Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this important bill. Tax fairness has been an NDP concern for decades. Unfortunately, I am not at all convinced that Bill C-2, an act to amend the Income Tax Act, provides the fairness that Canadians have done without for quite some time.
I will begin by quoting from the Liberal Party's election campaign platform. The Liberals told us that they would give middle-class Canadians a tax break by making taxes more fair: “When middle class Canadians have more money in their pockets to save, invest, and grow the economy, we all benefit.”
However, there is a problem here. The Liberal definition of middle class seems to be a moving target. Worse, that vagary seems to be intentional. It wins votes, but at the same time it absolves them of accountability. It leaves us with many questions.
Which Canadian workers fall into the category of middle class? Let us look at the numbers. MoneySense estimates for 2013, based on Statistics Canada data, are that an individual Canadian earning an income between $23,000 and $37,000 annually makes more than the poorest 40% of Canadians and less than the richest 40%. It is reasonable, then, to assume that if one sits in a wage range where the number of Canadians making more and less is equal, one falls in the middle, a middle which at the top end, using this definition, is just under $37,000. In fact, the Liberal tax proposal excludes anyone making less than $45,000. In other words, this tax reform excludes the lowest 60% of wage earners. However, as I pointed out, the Liberal definition of middle class is a little vague.
Let us give the Liberals the benefit of the doubt and look at Canadians with an annual income falling between $48,000 and $62,000 per year. The tax benefit now kicks in at a whopping $50.
As an aside, and because the bill also proposes a rollback in the TFSA limit, it may be sad and somewhat surprising to learn that the claims of the previous minister of employment, the member for Carleton, turned out to be inaccurate when he said that 60% of individuals contributing the maximum amount to their TFSAs had incomes of less than $60,000 in 2013. Were they middle class? Also, for those income earners, the additional $50 tax benefit, or 96¢ a week, does not amount to much. With that increase to one's take-home pay, they would have to wait two weeks just to buy themselves a double-double.
It seems to me that except for the fact that the Conservative Party leader seems to have had a change of heart and is now aligning herself with the 99%, the old Liberal-Tories same old story adage holds true here again today. Under the current Prime Minister's plan, the highest 30% of Canadian income earners are the main beneficiaries of this legislation while the wealthiest 10% pocket most of the money. One would think that an income tax deduction designed for the middle class should actually benefit a larger proportion of Canadians.
A federal tax system is put into place in order to create and maintain an equal and just society, to provide essential services for Canadians, and to ensure that not one of us is left behind. It is the vehicle of a strong social democracy. I would like to suggest that the plan should be sustainable. New Democrats know that is possible. How can the Liberals justify this change when it will result in a total revenue loss of $8.9 billion between now and 2021?
We have an opportunity to effect real change for the people who need it most, and, in doing that, everyone benefits. Unfortunately, the tax change proposed by the Liberals does not even come close.
Why not aim higher? Why not make changes that would ensure that no Canadian lives in poverty?
New Democrats know that we do not have to get bogged down in the definition of who is middle class to see that Canadians are being left behind as a result of Conservative and Liberal government inaction. The gutting of our manufacturing sector and the loss of well-paying jobs and stable work has affected the economy and the lives of people in London, Ontario and all of Canada for decades. New Democrats understand this reality and know that we can do better. The fact that we have Canadians living in poverty is shameful. The income gap is growing and it becomes increasingly difficult for families to find accessible, affordable housing, and child care, health care, and education.
In their effective opposition, the New Democrats have proposed a number of realistic measures to help families struggling to make ends meet: a national child benefit supplement; guaranteed income supplement; $15-a-day child care for all Canadian families; and reinstatement of the labour-sponsored tax fund credit, to name just a few. The NDP understands the reality of the middle- and lower-income earners of this country.
If the country were to reduce the tax rate for Canadians earning less than $45,000 a year by just 1%, from 15% to 14%, 83% of those people, some nine million Canadians, would benefit. The cost difference would be minimal and could be easily recovered with a very slight increase of one half percentage point to the corporate tax rate. The New Democrats' proposal makes sense in dollars and cents terms. Our proposal would also enable the government to increase the working income tax benefit, which has proven to be very effective for low-income workers, and put more money back into local economies.
As tomorrow is International Women's Day, let us talk a bit about equity.
We know that creating equity for workers with the lowest incomes benefits women. Federal tax policy is structured such that the ratio of profit between women and men is 60-40, more or less. It favours those with higher incomes, and since men by and large earn higher incomes than women, they are advantaged and women are disadvantaged under the current taxation regimes. This disadvantage follows them from the time they enter the workforce to retirement, as women on average fall more often into the category of low-wage earners and since those benefits are often calculated based upon annual income, which is more likely to be part-time, precarious, or interrupted in order for women to raise children.
As members can see, tax cuts to the lowest tier of Canadian income earners, such as those proposed by the NDP, would not only benefit those workers and the communities but would also represent a small and vital step toward gender equality.
The NDP has always worked for seniors. I am very proud to say that we are the only party that has a national strategy on aging, and I am thankful to my staffer, Tara Hogeterp, who worked diligently in the last Parliament, with the aid of our NDP research staff team, to bring that strategy to the public.
We do not believe that an increased TFSA limit is the solution for lifting nearly 200,000 seniors out of poverty, so we support the government's proposal to amend it. We fought against the Conservatives' reckless decision to raise the retirement age from 65 to 67. We proposed to increase funding for the guaranteed income supplement by more than $400 million.
It seems to me that the government is missing an important opportunity here to create fair and equal taxation systems that would benefit all Canadians, missing an opportunity to fulfill one of its election promises. It makes me wonder whether it ever had any intention of doing so in the first place.
Instead of making smoke-and-mirror changes to tax policy that would not benefit anyone but copywriters, why not create a system that would actually serve the Canadian population and work toward real sustainable fairness and equity?
In doing so, the government would be able to say that election promises do matter. That would be a remarkable and refreshing change.
