Bill C-9 (Historical)

Jobs and Economic Growth Act

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

Part 1 of this enactment implements income tax measures proposed in the March 4, 2010 Budget. In particular, it
(a) introduces amendments to allow a recipient of Universal Child Care Benefit amounts to designate that the amounts be included in the income of the dependant in respect of whom the recipient has claimed an Eligible Dependant Credit, or if the credit is not claimed by the recipient, a child of the recipient who is a qualified dependant under the Universal Child Care Benefit Act;
(b) clarifies rules relating to the Medical Expense Tax Credit to exclude expenses for purely cosmetic procedures;
(c) clarifies rules relating to payments made to a Registered Education Savings Plan or a Registered Disability Savings Plan through a program funded, directly or indirectly, by a province or administered by a province;
(d) implements amendments to the family income thresholds used to determine eligibility for Canada Education Savings Grants, Canada Disability Savings Grants and Canada Disability Savings Bonds;
(e) reinstates the 50% inclusion rate for Canadian residents who have been in receipt of U.S. social security benefits since before January 1, 1996;
(f) extends the mineral exploration tax credit for one year;
(g) reduces the rate of interest payable by the Minister of National Revenue on tax overpayments made by corporations;
(h) modifies the definition “taxable Canadian property” to exclude certain shares and other interests that do not derive their value principally from real or immovable property situated in Canada, Canadian resource property, or timber resource property;
(i) introduces amendments to allow the issuance of a refund of an overpayment of tax under Part I of the Income Tax Act to certain non-residents in circumstances where an assessment of such amounts has been made outside the usual period during which a refund may be made;
(j) repeals the exclusion for indictable tax offences from the proceeds of crime and money laundering regime; and
(k) increases the pension surplus threshold for employer contributions to registered pension plans to 25%.
Part 2 amends the Excise Act, 2001 and the Customs Act to implement an enhanced stamping regime for tobacco products by introducing new controls over the production, distribution and possession of a new excise stamp for tobacco products.
Part 2 also amends the Excise Tax Act and certain related regulations in respect of the Goods and Services Tax/Harmonized Sales Tax (GST/HST) to:
(a) simplify the operation of the GST/HST for the direct selling industry using a commission-based model;
(b) clarify the application of the GST/HST to purely cosmetic procedures and to devices or other goods used or provided with cosmetic procedures, and to services related to cosmetic procedures;
(c) reaffirm the policy intent and provide certainty respecting the scope of the definition of “financial service” in respect of certain administrative, management and promotional services;
(d) address advantages that currently exist in favour of imported financial services over comparable domestic services;
(e) streamline the application of the input tax credit rules to financial institutions;
(f) provide a new, uniform GST/HST rebate system that will apply fairly and equitably to employer-sponsored pension plans;
(g) introduce a new annual information return for financial institutions to improve GST/HST reporting in the financial services sector; and
(h) extend the due date for filing annual GST/HST returns from three months to six months after year-end for certain financial institutions.
In addition, Part 2 amends regulations made under the Excise Tax Act and the Excise Act, 2001 to reduce the interest rate payable by the Minister of National Revenue in respect of overpaid taxes and duties by corporations.
Part 3 amends the Air Travellers Security Charge Act to increase the air travellers security charge that is applicable to air travel that includes a chargeable emplanement on or after April 1, 2010 and for which any payment is made on or after that date. It also reduces the interest payable by the Minister of National Revenue to corporations under that Act.
Part 4 amends the Softwood Lumber Products Export Charge Act, 2006 to provide for a higher rate of charge on the export of certain softwood lumber products from the regions of Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba or Saskatchewan. It also amends that Act to reduce the rate of interest payable by the Minister of National Revenue on tax overpayments made by corporations.
Part 5 amends the Customs Tariff to implement measures announced in the March 4, 2010 Budget to reduce Most-Favoured-Nation rates of duty and, if applicable, rates of duty under other tariff treatments on a number of tariff items relating to manufacturing inputs and machinery and equipment imported on or after March 5, 2010.
Part 6 amends the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act to provide additional payments to certain provinces and to correct a cross-reference in that Act.
Part 7 amends the Expenditure Restraint Act to impose a freeze on the allowances and salaries to be paid to members of the Senate and the House of Commons for the 2010–2011, 2011–2012 and 2012–2013 fiscal years.
Part 8 amends a number of Acts to reduce or eliminate Governor in Council appointments, including the North American Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act. This Part also amends that Act to establish the Canadian Section of the NAFTA Secretariat within the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. In addition, this Part repeals The Intercolonial and Prince Edward Island Railways Employees’ Provident Fund Act. Finally, this Part makes consequential and related amendments to other Acts.
Part 9 amends the Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985. In particular, the Act is amended to
(a) require an employer to fully fund benefits if the whole of a pension plan is terminated;
(b) authorize an employer to use a letter of credit, if certain conditions are met, to satisfy solvency funding obligations in respect of a pension plan that has not been terminated in whole;
(c) permit a pension plan to provide for variable benefits, similar to those paid out of a Life Income Fund, in respect of a defined contribution provision of the pension plan;
(d) establish a distressed pension plan workout scheme, under which the employer and representatives of members and retirees may negotiate changes to the plan’s funding requirements, subject to the approval of the Minister of Finance;
(e) permit the Superintendent of Financial Institutions to replace an actuary if the Superintendent is of the opinion that it is in the best interests of members or retirees;
(f) provide that only the Superintendent may declare a pension plan to be partially terminated;
(g) provide for the immediate vesting of members’ benefits;
(h) require the administrator to make additional information available to members and retirees following the termination of a pension plan; and
(i) repeal spent provisions.
Part 10 provides for the retroactive coming into force in Canada of the Agreement on Social Security between Canada and the Republic of Poland.
Part 11 amends the Export Development Act to grant Export Development Canada the authority to establish offices outside Canada. It also clarifies that Corporation’s authority with respect to asset management and the forgiveness of certain debts and obligations.
Part 12 enacts the Payment Card Networks Act, the purpose of which is to regulate national payment card networks and the commercial practices of payment card network operators. Among other things, that Act confers a number of regulation-making powers. This Part also makes related amendments to the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada Act to expand the mandate of the Agency so that it may supervise payment card network operators to determine whether they are in compliance with the provisions of the Payment Card Networks Act and its regulations and monitor the implementation of voluntary codes of conduct.
Part 13 amends the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada Act to provide the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada with a broader oversight role to allow it to verify compliance with ministerial undertakings and directions. The amendments also increase the Agency’s ability to undertake research, including research on trends and emerging consumer protection issues. Finally, the Part makes consequential amendments to other Acts.
Part 14 amends the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act to confer on the Minister of Finance the power to issue directives imposing measures with respect to certain financial transactions. The amendments also confer on the Governor in Council the power to make regulations that limit or prohibit certain financial transactions. This Part also makes a consequential amendment to another Act.
Part 15 amends the Canada Post Corporation Act to modify the exclusive privilege of the Canada Post Corporation so as to permit letter exporters to collect letters in Canada for transmittal and delivery outside Canada.
Part 16 amends the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation Act to allow the Governor in Council to specify when a bridge institution will assume a federal member institution’s deposit liabilities and allow the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation to make by-laws with respect to information and capabilities it can require of its member institutions. This Part also amends that Act to establish the rules that apply to the assignment, by the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation to a bridge institution, of eligible financial contracts to which a federal member institution is a party.
Part 17 amends the Bank Act and other related statutes to provide a framework enabling credit unions to incorporate and continue as banks. The model is based on the framework applicable to other federally regulated financial institutions, adjusted to give effect to cooperative principles and governance.
Part 18 authorizes the taking of a number of measures with respect to the reorganization and divestiture of all or any part of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited’s business.
Part 19 amends the National Energy Board Act in order to give the National Energy Board the power to create a participant funding program to facilitate the participation of the public in hearings that are held under section 24 of that Act. It also amends the Nuclear Safety and Control Act to give the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission the power to create a participant funding program to facilitate the participation of the public in proceedings under that Act and the power to prescribe fees for that program.
Part 20 amends the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act to streamline certain process requirements for comprehensive studies, to give the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency authority to conduct most comprehensive studies and to give the Minister of the Environment the power to establish the scope of any project in relation to which an environmental assessment is to be conducted. It also amends that Act to provide, in legislation rather than by regulations, that an environmental assessment is not required for certain federally funded infrastructure projects and repeals sunset clauses in the Regulations Amending the Exclusion List Regulations, 2007.
Part 21 amends the Canada Labour Code with respect to the appointment of appeals officers and the appeal hearing procedures.
Part 22 authorizes payments to be made out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund for various purposes.
Part 23 amends the Telecommunications Act to make a carrier that is not a Canadian-owned and controlled corporation eligible to operate as a telecommunications common carrier if it owns or operates certain transmission facilities.
Part 24 amends the Employment Insurance Act to establish an account in the accounts of Canada to be known as the Employment Insurance Operating Account and to close the Employment Insurance Account and remove it from the accounts of Canada. It also repeals sections 76 and 80 of that Act and makes consequential amendments in relation to the creation of the new Account. This Part also makes technical amendments to clarify provisions of the Budget Implementation Act, 2008 and the Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board Act that deal with the Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board.

Report stage

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is absolutely correct. The reason a government would throw a bunch of junk into an omnibus bill like this is that there are always a couple of good things within a budget. Obviously, if we vote against the budget, months later the government can say that we voted against this or we voted against that. At the end of the day, this is a confidence vote.

We are telling the Conservatives very clearly that we in this corner of this side of the House have absolutely no confidence in the governance of this country by the Conservative Party of Canada.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-9.

I have before me this bill, which is called a bill to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures. I have it in hand and I know that everyone is familiar with it.

It is a very large bill with 880 pages and more than 2,200 clauses. Those who are watching us might think that such a large bill is meant to improve things for Canadians in terms of taxes. It is called a budget implementation bill, but on the contrary, it is a Conservative scheme for pushing through a significant portion of their policies—their right-wing philosophy of which I will provide some examples—knowing full well that the official opposition, the Liberal Party, will back down. Thus, we already know that some members will be absent. They say they are against the bill when they take part in the debate, but when the time comes to vote, they will back down. The Conservatives know this very well. That is why they decided, after four years as a minority government, to seek passage of unpopular measures in bulk that they could not get passed in separate bills.

It is important that Quebeckers and Canadians watching us understand this: the Conservative Party has included unpopular measures in this bill, measures that would otherwise not get passed.

I will take as an example part 15 of the bill, on the Canada Post Corporation Act, on page 568. Clause 1885 has one paragraph:

1885. Section 15 of the Canada Post Corporation Act is amended by adding the following after subsection (2):

(3) The exclusive privilege referred to in subsection 14(1) does not apply to letters intended for delivery to an addressee outside Canada.

This change was part of Bill C-44, introduced by the Conservative government on June 17, 2009. That bill went to the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, of which I am a member. The debates were so serious that, after prorogation, the Conservatives decided not to bring back this bill, which would have made changes to the Canada Post Corporation. The Conservatives decided not to bring it back, because changes in the exclusive privilege of Canada Post will reduce its revenues.

As a Quebec sovereignist, I believe that one day, we will have our own country. We will control our postal service, but until that happens, there is one agency, the Canada Post Corporation, that delivers mail in all regions of Canada. Not a single member in this House would dare say that postal services are not important. It is the only service that the Government of Canada provides to the public through a crown corporation, Canada Post. It affects every single citizen, and these services are provided every day. It is the only service left for the public, simply because the remaining public services are provided by other levels of government. Municipalities provide a significant number, as do the provinces. The only service that the Government of Canada provides to the public is the postal service.

When the revenues of Canada Post are cut, its services are also cut. That is what we heard in committee, even before the first version of the bill, when remailers came up with an idea, and lost their case in the courts. These remailers were, and still are, operating.

When they lost in court, they brought their request to us. The president of Canada Post came to tell us why the corporation was suing the remailing companies it had tolerated for 20 years. It was because Canada Post lost approximately $80 million in 2007, and the losses were not stopping.

It is important that Quebeckers and Canadians, and even members of the House, fully understand what remailing is. Companies offer to collect a large business's mail and send it to clients overseas, outside of Canada. Canada Post has tolerated remailing for a long time. Obviously, these companies have grown and are continuing to grow. They have found all sorts of ways to collect mail here and send it from elsewhere. They ship mail in containers and then mail it from overseas, in countries where the costs are significantly lower than in Canada, which leads to financial losses for Canada Post.

Remailing companies came to realize that as long as they were collecting international mail from businesses, they could suggest to these businesses that they collect and send all of their mail. When Canada Post realized that remailing companies were signing mail collection contracts with all of the large organizations—universities and all of the major health networks—it realized that it was losing significant revenue.

In order to stay afloat, Canada Post has to cut services. There is a reason why, in the past three or four years, Canada Post has been closing post offices, trying to reduce the number of rural routes and installing group mailboxes instead of offering home delivery.

I do not think that a single member of this House would dare debate this issue. The Conservatives have decided to hide this measure in their omnibus bill, Bill C-9. We must never forget that Canada Post was the first major Canadian corporation. The famous Royal Mail has always been delivered ever since there was mail. The largest union in Canada is the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. It makes sense because the corporation delivers mail to every home.

The Conservative Party is destroying this service. This bill will take away its exclusive privilege. Canada Post won in court because the onus was on the companies to prove that they were obeying the law. Bill C-9 will take away that exclusive privilege and remailers will be able to collect mail.

What the government and the minister are telling us is that remailers will only be able to collect mail destined for foreign countries. If they collect mail distributed in Canada, it will be up to Canada Post to prove it. We can imagine the money Canada Post will have to spend to prove that private businesses are not collecting only international mail.

The companies knew what they were doing when they asked for the end of the exclusive privilege. Their problem was that they had to prove in court that they were not collecting mail. Now, Canada Post will have to prove it. What does that mean? I can say right now that Canada Post plans on cutting its spending by $250 million over the next two years. That means that services will be cut in rural areas in Quebec and the rest of Canada.

With the Bloc Québécois, I will be voting against Bill C-9 because I do not want to be responsible for ending the provision of service to the entire population. Every citizen pays taxes, whether they live in a rural or urban area. Everyone has the right to postal service in all parts of Quebec and Canada. I do not want to be the one to vote to eliminate postal service in rural areas.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for a very good dissertation on the whole issue of remailers. He has described it very accurately and has raised the spectre of serious consequences, certainly to Canada Post as a corporation but also in another area that concerns me. We had the same kinds of issues with regard to airlines when they were talking about whether they would get rid of Air Canada and things like this.

If we wanted to run a business as a private, for profit business, we would eliminate, in terms of airlines, the unprofitable routes and just deal with the most lucrative ones and maximize our profits. However, when we think of CBC and Canada Post, these are the anchors that communicate and connect this country together.

I am a little concerned, I do not know if the member is, that withdrawing the kind of essential services to rural Canadians is really contemptuous of the vision of the country, the importance of keeping people connected and that we are all created equally in terms having access to essential services.

I would be interested if the member is aware of any other potential--

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Order, please. The hon. member for Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this gives me the opportunity to tell my hon. colleague that it goes much further, since it affects all urban environments. My colleague does not understand what Canada Post is doing at this time. There is a moratorium on post office closures in rural areas, but not in urban areas.

So in urban environments, they are trying to give contracts to private enterprise. Of course, when the time comes to renegotiate the contracts, since Canada Post has lower revenues, fees are not increased, nor what is paid to dealers for providing the service. More and more dealers in urban areas are not interested in the service.

Now Canada Post is forced to centralize in post offices that are further away because there are no more dealers, all because Canada Post is broke, and all urban areas are going to be affected.

The members of this House believe that the measure they are taking is a minor, short-term measure and that Canada Post will recover, but Canada Post will not recover. In order to provide the service, Canada Post will have to rely more and more on dealers in urban areas, for instance, and yet will have a much harder time paying the dealers. So dealers—obliged to provide a certain amount of space, but not paid for the space they are providing even though dealers have rent to pay to the owners of locations—will no longer be able to sign contracts with Canada Post. Worse still, in Montreal, at this very moment, fewer contracts are being signed.

Dealers even say they no longer want to provide the service because it is not worth it. Once again, this does affect rural areas, but hold on to your hats, because it is also going to affect urban areas pretty soon.

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

Mr. Speaker, clearly, the Canada Post remailer issue is a smoking gun in Bill C-9 because it, like the sale of AECL, especially does not belong in Bill C-9. The evidence of that is the fact that the government itself introduced the remailer issue in Bill C-14 and Bill C-44 in the last couple of years.

I applaud the member for his analysis of the bill. I want to ask him why he thinks the Liberals should be able to claim that they are sympathetic to this issue, when in fact they will not be supporting it.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I was quite surprised to see the NDP member from Outremont try to add a new measure on oil or oil drilling to the bill in an attempt to entice the Liberals to vote in favour of the bill. This quite simply means that with such a measure, the NDP would also be prepared to support Bill C-9, knowing full well that some of the measures are unacceptable.

I did not understand what the deputy leader of the New Democratic Party, the hon. member for Outremont, was trying to do. He wanted to add a measure, apparently to try to mollify the Liberals to get Bill C-9 passed. I am trying to understand, but I still do not get it.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-9 and to the Group No. 2 deletions that the NDP alone has been attempting to have deleted from the bill.

To answer the Bloc member's question, we in the NDP recognize that we cannot effect changes to legislation in Parliament without the co-operation of the other two opposition parties. Therefore, it makes sense that if it takes a proposal or an amendment to get the Liberals to support it, we would be prepared to do that.

However, having said that, we have no intention of voting for the bill even if we were to get the deletions that we were looking for because, once again, the bill is not an honest attempt at a budget implementation bill. It is well-known that if we want to implement the provisions of the budget, as the member for Mississauga South has indicated, we should at least talk about the budget or at least mention it in the throne speech.

What the Conservatives have done here, recognizing that the Liberals are the weak link in the chain here, is decided in a minority situation to ram all this stuff into a bill that is basically like vegetable soup and throw in the issue of the remailers, the issue of selling AECL and the environmental issues and serve it up in an 880-page omnibus bill and hope for the best. They are basically challenging the Liberals to vote against them and have an election over it. That is not the way we should be running Parliament.

The Conservatives presented the post office remailers as a government bill on two occasions and they ran into a wall. Even the Liberals said no when they brought in the remailer issue on Bill C-14 and Bill C-44 over the last couple of years. The brain trust of the Conservative government saw a way to get the budget implementation bill through so it threw in a bunch of things that did not apply.

Now we have the government's very weak defence today of saying that we have had so many days to discuss the bill and that it brought in an omnibus bill because the Liberals did it before. In other words, two wrongs make a right. Just because the Conservatives can point to and attack the member for Mississauga South on the basis that he was in the House when the Liberal Party was in power and it did the same thing that--

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

It being 5:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.

The House resumed from June 3 consideration of Bill C-9, An 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, and of the motions in Group No. 2.

Jobs and Economic Growth Act

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

When the matter was last before the House, the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona had the floor. He has seven minutes remaining in the time allotted for his remarks.

I therefore call upon the hon. member for Elmwood--Transcona.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise for perhaps the last time on Bill C-9. The bill, as we have pointed out numerous times, is 880 pages long, which is quite excessive even for the government.

Governments in the past have resorted to omnibus bills to bring in measures that are largely unpopular. Measures they cannot get through any other way, they have stuck them in omnibus bills in the past, but this one will probably never be beaten because I have never seen one of this size, 880 pages. The government has thrown in all sorts of measures that it cannot get through.

The best example of that would be the issue of the post office remailers. The government has tried to get the bill through as Bill C-14. It failed. It tried Bill C-44. It failed again.

Now that it sees a weakness in the Liberal official opposition, it has decided to go for broke and throw everything into this vegetable soup essentially and bury the remailer issue in there, which is going to be the beginning of a deregulation process of Canada Post.

To combat this attempt by the government, we have tried to delete a number of the objectionable parts of the bill. As such, the amendments have been grouped into two different groupings.

We have so far dealt with Group No. 1, which is the air travellers security charges, environmental assessment, and EI funding. Now we are now dealing with the Canada Post issue, which I just spoke about, and the fire sale of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited in Group No. 2.

In terms of the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, AECL, it is the largest crown corporation. This in itself, as I think everyone would agree, would merit a separate bill because this particular crown corporation has had over $22 billion put into building the company. There is a critical mass of expertise.

The government is bent, we believe, on selling and privatizing AECL probably to an American firm, and just at a time when the nuclear industry is starting to become popular again. In some parts of the world there are over 100 reactors being initiated on a global basis. This industry in Canada is well known as a world leader in this area.

As much as I do not condone the expansion of nuclear development because of all the associated problems with it and the timeline to get it up and running, we have Ontario interested in nuclear as well as Saskatchewan and I believe Alberta. Is the timing not perfect for a free enterprise Conservative government to take a company that we have put $22 billion into and basically sell it off at fire sale prices to the private sector? That is just typical of the way the Conservative government operates.

We have spoken at length about the remailers at Canada Post and where the government is headed with Canada Post.

The government announced last year that it was going to do an inventory of government assets. It was going to look at selling some of the assets, particularly looking at the deficit of $56 billion.

This is a perfect opportunity for the Conservatives to start assessing the asset base of the government and selling off buildings, the CBC, and other assets that the government owns.

We are really looking at neo-Reaganites and Thatcherites in reality. The Minister of Immigration claps at that. This is what a minority Conservative government is doing. Imagine what would happen if these guys had a majority government. They would not even have fire sales, they would just give the assets away, maybe even pay their friends to take the assets.

However, we find it very disturbing that in an environment where we had a worldwide recession on our hands, the banks of this country still managed to post a $15.9 billion profit. What does the government do? It rewards them with a reduction in corporate taxes trying to race to the bottom, trying to get down to 15%, so they will be at least 10 points below the United States.

The bank presidents are still at the trough. The president of the Royal Bank is earning $10.4 million a year and what do the Conservatives give to Canadians? They raise the air travellers tax by 50%, making it the highest in the world. This at a time when the Americans are charging a $5 tax. So we are going to be sending our travellers over to American airlines. Is that smart economics? But that is the Conservative government.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, I have to refer to a wonderful quote that our hon. transport minister has been using and that speech I will suggest was pretty much fact free. All sorts of insinuations, accusations, fearmongering about things that have not even been talked about--

[Dick Harris, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

And a lot of dreaming in Technicolor.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

And even as the hon. member for Cariboo—Prince George says, dreaming in Technicolor. The member should be in the theatre rather than in the House of Commons delivering those sort of comments.

He spent a fair bit of time talking about AECL. We all know that has been a very difficult and challenging file for all governments to deal with. There is a future for nuclear. As much as I am surprised that the NDP members even comment on it because they usually run as fast as they can from any way of using nuclear energy to produce power in this country. Now they are suggesting that we should not do anything rational with it.

However, let me read one quick quote and I would like a comment. This is from Neil Alexander of the Organization of CANDU Industries, who should be a very knowledgeable individual. He says:

OCI has been a long-time and consistent supporter of the restructuring of AECL to achieve the objectives that are very clearly defined in Rothschild's investment summary. We agree that CANDU technology has to be properly capitalized to be successful, that the management team of AECL does need a significant injection of commercial capability, and that the sales team at AECL does need a much greater international outreach.

That is what we are trying to provide. Why will the member not support that?