentleman said that we were more in debt than those guys are and wanted to know how we were better off.

We could go on for hours.The government has lost its priorities. Two out of three Canadians have not given the Conservatives their vote primarily because they cannot depend upon them and y cannot trust them because they say one thing and they do another. They talk about lowering taxes and yet they are increasing taxes. The only taxes they have decreased are the corporate taxes.

It is not that I am against that, but it is a timing thing. We keep reducing those corporate taxes year after year when the nation is hurting today. It is times like this when the gas companies, for example, need to come on board and say that they will help the average Canadian. It is times like this where everybody comes together as a family and it becomes a give-and-take for the good of the nation.

When we look at what the government did with airport taxes and at what happened with the seniors and the GIS, it is shameful. When we look at the lack of investments in R and D, that is shameful. When we are looking at the government spending $16 billion in untendered contracts, surely to God that is unacceptable. What will Canada's benefit be from that?

Canada has spent over $23 billion so far in Afghanistan, and now we are going to—

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to say thank goodness I mentioned that there were 199 clauses in the bill dealing with diverse areas that I must admit I am not very familiar with, but I am certainly aware of the Air Travellers Security Charge Act and the Excise Act, which are being amended under part 2. These empower the Canada Revenue Agency to issue online notices at taxpayers' request. In fact, they do not have to do with the air travellers security charge itself. This is administrative and that is the difference.

If we are talking about the budget, that is what the member is asking about. If we are talking about the budget implement bill, which deals with the technicalities of how we deal with it, the questions I would ask would be why does clause 91 empower the Minister of National Revenue to authorize a designated carrier to report semi-annually rather than monthly? If we report semi-annually rather than monthly, that means we are losing the cashflow month after month and we are getting these lump sums. If one understands the time value of money, the government is losing money simply by making these changes.

Secondly, what type of documents or notices of deduction will be sent by email, how will they ensure a person has indeed received the document in question, and what date will be used for the calculation of interest and penalties? Again, it is technical in this regard. I do not disagree with the member with regard to the propriety of the charges, but with regard to Bill C-47 and the changes being proposed, it would appear to be appropriate.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-47, which is not a short bill. The printed version is 143 pages long. The bill includes about nine different sections and 199 clauses. I hope all hon. members will appreciate that when we get a bill this size, it is difficult for any speech to touch on the substantive matters.

The House will often deal with the issue of relevance in debate. I have heard people say that we are debating the budget from last March and they start talking about virtually every item in the budget. However, subsequent to that we have had one implementation bill and this is the second. These implementation bills are intended to put the technical mechanics in place so the representations in the budget are operable. I want to get into a few of those.

I want to advise those who are interested that this bill deals substantively with amendments to the Income Tax Act and related acts in part 1. Part 2 deals with amendments to the Air Travellers Security Charge Act. Part 3 deals with amendments to the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, which is extremely important in terms of funding of provincially delivered programs and services. Part 4 deals with amendments to the Bank Act and the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada Act. Part 5 deals with amendments to the Canada Disability Savings Act, which we discussed substantively at committee. Part 6 deals with amendments to the Customs Act. Part 7 deals with amendments to the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act. Part 8 deals with amendments to the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions Act. Bill C-47 is a very broad-based bill.

When we are dealing with a budget implementation bill, we are often not talking about anything in the bill in terms of specific amendments to legislation. We tend to drift back to the budget itself and some of its consequences.

The parliamentary secretary, on behalf of the government, led off the debate on the bill. He did not talk much about the budget implementation bill but rather he talked about the budget. This opened up the debate to virtually everything to do with the budget. That is why some people who are interested in the proposed changes to some of these acts have been somewhat ignored in the debate. To rectify that, I want to deal with the proposed amendments to the Income Tax Act and related acts. It is an area in which I have some experience.

The first important area has to do with benefits entitlement and shared custody. Under the Universal Child Care Benefit Act, an eligible individual is defined in subdivision a.1 of division E of part I of the Income Tax Act. If I repeat a lot of these references, people will not understand, so let me just say it is defined in the act. The act currently provides for only one eligible person for a given period.

Under the current provisions, the Canada Revenue Agency has rotated benefits for the universal child care benefit, the Canada child tax benefit and the GST-HST credit for families with shared parenting arrangements on a six month payment basis. The budget proposed to allow two eligible parents in a shared custody arrangement to receive child benefits, including the UCCB. I support that change. It makes sense. A lot of people are at a disadvantage by having just one eligible recipient where shared custody would be a more equitable situation.

The second item under the income tax amendments has to do with the rollover of RRSP proceeds to an RDSP, or registered disability savings plan.

The existing registered retirement savings plan rollover rules are extended under the bill to allow a rollover of a deceased individual's RRSP proceeds to a registered disability savings plan of a financially dependent, infirm child or grandchild. The reason that is important, and why I support it, is that on death of the holder of a registered retirement savings plan, if there is not a spouse for which the act already provides a tax-free rollover, it would then collapse and be taxable fully in the year of death.

If an RRSP collapses all in one year and has a tax liability, in many cases most of that would be taxed at the highest possible rate. It means the estate of the person involved would pay much more tax now than it would have paid had he or she not bought the RRSP in the first place. This would allow that investment in the RRSPs to rollover to a disabled person, financially dependent infirm child or grandchild. It would in fact help families. Members will know that anything that helps families will have my support.

The third area under the Income Tax Act has to do with charities and the disbursement quota form. The finance committee presently is looking at Bill C-470, which tries to put transparency through the expenditures, particularly the human resources costs and salaries of executives of charities. Concerns have been raised that some charities pay exorbitant amounts of compensation to people with the amount of the moneys actually go for charitable purposes being substantially reduced, and that is a problem.

Interestingly enough the changes made in Bill C-47, and I do not know enough about individual cases, I suspect will help some and hurt others because it deals with a disbursement quota.

First, the disbursement quota reform for registered charities, specifically the charitable expenditure rule, would be repealed. Second, the capital accumulation rule would also be modified to increase the threshold from $25,000 to $100,000 for charitable organizations. Third, the anti-avoidance rules would be extended to situations where it could be reasonably considered that the purpose of the transaction was to delay unduly or avoid the application of the disbursement quota. Finally, measures would be implemented to ensure that transferred amounts between non-arm's-length charities would be used to satisfy the disbursement quota for only one charity.

The problem I have with that section is it goes in a different direction than Bill C-470 in terms of the transparency and the concern that there be moneys. In fact, it would allow the charity to have a higher threshold of making disbursements. It would also allow certain charities to accumulate money for capital investments, for instance, if they wanted permanent facilities or core funding for certain programs.

I can understand that in terms of, for instance, hospitals, hospital foundations. I am not sure if the same rules would not have maybe unintended consequences with regard to other charities that are not in some of those key areas of universities or hospitals or organizations like the Cancer Society or the Heart & Stroke, et cetera. There are 85,000 registered charities in Canada. When we start to play around with the disbursement quota rule, somebody will fall through the cracks and there may be some unintended consequences. It will be up to us to monitor the situation.

The next area under part 1 has to do with the employee stock options. There are various methods in the Income Tax Act to deal with the treatment of employee stock options.

First, there is an amendment that would preclude double deductions of both the employee and the employer in respect of the same stock option benefit, which would make sense. The stock option agreement to a non-arm's-length person results in an employment benefit at the time of disposition, and, again, that makes some sense.

A further measure would repeal the tax deferral election. As well, the existing tax withholding requirements would be clarified to ensure that the amount in respect of tax on the value of the employment benefit associated with the issuance of the security would be required to be remitted to the Canada Revenue Agency by the employer. Again, administrative and substantively I agree with that.

Finally, the last measure introduced is a special elective and relieving tax treatment for taxpayers who elected under the tax deferral election introduced in budget 2000 to defer taxation of their stock option benefits until the disposition of the options securities. That appears to be a sound approach.

Section (e) under part 1 deals with accelerated capital cost allowance for clean energy generation. At the finance committee's prebudget hearings, which we have recently concluded, the issue of accelerated capital cost allowance came up frequently. It is an opportunity for businesses to write off, for tax purposes, desirable investments on an accelerated or quicker basis so they pay less tax, which allows them more cash flow to meet their obligations or, more important, to reinvest and continue to roll over their assets to ensure they have the assets, the machinery, the equipment and the like to be more efficient in their work.

Accelerated capital cost allowances is with us to stay. It has been used as a tool rather than a tax cut or something like that. This is effectively a tax deferral scheme. If the businesses keep doing it, it effectively represents a permanent reduction in taxes that could carry forward as long as they continue to invest in the capital, equipment and machinery. I agree with it as a tool and it is very much supported by those who are involved in equipment.

In this one, the section deals specifically with clean energy generation. With regard to our environment and addressing greenhouse gas emissions, et cetera, this is a positive development, which I support.

Section (f) is capital cost allowance for television set-top boxes. I do not know if anybody will understand that, but the capital cost rate for satellite and cable set-top boxes that are acquired after March 4 and that have neither been used nor acquired or used before March 5 will be increased to 40% to better reflect the useful life of the assets. This is effectively a correction of a rate, which is already available in the tax act. As it indicates, it is simply to reflect the fact that these assets have a very short lifespan or utility before substitutes become available and desirable by consumers. It allows them to write them off over a short period of time.

Section (g) under part 1 deals with the Canadian renewable and conservation expenses to do with principle business corporations. The definition of that will be amended to clarify that flow-through share eligibility extends to corporations the principle business of which is one or any combination of producing fuel, generating energy or distributing energy. I agree with that. It is a constructive move to make that change.

Section (h) deals with international financial reporting standards. It gets a little too technical, so I will not go to go there. Having looked at it, there is a five-year transition rule, and I think it works.

There is a sub-item on that. Amendments to the Canada pension plan and the Employment Insurance Act and the Income Tax Act will be made to provide legislative authority for Revenue Canada to issue online notices where authorized by a taxpayer. Again, this is an efficiency in terms of the process.

In addition, part 1 of the bill implements a number of other income tax measures. Employee life and health trust is new. The working income tax benefit will be amended for 2009 to $925 for single individuals with no eligible dependents and to $1,680 for individuals with at least one eligible dependent.

The amendments in this bill will ensure that the working income tax benefit amounts will continue to be indexed to inflation on an annual basis. Thank you, Mr. Minister. I think it is an important change.

There are some technical amendments to the tax-free savings account. I want to comment more fully on that, but I will move on.

Finally, there are the labour-sponsored venture capital corporation rules. Very few people will understand very much about that, but there are consequential amendments related to the tax-free savings account, which I want to address now.

First of all, I certainly support the tax-free savings account instrument, which allows Canadian residents who are 18 years of age or older to be eligible to contribute up to $5,000 annually in a tax-free savings account. The contributions are not tax deductible, but the investment income earned in a tax-free savings account will not be taxed. Since the contributions were not deductible when deposited, there will be no tax when withdrawn.

It is a good instrument to save money if one has money. This is of benefit certainly to middle and higher income Canadians who have cash that they are presently investing and paying income tax on the investment income. Now there is an instrument where they, their spouses and kids can have tax-free savings accounts. All of a sudden, formerly taxable investment income is going to be growing up in non-taxable instruments.

Eventually, I suppose, the taxes will ultimately come when that money is taken out and disbursed for consumption purposes and it works its way through the system. However, it is a leakage of tax revenue to the government, no question about it.

I raised my concern on this with the finance minister and officials last Tuesday. It has to do with the number of amendments they have to make. This is a simple program. One can put up to $5,000 a year in there, and on any income earned on eligible investments, one will not have to pay any tax ever.

We have amendments to make the income attributed to deliberate overcontributions and prohibited investments subject to existing anti-avoidance rules. We also want to make any income attributable to non-qualified investments taxable at regular tax rates. As well, we want to ensure that withdrawals of deliberate overcontributions, prohibited investments, non-qualified investments or amounts attributable to swap transactions or related investment income from a tax-free savings account would not create additional tax-free savings account contribution room. Finally, we want to effectively prohibit asset transfer transactions between tax-free savings accounts and other accounts.

It is a simple program, but the amendments that are being made say to me that the crafters of this and all the levels of care and due diligence that took place in the process somehow did not consider what would happen if people made overcontributions. The government did not consider that if people made an overcontribution, a penalty of 1% was actually a lower amount than what they could earn on those investments, so 1% was not a deterrent. People realized that they could invest at 3%, and if it cost 1% in penalties, they would still make 2% on something that is not going to be taxable anyway. It is getting around the rules.

How is it that the government could not deal with the issues of non-qualified investments? Obviously there are some. It could not deal with deliberate overcontributions, prohibited investments, non-qualified investments, or amounts attributable to swap transactions and what happens if this is done and what are the consequences.

The point I made there and I will make again today in the House is that I did not get a strong comfort level that there was rigorous due diligence and careful thought given to this particular program. With all the things that the government missed in a very simple program, in my view, if the little things are not done well, there is not a great confidence level with regard to the larger items.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's speech because she touched a lot of points that Canadians have also raised. In the brief time I have to ask a question, I want to focus in on the economic stimulus.

Last Tuesday, on the front page of The Globe and Mail, the finance minister was quoted as saying, “March 31, that is it. It is over”. There was an article about the city of Ottawa and should it not complete the project that it does not anticipate completing but costing some $5 million.

Interestingly enough, on the same day the minister appeared before the finance committee on Bill C-47 and was asked about the stimulus plan. His response was that the Conservatives would be flexible and would look at each project on a case by case basis. Just yesterday, the member for Ottawa—Orléans reported, although I do not know whether it was an authorized comment, that those that are substantially complete.

It does raise the question that there does not seem to be a position of the government. It appears to be a strategy to somehow create a crisis that March 31, 2011 is hurling toward us, then to ease up a little, and then to say that it will do something. It is almost like the Conservatives want to create a crisis and then they will resolve it and take credit for doing something good, when in fact they are the authors of both ends of the argument.

I wonder if the member would care to comment on whether the government has been straight with Canadians, with the municipalities and the provinces about their obligations so that they can make appropriate plans to deal with the projects they have. Timeliness is very important in this regard and the government should not be coy with Canadians, provinces or cities, but should just clearly indicate its intent with regard to the stimulus funding.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to rise yet again to speak to Bill C-47, a bill that, in an Orwellian turn of phrase, is entitled Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act.

Nothing would make me happier than to report to this House that people in my home town of Hamilton were actually experiencing an economic recovery. Then we, too, could take joy in a bill that claims to be sustaining that recovery. However in my home town, people are far from rejoicing in the lead-up to this holiday season. On the contrary, they are profoundly worried about their future.

The Prime Minister points to soaring bank profits and takes that as proof that the recession is over. For him, if his banking friends are out of trouble, everyone is out of trouble. However, Canadians see it differently.

One and a half million Canadians are still out of work. Six out of every 10 Canadians live paycheque to paycheque. Household debt is at record highs. Life is more expensive than ever.

Unlike the Conservative government, New Democrats will not declare this recession over until middle class families are back on their feet. A true recovery must not leave anyone behind.

That requires a fundamentally different approach to dealing with the economy than what the Conservatives have brought before this House to date. Since the Conservatives first became government, they have been destabilizing what was once a balanced economy in this country. It is an economy that Canadians had painstakingly built together since the second world war, a strong primary sector with timber and mining, a strong secondary transformation manufacturing sector and of course an important service sector.

That formerly balanced economy got skewed because of the government's tax policies. Since coming to office, the Conservatives have handed more than $60 billion in tax cuts to Canada's wealthiest corporations. Now I know that some on the backbenches of the Conservatives Party will suggest that those tax cuts went to all corporations, not just the wealthy ones, and that therefore they have simply been trying to stimulate the business climate in our country.

However that is a false argument. If a company is not making a profit, it cannot pay taxes on that non-existent profit. There is no profit to be taxed. Companies that could use a break the most are not getting any benefit from the much-touted tax reductions.

Who did get the money? It is companies like Encana, those that are piling up seas of unimaginable poisons behind the world's longest dikes near the tar sands. I do not need to remind members in this House about what happened in Hungary last month. Approximately one million cubic metres of red toxic sludge was released when a dike burst at the waste reservoir of an aluminum plant in that country.

Clearly it is not inconceivable that something similar could happen here. The poor track record of managing something as simple as protecting ducks from tailings ponds should set off alarm bells in all of us. Let us just imagine what is going to happen the day the dike breaks and who is going to be on the hook for those costs. Why, it will be taxpayers, of course.

We have never internalized the cost of the tar sands. We are bequeathing the obligation of paying the normal cost of cleaning up the mess from the tar sands to our children and our children's children. That, combined with the $60 billion debt for corporate tax cuts is one of the principle causes of the destabilization of our economy, and it is an unconscionable legacy to leave to future generations.

Now before government members jump all over me, let me be clear. I know that the tar sands are an important source of wealth for our country, but that does not negate the need and indeed the responsibility for that resource to be developed in an environmentally, economically and socially responsible way. That is what sustainable development is all about.

What is happening now is not sustainable, because the true costs of extracting oil have not been internalized. We are selling oil at artificially low prices. That brings in an artificially high number of U.S. dollars. That, in turn, pushes our Canadian dollar higher, which then makes it more difficult to export Canadian goods.

We have set up a vicious cycle of job losses, which are being felt especially in the industrial heartland of Ontario and Quebec. Clearly such policies do not sustain Canada's economic recovery, as the title of this bill would want us to believe. On the contrary, they exacerbate the job losses that were already affecting hardworking Canadians as a result of the 2008 recession.

Even before the current crisis hit in the fall of 2008, Statistics Canada reported that we had bled off 300,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector. It is little wonder that Canadians are worried. They are worried about their jobs. They are worried about their retirement savings. They are worried about their children's futures.

Let me just remind members in this House of a few reports that have been raised in this chamber during various debates:

From RBC Economics, today the typical Canadian family must devote 49% of its income to own a standard two-storey home, while mortgage rates are at their lowest point. That means people on average are spending half of their income to own their home, and they know if interest rates go up the costs will only increase.

From the BMO Financial Group, 64% of parents worry they will not be able to afford the rising costs of post-secondary education. Having recently met with student groups from across the country, I know that CFS, CASA, students in professional programs and graduate students would all echo that.

From the Canadian Medical Association, 80% of Canadians fear that the quality of their health care will decline over the next three years.

From the Canadian Cancer Society, Canadian families are concerned about the cost of caring for a terminally ill loved one, which is currently $1,000 a month, excluding the loss of income from taking time off work to provide care. That is one of the reasons I have introduced Bill C-534. It is one small step toward providing financial assistance to spouses providing in-home care.

From the Canadian Institute of Actuaries, 72% of pre-retired Canadians worry about maintaining a reasonable standard of living in retirement and maintaining a reasonable quality of life.

From RBC Economics, 58% of Canadians are concerned with their current level of debt, averaging $41,470 per person, which is the worst among 20 advanced countries in the OECD.

From the Canadian Payments Association, 59% of Canadians believe they would be in financial difficulty if their paycheque were delayed one week. Think about that. More than half of all Canadians are living paycheque to paycheque with virtually no savings to fall back on. This is a country with a lot of people who are profoundly worried. For them, the devastating impact of the recession is clearly not a thing of the past. It is still being felt every single day.

To be debating a bill that talks about sustaining Canada's economic recovery will seem a little far-fetched for a lot of Canadians who may be watching our proceedings in the House today. They want to experience the economic recovery first-hand, and so far, they have been left behind. Regrettably, it looks as if things are going to get worse before they get better, at least if the Conservative government has its way.

Last week the finance minister kicked off his pre-budget tour for the 2011 budget, purporting to be listening to Canadians. Yet he began by telling seniors and hard-working families that they should not get their hopes up, that there will not be any new big spending because he has no money left. Both parts of that assertion deserve a closer look.

First, let us look at why he has no money left. The government has created the single biggest deficit in Canadian history at $56 billion. We already know that the $6 billion annually for additional corporate tax cuts had a great deal to do with that, yet the finance minister insists on continuing them despite the fact that our corporate tax rates are already lower than those of our biggest competitor, namely the U.S.

Do Canada's chartered banks really need another tax break? In the first nine months of this fiscal year, they reported $15 billion in profits and they have set aside an astonishing $7.5 billion for executive bonuses this year. I would defy the government to find a single Canadian outside of that exclusive club who thinks that additional tax cuts for the big banks ought to be a priority for the government.

Nor did Canadians think that the government used money wisely when it hosted the G8 and G20 summits last summer. The Conservatives spent $1.3 billion for a 72-hour photo op at the G8 and G20 summits. That included $1 million for a fake lake, $300,000 for a gazebo and bathrooms that were 20 kilometres away from the summit site, $400,000 for bug spray and sunscreen, more than $300,000 for luxury furniture and $14,000 for glow sticks.

The Conservatives would want us to believe that such is the price of hosting events on the world stage, but the security cost of the G8 meeting in Italy was $124 million in 2009. The year before, it cost $280 million in Japan. It cost $124 million in Germany. Once again, it is about choices.

For just over half of what it cost to host the G8 and G20 in Canada this summer, we could have improved the guaranteed income supplement so no Canadian senior would have to live in poverty. The remaining $600 million would still have been higher than the expenditures on any other summit. Clearly, the Conservatives' claim of being fiscally responsible is not borne out by reality.

Now to the government, of course, that is all water under the bridge. The government wants us to forget all about how we got to the record deficit and just wants us all to begin focusing on tightening our belts to get it back under control. Well actually, that is not all of us. There is still new money around. It is just not there for the priorities of hard-working Canadians.

Here is some of the new spending that has already been announced and for which money will be found in the upcoming budget. First, of course, is the ongoing commitment to spending $6 billion annually on additional corporate tax cuts. Next, there is the government's decision to continue Canada's military presence in Afghanistan.

According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Canada's military mission to Afghanistan up until 2011 will cost Canadians $18 billion. The government originally estimated that the military extension from 2011 to 2014 would cost $1.6 billion in military and $300 million in aid over the three years.

However later on, the government announced that the military costs were actually higher and the extension will cost $2.1 billion.

By contrast, according to PCO documents, the strictly civilian role envisioned by Canadian officials for the 2011-2014 period would have focused on diplomacy and development at a total cost of $.5 billion over three years. That would have been less than 25% of the cost of the military extension.

Next, there is the commitment to build U.S.-style mega-prisons in Canada. This is despite the fact that crime rates are actually going down. According to the President of the Treasury Board, we need those prisons to lock up the unreported criminals who have been doing unreported crimes. The cost is a cool $10 billion to $13 billion, and to find the money for those astronomical costs the government has shortchanged municipalities to the tune of $500 million on policing costs and shut down the successful prison farm program.

At least no one can accuse the Conservatives of letting sound public policy stand in the way of their ideological agenda.

Then there is the $16 billion that has been committed for the next budget year to the purchase of F-35 fighter jets. This is the single biggest defence procurement purchase in Canadian history. It raises a number of important questions.

First, why is this huge expenditure so vital to Canada's defence when we cannot even properly patrol our coastline? Why was this an untendered contract? Where is the transparency? Where is the accountability?

We know that technology problems plague the F-35 program, that commitments from some other countries are far from certain and that even the U.S. Pentagon says the program is two years behind schedule. There is a cost overrun of 65% and, worse of all, we have no guarantees on price, jobs, quality or value for money.

The government is flying by the seat of its pants and yet it stands firm in its commitment to purchase 65 new fighter jets. Canadians deserve transparency and accountability, and above all they deserve a say in whether this money is well spent.

Together the above four commitments alone account for $34 billion in new money that is already earmarked for future spending. Apparently there is plenty of money floating around for the government to act on its priorities. However for hard-working Canadians and seniors, there is nothing left but to tighten their belts.

Frankly, that is not good enough. Canadians deserve better and they deserve to be heard.

I would invite the Minister of Finance to come to Hamilton with me and to listen, really listen, to what the priorities are in our community. Jobs, EI and retirement savings are right at the top of the list. The minister will know that our community has been devastated by plant downsizings, restructurings and closings.

I have raised the case of U.S. Steel on numerous occasions in the House. Not only did the government fail to do due diligence when it approved the foreign takeover of Stelco by U.S. Steel but, now that the workers have been locked out, it is failing to provide even the basic support of providing the workers with EI. This is despite the fact that there was a $57 billion surplus in EI, which successive Liberal and Conservative governments stole to pad their general revenues in previous years.

It is simply outrageous, and hard-working members of USW Local 1005 deserve better from this government.

However they are not the only ones who have been devastated in recent years. I could list literally dozens of manufacturing plants that have closed their doors completely and thousands of workers in just about every sector who have lost their jobs or had their hours cut during this last recession.

That is why they have looked with hope to the government's infrastructure program, which promised $3.2 billion for job creation through investments in provincial, territorial and municipal infrastructure. Fourteen projects were approved within the city of Hamilton, totalling $184 million of stimulus funding. The 15th project was announced for the city on September 25, 2009. A condition of the funding was that approved projects be substantially completed by a deadline of March 31, 2011. It was understood that the federal and provincial governments were determined to see the projects completed in a timely manner.

However, it is difficult to appreciate the taxpayer benefit of withdrawing funding to the municipal governments for public infrastructure projects that extend beyond the March 31 deadline, particularly where projects may be delayed due to a number of factors that are beyond the municipalities' control.

In Hamilton six projects are at risk for not meeting that deadline, primarily due to factors that are indeed beyond the municipalities' control. First, although the program was intended to run over two years, project announcements were not made until June 2009, thereby effectively leaving only a single construction season for project completion.

Second, one of the projects was further delayed when its funding was not announced until September 2009.

Third, contractors, particularly for specialized construction, were difficult to obtain because of the large influx of stimulus funding, all with the same completion deadline.

Fourth, the approval process by some ministries and regulatory agencies have delayed some of the projects.

Despite these challenges, all 15 of the infrastructure projects are well under way. The delay in completion before the March 31 deadline is a matter of months, not years, and yet now the government is indicating that there will be absolutely no extension given to complete these important community projects. This, despite the fact that the Prime Minister himself stated at the opening of the recent G20 summit, “To sustain the recovery, it is imperative that we follow through on existing stimulus plans”.

In Hamilton, this is particularly germane. While recent employment figures reflect significant year over year job creation across the country, Hamilton is still experiencing increased unemployment. From June 2009 to June 2010, our jobless rate rose half a percentage point, from 7.2% to 7.7%. For our community, the ability to complete all of our infrastructure projects is critical to Hamilton's economic recovery. Conversely, the potential withdrawal of infrastructure funds after March 31 will only compound the pressures on our city and local taxpayers during this economically challenging time.

I have absolutely no doubt that the completion of these projects is much more important to Hamiltonians than the construction of prisons for unreported crimes, and I suspect the same is true in communities from coast to coast to coast.

I implore the government to listen to Canadians and extend the infrastructure deadline.

While I am on the subject of jobs, let me point out as well that we urgently need action on creating green jobs for a sustainable future. My NDP colleagues and I have laid out a comprehensive strategy for protecting jobs and protecting the environment, but urging the government to take action on that file is probably not time well spent. After all, the Prime Minister and his Conservative colleagues just killed a landmark climate change plan after it was passed by elected members of Parliament.

The New Democratic climate change accountability bill was Canada's only federal climate change legislation. Members of Parliament supported it and Canadians supported it but the Prime Minister refused to listen and then he instructed his unelected, undemocratic senators to kill the bill. By obstructing progress, the Prime Minister ignored the will of Canadians and left our country dangerously unprepared for climate change. Regrettably, it is our children and grandchildren who will pay the ultimate price.

I know I am running out of time but there is so much more that needs to be addressed. I have heard from so many constituents about what they believe the government should focus on in the upcoming budget but I will not be able to get it all on the record here today. Perhaps I could point to the excellent report of the HUMA committee as a short form for some of the other issues that must become priorities for government support.

Currently in Hamilton, 18,600 people depend on food banks every month and more than 8,100 are children. The Globe and Mail reported last Friday that there has been a 25% spike in the number of seniors now living in poverty. Poverty is real and it is pervasive but it is not inevitable.

We must ask ourselves a question. The banks and car companies received their bailouts from the government but where is the bailout for the poor? During this recession, we have seen the Conservative government bailing out big businesses. such as the auto and banking industries, but putting few resources into helping to build the social infrastructure necessary to aid the most vulnerable in our society.

Civil society groups are challenging all of us to do better. They are calling on the federal government to be more responsible, more accountable and to prioritize resources to child care, the child tax benefit, EI reform and social housing. These organizations have all been working tirelessly toward the same goal of eliminating poverty in Canada.

In Hamilton, I want to give a particular shout-out to the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction, the Social Justice Coalition that campaigned for adequate welfare, Social Planning & Research Council, the Hamilton Community Foundation, Wesley Urban Ministries, the Good Shepherd Centres, Food Share, St. Joseph's Immigrant Women's Centre, Neighbour 2 Neighbour, the Hamilton's Centre for Civic Inclusion, the Housing Help Centre and the United Way. The list does not end there but each and every one of these organizations demonstrate unbelievable resilience through their continued efforts. Their work is inspirational and is a large reason that I remain so hopeful that it is not too late to build a better world.

Here in the House of Commons, New Democrats are taking up their call. Thanks to the incredible work of my colleague from Sault Ste. Marie, New Democrats now have a bill on the floor of this House calling for a national poverty strategy and an action plan with clear targets and timelines. The three priority areas that the bill addresses are income security, social inclusion and housing.

Instead of hitting seniors, who are the most vulnerable, with the HST on everything from home heating to haircuts, let us bring the federal government back into the discussion about its role in public life relating to poverty, the economy and taxation. Part of that conversation has to--

[Robert Carrier, Bloc, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Madam Speaker, Bill C-47, a budget implementation act, is at third reading.

The Bloc Québécois spoke out on several occasions against the budget presented by this government. The budget proposed by the Conservatives perpetuates the federal government's encroachment on areas of Quebec jurisdiction. The budget also clearly penalizes the Quebec government. Another source of major dissatisfaction for Quebec is the fact that this budget maintains a tax system that is extremely generous to the banks and oil companies while putting the burden of the deficit on the middle class, workers and seniors.

The Bloc Québécois's budget suggestions have always been consistent with the expectations of Quebeckers and, if the government had implemented them, they would have ensured that Quebec came out of the crisis prosperous, sustainable and green.

The Conservatives, supported by the Liberals, have continued to focus their policies on the needs of Ontario and Alberta to the detriment of Quebec. Despite all the fine Conservative promises of 2006 about a new openness toward Quebec, the Conservative budget does not satisfy the needs of Quebec's economy. Forestry, aerospace, the environment and culture are priorities of Quebeckers that have been completely ignored. What is more, Quebec's top priorities—enhancing employment insurance and the guaranteed income supplement, harmonizing the QST with the GST, and implementing a real plan to help the forestry industry—have not been addressed in the budget.

The government is also confirming its intention to create a Canada-wide securities commission despite opposition from economic players in Quebec and its National Assembly.

It is clear that the Conservative government has many priorities other than Quebec. The automotive industry in Ontario has received $9.7 billion, while the forestry industry, which is so vital to the regions of Quebec, has received only $170 million.

For all intents and purposes, the environment was ignored in the budget. However, the Conservative government has put $1 billion toward developing nuclear power, which benefits Ontario, Alberta and the oil companies. These companies already have generous tax benefits.

What I find the most upsetting in this budget is that it ignores the need to improve employment insurance and the guaranteed income supplement, which is keeping our seniors in poverty. It also ignores the need to deal with the issues of social housing and homelessness.

As for the guaranteed income supplement, an issue that is dear to my heart and concerns many of my constituents, for years now the Bloc Québécois has been calling on the various Liberal and Conservative governments—we had a Liberal government in 2004 when I was first elected—to stop pulling the wool over seniors' eyes. We have asked the government many times to take concrete action in order to help the thousands of seniors throughout Quebec who are lacking the basic resources they need to live in dignity. In 2007, I introduced Bill C-490 to make significant changes in order to allow our seniors to live in dignity.

Since coming to power, the Conservatives have gotten into the habit of being misleading and telling half-truths in order to govern according to their ideology while keeping public discontent at bay. Just recently, we saw another shocking example of their bad faith when they distributed documents congratulating themselves on increasing guaranteed income supplement benefits.

Those increases are nothing more than adjustments that have been planned since 2005. In reality, the Conservatives have done absolutely nothing since 2006 to help older people who are struggling financially, and needs remain considerable and urgent.

But let us go back to the legislation before us, Bill C-47, to implement various initiatives presented in the budget on March 4, 2010. The Bloc Québécois voted against the budget because it was unfair to Quebec, but does not object ideologically to all the measures resulting from it. The Bloc Québécois actually supports many of the initiatives presented in the bill, which our party helped to enhance. We especially support the clauses to improve the allocation of child benefits. The government agrees to pay half to each of two parents who have joint custody in order to ease the tax burden on beneficiaries of a registered disability savings plan, a plan that was designed to provide severely disabled children with financial security.

We also support the provisions to reduce the administrative burden on charities and some small businesses and tighten the rules around the TFSA in order to prevent tax avoidance, as well as those that will prevent companies from benefiting from double deductions for stock options.

However, despite our support, we also have many reservations. This bill confirms the Conservative government's intention to spare rich taxpayers at all costs and have the workers and the middle class pay off the deficit. The government will continue to treat stock options like capital gains for ordinary taxpayers. The Bloc Québécois deplores the fact that only half of the income derived from stock options is subject to federal income tax. The Conservative government could show fairness to workers and collect $1 billion in tax by cutting off this gift.

Businesses are not being asked to pay their fair share to increase government revenue, except that they have to make source deductions to ensure that employees with stock options pay their taxes. Furthermore, this bill attests to the Conservative government's inertia with respect to the environment and the fight against greenhouse gases. Only one environmental measure is included: encouraging the production of clean energy.

The government is ignoring the Bloc's urgent calls concerning equalization payments and increased transfers for education and social programs. It is ignoring our recommendations concerning income security for pensioners.

I would like to address some of the measures in this bill that affect entire areas of Quebec society. First, I want to address the measures regarding income tax on charities, as included in part 1.

The government is changing the rules on sums that have to be spent on charitable activities by repealing the rule on charitable spending, changing the rules on capital accumulation, and strengthening the rules against tax avoidance. In Quebec, we can count on the dedication of 16,000 charities registered with the Canada Revenue Agency. The Bloc Québécois believes it is vital that charitable organizations be able to focus on their activities, rather than on constant fundraising. Accordingly, we supported the campaign to eliminate the capital gains tax on donations of securities and private equity holdings to charities.

In addition, the Bloc Québécois is open to the idea of extending the tax credit for charitable donations.

In response to the 2010 budget, the Bloc Québécois deplored the fact that the government did not consider the issue of charity funding. The survival of these organizations is especially important given that the Conservative government has used terrible methods to reduce its deficit, which could lead to reduced public services. The decisions related to health transfers are one example of this.

When it comes to international aid, we cannot help but be concerned by the major withdrawal and the politics of fear imposed on NGOs by this government. This withdrawal is particularly apparent in the case of organizations whose positions are at odds with the government's viewpoints.

In budget 2010, the federal government announced its plans to cap expenditures for development assistance, thereby confirming that it would not make the effort needed to achieve its target of 0.7% of GNP.

The Bloc Québécois recognizes the important role of charitable organizations in Quebec society and around the world. They all need predictable, long-term funding in order to fulfill their respective mandates. The federal government must stop extending certain programs on a temporary basis and stop being so secretive about its intentions regarding the funding of organizations. In doing so, the government creates uncertainty among the most vulnerable, our community groups and the charitable organizations that help them.

The Bloc Québécois will also continue to call on the federal government to implement a realistic plan to achieve the UN target of 0.7% of GDP for international assistance as quickly as possible. If the federal government does not increase its budget for development assistance, it will greatly impede the vital work that is being done by charitable organizations in the developing world.

Part 3 of the bill deals with measures pertaining to federal-provincial fiscal arrangements. The purpose of these piecemeal arrangements, made at the behest of the federal government, is to facilitate tax sharing by Canada and Quebec. The Bloc Québécois believes that it is high time to come up with a vigorous mechanism ensuring that Quebec receives all taxes paid in the province. For that reason, we are asking the federal government to initiate talks with the Government of Quebec in order to create a single tax return in Quebec, on the basis of an agreement similar to that for the GST, for all taxes paid by Quebeckers.

Since 1991, the Government of Quebec has collected the goods and services tax for the federal government, which compensates it for this service. The Bloc Québécois believes that Quebec should collect all income tax. Not only would corporations and individuals save considerable sums every year, but the reduced cost of tax collection would lead to recurring savings that, in turn, would lower pressure on public finances. The introduction of a single tax return by the Government of Quebec would save hundreds of millions of dollars by reducing duplication.

Part 7 of the bill, which also deals with federal-provincial fiscal arrangements, particularly addresses total transfers, including equalization. The Quebec government is the loser with this implementation bill, as it was with the 2010 budget, because the Conservatives have maintained their decision to unilaterally cap equalization payments.

Since the equalization envelope is now capped, the total amount of equalization payments will be calculated in line with economic growth, which means that Quebec will lose several billion dollars over the coming years.

There is nothing in this bill about the formula affecting a segment of Hydro-Québec's revenue, either, which deprives the Quebec government of an additional $250 million. Lastly, there is nothing planned with regard to education and social program transfers. The Bloc Québécois is calling for a substantial increase in investments in these programs to return to the 1994-95 indexed level. Such an increase would mean that Quebec would receive $800 million more annually for the funding of its social programs.

The government is flatly refusing Quebec's urgent calls for an increase in federal transfer payments, in particular in education. The growth in health and education transfers will be compromised as of 2014-15 since the Federal Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act does not allow for any further growth in these transfers beyond 2014.

Furthermore, the bill currently before us provides no compensation for the harmonization of Quebec's sales tax. Even though Quebec has been unanimously calling on the government to provide financial compensation of $2.2 billion, this is still being denied. Total compensation of $6.86 billion has been allocated, including $4.3 billion to Ontario, and the rest to British Columbia and three Atlantic provinces.

For days there have been rumours from the office of Quebec's finance minister that Quebec and Ottawa will reach an agreement on this by spring. It is only a glimmer of hope, but if this agreement goes through, more than 20 years of injustice will finally be remedied.

The Bloc Québécois will support this bill to implement various initiatives in budget 2010, but the many reservations we have expressed about this budget and its serious shortcomings show that the Conservatives still have not understood the economic and cultural reality of Quebeckers.

The public cannot be fooled so easily, as we saw in yesterday's byelection in Quebec. The Liberal government in Quebec, which for months has been ignoring calls by the public to hold a public inquiry into the ties between the construction industry and political parties, was defeated in a riding that it had held for more than 25 years.

The fact of the matter is that Quebeckers do not identify with this Conservative government. They deplore the fact that their cultural and economic development are being hindered by this government and they are not shy to make that known at election time.

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

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for his presentation regarding Bill C-47. I want to initially congratulate him for discovering this issue and dealing with it very expeditiously, and of course, the government has responded. So it was very good that he got onto it very early and dealt with it.

This budget of the Conservative government increased the air travellers security charge by 50%, which makes it now the highest in the world. Revenues collected through the tax exceed the amount spent on security. Over five years, we have raised $3.3 billion through the tax, but we have spent only $1.5 billion on security itself.

One of the results of this is that the government is now the best friend of the North Dakota and U.S. air industry, with over 50,000 Manitobans now streaming to Grand Forks to fly on U.S. carriers because they are increasingly cheaper than Canadian carriers. So as a result, they are bypassing the use of Canadian airports. I understand, of course, that part of this has to do with the high dollar, high passport fees and other issues, but certainly increasing the air tax by 50% in the budget, when Canada already had the second highest air tax in the world, makes us now the highest taxed in the world in terms of air taxes.

Could the member comment on what this is doing to the tourism industry in this country, which is already on a downward spiral?

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question and I appreciate the fact that he also agrees with what I had to say about seniors.

There is not one word of anything that I spoke of in Bill C-47, except to say that this is how they are going to pay for it. There is not one word about depleting the GIS in the budget implementation act, except now we know that this is how they are going to pay for it. So although the budget implementation act speaks softly and kindly about seniors, it is not what is in the budget that matters, it is what is not in the budget.

This would have been the proper place to describe what the Conservative government did. It did not do it. The decision was made on May 17, 2010. The legislation that we are debating here was not even given first reading until September 30.

The Conservatives did this solely outside of the purview of Parliament. They did this behind closed doors, and they did it by regulation. These are the issues on which I feel all parties should have a say, which we were denied. It is not in the budget but it certainly has serious implications for it.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Madam Speaker, Parliament is currently reviewing the contents of Bill C-47, the Conservative government's budget implementation act. The bill was tabled on March 4 and received first reading only on September 30.

This is the largest deficit spending budget in the history of Canada. The spending will occur through borrowed funds that not only this generations but generations to come will have to pay for. The debt will be growing.

What is not unveiled in this budget document is another source of income to pay for these provisions within the budget document.

Canadians were told, it was revealed in the House just last week, that a significant source of the income of the funds required to pay for this largest deficit spending budget in the history of Canada will be borne on the backs of Canadian seniors.

It was revealed just last week that a secret policy had been established by the Conservatives to strip seniors of their pensions, to do so by taking away the right to GIS, a guaranteed income supplement. This is absolutely ridiculous.

The policy dates back to May 17. There was absolutely no notice of the policy. There was absolutely no information given to any Canadian senior or any Canadian citizen. It goes beyond impacting seniors, because it also impacts any Canadian who is attempting now to put money away for future retirement through an RRSP.

We know that our retirement system is based on several key platforms or planks. One of course is the Canada pension plan; another is the OAS, the old age security and subsequent GIS benefits, which flow from it; and the other plank is private investment, where working Canadians through the course of their entire working lives try to put a few dollars away in an RRSP, in a sheltered RRSP, which by law must be converted into a registered retirement income fund in due time.

The travesty has so upset Canadian seniors, when they discovered this information through things that were revealed in the House by myself and through the hard work and dedicated work of a retired Service Canada employee. He spent his entire working lifetime helping and supporting seniors and helping them navigate and understand the rules related to Canada's pension systems, Canada's public pension system and as well trying to navigate those rules and how they work with Canada's private pension system.

It was revealed by a Mr. Gerard Lee through his own work, through his own understanding and investigations of this that secret rules were put in place on May 17 affecting a senior's eligibility for GIS, the guaranteed income supplement.

For the benefit of members on the other side of the House who may not be aware of how the GIS works, the guaranteed income supplement is a key plank, an income-tested plank in the public pension system of our country. It builds upon the old age security program, OAS, which is a near-universal public pension for seniors. The GIS, which flows from that, is actually a directed pension system, directed in particular at our lower income Canadian seniors.

How the GIS is influenced by other forms of income is very important. In order to determine eligibility, the GIS is not based on seniors' current year income. It is actually assessed on their previous year's income. In other words, the determination of whether a senior might be eligible or might be receiving a GIS supplement in 2010, a guaranteed income supplement, was made based on 2009 income. The total amount of income seniors received in 2009 would determine whether or not they were eligible in 2010.

However, because last year's income is not always a very appropriate determiner of what resources a senior has available to him or her in this year, 2010, the government when it established this program recognized that one-time or lump sum income sources can be excluded from the income assessment for the pensioner in determining eligibility for GIS.

Specifically, income sources such as employment insurance benefits, which have a finite start and stop, which were basically made available in the previous year, can be optioned out of the GIS eligibility criteria in determining this year's benefits. Workmen's compensation benefits, which have a finite stop and start, could also under existing, former and current rules be optioned out of the eligibility calculation. Certain pension benefits and annuities can be optioned out of the calculation.

Since 1957, Canada has had a registered retirement savings plan and we champion that as a source of retirement investment. We encourage Canadians to invest in RRSPs. We put it into law that any RRSP after a senior hits the age of 71, must by law be converted into a RRIF. So we encouraged investments into RRSPs by granting tax shelter benefits, tax reprieve at the time of the investment, and we guaranteed our citizens that we would not mess with it; we would keep this as a stable, solid investment in perpetuity. We want to encourage working people to invest in RRSPs so that, coupled with the public pension systems and their own workplace pension systems, they have an additional source of income to be able to meet their needs and to meet the needs of their families. That was a solemn commitment, I thought.

On May 17, in a very secret, very dishonest way, the government changed all that. Conservatives put in place a new system of rules for the calculation of the guaranteed income supplement. They did not announce one word of it to any citizen. They did not put out a press release. They did not make this information available to any seniors' organization. Conservatives said, effective this date, that for the purposes of calculating the guaranteed income supplement, when senior citizens withdraw any money from a RRIF, deplete a RRIF, that money now is calculable against their income for the purposes of whether or not they are eligible for the GIS.

Let us think of a senior citizen who puts away a small amount of money under an RRSP, by law is required to roll it over into a RRIF, thinking that is a nest egg, a safety net, a source of funds to respond to emergencies with. That senior citizen, after the age of 71, has the unfortunate circumstance of having to bury a loved one, or pay for emergency home repair or pay for unanticipated costs related to a medical illness, cancer, heart attack or otherwise. Prior to May 17, he or she could use RRIFs, could organize finances in such a way as to use some of a RRIF, withdraw those funds, deplete that RRIF and not have that money used against him or her for the purposes of the calculation of the GIS. That is no more.

Now as of May 17, the government decided, but did not tell anyone, that any senior citizens who withdraw their RRIFs in a lump sum payment or otherwise now are going to lose their GIS. Fundamentally what the government did was it took the value of their RRSPs, the value of their RRIFs, and cut it by 50% right off the top, and it is also taxable at the moment the money is withdrawn from the fund. It is an incredible assault on the well-being and the security of our seniors, and the Conservatives did not even bother to tell anyone about it.

It has been said here in this House that (a) the minister did not know anything about it, but (b), now that she does know, it really does not affect too many people.

First, let us talk about whether or not the minister knew anything about this.

In the last number of weeks, when queried by investment counsellors as to whether or not the practice had changed, the Minister of Human Resources Development Canada sent out letters acknowledging the change made May 17 and defended the policy.

Second, the minister now says that this does not affect very many seniors.

Let it be understood that there are 1.5 million eligible recipients today of the guaranteed income supplement. That is 1.5 million, by definition, lower-income Canadian senior citizens. As I said, the GIS is income-tested. Only those who have a lower income threshold are eligible for the GIS. There are 1.5 million lower-income Canadian senior citizens who are directly impacted by this.

Bear in mind that $3,500 is not an elitist amount, $3,500 a year to try to help maintain and stabilize the standard of living of a senior. However, any senior citizen who withdraws any more than $3,500 a year from a RRIF will lose the GIS or a substantial portion of it. Those are the facts.

Any senior citizen who contributed a dime into an RRSP, over 20, 30 or 40 years of a working lifetime, will be directly impacted by this decision, because as we know, an RRSP must be converted to a RRIF, by law, at the age of 71.

The minister suggests this is only a small number of lower-income senior citizens, and I would love to know exactly what the minister thinks is just a small number. Lower-income senior citizens are directly impacted by this cash assault for the benefit of paying for Bill C-47. What is it, 200,000, 300,000 or 400,000 Canadian low-income senior citizens? I guess that is a small amount.

This is an outrage. It is not only the 1.5 million Canadian seniors currently depending on the GIS system for their income who are affected. People who are now contributing to an RRSP, thinking they are developing a modest nest egg for their security in retirement, need to know whether or not they should stop doing that and start putting their money underneath their mattress.

Here are the consequences of these rules. When funds are withdrawn from a savings account, not a registered account, to pay for a cancer treatment, emergency home repairs or to offset the cost of the burial of a loved one, that is not computable against the GIS. That is a person's own money. However, withdrawing money from a registered retirement income fund, which one may have spent a lifetime trying to acquire, is computable against GIS.

In other words, the RRSP and RRIF system is now in jeopardy. Not only would one lose 50% right off the top but other benefits too.

The province of Newfoundland and Labrador, for example, and many other provinces base their social programs for senior citizens on an income-tested program. Instead of creating a second set of rules, considering the federal government's guaranteed income supplement, GIS, is income-tested and is directed specifically at lower-income senior citizens, many provinces simply model that, and a recipient of GIS will also get other benefits, such as a provincial senior citizen's drug card.

A drug card can be worth anywhere from nothing, if you happen to be fortunate enough to be in great health, to $50,000 per year, if you happen to need emergency high-cost medications and other services. All of a sudden this decision to pay for the federal budget on the backs of senior citizens in a secret, clandestine way, is not only costing senior citizens their full GIS entitlements that they worked so hard for, fought for and built this country for, but what is not known to many of them is that they are also losing their drug cards from the provincial governments as a result.

The government did not have the gumption to even bother to inform them what would happen if they made this decision. After years and years of following a particular practice and of understanding the rules a certain way, seniors acted within what they felt were the rules. It is hard to act within the rules when we are not even told what they are. In other words, if senior citizens, on November 30, 2010, withdrew RRIF funds thinking the rules were in place in a certain way, they will not find out that they just hit themselves very, very tragically in their own personal finances until next year, because GIS is not based on a person's current year's income. If we make a withdrawal from a RRIF, deplete a RRIF in 2010, the impact is not even foretold to us until Canada Day, July 1, 2011. Happy Canada Day.

That is what a secretive government does. It prevents us from knowing what the consequences of its actions are and prevents us from acting in our own best interest. That is what they did to Canada's senior citizens.

It would not be until 2011 that anyone who withdrew any funds from a RRIF, depleted a RRIF, would even know about it, because the exercise of optioning those funds would not be explained to them, or the fact that they cannot option those funds like they can option employment insurance, workers' compensation benefits and certain annuity payments. To pay for Bill C-47, the budget implementation act, the most significant deficit-spending budget in the history of Canada, what was not told to them, was not told to me, was not told to us and what was not told to any Canadian citizen is that the government will pay for this budget on the backs of Canadian seniors. The cash grab in all of this is unreal.

The minister has said that he has just found out about this and he will put a stop to processing the policy right now. He will review it, but it is still very much on the table. It is still very much on the table for him to do it down the road, and should he, by implication, agree with what he decided on May 17, 2010 after all, he will recoup an awful lot of money. He will have court judgments or whatever. He will file letters of notice that the money he is forgiving right now, he will recoup down the road.

The integrity of our registered retirement savings plan system, of our registered retirement income fund system, and of our public pension plan system requires consistency and a solid, steady hand at the administrative wheel. It does not need and will not accept a minister who decided but just got caught, so now he will give it a temporary reprieve to try to get out of this mess, but he will hold us in limbo until he figures out whether or not he will keep the policy.

Our seniors deserve better. Rescind this policy, do not review it.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his intervention on Bill C-47 and more broadly on the underpinnings of our economy. He is quite right. The GDP dropped down to 0.03 from 0.06.

At the finance committee meeting where the minister appeared on Bill C-47, the minister was engaged with regard to the economic stimulus plan, particularly the reports in the press where cities, municipalities and provinces were concerned about the March 31 deadline. Last Tuesday in The Globe and Mail, the minister himself reported that there may be some movement. Yesterday, the member for Ottawa—Orléans was a little more specific about the economic stimulus and that projects were substantially completed.

This seems to be a creeping story about what is happening, but the fact remains that the government is playing coy with Canadians and with the cities and provinces. I wonder if the member would care to comment on whether or not the government has been straight with Canadians and with stakeholders, such as the provinces and cities, about making appropriate plans. It could be a very expensive proposition if the government were to download these costs on the banks--sorry, their backs.

The House resumed from November 29 consideration of the motion that Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures, be read the third time and passed.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to hear the Bloc Québécois support the Conservative government's budget policies, but it is also a little surprising. In fact, we have often stood alongside the Bloc to denounce, for example, the theft from the employment insurance fund. Bills C-9 and C-47 are spinoffs of this. The employment insurance fund is in there. For example, they are imposing new airline security taxes, which are inflating airline ticket prices in Canada. The Bloc is supporting that. There is a new regulation concerning the harmonized sales tax. The Bloc has not done anything to obtain compensation for Quebec for the harmonization it has already undertaken in this area. We are very surprised to hear the member for Holchega kowtow to the Conservatives once again and support the government's budget policies. We are very surprised by that.

Let us take a look at what is in Bill C-47, which the Bloc is supporting, and in the Conservative government's economic policy. Everything that happen in politics happens in a certain context. I would like to read a Reuters article from today, which was written by business journalist, Louise Egan.

I will read from this article from Reuters entitled “Canada record-high current account gap spurs worry”.

Louise Egan says this on behalf of Reuters:

Canada entered the club of countries with oversized current account deficits in the third quarter, posting the biggest shortfall on record as its worsening trade profile heralded a further slowdown in economic growth.

That is today.

Statistics Canada said on Monday:

The country's eighth consecutive quarterly shortfall in the current account--a measure of transactions in goods, services and investment income--totaled C$17.54 billion...compared with a revised second-quarter gap of C$12.98 billion.

Analysts surveyed by Reuters had forecast $15 billion.

What is interesting to note is that we are getting observations from people like Doug Porter at BMO Capital Markets, who said “Canada suddenly finds its broadest trade deficit in the company of countries that have typically been cited as extravagant over-spenders/under-savers”. He also said, “This may prove to be a passing phase but it is in fact an early warning that the country may be living beyond its means”.

In the days leading up to the G20 summit of the world's leading emerging and advanced economies, the U.S. treasury proposed capping current account surpluses and deficits at 4% as a way of achieving a better balance between surplus nations like China and debt ridden importers like the United States. We are above that 4% right now.

What we have to look at is how this fits into the overall budgetary plan of the Conservatives, such as it is. That is probably more of a compliment than they deserve to even mention the word plan when discussing the tragedy that has been visited upon the Canadian economy in the past five years since the Conservatives came to power.

We occupy the second largest land mass in the world and we have only 35 million people to try to give that value. That has always required the understanding of a government that placed value on the creation of jobs, on the creation of long-term growth and on the idea that we would try to go into those sectors of the economy that were the most forward-looking and the most productive. The Conservatives will have none of that.

The Conservative ideology is that anyone who seeks to have the government take a look at the economy, to balance it out and to have it grow long-term and make sense in some way is trying to pick winners. Their central thesis is a pristine marketplace that effectuates the best choices in all circumstances.

What we have had is an across the board tax cut being proposed by the Conservatives since they arrived in power. That is their panacea. That will solve all the problems. There is one slight difficulty with that. Any company, especially in the manufacturing field, that was not making a profit had not paid any taxes, so they did not get anything from the Conservatives tax decreases. The most profitable companies received those tax decreases, companies in the oil sector. The banking sector saw the same thing.

We will see a bit later this week the most recent quarter of bank profits, but for the first nine months of this year, Canada's chartered banks made $15 billion in profit. That is not because they are clever managers. It is because they have a quasi monopoly and they can charge people basically whatever they want, especially since the Conservatives came into power. Paying 25% on a credit card is no problem. Banks gouge customers every time they go to the banking machine. No problem. Why not? As far as the Conservatives are concerned it is normal to give a tip to the bank president every time someone accesses money at an ATM.

The real problem is the Conservatives have been destabilizing the erstwhile balanced economy that Canada had so painstakingly built up since the second world war. They are doing it by giving these across the board tax cuts, blind to any notion of productivity, blind to any notion of the creation of stable, long-term jobs which would allow people to raise a family. That is a thing of the past. As far as Conservatives are concerned, the market can decide.

When companies like Encana and Enbridge get millions of dollars in windfall because they have had a reduction in their taxes, we are still hollowing out the manufacturing sector. We are superheating the petroleum sector, bringing in an artificially high number of U.S. dollars, putting increasing pressure on the Canadian dollar, something that the textbooks refer to as “the Dutch disease”. This was after the situation that existed in Holland in the 1960s where the discovery of gas meant that a large number of foreign currencies were coming into the country, pushing the guilder ever higher. All of a sudden the Dutch realized that what was supposed to be manna from heaven was in fact destroying their economy because they could no longer afford to export their goods.

When we look at today's StatsCan figures, we realize the only thing that Canadian companies are spending is on equipment coming in from other countries. We can no longer produce on a competitive basis. Our manufacturing sector is being hollowed out. It is interesting to note that StatsCan, shortly after the Conservatives came to power, almost in a defensive statement, which I have never seen anything like it from StatsCan, said Canada was not suffering from the “Dutch disease”. When somebody bothers to use a term like that and then to affirm that it does not apply, my radar is automatically starting to ping. Why is it even mentioning it if it is not the case? That statement was made in 2006.

Between 2004 and 2008, in other words in 2008 before the current crisis hit, StatsCan put out new figures that showed precisely the opposite of what it had affirmed two years earlier. Between 2004 and 2008, Canada, mostly in Ontario and Quebec the industrial heartland, had bled off 322,000 good paying manufacturing jobs. The prime reason for that was we failed to internalize the costs of the oil sands. Instead of taking the fiscal space that was available and trying to help those sectors of the economy that needed it the most, we were giving the money to those sectors of the economy that were already making the largest profits.

How did we create the fiscal space for the $60 billion in tax increases that had been given to Canada's most profitable corporations? It is not very complicated. The Conservatives finished off the job started by the Liberals. They took $57 billion out of the employment insurance account and transferred it to general revenues of the government. A lot of people would look at that and say “so what, who cares”, that it was government money before and it government money after, but there is a huge difference. Every company, whether they were making money or losing money, had paid into that EI account as had every employee. We had that $57 billion purpose built, dedicated to take care of the inevitable cyclical aspect of the job market in Canada and when the recession hit, there would be money there to pay people employment insurance benefits.

The Conservatives cleaned out the account and now there was no more money there. There is going to be a $15 billion deficit that is going to have to be paid back again by all companies. Whether they are making profits or not or whether they are paying taxes or not, they are going to have this payroll tax for every job in their companies. That is what the Conservatives did. They created that fiscal space to give the tax decreases to the most profitable corporations by looting the employment insurance account, by taking the money that was there to create the fiscal space to do it.

When we talk about sustainable development, the notion that comes most immediately to mind is the environmental aspect. That is after all the driving force behind the United Nations report by Brundtland, the former prime minister of Norway. He put together this important report with a view to the Rio summit in 1992. That was a way of saying every time the government had to come to a decision with regard to a problem, it had to look at not only the environmental but also at the social and economic aspects.

As we have cleaned out the manufacturing sector in Canada, we have shovelled forward onto the backs of future generations not only the environmental debt, which I will talk about in a minute with regard to the tar sands, but we have shovelled the financial and fiscal burden onto their backs. Hundreds of thousands of people will be coming to retirement in the next decades. They will no longer have a proper pension plan. At least in the manufacturing sectors those used to be provided for. We have seen what has happened to companies like Nortel, but more generally, employers that take over companies in Canada with the complicit attitude of the Liberals especially and the Conservatives, the first thing they go after is the pension plan of their employees. That is for the social aspect.

However, let us look now at the long-term deficit with regard to the environment and how that is continuing to cause one of the biggest problems in the Canadian economy. One of the basic principles of sustainable development is we have to internalize the costs of the environment. These are basic principles like user pay, polluter pay. We have to ensure we look at the life cycle analysis of anything that is put on the market.

Right now we are as guilty as a company that is manufacturing a product that is pushing all of its garbage into a river and claiming that it is making a good profit because it can sell cheaper, the way we are developing the tar sands. Right now we have a way of developing them which means we are not cleaning up the mess, we are not including it in the price. We are not even including the price of attempts to go after carbon capture and storage. That is being left on the general tax burden on the backs of every Canadian.

We have an unusual situation. We claim that we have the strategic resource that we are exploiting in the public interest, but in fact we are leaving a huge environmental burden on the back of future generations in addition to the fiscal and financial burden.

I talked about the $57 billion looted from the EI account. I talked about the $60 billion in tax reductions for Canada's richest corporations. It is no coincidence that Conservatives have also racked up the largest deficit in Canadian history also to the tune of $60 billion, and the three are related.

If we continue like this, we will have hollowed out manufacturing sector, we will have become, for all intents and purposes, a third world country relying almost exclusively on the exploitation and extraction of resources that we pump to our neighbours as quickly as possible. That is not a figure of speech, that is literally the case.

Let us look at what we have done with the tar sands. There are projects like Keystone, Alberta Clipper, Southern Lights and we are putting in these pipelines. The Conservatives had them approved rapidly since they became government. They have scrapped the Navigable Waters Protection Act since they came to power. Just recently, they scrapped the whole environmental assessment process in Canada to send it over to the National Energy Board, which has no experience or expertise in the matter, to ensure these large energy projects get approved as quickly as possible.

Then the North American Free Trade Agreement moved in to provide its impetus in all of this. Under the North American Free Trade Agreement, there is a proportionality clause that means, essentially, that once we have started exporting the raw bitumen in such large quantities to the United States, we cannot reduce the quantities we export unless we reduce what we send to ourselves.

An independent outside analysis of just one of those projects, the Keystone project, concluded that there were 18,000 jobs being exported to the U.S. at the same time. Like a third world country, we do not even add the value here. There is no processing. Nothing is added. There is no refining. We are not doing anything with it to create permanent, long-term jobs here. It is a shameful way of destabilizing the balanced economy that we have built up since the second world war.

The government has always argued that it is not what is really happening, that those of us who say that the government can and should play a role in building a stable economy are trying to pick winners. The Conservatives have chosen their winners and it is the oil companies and the banks. People are going to pay for those lousy choices. Instead of looking at the most productive jobs and the most forward-looking parts of the economy, things that could be helping us for the future, creating a system of green renewables across the country, that is all going to be lost.

We have had an extraordinary occasion for the past five years to do something for future generations, but the vituperative, closed, narrow-minded attitude of the Conservatives has meant that they spew their venom at those who want the government to do something right with the economy. They claim to be doing a good job, but today's Reuters article, which will be in various forms in all of the economic papers across Canada tomorrow, prove just the contrary, that what the NDP has been saying for years in the House, that the Conservatives are destroying the balanced economy that Canada built up since the second world war, is in fact true.

The NDP is not alone in saying that Canada is suffering from the Conservatives' political and economic choices. It is now proven by today's statistics from Statistics Canada. That is why the NDP has no issues with saying that Bill C-47 will never receive our support, no more than Bill C-9 will, because it reflects the Conservatives' overall budget policy.

Earlier, I listened patiently to the member for Hochelaga, who said that the NDP was going to vote against, but he did not know why. I will return the compliment to my friend and colleague, the member for Hochelaga, by saying that, aside from general remarks about Bill C-47—he seems to have plenty to draw on—it would have been nice if he had told us exactly which clauses in Bill C-9 he likes. Furthermore, with everything we now know about the awful consequences of emptying the employment insurance fund, how can he support a bill that deals yet another blow to employment insurance? How can he support a bill that imposes yet more taxes on people who buy airplane tickets? How can he stand there and vote on the harmonized value-added tax without saying a word about how Quebec was the first province to harmonize its taxes? I was in the National Assembly when that happened. When the maritime provinces later did the same thing, I was there, and I saw how Bernard Landry reacted, with good reason, by saying that Quebec had already harmonized its taxes and was entitled to the same compensation the maritime provinces received.

They said the rules had changed. Even though Quebec was the first, its harmonization was not the same as theirs, so only the maritime provinces would receive compensation. It just so happens that the maritime provinces were about to vote in a federal election, and the Liberals really needed their support.

Then the same thing happened in British Columbia and Ontario. We have already spoken out against that, and we know how the story played out. Still, they said that the rules had changed again.

For all of these reasons, the NDP will once again vote against the Conservative government's budget policies.

[Daniel Paillé, Bloc, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to reassure the member for Mississauga South. There are days when a lot of talking happens, but I have no intention of taking as much time here in the House as he has, with so much imagination.

This bill is a perfect example of how thorough the Bloc is. Yes, we said that that we were against the overall budget speech and we voted against it. But now that it has been passed, we need to move on. That is what we are doing.

We have thoroughly analyzed this bill and our opinion is: why not? We should vote in favour of passing this bill at this stage because we have done a thorough analysis of it.

It is unfortunate that not all the opposition parties work like that. We know full well that the Liberals say they will vote against it, but when it comes time to vote, they will not be here. The NDP will vote against it because they are against it. Do not ask them why, but they are against it. At least they will be here.

Certain measures in this bill are important, and it would be proper for us to point out what we agree with. Some measures deal with personal income tax. The first measure I will talk about would allow the following benefits to be shared between parents who have shared custody of children: the universal child care benefit, the Canada child tax benefit and the GST or HST credit.

It can be a sad thing for families, but we have to accept the fact that, in Quebec and Canada, many families are blended and many children's parents do not live together. More and more parents share custody of their children. For example, the universal child care benefit is $100 per month, and as we know, it is given to parents of children under the age of six. This bill would divide that benefit between the two parents who share custody of their children. This is why the Bloc is so important. This is our hallmark. Having thoroughly analyzed this measure, how can we oppose it? The answer is clear for anyone who has done a thorough analysis. I cannot see myself telling my Hochelaga constituents that we will vote against this kind of measure because we are ideologically opposed to the government.

Another measure that we find completely acceptable is the one that would enable people to roll over the proceeds of a registered retirement savings plan to the lesser-known registered disability savings plan (RDSP), where investment income accumulates tax-free. Everyone knows about RRSPs, but RDSPs were created to enable parents to save for the long-term financial security of a child with a severe disability. These measures make it possible to save money depending on the degree of the child's disability. In many cases, parents of such children have RRSPs.

What happened when they die? These registered retirement savings plans have been taxed like any other. Now, parents and grandparents of a child with severe disabilities will be allowed to roll their RRSP, if they have one, into a registered disability savings plan, which will help meet the child's needs. If the child should pass away, it will be taxed in the usual way.

How can anyone be against such a beneficial social measure that—fortunately—will not affect very many people, but that can help families caring for a child with a severe disability get through the grief of losing a parent or grandparent?

These measures apply to personal income taxes, but there are also other measures that apply to charities. We all have charities in our respective ridings. Some of the administrative rules that were—pardon the expression—a bloody nuisance have been repealed. Everyone knows how hard the people who run charitable organizations work. These people work all day long, sometimes seven days a week, to achieve their charity's goals. Yet those organizations are weighed down by completely unreasonable administrative requirements.

Charities will now be allowed to give the Canada Revenue Agency information. That agency was already receiving information from charities, but it forced them to give information concerning the percentage of donations it had to spend in a year based on the tax receipts they had issued, for example. Thus, a charitable organization that has issued $100,000 in tax receipts for 2010 has to spend at least $80,000 the next year. Sometimes charities would not meet that standard and near the end of the year, they would have a tax problem. That standard will be reviewed and charities will simply have to fill out the information requested by the CRA, and that will be sufficient.

Charities were also obliged to spend the equivalent of 3.5% of the organization's assets every year. If a charity wanted to accumulate a certain amount of capital in a given year, it could not do so, because it absolutely had to liquidate 3.5% of its assets. That was another administrative nuisance.

The government finally seems to realize that the left hand was asking for information while the right hand—the Canada Revenue Agency—already had all the information. I do not see how anyone could be against more flexible requirements for charitable organizations.

As far as charities are concerned, there were different stories. However, we think that the government should not be saying that it was nice to charities while it is cutting funding to NGOs and development agencies around the world. The Bloc Québécois position on that is very well known: we must not stop pressing the government to give 0.7% of GDP to international development agencies. We will continue to press the government to achieve that objective, which obviously was set by the UN. Nevertheless, we must commend the establishment of more flexible administrative rules.

Other measures have to do with corporate taxation. In January, the Bloc Québécois toured Quebec. It asked the Minister of Finance to do better when it comes to taxing stock options. We said that a certain number of bonuses should be taxed more, in other words excessive bonuses should not be deductible from corporate profits as an expense. We regret that such a measure is not included.

Let us now talk about a measure related to performance bonuses. Sometimes corporations offer their employees stock options. There is nothing wrong with that. It is part of the benefits offered to the employees. However, when the stock options are issued, a loophole in the legislation allowed a double deduction, in other words, the employee and the employer could both deduct those options. That is no longer the case. The government is announcing that in 2014 and in 2015, it will bring in $400 million thanks to the elimination of this double deduction.

We agree with this measure, but it does not go far enough. The government could take this even further. What the government is showing us is that it is possible to close loopholes in the legislation and tax stock options. It is not as though the Conservatives are being adamant about not touching this. In fact, the Conservatives are handling this quite well in Bill C-47, and we are supporting them.

The measure is good, but the government could do better. That reminds us of school report cards. We have all received the comment “good behaviour, but could do better”.

The rules related to tax-free savings accounts, TFSAs, have also been tightened. Last week, my colleague from Saint-Lambert asked a question regarding the guaranteed income supplement. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development and to the Minister of Labour told her that the government was doing everything it could for seniors living close to the poverty line by creating TFSAs. Clearly, he did not understand the documents he had before him at all. The bill also resolves a number of issues with the TFSA. Everyone knows that someone can contribute $5,000 per year after taxes to a TFSA and that the income generated by the account will not be taxed.

Some wily investors were depositing much more than $5,000 per year into their TFSAs. They had to pay a penalty of 1%, which was not really a penalty at all considering that returns could be far higher than 1%. Now the bill will close the loophole. How? Any amount over $5,000 will be taxed at 100%. I find this interesting. What does this tell me? It tells me that this government, when it wants to close loopholes, can impose tax rates of up to 100% on excessive income. It is doing that very thing. However, last year, when we suggested a very high tax rate on extremely large bonuses, we were told that implementing such a measure would be impossible. I have been watching the government and I say that it is possible. Yes, it is possible. The government is doing that very thing and we support its actions. We are in favour of this bill because of these types of measures.

There are also clean energy measures. Very few people are interested in the phenomenon of capital cost allowances, or depreciation. Many people do not have any idea what that even means. I understand. When it does not fall within the realm of your occupation, it can be a bit of a dry topic, but capital cost allowances permit businesses or individuals who have investments to deduct the cost of an asset based on the useful life of that asset.

Naturally, when you own a business and you purchase a truck, you do not depreciate the truck over 20 years. It will not last 20 years. There are many formulas and tables used to calculate depreciation of an automobile or computer hardware, for example, over three years. However, when the goal is to help the business and to foster a form of investment, accelerated capital cost allowance makes it possible to recover the cost more quickly. This is the case for geothermal equipment.

Our colleague from Brome—Missisquoi is an expert in geothermal energy in Quebec and Canada. He could talk about it for hours. When we examined solar heating, geothermal energy and distribution equipment for district energies, we obviously agreed.

For that reason, the Bloc Québécois, which is known for its thoroughness and which examines bills one after another, says that unfortunately with regard to geothermal equipment, we agree. We have to agree.

The bill also contains measures concerning the implementation of international standards. It will allow international accounting standards adopted by everyone to be used by public corporations. We will no longer use generally accepted Canadian accounting principles. We will be using accounting principles from international financial reporting standards. Can we oppose this? Everyone uses them. Therefore, we support this measure.

This bill will also authorize the Canada Revenue Agency to issue online notices. It is about time. The time has come to issue online notices of assessment. Everything is online. Is the Conservative government behind the times? Yes. Is it far behind? Yes, but it is catching up. It is getting there, and we cannot vote against that. We must at least mark the gesture. It is behind the times but at least it is getting there in situations such as these.

It is because of these types of measures, and after thorough study of the bill, that we are making an exception and voting in favour of the bill. However, we voted against the government's budget as a whole and we were present. The Liberals were against it but they were not present. The NDP were against it, although they do not know why, but at least they were present.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-47, the implementation act for budget 2010.

Canadians across the country are struggling to pay their bills and plan for the future and so obviously is the government. The government has shown itself to be so fiscally irresponsible that Canadians no longer trust it. They cannot trust it to manage the fiscal future of Canada. They are growing tired of the constant missed budget targets, ballooning budgets and reckless spending. Unfortunately for Canadians the government governs with ideology instead of facts and even then its outrageous spending is hardly conservative.

While the Conservative government focuses only on the electoral cycle and short-term progress, it fails to plan for the future of Canadian industry and for the jobs of tomorrow. Its visionless spending risks Canada's fragile economy and threatens to create even larger issues down the road. Canadians are aging and their government has no plans to help them.

The finance minister recently lectured Canadians saying, “This is not the time for dangerous and risky new spending schemes that will increase deficits and raise taxes”. However, Canadians are wondering why he does not take his own advice. Canadians are wondering why he is lecturing them and not his own government.

As the finance minister asks Canadians to tighten their belts, he continues to borrow from their already underfunded futures and recklessly spends on everything under the sun. His risky spending outlined in budget 2010 delivers deafening blow after blow to the future of our economy and our country.

To really get an idea of the lack of vision and lack of value for tax dollars the government has provided, we need only look to its record of reckless borrow and spend fiscal irresponsibility.

The Minister of Finance talks about restraint when his government has never shown an ounce of fiscal restraint. I do not have enough time to tell the House about all of the finance minister's own risky spending schemes. I would need infinite and unlimited time for that, so instead I will take this time to tell the House about some of the risky and reckless, borrow and spend Conservative schemes that are leaving Canadians scratching their heads and asking where their tax dollars have disappeared to.

Even before the downturn, the Conservative government burned through the $13 billion surplus it inherited from the previous Liberal government. The government claims to want to eliminate the deficit when the only thing it ever eliminated was the surplus.

Under the Conservative government, Canada holds the largest deficit in Canadian history, at $56 billion. The Conservative spending that led to the deficit is exactly the kind of risky spending Canadians cannot afford.

In October 2008 the finance minister said, “At a time of global economic uncertainty, no responsible economic manager would suggest experimenting with...massive increases in government spending”. He then increased government spending by 17.8% the next year. Imagine that. In fact, before the economic downturn, the finance minister increased spending by 18% over three years. He put the country in deficit before the recession. He took a $13 billion surplus and turned it into a deficit before the recession began.

The House proceeded to the consideration of Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures, as reported (without amendment) from the committee.

Business of the House

[John Baird, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of the Environment]

Mr. Speaker, before I respond to the hon. member's question, I want to say that at our House leaders meeting just two weeks ago, the government raised the issue of one of the Liberal members calling a minister of the Crown a “slime” five times.

The House leader for the Liberal Party is seeking to raise the decorum and the quality level of debate in this place. The member is a senior member of the Liberal shadow cabinet. Before I answer the normal Thursday question, I wonder if the member could update us on where we are on that.

The House leader of the official opposition has also been very passionate in wanting to reduce the amount of heckling in this place and yet we was rather egregiously heckling the Minister of Finance yesterday on Walkerton. I spoke with the member who represents that constituency and that community takes great offence at the continuing vilification of the name of their town. Maybe we will get that next week with the slime comment.

Today we will continue the opposition motion from the Bloc Québécois.

Friday we will debate Bill C-41, strengthening military justice, and Bill C-43, the RCMP labour modernization.

On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday of next week we will call Bill C-49, action on human smuggling; Bill C-47, sustaining Canada's economic recovery; Bill C-22, protecting children from online sexual exploitation; Bill C-29, safeguarding Canadians' personal information; Bill C-41, strengthening military justice; Bill C-43, the RCMP labour modernization; Bill C-54, child sexual offences; Bill C-33, safer railways act; Bill C-8, Canada-Jordan free trade agreement; and, Bill C-20, an action plan for the National Capital Commission.

Thursday will be an allotted day for our friends in the New Democratic Party.

Finance

[James Rajotte, Conservative, Edmonton—Leduc, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the eight report of the Standing Committee on Finance concerning Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures.

The committee has reported it back to the House without amendment.

Comments by Member for Mississauga South

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday in my presentation on the question of privilege raised by a member of the NDP, I did quote from one or two emails.

I would indicate to the hon. member, who is a member of the finance committee as well, that those emails were given to the committee members yesterday at the public meeting on the consideration of Bill C-47 when the Minister of Finance appeared.

That is where they were distributed to me. They were handed to me by the clerk. They were available on the table. The member has his facts all wrong.

Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, the member's point is well taken. It is the roll out. It is one thing to have a piece of legislation. The other is to have a piece of legislation that is operable and efficient.

I can give one example. At the finance committee today we had the finance minister and his officials before us on the budget implementation act, the second bill. I asked them about the tax free savings accounts because in that bill there needs to be amendments dealing with deliberate overcontributions and prohibited investments. There were about five different amendments dealing with tax free savings accounts. If people put up to $5,000 a year in this account, the income they earn on it is not taxable. Real complex.

However, there are more amendments happening in Bill C-47 on tax free savings accounts than the legislation segment creating it.

I basically told the officials that they had not done their job. Where was the due diligence? Where was the consultation? Where was the anticipated question? Where was the roll out plan and how were we going to be sure that this thing worked, when we had anticipated all of the things that people would do, particularly some of these shrewd tax planners.

We do not seem to work smart. We work hard. We have jillions of people. I was told we had sign-offs at every level but not one of them contemplated what to do if there was an overcontribution. It is obscene.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Okay. Under Bill C-47, with regard to the disbursement quotas for registered charities, this all has to do with a private member's bill that is currently before the finance committee, in which the member has expressed some concerns about the amount of money related to the charity that's not getting down and hitting the ground to help people but is being absorbed by expenses and in other ways. In fact, it touches on disbursement quotas.

This seems to be going in the opposite direction, so that it's opening up the ability of charities, in fact, to spend more money on operating expenses and capital expenditures with less money hitting the ground to assist the targets of the charity. Is that the fact?

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

It's a good thing question period is coming.

Gentlemen, I had the opportunity to attend the briefing that officials gave when Bill C-47 first came out. As far as I recall, there were very few questions, and that I think was a credit to the work that was done by the officials, to be there, to be prepared, and to answer whatever questions there were.

On the TFSA, the tax-free savings accounts--and you may know that I asked the minister about that--this is a very straightforward, understandable intent, to be able to set up an account in which the income from that will not be subject to taxation, subject to certain limits per year. But the number of amendments, the scope of the amendments that have been proposed in Bill C-47 with regard to over-contributions, prohibited investments, attributed income, non-qualifying investments, etc.... It's a fair bit, and it strikes me that when you see all of these things...this was a very sloppy job, in my opinion.

I would have thought that any program worth its salt would have had a rigorous review, due diligence, and a sign-off by everybody who touches this thing. Did that happen?

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

It is fine. It was in response to Mr. Wallace's request that we start. To help you determine how we are going to proceed, I just wanted to let you know that we are going to vote against Bill C-47 and its various clauses, and I will ask for a recorded division on each clause.

[Tim Wach]

The elimination of the disbursement quota as a function of charitable receipts clearly will make it easier for charities because they will have a disbursement quota that they no longer have to worry about, or at least one that used to be in place. And raising the threshold of the disbursement quota that is a function of assets that are not used in charitable activities from the $25,000 to the $100,000 threshold will also eliminate, for some of the smaller charities, filing requirements. They'll still have to file with the CRA. They'll still be subject to CRA supervision. And as I mentioned, there are within Bill C-47 anti-avoidance rules that were introduced, and they were announced in the budget as well. The intention to introduce these rules--

[Tim Wach]

The changes to the disbursement quota are not intended to affect the ability of the CRA, Canada Revenue Agency, to oversee the activities of the charitable sector. In fact, the changes in Bill C-47 introduce some stronger anti-avoidance rules that are intended to address some transactions that we had become aware of whereby charities were engaging in some activities that might be viewed as contrary to the disbursement quota rules as they stand.

[Tim Wach, Director of Legislative Development, Tax Policy Branch, Department of Finance]

The box-top sets in question are the decoders that are used for satellite or cable television. It's actually not an accelerated capital cost allowance that is provided, but really one that reflects the economic life of the asset. The change that was proposed in the budget and that is included in Bill C-47 is simply intended to bring the CCA rate into line with the economic useful life of the underlying asset. It was a particular item that was identified by the department. We are constantly looking at the rates that are provided for tax depreciation to ensure that they accurately reflect the economics of the particular assets, and this is one that was identified and brought forward as part of the regular process.

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

Initially, on Bill C-47, I would like you to explain. We're all very interested in the accelerated capital cost allowance on box-top sets of televisions, because I think that's an issue that's pivotal to our deliberations today. So please explain to the committee the accelerated capital cost allowance on these. We do have a global economic crisis, and the government is bringing forward visionary policies to address the issue that we're hearing about from constituents on an ongoing basis, and that is, accelerated capital cost allowance around box-top sets? What is that? I don't own a television. Explain to me the policy. It's very important that we understand it.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

So we don't see it in Bill C-47, correct?

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

I have an additional question, if there's time.

My colleague Mr. Szabo introduced the subject of the tax-free savings account and the changes in Bill C-47. But I don't feel he provided an appropriate amount of time for you to elaborate on the changes that are taking place in that respect.

I'm sure Canadians are becoming aware of the fact that as a Conservative government we've cut taxes in a hundred different areas, in every form of tax that the government collects: personal, consumption, business, and excise.

The tax-free savings account was a landmark change for Canadians. I note that Peter Aceto, the chief executive officer of ING Direct Canada, is known to say:

We think TFSAs are a great gift the government has given Canadians to help them save.... It's the most important thing that's happened in that regard since RRSPs 50 years ago.

Bill C-47 does address some of the abuses that were taking place in the last year. I am wondering if you could elaborate further for the committee on what those changes are.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Thank you very much. I'm going to focus on a similar subject to red tape, but in a different area.

Supporting the good work of charities across Canada is obviously a shared goal among all parliamentarians. During the finance committee pre-budget consultations, we heard many ways that government could assist charities, either through tax changes or reducing red tape. I know we have heard from many charities throughout the years about the need to cut their red tape so they can devote more of their time and energy, their resources, to actually helping others and not dealing with needless administrative paperwork.

One measure being legislated through Bill C-47 helps to cut red tape facing charities. I'm wondering if you'd be willing to describe how this measure will help the charity sector. Also, what has been the reaction to date among the charities to that important measure?

[Jim Flaherty, Conservative, Whitby—Oshawa, ON]

Thank you.

As you know, we did reduce the paperwork burden on business in Canada by 20%. That got rid of about 80,000 redundant regulatory requirements.

There are two specific red tape provisions in Bill C-47. First of all, there's providing Canada Revenue Agency with the authority to issue notices online, if the taxpayer requests, for those notices that can currently only be sent by ordinary mail. That will decrease the amount and volume of paper. Secondly, it will allow certain small businesses to file and remit semi-annually rather than monthly. Many small businesses would prefer to do that, and it reduces their paperwork burden as well.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Minister, we hear from constituents in small businesses in our communities about the burden they face with filing tax returns, the red tape associated with that. This is especially true of the small and medium-sized businesses in our communities that are the largest job providers, as you know. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business estimates that businesses currently spend over $30 billion a year in complying with regulations.

Our government has done a lot to reduce the number of regulations that businesses have to comply with and the paperwork burden associated with that, but Bill C-47 goes further and it includes two important measures. I was wondering if you could elaborate for this committee the steps this bill takes to reduce that paperwork burden even further.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Thank you.

Minister, tax-free savings accounts: good idea, poorly executed. This act, Bill C-47, has to now deal with deliberate over-contributions, prohibited investments, income attributed to non-qualified investments, withdrawals of deliberate over-contributions, prohibited investments, non-qualified investments, swap transactions, related investment income, and effective prohibited asset transfer from TFSA accounts to other accounts.

Considering it was such a simple plan—a good plan—but so badly executed and having so many amendments, what have we done to make sure this never happens again, so that our tax act doesn't become even more complex than it already is?

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Minister, for joining us today.

I left the industry meeting to come here. We're talking about pensions at industry. We've talked about pensions around this table at finance. I know that you've worked very hard with your counterparts at the provincial level on pensions.

The Conservative government has put together proposals and changes to the pension plan, the federally regulated pension plan, over the last year. Could you highlight for me, Minister, what's in Bill C-47 that continues our progress in improving the pension system for Canadians?

It's a nice question, isn't it?

Thank you.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

I'm sure that you're going to be shocked to actually hear a question that's relevant to what we're supposed to be discussing here today, and that's Bill C-47.

Thank you, Minister, for coming. I appreciate your taking time to come here today.

Reflecting on Bill C-47, there are a number of issues and measures in C-47 that follow on the path this government has taken, which has been to help job creators, and to help job seekers, which is the one I would like to ask a question about. That's the working income tax benefit that was in Budget 2007 originally. It was very forward thinking. It was doubled in 2009 and was applauded by many, such as the Caledon Institute, which suggested that it was a welcome addition to Canadian social policy and filled the long-recognized gap in Canada's income security system, and the United Way, which reflected that it's a positive change that will help to improve the situation of low-income families.

Personally, I don't think enough people, specifically those people who don't fit into that income bracket, actually understand what this has done. We have taken nearly a million people completely off the tax rolls with tax reductions, but WITB allows them to take part in the economy.

Perhaps you could explain what in Bill C-47 we've done to continue that and extend that?

[Jim Flaherty, Conservative, Minister of Finance]

Thank you, Chair.

I will not go on too long in my opening remarks, to make sure there is lots of time for the committee's questions.

Before I begin, let me congratulate the chair and all members of the finance committee for their work over the past few months on the annual pre-budget consultations. Along with my own consultations as the Minister of Finance, the finance committee's pre-budget consultation helps ensure that Canadians have the chance to make their voices heard. Recommendations flowing from this committee's hearings always inform and influence the ultimate budget content. I urge the finance committee to conclude its work. I know you're in the process of preparing your report, and I look forward to receiving and reviewing your findings.

First, however, I want to urge the committee to study and adopt Bill C-47, the Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act.

The Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act is one of the many measures the Conservative government has taken to address the global economic crisis. The act contains many provisions that are key to Budget 2010 and is thus an important part of Canada's Economic Action Plan, which helps create jobs and contributes to economic growth from coast to coast.

Since July 2009, nearly 430,000 net new jobs have been created in Canada. Of those, 380,000 are full-time jobs. The IMF and the OECD both project Canada to lead the G-7 in economic growth over the next five years; we're not alone in recognizing the strength of the Canadian economy. The Economist magazine calls Canada an economic star; the OECD says “Canada looks good—it shines, actually”.

Our government is on the right track on the economy and for Canadian families. However, as we have said all along, the global economic recovery remains fragile. That's why we must continue to implement Canada's economic action plan and move forward. Bill C-47, the Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, does precisely that, moving forward to ensure that our economy continues to stay on track.

The act includes measures to help Canadian families get ahead: by indexing the working income tax benefit, or WITB; by allowing RRSP proceeds to be transferred to an RDSP, a registered disability savings plan, on a tax-deferred basis; by allowing a 10-year carry-forward for RDSP grants and bonds; by further strengthening federally regulated pension plans; by measures to cut red tape, helping registered charities with disbursement quota reform, allowing taxpayers to request online notices from the Canada Revenue Agency, reducing the paperwork burden for taxpayers; by measures to close down tax loopholes, such as better targeting of tax incentives for employee stock options and addressing aggressive tax planning relating to TFSAs or tax-free savings accounts; by measures to protect consumers, such as improving the complaint process for consumers when dealing with the financial services industry; and finally, measures to promote clean energy, such as expanding access to accelerated capital cost allowance for clean energy generation.

Clearly the Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act introduces key measures to support Canada's economic recovery. I would like to highlight a few of the aforementioned measures—only a few—starting with closing tax loopholes.

Our Conservative government understands that ending tax loopholes is necessary to ensure that all taxpayers pay their fair share of taxes.

In order to broaden this objective, measures were announced in Budget 2010 and are included in this act regarding the taxation of employee stock options. For instance, changes proposed to the taxation of stock option cash outs will address aggressive tax planning strategies. These strategies have enabled some individuals and businesses to avoid paying taxes on a portion of stock-based compensation.

I'm happy to report that this move in support of fairness has been welcomed even by business. I can't say that the closing of these tax options has been uniformly welcomed by business, because I have heard some concerns expressed by some businesses about the fact that we are taking away a rather lucrative tax option that has been exercised by some. But I think most of the business community accept the fact that we need to have a level playing field and that the key is lower taxes overall, not special tax options that certain groups can take advantage of.

In fact, that view is reflected by John Manley, the president of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives. Here's the way he put it. He said:

...our members have always felt that if you get the system right everybody's going to benefit. ...if you said to them, would you rather have some special treatment on options or would you rather have very competitive corporate income tax rates, they would say we will take the latter, thank you very much. Keep the rates as low as you can. Forget any special loopholes. ...having a fair tax system is going to be the top priority.

Mr. Chair, before I conclude, I would like to address important measures in Bill C-47 related to the RDSP. One of the most important actions our government has taken in support of persons with disabilities has been the creation of the registered disability savings plan. The RDSP helps parents and family members provide long-term financial security for a severely disabled child.

The Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act includes two proposals to further improve the RDSP.

Under the current rules for RRSPs and RRIFs, a deceased individual's RRSP or RRIF proceeds may be transferred on a tax-free basis to the registered retirement savings plan or income fund of a financially dependent infirm child or grandchild. To give parents and grandparents more flexibility in providing for a disabled child's long-term financial security, Bill C-47 proposes to allow a deceased individual's RRSP or RRIF proceeds to be transferred on a tax-free basis to a financially dependent infirm child's or grandchild's RDSP as well.

The second improvement to the RDSP would allow a ten-year carry-forward of Canada disability savings grant and Canada disability savings bond entitlements in an RDSP. Colleagues, this recognizes the fact that many families of children with disabilities may not be able to contribute regularly to their plan. This will give them more opportunity over a longer period of time to top up those RDSPs.

Both proposed changes will further ensure that RDSPs give Canadian families peace of mind, helping them save for the long-term financial security of a loved one with a disability.

Tina Di Vito, director of retirement strategies at BMO Financial Group, called the changes fantastic measures, adding:

...the benefit will be huge. This will allow more people with disabilities to get the care they need. With the RDSP, Canada is leading the world in showing how smart policy can help provide financial security and independence for people with disabilities.

Mr. Chair, in summary, this act will help ensure that the Canadian economy continues to move in the right direction. With support from Canada's economic action plan, the Canadian economy has started to recover. We must continue to provide the steady guidance that has allowed Canada to continue on the right track to recovery.

With that, I invite the questions of the committee.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Good afternoon, everyone. This is the 47th meeting of the Standing Committee on Finance. Our orders today are pursuant to the order of reference of Thursday, November 4, 2010. We are studying Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures.

We are very pleased to have officials from the Department of Finance, and the Minister of Finance, the Honourable Jim Flaherty. We have Minister Flaherty for the first hour.

Minister, as you saw when you came in, you were very warmly welcomed by all members of this committee; we appreciate having you here. We look forward to your opening statement, and then we'll have questions from members. Welcome to the committee.

Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division at second reading stage of Bill C-47. Call in the members.

The House resumed from November 3, consideration of the motion that Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in debate on Bill C-47.

I want to begin by congratulating my hon. colleague from York West on the excellent work she does on behalf of seniors. She shows great concern for our seniors who are struggling these days. Imagine being on a fixed income that is tied to interest rates when interest rates are as low as they are these days and what a challenge that is to live on very low incomes. When she spoke of people living on incomes of $11,000 a year, it is heart-rending to consider what kind of a life that means for a person. Think of widows, for example, living on that income or sometimes less and how they manage to eke out, to survive.

I want to extend my appreciation for her excellent work in this regard and also my appreciation for my colleague from Malpeque, who spoke before, who has always been a powerful voice for the farmers of Canada and who has great passion for agriculture and for the challenges farmers face. Thank goodness they have a voice like his in Parliament.

During the worst recession in decades, at a time when Canadians families have been struggling to care for sick loved ones, to save for the kind of retirements we were talking about a moment ago and to pay for their kids' education, these borrow and spend Conservatives spent the last four and a half years, almost five years now, wasting billions of taxpayers' dollars.

By the year 2015, the Conservatives intend apparently to add $170 billion to our national debt. Imagine that. When we came into office as the Liberal Party back in 1993, we came in with a Conservative deficit of $42 billion and we managed through the hard work of Canadians. Government obviously played a role, but Canadians sacrificed and got us into surpluses nationally and gradually paid down the debt, year after year for eight consecutive years of balanced budgets, paying down our national debt, moving our country in the right direction and helping to lower our interest rates.

When we lower interest rates, what happens? People can more easily afford to spend on things because they are not paying as much on their mortgage or on their car loan and they can afford perhaps a little more. They can afford to live a little better and it makes a difference in their lives. It makes it a little easier to go to the grocery store. That is important to people.

When interest rates come down as a result of the kind of work done by the Liberal government in the 1990s with the support of Canadians, it benefits the whole economy. There is more money flowing through the economy and that makes a big difference.

The worry is that, with the kind of spending the government has been engaged in, we are eventually going to see inflation and very high interest rates quite possibly. That is good if one is on a fixed income and receiving interest, but it can get too high obviously, so that it hurts the overall economy and it is bad for all of Canada.

The government has been racking up deficit after deficit over the past few years. Its fiscal mismanagement has meant that Canada was in deficit before the recession began. Imagine. The Conservatives came into office with a surplus of $13 billion and within a very short time they turned around in the wrong way and put the country into deficit before the recession began. They can talk all they want about how there was a need to respond to the recession. They did not believe there was a need at first. The Prime Minister said it was a good opportunity to buy stocks. He said things were a bit bad but everything would be fine.

Things got a lot worse. He was wrong. Things got a heck of a lot worse. In fact it was a lousy time to buy stocks as it turns out. It might have been better later if anyone had the money to do it, but most folks did not. Perhaps some of his prosperous, wealthy friends did, but most Canadians did not have the funds to buy stocks at that time.

Here we had a situation where the Conservatives put us in deficit before the recession hit, through their own mismanagement, with some of the biggest increases in spending in history. In the first year they increased spending by 18%. That is incredible.

This year they have done something else, something really spectacular in the annals of deficit creation, I suppose. They have recorded the biggest deficit in our history, $55.6 billion.

There is no question that the Conservative government is the biggest spending, biggest borrowing government in Canada's history. I hope they are not too proud of that record, because it is certainly not a record to be proud of.

It is remarkable to think that the Minister of Finance, also known as the minister of debt and deficit did the same thing in Ontario. I guess we should have known it would happen again when the Prime Minister made him finance minister in Ottawa.

Somebody has to tell the Minister of Finance that before he can do things like increase spending and lower taxes, first he has to balance the books. First he has to get rid of the deficit and then he can do those things, as the Liberal government did in the 1990s, but it is a lesson the finance minister sadly has not learned.

It is really a highlight of his mismanagement and of the government's mismanagement. They fail to understand that they do not start increasing spending dramatically and cutting taxes dramatically, as they want to do with corporate tax rates with the big corporations, until they have balanced the books. If they can balance the books, get things under control and get surpluses, then they have the room to do things like that, but not until then. Why they cannot understand that is startling. Their bad choices will mean that future generations are saddled with more and more debt. Those same choices are not helping hard-pressed Canadians today.

This right-wing Republican-style government, and I do not know if we say a tea party-style government these days because it is pretty right wing, is turning its back on people who are struggling to make ends meet in these tough economic times. Some of my colleagues have talked about this already. It is pouring billions of dollars into U.S.-style prisons and doing nothing about prevention of crime. It is pouring billions into untendered fighter jets and tax breaks for wealthy corporations.

It is interesting that the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defence say that there was a competition for these fighter jets. Yes, there was, in the U.S. 10 or 11 years ago. When was there ever a competition in Canada? Canada was not part of that competition. Since when do we outsource our decisions about making a $16 billion purchase? That is hard to imagine.

Even today in question period, the Prime Minister talked about how there was a contract for the F-35s. The fact, as members of the House know and as the Prime Minister ought to know, is there is no contract yet. The government has signalled its intention, but it certainly has not signed a contract yet. For the Prime Minister of Canada to say in the House that there is a contract when there is not is truly outrageous. If that is not misleading the House and Canadians, I do not know what is. It is very disturbing.

When we look at the government's treatment and we look at how it spends wastefully, is it any wonder that poverty is on the rise under this regime? Instead of punishing homeowners in March by killing the home renovation program, it should have taken the knife to some of its own pet projects. It could have started by cutting costs, for example, at the G8 and G20 summits, the 72-hour, $1.3 billion photo op to satisfy the Prime Minister's vanity.

Imagine what the money was spent on. The government wasted millions of dollars on fake lakes, glow sticks, gazebos and steamboats. It had a department responsible for summit infrastructure supporting the building of a gazebo that was kilometres and kilometres from any summit activity.

It had also supported the development of a steamboat that was not even ready to go in the water until three months after. What that could possibly have had to do with the summit is hard to imagine, except that it helped out perhaps the electoral prospects of the Minister of Industry in whose riding it was held.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Madam Speaker, I know the hon. member has worked long and hard on the pension issue and has had quite a number of town halls and various other meetings with people affected, and there are a couple of ideas that are floating out there with respect to creating a stranded pension agency and a supplemental plan for Canada pension so that Canadians are not stranded. Yet in Bill C-47 I see nothing on either issue.

I would be interested in the hon. member's views with respect to both of those ideas and whether the government would reorganize its priorities so that these kinds of issues of keen concern to senior Canadians would be addressed.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have a chance to raise some of the concerns I have with respect to Bill C-47. It is difficult to follow my hon. colleague because he speaks very well and raises the issue with such compassion and caring, but I will do the best I can.

Let me say at the outset that I do not accept that the government has demonstrated either the will or the skill to manage any economic recovery. While the Conservatives may claim to have a steady hand on the wheel during a raging storm, I suggest that if they looked more closely, they would find that they are standing on the docks as the good ship Canada has left without any predetermined plan.

The only saving fiscal grace that we have seen is the thousands upon thousands of small businesses pressing for success, a banking sector that is stable and secure as a result of the previous Liberal government, and a labour force that is skilled and dedicated. The government has been too busy developing sound bites and using the treasury for self-promoting commercials.

In the election of 2008, the Prime Minister insisted that Canada would never fall into a recession, that we were all dreaming. He suggested that the warnings of a global meltdown were nothing other than alarmists bent on undermining the Canadian economic success story. He dismissed any public discussion of advance preparedness as fearmongering and said that slashing taxes to Canada's largest corporations would prevent any global economic calamity from touching down domestically. How wrong he was and how right we were.

Today looking back, it is very clear that the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance were either hiding something for partisan electoral reasons, or they were totally oblivious to the impending economic difficulties. Either way, their approach has been unacceptable, shortsighted and damaging to all Canadians.

Setting all that aside and ignoring the fact that the government has abandoned any semblance of fiscal prudence or long-term planning in favour of a borrow and spend approach to public policy, we now need to focus on the task at hand.

Bill C-47 does have a very few redeeming qualities. For example, in part 1 it seeks to allow for the sharing of the Canada child tax benefit, the universal child care benefit and the HST tax credit for eligible shared custody parents. It also expands the availability of accelerated capital cost allowance for clean energy generation. While, yes, these are good measures when viewed in a singular fashion, when viewed as part of a larger picture, I fail to understand how these items address the impacts of the global economic slowdown in Canada.

While it is true that Bill C-47 makes some technical amendments to the tax free savings accounts and allows registered retirement savings plan proceeds to be transferred to a registered disability savings plan on a tax deferred basis, it fails to address some of the most serious problems faced by individual Canadians and Canadian business leaders.

For starters, Bill C-47 is silent on the fact that Canadians are being forced to carry greater amounts of personal debt just to survive. It is silent on the looming pension crisis that many of us know about. It does nothing to help stabilize the increasing gap between government revenues and government spending.

The Prime Minister inherited a $14 billion annual budgetary surplus from the Liberals. Then, in one of his first fiscal decisions, he moved to slash the federal fiscal capacity. We watched as government revenues plummeted, something that eliminated any ability for the government to make strategic investments or to help business, labour or seniors when times get tough.

The government took Canada from the economic envy of the world to what the finance minister now suggests is no worse than everyone else. Imagine crowing about mediocrity. That might be acceptable to that borrow and spend gang of mismanagers, but it is certainly a far cry from what Canadians had come to expect under the previous Liberal administration.

The government has used the word “stimulus” to justify everything it ever wanted to do. I will give the House a few examples.

The government recently billed Canadian taxpayers, all of us, a substantial sum of money for a so-called town hall meeting in Cambridge, Ontario, to release the second economic action plan report card. The cost was $108,000 just to make an announcement that clearly could have been made here in the House or anywhere here in Ottawa.

Then just three months later the government did it again, to release the third report card in Saint John, New Brunswick, at a cost of $143,000.

That is more than $250,000 for stunts to tell Canadians we are in good financial shape when it is untrue, because we are not.

That is over and above the 332% increase in the amount the PMO is currently spending on communication consultants, or spin doctors, beyond its internal communications staff, which is immense to begin with and has also increased by 30% in two years.

Canadians can only be fooled for so long.

Canada's fiscal capacity was damaged long before the Conservative government ever began spending on stimulus.

In the name of stimulus and promoting Canada, the Conservatives have spent billions on faster jets, bigger prisons and caviar summits. But when it comes to pension reform, or putting money into the pockets of our seniors, our small businesses or our vital social programs, the Conservatives cry poverty at that point.

Canadians are catching on to the kind of games being played.

In part 5 of Bill C-47, there is an amendment to the Canada Disability Savings Act to allow a 10-year carry-forward of Canada disability savings grants and Canada disability savings bond entitlements. I have no problem with that and I do not think most of us do.

Bill C-47 proposes to make changes that would require consent of a member's spouse or common law partner before the transfer of the member's pension benefit credit to a retirement savings plan. Again, I am not complaining about that.

My greatest concern with Bill C-47 is what is missing from these pages: fiscal prudence, long-term planning, compassion, a real plan for economic success. These are the things Canadians want, need and expect from their government.

During the Chrétien and Martin years, Canada went from the massive Mulroney debt to a global position of strength and envy. Liberals worked and Canadians worked to eliminate the deficit, to reduce the national debt, to make the largest series of strategic tax cuts in history and to pump billions into vital programs such as health care.

But in just four short years the government has transformed itself from alleged fiscal conservatives to the largest and most lavish spenders in Canadian history. Our deficit is now larger, if one can imagine that, than it was during the Mulroney years.

I guess we should not be surprised though. After all, when the same finance minister was the minister of finance in Ontario he pulled the same stunt along with premier Mike Harris. He sold provincial assets such as Ontario Hydro in order to pay for his mismanagement, and then he promised that hydro bills would not go up. But they clearly did.

While Paul Martin's legacy as finance minister is one that demonstrated a real ability to manage the finances of a nation, the current finance minister can only crow that Canada is not the worst kid on the block. But I guess we all gauge success differently.

Bill C-47, like budget bills before it, has its strengths but it does nothing to show real leadership. It fails to address real problems and it fails to chart a long-term, sustainable course for Canada's economic success.

I know the minister and the Prime Minister say it cannot be done. They say there was no way to see the storm clouds gathering on the horizon, but I wonder why almost everyone else saw it coming.

In the election of 2008, the member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville devised a detailed plan to help Canada stay off the rocks, but the Conservatives said that our economic fundamentals were wrong. They dismissed it as not being prudent and proactive.

I say to the emperor and the keeper of the purse that perhaps they should contact Paul Martin or the member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville or the member for Etobicoke—Lakeshore, who saw this economic slowdown coming.

Just as we did in 1993, the Liberals stand ready to clean up this mess left by the reckless, short-term habits of the Conservatives.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak on Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures.

Speaking in my role as agriculture critic, I can tell this House that the budget was one of the biggest disappointments ever for the farm community. There was not a new dime for primary producers in that budget, even though many in the livestock sector were facing the worst crisis that Canada's beef and hog industries have ever seen.

Sadly, the government has become known as a borrow and spend government, with both the debt and the deficit out of control. We heard some of those remarks in the House today with respect to the budget officer.

One of our worries with this Minister of Finance was that he might do to Canada what he did to Ontario. Certainly, this has come to pass. We all know that this minister is more responsible than anybody else for Ontario's fall from a have to a have not province. He cut services, downloaded costs, and drove up the deficit, hampering the ability of the Ontario government to do its job. Now he is doing the same thing to Canada.

What do we have for the farm sector? We have two of the biggest spending budgets in Canadian history, together with the biggest deficit in Canadian history. And what did the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food provide for the farmers in their time of need with all that spending? Zero. Nothing.

The minister claims that he puts farmers first, but the only area where the minister has put farmers first is in the area of debt. Since the government came to power, farm debt has reached $64 billion. That is up $9 billion under the Conservative government's watch. Net income on the farm has gone down, especially in the hog and beef sectors.

We worked with the government. We tried to work with the government to get money to the livestock sector when commodity prices were at an all-time low. For beef and hogs, we actually managed to get a program through; the government committed itself at the time. However, we warned the government that it could not expect the moneys associated with the emergency advance payment program to be repaid until the market improved.

Our worry was that the government would not stick to its word. Now we know it did not. In fact, on August 6 of this year, the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food made an announcement in which he basically demanded that those moneys be paid back. The announcement, which was made in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, lays out the terms of repayment.

This is how bad it is. Starting on June 1, 2011, just a few short months away, producers who took the $400,000 advance have to pay that money back in 10 short months. That is $40,000 a month in an industry that is barely able to get back its cost of production.

That was not the original commitment of the Government of Canada. The government assured us at the time that farmers would not have to pay those moneys back until prices improved. Farmers again were given a line.

Now in my province, in Prince Edward Island, I am told by the cattle industry that effective next June or July, as high as 70% to 80% of those livestock operators could find their loans in default. That is unacceptable. The government has to support the farm community and find a way of doing that. I am asking the minister to support the farm community, to not put farmers in the position of where they are in default.

Last night I spoke with a key Prince Edward Island producer. He said that the livestock industry is hurting, especially so in Atlantic Canada. Atlantic Canada is a deficit area in beef production and prices are discounted by 10¢ a pound as compared to Ontario. Ever since we have had BSE in this country, prices for cattle over 30 months are discounted by 20¢ a pound. Producers cannot survive in that kind of regime. They are not getting their costs.

We offered suggestions of things the government could do that would assist farmers in their time of need. In the livestock sector, it could eliminate the viability test. It could change the reference margins and get moneys out there under the safety net program, but there is not the political will. The government has money for everything else. It has $16 billion for untendered airplanes, $9 billion for expanding the jails, over $1.2 billion for the Prime Minister's photo op, but it has no money for primary producers. That is unacceptable.

It is not just in Prince Edward Island. The minister gets up in the House and quotes a farm leader from somewhere. We do know, strangely, when the minister makes an announcement, his office calls up some of the farm organizations and asks, “Could you praise the minister on this a little bit, please”, and then he uses the quotes in the House.

However, when we talk to producers on the ground, we get an entirely different story. Linda Oliver from Mozart, Saskatchewan said that the minister “turns his back on the livestock sector”. She said that approximately 125 producers and supporters at a meeting in Weekes, Saskatchewan sent a message that contradicts that of the Minister of Agriculture. She said that cow-calf producers are in a dire situation. She also said:

However, we, at the same time have to make a living at this farm. We have not been very self-sufficient for many years now because of the lack of response to the situation by the [Minister of Agriculture].

It is just unacceptable that in this budget, primary producers, farmers, the suppliers of food in this country, the people who are really responsible for food security in Canada, who bring in dollars to the country because of their exports, are basically left to wither on the vine. While exports increase, farm incomes have gone down.

Last week I was at a farm meeting at the Ontario Federation of Agriculture. There was the same strong message from farmers in financial difficulty, especially in the livestock sector. They asked the government for a risk management program. They asked that at least under the agri-flexibility fund the Government of Canada allow that to be used for the farm program that farmers want jointly with the Ontario government. The Government of Canada has again refused.

On Thanksgiving weekend I was in the Interlake region, and the crop damage there is phenomenal. It is in a quarter section of land of canola. There are well over 100,000 acres of land that have been affected by water damage. Those farmers have said consistently that agristability, the safety net programs do not work. Where is the backbench in the government party? Why are those members not arguing for these moneys and telling the government the concerns of farmers in the Interlake region? Why is the minister not coming forward with a program to assist?

The bottom line is that the Government of Canada has seriously failed the farm community in this country. While the government has the biggest spenders and the biggest deficit, the farming industry has been left with virtually nothing. Those in the farm community are the generators of wealth, but the Government of Canada has failed them.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour for me to stand in the House and speak to the bill before us, Bill C-47, which looks at the budget and the economic policies taken by the government.

Essentially, this is a budget that people back home in the riding that I have the honour of representing, the riding of Churchill, know it is not a budget for them. In fact, it is a budget for very few Canadians out there, often Canadians who already doing quite okay, when we should be looking, especially in a time of recession, at what might benefit everyone and at particular areas, whether it is industries, regions or communities, that have faced particular hardships as a result of this most recent economic recession.

I am proud to stand in the House along with so many of my colleagues in the New Democratic Party to speak out on how this budget has done little to support Canadians. While we are happy to see that some of our measures and work in the area of employment insurance and in some small ways in certain other areas have been heard, the vast majority of proposals and the spirit of looking out for average Canadians and the challenges they face has not been heard in this budget. It certainly is not reflected.

This budget does something that is not only counterproductive to the situation we currently face but also presents a dangerous trend when we look ahead at our future. Budget 2010 presents ample evidence of a tax strategy that begins to take away increasingly from average Canadians and benefits more and more those who are well off and work in sectors that have been very successful.

The government continues to drive the country deeper into debt so it can give tax cuts to profitable corporations: $21 billion worth since 2008 and $60 billion worth by the time they are fully implemented in 2014. During that same period, the government, by its own reckoning, will add $162.4 billion to the public debt, $60 billion more than the 10 previous years of surplus erased.

While the government is giving corporations a free pass on contributing to the country's financial recovery, it is planning to take a big chunk out of the pockets of Canadian workers. Over the next four years, the Prime Minister plans to rake in over $19 billion more in EI premiums than is paid out.

While the oil and gas and banking sectors have benefited from tax breaks, the same has not been the case for the average Canadian. In fact, with the increase in EI premiums, that burden has been increased.

There are specific stories in the region that I represent that speak to how this budget has not responded to people's needs. I would like to first begin by looking at how this budget does very little when it comes to the needs voiced by aboriginal Canadians.

I have the honour of representing 33 first nations and many Métis communities in my area. When I visit these communities and hear from aboriginal peoples in northern Manitoba, they speak out for the need for adequate funding for education.

Just this afternoon I was speaking out on a new study that showed record high dropout rates among aboriginal Canadians in my own home province of Manitoba, something that is so disheartening to see in the year 2010 when so many of us know the value of an education. However, the reason we see these rates is because the federal government, both under the Liberal leadership and now under the Conservatives, fails to adequately fund education on reserves and fails to adequately fund post-secondary education across the board for first nations and Métis students. This prevents them from accessing opportunities that we all know are key to them progressing into the future.

We know that $10 million were put aside for the work around missing and murdered aboriginal women, many of these women coming from the region that I represent. However, instead of the government listening to organizations, like the Native Women's Association of Canada or the Sisters in Spirit organization, it has chosen a very narrow approach. While work to collect statistics and the policing approach is important, we also need to be looking at specific measures in terms of domestic violence and violence perpetrated against aboriginal women, as well as awareness and prevention in that area, something we do not see this pocket of money going toward.

In this budget, there is no new money for water or waste water management in aboriginal communities. This week, I have stood in this House to ask the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and the government what they are going to do about the third world living conditions in the first nations that I represent. The Island Lake communities face some of the worst water and sewer conditions in all of Canada. These conditions are shocking to Canadians. Yet, this is the reality for some Canadians today. This budget does nothing to address this dire need in northern Manitoba.

Housing is another area in need of significant action. There is a housing crisis not only in aboriginal communities but in northern communities and communities in general across the country, many of which have fast-growing populations. Yet there is no new money for housing. Aboriginal people, the people of northern Manitoba, northerners in general, all these groups are affected by a shortage of adequate housing.

Another issue with a direct negative impact on the communities that I represent is the way the government has handled foreign ownership.

My hometown, which depends on the mining industry, has seen the buying out of the company that ran the mine. It was formerly Inco; now it is Vale. We look forward to negotiating with this company, which put Canadian workers out of work when they went on strike for benefits, a proper pension plan, and a decent commitment to the people of the region, who allow these companies to produce such profits. Yet, the current government failed to say no to the foreign buyout of Inco, a profitable Canadian company. Moreover, it is continuing that trend, amending the Investment Canada Act in this budget bill so that only significant investments will now be reviewed.

The people who live in the communities I represent need a federal government that will stand up to foreign corporations, that will protect our resources, and that will protect Canadian working people and their communities. This budget would not do any of these things.

Smaller rural and northern communities require assurances that our essential services will be supported. This budget attacks our postal service through the withdrawal of international mailers from the monopoly that Canada Post now holds.

This means a reduction in the revenue that Canada Post depends on to provide service to rural and northern communities, which often do not fit a market model. In The Pas, Kelsey, Thompson, Flin Flon, and in communities across northern Manitoba, we fear that postal service to rural Canada will be the first to be cut back. We are already seeing some reduction in service. Yet, instead of having a government that will step up and recognize the importance of delivering this service to Canadians, no matter where they live, we see a move toward privatization and a lack of support for the crown corporations we rely on.

Finally, the state of infrastructure in the north is alarming. We have heard a great deal about the current government's commitment to infrastructure in its stimulus package.

I can tell members that there is a great deal of concern when it comes to ensuring that these infrastructure projects go out in time. I represent communities that are isolated, that have a very short construction period, and that are concerned about running out of time, despite having tried their best to get these projects rolling as soon as possible.

So, all in all, there are many ways in which this budget would not serve the interests of northern Manitoba. That is why I find it so disappointing.

The House resumed from November 1 consideration of the motion that Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there are two areas that I would like to ask the member about with respect to impact as a result of Bill C-47 and the budget. One is in the area of green technology and the fact that the government cancelled most of the eco-technology grants. It has suggested that in this budget there is an opportunity through the capital depreciation allowance for green technology that it will make up, but it does not really give incentives to consumers. How does the member feel about that?

The second question is about how this budget fails families. I would like the member to explore that a little, if she would not mind, for the benefit of the House. We have recent data which provides a strong rationale that the poverty gap is in fact increasing as opposed to decreasing. What does this budget do for families and could it be improved?

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

Mr. Speaker, I am rising to speak to Bill C-47, an act to implement certain provisions of the other budget tabled in Parliament, blah, blah, blah. The short title is “sustaining Canada's economic recovery” and the blah, blah, blah is about sustaining Canada's economic recovery because, although I will speak specifically to the universal child care benefit and pensions, I want to highlight for people that this so-called economic recovery has not reached from coast to coast to coast in our beautiful country.

I want to refer to a Statistics Canada study that was in The Globe and Mail article entitled, “Natives bore brunt of job losses, study shows”.

When this recession was rolling out across this country, first nations, Métis and Inuit said very clearly, I am sure to many members of this House, that they did not want to be left behind in this recession and that we should not forget that they are already the poorest of the poor.

In Canada's economic recovery act, we see that first nations, Métis and Inuit are absolutely left behind.

According to Statistics Canada, this article reads:

Aboriginals have long struggled with higher unemployment than the rest of Canadians, but the recent economic downturn saw the trouble mount, widening the gap between natives and non-natives.

...in communities across Canada, aboriginal people not living on reserves were hit by bigger drops in employment rates from 2008 to 2009 than the rest of the population.

It mentioned that Statistics Canada did not measure employment on reserves.

The article goes on to state:

The unemployment rate among aboriginal people aged 15 and over rose to 13.9% in 2009 from 10.4% the previous year. At the same time, the unemployment rate for non-aboriginals rose to just over 8% in 2009 from 6 per cent in 2008.

We can see that clearly highlights the starting point difference between aboriginal people working off reserve versus the non-aboriginal population.

The article goes on to give a couple of numbers in a couple of different sectors. It states:

There was a 30% employment decline for natives in manufacturing, compared to just 8% among non-native manufacturing workers. A similar decline was noted in construction, with a 16% drop for native workers compared to 5% for non-natives.

The reason I raise this today is that the legislation before us would do nothing to change those numbers for first nations, Métis and Inuit. We had fair warning before we entered into this recession. We simply have not seen the kind of action that would alleviate the poverty in some of these communities from coast to coast to coast.

I want to speak very briefly to the part of the legislation that deals with the universal child care benefit.

When the Conservatives introduced the child care benefit, the New Democrats stood and said that it would not provide quality, affordable, regulated, licensed, publicly-delivered child care for families in this country.

Despite the fact that people receive $100 a month per child, which is partially clawed back through the tax system, we are now seeing, just as we predicted, the disappearance of child care spaces. The government talks about having a choice in child care. How is $100 a month a choice in child care when the child care bills can run up to $1,000 a month or more, depending upon the city in which one lives? Mothers and fathers are left struggling to figure out how they can continue to work. I must point out that work is often not a choice for people. It often takes two working family members to pay the bills and keep a roof over their children's head. These families are struggling with the fact that they must work and are concerned about what happens with their children when they drop them off at a child care centre. There are many fine family-run child care centres in this country, but that is not the point. The $100 a month is not a choice in child care.

In my riding, an article recently said “Childcare shortfall reaches five hundred kids”. In an article in the Cowichan News Leader, on July 30, it said, “There are 538 fewer childcare spaces in Cowichan compared to 2007”. I happen to know that it is not because we have 538 fewer children in the Cowichan valley. It is because these child care centres are being forced to close.

An organization called Social Planning Cowichan is doing a lot of work around examining the reasons why these child care spaces are disappearing and what the options are for families. It says:

According to [Social Planning Cowichan] numbers, about half of Cowichan's 10,000 kids under age 12 need care—a percentage and total virtually unchanged from three years ago.

There are 10,000 children just in the Cowichan Valley who are requiring care. These are children under the age of 12. It goes on to say:

In 2007, childcare support was available for 48 per cent of those needing it, and now that figure is just 37 per cent.

One suspect is the recession, stealing families' childcare cash. An accomplice could be government cuts to childcare programs. Wages often in the $12-$13 an hour range have also made it hard to attract and retain qualified help.

Somebody once reminded me that we want to provide really good child care for these children because they are going to grow up and change our diapers when we are in long-term care facilities. However, what we are saying is that we are going to pay those workers $12 to $13 an hour, and they are raising the future generation. They are raising the future business leaders, community leaders and perhaps politicians. That is what $100 a month in child care choice contributes to.

We should be looking toward the province of Quebec that has done a very good job in providing child care for the children in the province. It is a model for the rest of Canada and we should look to it for a program that has been very effective in terms of providing real child care choice for family members.

I want to touch briefly on pensions. Before I do that, this is relevant because it is about poverty.

HungerCount 2009, put out by Food Banks Canada, has a couple of interesting figures in its report. It says:

This year’s HungerCount survey confirms what we all suspected: food bank use across the country has escalated as a result of the economic downturn. More than 790,000 people walked into a food bank in March 2009, 72,000 of them for the first time. Not surprisingly, food banks themselves, running on shoestring budgets and staffed largely by dedicated volunteers, are struggling to meet the demand. This year’s HungerCount portrays a country in need of change.

Sadly, I only have 10 minutes so I cannot read all of the very good information about poverty in our country, which is resulting in increased food bank usage, but it does say who is turning to food banks. It says:

In terms of household composition, food bank use did not change significantly from 2008 to 2009. Nearly half of assisted households were families with children, split about evenly between two-parent and single-parent families. The proportion of single people turning to food banks for help edged up.

It says that 49% are families with children. It also points out that 12% of those assisted are aboriginal.

That was going to be in the context of pensions, and this economic recovery bill, Bill C-47, does have amendments to the Pension Benefits Standards Act. However, what it sadly does not do is look at increasing CPP, OAS and GIS to some of the poorest, marginalized seniors in our country. What we know is we have the capacity to do that if we only do not go ahead and implement those corporate tax cuts. The $700 million annually that would be required to lift seniors out of poverty and protect pensions in cases of bankruptcy or insolvency could come from those corporate tax cuts, so we could afford to pay for it.

New Democrats do not support the bill and do not see it as a full-blown economic recovery bill.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak before the House regarding this bill. On September 30, 2010, the Minister of Finance introduced Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures, Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act.

A lot of it is smaller plugs filling the holes on the back end of the budgetary process. Nonetheless, in the spirit of fair and balanced debate, I would like to congratulate the government on some of the measures.

Part 1 implements a number of income tax measures. It allows for the sharing of the Canada child tax benefit, the universal child care benefit. That is a different debate. The universal child care benefit, through which parents get $100 a month, is being passed off as a child care program. I have misgivings about it. It does not give enough attention to the policy of early childhood education, and it does not address the fact that we have early childhood educators who are not given the right tools.

The problem with this type of thinking, just mailing out a $100 cheque every month, is that no one knows where it ends. Where is the broad vision for what we want to do, which is to allow accessible, universal child care? Under this thinking, we might as well mail $50 to everybody and call it a pharmacare program. It might work, but members will see what I am getting at.

I do not want to sound facetious, but I want to get to a positive aspect: allowing registered retirement savings plan proceeds to be transferred to a registered disability savings plan on a tax- deferred basis. I was considering doing a private member's bill on that, but the government introduced it in its budget, and here we have it, so I would like to congratulate the government. That is a positive step for people with disabilities. RRSPs are much more prevalent now than they were previously, and this provides a bit of flexibility for caregivers to pass it on to people in their families who suffer from disabilities. There we have one positive step.

In the spirit of raising the bar, there are also other issues we could look at with respect to the flexibility of registered retirement savings plans, whether to bequeath them to another person in the family after a death. This should be looked at. It is a positive first step to take the unused part of an RRSP, after a death, and pass it on to someone who is invested in an RDSP, a registered disability savings plan.

The other issues in part 1 amend the Canada Pension Plan, the Employment Insurance Act, and the Income Tax Act to provide legislative authority for the Canada Revenue Agency to issue online notices if the taxpayer so requests. In the digital age, online notices are more prevalent, more available. As a member of Parliament, I get a lot of calls regarding the Canada Revenue Agency. A lot of people are in arrears, owe money, fines, interest, and so forth. These things can be quite crippling, and the financial forgiveness that is available is always hard to get. Sometimes there is a lack of information, not just for individuals, but also for small and medium-sized businesses. This could be a positive step toward a free flow of information.

The only other issue is that the government has to commit to 100% penetration on broadband Internet. During the economic stimulus plan, part of the budget announced the penetration of broadband Internet to rural and northern areas. In all of Atlantic Canada, despite all the money that was talked about, only one project was approved.

I do not want to take away from the rest of the country, and I wish them all the best in their projects. But there was only one in Atlantic Canada. This leads me to believe that we did not put enough emphasis on the availability of broadband Internet. It would have allowed far more communities, small groups, and educational institutions to be connected.

We ask people to sign up for Service Canada, EI, and the Canada pension plan, and we create a flow of communications so that people can receive their benefits that much quicker. But without a commitment to 100% penetration, our attempts to promote on-line interactive government services will fall short.

In light of how much the government has gone from paper to on-line services, and how much we interact with the government, whether municipal, provincial, or even federal, it should be a right for people to be connected on the broadband Internet.

In the beginning, we had a railway service that connected our country. Then we had the Trans-Canada Highway, and now everyone would consider it a right to have highways and roads that connect even small communities.

I have 191 communities in my riding. That is a lot of pavement, a lot of asphalt. But of the 191 communities, 31 do not have access to broadband Internet. Put aside the issue of affordability. It is just not there.

On an individual basis, that is bad enough. But how do we attract industry? How do we say to a company that our plant has closed down, but we have a well-trained talent pool within this community, and we want the company to come in and set up a business?

Do I have vital services? Yes. Water hook-up? Yes. Asphalt to the back of the business? Yes. Do I have broadband Internet? No, we do not. We have dial-up.

How can a company bidding on major contracts do this when it is already at a terrible disadvantage? That is part of the issue.

I applaud the government for moving toward more on-line services, but I think the debate has to continue beyond this. We have to talk about the fact that not everyone is hooked up under broadband services.

Part 7 amends the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act to implement the total transfer protection for 2010-11, to set out the treatment of the one-time transfer protection payment under the fiscal stabilization program. That is pretty straightforward.

Let us talk about equalization and transfer payments. We joined Canada in 1949, and today I can stand in the House and say that I live in and represent a “have” province. That was a long time coming. There were certain sacrifices along the way, but we have become a “have” province.

We are not doing things just for the sake of making more money out of revenues from oil and natural gas development. My province now has one of the best poverty-reduction strategies in this country. I congratulate the provincial government for doing it. It is well managed and it is going to make a big difference.

Recently, a program for a home heating rebate for seniors was announced. It is a fantastic program. This was done federally in 2005. It was the energy rebate. As far as I can gather, energy prices have not decreased, so I think that is something we should look at.

It also mentions the Pension Benefit Standards Act. It is almost as if we do pension reform on the margins. I discussed this earlier.

Pension reform is going to be part of this debate. I understand first ministers are currently discussing it. I hope that they come up with a plan that allows more flexibility in the Canada pension plan.

I do like the fact that we could have a supplementary Canada pension plan. That is one element and a visionary element that could bring a greater amount of benefit and income for our most vulnerable seniors.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak on Bill C-47 and address a couple of issues in the bill, both hearkening back to the original budget bill, which this is just apart of, and also some specifics in this bill.

In that regard, the budget, last time, was a classic of opportunities missed, and even where issues were addressed, government having gone offside.

I want to address in particular the funding that was promised, first, in the throne speech back in late February or early March of this year, then the actual dollars put into the budget, and then an announcement made just this past weekend on the issue. It was with regard to the horrendous issue of the number of aboriginal women who have gone missing in this country over the last decade or longer.

The sad part about this is not just the tragedy of all those women going missing and presumably, in a lot of cases, having been killed, but the fact of both the current government and the prior government not paying any attention to the issue at all. The dimension of the problem was raised by groups coming out of the first nations and having to do work that should have been done by our police forces, our justice system and our governments, which was ignored in large part by all of those sectors of our country.

It is inevitable, I think, to conclude that had the issue been treated seriously from the very beginning as these women went missing, a great deal of the loss of these women to our society could have been prevented. The current government in particular, but the prior government as well, spent way too much time on prosecuting crimes, on punishing criminals, as opposed to spending much more effort as is needed to prevent those crimes from ever happening.

Again, the announcement that we saw on Friday is just typical of that.

What was promised in the throne speech was that $10 million would be spent on what in effect I thought, from reading the speech and hearing the speech, would be mostly on prevention and assisting aboriginal groups in particular in identifying the loss of these women and trying to use methodologies that would teach us what happened to them and ways to prevent that from happening in the future.

One group in particular, the Sisters in Spirit, had done tremendous work. I was totally amazed when they brought it forward both to this House in a standing committee and to various members of Parliament who have responsibility in these areas. What was clear was that they had done very effective work in identifying how severe the problem was, but they were also literally begging the government to provide them with additional resources. That is what I thought part of that $10 million was going to be used for.

Did that happen? No, it did not.

The announcement on Friday by the minister responsible for women's issues made it very clear. When we look through the individual areas where these funds are going to get spent, it is not focused, certainly, on first nations people, aboriginal people, Métis or Inuit women. It is much more broadly dispersed among the whole population.

In spite of that promise in the Speech from the Throne that it was going to be dedicated to first nations, the aboriginal population, in fact it is not. If we do any kind of apportionment of the dollars, less than 10%, or maybe 15%, would end up aiding those communities. The rest is going to be spent on the general population.

In addition, this is not an issue that was new this past weekend. We have known about it for some time because of the work, over the last couple of years, done by the Sisters in Spirit and other groups like that from the first nations.

However, what has happened? The government says that it is going to spend the money. It is only $5 million per year for two years. That is all it has committed to. We get the announcement of how it is going to spend it, more than six months after the promise, when in fact Sisters in Spirit in particular were ready to go immediately. They had an outstanding application for funds. The government could have given them a portion of the $10 million back in March, quite frankly, when the budget first got passed. It did not do that. It spent all this time, I am not sure doing what, because when we see what it is proposing to do, it did not take six or seven months to plan that out.

In any event, we are now here, again too late, unfocused, for the $10 million. Some of that money is supposed to be spent this year on aiding some of the groups that would be providing some preventative work. It is very small amounts of money, maybe as little as $1 million per year for the next two years. I cannot see how any of that money is going to get spent this year, given how late the government has come down with it. We are going to have to wait for proposals to come forward. With the year-end break, very little of the $5 million for this year is going to get spent this year, and of course, with the risk of an election next year, it may not get spent at all.

However, it is typical of the government's attitude towards this problem, that it is not taking it seriously. Nothing could make that clearer than the way it has handled this money. There have been lots of photo ops, lots of press conferences and press releases about how it was going to do something, but the reality is that it is too little, not nearly enough money, for sure, for the problem that the aboriginal community is faced with. It is too late and what little it is doing is going in the wrong direction.

We look at this and ask why we are bothering with the government even doing this. The answer, of course, is that it gives the government the opportunity to do those press releases and have the photo ops.

The other reality with regard to this particular money is that it is quite clear from our discussions with first nations people and aboriginal communities generally that they are not at all happy, but we are not hearing any negatives from them because they are intimidated by the government. So often with so many other groups, it has intimidated them into silence by not renewing contracts and cutting off funding, KAIROS being a classic example of that and any number of other groups that it has cut funding to because they did not toe the government line, and this is again another example of that. The $10 million is really of questionable value, and whether it is going to get spent or not is questionable as well.

Let me switch to the other point that I want to raise in this brief speech, which is with regard to the pension issue.

We have in Bill C-47 one paragraph on pensions. We have had the finance minister running around the country, as well as in this House, making all these forecasts that the government is going to do something about reform of the Canada pension plan. We are promised repeatedly that it is coming, and again what we see in this bill is one paragraph that really has nothing to do with reform of the Canada pension plan.

We had been promised repeatedly, and even some dates were put on this. We were supposed to have something by the spring. Then we were supposed to have something this fall when we came back from the mid-term break. There is nothing in regard to pensions. We know, and I say this from a really negative personal experience as a member of Parliament, how traumatizing this is to a large number of our constituents.

I come from a city that is heavily dependent upon the auto industry. When it looked as though both General Motors and Chrysler were going to go into bankruptcy, and that the pensions were going to be in serious jeopardy, we expected more from the government. We expected them to deal with it. We expected them to deal with reforming Canada pension plan.

Let me conclude by saying that paragraph 70 in this bill does nothing for any of those issues.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bill C-47, sustaining Canada's economic recovery act.

I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak on behalf of my party today because I strongly oppose the government's vision and I think Canadians deserve to know the truth about how it is rapidly destroying our social infrastructure, which was once strong and proud. Budgets are about making choices. Time and time again, we have seen the government make choices that are not in Canadians' best interests.

Borrowing billions to give corporate tax cuts, building more prisons, sole source contracting for fighter jet planes, the government's choices have led to a proven track record of poor economic choices.

Canadians want their money to be spent wisely on things that improve the quality of life of their families. I even find the title of the bill misleading. We are led to believe, based solely on the title of the bill, that the current government is making the choice to do everything possible to help our country recover from a tough economic time. In reality this budget bill is doing exactly the opposite.

It is a typical game of the government, smoke and mirrors, clouded by wasteful spending and irrational choices and shattered by mistruths.

I am deeply concerned that the choices that the current government is making are not to the benefit of Canadians. On Friday I listened to Power and Politics and heard the Parliamentary Secretary for Official Languages telling the CBC about how the government has undertaken significant consultations with Canadians across the country and that these consultations had been meaningful. That means having a real substantive impact on public policy.

I find this disconcerting because a few weeks ago I had the opportunity, in my role as critic for democratic renewal, to travel across our great country to talk to Canadians about issues that matter to them. What I heard during this “Canadians Make the Rules Tour”, as it was called, was that Canadians across the country felt shut out and disengaged from the decision making that goes on here in Ottawa.

I heard about how Canadians are tired of the government's top-down, paternalistic, father-knows-best style of governing. They want change. They want another option to choose from.

At every round table across Canada, I heard about the importance of having a strong independent media holding the government of the day to account. Canadians believe that a Prime Minister should be accessible and take unfiltered questions.

I was shocked at the overwhelming ground swell of concern that the CBC has no longer sufficient funding to do its job properly.

This is a choice, a strategy on the part of the current government to limit the democratic discourse in Canadian public life by silencing any dissenting voices. Instead the government has made the choice to bloat the PMO communications budget in order to sell its bad choices to Canadians.

In Vancouver, people expressed concern about the government's failure to listen to the people and about how stakeholders are basically being left out of the decision-making process.

In Calgary, people expressed concern about the concentration of power in the Prime Minister's Office and talked about how the government should be accountable to Parliament.

In Fredericton, people talked about the importance of Parliament's role as a place for dialogue and developing policies that are in the interests of the Canadian people. Unfortunately, the government does not share that vision of parliamentary supremacy.

Rather, the government seems to think that Parliament is a kind of suggestion box and a good place to put up Christmas lights once a year.

It is a terrible shame that Canadians have to watch our democratic institutions go downhill over time. Those are the facts. Canadians have spoken. When will the government finally choose to listen to what Canadians have to say?

Scholar Ursula Franklin has said that good governance is fair, transparent and takes people seriously. This government has not been fair, funding only Conservative ridings. It has not been transparent in terms of the redacted documents that are now the joke of a government elected on transparency. With sleight-of-hand announcements of the re-announcements of the re-announcements, this is a government that does not take people seriously. It bullies and silences civil society, choosing only to listen to the small number of Canadians who actually agree with it.

The government has made choices to eliminate the Canadian Council on Learning and to cut government funding to organizations like KAIROS, the Canadian Council for International Co-operation and women's groups across the country that represent the voices of social justice. This does not even mention the government's ideological bungling of maternal and child health, which is both failing Canadians and ruining what was once a sterling international reputation.

Time and time again, we bear witness to the shell game of this government. We have seen funding announcements recycled. The theme here, though, is consistent: never any new money.

The chill in the NGO community in Canada must come to an end. Within civil society is real expertise that could and should be tapped in order to get the best possible public policy for Canada and Canadian families.

As Liberals, we do not adhere to the same principles as the current government. We know that there are tough choices to be made. That is what governing and democracy are all about. We believe we should be investing in people and bringing about transformative change with the dollars that government spends.

However, time and time again this government has made the choice to abdicate governing in favour of never-ending campaigning and trying to convince Canadians that its draconian actions are not as bad as the dissenters make them out to be.

The leader of the official opposition has indicated a three-pronged approach to the return of a fair, open and compassionate Canada. It would put the emphasis on learning, care and a renewed sense of Canadian leadership in the world.

We have listened and made our intentions clear to take care of Canadians who devote a good portion of their lives to supporting their ailing loved ones.

We listened to the ideas that came out of the May 2010 public consultation on the digital economy and have announced a strategy to make our government more open, with free access to government data, a policy that the U.K. estimates has created an economic benefit of over six billion pounds.

With that in mind, we in the Liberal Party are committed to maintaining a government strategy.

As we have demonstrated with my private member's bill to bring back the long form census, we believe it is crucial to provide Canadians with evidence-based data so they can make informed decisions.

Contrary to what the Parliamentary Secretary for Official Languages said last Friday, we want to conduct real consultations with Canadians in order to draw on the knowledge and expertise of a strong civil society.

As former chief statistician, Munir Sheikh, was quoted in the Toronto Star on Sunday:

With the government’s decision to abolish the long-form census, it is not clear how one would get reliable answers to these important questions.

...in the absence of high quality census data, it may become considerably more difficult to deal with some of the fundamental economic and social issues we face.

In fact, I would like to note that the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories last week passed a motion to urge the Government of Canada to reverse its decision to eliminate the mandatory long form census.

We believe that without the empirical evidence needed to create policies, ideology will inevitably become the default foundation for debate and discussion in Canada, something that truly frightens me.

This government will spend $30 million more to get less reliable information.

I do not believe that public money should be used to finance projects like the construction of prisons for hypothetical prisoners who, strangely, cannot even be counted.

It has just been pure ideology and fear mongering. Speculation and hearsay is not sufficient evidence. It is crucial that we have the best possible information on which to make proper decisions with public money.

Choices governments make can be transformative or hold a country back. Progressive governments invest in their people, invest in science and invest in the future. Borrowing money for prisons, fighter planes and corporate tax cuts are on one side; care, learning and earning back Canada's place in the world are on the other.

This bill demonstrates the priorities of this government. It refuses to invest in our people and those people who share our tiny planet with us. Canadians deserve a government that listens and understands the reality of their daily lives. Young entrepreneurs keen to conquer the digital economy, single mothers who want to go back to school and women trying to take care of a loved one at home know this government could and should be helpful. This government has not heard their needs. The budget bill has let them down terribly.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very honoured to have this opportunity to share my time with the member for Scarborough—Guildwood, who so eloquently spoke on the issue before us, which is Bill C-47.

I rise to speak to Bill C-47, the second act to implement the provisions of the budget of 2010, which we heard in this place on March 4. As I have mentioned in the past, budget 2010 not only fails to address the real challenges facing Canadian families, it fails to even recognize that those challenges even exist. That is why Bill C-47 is a continuation of that failure. Therefore, the Liberal Party and I will not be voting in favour of the bill.

The budget 2010 stimulus package is not working. That is the underlying premise of what I will be talking about here today. The question I ask many of my constituents and many Canadians when I travel the country is whether they are better off today than they were when the Conservatives came into power. The overwhelming response is, no, they are not better off.

I will speak to a few key areas that this budget touches upon and the concerns that many Canadians have brought to my attention.

The first issue that comes up time and time again is jobs. The unemployment rate is 2% higher today than it was during the last election when the Conservatives came into power. In particular, if we look at the jobs number, full-time jobs have been replaced by part-time jobs. We have lost over 200,000 full-time jobs.

People who have part-time employment are unable to find full-time employment. Around 11% to 12% of people who currently work in part-time jobs have difficulty trying to find the full-time employment they are seeking. Employers trying to find employees for certain jobs are unable to do so as well.

At the Montreal conference that the Liberal Party held not too long ago, one of the themes that emerged, and this was when we did public policy, was that there were jobs without people and people without jobs. The job market has gone through a major restructuring. People looking for jobs are unable to find them. People who have jobs are not satisfied with the one they have.

This is a real concern. This is the number one issue that I hear about time and time again. Unfortunately the job story is one that the government does not get and it is something as parliamentarians we need to address. This budget in particular fails to do so.

The second issue that comes up in my discussions with my constituents and Canadians is the current trend we see with the government with respect to borrowing and spending. Household debt is at record levels. The average Canadian owes about $42,000, which is one of the highest amongst the OECD levels.

I want to emphasize this point because my constituency of Mississauga—Brampton South very much relies on trade. We have the Pearson International Airport and major highways in the constituency. Trade is absolutely critical for economic growth and activity in my region.

As a trading nation, we have a monthly trade deficit now at a record of $2.7 billion. What further compounds the issue now, focusing on the borrowing aspect of it, is that we have a record deficit of $56 billion and climbing. This number continues to be revised, over and over again, as the government is unable to demonstrate that it has any type of control when it comes to borrowing money. It increased its spending and doubled it just before we entered the recession. It was the most expensive endeavour taken by the government. It turned a $13 billion surplus into the $56 billion deficit that we see before us.

This is something that obviously is consistent. If we look at all of the budgets of the government, it has increased spending at unprecedented levels. What is even more troublesome is that in the next four years, it is projecting a deficit increase of $156 billion over those four years. It actually adds to our debt, which in turn costs Canadian taxpayers and future the generations $10 billion in interest. This is the kind of legacy the government is leaving for our children.

The government is borrowing and spending at a reckless rate and is leaving a legacy for future generations that will cost hard-earned taxpayer money to pay and finance the deficit and debt left by the government. People just do not understand how a government could spend so much money and borrow so much money.

Then people focus on the spending. We in opposition have highlighted this because it is important that the Canadian public realize the rate at which the government is spending money.

For example, the government spent $130 million on shameless, self-promoting advertising. I spoke with the Auditor General at committee last week about these quarterly reports and statements the government put out. She clearly indicated that it was simply a show and tell exercise. She said that it was simply a government exercise to promote and market itself. She said that the numbers were not substantive and the figures were not accurate. Those audits clearly demonstrated that the figures were not reflective of the real picture.

The Conservative government is spending all this money on twisting things in order to promote itself, and the public is now becoming acutely aware of this pattern. The government spent $130 million promoting itself through signs with respect to the economic action plan, for example, in my riding. That money could have been used for additional projects. This is a clear example of the government's loss of control and its reckless spending.

The government spent $1.3 billion on a 72-hour photo op. This was unprecedented, especially when we compare the cost to G20 summits in other countries, particularly the amount of money spent on the fake lake and glow sticks. This kind of spending at a time when people are worried about their jobs and concerned about household debt cannot be justified.

Here is another example of how the government has spent so much money. It wants to spend $13 billion on American Republican-style megaprisons for unreported crimes. This is not in line with the priorities about which I hear. It is an expenditure that makes absolutely no sense in the current context with a record deficit and the job situation that we face as a country in this difficult economic time.

The government is going to spend $16 billion on F-35 stealth jet fighters. It was a sole-sourced awarded without competition. People are stunned that the government would continue with this decision in light of the record federal deficit.

The Auditor General presented a report recently with respect to the helicopter purchases. She indicated that the sole source process for the F-35 was not the best way to go. It was not the best value for money proposition for the government and for taxpayers. This is alarming to me and to many Canadians. Why does the government continue to spend this kind of money during these difficult times?

The Conservative government provided $20 billion in corporate tax cuts that we cannot afford at the present time. Again, we are giving money away to large corporations when we should be investing in Canadian families. I will speak to this a bit later as well.

Those are some examples of how the government has spent recklessly and how much money it has borrowed.

When I ask Canadians if they think they are better off today compared to when the Conservatives came in to power in 2006, they say no. The reason they say no is because of government mismanagement. Through the various examples that we bring up in the House of Commons, through what they read in the media and see on TV, what they see in public, Canadians are beginning to realize that the government has really mismanaged taxpayer money.

Last week I had the opportunity to highlight two examples of where the government has really misspent and they highlight a bigger problem. The government outsourced the VIA Rail press releases at a cost of $3,400 for approximately 1,300 words. That was completely unnecessary. This reflected the bigger problem.

I want to highlight the fact that the most recent public accounts show that the Conservatives spent $9.4 billion on external contracts for professional and special services, a $2.2 billion increase over the previous Liberal government. That is just another example of mismanagement at a time when people are worried about the bottom line.

This budget is not in line with the priorities of Canadian. Canadians are worried about jobs, and this budget does not address that issue in a real significant way, specifically, with regard to the restructuring that is taking place in our economy. A lot of full-time jobs have been lost and those jobs are now being replaced by part-time jobs.

The government is borrowing and spending money at a reckless pace and that is going to leave a difficult legacy for future generations. It is mismanaging taxpayer dollars at a time when Canadian families are going through difficult times.

Families in my riding care about health care, education, their pensions. This budget is a clear example of the difference between what the current government is planning versus what we are proposing. Most recently we came out with a family care plan. That clearly outlines how we care about our families and our communities.

My colleagues and I will be voting against this bill because it is not in line with Canadian families. It is unfortunate that we are worse off today than we were in 2006, but I hope that changes in the near future.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Before we resume debate, I would like to remind all hon. members of the House that the matter before us at this time is Bill C-47. When members ask questions, they ought to address that bill. It is a broad bill, so there is a great amount of leeway involved with that. The last question did not address it and I gave the hon. member from Scarborough—Guildwood significant latitude in terms of answering the question. However, I would encourage all members in future to ask questions regarding the legislation before the House.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Mississauga—Brampton South.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-47. It is certainly interesting to watch the debate as it has unfolded and listen to the Liberals talk about the corporate tax cuts and how they would stop them, when they were the party that started them when they were in government. It is just amazing.

The NDP has been consistent for the last number of years, calling for an end to these tax breaks, and suddenly the Liberals have jumped on board in a big way. I guess it is interesting when they take our speaking notes.

My particular focus today is going to be on pensions and seniors. I am kind of saddened because there has not been enough talk about the seniors' situation in the House during the debate.

You will know, Mr. Speaker, that I spent the last two years touring Canada talking and listening to Canada's seniors. I have been saying throughout the 38 community meetings that I have attended from coast to coast that it is time to change the conversation.

We have EI premiums and we have our pensions, which are deferred wages. Neither are payroll taxes. They are purchases that we make as Canadians to protect our future. That expression, payroll taxes, was started in Canada by the former Liberal government, and we have to take that language back and bring about that change, take it back away from corporate Canada, away from the right wingers who view this as their own particular territory.

Pensions are clearly the assets and money that belongs to workers. EI premiums are very clearly intended to purchase insurance against hard times. As I said, they are not payroll taxes, no matter who says they are. They are premiums for the provision of protection for workers and their families.

Two years ago when I met a number of delegations of seniors, they were talking to us and trying to get our attention, saying that there was a crisis developing on pensions in Canada. Neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives were seized with pensions at that time.

I reported to the House that the NDP held round tables two years ago, followed by months of intensive research, and on June 9 of that year we proposed an opposition day motion on pension reform. You will know, Mr. Speaker, that the NDP opposition day motion on pension reform was passed unanimously by the House.

That particular motion set out a road map for retirement security for seniors, a road map that to date the government has failed to implement. It was during the debate that our leader, the member for Toronto—Danforth, called for an immediate increase to the guaranteed income supplement to help 300,000 seniors who live below the poverty line. I will say that a majority of those seniors who live below the poverty line are women.

We also laid out a strategy for the doubling of CPP, and we said there must be a national pension insurance plan. Later in that year, October 22, 2009, the member for Toronto-—Danforth, our leader, and I released a New Democrat seniors retirement security plan.

I want to say again that the first line in the House that was spoken by the leader of our party was to address the situation with seniors who live in poverty. We must eliminate seniors poverty now, and it can be done.

This is a national disgrace, but how did it happen? How during 13 years of a Liberal government with five surplus budgets and five years of the current Conservative government did they allow this to happen on their watch?

It happened because the Prime Minister and the federal Liberals before him put the interests of Bay Street ahead of the interests of the workers and the pensioners of this country. I am here to say that our New Democratic caucus under the leadership of the member for Toronto—Danforth will no longer stand for this.

Today when I look at Bill C-47, I do not see the things seniors need. I remind the government that the NDP plan proposed an immediate increase to the GIS to close that seniors' poverty gap, and we can even put a price tag on it. Statistics Canada says fixing the poverty gap for seniors would cost less than $700 million.

This $700 million would ensure dignity and respect for the seniors who built this country. However it is not here in Bill C-47.

To pay for this particular boost for seniors, all it would take is the cancelling of one of the yearly tax breaks to the corporations of this country, the tax breaks that have been going to the banks and big oil and big gas.

Next, in consultation with the provinces, we can begin the process of strengthening the Canada pension plan. We know, and I have reported in the House before, that 63% of working Canadians today have no pension and no savings. How could they save when they are barely getting by? Consider that 93% of all working Canadians are part of the Canada and Quebec pension plans. There is no other option that will provide the advantages at so little cost.

Specifically, we are proposing a phasing in, in consultation with the provinces, of the doubling of CPP. I reported to the House just last week that pension expert Professor Kesselman and Jack Mintz, who worked for the government during the studies they have been doing, both agreed with the NDP plan for the increase in CPP. Our plan, as it is proposed, would increase the benefit from $908 a month to $1,817 to help secure a livable retirement for Canadians.

I also believe it is time for a national system of workplace pensions insurance. I am sure it is not news that underfunded pensions are an epidemic and collapsing pension plans are demanding a range of solutions. Today we are still fighting to move workers' underfunded pension assets to the front of the creditors line during CCAA and BIA.

Members will likely recall that I introduced Bill C-476 to protect pensions assets during CCAA and BIA in the House and another bill, Bill C-487, which would have done the same for LTD. Today I would suggest that one of the main problems facing Canadians is preserving private pension assets.

We are all aware in the House of the situation of Nortel workers. The Nortel workers became the poster children for the suffering workers who face companies using CCAA or BIA to avoid their responsibility to their workers and retirees. The frustrating thing for the NDP caucus remains the fact that the bill could have been before the House before the Nortel pensions were reduced to 64%, had the Liberals and Conservatives supported my original call for unanimous consent to address that motion. We could have helped those workers, instead of watching them lose over 30% of their pensions.

Beyond CCAA and BIA, the NDP recognized that workers also need insurance guaranteeing a minimum pension income when their workplace plans fail. As part of the NDP's seniors' retirement security plan, we proposed a self-financing mandatory insurance system funded by the plan's sponsors, and I stress the word “self-financing” as there would not be a cost to the government.

This is not as groundbreaking as it sounds. In fact, this is standard in the United States, Britain and elsewhere in the world. There are countries in which the governments actually back the pension plans. Where has Bill C-47 contemplated such important measures? The answer is it does not.

The NDP has proposed a national plan ensuring pension payouts are secured up to $2,500 a month. We insure our cars, we insure our homes and, in fact, we insure ourselves. Is it not common sense that we should insure our futures, our pension plans?

We are pleased that in June, as the last session of the House was ending before the summer break, the Minister of Finance agreed with the NDP plan for enhancing CPP. In fact, recently the Ontario minister of finance also agreed with New Democrats in our call to increase CPP.

I want to talk a bit about the government's actual spending priorities that we have heard repeatedly. They include $9 billion in corporate tax cuts so far with the one this year; $16 billion for stealth fighter jets; $9 billion for prisons, and I have suggestions of some people we might put in them; and $130 million last year in advertising. Yes, everyone heard that, $130 million spent on advertising. What did seniors get? They got $1.55 a month. People can imagine their disappointment.

[Ken Dryden, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this chance to speak to Bill C-47, the second budget implementation act.

Everybody, rich and poor, young and old, doing well and not doing well, we are all looking for the same thing: a chance, a real chance. Even the rich who have been rich all their lives, to develop a new product or to break into a new market, at some moment they need a chance, too.

For those who are not rich and for those who are poor who have not had the same chances or who did not give themselves the full chance they needed, what do they do? Where do they go? For them, for all of us, at some moment, government matters.

A budget matters. A budget offers a path to our economic future as a country and for each of us as individuals. However, the impact of a budget is far more than just economic. It can add a piece to a life that up to that moment does not quite work. A budget has often to do with money in the form of an investment, in training, learning, health, research and development, housing, literacy, in things that might not make today much better than yesterday, but which will give us a shot at a better tomorrow.

I have watched the government for more than four and a half years. I have listened as it has brought down several budgets. A budget day offers many announcements about many things, so much it seems is about to be done. Then the next day and every day after that we also begin to see what is not being done. For me, the test for any budget of any government is, what will its impact be 5 years or 10 years from now? How will it make us better off, as a country, as individuals? How much is a budget just stuff and in truth will not have any real impact on our lives at all?

That is my disappointment with the government. More than four and a half years have passed with very little benefit to the future of Canada and Canadians.

Learning, we know, will be central to every country's future. As parents, we worry about our kids. As we look into the future, more than anything we want to know that they will be okay. We see these immense, unimaginable changes ahead and we do not know how our kids will adapt.

We know that passing on to them some money will help a little, but money gets spent. Over time, we have come to realize, to know that in their future their only real security, their only real opportunity is learning. Therefore, when things change, they have in them the capacity to learn and change with them.

Our kids need to learn more and better in their early lives, to have enriched opportunities outside their own homes as well, in early learning and child care, just as they do when they get to kindergarten and beyond. They need to have better chances at college and university so their learning is not interrupted constantly by the need for part-time jobs or years off to limit the debt they incur.

Many adults who do not learn to read early in their lives, who live under the suffocating ceiling of illiteracy need literacy programs to give them another chance at life.

What is the government doing in these regards, in this budget? What has it been doing in these more than four and a half years? Very little. Enough to say in question period and in scrums that it is doing something. Enough to meet its political needs, but not enough, not nearly enough, to meet the needs of those outside government, to meet the needs of Canada and Canadians for the future.

When this recession ends, one thing is certain, the world's economy will not go back to where it was before the recession began. Shifts have taken place. There are new ways to do things, new technologies, especially in the energy sector, new opportunities, new risks. The need for any government, for any company, is to move to where the world is going, not to where it was or is.

In this budget and in the last four and a half years what has the government done to prepare us to succeed in the future? It has done just enough to say it has done something.

It is even more dramatically the case for those who are poor and who need a chance in so many different directions, affordable housing, income assistance, child care, disability supports and even more so still, those who are aboriginal. The government has done just enough to say it is doing something, but not nearly enough to make a difference, to offer a chance at a real life.

For more and more families, it takes both parents in the workforce to make ends meet. We are living longer. We are living healthier. However, as extended families, less often do we live together. What happens when something goes wrong, when there is a major illness in the family, a child or an elderly parent? When lives are closer to the margin, how do we adapt? How do we help caregivers? The government has done just enough to say it is doing something, but not enough to make a difference.

If someone notices just how little the government is actually doing for Canadians, the government discourages those voices. According to how the government thinks, these problems should not exist. If government gets smaller, if a little more money is put into the pockets of people, everything will be fine.

The reality is, however, that life as it is really lived annoyingly gets in the way, unless of course the government does not notice. For the Conservative government, it is the miracle of ideology. If the Conservatives know something already, then they do not have to listen. The government does not have to listen to community groups, so why not cut their funding. It does not have to listen to people who oppose or criticize it, so why not fire or humiliate them. Because we cannot know what is not knowable, the census is cut. Everybody knows that if something is not measured, then it does not exist. If it does not exist, then it cannot be a problem. If it is not a problem, why have government programs to fix what does not need fixing? It is magic, magic for the government but not magic for those who need a chance.

In a time of global economic transformation, in a time of climate change, in a time when the gap between the rich and everyone else has grown, in this more than four and a half years, as exemplified by the second budget implementation act, the hallmark of the Conservative government has been political management, not national stewardship.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to participate in the debate on Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures. It is nicknamed Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act.

This gives me a chance to address broadly the government's economic priorities. I have to say that in my home community of Burnaby there are lots of folks who question where the government is headed. They question the expenditures that the government is undertaking, especially during this period of recession. They question things like the large expenditures the government undertook on the G8 and G20 meetings, which were larger than those of any G8-G20 meeting in the past, and more than any that are planned in the future. People in Burnaby are left wondering just what the heck is going on when the government puts out that kind of money for that kind of meeting.

People in Burnaby are wondering about the planned expenditures for building more prisons. They do not understand why that should be a priority, especially when crime is falling in many of our communities. They just do not get why that kind of building program should be a priority for the government.

People wonder about the purchase of new fighter jets to the tune of $9 billion, and the $9 billion maintenance contract associated with the purchase. They do not understand that kind of expenditure when there are other needs in our community going unmet. They do not understand why the government continues with its massive corporate tax cuts at a time when the government is in deficit, and why government would borrow to continue these tax cuts when it does not have the money for them. It does not make sense to people. People would not do that in their own budgeting. They do not understand why the government is pursuing such activities.

They do not understand why this is not a time for us to work together to solve some problems instead of undertaking massive expenditures. People in Burnaby are coming together to put forward a clear program on homelessness and affordable housing. They favour addressing this issue by working together, across political lines, working among different agencies, with the public and private sectors.

There has been a lot of activity in Burnaby over the last year on this issue. A lot of it was motivated by the Burnaby Task Force on Homelessness. I want to pay tribute to the co-chairs of that group, Wanda Mulholland, a citizen activist on homelessness issues, and Irene Jaakson, from the Lookout Emergency Aid Society. I also want to recognize the various other partners in the Burnaby Task Force on Homelessness.

People have come together from all over the community to address these issues: the Fraser Health Authority, B.C. Housing, all of the local MPs and MLAs across party lines, the Lookout Emergency Aid Society, Burnaby Community Connections, Burnaby Mental Wealth Society, Faith Lutheran Church, West Burnaby United Church, South Burnaby United Church, the Burnaby Hospital, the city of Burnaby, the Salvation Army, the community policing offices, the Progressive Housing Society, the Ministry of Children and Family Development, the Regional Steering Committee on Homelessness from the United Way, the Greater Vancouver Shelter Society, the Progressive Housing Society, the Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority Police Service, the Mental Health and Addictions Geriatric Team from the Fraser Health Authority, and the Dixon Transition Society. All kinds of organizations and their representatives have come together to work on solutions to housing affordability and homelessness in Burnaby.

Recently, we marked this with a National Homelessness Week, which included a number of events that highlighted the program in the city of Burnaby.

What is remarkable about Burnaby is that there is not what might be considered the usual collection of community agencies, churches, and other agencies that serve people who are underhoused or homeless. Nevertheless, this message has spread to the business community in Burnaby. The exciting news is that the Burnaby Board of Trade has also got on board with this campaign and taken some significant initiatives of its own with regard to housing and homelessness.

A recent survey by the Burnaby Board of Trade established that homelessness and affordable housing were the top two social issues that business members could address. A full 64% of the members of the Burnaby Board of Trade identified those two issues as the key social issues in our community. The Burnaby Board of Trade Social Development Committee then began working on these issues.

The Burnaby Board of Trade's committee identified a number of reasons that homelessness was important in our community and to the business community. They noted that homelessness is just plain bad for business, that it is expensive, that it is a waste of human capital and productivity, and that it reflects poorly on our society. They found out that homelessness numbers are increasing in Burnaby and other communities in greater Vancouver. They noted that affordable housing is in short supply. They talked about solutions to those problems, and made some recommendations.

But they did not leave it there. They decided that they were going to take it further, and they got together with the Surrey Board of Trade and the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce. Last September, they took a motion and a report to the annual meeting of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Ottawa. That annual meeting adopted the report suggested by those three organizations, the two boards of trade and the chamber, on reallocating federal funding to develop a national plan to end homelessness.

That was a significant move. To have the Canadian Chamber of Commerce adopt a policy for ending homelessness and providing affordable housing is an important development. The government should be getting ready, because it will be hearing from representatives of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce on this issue when they have their next meeting here on Parliament Hill.

It is interesting to note that in the report adopted by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce they make some clear statements. They say:

Homelessness is bad for business and the federal government does not have a national plan to end homelessness in Canada. Homelessness has a direct financial impact on businesses as it deters customers, damages employee recruitment and retention, harms tourism, and discourages companies from setting up offices in areas with a visible homeless population.

They begin their report with some bold and clear statements about the impact of homelessness on our communities and on the ability of businesses to be successful.

They note a number of statistics. The one that is often drawn to our attention is that Canada is the only G8 country without a national housing strategy. They note that homelessness costs Canadian taxpayers between $4.5 billion and $6 billion annually, including health care costs, criminal justice, social services, and emergency shelter costs. They note that between 150,000 and 300,000 people are homeless in Canada, which is shameful to report. They note that in greater Vancouver homelessness increased by 22% after the homelessness count in 2008.

The Burnaby Board of Trade, the Surrey Board of Trade, and the Great Victoria Chamber of Commerce know about affordable housing and homelessness. In their report, they say, “The sooner the federal government commits to ending homelessness in a reasonable time frame, the sooner Canadian businesses and citizens will benefit from the resulting increase in Canada's economic productivity and quality of life. The development of a national plan to end homelessness is the necessary first step towards fulfilling this commitment”.

They make four recommendations. They call upon the federal government to reallocate funds from within the federal budget envelope to develop a national plan to end homelessness; to establish a reasonable target for the reduction of homelessness in Canada and set a reasonable time frame to accomplish this goal; to maintain a housing-first approach of creating and sustaining affordable and supportive housing as a first priority in the development of the national plan; and to consult with other levels of government and community partners in the development of the national plan.

If the Canadian Chamber of Commerce gets it, I wonder why this is not on the agenda of the current government. That is another failing in the government's economic program.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to this important budget bill, Bill C-47. It is another in a continuing series of discussions we are having with the government about what it should be doing to deal with some of our difficult economic realities. Among other things, it should be investing in communities and people, and looking after families that are finding it hard to make ends meet in these difficult times. As jobs continue to be lost or changed in nature, incomes go down, the cost of living continues to increase, and people struggle to keep body and soul together as they attempt to provide their children with support, education, and help with their health care needs.

As we continue this discussion about the budget and the economy, it is important to understand how they connect, and how we as government support communities that are struggling to keep all of their citizens' heads above water. It is important to understand and reflect on what got us where we are today. We need to consider the 2008 collapse of the world's financial sector and understand why it happened.

The government did not recognize the 2008 recession until the opposition on this side of the House made it aware of the problem. Then, all of a sudden, the government began to realize that it needed to respond in a serious way to this economic and financial tsunami that was coming at us.

The cause of this was that we allowed our banking systems, both here and around the world, to continue to be further and further deregulated. Besides the banks, we deregulated a lot of other financial practices. We allowed the ethos of greed and fear to be the driving force behind the decisions made by corporations and governments around the world. Finally, to keep things from getting even worse, governments had to step in and become engaged again.

Deregulation and free trade, which went hand in hand with the deregulation, allowed some corporations to become more powerful and wealthy than many countries. We saw a push towards less government intervention, which is what is now challenging the government of the day. Even though they are great believers in less government intervention, this government was forced to intervene in the economy as never before.

At the same time, we lowered taxes for corporations over and over again, at the provincial and the federal levels. Finally, the government woke up and realized that it had to come to the table with big bags of money to help its friends in the business world to weather these difficult times. But because it had given away so much of the treasury, so much of the capacity of the government to play a role in our economic life, the government had little money left. The result is that we now find ourselves with a huge deficit, and we will be in deficit for a long time to come.

Why are we in the New Democrat caucus speaking so aggressively against this budget today? It is because the government will not be turning these corporate tax breaks around. Instead, the government wants to reduce even further its ability to intervene in the economic affairs of this country.

If we do not stop, take a long look, and do something different, this will be tragic. It will be especially tragic for those who are most at risk and marginalized, and this is the group of people that government has the greatest and most urgent responsibility to help.

For the six years that I have been in this place, and particularly over the last two years since the collapse of the financial world, I have been calling for a national anti-poverty strategy. Six provinces in this country recognize that something significant needs to happen if we are going to deal with the increasing number of people who find themselves unable to make ends meet. Provincial strategies have been put in place. I was in the Northwest Territories a couple of weeks ago, and they are moving on a strategy to deal with poverty.

The provinces are telling us that they will not be able to do all that they have to do. They will not be able to put in place those programs that they know are necessary to lift people up and give them the opportunity to take advantage of the new economy when, a year or two from now, this recession has eased off.

The provinces just do not have the resources, and they are calling on the federal government to be a partner in this effort. They know that we need to move away from this ethos of greed and fear to one of hope and concern for the common good.

Those of us who have been engaged in this exercise over the last three years know that it makes good economic sense to deal with poverty. The choices we make will affect not only our ability to help those who are in difficulty, but also our ability to turn our economy around. Failing to address the problem is costing us in many direct and substantial ways.

We heard from all kinds of people as we travelled the country, getting input on what the federal government should be doing about poverty. They told us the choice is clear: we can pay to address poverty now, or we can wind up paying a lot more for a lot longer.

We pay for poverty through lost productivity, lost opportunity, and increased family violence. We pay for it through the health care system and our criminal justice system. We pay for it through growing demands on an already-frayed social support system. We pay for it through our children's reduced life chances, employment opportunities, and earning capacity.

For the first time in their lives, thousands of families across this country are going into Christmas relying on the good graces of provincial and municipal welfare systems, or what is left of them. People are finding that there is not much to be had.

After the government of the day's 1995 elimination of the Canada assistance plan, the reduction in the transfers to provinces, and the huge rollout of corporate tax breaks, not much was left in the coffers when people came calling in their time of need. People who pay their taxes, work every day, and pay into unemployment insurance are finding as they face this Christmas that the safety net they thought was there has disappeared.

If nothing else, when we consider this budget we should be addressing the difficult reality that is confronting many of our friends and neighbours, our constituents. We need to deal with the question of poverty in this country.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the second piece of budget legislation, Bill C-47, sustaining Canada's economic recovery act.

Sustaining Canada's economic recovery has to be the most important issue before Parliament today for all Canadians. The current Conservative government would tell Canadians that Canada is in shipshape in comparison to other countries around the world, and yet, when I look at my riding of Random—Burin—St. George's in Newfoundland and Labrador to evaluate the success and stability of Canada's economic recovery, it is not encouraging at all.

Small communities are facing many challenges today with limited employment opportunities, aging and insufficient infrastructure and few alternatives for young people to establish careers in their home communities.

Regardless of reports of economic recovery, these continue to be difficult times for rural Canadians and for rural communities.

It was in July that Canadians saw the economy start to falter and an indication that Canada's economic growth was not as rosy as the government would have Canadians believe. Consumer confidence has now declined for four straight months. It is foolhardy to ignore that Canada's economy remains vulnerable. We need to ensure measures are taken that will ensure long-term stability and growth, and not a short-term quick fix that will leave us in a worse position in the near future.

The recession hit Newfoundland and Labrador hard. The province suffered the second largest increase in unemployment in Canada. The unemployment rate in Newfoundland and Labrador rose from 13.8% in October 2008 to 17% in October 2009, which was the highest in Canada at that time. Canada's unemployment rate is 2% higher today than it was when the federal Conservative government was elected just over two years ago. Unfortunately, the full-time jobs that were lost are now being replaced by part-time work.

Families have had no choice but to depend on the employment insurance program, particularly the best 14 weeks' project, which calculates benefits based on the highest 14 weeks of earnings. While I am pleased that the government decided to extend these employment insurance pilot projects after many appeals to do so, what Canadians want are long-term jobs. In the meantime, these pilot projects are vital for the seasonal industries that are found across the small communities throughout Random—Burin—St. George's and throughout our country. The short-term nature of the extension of the pilot projects leaves one to wonder whether the Conservative government really appreciates the tentative nature of Canada's economic recovery.

Rural Canadians have specific needs that cannot be ignored in building Canada's future prosperity. We cannot leave rural Canadians behind. Unfortunately, our rural communities are underserviced by the Conservative government. Services, such as high-speed Internet connections, expanded cellphone coverage and local postal service are essential to enable communities to connect to one another and to the world.

Rural communities are being left behind because of a lack of access to basic services. The Conservative government has divided communities into haves and have nots based upon where people live. Something as accessible for some as broadband Internet service is taken for granted in the large urban centres and 80% of Canada. However, for many of the people I represent, high-speed Internet is not a reality and it poses a substantial hurdle for economic growth.

One indicator of a strong economy is ensuring Canadians have access to the tools needed to move ahead and be gainfully employed. Education is one of the keys to providing these tools. Unfortunately, in rural communities, students who do not have access to high-speed Internet are at a disadvantage. There are courses they cannot access that are readily available to students at urban centres. They are disadvantaged because of where they live and yet they live in Canada.

The Liberal Party of Canada believes that economic opportunity and a high quality of life can be achieved in all regions and is committed to tackling the rural-urban divide.

Too many Canadians are leaving rural communities because they cannot find jobs or do not have access to essential services, like Internet and education, and even basic services like banking and mail service.

Canada's economy is increasingly linked through the Internet. As jobs, education, and communication become more dependent upon the Internet, Canadians without Internet access or Internet skills will be left behind.

Internet business opportunities are compromised without high-speed Internet. Opportunities to market products globally do not exist without high-speed Internet and access to education resources is greatly hindered by our lack of high-speed Internet services.

It is imperative that the Conservative government take a look at the issues in rural Canada, like rural broadband, and work toward a plan for nationwide high-speed Internet to give every community the essential resources to work toward Canada's economic recovery, instead of relying on an economic stimulus plan which one would have to question just how effective it was since consumer confidence has been steadily declining since July.

Of course, the government points to its $200 million broadband strategy as proof of doing something about access to broadband for Canadians. This is the same government that is willing to spend $16 billion on jet fighters without an open competition, which Alan Williams, the former assistant deputy minister in the Department of National Defence, says would save 20% if we had an open competition, and in this case that would be $3 billion. On can just imagine what could be accomplished in terms of connecting Canadians to high-speed Internet with just the savings that would be realized by holding an open competition for the fighter jets.

Then, of course, there is the $10 billion that is being spent on prisons, and the list goes on.

Bill C-47 raises the issue of pensions. We have been pressing the government to bring forward meaningful pension reform to make retirement easier and more secure. We called for three specific pension reforms: a supplementary Canada pension plan to give Canadians the option of saving more for retirement; allowing employees with stranded or abandoned pensions following bankruptcy, the option of growing their pension assets through the Canada pension plan; and protecting vulnerable Canadians on long-term disability by giving them preferred status as creditors in bankruptcy.

Canada is aging. One-third of Canadians lack the savings to maintain their standard of living after retirement and the same number again have no retirement savings at all. Today's pension crisis cannot be ignored and should not be ignored but the Conservative government has continuously failed to delivered on its promise to introduce pension reform.

The fiscal record of the Conservative government is cause for concern for all Canadians. Canada was in an enviable financial position with a healthy $13 billion surplus when the Conservative government took over in 2006. The Conservatives abandoned prudent measures that were built into the federal budget under Liberal leadership and spent the cupboard bare, plunging Canada into a deficit before the recession even hit.

The finance minister continues to lead the government on a spending spree with taxpayer money. The Conservative government's economic record is nothing to boast about. Spending ballooned by 18% between 2006-08, putting Canada into a deficit position even before the recession began in the fall of 2008.

Even today, with a deficit of $55.6 billion, nearly $2 billion higher than projected just last spring, the Conservative government remains determined, as I mentioned earlier, to waste billions on megaprisons, untendered stealth fighters and unaffordable tax breaks for large corporations.

What Canada needs is an economic plan that puts the needs of Canadian families first with strategic investments in health and family care, pensions, learning and jobs, and global leadership.

I know families in my riding are not in a better position economically as a result of the investments by the government. What I hear from them is that they are not better off after Conservative budgets. They are worried about making ends meet, whether it is finding or paying for child care, looking after sick or aging loved ones, paying for their children's post-secondary education or simply saving enough to retire.

Recently, the Liberal opposition shared its family care plan with Canadians and the government. In fact, we encourage the government to run with our plan because it would mean better services for Canadian families. The Liberal family care plan recognizes the important contribution of family caregivers and would invest $1 billion in a six month family care employment insurance benefit and a new family care tax plan.

Not only is the Liberal plan the right plan for Canadian families, it is a way to contain health costs by making it possible for Canadians who are sick to stay at home and be cared for by family members. The smart thing for the government to do would be to snap up the idea and support the 2.7 billion Canadians who are providing care for seniors. Unfortunately, the Conservative government has different priorities.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment the member for Davenport for making an effort at putting on the table a discussion about a vision the country ought to have through the House of Commons.

I went through Bill C-47 and I am sure he did not find that macro-picture which the government says it would like to address. It is another little Chihuahua piece of legislation: lots of bark but very little bite. Here is where the bite is, and I would like the member for Davenport to address this.

There are some very light issues in this legislation about what the government is trying to do in order to maintain the sustainability of the recovery, and yet as part of this package, in part 2 of the bill the government is asking for the authority to impose a $3.2 billion tax on air travellers. One wonders whether the sustainability of an economic recovery would be maintained by hiding taxes in a piece of legislation that is allegedly designed to do something more.

Is this another one of those cases where it is sound bite legislation, lots of sound and no bite?

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-47, the sustaining Canada's economic recovery act.

When reading reports or listening to speeches on economic issues, it is often possible to be overwhelmed by numbers, statistics and projections. However, beyond these figures and complicated tables are human stories of Canadians simply trying to build better lives for themselves, their families and their communities in times that are increasingly less certain.

As we all know, seniors across Canada face some of the most pressing challenges in terms of maintaining a decent living for themselves. Upon retirement, the vast majority of Canadian seniors see a significant reduction in their income. Whether they have managed to purchase their own homes or not, the expenses they face can appear daunting to them as they enter their retirement years. Indeed, these expenses are significant to those on fixed incomes.

These expenses include electricity, gas, food, home maintenance, property taxes, transportation costs, health costs in terms of prescriptions and assistance devices, and the list goes on. Unfortunately, all of these expenses are increasing as time passes, while income, particularly retirement income, simply does not keep pace.

It is for this reason that we as a society must recognize that our population is aging and that many of our seniors find it difficult to make ends meet. The challenge will only become more acute in the coming years.

While public policy encourages Canadians to save for retirement, it is widely recognized that only one in five Canadians has an employment-based retirement pension plan. It is a simple fact that most Canadians without an employment-based pension plan have little left over to save for retirement.

While others may save independently, many Canadians are relying on the Canada pension plan to support them in retirement and these payments are simply not enough to maintain a reasonable standard of living.

Those are some of the challenges for seniors in Canada.

We as a society must recognize that we have an obligation to consider fully the unique challenges facing Canadian seniors. We have an obligation to consider the kind of programs and initiatives to ensure that those who have worked hard all of their lives can live decent and meaningful lives when they retire.

We need to have serious discussions in this country about public policy considerations, such as reducing property taxes for seniors or providing a rebate for these payments through tax policy, increasing assistance for those who need prescription medications or specialized in-home medical care, and proper community support systems that are adequately funded. These are only a few of the areas of concern.

We owe it to seniors in this country to ensure that they can enjoy their hard-earned retirement years.

Similarly, many young families in this country are struggling, which should not be the case in a prosperous country like Canada. It is shocking and intolerable that, according to a 2008 report, one in nine Canadian children lives in poverty. That is one million children who must contend each day with the terrible reality of poverty.

These are working families who, at the end of the month, simply do not have enough money to cover all of their expenses. It is this kind of poverty that is vicious, in that it is circular in nature. It traps people in a cycle of poverty which in most cases is difficult to escape.

Recently, the Senate of Canada released a report on poverty, “In From the Margins: A Call to Action on Poverty, Housing and Homelessness”. The report contains 74 recommendations that should be considered. These recommendations include a call to increase the guaranteed income supplement for seniors, a national affordable housing program and to make the disability tax credit refundable. We must consider these kinds of public policy initiatives.

I would remind members that it was the previous Liberal government under Prime Minister Paul Martin that began to invest in affordable housing for the first time in a generation. It was also the Liberal Party which, in the last general election, had a specific plan to address poverty in Canada in general and child poverty in particular.

Young people in this country require an increasingly specialized level of education if they are to have any chance at all of competing in the rapidly changing global marketplace. It is only the fortunate few who, through family or other means, have the resources to fully cover the cost of their education. The reality for most students is that they work while attending post-secondary institutions. They also assume large student loan debts which will hound them for years to come.

It is incumbent upon us as a society to have serious debates about what we can do to address the issues facing young people who are increasingly leaving school with unmanageable debt loads which they assumed simply so they could obtain an education.

Not only is it in the best interests of the students to attend school and become as competitive in the world marketplace as they possibly can, but it is also in the best interests of our country.

The future belongs to our young people. We need to do all that we can to position them well as they enter their working lives. For them to do so with the burden of enormous debt is not the way to achieve this goal. We must look at ways to make post-secondary education more affordable and less burdensome. Today unfortunately the opposite is happening.

Universities and colleges are facing ever increasing fiscal pressures and as a result are charging higher fees. Students, even those who are fortunate enough to find work during their years of study, have to borrow more to cover their education costs. We need to lessen this burden and adequately fund our elementary, secondary and post-secondary schools.

There is an infrastructure deficit in this country which, several years ago under the previous Liberal government, began to receive the attention it deserved. The global economic meltdown in 2008 forced many of these reports from the front pages. If we are to remain competitive and in order to sustain healthy cities and communities, we must have a plan of action that is well-funded to repair or replace and sustain infrastructure across the country.

It is simply not reasonable to suggest that we can remain competitive when our infrastructure is aging and in disrepair. In my home city of Toronto there are sewage systems that are over 100 years old and clearly in need of replacement. This story is repeated across the country. As the previous Liberal government had begun to do, we need to start addressing the infrastructure needs of Canada's cities and communities.

I recognize that in the hue and cry about fiscal realities the inevitable question is, how does one pay for the kinds of programs and initiatives mentioned in my remarks today? It is about priorities and putting in place the public policies we need to get the job done.

How can it be that the government can find $1 billion to cover the costs of a 72-hour meeting in Toronto and Huntsville which produced questionable results, and yet when it comes to poverty, the cry is that there is no money to be found? That $1 billion would have gone a long way in helping to address poverty in this country. It would be better spent in this way than on photo ops and closed door meetings.

Similarly, the government maintains there is no money to fund students or address the needs of seniors and young families, yet it continues on a program of corporate tax cuts in the billions of dollars.

Canada's economy is competitive. Corporations are effectively competing on the world stage. We would do better to cancel the billions of dollars in tax cuts for the large corporations and instead channel that money into the areas I have referred to in these remarks. We need to be building schools and hospitals with this money, not corporate office towers. We need to be helping young people go to school, not world leaders at meetings of dubious value at billion dollar conferences.

The reality is that we must adopt public policies that would help Canadians and their families to live the lives they deserve. We can be prosperous and prudent, compassionate and responsible. We can also be progressive and sensible. This is how we build a nation in which all have the opportunity to excel. In so doing, we help create what is considered to be the greatest country on earth.

The House resumed from October 8 consideration of the motion that Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Business of the House

[John Baird, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, certainly in the course of my comments I will answer both of those questions. We will continue debate today on Bill C-49, the preventing human smugglers from abusing Canada's immigration system act.

Tomorrow we will call Bill C-36, the consumer product safety bill. Since it was only reported back from committee today, we will need to adopt a special order, which I will propose after my statement. This is a bill that will help protect children, help protect families, and I think it speaks incredibly well of all four political parties that they put politics aside and are seeking speedy passage of the bill. So I would like to thank everyone in all parties for their support on this important initiative. It is a good day for Parliament.

On Monday, we will continue debate on Bill C-47, the second budget implementation bill. I know the member opposite has been waiting for this and I hope he will have the opportunity to speak to this important piece of legislation.

That would be followed by Bill C-49, the preventing human smugglers from abusing Canada's immigration system act; Bill S-2, regarding the sex offenders registry; Bill S-3, the tax conventions; Bill C-41, strengthening military justice; Bill C-48, the protecting Canadians by ending sentence discounts for multiple murders act; Bill C-29, safeguarding Canadians' personal information; and Bill C-30, on the Supreme Court of Canada decision in R. v. Shoker.

On Tuesday, we will call Bill C-32, copyright modernization. At the conclusion of debate on the bill, we will call Bill C-48, protecting Canadians by ending sentence discounts for multiple murders. Following Bill C-48, we will return to the list for Monday, starting with the budget implementation act, which again speaks to one of the member's questions.

On Tuesday evening we will have a take note debate on honouring our veterans and I will be moving the appropriate motion in a few minutes. I think it again speaks well that we are having a take note debate. I know the member for Vancouver East joined members of the Liberal Party, the Bloc Québécois and the Conservative Party in supporting this.

Thursday shall be an allotted day for the New Democratic Party, an opposition day as requested by the House leader for the official opposition.

Therefore, consultations have taken place among the parties and I am pleased to move:

That a take-note debate on the subject of the courageous contribution and service to Canada by Canada's Veterans take place pursuant to Standing Order 53.1, on Tuesday, November 2, 2010.

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

Thank you, Mr. Ignatieff.

You used the word “snuck”. The government bill was there for all to see. It seems to me that a year and a half after the fact is too late. A great deal of damage has been done.

Indeed I do support pay equity. I have since I was an MLA in Ontario. I actually brought forward a pay equity bill based on the 2004 task force. If I ever have a chance to do that again, I hope you will support it.

About a month ago, you said that Bill C-308, a private member's bill, was dead on arrival; it wasn't going anywhere because it needed royal recommendation. Now, since part of Bill C-471 requires a royal recommendation, and my guess is that it's most definitely not going to be granted, I wondered, when you drafted your bill, did you consider setting aside that part--which has, in your own words, no hope--in favour of pursuing the consequential amendment that revokes the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act? In that revocation, it would take us back to the point we were at before the Conservative bill. Women then would have the ability to appeal to the Human Rights Commission, with fines levied against employers and unions. They're quite significant fines in the case of unions who want to advocate for their members. Also, it would remove pay equity from the bargaining table.

Had you thought about pursuing that as a way of actually achieving something substantive that we know would go ahead--or that had hope of going ahead, rather?

Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address a question to the hon. member across the way. I have indicated that when the member leaves this place I would like to put an offer in on his thesaurus. I think he is amongst the better deliverers of lines in the House. I would not mind getting a copy of that when he has done. Perhaps he might even write it in a memoir for me.

I did want to mention a couple of points on his speech. I know he has companions in the Liberal Party who in last election indicated that they were going to cut corporate taxes farther and faster than I would cut them. Now they have skipped across, and they have apparently taken the 2008 NDP campaign platform and are running with that.

I am sure the member is actually happy about that in some regards, but at the same time I am sure he sees that it is not likely a truthful position from the Liberal Party since they have supported our reductions in corporate taxes. Good for them to this point, although most people believe that they actually supported it to save their skin.

I would say to the hon. member that this bill contains some key measures, including on the working income tax benefit. There are some key measures to help the working poor to climb and claw their way up, assisting them to get to middle class.

Has the member considered those measures in Bill C-47 and if he supports them?

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

No, no, rich people do not go to jail because the jail is too full of young aboriginal kids. There is no room for them. They can go to the country club and play golf.

Now we have a member of the board of directors of Onex Corporation as the Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister. We can just imagine the kind of bugs that are being dropped into the ear of the Prime Minister behind closed doors and under the shroud of secrecy that the Conservatives like to create. They can help us solve our deficit problem. They can privatize the prisons, privatize this and contract out that and get government out of all of these areas, which has been, as I said, the dream objective of the neo-conservatives since their beginning.

We have another contradiction or irony here that I do not think the public will be very pleased about. It will come up on the doorsteps in the next federal election, but in the context of Bill C-47, the budget implementation bill, it contemplates corporate tax cuts to the extent of $6 billion or $7 billion.

The astounding thing is the reasoning that goes into this. It is not as though we are in a surplus situation where we will be sharing some of the bounty through private sector tax cuts, personal tax cuts and corporate tax cuts. We are not in that environment. We are in a $50 billion deficit situation. To give this $6 billion or $7 billion more in tax cuts, we have to borrow that money. We will be borrowing money on the open market to give tax cuts to profitable corporations.

The irony about giving tax cuts in this way is that it rewards the most successful businesses. It does not give a hand up to a struggling business that is about to close its doors. They are not paying any income tax anyway because they are struggling. So this is not some kind of initiative to assist small and medium-sized enterprises. I could support that to ensure that we avoid plant closures, et cetera.

This will reward those most profitable businesses in the country, the very people, maybe the only people in the country, who do not need our help right now. It is the struggling small and medium-sized businesses that actually, legitimately need assistance to get them through these turbulent economic times, but by some convoluted pretzel logic, the Conservatives have decided to hand over this massive transfer of wealth to corporations instead of an option that I suggested, raising the old age security by $100 a month and bringing seniors out of poverty.

I wish I had more time to go into the tax-motivated expatriation, which is actually sleazy, tax-cheating loopholes that exist within our tax system, but the Conservatives have decided to leave that money on the table and not go after it, even though we are in a $50 billion deficit situation.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have this opportunity to join in the debate on Bill C-47, the budget implementation act.

As the government operations vice-chair, much of my 13 years as an MP has been spent in an environment where budgetary restraint were the operative words. They were key. In fact, it was a period of cutting, hacking, and slashing in a way that we often criticized as going too far.

In the Liberal years, when they tried to balance a budget, they did so in such a way that they were not just trimming the fat from government programs but had gone through the fat and were into the bone. Some of those cuts have never healed. In fact, some of the Liberals' cutting, hacking, and slashing bordered on cruelty in that they seemed to take no notice of the human consequences associated with their deep, reckless, and irresponsible cuts.

That was the environment in which I spent most of my political career, trying to direct spending to social spending and to bring an element of reason and compassion into the slashing that was going on. I contrast that now with the position I find myself in as the vice-chair of the government operations committee, the oversight committee for estimates.

When I contrast the experience of yesterday with that of today, I see billions of dollars flying out the door at breakneck speed, with virtually no oversight, model, projection, or yardstick to measure progress by. This is irresponsible and cavalier, almost reckless.

Granted, this spending was called for by other OECD nations. We all knew we had to get some money into circulation. But surely with some prudence and probity, we could have designed a way to get money into circulation with some yardstick to measure progress by, with goals and objectives that could be stated, observed, measured, and then evaluated.

We in the committee asked for that type of participation. But we were given none of it. In fact, it has been incredibly frustrating. For instance, we asked for the projected job creation associated with this spending initiative, and we got nothing to go by. This is my frustration as a member of Parliament. I am finally given the opportunity at this late date to speak to the budget implementation bill. Yet I recall that, at every step along the way, I tried to speak to the issues associated with this massive windfall of spending. And every step of the way, I was stymied.

Instead of the government coming to Parliament and allowing members to test the metal of its policies through vigorous debate and informed participation, it has put a shroud of secrecy over what it is doing, as if policy can be discussed only behind closed doors and drawn curtains. It seems we have no right, according to the government, to know what the stimulus spending is doing, where it is going, and how it is being allocated.

Whether the Auditor General will ever be able to do a thorough analysis of these billions of dollars of stimulus spending remains to be seen. In any case, if such an analysis were to occur, by that time things would likely have gone too far. We will be into another political cycle and presumably another election will have taken place.

It would be disingenuous to allow the Canadian people to think that we have weathered this economic recession relatively well owing to the strong financial stewardship of the government, but that is the illusion the government is trying to create. In every speech Conservatives make in public on the international scene, they say Canada has weathered the recession a lot better because they did what was right. Let us remind ourselves that, if we had actually run with the Conservative budget in late 2008, a catastrophe would have ensued.

The budget we are seeing today is in fact a coalition budget, a budget that we forced the Minister of Finance to entertain. In November 2008, remember, he was in full denial that an economic crisis existed.

The government considered that it was just business as usual. It did not worry about the economy, suggesting that the crisis would pass. We said no. The rest of the world said no. All of the members on this side of the House said no. We told the government that we would not let it drive the bus over the cliff, so we stopped it, and it is a good thing we did. We scared the government straight, as it were, because it had to regroup, pull back, and withdraw. It came out with a stimulus package that has helped us overcome the economic challenges of the last few months.

The Conservatives did not listen to advice, though. With what has been called the biggest economic crisis since the great depression, one would have thought there would have been some effort to reach across the aisle and co-operate. When the country is at war, a war cabinet is pulled together. When the country is in crisis, one would like to think that the government would approach opposition parties and say, “Look, in light of this crisis, we need an unprecedented level of co-operation, because we have to be paddling our canoe in the same direction to get out of these dangerous rapids”.

None of that happened. In fact, the Conservatives ignored all the advice proffered. Surely, they cannot think that they have a monopoly on common sense and reason, financial responsibility and experience. There are talented people on this side of the House, too. We put forward good ideas to the Conservative Party, but those members ignored virtually every one of them. I will talk about only one or two.

I fully supported getting money into circulation as quickly as possible to stimulate the economy in a Keynesian way. But we suggested ways to achieve secondary objectives at the same time. Yes, get the money into circulation. Yes, public spending is the way to do it. Yes, get it into people's hands. But we could have done transformative things with our economy, if we had set out mind to it.

I heard a speech recently by Van Jones, who was an adviser to President Obama in the United States. Two important U.S. objectives in its stimulus spending were, first, to wean society off the carbon-based economy that was dragging the country down, and second, to bring in the new green economy of the future. A stated objective in the U.S. stimulus spending was to do things that were environmentally smart to wean the American people off imported energy from questionable sources. That was smart. That was making lemonade out of lemons.

There will never be a flurry of public spending like this again in our lifetime. It is rare. As I said, my entire political experience of 13 years has been in an era of budgetary restraint, cutbacks, spending less, and getting government out of things.

When we got into a crisis, we decided as a people that government needed to get into this. But I do not think we are going to see it again. It is a wasted opportunity. We could have used this economic downturn and this blitzkrieg of public spending to transform ourselves from a carbon-based economy into a more sustainable one.

A nationwide, comprehensive energy retrofit program would have put money into circulation immediately. The country would have been put back to work and people would have renovated their homes.

The government offered a paltry home renovation program, but it did not have an adequate energy component. One could get the home renovation stimulus money of $1,300, not a great deal of money, to build a sundeck, for instance. That grant should have been available only to homeowners who wanted to energy retrofit their homes, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I understand that, if a homeowner wanted use the program to put in windows, this would be an improvement in energy efficiency. But there was nothing mandated about that. That was a mistake.

The government could have done something else in home retrofitting. It could have set up a comprehensive asbestos removal program, so that people could rid their homes of harmful asbestos, especially Zonolite insulation.

I cite that specifically because the federal government subsidized and promoted the installation of Zonolite asbestos insulation in 350,000 homes across the country and a countless number of public buildings through CHIP, its Canadian home insulation program. People's homes were devalued and made unsafe by virtue of a government program.

When UFFI, urea-formaldehyde foam insulation, was put in and a few people started getting irritation from it, I think it was André Ouellet at the time who started a massive, nationwide removal program to take all that foam insulation out of the houses, which the government had just paid to put in.

While UFFI is irritating to some people, asbestos is deadly to everyone. Yet there is no corresponding removal program. This would have been a perfect opportunity to implement a nationwide asbestos removal program to help homeowners whose homes have been devalued and made unsafe by the government's own home insulation program from 1977 to 1984.

We believe another way we could have stimulated the economy and get money into circulation immediately, plus achieve important secondary objectives at the same time, would have been to increase the old age security payments to Canadian pensioners. Instead of a $1.50 per month increase, anti-poverty groups tell us that an increase of $100 per month would have elevated hundreds of thousands of Canadian seniors out of poverty to the poverty line. This would not make them wealthy by any means, but it would at least elevate them to the base minimum level of poverty that we identify with the low-income cut-off.

Our party costed this out, and for the 300,000 individuals involved, it would be a total cost of $700 million. It is a lot of money, and I am not trying to downplay that, but one could guarantee that the money would be in circulation immediately. A dollar in a poor person's hand is spent that day, in their home community, and it would be in circulation. We all know that every dollar spent gets re-spent four times before it finds its natural state of repose, usually in some rich man's pocket. However, that would have been one way to guarantee money in circulation immediately and solve a serious social objective of senior citizens living in poverty, for a relatively low price tag.

These ideas were put to the Minister of Finance during the brief, paltry, and now we find useless, consultation process. We made these arguments. Frankly, it would have been very smart politically and I think the government would have looked pretty good in the minds of the general public if the senior citizens living in poverty were brought up to at least the poverty line, for one-fortieth of the stimulus spending that went on.

Those are some of the ideas that I find myself frustrated with as an opposition MP and as a member of the government operations committee, now that we are finally asked to discuss the budget implementation bill.

I would also like to discuss in the context of Bill C-47 the enormous crippling deficit that we now must address collectively. I doubt there will be a great deal of consultation associated with that either. Perhaps there will be an election following the next budget and there will not be anymore Conservative budgets after that. However, we strongly suspect that the next budget will be a bad-news budget.

We can anticipate the Conservative government trying to balance the books, and I am afraid that it will try to balance the books along ideological lines. The Conservatives will be trying to achieve secondary objectives and goals as sort of a neo-conservative wish list of things they would like to do.

During the time that I have been an MP, deficits were about as popular as a hooker with a chipped tooth. Now we are faced with a serious issue of deficits.

One of the things we predict through the Conservatives' law and order agenda, the legislation they are putting through, is a very predictable increase in prison construction, an unavoidable increase in prison construction because virtually every one of the bills they are pushing through has mandatory minimum sentencing, which will result in more people in prison.

We have just had the Parliamentary Budget Officer to our government operations committee giving us a projection of what this will cost, and it will cost billions and billions of dollars. Mark my words, the Conservatives will look at privatization of prisons, and there will be some company like Onex or Halliburton that will come into Canada and say that it costs Canada $147,000 to house a prisoner in a federal penitentiary and they can do it for $125,000, and these guys will jump on it like a dog on a pork chop. They will just leap for that.

There is a point in law, and my colleague from St. John's East and I were talking about it. It says a person can be assumed to have intended the predictable consequences of his or her actions. They can be presumed to have intended the predictable consequences of his or her action. The predictable consequences will be stacking up prisoners like cordwood in our penitentiaries. The Conservatives will end up locking up a whole generation of young aboriginal kids, because from now on, if some kid steals a loaf of bread, he or she will wind up in prison, according to the agenda of the Conservatives.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise and speak on Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures.

For the sake of bringing people up to speed on why we are even discussing such an unusual bill with a strange title, it is simply due to the fact that once the annual budget is presented, parliamentarians debate and then vote on the major overlying principles of the budget that is tabled. However, in order for the items presented in that particular budget to come into force, bills need to be presented so that the necessary provisions of the budget can be written into law.

Therefore, Bill C-47 is simply a technical bill that implements certain provisions of the last budget into law. As usual, a technical bill has turned into a possible reason to call an election. In the time I have been here, I have never seen more suspense surrounding technical bills than during the term of the Conservative government, simply due to the unusual way the government handles its parliamentary affairs when it comes to implementation bills. The budget says one thing and the bills say another.

For example, in a previous implementation bill tabled in the spring, the government included items to amend that had nothing to do with the budget. It requested amendments to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, introduced an airport security tax, proposed changes to the Employment Insurance Act, changes to the Canada Post Corporation Act and changes to allow for the sell-off of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. All this occurs because of the secret nature of the government, which tries to sneak divisive items into legislation through the back door in order to avoid public input or any type of parliamentary oversight. In this way, all decisions made by the government can be made under a shroud of secrecy to advance the Conservatives' secret agenda.

The budget for the year ending March 31, 2011, is expected to cost Canadians over $238 billion this year alone and add almost $25 billion to our national debt. The government likes to misrepresent itself by saying it is fiscally disciplined, but this is simply not true. The Conservative government has been the highest-spending government year after year for the last four years, and every year it has been in office it has broken the previous record for spending. Never in the history of Canada has any government spent as much money as this one has.

The government also likes to misrepresent itself by saying it does not raise taxes, but this is simply not true. To pay for its out-of-control spending spree in the last six months, the Conservatives are finding ways to increase taxes. The new airport security tax proposed by the government is in fact a tax increase. The government can call it anything it wants, but everyone in the chamber knows that it is a tax. Ordinary Canadians will feel that the government is reaching into their pockets whenever they have to travel, and they will know it is a tax.

In addition to the air travellers tax, this January coming, the government will charge Canadian workers, entrepreneurs and companies a payroll tax increase. The economic recovery is weak and fragile, and this latest tax hike will put countless small and medium-sized enterprises out of business. It will put thousands upon thousands of hard-working Canadians out of a job, and it will certainly cause a great amount of suffering in homes across Canada.

The Conservatives like to sprinkle money around on pet projects, they like to have their pictures in local newspapers holding giant novelty cheques and they like to fly the Prime Minister all over the country at the Canadian taxpayers' expense to make spending announcements, but the fact of the matter is that for all the spending the government has done, we have not seen any progress.

The budget 2010 stimulus package just is not working. National groups from different sectors of industry have all said that the stimulus is not doing what it is intended to do. As part of prebudget consultation hearings of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance, of which I am vice-chair, groups that have testified as early as this week have time and time again said the stimulus was appreciated but was not working. They say “appreciated” because they get intimidated by the government. However, when they say “not working”, they mean that the program was implemented, but with no consultation and vision for the future, how effective can the program be?

Canada's unemployment rate is 2% higher today than it was 18 months ago. Still, this number does not tell the full story. Too many full-time jobs have been replaced by part-time work. The government likes to claim that the stimulus package has helped to recuperate lost jobs, but replacing a high-paying full-time job with a low-paying part-time job is like a bad trade for a sporting team, and we all know how that works out in the long run.

Canada's economy shrunk in July, and this includes a downturn in the construction industry during what should have been the height of the construction season.

Just this morning, it was confirmed that the Canadian economy lost 6,600 jobs in the month of September, while expectations were for 10,000 additional jobs to be created. This is because the government has been slow to approve projects and has concentrated spending on pet projects in areas where the Conservatives hope to score political points rather than spending fairly and intelligently by listening to local officials who know what their communities need.

Consumer confidence has declined four months in a row. In this period of supposed recovery, Canadians are not feeling the benefits, and that is because the recovery is a lie. When unemployment is high, that is not a recovery. When people cannot get enough hours at work to make ends meet, that is not a recovery. When Canadians have to decide whether to fill up their gas tanks or buy groceries this week, that is not a recovery. When construction equipment idles while Conservative ministers take credit for a spending announcement, that is not a recovery. It is a photo op.

Household debt is at record levels. The average Canadian owes almost $42,000, which is among the highest levels of all the OECD countries. Canadians are trying to keep their heads above water, and all the government has to offer them is tax increases, billions in spending on prisons we do not need, jet fighters that have not gone through the proper bid process, and millions of dollars in advertising for Conservative propaganda. The only people to come out ahead during this recovery are the folks who make the economic action plan billboards.

Canada's monthly trade deficit is at a record high of $2.7 billion, and this is a warning sign for a country that depends upon trade for jobs and prosperity. Not long ago, we used to run a trade surplus in this country. Canada used to take in more money than it spent compared to trading competitors, but since the government has taken power and crippled our economy, we have seen revenues fall relative to expenditures.

When the Conservatives took power, Canada was running trade surpluses, unemployment was low, taxes were low, the government had a $13 billion surplus and the economy was growing steadily. In the last five years, its economic mismanagement has undone all of these accomplishments and Canadians are paying for its failure. The numbers are in and there is no hiding from the facts. The government has lost jobs, depleted our finances, increased our debt burden and raised our taxes.

This year's budget was critical because it needed to be bold enough and effective enough to stop the bleeding brought by three years of Conservative economic mismanagement. Budget 2010 failed to address the real economic challenges facing Canadian families, such as record household debt, the rising costs of education and home care, pension security and the loss of 200,000 full-time jobs in just the last 18 months.

The Conservative record of waste and mismanagement does not reflect the priorities of Canadians. The borrow-and-spend Conservative government has wasted Canadians' money with a record $130 million on shameless, self-promoting advertising; $1.3 billion for a three-day G8-G20 photo op, with spending on everything from a fake lake to glow sticks; $10 billion to $13 billion on American-style megaprisons to lock up unreported criminals, as the crime rate declines; $16 billion on a bad deal for stealth fighters, awarded without competition or guaranteed jobs for Canadians; and $20 billion in corporate tax cuts that we cannot afford.

The deficit has reached a record high of $54 billion and is projected to go even higher. The $156 billion of new debt that the Conservatives plan to borrow between 2009 and 2014 will cost taxpayers $10 billion in interest payments each and every year for decades to come. We have to pay $10 billion every year before we can even put a dent in repaying the debt.

What makes this even worse is that the government chooses to deflect criticism away from its pitiful record by creating divisions in this chamber and throughout the country by trying to stifle meaningful debate and oversight.

During a debate, we share ideas. I know that some issues are complex and can be emotional. But this government has gotten into the habit of constantly introducing bills that create divisions. Because of its rigid right-wing ideology, it does not want to put forward its ideas in separate bills.

Bill C-47 is a wasted opportunity by the Conservative government. Instead of offering meaningful help to Canadians in this time of economic uncertainty, the Conservatives have provided us with a mixture of taxes on ordinary Canadians, crippling deficits and recklessly ineffective spending on non-priority measures.

The Liberal Party of Canada would prefer we spend our time debating and implementing priority measures that benefit all Canadians.

These are difficult economic times, which means that governments must choose. The Conservatives choose tax breaks for corporations. We choose to help Canadian families.

That is why the Liberal Party has announced the Liberal family care plan to help people with the cost of caring for sick or aging loved ones at home.

Here are some statistics. There are approximately 2.7 million family caregivers in Canada. These people are responsible for 80% of home care services in Canada, providing more than $9 billion in unpaid care each year. More than 40% of family caregivers use their personal savings to survive. More than one-quarter of family caregivers miss one or more months of work to provide care, and 65% have household incomes under $45,000. Canada's population is aging; one in five Canadians will be 60 by 2020, and by 2017, Canada's 150th birthday, it is estimated that the number of seniors with chronic conditions requiring home care will increase by one-third.

Canadians want choices when it comes to caring for their families. Providing care at home allows our loved ones to live in dignity as they face their health challenges with their families. Making family care easier will also help to contain health care costs in the long run.

To enhance care for our parents, our grandparents and our sick loved ones, a Liberal government will invest $1 billion annually in a new Liberal family care plan to help reduce the economic pressure on hundreds of thousands of struggling Canadian families.

Our Liberal family care plan reflects the real value of family caregivers in our society—their value to our economy, our health, our families and our communities.

Canadians trust the Liberal Party to safeguard public health care. The fact is, the Canadian population is aging, and most Canadians expect to be responsible for the care of a very sick family member at home in their lifetime. The Conservative government has not shown any leadership on this issue, which is an important priority for Canadian families. One Conservative minister even suggested that family caregivers could use their vacation time to take care of their loved ones.

I would like to take a few moments to explain the Liberal family care plan in detail, in order to avoid any confusion.

The plan includes two measures: a new six-month family care employment insurance benefit and a new family care tax benefit.

The six-month family care employment insurance benefit, similar to the EI parental leave benefit, will allow more Canadians to care for gravely ill family members at home without having to quit their jobs.

For extended benefits, we will replace the six-week compassionate care provision with a new EI benefit lasting up to six months.

To make benefits more accessible and build more flexibility into the program, we are proposing changes to the nature of the required doctor’s certificate. At present, a doctor must sign a form confirming that a family member is “gravely ill with a significant risk of death within 26 weeks”. We will work with the medical community to relax that definition with a form confirming that the family member requires a great deal of care because he or she is gravely ill.

With regard to the flexible sharing of benefits, we will make the program more flexible by allowing the six months to be split up into blocks of time over a one-year period and by allowing eligible family members to share this time in order to provide care.

The new family care employment insurance benefit will cost approximately $250 million per year and will give support to 30,000 caregivers. A Liberal government will not increase employment insurance premiums to fund this measure.

The Liberal plan will also establish a new monthly tax benefit for family care. This new benefit will be applied in the same way as the Canadian child tax credit and it will be offered to all caregivers.

This new benefit will consist of a monthly tax-free payment, for a total of up to $1,350 per year.

The benefit will be gradually reduced based on family income starting at $41,000 and will be available to families with annual income under $106,000.

To qualify, families will have to produce a doctor's certificate confirming that a sick member of their family requires significant care and assistance to carry out daily or critical life tasks.

The new family care tax benefit will give support to approximately 600,000 caregivers at an approximate cost of $750 million per year.

We talked to Canadians. We know that more of us need to provide long-term care for our loved ones. The Liberal Party will do whatever it can to ease this burden. The choice is simple: stand with Canadians or stand with special interests. We will stand with Canadians.

Canadians are feeling the crunch of personal debt and they are worried that they will not be able to save enough for their retirement. Pensions are a priority concern and the Liberal Party has proposed pragmatic solutions to help out ordinary Canadians.

To further promote saving, we, the Liberals, are asking the government to consider our pension reform projects: creating a supplementary Canada pension plan to help Canadians save more and providing employees who lose their pension funds as a result of bankruptcy with an opportunity to increase their pension income through the Canada pension plan.

To allow Canadians to further invest in our national pension plan, on which we can rely, the Liberal plan proposes that the government work with the provinces, retirees, unions and the private sector to develop and implement a supplementary pension plan.

The Liberal Party will do whatever it can to help Canadians help themselves, which is why we have proposed a simple, pragmatic solution that will allow Canadians to save for their retirement.

The choice is simple: stand with Canadians or stand with special interests. We will stand, like I said before, with Canadians.

Budget 2010 fails, not only to address the real challenges facing Canadian families but to recognize that those challenges even exist.

When Canadians need their government to stand with them, the Conservatives have chosen to stand with special interests. Bill C-47 is just the latest example of the Conservative government's failure to stand with Canadians. As a Liberal, I have always stood with Canadians and will continue to do so by voting against Bill C-47.

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague for his excellent speech on Bill C-47. He spoke about some inequalities experienced by workers at AbitibiBowater in the Outaouais. The government is pleased that the senior managers received huge bonuses when the plant was shut down, while the workers are having difficulties getting their pensions.

I would like the member for Gatineau to explain this situation a little more.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising to speak to Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures. The Bloc Québécois has a lot of concerns about this bill, and about the budget it implements.

The government will continue to treat stock options like capital gains for ordinary taxpayers. The Bloc Québécois deplores the fact that only half the income derived from stock options is subject to the federal Income Tax Act. The Conservative government could show fairness to the workers and collect $1 billion in tax by cutting off this gift. In addition, businesses are not being asked to pay their fair share to increase government revenue, except that they have to make source deductions to ensure that employees with stock options pay their taxes. That is something else that is missing.

This bill also attests to the Conservative government's inertia with respect to the environment and the fight against greenhouse gases. Only one environmental measure is included; it encourages the production of clean energy. A number of things could be put forward.

The government is ignoring the Bloc Québécois' urgent calls concerning equalization payments and increased transfers for education and social programs. $830 million in post-secondary education transfers are still not going to the Government of Quebec. The fiscal imbalance has not yet been resolved. The government is also ignoring recommendations concerning income security for pensioners. Large corporations are filing for bankruptcy and abandoning their employees who are entitled to pensions.

This budget implementation bill confirms the Conservative government's intention to spare rich taxpayers at all costs and have the workers and the middle class pay off the deficit. The ideology of the Conservative Party's neo-Liberal Reform government favours those who are well off. Just think of tax havens. When they were in opposition, the Conservatives were scandalized; now they fully support tax havens.

Yes to oil; no to forestry. It is just incredible what the economies of Quebec and all provinces have had to bear because of the Conservatives' abandonment of the forestry industry. To help the rich, they are refusing to implement a 2% surtax on incomes of more than $150,000 per year. The automotive industry, concentrated in Ontario, received $9.7 billion whereas the forestry industry, vital to the regions of Quebec and all of Canada, only received $170 million. That is incredible.

For all intents and purposes the environment was ignored in the budget. However, the Conservative government put $1 billion towards developing nuclear power, which benefits Ontario, Alberta and the oil companies. The latter already have generous tax benefits. In addition, no new funding was announced for the cultural sector, which is important to Quebec's economy. The neo-Liberal Reformers have refused to acknowledge the need to bolster employment insurance and the guaranteed income supplement for seniors, the most disadvantaged. They also refused to tackle the problems of affordable social housing and homelessness. These problems were completely ignored. The fact that women are the most affected by poverty has not been mentioned, either.

The current Minister of Finance's way of doing things reminds me of one of his predecessors. I hope that my Conservative friends feel somewhat shameful about the fact that it is 2010 and I am comparing their actions to something that happened a long time ago. Not a lot has changed. I am thinking about Alexander Tilloch Galt, who was the largest land owner in Canada in 1867, who also owned the largest textile plant at the time as well as the Grand Trunk Railway Company. He was closely involved with the Bank of Montreal and was the finance minister under John Alexander Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister. Who was he partial to? The wealthy.

He was loyal, a bit like our current Minister of Finance, to one of the sayings of John A. Macdonald, Prime Minister of Canada. To paraphrase, Macdonald said that minorities needed to be protected. The rich being the minority, their protection needed to be guaranteed. And he did his utmost to protect them. Then there was the majority, which had difficulty just making ends meet.

We have a similar government here, and the tradition continues. It is shameful. This helps to explain much of the Conservatives' economic vision, the vision of the current Albertan leader. Oil yes; forestry no. Automobiles, yes; affordable and social housing, no. Tax havens, yes; the guaranteed income supplement for our least fortunate seniors, no. I could go on. It is scandalous.

And just to report how things turned out, before Confederation, Alexander Tilloch Galt realized that he could no longer do business with the Americans. As you must remember—perhaps you were there between 1861 and 1865—the Yankees and the people from Dixie were fighting the Civil War in the United States. And who did the British Empire support? It supported the South, slavery and Dixieland. England supported the South, which was secessionist, to the detriment of the Yankees, who were federalists. It was completely backwards. British subjects were not popular with the blue coats from the northern states.

Galt was in a serious bind. So what did he do? This is interesting. He drafted a document to develop the British colony along east-west trading lines because for obvious reasons he could not develop north-south trade. He wanted to join together three provinces: the united Canada—which was divided into Canada East and Canada West at the time—wealthy Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. This document was called the British North America Act or BNA Act.

Galt was the father of this act. Why? To make sure it worked. In 1867, he became the first minister of finance of Canada. He had the newly minted Dominion of Canada borrow money from its bank, the Bank of Montreal, to build a railway across the country. What he did was a little like what the Conservatives are doing today. Know who your friends are; they will make you rich. Yes, yes, add to the campaign coffers. The Minister of Natural Resources could tell us something about that, seeing as how he is an expert in the field. So Galt had this big zipper, the railroad, built to pull Canada together. He even sold his own railroad, the Grand Trunk, to Canadian Pacific to further line his own pockets. Does that remind hon. members a bit of what we have been talking about this week?

For the Conservatives, it is useful to be both judge and judged. For the Conservatives, it is useful to favour the rich at the expense of the poor, and that is what we are seeing in this budget. There are things missing. There are some positive measures, but the poor are going to get poorer and the rich, richer. And that is very expensive.

Alexander Tilloch Galt was a member of the Conservative Party. And what was that party called at the time? Listen carefully. It was called the Liberal-Conservative Party. That way, people did not get confused; blue hat or red, it makes little difference, they have a good time and line their pockets. The current member for Pontiac should be happy with that title. He is being touted as the next leader of the Liberal Party of Quebec. It is not just the member for Bourassa. What is happening with the Conservatives makes no sense.

Coming back to Bill C-47, I will conclude on this note. We need to think about the workers at AbitibiBowater. Why does John Weaver get $27 million in bonuses, yet when the AbitibiBowater mill in Gatineau closes, the workers will not get $16 million in severance pay? That is what the Conservatives are doing, and their budget does nothing about this scandal.

They need to be put in their place, and that place is out of Parliament.

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

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the hon. member's comments on Bill C-47. Yesterday the parliamentary secretary claimed that the Canada Revenue Agency was cracking down on over contributions to the tax free savings accounts, TFSA, but he said nothing about trying to collect tax on some of the $6 trillion to $10 trillion that are being held in tax havens around the world.

Four years ago the German government gave Canada the names of 106 Canadians with a combined total of more than $100 million stashed in Liechtenstein accounts. So far the Canada Revenue Agency has evidently closed only 26 of those cases. It assessed $5.2 million in back taxes, but has collected nothing, not one cent. However, since 2006, the Germans have recovered some 200 million euros and the U.S. is actively pursuing 150 individuals.

Why is the government unable to collect back taxes from tax haven investors when it has been given the names and the records?

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know whether the hon. member attended the technical briefing that was available to all of us on Tuesday evening. I attended it and took home a copy of the bill, which I read. I have a question for the hon. member that which puzzles me.

He said in his speech that the government had an ideological bias against the poor and that we were forgetting them. Has the member looked at pages 8 and 9 of the bill which talk specifically about making changes to the Income Tax Act to assist people who are the most vulnerable in our society, the people who are in need of RDSP and the opportunities for their families to make contributions? We have made some significant changes in that. Pages 30 and 31 talk about changes to the Income Tax Act for pensions plans. We have made changes on page 57 for CPP, also item 69 regarding employee benefit plans. Page 66 talks about changes to the act for the registered charities, which are specifically organizations that look to assist vulnerable people in our society.

Given the fact that we have had the support from the CFIB on a number of our initiatives and from the chambers of commerce across the country, my question for the hon. member is this. Has he read Bill C-47?

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today. First, I would like to say that I will share my time with my dear colleague from Gatineau.

As many of our colleagues have said, we will support sending this bill and its budget measures to committee to be more closely studied. However, it is clear that the Standing Committee on Finance will have a great deal of work to do in the coming weeks because this bill, which could be considered yet another omnibus bill, contains a number of clauses regarding taxes for individuals, businesses, and different levels of government.

Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures, would implement certain measures. It is true that the Bloc Québécois rejected the latest Conservative budget because it was unfair to Quebec. This government gave tax breaks to the oil companies and heavily subsidized the auto industry in Ontario at the expense of the forestry industry in Quebec, which was experiencing a major crisis. For these reasons, and many others, we voted against this budget. Since 2006, this government has done essentially the same thing as the Liberals. Unfortunately, it forgets about the least fortunate members of society.

A close look at these measures makes it clear that the government is still subsidizing industries and banks that are making billions and billions of dollars in profit and putting their money into tax havens around the world without necessarily paying taxes. And what did the last budget do about it? The government brags about cutting corporate taxes and about giving companies tax breaks. At the same time, it continues to steal money that belongs to the unemployed, as it has done for years. That word has serious implications, but sometime words like that need to be used in the hopes of waking the Liberals and Conservatives up. Nearly $60 billion has been pillaged from the employment insurance fund. Yet the last budget contained no help for the unemployed and no employment insurance support for people who lose their jobs.

During the last crisis in my riding of Berthier—Maskinongé, a crisis that hit the rest of Quebec and Canada as well, numerous people lost their jobs. Many of them came to our constituency offices because they did not have enough hours to qualify for employment insurance. There were young people who were in their first job. They worked 15 weeks in seasonal jobs. They did not have enough hours to qualify for employment insurance. What can we say to these young people and these workers? In Quebec, we told them to go to social assistance for support because they were not eligible for employment insurance, to which they had been contributing, some of them for their whole lives.

And what about the employment insurance fund? There was a $55 billion surplus. The surplus disappeared with the last budget. The Liberals and Conservatives were complicit because they knew they were both in the same boat. They simply decided to spend the surplus. There is nothing left. They have told the unemployed that they cannot help them. It is shameful to have so little empathy for the least fortunate in our society.

We see the same insensitivity when it comes to the guaranteed income supplement for seniors. Yesterday, the Bloc Québécois presented petitions with thousands of signatures from FADOQ, a Quebec seniors' organization, calling on the government to improve the guaranteed income supplement and pay the people who have not received their supplement. FADOQ is also asking that people be registered automatically for the guaranteed income supplement and that it be paid automatically. It is simple. The government has tax data and could automatically pay low-income seniors the supplement. But there is no will. The government has no money for seniors.

The government is investing billions of dollars in weapons, billions of dollars in oil companies that are making a fortune, and billions of dollars in other initiatives. It is investing outrageous amounts of money in the rich and famous and institutions like the banks that have huge sums of money stashed in tax shelters.

We are talking about people, children and families. Quebec is in the midst of a heated debate about whether health care should be privatized. We need money. Quebec needs larger transfer payments for its health care system.

Yesterday, I listened to the debate, and equalization came up. Quebec was described as a have-not province that needed a certain amount of equalization. But the government is investing $20 billion in weapons and giving oil companies huge tax breaks. This money, which is given away and does not come back as tax revenue, cannot be redistributed. These exorbitant amounts are not factored into equalization.

A sovereign Quebec could control its own tax revenue and its own economic, political and social levers. Yesterday, during a speech here on the budget, one member said that a sovereign Quebec would not be viable because Quebec currently receives equalization. I do not think a sovereign Quebec would choose to invest billions in F-35s. Because of its ideological bent, this government is aggressive when it comes to military spending.

I see a member from Quebec entering the House. I would ask her—and the government members—to think about Quebec's social democratic values when she votes; to think about the people in her riding who need support, especially unemployed workers and seniors. She should be asking her government to increase health and education transfers, instead of investing in budgets dedicated to fighter planes, and in services and tax breaks that only help the wealthiest people in our society. That is the usual approach taken by this government: always reducing corporate taxes, increasing fees and cutting social services that help people in need.

At this time, the President of the United States is making huge efforts. He is aggressively attacking tax shelters. He wants to raise corporate taxes, because nearly 50 million Americans do not have health care. Here, the Conservatives are doing the opposite.

In the last budget, when the government decided to invest money to help the economy, the media and environmental experts alike, and everyone really, said that in addition to helping our workers more, the budget could have also included a green shift, an ecological shift. The Conservatives could have used that money to transform our economy into a green economy. What they did instead was to continue investing in dirty energy and continue more or less with the same old approach, that is, supporting the banking system and corporations. There was no shift.

In closing, I would like to say that Bill C-47, like budget 2010, completely disregards the economic situation Quebeckers find themselves in. It is high time for parliamentarians to address the real needs of Quebeckers and all Canadians.

The House resumed from October 7 consideration of the motion that Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, over and over again I have heard Liberal speakers in the House criticizing the budget implementation process, with Bill C-9 and Bill C-47. With Bill C-9, they complained about the airline tax increases that would raise airline tax fees 50%, bringing them much higher than competing American airlines from which Canadian airlines were trying to draw business. They criticized the provisions of the omnibus budget bill of 880 pages that threw in things like the privatization of the remailers with Canada Post. Then when all was said and done, the Liberals ended up supporting the government, keeping the government in power by making certain that 30 of their members walked out just before the vote.

Are the Liberals going to continue this practice of keeping the government in power, or this time are they going to vote with other members in the opposition and defeat the government on this budget bill? If they are so opposed to the budget, then why do they not vote against it?

[James Rajotte, Conservative, Edmonton—Leduc, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to address this bill, the second budget implementation act. I did not actually hear the member address any of the contents of the bill in her speech. I would like to perhaps highlight three sections of the bill.

This bill allows for the sharing of the Canada child tax benefit, the universal child care benefit, and the goods and services tax or harmonized sales tax credit for eligible shared-custody parents. That certainly seems like a good idea.

It allows registered retirement savings plan proceeds to be transferred to a registered disability savings plan on a tax-deferred basis, which is a very popular measure.

The third item I want to highlight is that it expands the availability of accelerated capital cost allowance, which is depreciation, for clean energy generation.

These items are on the first page of the bill.

Can the member address these three items and inform the House as to whether she and the Liberal Party support these three measures in Bill C-47?

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today to speak briefly on what Bill C-47 means to most Canadians.

In general, this budget means very little to ordinary Canadians. It has little positive impact on them. Instead, it provides a road map for the large corporations to use in reaping greater profits and for the average working Canadian to lose faith in their government. What this budget bill does not do is provide any relief for the unemployed or any hope to those who are in imminent danger of losing their employment.

Let us look at the record of the finance minister. He has wasted away a $13 billion surplus that was left to him as a legacy to protect for the Canadian people. This was left to him by the prudent and excellent fiscal managers, the previous Liberal governments, under the leadership of Prime Minister Chrétien and Prime Minister Martin. What did the minister do? In good economic times, he wasted away the surplus and has now turned the $13 billion surplus into a $53 billion deficit. This is in good economic times, and he wishes Canadians to believe that he can manage their money in bad economic times.

Canadians need to be told how the finance minister intends to add further to this deficit by borrowing more money to pay for unneeded tax cuts for big businesses to the tune of approximately $6 billion, another $16 billion on new fighter jets, and untold billions wasted through mismanagement of the economic stimulus package. Why is it that the Conservatives preach fiscal responsibility but practice the complete opposite? The minister is the brains behind the biggest-spending government in the nation's history.

The current finance minister has a history in Ontario of destroying finances. He did it in Ontario by borrowing money to give tax breaks. He cut hospital funding, which led to the closure of 26 hospitals and layoffs for some 16,000 nurses. He left Ontario in a huge deficit, which Ontario is still reeling from. In many economic and financial circles, the finance minister has been labelled the architect of deficit .

The Conservatives and the finance minister take credit for Canada's being able to do better than others during the economic crisis. But let us look at the facts. Canada was able to buffer the economic crisis because the Liberals did not allow bank mergers and put in strict financial controls, so that we would not have a sub-prime mortgage scenario. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and Prime Minister Paul Martin also ensured that the CPP was funded for 75 years.

What did the current finance minister do? Remember the introduction of a 40-year mortgage with no down payment? It smells like a sub-prime mortgage. Remember trying to create or dip into the CPP to pay for boutique tax cuts? Is that really economic sense?

The opposition stopped him. Instead of taking credit for fiscal management, it is high time that the Conservatives took a hard look in the mirror and realized that they have been the biggest spenders since Confederation, turning a $13 billion surplus into a $54 billion deficit, and overspending by $70 billion. And for what? They have nothing to show for it except a huge, growing deficit. And to compound their economic incompetence, guess what else has been done?

The Conservatives have the temerity to give, through EDC, a loan to a foreign company to the tune of $1 billion. This foreign company is Vale, a Brazilian company. For those who do not know it, it was Vale Inco that created a hostile environment for workers at the Sudbury mine and then shut them out for a year.

Is this how Canadian taxpayers are treated by the government? Their hard-earned money is being given away to foreign corporations that have no intention of fulfilling their obligations to give work to Canadians, and to boot, the Canadian workers have to foot the bill. How do they foot the bill for this economic incompetence?

Canadian workers will have to fork out higher EI premiums. The effect of this tax on small and medium-sized enterprises and hard-working Canadians will be to the tune of $13 billion.

This pattern of Conservatives taxing the middle and lower income people and giving breaks to their friends in large corporations, both domestic and foreign, is a very similar pattern that we have seen recently.

The government is spending $16 billion on untendered contracts for jets, which will not create any jobs for Canada or benefit any regions and which even the Pentagon thinks is a wrong choice. Members should think this through: $16 billion has nine zeroes after 16. What could be done with this money if invested in a Canadian company, in Canada, or if a Canadian company could bid? The multiplier effects are tremendous. There would be millions of good-paying professional jobs.

It is simply unfortunate that, every day, working Canadians will be paying more as they worry about keeping a roof over their heads and food on the table. These decent Canadians will have to pay through their noses while the corporate friends of the Conservative government get to boast to their international colleagues about paying the lowest rates of tax in the industrialized world. I need to emphasize that the large corporations do not create jobs. In fact, they drain jobs away. It is the small and medium-sized enterprises that need the benefit.

How does the government then have the temerity to show such utter contempt for the vast majority of working Canadians while giving money to those who least need it?

In the past, some governments have talked of a trickle-down theory in which the wealth of the rich would somehow trickle down to those with much less. The Conservative government seems to favour the flooding-up theory, in which they take desperately needed funds from the average worker and small businesses and just dump it on those who will use it to buy toys, a second Mercedes, et cetera. Canadians want and deserve better.

I would like to give a few examples of the government's economic mismanagement. Let us look at the stimulus package.

The government's stimulus plan created photo opportunities for ministers and Conservative backbenchers to pose with oversized cheques with Conservative Party logos on them. The real truth is that it has yet to be revealed where these billions of dollars have been spent.

We have found some examples. In Kitimat, B.C., $2,316 was used to purchase a portable dance floor. In Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, a group received $404,416 to build a floating gazebo. In Maniwaki, Quebec, the owners of Auberge du draveur received a $212,500 federal grant to install a glass dome over their terrace pool.

We now know that rather than wanting results that would benefit unemployed Canadians and those in danger of losing their jobs, the government's priority was to situate signs on every piece of wall and fence and it demanded that 8,500 public workers would go and do that job for it.

If the Prime Minister and his colleagues were a little more interested in running the government for the benefit of all Canadians rather than changing government websites to Tory blue colour schemes, I might be a little less critical. Unfortunately, there is little good I can say about the budget and the government, except to say it has finally done something that I thought almost impossible. It makes Brian Mulroney look good.

Aside from a feel good campaign in the stimulus area, what jobs have actually been created?

The minister responsible for infrastructure and his officials are still unable to show how many jobs have really been created or have been saved by these stimulus funds. In fact, they have made a conscious effort or decision not to track these numbers. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has complained that the government is frustrating his efforts in getting the real numbers and what exactly this expenditure created.

Let us look at some of the areas where I think there is incomprehensible economic thinking.

One wonders why the government, between 2009 and 2014, is planning to borrow about $156 billion which would then cost the taxpayer $10 billion in interest payments each and every year for decades to come. Borrow $156 billion and add another $10 billion every year. Does that make economic sense, especially when the government is trying to state that it wants to create a recovery? There is no recovery when the government keeps digging the hole deeper and deeper.

To boot, the government is going to spend $13 billion on constructing jails for unreported crime. One wonders what the purpose is. We need to get to the bottom of economic thinking.

When it comes to giving prisoners an opportunity to work, the government says no and gives us no rationale for killing the prison farm system. The farm system has been proven to be beneficial not only to the prisoners, but to the system itself by providing low-cost food. It also provides many prisoners the first responsible job that they have had in their lives.

The government would rather have prisoners locked in their cells wasting away than learn a viable work ethic. The government will feign surprise when the recidivism rate climbs up to the 70% figure of our neighbours to the south.

What could have been done with the money? What are the alternatives? We can talk about the mismanagement, the bad spending, et cetera, but what is the issue here? The issue is Canadians who are dying to get a job, Canadians who are struggling to pay their mortgages, Canadians who are struggling to put food on the table.

What could the government do? It could do a lot of things. For example, the $1.2 billion that it wasted on a 72-hour photo op could have been utilized to give relief to caregivers. There are many caregivers in Canada. There are approximately three million caregivers who look after their elderly parents or their sick children. It is important for this sandwich generation to be given some relief.

There are so many other areas in which the government could have worked to help Canadians. Instead, it reduces the corporate tax, thereby reducing its revenue by $6 billion, which it could ill afford, and for corporations that really do not create jobs. Small and medium-sized enterprises create one job in eight.

What could the government have done? What can the government do with the $13 billion that it is planning to spend on building prisons for unreported crime?

We could use that money to address the deterrents of crime. We could use the money to alleviate poverty and illiteracy. There could be money for mental health and affordable housing. There are so many things the government can do that are positive for Canadians in general. It is important that the government listen.

As I review this I just cannot believe that the government keeps on increasing taxes. It created a payroll tax and it will increase the EI premiums in 2011 for both employees and employers. This will have a negative impact.

A lot of small and medium-sized enterprises are run by women. Women, who form 50% of the population, will get a double whammy. They are there as sole proprietors and they will have to fork out more in EI premiums. They work individually or as a collective and they employ people. The problem they are facing is that they do not only look after the economics of their business, but they also look after the family. Sometimes they have to bear the burden of caregiving.

With this double whammy, I would ask the government, why does it not change its thinking and not focus on ideology but on investing in Canadians? It is important to invest in Canadians.

In conclusion, if the Finance Minister and the Prime Minister stay the course they are following, they will not have any economic recovery. They will crash and the economy will go into a tailspin. There are issues around the environment and issues around programs, and it is important that these be fixed.

The budget reinforces my belief that the Conservatives are not here for the average Canadian, and unless they change their minds, they are only here for their friends in big business.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak on behalf of the Bloc Québécois about Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures.

The Bloc Québécois voted against the budget, and rightly so, because this budget left an entire segment of the economy, the forestry sector, to fend for itself. This sector is currently going through a very tough time. This is why the Bloc Québécois once again voted against the budget.

However, members must understand that when the time comes to implement the measures in the budget, this is done through certain bills. One of these budget implementation bills is before us today.

The Bloc Québécois is in favour of sending Bill C-47, which implements certain measures in the budget, to committee to be studied. We are giving our approval because we analyzed each of these measures one by one. We often need additional information to get the government to move on these measures and show some openness—a quality that the Conservatives have yet to show. But we are in favour of several of the provisions being proposed today. I will mention the measures we support.

First, to improve the allocation of child benefits, the government agrees to pay half to each parent who shares custody. Parents who have shared custody can now divide the income from these benefits in half, which makes sense.

Also, the government is proposing to ease the tax burden of beneficiaries of a registered disability savings plan, a plan that was designed to ensure the financial security of severely disabled children. This is an interesting measure that is worth adopting.

The government is also cutting red tape for charitable organizations and some small businesses. Red tape has always put a huge burden on corporations, small companies, not-for-profit organizations and charities, which often lack the administrative staff to handle paperwork. This bill would lighten that load, and that is worthwhile.

The bill tightens the rules around TFSAs to prevent tax avoidance. TFSAs were brought in previously, but it did not take long for some people to see them as a way of avoiding and evading taxes. I think it is a good idea to ensure that measures such as the TFSA are not used to avoid taxes.

Lastly, businesses will stop benefiting from double deductions for stock options. Even though we feel that this does not go far enough, we will see what happens in committee. These measures are worth sending to committee for discussion.

But we have to be careful. We are concerned about pension plan reform, because the bill gives the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions discretionary authority in the case of pension plans that are subject to the legislation of more than one jurisdiction.

This measure must be studied, because it pertains to private pension funds and it can encroach on the provinces' jurisdiction. The pension funds can be partly under federal authority and partly under the authority of Quebec and the other provinces. We feel it is important to ensure that Quebeckers' interests will always be protected and that Quebec law will always apply.

At the same time, this is a good opportunity to talk again about the whole pension system and how the government could help. The government likes to brag that it came out of the recent economic crisis in the best shape, but one reason is that our banks were smaller than the U.S. banks.

When I arrived here as a member in 2000, the first lobbyists who came to meet me were from the banks. They wanted permission to merge so that they could buy other banks outside the country, for example, large American banks.

By fighting tooth and nail to block those mergers, we saved those banks. Canadian banks had fewer investments in American banks. They were less contaminated than the other banks. This is the reason Canada has weathered the crisis better. Our banking system was smaller, less concentrated and less at risk because it had fewer interests in the United States. That is why Canada has weathered the crisis better than other countries.

At that time, the Conservatives were in favour of bank mergers. The Liberals caused quite an uproar. Then there was an election and the mergers were blocked. I was the one who was the most surprised to see Paul Demarais Sr. admit to the media, three or four weeks ago, that his one mistake in life was supporting the merger of Canadian banks. Paul Demarais was not born yesterday. He has met all the heads of state. He was one of the biggest advocates of bank mergers. He regrets it bitterly because the fact that we blocked bank mergers is the reason that Canada weathered the crisis the best. It has nothing to do with the Conservative government, which was in favour of bank mergers, and it has nothing to do with the Liberals either because they were also in favour of bank mergers but decided to oppose them at the last minute—because of the election, I suppose.

We were always against those mergers, from start to finish. Once again, we stood up for Quebec. That allowed Canada to weather the crisis. Once again, Quebeckers came to Canada's rescue. That happens quite often. Some might say too often, since Quebec does not get the rewards it deserves.

There is also the important question of pension funds. This morning I had the chance—or the sad duty, as I told the people who invited me—of attending a march with former Fraser employees. They were all retired workers who saw their August and September pension cheques cut by 40% on average. One worker came to see me and told me that his retirement pension had been cut by 58%. What a difficult situation.

For the past five years here in Ottawa, we have been calling for programs to help the forestry industry. That industry was the first to be affected, even before the big crisis. The government started to react when Ontario was affected by the automotive crisis, but the forestry crisis had already been going on for three years before the recent financial and banking crisis. This was not important to the government, since it was happening primarily in Quebec and in the northern areas of some provinces. The fact remains that this bad financial situation led to losses for many companies.

Now the government is telling us that it is a question of markets, or lack thereof, even though what the big forestry companies wanted was loan guarantees, which are allowed by the WTO. We have proven that in this House. Was the problem in the automobile sector not a market problem? Cars were not selling. Yet the Conservatives still gave the auto industry $10 billion to help it through the crisis, which was causing a drop in the market. They did not do the same thing for the forestry industry. In fact, that is why the Bloc voted against the most recent budget.

Let us go back to pension funds. Today, 200 Fraser workers and their families organized a march. Approximately 300 pensioners have been affected. They were there to try to make sense of the situation. The owner of Fraser is the majority owner of Brookfield Renewable Power. This corporation made more than $900 million in profits for the period ending December 31, 2009. The majority shareholder is a multi-billion dollar corporation that posted huge profits even during the economic downturn. The employees have difficulty understanding why governments allow a rich multinational to close its subsidiaries, to place them in bankruptcy, when the unfunded liabilities of their pension fund total $175 million.

Considering Brookfield's profit of almost $980 billion at the end of the 2009 fiscal year, this amount would have been acceptable had the company been nudged by governments to cover the liability, given that it was very rich. I am putting myself in the shoes of these workers and their families, who are wondering how this can be permitted. How can governments allow a multi-billion dollar corporation, through its subsidiary, to go bankrupt with the result that the workers, who have worked all their lives for the company, have their income cut by 40%?

In the La Lièvre and La Petite-Nation area, that amounts to $470,000 less per month and $5 million less per year in the local economy. Some will say that it is a small business and that 300 employees are not very many. However, the same thing has happened with other companies such as Nortel and AbitibiBowater. Once again, I was reading the Nortel agreement in which the employees instructed the government to make risky investments in order to not lose their pension income. They instructed the government, which is now managing their pension fund, to make risky investments. Is there someone somewhere who will stand by these investments in these times? It is suicide, but that is the decision they made in order to not lose their monthly income. We shall see what happens in the medium and the long term.

As for AbitibiBowater, the corporation negotiated a secret agreement. All we know is that governments allowed it, and that the union consented. Governments will say that the union said yes. But what choice did it have? When the time comes to renegotiate an agreement allowing a corporation to forego making up the pension shortfall, the choices are approve it or watch the company close its doors. The reality is that the employees are doomed and governments give their approval. But afterwards, governments take no responsibility. They say yes to the company and give it five to ten years to make up the pension shortfall. In the case of AbitibiBowater, rumour has it that it may even have up to fifteen years. Once again, if the company does not make it and declares bankruptcy, the employees have the most to lose. Governments do not have a plan because the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act does not protect the unfunded liabilities of pension funds, even if they were approved by governments. The government does not want to change the law.

The Bloc Québécois introduced Bill C-270, which would create a refundable tax credit to cover such losses. The government is not interested. The Liberals and the Conservatives oppose it. They say we must not spend money.

That is how it starts, with 300 Fraser employees losing 40% of their income. It will happen with other companies. In this region, many people are employed by the government, with good pension plans. But one day, a political party will get elected by promising a 35% cut in pension plans for public servants, to save money or to invest it elsewhere. As was mentioned earlier, the Liberals pillaged $54 billion from the employment insurance fund surplus to spend on their budget. The Conservatives keep telling us here that the Liberals pillaged $54 billion and spent it. But when the Conservatives were bringing in $17 billion a year, they never offered to pay back the money taken from the employment insurance fund. Now, when we want to improve the plan, the government says that we need to increase premiums. The government would never tell us to take the $54 billion that was originally pillaged to try to cover other expenses. No, it will blame the Liberals, but it would never do that. Inevitably, it is always the worker who pays.

In the case of the Fraser employees, it is the workers who pay. Their income has dropped by 40%. They are between 64 and 75, and 75 and 80 years of age, and they cannot find a new job, because now is not a good time to try to find one. So they have to cut expenses and are forced to pinch pennies after spending their whole lives working.

Let us all think about it. One day, we will be pensioners ourselves. If our governments decided to cut our pension fund by 40%, I do not think that we would be happy about it. This will happen because we will have allowed multi-billion dollar companies like Brookfield to cut employee pension funds, claiming that it was just that one company. Then, there will be another. In the end, all pension funds will be cut by 25% to 30%. Will federal, provincial and municipal public servants be able to protect their pension funds? No. One day, the majority will say that the government must cut all pension funds. I thought that the bill before us would address this situation.

So it must be understood that in committee the Bloc Québécois will do everything it can to make the government understand that it could show some interest in jurisdictional issues. Should Ottawa, Quebec or the provinces be managing this? We also need to discuss the real problem. When the plans post actuarial losses and governments have covered those losses, how will the people be compensated? Often, because we do not want companies to close, these losses are authorized and this has happened on a medium, large and extra-large scale.

So we can try to reduce these losses for the people. I am not talking about eliminating them. But the 200 families that I saw today were resigned. They knew they were going to lose money. But when it is that much, it starts to hurt. At first, they thought it was a bad joke, but now they are not finding it so funny.

Often, these people are not the most educated, but, once again, they dig around and try to find out who the shareholders, the owners, are. For example, the majority shareholder of Brookfield is a multibillionaire who is still making billions of dollars in profit annually. This is paid out in dividends to dozens or hundreds or thousands of shareholders, but no more. There are not hundreds of thousands of shareholders, just tens of thousands. At some point, governments need to think about that.

Inevitably, one day the people will have the power and will try to put everything back in order. And you wonder why the Bloc Québécois does so well. It is because we are close to people and because, as I did this morning, we walk with the retirees to try and understand their situation, to try and sympathize with them but, above all, to try and see if we can find solutions. We were elected to represent them and to help them understand why they have lost 40% of their pension funds, of their life's work, and that, every month, that 40% will be lost.

Meanwhile, here in Parliament, we see Conservative government misspending, we see contracts going to friends of the party, we see all sorts of things going on. People wonder why politicians do not sit down with them to work out solutions. As I said, they are willing to make sacrifices. They know they are going to lose money, but is 40% a norm we should hope for or accept? It is unacceptable. We are going to have to sit down very soon to discuss the future of all the pension funds of all the companies.

Government employees often watch us and listen to us. One day, political parties will get elected by promising to cut pension funds by 35%, because that is the only way to get money back. That will happen because the government allowed private companies to cut their pension funds and stood by while banks made bad investments. The bank managers were not put in prison; they were given bonuses. That is what happened.

People see that and they realize that the bank managers, who were often paid to give talks, all lost money during the recent crisis, like sheep. It always amazed me that a chamber of commerce or some other organization would pay a bank manager to come and give a talk. They may have had all the staff they needed, but they all got caught with risky investments. They all lost money, and not one went to jail. I find that shocking. What is more, they are protected by all of us here, and we allow them to get outrageous bonuses, because the practice of paying bonuses is starting to take off again. Bank managers are getting bonuses because the banks are restructuring. They have laid off employees, yet they are entitled to bonuses.

No one ever thought they might lose everything because they had lost 25%, 30% or 40% of people's pension funds. No one ever thought that. Once again, it is time to stop standing up for the wealthy and start looking after the people with problems.

I would say that pension funds are a real problem. All of us need to use our position here in the House of Commons to stand up for our workers who pay taxes and who pay our salaries. If there were no workers and no pensioners who still pay taxes—because pensioners do pay taxes—we would be out of a job.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his comments regarding Bill C-47. However, I think he neglected to point out that in terms of debt to GDP, which is a very important measure in terms of debt to GDP, Canada is in a much better position than the other countries he is talking about in Europe, such as Greece, Ireland and Spain, regardless of the fact that their household debt figures, which he mentioned, are somewhat comparable.

I have a question for him. As far as e-government is concerned, the g-tech annual conference just finished up today here in Ottawa. Since the new Conservative government came into office five years ago, we have found a dumbing down of government online programs. When Reg Alcock was in this House and Paul Martin was the prime minister, we saw a lot of activity in the federal government in those days trying to get government programs online, transactional and usable to the citizens of Canada. This was particularly helpful for people in far-flung rural areas who had to drive or fly into cities to do their government business. Now they can simply do it online with a credit card.

There was some sort of a vision, some sort of a direction that was similar to what they have in England, the United States and Australia. However, since the present government came to office five and a half years ago, there has been absolutely no talk of any government online programs or any sort of measurement of any kind of success, no targets in fact. One would think that for a government that prides itself on wanting to make itself more efficient and provide its services to the public online and transactional, that would be one of the areas that it would prioritize and put some effort toward.

Why does the member think the government has not seized on this opportunity to make services more broadly available to the taxpayers of Canada and, in fact, save the government money in the process by making the government more efficient? Why would it be neglecting that area?

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Business of the House

[John Baird, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the questions from my friend, the member for Ottawa South. I do have to admit from time to time that I am called upon to respond to certain questions that are asked by the opposition. There are not as many as there used to be, thanks to the appointment of the new Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, who I think is doing a fine job. The new Minister of Transport has a big challenge to tidy up the department. The only minister who has a bigger challenge to deal with is the new Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.

On the issue of decorum, I think there has been some degree of success. I will congratulate the Liberal House Leader . He has perhaps been more successful than I have in reining in the number of interjections during question period, and I undertake to him and to the House to continue to work in that regard. I think there has been a considerable reduction in interjections. Sometimes the members of the government or members of the opposition will bring out those types of interjections, but I will commit to continue to work with him and with our colleagues in the Bloc and the NDP on reducing them. I think we have met with some success. We do have more room to grow, but I will commit to continue to work in that regard. In many respects, that was a big part of the motion the House adopted last night, the motion standing in the name of the member for Wellington—Halton Hills, and I see him smiling at me now.

Much work has been accomplished, but much work remains to be done in that regard.

When government orders resumes after my statement, we will call Bill C-36, the consumer product safety bill. We have an agreement to send it to committee after one speaker per party, and I will be moving the appropriate motion in a few minutes.

I should point out that if we cannot come together to try to protect children and keep them safe, we do not have any place here. I am very pleased with the consultations with all parties on that. I think they will be welcomed, particularly by Environmental Defence, which has been championing these issues for some time.

Following Bill C-36, we will resume the debate which began this morning on Bill C-47, sustaining Canada's economic recovery act. Other bills scheduled for today, if necessary, are Bill S-9, tackling auto theft and property crime, and Bill C-39, ending early release for criminals.

Tomorrow, we will continue with the business before us today.

Next week, as the member noted, is a constituency week.

When we return we will continue, if necessary, with Bill C-47. The Canada-Panama free trade agreement is also on the agenda.

Thursday, October 21 shall be an allotted day, as I have told our friends in the Bloc Québécois.

Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier, with respect to Bill C-36, I believe you will find unanimous consent for the following motion. I move:

That, notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice of the House, a member from each recognized party may speak for not more than 20 minutes on the second reading motion of Bill C-36, An Act respecting the safety of consumer products, following which the said bill shall be deemed read a second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Health.

Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act

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

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased today to speak to Bill C-47, another of the budget implementation bills. In fact, the government wants to call it the Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act.

Certainly that is the difficulty of the situation, because on a macro basis, on a global basis, we are looking at some countries in the world that are having much more difficult times than we are right now. We only have to look at Europe to see what is happening in the country of Iceland, which had to declare bankruptcy in the last two years, and in the countries of Ireland and Portugal. We have to feel sorry for some of the measures that are being taken over there right now, because a lot of the workers in those countries are suffering a lot because of the restraint measures that are being forced upon them by the IMF.

We have not yet had to deal with that situation here, but our economic situation is much, much different in the sense that we are very tied to the American economy. As a matter of fact, it is only in very recent months, and I am not even certain whether we are past that point yet, that there is a recognition that there is $1.3 trillion in commercial loans coming due in the United States. In the spring, there was a freeze in credit for small business. Banks were classifying commercial loans as risky, so they were very conservative in their lending policies. Manufacturers were having difficulty getting lines of credit.

In 2008, the 400 largest U.S. contractors were doing 80% of their business in the private sector. Now, two years later, the 400 largest U.S. contractors are doing 80% of their work in the public sector, which will be running out, both in the United States and in Canada, over the next few months. The concern will be what will happen when the stimulus packages in both countries run out, what will happen with the unemployment rate. There should potentially be a rise in unemployment and the problems that will come with that.

The recovery is tentative at this point and there is enough concern to be passed around. The question is, how is the government responding to this situation and is it responding correctly? We would argue in our party that its priorities are somewhat displaced.

For example, we only have to look to Germany where Hermann Scheer, a German green politician, has been the catalyst, has been instrumental in propelling Germany into the future with green energy development. A number of examples have been covered in the press over the last year of the great advancements that have been made in Germany in terms of green energy development.

Here in Canada, we have a much more tentative approach to that. There was a company in Canada that was making solar panels. I believe it was called ARISE Technologies, based in Waterloo. The owner of the company, Ian MacLellan, was not receiving much encouragement in Canada, so he responded to the German government's offer to build a plant in East Germany. At this point, his plant cannot produce enough solar panels for the German market. I believe it is several years behind in its production. It is expanding so quickly, and I believe they are building more than one plant there to keep up with the demand. This is yet another opportunity lost, because now Germany has an advantage over Canada and will only increase that advantage over time.

In Canada, the discussion over the east-west power grid has been raging now for probably 20 years, or maybe even longer. The concept is to build an east-west power grid so that we can transfer clean hydroelectric power from Manitoba, for example, which has only developed 50% of its hydroelectric capacity. Rather than sending that power to the United States, as is the case now because all the lines are running north-south, we want to be able to send it east-west so that we can help Ontario stop using its coal-fired plants and prevent the need for nuclear power plants to be developed in the next few years.

Once again, where is the initiative on the part of the federal government? Ten of the 14 members of Parliament in Manitoba are Conservatives. In fact, only one of them has spoken on this issue over the last year. The Minister of State (Democratic Reform) has spoken about this issue. Saskatchewan has 14 out of 14 Conservative members. The question is where they are on this issue. The 14 members in Saskatchewan and 10 members in Manitoba should be leading the charge to try to force the government to put a plan together so that an east-west power grid can be developed.

It is their predecessor, John A. Macdonald, who had a national dream for this country. The national dream was to build a railway from east to west uniting the country, as opposed to developing it on a north-south basis. In fact, if the railway had not developed, the Americans would have probably taken over the parts of the country that we now know as Canada.

If we fast forward to where we are now, where is that Conservative vision of John A. Macdonald? The government still follows the ideology that whatever the economics dictate, whatever is the cheapest and fastest, is what it is going to do, and if it means building all the pipelines and hydro transmission lines north-south, then so be it and forget about looking at a common national vision of an east-west power grid.

An east-west power grid would provide a lot of jobs in the economy that are certainly going to be needed after the stimulus package money runs out. I still hold out hope that the members in the Manitoba and Saskatchewan Conservative caucuses will actually get motivated to come onboard with this idea and push it along a little further.

We look to wind power as a good example of an activity that should be encouraged, but where are the initiatives for wind power by the government? I remember 20 years ago, in 1992, in Pincher Creek, Alberta there was a lot of development of wind turbines in that area. As a matter of fact, I went out to look at them at one time. Of course, today the wind turbines and their technology have changed. If one were to go there, it would seem almost like a museum, because one sees the little turbines from 1992 and then the progression to the huge turbines now.

Canada, once again, has squandered an opportunity at economic development, because there are a lot of jobs to be had in the manufacture of the turbines. We have seen that industry grow in Scandinavian countries. The companies that make the turbines are from Scandinavian countries such as Denmark and have only gotten bigger and better with time. We have looked at the construction of wind turbines, but to no avail.

We have looked into it in Manitoba. We are at the point where it just did not proceed, for one reason or another.

As a matter of fact, North Dakota and South Dakota have manufacturing set up there.

We are once again playing catch-up. We are not really even in the game. We had wind farm developments in Saskatchewan, at Gull Lake. There was 99 megawatts of power at Gull Lake. That was about 10 years ago or so. However, since then, we have seen the focus change to other parts of the country, and other parts of the country are taking up some of the slack in this area. That is another very big area that the government should be concentrating on.

What is the government's vision? The government's vision does not seem to be in these areas at all. As matter of fact, its answer so far for economic development seems to be developing more prisons. It has announced $9 billion for the expansion of our prison system.

As a matter of fact, in this bill the government has suggested that it is going to crack down on the TFSA program, the tax-free savings accounts that were set up in the last couple of years. Evidently a problem has developed where a number of organized individuals, I think higher-income individuals would be more to the truth, have been overcontributing to the TFSA program. The government, rightly so, is cracking down in that area. However, when will it be cracking down on all the people who are investing in tax havens?

Only last year we had a situation where an employee of a bank in Liechtenstein left that bank with computer diskettes. He actually sold the information on the diskettes to the German government. As a result, the German government has recovered quite a huge amount of back taxes from the people who were investing in the tax havens. Out of that, 100 names were given to Revenue Canada. We have yet to hear whether Revenue Canada has collected any back taxes from these people.

We know Revenue Canada offers an amnesty to people. The question is whether these 100 people whose names were turned over by the authorities were given amnesty. For all we know, Revenue Canada let them off with just paying whatever taxes they owed and the amnesty was applied to them too.

Just in the last few weeks there was another example of an employee from, in this case, a Swiss bank, who made off with I think it was 4,500 names on diskettes and turned them over to the French government. Out of that, Revenue Canada got its hands on the names of another 1,800 Canadians who are investing in tax havens. Once again I would like to know what the government is doing to track these people down. Is it going to offer them amnesty to get them to file their up-to-date returns, or is it going to actually charge them for tax evasion, which is the proper way to proceed in this case?

We are getting no follow-up from the government as to the situation with uncollected taxes. Out of all the people who are putting money into tax havens in Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Panama and other countries, there are probably thousands of Canadians in those situations and the government does not seem to be too concerned about catching them. If the government can catch these people and collect a half billion dollars here or a half a billion dollars there of taxes owed, it would help a lot in terms of balancing the books here in Canada and paying for the roads and hospitals that we need.

Where is the interest? We have such lax laws in Canada for white collar crime. It is absolutely laughable. This is from a government that talks about being tough on crime.

This is the record of the tough on crime government on white collar crime. Over the last few years, the United States has successfully prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned 1,200 white collar criminals, including Conrad Black who committed his crimes in Canada. The record of the tough on crime Conservative government is two convictions against the same guy. The government does not have to pay $9 billion for prisons to house one person.

These are examples of the mixed messages we get from the government. On the very day the story broke in the Globe and Mail, in the Greg McArthur article regarding the 1,800 Canadians, the Prime Minister was being questioned in the House about that very issue. On that very day, the government's bill on the order paper for debate was a free trade deal with Panama.

In the case of Panama, we have 350,000 foreign companies hiding money there because it is a tax haven. The Panamanian government is making little, if any, effort to share the tax information.

As a precursor to signing on to these agreements, one would think the government would use some common sense and require that the Panamanian government sign on and honour the OECD rules and protocols on sharing tax information, not go ahead and reward it with a free trade deal. That is the backwards approach of the government.

In addition to regular companies doing business in Panama and hiding their money there, we have Mexican drug cartels laundering money through the Panamanian system. The government is only too willing to ignore that. It forgets the fact that Manuel Noriega, the former president of Panama, is doing time in a Florida jail because the Americans captured him for aiding and abetting money launderers.

Clearly the government has a very questionable set of priorities when it comes to dealing with economic development in our country.

One of the members opposite introduced a bill earlier this year to support a national hunting day, which is a great idea, and we supported the bill. In fact, Manitoba passed a similar bill just two years ago. I was at its annual meeting a couple of weeks ago. One of the reasons given for introducing the bill in the House was to encourage American tourism, to encourage Americans to come to Canada to hunt and fish and to help our economy.

The recognition by the Conservative member was that tourism was down. Partly as a result of my talks with him in the spring, and support in speaking to his bill, I was able to introduce a resolution to a legislators conference this summer, one I have been at now four or five years. This group includes 11 border states, from Illinois to North Dakota, and 3 provinces, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. I think Alberta is on the verge of joining that organization.

The legislators meet every summer. There is a western conference and a southern conference as well, but this is the Midwestern legislators conference. This group has met now for 65 years. At that conference, I was able to introduce a resolution, which they passed unanimously. I will not read the resolution at this time, but I will if I get asked about it in a question.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to Bill C-47, which is part of the budget process of the government.

It is no secret that at this time in the history of Canada we are facing a particularly difficult time. Things are changing very rapidly. We are not out of the recession and people are looking for help. The middle class and the very disadvantaged are looking for help.

Ultimately budgets, including this one, are about choices. Governments make choices, they put them in budgets and eventually they get judged on those choices. It is useful when discussing anything to do with the economy of the country to know what Canadians are thinking about the economy, their own position and the lives of their family.

I want to share a few facts with the House.

From RBC Economics: Today the typical Canadian family must devote 49% of its income to own a standard two-storey home while mortgage rates are at their lowest point. That means people on average are spending half of their income to own their home, and they know if interest rates go up that will only go higher.

From the BMO Financial Group: 64% of parents worry they will not be able to afford the rising cost of post-secondary education. I am sure CASA and CFS would echo that.

From the Canadian Medical Association: 80% of Canadians fear that the quality of their health care will decline over the next three years.

From the Canadian Cancer Society: Canadian families are concerned about the cost of caring for a terminally-ill loved one, which is currently $1,000 a month, excluding the loss of income from taking time off work to provide care. I will come back to this later.

From the Canadian Institute of Actuaries: 72% of pre-retired Canadians worry about maintaining a reasonable standard of living in retirement and maintaining a reasonable quality of life.

From RBC Economics: 58% of Canadians are concerned with their current level of debt, averaging $41,470 per person, which is the worst among 20 advanced countries in the OECD.

From the Canadian Payments Association: 59% of Canadians believe they would be in financial difficulty if their paycheque were delayed by a week. Think about that. More than half of all Canadians worry that they would be in financial difficulty if their paycheque were delayed by one week.

This is a country with a lot of people who are very concerned.

I want to share a statistic that was brought to parliamentarians last week, I think, by the Association of Canadian Community Colleges, ACCC. This is something that really outlines the challenge that faces this nation and why we need a bold and responsible government that can address this challenge.

Today 44% of Canadians do not participate in the labour force. That includes children, seniors and the unemployed. That 44% will rise to 57% by 2026 and 61% by 2031. In 20 years, 61% of the people in Canada will not be in the labour market.

This is a very telling statistic, which outlines the challenge that faces Canada right now and the absolute need for us to take advantage of the human resource potential of all Canadians. We must do whatever we can as a Parliament, and the government must do what it can to ensure all Canadians have an opportunity to reach the level of education and skills attainment that they should have. The problem is that the recession that is still lingering in Canada has disproportionately affected a group of people.

A dear friend of mine, the Hon. D. Scott McNutt who passed away just recently, used to have a saying that “A rising tide lifts all boats”, the idea being, in this case, that if an economy gets better everybody benefits. The fact is that not all boats are raised equally, and the poor and the disadvantaged are disproportionately hurt.

We heard this last year from the Citizens for Public Justice, who released a report indicating that during the recession the poverty rate in Canada increased significantly. In fact, the poverty rate in Canada had gone down over the previous couple of decades, particularly among seniors, although there were still many single women who were living in poverty. The poverty rates had gone down due to a decent economy and the fact that we brought in measures like the child tax benefit, guaranteed income supplement and things like that.

However from 2007 to 2009, poverty rates increased from 9.2% to 11.7% in Canada, according to the Citizens for Public Justice and their partner, World Vision. Child poverty went from 9.5% to 12%.

Those are pretty sobering statistics. They are not saying that the most in need in Canada suffered proportionately; they are saying they suffered disproportionately, that they got less than anybody else.

HungerCount, the report of Canada's food banks, last November indicated that the usage of food banks in Canada went up by 18%. That is pretty staggering.

A couple of weeks ago I had a chance to speak to Feed Nova Scotia in my own province, and they are talking about similar statistics. Their annual report says:

Forty thousand Nova Scotians are hungry each month—mothers, fathers, grandparents and, perhaps saddest of all, children and youth. Hunger knows no barriers. It's in every community across our province and its impact is truly profound.

Hunger is going up in this country, and it is going up at a very concerning rate.

Social assistance caseloads for those 900,000 more Canadians who are living in poverty went up.

Food prices went up 5%, and in fact in basic dietary staples over the last couple of years, those things that everybody needs, prices have gone up 10%.

Average household debt is up 5.7%.

Bankruptcies are up 36%.

We do not have the social infrastructure to deal with this, and we particularly did not have the investments from the government at a time of stimulus that we needed. In fact, many economists can validate the fact that the best form of economic stimulus is to give it to people who need it the most, the unemployed, the people who are marginalized, because they actually spend the money. They get it and they spend the money. If there is one thing I would think all Canadians would want to do it is to help those who are most in need.

The good news on the poverty side is that people are getting active on this front. There is a national mobilization. We had the social forum organized by campaign 2000. We had the 20th anniversary, the unfortunate anniversary, of Parliament saying we would eliminate child poverty by 2000.

Parliament adopted a new motion and hopefully we will do better.

There is a private member's bill from the member for Sault Ste. Marie on anti-poverty. Most notably we have six provinces and a territory that have anti-poverty strategies.

The problem is that the government is not addressing these needs. It is not addressing these needs at all. We have seen that in a number of ways. In the stimulus budget of 2009, those measures that were permanent, things like tax cuts, did not really help people with the lowest incomes. It helped people like the members of this House and myself who make $150,000 and more. There is an economic argument for doing that, and I do not dispute that. However I think we would all agree that those who are making $30,000 and less should have gotten more out of a budget for stimulus than members of Parliament and senators.

We do have a federal poverty elimination act brought into this House, but we have no action from the government. In fact in June 2009, in response to the United Nations periodic review, which suggested among other things that Canada should have an anti-poverty strategy, the federal government turned around and said “No, that is not our problem; that is not our jurisdiction”, yet the six provinces and a territory that actually have anti-poverty plans are telling our committee, myself, my colleague from Laval, the member for Niagara West—Glanbrook and others that we need the federal government to step up and at least acknowledge that poverty is an issue that affects us all and we all have responsibility for that.

Poverty is not getting the attention it needs. People in Canada are suffering.

I want to talk about education. Let us look at that statistic again, that today 44% of Canadians are not in the labour force and that is going to rise to 61% by 2031.

Canada is a fortunate country. Canada has done very well, in many ways more by accident than design. We have a rich land. We have lots of natural resources. People do not come here and fight on our land. Because of climate change, we have more of the kind of natural disasters that other places do, but we do not have them in the same way other countries do. We do not have the massive tsunamis that have affected parts of the world. Those kinds of tragedies happen less in Canada than in other places.

We have been very fortunate and very blessed as a nation. We have also taken advantage of our wealth to educate our citizens, but we are slipping. We made great strides on research and innovation starting at the turn of the century, investing in CFI and Genome Canada, increasing grants to the granting councils, to NSERC, to SSHRC, to CIHR and to all those organizations. We went a long way.

However we are starting to taper off, and other countries have started to say, “We can do that here”, not only on research and innovation where they are now investing but even on where their students are choosing to go to school. In fact they are coming to Canada and want our students to go there. That is a good thing.

We want our Canadian students to travel the world. We want other students to come here. We also need to say we have a problem. We need to educate Canadian citizens. We need to take advantage of all the people in Canada we possibly can and make sure they get the education they need not only for their own benefit, which is important, but also for the benefit of the nation.

ABC Life Literacy Canada released a report indicating:

...3.1 million working age Canadians with IALS Level 1 literacy skills, the lowest level of literacy, are employed with an additional 5.8 million working-age Canadians employed with a Level 2 literacy level. These 8.9 million people represent nearly 50% of the entire Canadian labour force...

Many Canadians struggle with literacy. Four out of ten Canadians age 16 to 65 struggle with low literacy. This is a problem. We need to address this issue. We need to make sure that people who are not attaining the level of literacy they want can get that level of literacy.

One of the very sad moments in my career as a parliamentarian was when a gentleman sat down with me and said, “Look Mike, I have never really done very well in my job. I have done my best. I work hard. I was offered a promotion but a literacy test went with it”. He was afraid he would lose his first job if the literacy test showed that he could not attain the level of literacy he needed.

These are the people we need. For their benefit and for the benefit of all of us as a nation, we need to allow them to attain the level of literacy they want.

With regard to aboriginal Canadians, as part of our study on poverty in May, the human resources committee visited the Lac Simon First Nation in Quebec and the Kitcisakik Indian settlement. I want to read to the House some statistics we found out while we were there.

I will mention Lac Simon first. With regard to educational attainment, of the 705 residents age 15 or over, 555 had no certificate, diploma or degree; 40 out of 705 had a high school certificate; 45 had an apprenticeship or trade certificate; 20 had a college, CEGEP or other non-university certificate; and only 35 had a university certificate. I would like members to think about that. Of 705 residents of working age, 555 had no certificate, diploma or degree. The labour force included only 220 individuals of which 175 were employed. The employment rate in Lac Simon is 24.8%.

We then went to Kitcisakik. Let me give the House the numbers from there. In 2006, of the 170 residents age 15 and over, 145 had no certificate, diploma or degree; another 15 had a high school certificate; 10 had college or CEGEP; and 10 had a university certificate. Of the 170 residents, 145 had no certificate. The labour force totalled 85. The employment rate was 31.2%.

I do not say this to try to educate my colleagues in the House. We know there is an issue, but what are we doing about it?

There is both a social justice argument and an economic argument for this country; we cannot allow that to happen in Canada. That should not be the case in a country as rich as Canada. We need to make sure that by 2031 all these people are not part of the 61% who are not in the workforce. They do not want to be part of the 61% who are not in the workforce. They want to be part of the group that is paying its way and making a difference for Canadians. I know we all believe in that. It takes an effort, a commitment and a belief that we can get there in order to make that happen. We are not doing anywhere near enough.

It is about choices. The Conservative government has chosen to spend money on certain things, and we all use those numbers and statistics in different ways.

Let me mention the G8 and G20 summits with a cost of $1.3 billion. As a comparison I will give the House the costs of hosting other summits. Let me begin with security costs at the G8. In 2009 in Italy security cost $124 million. The year before it cost $280 million in Japan, and it cost $124 million in Germany.

I can recall, as I am sure the member for South Shore—St. Margaret's would recall, the beautiful days of 1995 when we had the G7 in Halifax. The total cost of that summit was $30 million. Bill Clinton, John Major, Boris Yeltsin and other leaders came to Halifax. It was a very positive experience. I thank former Prime Minister Chrétien and the regional minister at the time, David Dingwall, for their work in bringing that summit to Halifax.

Summits are where things get done and they do work if they are in an environment where things can happen in a positive way and we do not end up being badgered around by spiralling costs for fake lakes, gazebos and all those sorts of things.

A couple of headlines in today's Quorum read, “Commons to probe G8/G20 spending, security”, and “Dance floor, gazebo among stimulus waste...”. For the millions of Canadians watching on CPAC who may not know what Quorum is, it is a summation of headlines in the news today.

We need to decide what Canadians want. Governments, whether they be Liberal, Progressive Conservative or any others that might hope to be a government in this country, need be responsible for their decisions.

That brings me to the announcement this week made by my own leader, which fits into a discussion of the budget. It is fully costed, fully accountable and it is a clear choice for Canadians about what they would like to spend money on. Their tax money, after all, is what is used to fund the priorities of whatever government they elect. They now have a clear choice with the Liberal family care plan.

I have spoken before in this House about my own circumstance as a family caregiver. Like just about everybody in this House, I have had the opportunity to provide care to loved ones myself. In my case, I had two parents who passed away almost simultaneously, six weeks apart, from cancer. They both died at home and, while it was sad, the circumstances were a lot better than if we had not had the family resources and financial resources to care for them. Many Canadians do not have those choices. Many Canadians who take care of sick relatives, whether it is an autistic child, a disabled adult, a brother or sister, or aging parents, do not have those choices.

I mentioned before that one the saddest meetings that I have had as a parliamentarian was when a person with low literacy skills came to me and said, “I need the government to step up”. That was at a time when the government had cut $1 million out of literacy programs.

One of my happiest days was a bit unexpected. I, as were many other members, was visited on Tuesday by members from the ALS Society. A woman, who some other members would have met, sat in my office and thanked me. This woman had lost her husband at 45 years old in a very sad passing from ALS. She had 14-year-old twin daughters. She told me that she had visited Parliament last year and that she had been listened to.

The family care plan that our leader introduced is a reflection of what Canadians need. To look at the six month EI benefit and the family care tax benefit, one of the concerns people have had about compassionate care under EI for a long time is that the six weeks are not very useful. It needs to be longer. The other thing it needs to be, not just for ALS but for people dealing with multiple sclerosis, struggling with depression, going for cancer treatments and many other things, is more flexibility so that within that six month period people can choose to take it as they need it.

People are not generally sick for five and a half months and then get better and go on about their life. Quite often they need to the support of their family for a few weeks here and a few weeks there. It also needs to be flexible to allow family members to share that. At six weeks, that is not much of a choice. The family care tax benefit, based on the child tax benefit, is another measure that people struggling with making difficult personal choices have asked for. I have met with people in my riding, as I know all members have, who are dealing with circumstances that we simply wish we could do more for and, in some cases, we cannot. They need that kind of help.

Bill C-47 is part of the budget and budgets are about choices. Are we reflecting the values of Canadians? Are we anticipating the needs of Canadians? Are we going where Canadians need us to go or are we simply going where we think we want to go, either for political or ideological reasons?

In my view, the budget that the government has brought forward does not do enough to help people who need help the most. Middle-class Canadians and low-income Canadians who, in most cases, through no fault of their own, need the help of a government. They need a government that will be on their side, that will be in their corner and that will provide assistance to them when they need it. We can do better as a country.

[Robert Carrier, Bloc, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Madam Speaker, in preparation for the 2010 budget, the Bloc Québécois did a pre-budget consultation tour in which 317 organizations participated.

We had the opportunity to speak with the main players in Quebec's development across the entire province. We gathered and studied all of the proposals, which we then submitted to the Conservative government. The Bloc Québécois's budget suggestions were consistent with the expectations of Quebeckers, and if the government had implemented them, they would have ensured that Quebec came out of the crisis prosperous, sustainable and green.

Unfortunately, the government missed the opportunity to properly address Quebec's economic, social, environmental and financial needs. They have shown once again that, as far as Canada is concerned, it is as though Quebec does not exist. The Conservatives, backed by the Liberals, established policies geared to the needs of Ontario and Alberta, to Quebec's disadvantage. Despite all of the wonderful Conservative promises made in 2006 about taking a new approach with Quebec, the Conservative budget has not met needs of Quebec's economy.

Whether we are talking about the forestry or aerospace sectors, the environment or culture, Quebeckers' priorities have been completely ignored.

For example, the automobile industry, concentrated in Ontario, received $9.7 billion whereas the forestry industry, which is so vital for Quebec's regions, received only $170 million.

When it comes to the environment, which for all intents and purposes was ignored in the budget, the Conservative government put $1 billion towards developing nuclear power, which benefits Ontario, Alberta and oil companies. Do we need to repeat that they already enjoy generous tax benefits?

In addition, no new funding was announced for the cultural sector, which is essential to the development of the Quebec nation and its economy.

What I find the most upsetting in this budget is that it ignores the need to improve employment insurance and the guaranteed income supplement, which is currently keeping our seniors in poverty. It also ignores the need to deal with the issues of social housing and homelessness.

The Bloc Québécois voted against the budget because it was unfair for Quebec, but does not object ideologically to all the measures resulting from it. We would rather look at the merit of each measure included in this bill during discussions in the Standing Committee on Finance and then support those that will help Quebeckers and those that we previously proposed.

The Bloc Québécois is in favour of a number of initiatives in this bill. We must admit that some are acceptable, including measures to improve sharing child tax benefits. The government agrees to pay half to each of two parents who have joint custody. The bill also lightens the tax burden on beneficiaries of a registered disability savings plan, a plan designed to ensure the financial security of children with severe disabilities. It also reduces the administrative burden on charities and some small businesses, and it tightens the rules on the TFSA to prevent tax avoidance. What is more, companies will stop benefiting from double deductions for stock options.

That is where the good side of the current bill ends. The Bloc Québécois has many reservations about this bill. It confirms the Conservative government's desire to spare rich taxpayers at all cost and have the workers and the middle class paying off the deficit.

We also see that the government will continue to treat stock options like capital gains for ordinary taxpayers. The Bloc Québécois deplores the fact that only half the income derived from stock options is subject to federal tax.

The Conservative government could show fairness to the workers and collect $1 billion in tax by cutting off this gift.

Businesses are not being asked to pay their fair share to increase government revenue, except that they have to make source deductions to ensure that employees with stock options pay their taxes.

This bill also attests to the Conservative government's inertia with respect to the environment and the fight against greenhouse gases. Only one environmental measure is included; it encourages the production of clean energy.

The government is ignoring the Bloc Québécois' urgent calls concerning equalization payments and increased transfers for education and social programs. It is also disregarding our recommendations on income security for retirees.

I would like to go into greater detail about some of the measures in the bill that the Bloc Québécois wants to improve in committee.

First, I want to address the measures regarding income tax on charities, as included in part 1. The government proposes changing the rules on sums that have to be spent on charitable activities by repealing the rule on charitable spending, changing the rules on capital accumulation, and strengthening the rules against tax avoidance.

The Bloc Québécois believes it is vital that charitable organizations be able to focus on their activities, rather than on fundraising. Accordingly, we supported the campaign to eliminate the capital gains tax on donations of publicly listed securities and private equity holdings to charities.

The proposed measures could reduce the amount of administrative red tape that charities have to deal with. However, the issue of funding these organizations remains largely ignored by this government. The survival of these organizations is especially important given that the government has slashed spending on social services.

When it comes to international aid, we cannot help but be concerned by the major withdrawal and the politics of fear imposed on NGOs by this government. This withdrawal is particularly apparent in the case of organizations whose positions do not correspond to the government's viewpoints.

In budget 2010, the federal government announced its plans to cap expenditures for development assistance, thereby confirming that it would not make the effort needed to achieve its target of 0.7% of GDP.

The Bloc Québécois recognizes the important role of charitable organizations in Quebec society and around the world. Child care centres, volunteer organizations, regional recycling depots and NGOs working in international aid all need predictable, long-term funding in order to fulfill their respective mandates.

Prior to budget 2010, the Bloc Québécois demanded that the federal government stop extending certain programs on a temporary basis and stop being so secretive about its intentions regarding the funding of organizations. In doing so, the government creates uncertainty among the most vulnerable, our community groups and the charitable organizations that help them.

The Bloc Québécois is also calling on the federal government to implement a realistic plan to achieve the UN target of 0.7% of GDP for international assistance as quickly as possible. If the federal government does not increase its budget for development assistance, it will greatly impede the vital work that is being done by charitable organizations in the developing world.

Last month, I had the opportunity to participate in a parliamentary mission to two of the poorest countries in Africa—Benin and Burkina Faso. Parliamentarians in these countries told us that they appreciate the quality of Canadian aid. However, they expressed serious misgivings about Canada's recent decision to no longer consider them to be priority countries since they are not included in the new list of countries that are a priority for our international aid. That is the result of the government's disengagement.

Part 3 of the bill deals with measures pertaining to federal-provincial fiscal arrangements. The purpose of these piecemeal arrangements, made at the behest of the federal government, is to facilitate tax sharing by Canada and Quebec.

The Bloc Québécois believes that it is high time to come up with a vigorous mechanism ensuring that Quebec receives all taxes paid in the province. For that reason, we are asking the federal government to initiate talks with the Government of Quebec in order to create a single tax return in Quebec, on the basis of an agreement similar to that for the GST, for all taxes paid by Quebeckers.

Since 1991, the Government of Quebec has collected the goods and services tax for the federal government, which compensates it for this service. The Bloc Québécois believes that Quebec should collect all income tax. Not only would corporations and individuals save considerable sums every year, but the reduced cost of tax collection would lead to recurring savings that, in turn, would lower pressure on public finances. Maintaining two separate structures for tax administration forces Quebeckers to pay very high administrative costs. The introduction of a single tax return by the Government of Quebec would save hundreds of millions of dollars by reducing duplication.

Part 7 of the bill, which also deals with federal-provincial fiscal arrangements, addresses total transfers, including equalization payments. The Quebec government is the loser with this bill, as it was with the 2010 budget, because the Conservatives have maintained their decision to unilaterally cap equalization payments.

Since the equalization envelope is now capped, the total amount of equalization will be calculated in line with economic growth, which will mean Quebec will lose several billion dollars over the coming years. Moreover, during this period, Quebec’s share may decline. If Ontario’s relative wealth drops in relation to Quebec’s, Ontario will receive a bigger piece of the pie while Quebec’s piece will get smaller.

There is nothing in this bill about the formula affecting a segment of Hydro-Quebec’s revenue either, which deprives the Quebec government of $250 million.

Lastly, there is nothing planned with regard to education and social program transfers. The Bloc Québécois is calling for a substantial increase in investments in these programs to return to the 1994-95 indexed level. Such an increase would mean that Quebec would receive $800 million more annually for the funding of its social programs.

The government is flatly refusing Quebec’s urgent calls for an increase in federal transfer payments, in particular in education. The growth in health and education transfers will be compromised as of 2014-15 since the Federal Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act does not allow for any further growth in these transfers beyond 2014.

Furthermore, there is no compensation resulting from the harmonization of Quebec’s sales tax under Bill C-47. Even though Quebec has been unanimously calling on the government to provide financial compensation of $2.2 billion for the harmonization of its sales tax, this has been denied. And yet, total compensation of $6.8 billion was allocated to Ontario, British Columbia and three Atlantic provinces.

As far as the main transfer payments to Quebec are concerned, the federal government must reverse its decision to unilaterally modify the equalization formula, thereby ensuring Quebec receives the money to which it is entitled. The federal government must do away with the equalization cap and treat Quebec’s water resources fairly when calculating equalization.

Furthermore, the federal government must increase the Canada Social Transfer. The Bloc Québécois is calling for a substantial increase in investments in these programs in order to return to the 1994-1995 indexed level.

Bill C-47, like the 2010 budget, completely disregards the economic situation Quebeckers find themselves in.

Unfortunately, it is clear that the Conservatives continue to fail to make this an opportunity for Quebec. The 2010 budget implementation bill includes several positive initiatives, but it is clearly not a harbinger of any fundamental change in direction on the part of the Conservatives.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for Kings—Hants for sharing his time with me during this debate on Bill C-47.

This bill gave the Minister of Finance a golden opportunity to present new ideas, better management practices and a true vision for Canada's future. Instead, this bill is a simple administrative process that does not offer any hope when so many Canadian families are having a hard time making ends meet.

Canada's economy shrank because this borrow-and-spend government has failed to stimulate substantial economic growth. The Conservatives refuse to attack the real economic challenges Canadian families are facing, including record-high household debt, the exorbitant cost of post-secondary education and home care, and the insecurity of pension plans for those still working, not to mention the loss of 150,000 full-time jobs.

Statistics Canada indicated that our gross domestic product dropped by 0.1% in July, which translates into an overall contraction of the Canadian economy, while the unemployment rate in our country is 1.9% higher today than it was during the last election.

After a decade of surplus budgets under Liberal governments, the Conservatives put Canada into a deficit even before the recession by increasing government spending by 18% in their first three budgets. Their current record deficit of $54 billion is expected to get worse.

The Conservatives' wasteful and rather irresponsible spending is the primary reason this record $54 billion deficit is getting worse.

The Prime Minister's solution seems to be to borrow $20 billion more to offer a tax break to the most profitable businesses—a gift we can hardly afford to give—while ignoring the needs of Canadian families who are in utter distress.

How have things improved for Canadians since 2006? Have these billions of borrowed dollars really helped restore Canadian families' sense of confidence in the future?

During the last election campaign, this government promised Canadians that it would never go into deficit. Since then, its road map has been littered with waste that keeps piling up.

Here are a few figures that provide a snapshot of out-of-control spending: a record $130 million on shameless self-aggrandizing publicity; $1.3 billion for a 72-hour photo shoot at the G8 and G20 summits, money that was used to buy anything and everything from a fake lake to light sticks; $10 billion to $13 billion on U.S.-style mega-prisons where all those “unspecified criminals” will be sent—the ones who will never be brought to justice—and this at a time when the crime rate is going down; $16 billion for a botched agreement to purchase stealth fighter jets involving an untendered contract with no guarantee of jobs for the Canadian industry; and $6 billion in yearly tax breaks for the country's most profitable companies, a tax cut well beyond our means.

Can anyone deny that this frenzy of waste demonstrates that this government has absolutely no sense of the very real financial concerns of middle-class families that are having an increasingly tough time making ends meet?

Canadians expect their government to use public funds responsibly to provide the services they need to improve their quality of life. I understand that it is difficult to strike a balance between spending and saving in the midst of the current economic uncertainty, but that is what an effective and compassionate government must do.

Bill C-47 is the latest in a long line of opportunities this government has botched.

A look at part I of the bill—which is at the beginning—and at the Universal Child Care Benefit Act, is enough to convince anyone.

What a flagrant example of a missed opportunity. This is the kind of inaction that shows us the extent to which Conservative values fly in the face of good public policy.

The purpose of the proposed amendment in this clause of the bill is to divide the already meagre $100 benefit given to parents with shared custody, with the result being that each one will receive $50. May I remind the House that this benefit is also taxed at year's end?

The government had an opportunity to raise this amount to a level that would really have helped Canadian families absorb the cost of child care. Instead, it chose to split it further, thereby forcing families into a Solomon-style dilemma.

The fact of the matter is that this $100 child care benefit is just one drop in an ocean of ever-increasing expenses weighing our families down. Depending on where you live, the cost of child care can range from $200 to over $1,000 per month.

On average, one month's child care fees in Ontario's Chatham region total $826, while a similar child care service in Winnipeg, Manitoba, costs $395. I should point out here that the provincial government capped fees in that province.

The cheapest city on the list as far as child care is concerned is Montreal, where average fees total $205, but let us not forget that this amount is based on a law that caps the cost of child care at $7 a day in Quebec. In Quebec’s case, the province had to intervene in order to make the cost of child care affordable for all families.

Here are the average costs in other cities across Canada: Regina, $415; Fredericton, $420; Saint John, $430; Yellowknife, $605; London, $640; Kitchener, $650; Toronto, $800; and here, in Ottawa, $860.

We must not forget that those are averages, and that in many cases, the costs are much higher. Let us not kid ourselves: there are certainly cheaper places, but as with anything else, you get what you pay for.

With this bill, the government had a chance to increase the amount of the child care benefit, but it did not do so. Instead, it spent $130 million on brightly coloured signs and flashy ads. That $130 million could have funded over 21,000 full-time day care spaces for a whole year to help struggling Canadian families, including many single parents who need to provide day care for their children.

The government had a choice: spend money on flashy billboards, or offer real support to families that are struggling with child care issues. We now see this government's fundamentally mean-spirited priorities. It is disappointing to say the least.

Another clearly missed target in the bill is the complete and utter dismissal of the real and urgent problems affecting the Champlain Bridge, the most travelled bridge in the country and an essential link between Montreal, the South Shore, the Eastern Townships and, lest we forget, the United States.

The Conservative government chose a band-aid solution by investing $212 million over 10 years to repair the bridge structure. Unfortunately, when I looked into how that money has been spent up until now, I discovered that, as with most other projects undertaken through the Conservative government's economic action plan, the money does not seem to be there.

The Federal Bridge Corporation Limited had planned on spending nearly $14 million in the first year on “urgent” repairs. But the first year is over, and the corporation does not appear to have spent even $10 million. If the bridge needs urgent repairs, why is the money being sent over in dribs and drabs?

When I wrote to the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in April 2009 to ask about the possibility of repairing the bridge in a way that would allow light rail transport or other forms of public transportation, he replied with the following:

First, I would clarify that provincial, territorial and municipal governments are responsible for the planning and operation of Canada's various public transportation networks. The Government of Canada does not intervene in the planning, management and operation of these networks.

That may be so, but when they are on a bridge managed by a federal corporation, the federal government has to take action.

Allocating money is helpful only if that money is actually spent on the projects for which it was allocated. I suppose the Conservatives have become so good at public relations that they think all investments end at their communications unit.

Who is blocking this important funding? It is obvious that the Conservative government is washing its hands of the Champlain bridge and no longer wants to talk about how the work is progressing. I just learned that a vital study on the future of the bridge or a secondary route is still being held up. Consortium BCDE was awarded a $1.397 million contract in late September 2009 to study the feasibility of building a new bridge in the Champlain bridge corridor. The study was supposed to have been completed in 12 months, but now its completion date has been postponed to December 2010.

I was very eager to see the results of this study so that we would finally have a real plan, a real vision for the future of this vital route over the river. Patch jobs are not the answer, as anyone who takes the Champlain bridge regularly knows. The completion of the study has been postponed for three months. Can anyone assure us that there will not be any more delays?

In its annual report for 2008-2009, The Jacques Cartier and Champlain Bridges Incorporated promised in its objective 8 to “carry out a feasibility study to construct a new bridge along the Champlain Bridge corridor” and said it anticipated awarding the contract for the study in July 2009. The Jacques Cartier and Champlain Bridges Incorporated awarded the contract two months late, and now it seems we will have to wait three more months for the results. The people on the south shore of Montreal are fed up with the delays with their bridge. I am disappointed to see that it does not seem to be a priority for The Jacques Cartier and Champlain Bridges Incorporated and even less so for the Conservative government.

A real penchant, though, for finding the silver lining in every cloud led me to examine the bill from stem to stern in the hope of finding a hidden gem. I came across part 4 of the bill, which deals with changes to the Bank Act. When I saw this short section, which is near the end of Bill C-47, I was eager to see whether the Minister of Finance had kept his word and included the changes I had suggested in the House.

On October 7, 2009, I introduced a private member's bill, Bill C-457, which made some important changes to the Insurance Business (Banks and Bank Holding Companies) Regulations to ensure that insurance brokers in small and medium-sized firms benefited from a standardization of the rules of the game. Ironically, on the same day I introduced this bill, the Minister of Finance stated that the government intended to prohibit Canadian banks from using the Internet to promote and sell insurance on their websites. This measure was in one of the four parts of my bill. I saw in it a sign that the government had reacted because I introduced my private member’s bill.

I therefore wrote to the Minister of Finance on October 19, 2009, asking him to support my bill so that the regulations could be changed once and for all.

The minister finally replied to my letter on July 29, 2010. I do not wish to dwell on the length of time it took for the minister to reply, but nine months seems excessive, particularly since he stated, on October 7, 2009, that not only would he write to the banks about putting an end to their practice of selling insurance on their websites, but also that his government would adopt a law to that effect.

In his letter of July 29, 2010, the minister advised me that “draft regulations” would soon be pre-published in the Canada Gazette to address the issue of banks using the Internet to promote and sell insurance. We are still waiting for those draft regulations. I had hoped to find these changes in Bill C-47, but, unfortunately, I have been disappointed as they have not been included.

Since the minister did nothing more than offer lip service and make a few verbal threats, the banks have already responded by trying to promote insurance on cell phones and personal digital assistants, or PDAs.

My bill expands the prohibitions against banks selling insurance. It would prohibit banks in Canada from promoting insurance products in their branches and neighbourhoods, or on websites, ATMs, cell phones and PDAs.

Once again, Bill C-47 provided an opportunity to deal with this and other pressing matters. The Conservatives are good at making promises they do not intend to keep, and we are left, once again, trying to squeeze water from a stone.

As I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, this bill is purely administrative. It does not contain a single substantive measure, much less an innovative one.

This was yet another wasted opportunity, another example of the laissez-faire approach adopted by the government which, time and time again, has shown that it is not interested in governing.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is worth bearing in mind the reasons that we now have, and we will see if they applaud this part, the highest deficit in the history of Canada. I do not hear any applause; I was just checking. They broke the previous Conservative record for the highest deficit in the history of Canada. I am waiting for the applause; it is not there.

How did we get there? It is because of some of the things in this budget bill.

For example, after the Liberals stole $50 billion from the employment insurance account, transferred it over into general revenue and made that money disappear so it would not be there when the workers needed it when the grave crisis hit in the fall of 2008, the Conservatives in this budget bill, now that the money is gone, are just putting double locks on the door.

Let us look at that, because a lot of people when they hear that will say, “What does it really matter? It was government money before; it was in the EI account. Who cares if Paul Martin and his gang of merry men transferred it over to general revenue? We cannot really say that was stealing money. It was all government money before and it is still government money now”. But there is a big difference.

The money that was put into the employment insurance account was put in by every single company and by every single worker. Why is that important? Since the Conservatives arrived, they have been destabilizing the erstwhile balanced economy that we had in this country, that we had built up with painstaking work since the second world war: a strong primary sector with timber and mining, and a strong secondary transformation manufacturing sector, and of course more and more, an important service sector in this country.

When I say they have tilted it, they have skewed that formerly balanced economy, what they have done is this. They have created the fiscal space to hand over $60 billion in tax decreases to Canada's wealthiest corporations. The argument on the other side often comes back that it is not just to the wealthiest corporations, that all corporations got those tax reductions.

That is a false argument. If a company, especially in mining, forestry or manufacturing, in those areas was not making a profit, of course it did not pay any taxes. If it was losing money and it did not pay taxes. How could it profit from a reduction in taxes? It did not.

Who got the money? Companies like Encana, those that are piling up the poison goo behind the world's longest dikes near the tar sands.

Let us look at what is happening in Europe right now with one dike holding back the poison from one aluminum factory, maybe one one-thousandth the volume of what is behind the longest dikes in the world at the tar sands. Imagine what is going to happen inevitably the day they break, because we have never internalized the cost of the tar sands. As they have their phenomenal profits the reduction in taxes goes to them as more windfall. Hundreds of millions of dollars go to just one company like Encana since these tax reductions have come into place.

How does that connect with the employment insurance account? Easy. Every company, whether it was losing money or making money, was paying into the EI account. That money was brought into general revenue to create the fiscal room to accord those tax reductions for the richest companies. In effect, that money of the workers in those companies that were losing money in manufacturing in Quebec and Ontario in particular, was being paid over to the people in the tar sands and to Canada's chartered banks. That is what the Conservatives' policy has been all about.

Look at the chartered banks with $15 billion in profits for the first nine months of this year, but we should not worry as they are planning to share it with each other. They are going to give themselves $7.5 billion in executive bonuses for the first nine months of this year. You heard that right, Mr. Speaker. That is what the Canadian banks are doing. The government continues to sit on its hands and wants to give them further tax reductions.

Now, every time we hear the Liberals with their new-found conviction that these tax reductions are a bad idea, we should remind the Liberals that they have voted every step of the way for the $60 billion in tax reductions for Canada's richest corporations.

We should remind the Liberals that they voted on the last budget to scrap the Navigable Waters Protection Act. They voted with the Conservatives to remove a woman's right to equal pay for work of equal value. I know that sounds surprising, but that is what the Conservatives put in the prior budget bill. At that time the Liberals actually stood up and voted with them as the Conservatives were scrapping the environmental assessment program and policies and practices in Canada that were competent, that existed. It is a little different this time. The Liberals are doing the snake walk toward the back of the room and they are hiding behind the curtains. They do not even have the courage anymore to say they are backing the Conservatives. They simply absent themselves in sufficiently large numbers to allow the Conservatives' budgets to pass.

The effect of all of this has been to produce the greatest budgetary deficit in Canadian history because when the incredible crisis hit in the fall of 2008, the cupboard was bare with regard to employment insurance. The NDP was there, thank goodness, in the summer of 2009 to demand that the government increase the money available for EI and we got over $1 billion of that added to what was there. My colleague from Acadie—Bathurst in New Brunswick worked so hard on that file. The leader of the NDP had meetings with the Prime Minister to make sure that the money was there in the toughest times for workers.

Now we are looking at the perfecting of what the Liberals put in place in terms of robbing the employment insurance account. It was a bit rich a couple of weeks ago to hear the Prime Minister accuse the Liberals of having emptied the EI account. All we have to do is read what is in Bill C-47 to realize that now that the Conservatives have taken the money out and closed the door, they are locking the door. They are perfecting the theft that was indeed perpetrated by the Liberals, but the Conservatives are the ones who are completing the job.

There is no way for the Conservatives to avoid that any more than the Conservatives can hide from the HST, the new sales tax that is being added. There are seniors in places like Timmins and Sudbury right now who are realizing that they are going to pay $50, $70 or $80 a month more, stretched out over the whole year, for their heating. What the Conservatives do not understand is that when people are on a fixed income, they do not have another $80 a month. Yet the Conservative government here in Ottawa with the McGuinty Liberals in Toronto are foisting that tax increase on our poor seniors, especially in the northern areas who are going to pay it as heating oil prices go up as this new tax comes into force.

That is one of the reasons the NDP is proposing that we remove those taxes immediately.

It is also one of the reasons that we look at what the government is doing. It has money for the military. It has tens of billions for military equipment, but it does not have a penny for seniors.

To govern is to establish priorities. The Conservatives have been clear in their priorities. Take care of the banks. Take care of the oil companies. Do not internalize the costs of the tar sands. Let them sell oil artificially low, bringing in an artificially high number of U.S. dollars, pushing our Canadian dollar ever higher and making it increasingly difficult, with the high Canadian dollar, to export our goods, setting up a vicious circle of job losses, especially in the industrial heartland of Ontario and Quebec.

Before the current crisis hit in the fall of 2008, according to Statistics Canada, we had already bled off 300,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector, in those provinces in particular. How did that happen? The policy of allowing the blind, unlimited, uncontrolled, and environmentally dangerous exploitation of the tar sands brought in a large influx of U.S. dollars and pushed the Canadian dollar ever higher. Not only was the government giving them the tax breaks out of the money that had been put aside by those manufacturing firms, it was killing them as it continued to apply those policies.

As for the internalization of costs of the tar sands, it is a simple proposition. It is one of the basic tenets of sustainable development. If someone said that he or she had a factory that was producing widgets for a price far lower than that of other companies, people would want to visit the factory and see why they were doing so well. They would notice that they were pushing a lot of stuff out the back door. They would want to see what they were up to. But the owners would keep putting them off. In this case, people pushed and went to the back door, and they realized that the owners were taking all the garbage from their factory and putting it into the river in the back. They found that this was not the real price of the widgets, because the owners had not been paying the normal cost for disposal of the waste from the factory.

That is exactly what we are doing with the tar sands. We are bequeathing to future generations a $60-billion debt for next year, and, at the same time, we are bequeathing them the obligation to clean up the mess from the tar sands, which is one of the principal causes of the destabilization of our economy.

Do not get me wrong. Anyone who has looked at the economics realizes that, long-term, the tar sands can and will be one of the sources of wealth in this country. If exploited correctly, in a manner that is environmentally, economically, and socially responsible, according to the principles of sustainable develpment, the tar sands can be a source of wealth.

However, what we are doing now is the antithesis of sustainable development. We are behaving like a third world country. We are exploiting the tar sands too rapidly. The Americans have asked us to put in too many pipelines too fast, pipelines with names like Trailbreaker and Southern Lights. These are the pipelines that are being put in. Under the North American Free Trade Agreement, the application of the proportionality rule means that we could not even reduce what we are sending to the Americans through these new pipelines, unless we reduce proportionally the same amount that we are getting from them.

Therefore we continue this unbridled exploitation of the tar sands, but we have never internalized the costs. We have never paid for the garbage we are putting out there, either in greenhouse gas emissions or in what is being held behind those dikes, namely, seas of unimaginable and unnameable poison. This is not being taken care of.

If we had at least said, “From now on, you are going to develop the tar sands, paying the full cost, so that you do not leave it all on the backs of future generations”, it would have been sustainable. But we are not doing that. We are leaving it to future generations. We are skewing the balanced economy by killing off the manufacturing sector, because of the high dollar, which is directly related to this policy of the Conservative government.

Bill C-47 is to a large extent a reflection of the Conservative government's tendency to make sure that the military, the oil companies, and the banks are taken care of first and foremost. Meanwhile, seniors are left in the lurch, with new taxes on their heating oil. The government is betraying its essential nature. It is not there for Canadians. It is not there for people. It is there for the institutions, the powerful ones that put it in power and want it to stay there.

That is a difference in policy. That is a difference in priority. But at least it is clear. What is not clear is why members of the Bloc say they are against it, but will vote for it. What is not clear is why the Liberals talk against the tax decreases for the richest corporations when we know that they voted for them every step of the way. It was a shocker to a lot of people in environmental groups to see the Liberals vote with the Conservatives to scrap the Navigable Waters Protection Act, a century-old piece of legislation that was a model of sustainable development and way ahead of its time.

This year the Conservatives are scrapping the process of environmental assessment in Canada. The Conservatives would never get away with it unless the Liberals were complicit. How are the Liberals complicit? They take enough of their people behind the curtains at every vote on the budget to assure that it is passed.

The most disturbing departure from wise social policy is their removal of a woman's right to equal pay for work of equal value, something that has always been considered a tenet in our society. The Conservatives provided steep fines for any union that would defend a woman's right to equal pay for work of equal value, and the Liberals voted with them.

I am trying to find a synonym, because there are limits to what we can say in Parliament, to describe what the Liberals did when they voted to remove a woman's right to equal pay for work of equal value. This is contrary to what they say they represent, but they could have voted against it, preserving this important right.

Soon thereafter, the Liberals presented a private member's bill that is so far down the list it has no chance of ever being adopted. Here we have an example of speaking out of both sides of the mouth. The Liberals vote with the Conservatives to remove a woman's right to pay equity, to equal pay for work of equal value. Then, when they get caught, they table a private member's bill that they point to as proof of their support for pay equity. When it counted, when they could actually have done something about it, they were not there. But when it comes to presenting a private member's bill that will produce no effect, because it will never be adopted, they are there to position themselves.

That is what the Liberals have always been about in this country, positioning themselves. They have a leader whose writings were the source of consolation for the George Bush White House on the use of torture. They termed it “enhanced interrogation techniques”. What came out of George Bush's mouth a couple of weeks later? Enhanced interrogation techniques. Who gave him that terminology? The illustrious professor from Harvard who is now the head of the Liberal Party of Canada. He is the same person. He is not somebody else with the same name. He is the same guy who wrote in the New York Times that Canadians were a bunch of wusses for not getting involved in this great war that they were planning in Iraq.

That is the Liberal Party. The Liberals are always positioning themselves and posing as people who believe, as their name would tend to suggest, in liberty, in liberalism, in a vision of openness, but every time it counts, they vote with the Conservatives to take away the rights of citizens, to decrease the taxes of the richest corporations.

What it comes down to is that every time the Liberals had an opportunity to do something real to stand up for rights and preserve the balanced economy we had built up since the Second World War, they were absent, or even worse, they voted with the Conservatives.

More recently, they have adopted the clever trick of taking turns hiding behind the curtains. We see this, for example, every time a bill is brought forward to prevent the use of scabs in labour relations. Those on the extreme right wing of the Liberals—always the same ones—rise and vote against social legislation to prevent the use of strikebreakers. That is the sad reality of the Liberal Party these days. It is a good thing that as we see the right wing crumbling in Quebec, the right wing is crumbling in the Liberal Party, and the only social democratic party in Canada, the New Democratic Party, is still here to speak for the people, to talk about social, economic and environmental equity.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I too am pleased to speak to Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures.

The New Democratic Party does not support the budget policy of the Conservative government. Although we agree with the Bloc that this is bad budget policy, as surprising as this may seem, we are going to vote against it because we are against it.

If I understood my Bloc colleague’s comments correctly, he is going to vote for the bill because he is against it. I have not yet grasped all the nuances of his assertion, but if I understood it properly, it is because it is like spaghetti. That is his word, not mine. I imagine he does not know which end of the spaghetti to start at. We see it as a bitter pill, and we will not allow the Conservatives to force their bitter pills down our throats. This comes straight out of the budget policy they have been forcing on us for five years.

Governing means setting priorities. If we take an example from this very day, the FADOQ network was present was in Parliament today. Liberal, Bloc and New Democrat members tabled petitions signed by thousands of people calling on us to start looking after the seniors in our country.

What is the Conservative government’s priority? It has found $12 billion for fighter planes, and it has given the poorest seniors, who are receiving the Guaranteed Income Supplement, a $1.50 increase. That is the Conservative government’s priority.

The NDP opposes the budgetary policies of the Conservative government, so it is no surprise that we are going to be voting against Bill C-47 which is there to put into force the budget the government brought in last year.

The Conservatives are finishing their fifth year in power this fall.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will try to be brief. I have seldom heard my colleague talk at the Standing Committee on Finance. I sit on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights and the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, so unfortunately I have not had the opportunity to hear a speech as brilliant as the one he just gave. I will be pleased to welcome him to Abitibi-Témiscamingue on October 18, with all due honours.

That said, I have a question for my colleague. I have not heard that there is anything about employment insurance in Bill C-47. Did the government forget to dip into the employment insurance fund, or is there a more devious way of doing so? How is the government going to go about it?

[Daniel Paillé, Bloc, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, to begin, I would like to congratulate my Liberal Party colleague who is now leaving the chamber, but who has been appointed official opposition finance critic. I would like to congratulate him on that appointment. He is joining us on the Standing Committee on Finance.

The Standing Committee on Finance is very important since that is where we will try to see what is in Bill C-47. It is actually somewhat discouraging. As one of my old employers said, it looks a little messy. This Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures, is like a dish of spaghetti or a bowl of chowder. There are some measures from the budget— and I will talk about them in a moment—and there are measures concerning personal income tax, charitable organizations, business taxes and energy production companies. These are areas where it has been decided it is time to implement certain measures. In the standing committee, we look at those measures and we try to refine them and clarify them. At the same time, the government is taking the opportunity to bring up old business, if I may put it that way.

There are no specific clauses, but other measures have been mixed in relating to personal income taxes or to businesses. So we have to look back in time to clarify some of those things. There are also other measures that are completely unexpected and surprising, things we have never seen. We do not know where they come from. That is how things work in this kind of bill. There are measures relating to individuals, businesses and governments. So if I may put it that way, what we have is a dog's breakfast of a stew or a bowl of spaghetti with all kinds of things thrown in.

So let us try to sort it out. Obviously, the Bloc Québécois voted against the budget as a whole. Do we need to explain why? Because we realized that all of this government’s economic policies since 2006 have been focused on the needs of Ontario and Alberta. The budget has a limited capacity, and when all the credits and budget measures are aimed at regions other than Quebec, we wonder what is left for Quebec.

We voted against the budget because we saw it contained nothing for forestry, for example. There were lots of things for the auto industry and the oil industry, but nothing much for forestry or aerospace. We could find almost nothing for the environment, and zero, zilch, nada for culture. They do not care about that. And also, coming from a very urban riding in the extreme south of Montreal, I can see that there are needs in terms of social housing and homelessness. For example, we can see that in Canada, in Quebec and in Montreal, women are hit the hardest by poverty.

So there was nothing in this budget. How is it that we can say there was nothing in this budget in terms of what we are experiencing, what we are seeing? Because every year, and I did this last year, we go on a pre-budget tour. We go out and see people. We go out and meet with groups, whether they be community groups, workers, employers or organizations. We go and see everyone and we consider and analyze their expectations.

Last year, during the parliamentary lockout decreed by the Prime Minister, I travelled throughout Quebec. I had just been elected and I visited the whole province. I am going to do the same thing again this year. In the Bloc Québécois, we have made up our minds that we are going to try and seek out, rediscover, and revisit every person and every region, and even go to a place that I was, sadly, unable to visit last year.

As the saying goes, a fault confessed is half redressed. I must admit that last year we ran out of time to visit Abitibi-Témiscamingue. I shall therefore take this opportunity, in this very important speech, to announce to the House that the Bloc Québécois’ pre-budget consultations will begin on October 27, 28 and 29. I will obviously be welcomed as only my colleague from this House, the member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue, knows how. I will go and visit him in Rouyn Noranda. It will be a real pleasure to do so. Side by side, we can sharpen our pencils and take up our pens, and our Crayolas if need be, and do the sums right.

There are some positive things about the bill we have before us. There are a few strokes of genius in it. And yes, that does happen. It would seem to confirm the high quality of the officials in the Department of Finance of Canada. I used to be an official in the Quebec finance ministry, and I could see there were some particularly worthwhile people there, too. Therefore, we are likely to pass—rather, we are going to pass—a certain number of things. For example, in the area of benefits for children, the Conservative government has finally got its head around something that families face and has been a social reality in Quebec and throughout Canada for some time, and that is that divorce sometimes—alas, often—happens. Children spend one week at their father's home and the next at their mother's. The tax system was unable to keep up with this. In any event, apparently the tax credits for benefit repayments can be split between the mother's tax return and the father's. We cannot oppose that. And that is why the Bloc Québécois, with the rigour for which it is legend, will continue to support this measure. It is precisely why we will vote in favour of this bill, so that it can be referred to the Standing Committee on Finance for consideration and, hopefully, further improvement.

The bill also includes another measure concerning registered retirement savings plans and registered disability savings plans. Again, it is a bit late, but better late than never. The bill allows the proceeds of an RRSP of a deceased person to be transferred to the registered disability savings plan of a family member. We are also voting in favour of that fine measure.

The bill also addresses the administrative burden on charities. In my riding of Hochelaga, there are a tremendous number of charities. Why? Because there is tremendous need and because these people and small businesses are worn out. They are limited by administrative obstacles and unbelievable administrative work. Sometimes some completely ridiculous things happen. For example, one requirement was that 80% of donations received in a year needed to be spent immediately. They wonder if it is possible to save for the coming years, accumulate some of the donations received during the year and keep them in reserve to build up to a larger operation the following year. That option will now be available. Again, even though this measure came later rather than sooner, at least it came.

However, these measures do not go far enough. For example, there is still the matter of the tax-free savings accounts and the $5,000 ceiling. It was said that any interest, capital gains or dividends earned on that $5,000 in capital would not be taxable.

Three years later, they realized that some shrewd people were depositing much more than $5,000. Those people had to pay a small penalty, but given that the interest, capital gains and dividends were tax free, it was much smaller than the financial gain. So, they woke up and decided to put a stop to this practice.

Last year, the Bloc Québécois made some very important recommendations regarding wealthy people who have TFSAs. We suggested to the government that the wealthy be taxed at a much higher rate. We proposed that taxpayers with taxable income of between $150,000 and $250,000 pay a 2% surtax. That was what we recommended and continue to call for. In addition, we recommended a 3% surtax for those fortunate enough to have taxable income of more than $250,000. Naturally, the government, with its Conservative policies, rejected our recommendations.

At the same time, we asked for special taxation of the huge bonuses paid to people who sometimes earn a lot of money in a year, not because of the particular circumstances of their professional life, but because they get an enormous bonus from their company. These people find themselves with a few million dollars in their pockets, and we wondered why they were not paying more taxes.

The Bloc Québécois continues to call for these changes, but the Conservative government is not budging. Why are we recommending this? Yesterday, at the Standing Committee on Finance, we discussed the fact that people are worried, and with good reason, about the deficit and debt. People wonder where the money will come from to pay down the deficit, which we would like to do. People wonder where that money will come from. It is called tax room. Is there tax room somewhere? The answer is yes. It is to be found among those who earn more than $150,000 per year. It is to be found among those who earn more than $250,000. There is surely a great deal of tax room among those who receive a huge one-time bonus or performance pay.

We also pointed out a certain number of choices that have been made. For example, over the next 20 years, $490 billion will be injected into the army. That amounts to more than one Olympic stadium for every member of Parliament, in other words, one stadium for every member of the House of Commons and every senator in the Senate. I know. The Olympic stadium is in my own riding of Hochelaga. Just imagine an Olympic stadium in every riding in Canada, not to mention all the additional seats in the Senate. There would even be some money left over. All that is going to arms.

Could we not do something other than this kind of nonsense?

The bill has a number of particularly intriguing things in it. For example, we certainly did not expect the government to confer new powers on the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions in its proposal on the pension plans of companies that go bankrupt. The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions of Canada would have a certain number of discretionary powers over pension funds. That is fine for funds under the federal system, but it is not okay for those that are managed under provincial systems.

Quebec and Ontario have their own pension fund management systems. We believe that the federal government has no business interfering with them. Is that surprising? Unfortunately not. I rise regularly in regard to the Autorité des marchés financiers in Quebec, which does a very good job together with all of the provincial securities commissions. There is a Canadian body—the Canadian Securities Administrators—which represents Canada on the international level. Then there is the International Organization of Securities Commissions. Just last week there was a conference in India. Who represented the Canadian Securities Administrators? The president of the Autorité des marchés financiers in Quebec and his colleague from the Ontario Securities Commission. That exists. These people did not go there to talk platitudes. They were discussing systemic risks. These are intelligent people who are dedicated to their jobs, but they are not under the federal thumb. That is why he is trying to take us there.

The bill is silent on a number of issues, such as Hydro-Québec. There is nothing on the $250 million that was lost to Quebec because of an administrative discrepancy between Hydro-Québec and Hydro One. Once again they are changing the equalization formula without any prior notice to the provinces. We are obviously against that.

There is nothing about relations concerning all the other issues. The government owes us $2.2 billion for harmonizing the GST and the QST 19 years ago. The government refuses to tax the rich and to abolish the tax havens used by the banks. It refuses to include some points, when we know that it could do things differently.

I invoked Standing Order 31, as we say, and spoke about the vote we had on the firearms registry. The vote was said to be close, but that was not at all the case. It was 153 to 151, but that was not close, because it was not the regions against the cities. How did Quebec members from the Bloc, Liberal Party, NDP and Conservative Party vote? They voted 83% in favour of maintaining the firearms registry and 17% against. In the rest of Canada, 61% of Liberal, Conservative and NDP members voted to abolish the firearms registry. This shows that there are two societies.

Back to the budget. If they want to establish an industrial policy for the oil and automotive industries, abolish the firearms registry, favour the rich and steal from the employment insurance fund, they can go right ahead. That does not reflect our values. That is why I returned to politics. We are here to draw attention to these differences and to say that we want to be good friends and good neighbours, but that it is too bad—we are leaving.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-47, the implementation act for budget 2010. When I speak to people in my riding of Kings—Hants in Nova Scotia or to Canadians from coast to coast to coast, they tell me they are worried. They are worried because they do not know how they are going to make ends meet. They have a mortgage to pay and they are barely able to make payments now. They are afraid of what is going to happen as interest rates rise. They are struggling to save for their retirement. Many of the people I speak with tell me they are struggling with the costs of higher education for their children.

At the same time, many of them are part of a sandwich generation, where they are not only helping take care of children but are also taking care of loved ones, elderly parents who are sick and need their time and their care. These Canadians are looking for a government to help them get through this, to partner with them, but the Conservative government has not been there for them.

Budget 2010 failed to address the challenges that ordinary Canadians are facing. It is a continuation of the Conservatives' borrow and spend policies, out of control spending, out of touch with ordinary Canadians, the borrow and spend policies that are doing nothing to create jobs, improve Canada's competitiveness, or strengthen our long-term economic prospects and opportunities.

In July, the economy actually shrank. Even more troubling, the numbers were down in the construction industries during the height of the traditional Canadian construction season. Why is this? Simply put, the Conservative government's infrastructure program on budget 2010 has not achieved what it could have achieved. It has not been working for ordinary Canadians.

Under the Conservatives' watch, decisions on these projects have been slow. All too often these decisions have been driven by politics, not economics. Under budget 2010, we have seen funding go to floating gazebos, a portable dance floor, a wine therapy centre, a glass canopy over a private business's swimming pool. This is a waste of tax dollars. This is not the type of investment that will make Canada more competitive in the global economy of tomorrow.

Meanwhile, legitimate projects have been delayed, and in some cases, refused. Communities across Canada are worried that they will be left with a bill for projects that are not done by the March 31 deadline. We are asking for the government to be flexible on that. The Parliamentary Budget Officer recently estimated that between 25% and 50% of the projects will not be completed by March 31.

What I am talking about is not a new stimulus program or new funding required. It is simply for the Government of Canada to meet its commitments and promises already made under the existing pool of stimulus funds. What I am talking about is the need for the government to honour its promises to its provincial, municipal and community partners. People cannot swim in an 80% completed swimming pool. People cannot cross a 75% completed bridge, and people should not flush their toilets into a 90% completed sewage system, even in Halifax. So we are asking the Government of Canada for some flexibility to ensure that local governments and community groups are not left on the hook for incomplete projects because there have been delays due to federal red tape and inevitable delays due to the Canadian winter.

The communication agreements for these deals with municipal and community partners are almost laughably long. The Conservative government has been more preoccupied with tracking the advertising signs for each project and trying to locate these signs even with GPS than making sure that each project was on track and actually creating jobs. It has been more interested, in fact, in counting signs than in counting workers.

The Conservatives have tripled the budget for advertising to $130 million. They have a sign fetish. Tens of millions have been spent on signs for the stimulus package. There is a sign on McNabs Island in Halifax. Nobody goes to McNabs Island, but there was a project there and there is a sign. One could say it is the loneliest erection in Canada. But what has been the result of the Conservative stimulus package?

The fact is that construction numbers are down. Unemployment figures are actually quite high nationally, at 8%, which is two points higher than when the government took office. Youth unemployment is almost 17%. But those numbers do not tell the full story. In Canada, 200,000 full-time jobs have been lost. We are losing full-time jobs and they are being replaced by part-time work. So when the Conservatives talk about a recovery, what they are really talking about is a weak statistical recovery with a continued deep human recession.

Last year, Canada saw its first trade deficit in 30 years. That is troubling, because we are a small, open economy that depends on external trade for our wealth. To be buying more than we are selling is ominous for the long term.

Consumer confidence in Canada has dropped in each of the last four months. That reflects the fact that private and household debt in Canada is at a record high of $1.4 trillion. Each Canadian owes an average of $42,000 in terms of personal debt. As my colleague said earlier, this is worse than almost any other advanced OECD country. As interest rates nudge higher, Canadians are justifiably worried about how they will make ends meet and pay the bills.

It would seem that the Conservatives have run out of ideas. Either that or their ideology is preventing them from developing ideas, or perhaps they just do not believe in government. I have heard the discussion earlier on the tax-free savings account, which was developed under the Liberal government and implemented by this Conservative government. The WITB was introduced by a Liberal government and further developed by the Conservative government. We could say the Conservative government is a government of sound and original ideas, but unfortunately, its sound ideas are not original and its original ideas are not sound. One of those original ideas was to eliminate the long form census so that Canadians would not have to go to prison and languish away in Canadian penitentiaries on long form census issues, but I digress.

The fact is that Conservatives have failed to protect jobs with their stimulus. They have failed to protect jobs today, and more importantly, they have failed to create the jobs of tomorrow. What we have gone through and are going through is not an ordinary recession. What we are going through is a global economic restructuring. That is why it is important that Canada in its infrastructure investments not simply recover to where we were before the recession. That is not good enough, because the rest of the world has gone somewhere else. Wayne Gretzky, that great Canadian economist, once said that we have to skate to where the puck is going. That is what the rest of the world has done. Other countries have gone to where the global economic trends are going. They have focused on green investments. They have focused on scientific investment, on research and development, on modernizing the energy grid, on modernizing energy production and transmission, on investing in clean energy technologies so that they are competitive in the emerging global, carbon-constrained economy. Our competitors have focused their investments on science, technology and the green economy because they know that is where the jobs of tomorrow will be.

The Globe and Mail had a few things to say about the Conservative stimulus package. They called the Conservative stimulus package “a squandered opportunity”, and said:

[T]o throw billions into a hodge-podge of boondoggles and call it world-beating economic policy is a bit of a stretch

The Globe went further:

[T]oo much of the stimulus appears to have wound up feeding local egos, and wallets, without leaving an enduring economic mark.

Finally, it concludes that the stimulus package's legacy:

may be a swelling deficit that crowds out spending on the kind of infrastructure the country really needs.

A squandered opportunity indeed, in fact the Mandarin word for “opportunity” is the same as the Mandarin word for “crisis”. Other countries, our competitors, were careful not to waste a good crisis. South Korea invested 79% of its stimulus package in green technologies, creating 1.8 million green jobs of the future. China invested $218 billion of its stimulus funds toward clean environmental technologies. On a per capita basis, the U.S. put 14 times more money into green and clean energy investments than Canada, modernizing grid and building new energy production.

A more strategic approach in Canada could have been to help build Canadian competitiveness, a more energy-efficient Canadian economy, and a Canadian economy with a lower carbon footprint.

What could this have meant in terms of jobs? We could have created the jobs of tomorrow in this emerging green economy. Properly targeted, we could have greened the Government of Canada buildings, over seven million square metres of office space, creating green construction jobs across Canada. Properly targeted, we could have done more to help Canadians green their homes and to help Canadian companies green their companies and factories, which would have meant that after this recession, those Canadian companies would have been more profitable. Their bottom lines would have been bigger. They would have paid more business taxes because they would have been making more money. They would have employed more Canadians. Those Canadian households would have had more money at the end of the month to live on and to pay for their children's education. Any investment in reducing the energy consumption of a government, of its citizens and of its companies pays endless dividends for generations, notwithstanding the importance to the environment.

There was a real opportunity for us to have a game-changer here. This was a massive stimulus package and I fear it missed the mark and we will not know the degree to which it missed the mark until we see where other countries go in the next 10 to 20 years.

The 2010 budget provided no real vision.

A couple of weeks ago, the finance minister delivered a speech before the Canadian Club of Ottawa. Instead of offering an economic vision for the country, the minister debased both himself and his role as a minister of the crown by launching into a long partisan rant about the opposition. He was trying to distract Canadians from his bad economic record of waste and mismanagement, and he was trying to distract Canadians from the fact that the biggest spending, biggest deficit finance minister in Canadian history also lacks an economic plan for the future. He has a bad record and no plan for the future. He has no vision, no ideas to address the real concerns of Canadians. Canadians across the country were justifiably offended.

The National Post described it as “overcooked rhetoric”.

The Calgary Herald said:

Wave after wave of pointless and misleading provocation gushed from his podium before a Canadian Club audience which, except for the Conservative cheerleaders among them, appeared unimpressed by his fear-and-loathing diatribe. Eyes were openly rolling, whispers were exchanged under furrowed brows, groans could be heard when [the finance minister's] script soared over-the-top, which was often.

The Canadian Press said:

The attack before a Canadian Club audience, which lasted the better part of a 20-minutes, was received with stony silence by those in attendance.

Even L. Ian MacDonald of the Montreal Gazette described it as:

A clip and paste job directly from the Prime Minister's Office by the dark side of the Langevin Block

He went on to say:

Even Conservatives in the room were staring at their shoes in embarrassment

Finally, Don Martin of the National Post said:

How a government, which has emptied the public purse far into the future, ratcheted up the deficit to historic highs and bloated the bureaucracy to unprecedented size can stand for re-election as a conservative-friendly government is beyond me.

I knew those guys were not that progressive socially, and now I find out they are not even conservative economically. That is indeed unfortunate.

The fact is that the Conservatives inherited a $13 billion surplus from the Liberals, but the borrow and spend Conservative government increased program spending in its first three years of office by 18%. They spent the cupboard bare even before the downturn. In fact, they actually put the country into deficit before the downturn.

What are the borrow and spend Conservatives now spending hard-earned Canadian tax dollars on? They are spending $16 billion on fighter jets, without a fair tendering process; and $10 billion to $13 billion on U.S.-style mega-prisons despite the fact that crime rates are going down. Of course, we need those to lock up those unreported criminals who have been doing unreported crimes.

The Conservatives spent $1.3 billion for a 72 hour photo-op at the G20 and G8 summits that included $1 million for a fake lake; $300,000 for a gazebo and bathrooms that were 20 kilometres away from the summit site, so I hope they bought some Depends; $400,000 for bug spray and sunscreen; over $300,000 for luxury furniture; $14,000 for glow sticks; and millions on high-end hotels. If it were not so wasteful, we could find this funny. If Canadians were not working so hard to pay their taxes, they would probably find some humour in this. But it is tragic for Canadians who are barely getting by.

In budget 2010, the Conservatives are borrowing $6 billion to pay for corporate tax cuts during a time of deficit. We cannot afford these tax cuts. The Liberal government did cut corporate taxes and personal taxes, the biggest tax cuts in Canadian history, but it was during times of surplus. It is fundamentally different economics to borrow money today to pay for tax cuts than it was to actually provide tax cuts during times of economic surplus.

Last week, the Minister of Finance missed another deficit target. Forecasters are now expecting that the deficit will go even higher. Canadians have to wonder what they got for that $54 billion deficit. Has it protected the jobs of today? No, it has not. Unemployment is two points higher than when the Conservative government took power.

Has it created the jobs of tomorrow? No, it has not. Other governments around the world have invested in creating the jobs of tomorrow and positioning themselves to compete in the sciences focusing on the green jobs of the future.

What do Canadians have to show for this wasteful, visionless spending frenzy? They have fake lakes, floating gazebos and thousands upon thousands of advertising signs. The Conservative borrow and spend policies do not reflect the priorities of Canadians. A Liberal government would cancel the Conservatives' planned tax cut for Canada's largest corporations. We would do this to reduce the deficit and to invest in Canadian families.

Yesterday, our Liberal leader announced our family care plan. It is our plan to stand with Canadian families by helping family caregivers with the cost of caring for sick and aging loved ones at home. It includes a six-month family care EI benefit which would be similar to the EI parental leave benefit. It would allow more Canadians to care for gravely ill family members at home without having to quit their job. It would also include a family care tax benefit that is modelled on the child tax benefit. For low and middle income family caregivers who provide essential care to a family member at home, this would help ease their financial burden.

Those are the kinds of policies and the type of leadership that Canadians are looking for. This is the kind of compassion that Canadian families who are struggling to survive need.

Canada's Conservative government has been more focused on this week's polls than on the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. Today I have focused mainly on the Conservatives' fiscal and trade deficits but the most troubling deficit has been the Conservatives' leadership and vision deficit.

These are challenging times and it is during challenging and difficult times that countries and businesses need smart, visionary leadership. As the Conservative ministers go into the cabinet room, they may pause for a moment and look over the door where there is a biblical quotation that reads, “Where there is no vision, the people perish”.

The nature and severity of the challenges faced by Canadians today in this global economic restructuring are so serious and so important that without real leadership a lot of the aspirations of Canadians for their themselves, their families and their futures will perish with the lack of vision they are getting from the Conservative government.

We often hear the Prime Minister use the excuse that we have a minority Parliament and that is why we cannot really get things done. I would remind the Prime Minister and the Conservatives that it does not need to be this way. Minority Parliaments have worked in the past. The Pearson minorities in the 1960s led to the Canada pension plan, medicare and bilingualism. The Pearson minorities were productive because the parties worked together to make things happen. There was co-operation, collaboration and respect.

The word “respect” is critically important because respect for Parliament means there is respect for the people who chose this Parliament. For the Prime Minister to say that he cannot get anything done, that he cannot have any big ideas and that he cannot really implement his plans for the country because of a minority Parliament is a cop-out. It shows a lack of respect for Parliament or a lack of understanding of Parliament.

If we are going to make this Parliament successful, we need to all work together and try to address this and ensure there is respect for this Parliament. We can get things done but it will take vision and ideas. The Liberal Party of Canada is offering Canadians compassion, vision and ideas and the real leadership it needs for the 21st century.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a nice lead-in when someone thanks farmers. As a farmer of 35 years, I would like to echo that as we do go into this weekend of thanksgiving. I wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving weekend with their families.

Back to the order of the day, I do want to take this opportunity to begin debate on Bill C-47, sustaining Canada's economic recovery act. This bill represents a key component of Canada's economic action plan, including many important measures from budget 2010.

This is a key piece of economic legislation that demonstrates our Conservative government's continued focus on the economy, as well as our strong determination and commitment to help sustain Canada's economic recovery. It is a recovery clearly supported by our economic action plan, with real support for families, consumers, businesses and taxpayers. We heard last week that nearly 23,000 job-creating projects across Canada, supported under the plan, are currently under way or already completed. The continued implementation of the economic action plan through economic legislation such as sustaining Canada's economic recovery act will help ensure Canada meets the ongoing global economic challenges head on.

Indeed, Canada has met the recent global economic storm with an aggressive and effective response that has served as a model for other countries to follow.

Bank of Montreal deputy chief economist Doug Porter has declared that Canada has had “arguably one of the most successful stimulus programs in the industrialized world.

We likely will not hear that from the opposition, unfortunately. We also will not hear the opposition acknowledge that Canada has been performing relatively well compared with all other industrialized countries. The opposition seemingly only wants to talk down Canada's economy at every opportunity.

However, let us look at the facts. Canada is the only G7 country to have virtually recouped economic output and private domestic activity lost since the start of the recession. Canada is the only G7 country to have posted significant positive job growth since the summer of 2009, in fact creating almost 430,000 net new jobs since July 2009.

Canada's total government net debt to GDP ratio is projected to remain the lowest by far in the G7. What is more, according to the IMF and the OECD, Canada is expected to be the fastest growing economy in the G7 over the 2010-11 period. Again, the opposition might not want to admit it, but this is the reality. Canada is in a relatively solid and enviable economic position compared with other industrialized countries. If the opposition does not want to take my word for it, which I am assuming it may not, it should listen to independent observers both at home and abroad. Let me read only a sample of the commentary that has appeared in recent months.

TD economist Craig Alexander stated, “The pace of Canada's economic revival stands out in the world”.

The Conference Board of Canada economist Glen Hodgson declared, “Canada is in a much stronger fiscal position than almost every other industrialized country”.

A Victoria Times Colonist editorial proclaimed:

The truth is that far from needing a lecture on financial management or sound public policy, Canada should be delivering one.... [T]he facts are plain. Our handling of the economic downturn has been an example for the world.

The Toronto Star, not normally known as a fan of our Conservative government, stated as well:

Canada has come through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression remarkably well--better than any other industrialized nation in the world.

Internationally, Canada has been held up as a model of strong economic leadership to follow.

The BBC said:

As Americans and Europeans face deficits and drastic government cuts, Canada's economy is recovering from only a mild recession.... The Canadians, it seems, have answers for even the toughest puzzles.... [I]n this economy, we all want to be Canadian.

The Los Angeles Times remarked:

[O]n such critical issues as the deficit, unemployment, immigration and prospering in the global economy, Canada seems to be outperforming the United States. And in doing so, it is offering examples of successful strategies that Americans might consider.... Canada's financial house is tidy and secure.

The OECD recently commented:

I think Canada looks good -- it shines, actually. Canada could even be considered a safe haven.

All that said, we cannot be complacent or smug. Uncertainty remains. Beyond our borders, the global economic recovery is far from secure. This is especially true in the United States, which is, of course, our largest trading partner, where grave economic challenges persist.

At home too many Canadians are still looking for work. Without a doubt, the economy must remain our priority. Canadians expect nothing less. That is why our Conservative government is focused on the economy above all. We are demonstrating this commitment by working to fully implement Canada's economic action plan.

We are demonstrating it through this, the sustaining Canada's economic recovery act, an act that would help Canadian families get ahead by, for instance, indexing the working income tax benefit, as well as by further strengthening federally regulated pension plans and allowing a 10-year carry forward for registered disability savings plan grants and bonds.

It is an act that would help cut red tape for taxpayers by allowing them to request online notices from the Canada Revenue Agency, registered charities with disbursement quota reform and job-creating small businesses by allowing them to file their taxes semi-annually instead of monthly.

It is an act that would help protect consumers by improving the complaint process when dealing with banks and the financial services industry.

It is an act that would close down tax loopholes by better targeting tax incentives for employee stock options and addressing aggressive tax planning related to tax-free savings accounts.

It is an act that would promote clean energy with an accelerated capital cost allowance for clean energy generation.

In the time remaining, I would like to take a few moments to further highlight a few of the positive steps in this act that I alluded to a few moments ago.

First, I would like to spotlight the improvements we are making to the working income tax benefit, locally referred to as WITB.

Often low-income Canadians who want to enter the workforce face substantial disincentives through reduced benefits and increased taxes. To help low-income Canadians who want to work, our Conservative government introduced the WITB as an incentive to make work pay.

WITB has been successful, making work more rewarding for approximately 1.5 million low-income Canadians annually. Last year, we made WITB more generous by effectively doubling the support provided by it. Building on that action, the sustaining Canada's economic recovery act would ensure that WITB amounts would continue to be indexed to inflation on an annualized basis.

I note that WITB's introduction and recent expansions have been widely praised. For instance, the Caledon Institute of Social Policy called it an “important...addition to Canadian social policy...helping welfare recipients get over the welfare wall, and supplementing the earnings of the working poor”.

Even the Liberal Party's current finance critic, the member for Kings—Hants, has lauded our Conservative government's action. He stated:

The working income tax benefit...has helped many working families and increasing it further will contribute even more significantly to helping make work pay.

Second, I want to highlight how, in this act, we are making the registered disability savings plan, RDSP, even better for Canadians with disabilities and their families.

We know that Canadians with disabilities make significant contributions to our communities, and that is something we always look to support. Since 2006, our Conservative government has taken several important actions to that effect, including the creation of the RDSP. The RDSP helps parents and family members provide long-term financial security for severely disabled children.

The sustaining Canada's economic recovery act includes two proposals to improve the RDSP.

The first improvement to the RDSP, to which I alluded before, proposes to allow a 10-year carry-forward of the Canada disability savings grant and the Canada disability savings bond entitlement in an RDSP. This measure gives families even more flexibility, recognizing that families of children with disabilities may not be able to contribute on a regular basis to their plans.

The second improvement proposes to allow an individual who has passed on to have his or her RRSP or RRIF proceeds transferred, on a tax-free basis, to an RDSP of an eligible dependant child or grandchild.

These improvements have been well received by Canadians with disabilities and their families since we announced them in budget 2010.

Bank of Montreal Financial Group's Tina Di Vito noted that it was:

...a fantastic measure that will benefit people with disabilities and give their parents and grandparents peace of mind. ...the benefit will be huge. This will allow more people with disabilities to get the care they need. ...Canada is leading the world in showing how smart policy can help provide financial security and independence for people with disabilities.

Third, I want to look at how the disbursement quota reform in this bill will better allow registered charities to concentrate on helping Canadians in need rather than dealing with red tape.

All Canadians recognize the invaluable role that charities play in communities right across this country. Since 2006, our government has taken steps to support charities and the great work they do. For instance, we have exempted capital gains on tax associated with the donation of publicly listed securities to public charities and private foundations.

We are now proposing to build on this with significant reforms to the disbursement quota for charities. The quota, which has not been significantly modernized in three decades, has become outdated and imposes costly administrative complexity and unnecessary red tape on charities. This has only served to take their time and resources away from their charitable activities. That is why we are proposing to eliminate all the outdated disbursement quota requirements except, justly, those related to the requirement to disburse a minimum amount of investments and other assets not used directly in the charity's operations each year.

Reaction to this move has been overwhelmingly positive, underlining its importance to Canada's charities.

The Community Foundations of Canada, representing nearly 200 community foundations, applauded it and said:

...a win-win situation—it has a dramatic impact on communities, making it easier for charities to serve people in need.... We applaud the government's decision to reform the disbursement quota policy.

I quote Imagine Canada:

...extremely pleased that the federal government has responded positively to our concerns about the disbursement quota. [It]...added layers of red tape and reduced flexibility in responding to the needs of Canadians and communities.

Finally, the Salvation Army expressed its support by saying:

...removal of the quota will provide The Salvation Army, one of Canada's largest charities, with increased flexibility.... [It]...will allow us to better respond to the needs of the people we serve in 400 communities across Canada.

Fourth, I want to briefly highlight a step we are taking in this bill to clamp down on a tax loophole related to the tax-free savings account, or TFSA. Since our Conservative government introduced the TFSA in 2008, it has proven exceedingly popular and has been called the single most important personal savings vehicle since the introduction of the RRSP.

The landmark TFSA, the first of its kind in Canadian history, has allowed Canadians to watch their savings grow tax-free, but late in 2009 concerns regarding the use of TFSAs in tax planning schemes were raised regarding inappropriate transactions and the deliberate use of over-contributions providing investments and non-qualified investments by a small group of Canadians to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

Accordingly, we are addressing these serious concerns regarding the abuse of TFSAs and have closed these tax loopholes. This strong action to ensure Canadians pay their fair share of taxes has been loudly and widely applauded.

Tax experts, like Jamie Golombek, have underlined:

For the average everyday Canadian who is putting $5,000 a year into a TFSA account, these changes will be of absolutely no interest. It is a group of highly sophisticated traders and investors who are exploiting the rules. ...this is targeting those people making enormous amounts of over-contribution.

These are only four important steps of many in the sustaining Canada's economic recovery act that illustrate its importance and how it will help Canadian families and Canada's economy in the years ahead.

Clearly this act, as a key component in implementing Canada's economic action plan, would help keep our economy moving in the right direction. The act would help protect our economy against the ongoing global economic turmoil during this fragile period and keep Canada's economic advantage. As such, this legislation deserves the support of this entire Parliament.

[Jean-Pierre Blackburn, Conservative, Jonquière—Alma, QC]

moved that Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Jim Flaherty, Conservative, Minister of Finance]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)