Bill C-2 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Income Tax Act

This enactment amends the Income Tax Act to reduce the second personal income tax rate from 22% to 20.‍5% and to introduce a new personal marginal tax rate of 33% for taxable income in excess of $200,000. It also amends other provisions of that Act to reflect the new 33% rate. In addition, it amends that Act to reduce the annual contribution limit for tax-free savings accounts from $10,000 to its previous level with indexation ($5,500 for 2016) starting January 1, 2016.

Income Tax Act

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise in this chamber on behalf of the constituents of Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola.

I appreciate that we are at the eve of our rise, although it is neither your job, Madam Speaker, nor mine to say when that is. However, I want to thank every member I have had the opportunity to work with in this chamber during this opening round before we rise for the summer and thank the pages and the table staff for their commitment to this country.

I am here to speak to Bill C-2. It is an important bill, because it lays out the philosophy of the current government. The Liberals believe that raising taxes on the highest bracket will benefit this country. It is perfectly all right for them to contend that. They won the election. However, it is also perfectly all right for us, as members of Her Majesty's opposition, and all opposition parties, and even their backbench, to question the government.

Oftentimes in our system, members of Parliament are more relegated to being an approval body in this chamber and are not necessarily directing policy. However, I think one of the strengths of our system is when governments of any stripe take the policies of their predecessors, evaluate them, and continue them, if they are good for Canada.

In the same spirit, I would also suggest that we must remember that a broken clock can be right twice a day, but once in Quebec, I believe, because they go by international time. However, even in opposition, we may strike on an idea whose time may have come. I would hope that the government and members of the governing party will listen and take that forward. This country is great because of continued work toward policies that support all Canadians.

With that in mind, I will raise a few points about what I think could be improved and what the government, or ministers themselves as they work with their deputies, maybe not through this legislation but through their deliberations on future legislation, might take into account.

I have had the great opportunity to work with some members of the finance committee by subbing in from time to time. It is a very good group. The members seem to have a good understanding of the bills before them, and they seem to get along quite well.

One of the interesting concepts we heard about in committee was from Dr. Jack Mintz. Dr. Mintz raised a concern that taxing at the highest bracket would put pressure on some people of higher means, who may say that they are going to move to a different province or offshore to another country. When we lose those entrepreneurs, because 60% of small business owners are in that bracket, we lose collectively. We lose their innovation, and sometimes their capital, because they may begin investing in other countries.

The current government has said that it will use evidenced-based decision-making. Evidence means that there is theoretical evidence provided through academia, governmental reports, or think-tank studies or through actually collecting the data and creating an inventory, so to speak, on whether a policy is in the long-term interest of this great country.

In regard to Bill C-2, Dr. Mintz made the suggestion that the Canada Revenue Agency has the ability to track whether someone in this higher income bracket, who the Liberals will be taxing at a higher rate, moves or migrates to other lower-cost jurisdictions to operate, such as my province of British Columbia.

I am sure that Premier Christy Clark would love me to take a moment to sell all the high points of locating to British Columbia to entrepreneurs, but I will not do that. I am not going to speak to the parochial interests of my home province. I refuse to. However, what I will say is that there could be interprovincial or offshore migration.

If CRA was to collect the information, we might be able to get a tale of the tape.

I realize that people move for all sorts of reasons, but economists will tell us that incentives matter and people do make decisions, particularly in the higher income brackets, to find places where they can maximize their capital and where they feel welcome.

As a starting point, this is something the government can do on behalf of all Canadians to ensure that its policies are to the benefit of the long-term interests of this great country. I hope the government will give that full consideration.

I will also step back and tell the House about a personal experience. I love this chamber. I love this country. However, one of the things about our politics that we could change would be to stop judging an idea because of the messenger. If a former minister of the previous government gets up and makes a suggestion based on his or her experience, or someone from some think tank who people believe has some sort of ideological background says that this is a good policy for Canada, we should listen and evaluate it. We should not simply dismiss it because we disagree with some sort of vaguely placed ideological position. Let us start judging policies by their merits, not by the people who espouse them.

There are many things this government is going to be looking at. Trade, for example, is going to be an extremely difficult file for the Liberals, because Canadians have different views. Ultimately, the government is going to have to look at the evidence, look at how our economy has grown over the past 30 years by becoming a free trading nation, and then evaluate how that helps all of us.

We all have a different reaction when we suffer a loss, whether it be an electoral loss or a personal loss. We face denial, then anger, sadness, and acceptance. I am getting close to the acceptance stage on many of the government's policies, but members on the other side continue to get up and criticize the opposition for having a different view. We need to embrace the views, respect the views, and not cut each other down.

That being said, I will go to the subject of tax-free savings accounts. My riding is made up of an older demographic. Broc Braconnier is a veteran and one of the volunteers on a volunteer tax group. This is a group of individuals that helps seniors, usually low-income seniors at risk, file their tax returns so they can get the benefits they so desperately need. He mentioned to me that the tax-free savings account offered seniors two important steps. First, if they sold a home and downsized, a lot of the money from the sale of that home could go into a tax-free savings account if it had not been used before. They could also draw income from that account at an accelerated rate, which could make them feel that they had the nest egg they worked for. The same applies to the RRIFs.

I would just say to members on the other side that it is perfectly legitimate for us to raise concerns about certain policies. I do not mind being criticized, but let us talk about the ideas, and let us make sure that we are not skating around the area we like or the area we dislike. Policies are not so simple that they can be dismissed in one statement in this place.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Madam Speaker, let us take the politics out of it and talk about the ideas.

I think it was economist Rhys Kesselman in 2001 who did the groundwork on the concept of the tax-free savings account that laid the track toward that particular measure. Even he suggested that the doubling that had been suggested by the previous government would really only advantage the very wealthy, the people who, logically, had the money to put in. At this time of high personal debt, having the extra money to put in becomes a little harder. Other people have said that only about 16% of Canadians actually max out at the current level. That is where we might tend to differ as to the best approach.

I want to talk about pensions. Over a period of time, international pressures and mobile capital have meant that people can move money and capital all over the world. We have lost a lot of good jobs. About 60% of Canadians in the private sector do not have company pension plans.

As we look to the future, I would like to ask the member what other measures he would suggest, other than beefing up the Canada pension plan or ignoring—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

We only have five minutes for questions, and there are other parties who want to take part as well.

The hon. member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Madam Speaker, I will reply to the member's last question.

The PRPPs that allowed portable savings, fully portable among all provinces, is something that all finance ministers agreed with, I think about four or five years ago. Yet many provinces, our most populous provinces, such as Ontario, have not yet implemented that strategy. This was unanimous and would allow people to have their own pensions and allow a voluntary contribution by employers. That is important.

I would like to discuss some of the other concepts with the member at another time, but I appreciate the spirit in which he asked the question. This is the kind of debate people in our home constituencies expect of us.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Madam Speaker, the member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola appealed for evidence-based policy and raised the concern that the rich might just leave in response to slightly higher income tax rates at the top end. Yet he presented no empirical evidence on this problem.

Luckily, a couple of weeks ago, Stanford University published a study entitled, “Millionaire Migration and the Taxation of the Elite”, which studied exactly that question south of the border. What it found was that millionaire migration is not an issue and that, in fact, the rate of interstate migration among millionaires was lower than it was among the general population.

I wonder if the member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola could bring some actual evidence to bear on this question.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Madam Speaker, first, the report the gentleman cites is from the United States, and they have a much different tax system. In fact, academics have widely criticized the many loopholes that allow people to do that. If a person has the ability to use loopholes, there is going to be less migration.

I have to say that the previous government worked very hard to make sure that loopholes were taken out of the tax code here in Canada. Some tax relief was actually put in place for families, people with disabilities, and seniors. That is where the focus was.

I would point out that it was actually Dr. Jack Mintz, not me, who made this assertion at the finance committee. The University of Calgary School of Public Policy has put out a number of reports in this area.

I understand that the member has an ideological position, and that is not bad, but again, let us focus on Canada, let us hear from Canadian academics, and then let us have a discussion around those areas. I appreciate that I did not have evidence to table today. This speech was a little last minute, but if he has other suggestions as to how we can correspond on this, I would be open to that.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Madam Speaker, before I begin, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Regina—Lewvan.

It is good to be returning to the discussion on Bill C-2. As we all know in the House, this is a bill that received its first reading all the way back on December 9, 2015. We have had quite a session since then, and it is good to be returning to some old familiar ground.

Bill C-2 covers a few different areas. It is a bill that would amend a few different areas of the Income Tax Act. However, I am going to be limiting my comments to two areas in particular. The reason for that is they are the areas that are most relevant to the constituents in Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, and I suspect to constituents of most members of Parliament in the House as well. One area is the changes the bill would make to our tax code, notably to the area that the Liberals define as the middle class; and the second area is the reduction of the TFSA contributions from what the previous Conservative government used to have at $10,000 per year, down to a more reasonable level of $5,500 per year.

As part of my introductory remarks, I also want to speak a bit about my history as a former constituency assistant. I had the honour of working seven years as a constituency assistant. In that time, Canada Revenue Agency casework was one of the top three cases that came across my desk. It was some of the top casework that I got to see. I had a very privileged position, because over seven years I had very privileged access to many members of my constituency and their tax returns. I got to see the full range of their incomes, the very intricate details of their tax returns, and their relationship with the CRA because they essentially signed a contract with our office to give me unimpeded access to their tax returns and their tax history so that I could make some inquiries with the CRA on their behalf and try to solve the problems that they brought to the office.

One of the notable things that I saw during those seven years was the range of incomes. The range of incomes in Cowichan—Malahat—Langford would not be touched by the Liberals' tax measures. Incomes generally fell in a range of about $25,000 per year and maybe up to a high end of $50,000 to $60,000, so that the people at the high end would get some benefit but not much.

The key point I am trying to make here is that most constituents in my riding and I suspect most people across Canada would not receive any benefit from this tax cut, yet the Liberals keep on selling to the Canadian public that this would be a middle-class tax break. That is absolutely false.

I spoke to the bill at second reading back in February, when I was still getting used to making speeches in this hon. House. One of the things that I really loved to bring up during that speech, and I brought it up again during our discussions on Bill C-15, was the fact that the median income in Canada according to Statistics Canada is $31,000 a year. If we take the definition of median, which basically is the number separating the higher half of a data sample from the lower half, we could take $31,000 a year as a reasonable definition of where the middle class is. However, the Liberals' so-called middle-class tax break would not even start to begin giving benefits until people reach an income of $45,000 a year. They would max out when they get above $90,000 and into $100,000 a year.

To make it perfectly clear to everyone watching this debate, every member of Parliament in this chamber who earns $170,000 a year, which is on the public record, would get the maximum tax break of $670 per year, everyone. That is what the Liberals would do. They would give people in very high incomes a tax break, which frankly speaking we do not need. I do not know about everyone else in this chamber, but I was not elected to come to the House to give myself a tax break while the hard-working men and women of my riding get nothing. That was not what I was sent here to do. That is not the middle class that I came here to fight for.

The Liberals will say that it is okay because they are introducing the child benefit. It is a great concept, the child benefit. I will never, as a father of young children and knowing many constituents who have young children, argue against giving more money to the hard-working men and women of our country to help them raise their children.

However, I need to point out some evidence for everyone who is watching this debate. The Liberals' plan for the Canada child benefit will provide a maximum annual benefit of up to $6,400 per child under the age of six. Compare that with the average cost of child care in B.C., which is $14,000 per year. It is a drop in the bucket.

When I talk to families about the difficulties of child care, they say that more money would help but that what is really bugging them is the lack of affordable spaces and the lack of spaces overall. Furthermore, a lot of parents come up to me and say that their spouse works and they are a stay-at-home parent, and what would really get their family ahead is if they could actually hold two jobs. They cannot do that because the costs of child care are too high. They literally cannot afford to go and get a job.

That is what I hear. That is what I heard during the election. That is what I heard during seven years of working with constituents, right where the rubber meets the road, right at the constituency office.

I do not want any member of Parliament to tell me I do not know what I am speaking about, because I come here with evidence. I come here with testimony. I come here with seven years of experience of working with families. It is a shame that this Parliament is not doing anything to expand child care spaces in this country.

Furthermore, if we really wanted to give lower-income Canadians a leg up, we would pay attention to the wages they are receiving, and we would take this opportunity to show some leadership and institute a federally regulated minimum wage of $15 an hour.

A lot of people will say that is only going to affect a small number of jobs. That does not matter. It is about showing federal leadership. It is about having the House of Commons lead the way so that we put ourselves in the morally correct position of saying that we did it first and we expect the provinces to follow. I do not know how families make it on $11-an-hour wages. I simply do not. It is a miracle that they get by in the first place on those low wages.

I have spent a lot of time in my speech speaking about that particular tax change. It is a very passionate subject for me, as members can see. I do want to devote a little time on the TFSA, because that is one change in Bill C-2 that I agree with.

The Conservative government's plans in the previous Parliament to raise the limit to $10,000 a year would have been a huge cost to our treasury in later years. Furthermore, I do not know many families who could max out at $5,500 per year, let alone $10,000. When a family is earning a median income of $31,000 a year, how on Earth are they able to save $10,000 per year extra, to sock away? It is simply not possible.

That is a policy that benefits the top income earners in this country. Leaving the limit at $5,500 is perfectly reasonable, and it is something I can certainly support.

The costs with the TFSA increase to $10,000 a year would have risen to $132 billion by the year 2080. Conservatives like to portray themselves as the party of low taxes, and they like to really use the phrase “tax and spend”. The point I am trying to make is that if we are taking that much money out of federal revenue by those later years, that in itself is a tax on the programs that we use to support this society, to help low-income people get through.

If we are taking that kind of revenue out of the federal revenue stream, we are going to have to make cuts to federal programs. As much as we do not like to pay taxes, they are a part of living in our society and they are a part of building our infrastructure and building our supporting programs.

I will conclude by saying that we have been proposing some truly progressive things that could have made a real difference to low-income earners. I am sad to see that Bill C-2 did not live up to those standards and for that reason I will be voting against the bill at third reading.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, I want to probe my colleague's comments about the minimum wage. He sees that a higher minimum wage would provide benefits. Many economists believe that a higher minimum wage leads to increased unemployment and it is not hard to understand intuitively why that would be. If the cost of something is increased, people will purchase less of it. If the cost of labour is increased, people will hire fewer people.

There are things the government could do that would help people in that same situation. It could raise the base exemption people can earn before paying tax, like we did. It could lower the lowest marginal tax rate, not the middle rate, which is also something that we did when we were in government.

Would the member not agree that those types of measures would have more of a benefit and less of an economic cost because they would not increase unemployment?

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Madam Speaker, certainly if we do raise the wages, that is something that businesses will have to bear, but the part that the member leaves out is that if we have low-income workers in a jurisdiction with more money in their pockets, they tend to spend it locally.

In fact, there are several examples in the United States, notably the city of Seattle, which experimented with minimum wages, and it has shown that rather than businesses going out of business, they are actually thriving.

I believe in putting more money into workers' pockets. There are studies that show they spend that money locally, which helps all of our local businesses thrive.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank and applaud my hon. colleague for his excellent speech.

Successive Liberal and Conservative governments have provided huge tax giveaways to Canada's large corporations, whose tax rate went from 28% in 2000 to just 15% in 2012. Still, this has not created jobs and it has not stimulated the economy, and the Liberals promised to help small and medium-sized businesses, which are the real job creators in our communities, towns, and cities.

What does the member think of the Liberals' broken promise to support those who are the real job creators in our society, namely, small businesses?

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Madam Speaker, my colleague raises a very important point about corporate tax rates because the other question the NDP has always received is how would members have paid for their platform. No one in the House except this party has looked seriously at how low corporate tax rates are, how they have been on a downward trend for a decade now, how we are the lowest in the OECD with an average lower than the United States, and yet there has not been a corresponding investment by those corporations.

In fact, none other than the former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney has referred to the corporate bank accounts that are filled to the brim with dead money. It is not being invested, so despite the low corporate tax rates we have, we have not seen the corresponding investment by the private sector.

All we are asking is that corporations pay their fair share in our society. Their rates go up a little bit more to make life easier on the rest of Canadians and I think the member makes a very fine point because the tax burden for too long has been on the real middle class and that is the one that the NDP is proud to support.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Madam Speaker, I have a quick question about the concept of increasing the CPP contributions. Hon. members on the other side call it a tax. Does the member agree with that characterization?

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Madam Speaker, I most certainly do not. I have met with so many low-income seniors that I have lost count, so many who are struggling. The CPP is one pension plan that went through the 2008 financial crisis relatively unscathed. It is a strong plan. It needs enhancement and if we are to have a serious conversation about low-income seniors in this country, we need to start having it now. A retirement vehicle that has survived previous shocks is a solid investment for our future.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Madam Speaker, we are here today debating a tax bill. I would begin by observing that our federal government is faced with a very serious revenue problem. The Conservative members of this House like to pat themselves on the back for the fact that federal tax revenues as a share of gross domestic product are at their lowest level in about half a century.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!