Bill C-21 (Historical)

Red Tape Reduction Act

An Act to control the administrative burden that regulations impose on businesses

This enactment enacts the Red Tape Reduction Act, which establishes controls on the amount of administrative burden that regulations impose on businesses.

Red Tape Reduction Act

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I think that the member has spent far too much time in his senior minister's gazebo.

That is not what business owners across Canada are telling us at all. They are telling us that we need to be aggressive about the current situation. This means cutting red tape for them. That is not what is happening. the government wants to reduce the administrative burden. I can confirm that. We support that goal, but not with a bill like this one. This bill does not do anything meaningful to ease the burden on administrators and accountants.

[The Deputy Speaker, Joe Comartin]

Order. 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 Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, Employment; the hon. member for York South—Weston, Rail Transportation.

Resuming debate. The hon. member for Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I would like to let you know that I will be sharing my time with the member for Chambly—Borduas.

I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-21 because this gives me an opportunity to talk about how important small businesses are to me and my riding and about why we should support them.

Specialized industries and big businesses should not be the only beneficiaries of our desire to support our economy. We need to recognize that small businesses are central to our economy. I will explain why. Small businesses are one of our biggest drivers of economic growth. We have to help them thrive. Small businesses already account for nearly half of Canada's GDP, and they are responsible for close to 60% of all jobs in Canada as well as 75% of net new jobs. When the economy is in a downturn and fewer jobs are being created as we lose big companies, small businesses are the ones making a difference and creating jobs, especially in rural and remote areas. As a result, they are very important and create 75% of net new jobs.

We in the NDP believe that SMEs should be a priority for any federal government, because they directly support job creation. That is why we proposed reducing the small-business tax rate from 11% to 9% during the last federal election. That measure directly targeted SMEs. We also proposed other simple, concrete measures to help SMEs. For instance, we proposed expanding the hiring tax credit for small businesses. The Conservatives cancelled it in 2014, which was really sad to see, because it meant taking away a tax credit that created jobs and helped people enter the workforce. There are 1.3 million unemployed Canadians. Eliminating this kind of hiring credit that created jobs was a move in the wrong direction. At the same time, in the most recent budget, the Conservatives spent $500 million to implement measures that, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, will create only about 800 jobs. Clearly, that is not a good investment.

Furthermore, youth unemployment is very high. It is actually double the national average. We need to take a closer look at that in order to reverse that trend. Everyone knows that our youth are Canada's future. As parliamentarians, we have to invest in their future. That is why we proposed a tax credit worth up to $2,000 for hiring young people, in order to help businesses train young people aged 18 to 25 and provide them with good jobs.

In addition to all of that, as part of our campaign to make life more affordable, we proposed ways to reduce operating costs for our retailers and merchants, by directly tackling the anti-competitive credit card fees imposed by credit card companies. The Conservatives introduced a voluntary code of conduct recently, but that is not enough to reduce credit card transaction fees. We in the NDP are concerned about the excessive fees that businesses have to pay, since they can amount to 1, 2 or 3% of sales.

The exorbitant fees charged by credit card companies do not help our communities. That is money that comes directly out of our communities and will not be reinvested. A ceiling needs to be imposed to make these fees more equitable for the companies, but especially for our merchants. That would be fairer to the families who are trying to make ends meet.

These proposals truly support the entrepreneurs in my region whether they have just started their company or have been in business for decades. I travel around my riding and talk about these proposals, which are very well received by the Vallée de la Petite-Nation chamber of commerce and the chamber of commerce and industry of Deux-Montagnes, Saint-Eustache, Sainte-Marthe-sur-le-Lac, Mirabel and Argenteuil. These proposals will directly affect business owners in my riding.

In a riding like mine, a big part of the economy is based on agriculture and agri-food, and most of the business owners work in that field as well. These farmers are at the heart of our rural areas and a job creation strategy in the rural areas and small communities. I wanted to point that out because we have to think beyond taxes and red tape. We also have to think about what we can do to encourage and support our farmers.

The bill before us, Bill C-21, An Act to control the administrative burden that regulations impose on businesses, is meant to reduce red tape for businesses. The Conservatives are proposing to do that by giving more power to the Treasury Board. That is where they start to take away the SMEs' power to create jobs.

We still want to find ways to reduce the administrative burden on SMEs and allow them to focus on what they do best, namely growing their business and creating jobs. However, the NDP wants to prevent the government from eliminating rules regarding health, food safety, transportation safety, management systems and the environment. It is not unreasonable to ask the government to protect the environment, workers and our food.

We are concerned that the measures introduced to concentrate power in the Treasury Board are not steps in the right direction. We do not trust that the Conservatives will do a good job. In closing, I will provide two examples.

First, in the October 2013 budget implementation bill, Bill C-4, the Conservatives made changes to the Canada Labour Code in order to gut the powers of health and safety officers in federal workplaces. They are directly compromising Canadians' health and safety.

Second, they do not necessarily want to reduce red tape because they increased the paper burden with the Building Canada fund. We do not know how they can be trusted. When they have the opportunity to take occupational health and safety seriously, they do not do so, and when they say that they want to reduce red tape, they make more for our municipalities, which also create jobs.

For all those reasons, I cannot support this bill.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member made a great deal of reference to small businesses and how we should support them, and she referred to taxes and so forth.

Last fall the federal government came up with its so-called initiative, the small business job credit program, which in a bizarre way encouraged some small businesses to look at laying off staff.

On the other hand, the Liberal Party came up with the EI premium exemption, which was widely accepted outside of political circles as a program that would have generated tens of thousands of jobs for every region of the country. The NDP balked at the Liberal proposal back then, and we raised concerns with respect to what degree the New Democrats were committed to supporting small business.

This is a fairly small and relatively insignificant bill in terms of moving forward on dealing with regulations. However, from what I understand, the small business community has come out in support of the legislation.

My question for the member is this. When the small business community supports the legislation as a small step forward, why would the NDP not support that initiative?

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, I did not have a lot of time to consider that, but I believe that it is simply because we do not trust the Conservatives when it comes to Canadians' health and safety.

Why would we trust them to abolish regulations? We have to give SMEs more power to create jobs, but we have to do that by investing in them, as I clearly outlined in my speech. That is what SMEs really want.

I always find it interesting to hear the Liberals talk about employment insurance. We must remember that they raided the employment insurance fund. Honestly, in a riding like mine, many seasonal workers must now live with the consequences. They are told that there is no more money in the fund or that they will not have access to it, or they are treated as though they have not been looking for work. It is very insulting.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my hon. colleague on her speech and on the excellent work she is doing for her constituents and small businesses, as she explained. She has been travelling around her riding, which is her job, and meeting with chambers of commerce.

She talked about what would help small businesses, and it is not this little bill, which is a real joke, a total farce. It is a fraud, actually. It will not really cut red tape. Yes, we need to cut red tape, but we also need to help small businesses.

The member did a good job of explaining several concepts, and I would like her to clarify how we, the New Democrats, can help small businesses. What is the NDP's plan for helping small businesses?

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the worst part is that the Conservatives know what they could be doing. They cancelled the hiring tax credit for small businesses. We wanted to enhance it because it would have created direct jobs.

It would be easy for the government to change the credit card fees that big corporations charge businesses, and that would have a direct impact not only on businesses but on all Canadians.

Regulation is not bad in and of itself, but the Conservatives see it that way. Unfortunately, that attitude has gotten us into some difficult situations. For example, if the rail safety reports produced by the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities had been implemented, then what happened in Lac-Mégantic could have been avoided.

This aversion to regulations is actually a threat to the health and safety of Canadians. We have reached the point where we can no longer trust the Conservatives. We have no choice but to oppose this bill. Unfortunately, the Conservatives are allergic to regulations. This should not be about getting rid of regulations; it should be about finding the best way to protect Canadians and create jobs at the same time.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Mr. Speaker I also have the pleasure of speaking to Bill C-21, which addresses the administrative and financial burden imposed on our small and medium-sized businesses. This is quite clearly a matter that affects all of us, because we all have such businesses in our communities.

In my constituency of Chambly—Borduas, I belong to two chambers of commerce and industry: the Chambre de commerce et d'industrie du bassin de Chambly, and the Chambre de commerce et de l'industrie de la Vallée-du-Richelieu. The latter is an example of one of the newest and fastest-growing chambers of commerce in Quebec, and indicates what a strong upswing we are currently enjoying.

With respect to the Chambly chamber of commerce, we also know that with assistance from the Quartier Dix30 centre, good work is being done to promote the services available in the regions and municipalities in the Chambly basin.

When you talk to these people, you can be sure that they will all tell you the same thing, regardless of where they come from, their riding or the circumstances on the ground. They all want us to reduce the tax burden and cut red tape. If we are going to do that, however, we have to do it right. When I talk about doing it right, the example that comes to mind does not involve small and medium-sized businesses, but it says a lot about the approach taken by the Conservatives. I am referring to the report of the parliamentary budget officer of the time, which talked about cuts the Conservatives had made. They said they had to reduce the size and cost of government. They talked about austerity, and so on. We realized, and the parliamentary budget officer demonstrated this, that because of these cuts, we reduced services to citizens but did not really reduce the size of government, improve its efficiency, or actually reduce costs all that much.

When we consider this example, we realize that we all want the same thing. We all want to reduce an unnecessary burden. At the same time, however, it has to be done in an intelligent and effective way. We supported Bill C-21 at second reading and it went to committee. Some 12 amendments were proposed, but none was accepted. The very purpose of those amendments was to make our approach more coherent.

As my colleague from Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel so rightly put it, regulation in itself is not a bad thing. We just need regulation that is intelligent. For example, when we talk about the safety of a company’s employees, the safety of Canadians, health, protection of the environment and all such matters, these are things we want to improve, things that must be in place and must be properly managed and regulated. However, at the same time, we have to find ways of reducing the tax burden.

The problem with Bill C-21 is not only that there is no oversight of those issues, but also that the bill gives the president of the Treasury Board too many discretionary powers. From what we have seen, the current President of the Treasury Board is incapable of making good decisions that effectively reduce the existing burden of our small and medium-sized businesses.

In terms of reducing the tax burden, it is important to raise a number of points to confirm and explain the NDP's approach to this issue. I had an opportunity to raise these points with the Chambre de commerce et d'industrie du bassin de Chambly. About 100 people attended a conference that I offered to the entrepreneurs of part of my riding to explain our approach. First and foremost, this approach involves reducing taxes for small and medium-sized businesses. We often talk about this, and it is extremely important.

The example that proves that we can walk the talk is Manitoba. After five majority NDP governments, the tax rate for small and medium-sized businesses is 0%. That speaks volumes about our approach. We realize that they are the economic driver of our communities. We must legislate or not legislate—or, in this case, impose or not impose legislation—accordingly.

The other issue is the hiring tax credit. This measure was introduced by this government, but unfortunately it was cut in the last budget. We wanted to see a new and improved version of it. We even used it as a basis for a proposal that I had the chance to make a little over a year ago with my colleague from Parkdale—High Park. We proposed a similar tax credit that also applied to the hiring of young people. After all, there is a problem not just with youth unemployment, but also with youth underemployment.

A Statistics Canada report indicated last year that an increasing number of well-educated young people are struggling to find work that matches their qualifications and talents. We proposed providing a tax credit to SMEs to create new jobs, not just replace their employees with younger workers.

The credit sought to encourage growing businesses to hire and train young workers, who would become contributing members of our communities and our economy for the future. This is just as important for the SMEs as it is for everyone in our communities.

After all, we can see a domino effect among young people. When families of consumers settle outside urban centres, that leads to new businesses and new schools in the area and to all sorts of positive effects that contribute to our communities. I have seen this in my constituency, which has some of the fastest-growing municipalities in Quebec. There are growing numbers of young families where I live.

We are not just talking about a tax credit to reduce the tax and administrative burden on small and medium-sized businesses; we are also talking about the notorious credit card fees. We talk about that all the time. The Conservative government is happy to rely on a voluntary code of conduct for these companies, which means that we have to rely on the good faith of these companies. That very rarely translates into concrete results.

The measures the NDP is proposing are the result of consultations with the small and medium-sized businesses that come to see us in our constituencies and in Ottawa. They come to see the NDP members and the members from all the other parties to tell us that this code of conduct is not working.

This is a concrete way of minimizing the burden that would not require major changes and that the government could implement very quickly. It would put substantial shares of profits into the pockets of small and medium-sized business, which in turn would contribute to job creation and economic growth in our regions and our communities.

There is also the question of the different employment insurance schemes. Here again, we saw a ridiculous proposal from the government. It proposed astronomical spending to create very few jobs, while at the same time dipping into the employment insurance fund to finance this measure, as the Liberals did before the Conservatives.

The employment insurance fund belongs to the employees and employers. Spending those funds in such a cavalier manner for the sake of good headlines on the eve of an election is not a very intelligent approach. They tell us that this bill is a step in the right direction, when all it does is give more powers to the President of the Treasury Board.

I will repeat what some of my colleagues have already said. We can no longer trust in the Conservatives’ approach. We have a plan for small and medium-sized businesses. When I interact with entrepreneurs, because I participate regularly in the activities of the chambers of commerce in my constituency, they tell me that they fully support that approach. We are going to continue to fight for it in the House.

We cannot support an approach that so far has not worked and has not produced the desired results. That is why we put forward our proposals.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member made a good point when he talked about the importance of regulations, whether they be health and safety or environmental regulations. Health, safety and the environment are important reasons why we have regulations.

Many regulations complement Canada's ability to export products. We spend a lot of time talking in this place about small businesses. Regulations with respect to the qualify of our food products enable us to export much more. There is no doubt that regulations are of great value.

My question for the member relates to the literally tens of thousands of regulations. Surely to goodness the member would acknowledge that at least one regulation has become somewhat dated. From what I understand, the small business community in Canada has tentatively looked at the legislation and has said that it is not perfect. It is far from perfect. The member said that he supported the bill at second reading to try to get some amendments made to it.

The bill is a small step and one we are not overly encouraged about. Why would the member oppose the bill if it is at the very least a small step that small business seems to like?

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely right. We could definitely do a lot to alleviate some of the burden on small and medium-sized businesses.

There are some important regulations. The problem we have is that when we talk about safety, security or those good regulations, for lack of a better way of putting it, we have to regulate intelligently. There is no reason to trust the Conservatives. The President of the Treasury Board up to this point has not proven himself able to appropriately deal with more power.

The best example in the legislation is the one-for-one rule where one rule is removed for every new rule. We are being asked as legislators to take it on blind faith that the one-for-one rule will be applied appropriately when there is no guarantee that the government will not touch rules and regulations as it has done in the past, whether it was with respect to rail safety or food safety, issues that affect our everyday lives. No small or medium-sized business, no constituent of mine and definitely no constituent of any member of the House would see us get rid of those rules and regulations.

We definitely agree that something needs to be done about regulations. However, we will not find the proper solutions by letting the President of the Treasury Board go nuts on this. We will find the proper solutions by putting forward concrete proposals that will really alleviate the burden on small and medium-sized businesses in our country.

[Djaouida Sellah, NDP, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague and almost-neighbour from Chambly—Borduas.

I know that he works hard, since I have seen him first-hand, and I thank him for his relevant and logical speech.

In their 2014 budget, the Conservatives acknowledged that the transaction fees imposed on Canadian businesses were among the highest in the world and they promised to take action.

The result is that credit card companies only have to take measures on a voluntary basis. We have learned over the years that the Conservatives love self-regulation and allowing businesses to implement their own measures.

This shows that the Conservatives do not plan on standing up for SMEs and Canadian consumers when it could be detrimental to Bay Street interests.

The NDP called for the creation of an ombudsman to regulate the credit card fees that card issuers charge merchants.

Why does my colleague think that the Conservatives will not accept that suggestion?

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as I said in my speech, it would be extremely simple to require credit card companies to eliminate these absurd fees charged to small and medium-sized businesses. It would not take any time, it would not cost much, and an incredible amount of money could be saved. Instead of going into the pockets of the credit card companies, this money would go back to our small and medium-sized businesses and, therefore, to our communities. That is the NDP's vision and that is what we are suggesting.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is with great honour that I stand here to represent the people of Timmins—James Bay.

We are dealing with yet another Conservative game of shadow boxing; that the Conservatives actually understand the economy. It is fascinating that they are talking about helping small business when they cannot even bring a budget into the House because they have stripped the fiscal capacity of the country to the bone. They were going to allow people, through their income-splitting scheme, to claim it even though it had not passed in law. Everything was dependent in their world view on the high oil prices. The government has banked the entire economy, like a drunken gambler, on the roulette wheel of commodities, not understanding that commodities go up and down. A balanced national economy can withstand those. We have done this in Canada for the last 150 years, but we have had a government that has been completely unbalanced.

We saw all the members from the 401 area stand again and again and praise the tar sands, while the manufacturing sector was going down the toilet. Now the Conservatives have suddenly discovered the manufacturing sector.

We are talking about red tape and this chimera the Conservatives have created, that they will slay the red dragon of red tape.

It reminds me of H.L. Mencken. I am sure he is probably glad he is not alive to see that group in action. He said that for every complex problem, there was an answer that was clear and simple and was wrong. We could probably use that to define the Conservative Party over the last hundred years, but definitely under the current government.

Let us look at the issue that for every new regulation we will strip an old regulation. It sounds so simplistic, but what it speaks to is incompetence, the incompetence of the ministers in the various departments who are not overseeing the regulations right now. They think the Muskoka minister is somehow going to be able to handle the thousands and thousands of regulations, and we should trust him to cut through this.

Folks back home will remember that the Muskoka minister was the man who took $50 million in border infrastructure money, when he had only won by 14 votes, and blew it on pork barrel projects of zero significance. Then when he was asked for the paperwork, he claimed there was none. He took taxpayer money, spent it on the gazebos, the sunken boats, the lighthouses, where there are no waterways, created a fake lake, even though we had no need for one, and then said that he did not have any paperwork, which was not true. It was false. There was lots of paperwork. He made the paperwork up himself out of his constituency office and he ran it through the municipalities.

He misrepresented the spending of money. However, under the government, that kind of malfeasance and incompetence is not punished; it is celebrated. He was given the job of being the oversight for all government spending based on that behaviour.

Do not get me wrong, getting rid of red tape that is meaningless is sometimes very important. I live in the little mining town of Cobalt. Our neighbour is Haileybury where all the mine managers live. It had on the books for many years that it was against the law to walk in the streets of Haileybury with a lunch pail. That was to keep the miners from coming and using the local watering holes in Haileybury. That law was never used and it sat on the law books in the municipality for decades and decades. Most Canadians did not realize it until Paul Soles pointed it out on This is the Law in the 1970s. Maybe they got rid of it then. We should get rid of those kinds of regulations.

We would believe that if we had a government where we had ministers who were actually competent and took responsibility, they would be overseeing their departments regularly to see what kind of red tape was no longer needed, such as what has become redundant and where there are two regulations that are working at cross purposes. However, they are not interested in that. They are interested in creating these sideshow chimeras to take attention from the fact that they have mismanaged the economy substantially.

It seems the Conservatives have put their poor finance minister in a bag and have him hidden away. He cannot explain why he cannot add up the money, because he was counting on the high oil prices. Now they are saying that they are going to help small business. We know that is not true.

Let us look at the Conservatives' idea of red tape. Red tape is a particular buzzword for the neocons. They love this. They use red tape all the time, but they never like to talk about the effects of the red tape.

For example, it was under Mike Harris, their great guru, that they were going to privatize Ontario Hydro, which helped create the Province of Ontario as an industrial powerhouse. However, Mike Harris had it in his head that it was brilliant idea to privatize it. He blew it so badly that we are still picking up the pieces. Perhaps the only people on the planet who could mismanage a hydro resource worse than Mike Harris are the Kathleen Wynne Liberals.

We can talk to any senior citizen in the Province of Ontario on the mismanagement of hydro under the present Liberals. It is so corrupt that they spent $1 billion moving two gas plants to save three lazy Liberals their seats. Imagine what a billion dollars would do for the Ontario health economy. There was the privatization guru.

Let us remember 2008, the horrific listeriosis outbreak. How many people died in that outbreak? I believe it was 22 people with 57 confirmed cases. From the internal reports, we learned that the Canadian Food and Inspection Agency, under the government, was being told that it was no longer going to be ensuring the safety of the plants. That was red tape. The government was going to allow the companies to look after themselves, and people died.

Speaking of incompetence, what did the agriculture minister have to say to families who died because the government chose to trust the cattle and beef giants over public safety? He had lots of jokes to make about listeriosis, he thought it was funny. We remember what Conservatives did with their cutting of the red tape.

We have seen debate after debate in the House. I remember in previous Parliaments, when Bill Blaikie was here, there was a brilliant idea, which came from the Liberals originally, to let the rail companies police themselves. We were told that we did not need the oversight, that we could trust the rail companies. A cheesy little rail company running past Montreal and not following all the rules caused a huge rail disaster in Lac-Mégantic and people died because of the lack of oversight. That was the kind of stuff Conservatives were praising, getting rid of red tape.

The Transportation Safety Board came out with its report on Lac-Mégantic and expressed its deep concern about the need for government to have oversight. Speaking of incompetence, the member for Essex was out there blowing off the need for safety, blowing off the need for the report and then saying that he had not even bothered to read the report. People died because of these decisions and he had not bothered to read the report. We know what Conservatives think of red tape.

Some of the newer neocons have their sense of history which begins in 2008 or 2011. I remember when they were talking about the deregulation of the banks when Citibank was the future and Canada could not compete with all our little banks. We were the economic backwater. That was the scheme the Liberals were totally into at the time. We would allow banks to make investments, allow them to take our savings and speculate on the market because that was the way the world was going.

I remember how members were laughing at the NDP, the nanny state NDP, afraid to compete. We were saying that we needed regulations for the banks to protect people's savings. That is a fundamental principle. We stopped the deregulation. When the rest of the world that had followed the neocon-neoliberal route went down the economic toilet, it was staggering to see Jim Flaherty standing and talking about how glad he was that we had regulation. The Conservatives ridiculed regulation as needless red tape, but it saved our economy at the time.

What is some of the other red tape the Conservatives hate? They get backbenchers to stand on their hind legs and beat their chests about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That is red tape to them. The Supreme Court is more red tape. God, they hate the Supreme Court ensuring the rule of law interferes with everything.

We have a justice minister who is so incompetent. Speaking of the incompetence of this world, this man has had more recalls of legislation than Ford had with the Pinto. He ignores the legal reviews of legislation, brings it into the House time and time again, and is told it will not pass a charter challenge at the Supreme Court. He bangs his head against the Supreme Court and then is outraged when it says it will not pass a charter challenge and he has to return it. One would think he would be chastened. In the private sector, he would probably be gone if he had that many recalls, but no. Conservatives stand, beat their chests, and go on about that outrageous Supreme Court defending the rule of law.

I see my friend has just entered the chamber, Mr. Enemy of Red Tape, who is going to allow new anti-terrorism measures and all manner of control to CSIS with no oversight, because it is red tape that is protecting the private rights of Canadian citizens, this needless red tape. That is staggering. Conservatives say not to worry, the oversight body is already able to do the job, the oversight body that the Prime Minister appointed, Arthur Porter. Is he still in a Panamanian jail for gun running, money laundering, or fraud? He was a friend of the Prime Minister. He is just one of the many criminals with whom the Prime Minister has chosen to hang around.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Bruce Carson.

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

Mr. Speaker, Bruce Carson is another well-known criminal.

Arthur Porter was the man who the Conservatives say was able to oversee CSIS, as they allow it all manner of extra rules that have not been in place before. This is not to say that we do not necessarily need more tools to go after terrorism, but we need the rule of law. To them, that is needless red tape.

Who else was overseeing CSIS? It was the northern gateway lobbyist. What was the lobbyist's name? Chuck Strahl. Chuck Strahl gets parachuted in because he is a party favourite and does not tell anybody he is an Enbridge lobbyist. They have northern gateway, so all the Conservatives are standing and denouncing these terrorists, who as far as I could tell were just ordinary citizens of British Columbia. Was Chuck Strahl getting briefed on the northern gateway, the supposed threat, while he was overseeing CSIS? These are questions. This is the government's idea of red tape.

Getting back to this bill, we see Conservatives stand to speak about red tape all the time, but they do not deliver. I ran a small business for 10 years, and one of the biggest issues of red tape I had to deal with was the Conservatives' beauty of GST-HST, where they had moved the burden from the large corporate bodies down to individuals and small companies. I know that as the economy is tanking and people are trying to get back into the workplace and find other work, HST has to be collected starting at $30,000. That was the rule back in the 1990s.

If a man has lost his job or his wife is wanting to get back into the workforce to do some consulting, hairdressing, web design, or the husband wants to do web design, these are micro businesses that can be grown into small business that may start to employ people, but they have to start paying the HST at $30,000. People really cannot do much at $30,000. I know people who told me they wanted to start small businesses, but if they were only making $32,000 or $33,000, the administrative burden of dealing with the HST actually was not worth it. It simply was not worth going back into the workforce to do that.

A reasonable government would raise the minimum on HST, say, to $50,000 over 20 years, from the 1990s to today. That would be a reasonable move. People could get themselves established. They could find out whether their home project could become viable, whether it is making stained glass, crocheting, or whatever, and then a small business gets established.

With the New Democrats' idea of helping small business, one of the big issues we have been pushing is credit card fees. Talk about needless impediments to small business. Ask any small business owner, such as a taxi cab driver or someone running a small restaurant, about the credit card fees. We will never see the Conservatives deal with this.

Not to speak ill of the dead, but I remember when Jim Flaherty stood and said he was going to go to the banks and deal with all of this. He came back like a chastened altar boy. He was just going to leave it to them.

This is where regulation is important. These sectors of the economy have to be regulated because, if basic rules are not in place, people get ripped off. Government needs to ensure regulation on the credit cards. One of the other things was that they deregulated cable and phone rates. We have among the highest cellphone rates in the world, but they believe that, if they just leave it to business, it will do it. We believe that certain regulations are important, to protect the market and to protect the ability of consumers to have fair play.

In terms of supporting small business, we would say in a time of economic uncertainty, when the Conservatives have literally bet the entire Canadian house on Fort Mac, that we need to ensure that small business can innovate and do its job. Let us drop the tax rate from 11% to 10% to 9%, because we know this money would go directly back into the economy.

Small business reinvests that money all the time, whereas the current government put in large corporate across-the-board tax cuts, believing the theory of trickle-down. We know the only real thing that does trickle down in economics, and it is not money. The Conservatives cut that tax rate on the large corporations, and any economist will say that we have dead money. It is money that the large corporations have taken out, that they are giving in CEO bonuses or putting offshore, that they are not reinvesting. If the Conservatives are going to work with business, they should offer an incentive for innovation. An innovation tax credit makes sense. What we are dealing with here is a bill that would offer nothing to small business, except the false image that they are going to deal with the needless regulations.

I think back to when I was documenting the life of people in my region in terms of the hard-rock mining industry. If they go underground in Stobie Mine in Sudbury, or go underground in Timmins, wherever they walk there will be signs that say not to put one's hands here or not to stand there. An old miner said to me one day that every one of those signs and regulations was paid for in blood. They would only put up a sign telling them not to do something if someone had been seriously injured, not just once but usually two or three or four times, or killed. Those regulations were important. We saw in the mining sector again and again this effort of self-regulation. Allowing companies to do it does not work. There are certain regulations that are important.

How do we deal with the issues of meaningless red tape, contradictory red tape, red tape that has become redundant as the years go on? I would put it back to my colleagues on the government side that this is where they have to ensure a standard that the ministers are going to meet. That is ministerial responsibility. It used to be in the ministerial code. They quietly took out ministerial responsibility. I find that staggering. It is as if they did not want to be on the hook for promoting incompetence. If they are competent, then they will be overseeing their department and regularly bringing forward recommendations of where regulations need to be removed and replaced with ones that work.

What we are dealing with here is just another shadow bill. It is shadow boxing with the economy, when the real issue we are facing is that the Conservatives have stripped the fiscal capacity of this country to the bare bone. The Conservatives do not know what the numbers are. We are getting contradictory numbers in terms of this budget: if they are going to be doing cuts, if they are going to be going into the contingency fund. The Conservatives do not seem to know. They are playing games with the economy, which is not the kind of message for a G7 nation to send.

At a time when we are seeing increasing economic uncertainty in Canada's west, we need to be able to tell small business people that we are going to work with them to kick-start the economy so we can balance the economy and get off this one-industry-only obsession and ensure we have a diversified economy. That is where the New Democrats are coming down on the issue. We would drop the small-business tax rate from 11% to 10% to 9%. The New Democrats would ensure that, when business people make a capital investment, they can write it off quicker. That would help manufacturing.

Some of these ideas have been in previous budgets. The Conservatives and the Liberals have had similar things in the past. However, they have given them up; they are not interested and they have moved on. We say these are the kinds of incentives that we need now, at a time of economic uncertainty.

I am, as always, proud to represent the people of Timmins—James Bay, but less proud to have to deal with bills that simply do not address the needs of Canadians.