Bill C-29 (Historical)

Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 2

A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 22, 2016 and other measures

Part 1 implements certain income tax measures proposed in the March 22, 2016 budget by
(a) eliminating the eligible capital property rules and introducing a new class of depreciable property;
(b) introducing rules to prevent the avoidance of the shareholder loan rules using back-to-back arrangements;
(c) excluding derivatives from the application of the inventory valuation rules;
(d) ensuring that the return on a linked note retains the same character whether it is earned at maturity or reflected in a secondary market sale;
(e) clarifying the tax treatment of emissions allowances and eliminating the double taxation of certain free emissions allowances;
(f) introducing rules so that any accrued foreign exchange gains on a foreign currency debt will be realized when the debt becomes a parked obligation;
(g) ensuring that amounts are not inappropriately received tax-free by a policyholder as a result of a disposition of an interest in a life insurance policy;
(h) preventing the misuse of an exception in the anti-avoidance rules in the Income Tax Act for cross-border surplus-stripping transactions;
(i) indexing to inflation the maximum benefit amounts and the phase-out thresholds under the Canada child benefit, beginning in the 2020–21 benefit year;
(j) amending the anti-avoidance rules in the Income Tax Act that prevent the multiplication of access to the small business deduction and the avoidance of the business limit and the taxable capital limit;
(k) ensuring that an exchange of shares of a mutual fund corporation or investment corporation that results in the investor switching between funds will be considered for tax purposes to be a disposition at fair market value;
(l) implementing the country-by-country reporting standards recommended by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development;
(m) clarifying the application of anti-avoidance rules in the Income Tax Act for back-to-back loans to multiple intermediary structures and character substitution; and
(n) introducing rules to prevent the avoidance of withholding tax on rents, royalties and similar payments using back-to-back arrangements.
Part 1 implements other income tax measures confirmed in the March 22, 2016 budget by
(a) allowing greater flexibility for recognizing charitable donations made by an individual’s former graduated rate estate;
(b) clarifying what types of investment funds are excluded from the loss restriction event rules that otherwise limit a trust’s use of certain tax attributes;
(c) ensuring that income arising in certain trusts on the death of the trust’s primary beneficiary is taxed in the trust and not in the hands of that beneficiary, subject to a joint election for certain testamentary trusts to report the income in that beneficiary’s final tax return;
(d) clarifying that the Canada Revenue Agency and the courts may increase or adjust an amount included in an assessment that is under objection or appeal at any time, provided the total amount of the assessment does not increase; and
(e) implementing the common reporting standard recommended by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development for the automatic exchange of financial account information between tax authorities.
Part 1 also amends the Employment Insurance Act and various regulations to replace the term “child tax benefit” with “Canada child benefit”.
Part 2 implements certain goods and services tax and harmonized sales tax (GST/HST) measures proposed or confirmed in the March 22, 2016 budget by
(a) adding certain exported call centre services to the list of GST/HST zero-rated exports;
(b) strengthening the test for determining whether two corporations, or a partnership and a corporation, can be considered closely related;
(c) ensuring that the application of the GST/HST is unaffected by income tax amendments that convert eligible capital property into a new class of depreciable property; and
(d) clarifying that the Canada Revenue Agency and the courts may increase or adjust an amount included in an assessment that is under objection or appeal at any time, provided the total amount of the assessment does not increase.
Part 3 implements an excise measure confirmed in the March 22, 2016 budget by clarifying that the Canada Revenue Agency and the courts may increase or adjust an amount included in an assessment that is under objection or appeal at any time, provided the total amount of the assessment does not increase.
Division 1 of Part 4 amends the Employment Insurance Act to specify what does not constitute suitable employment for the purposes of certain provisions of the Act.
Division 2 of Part 4 amends the Old Age Security Act to provide that, in the case of low-income couples who have to live apart for reasons not attributable to either of them, the amount of the allowance is to be based on the income of the allowance recipient only.
Division 3 of Part 4 amends the Canada Education Savings Act to replace the term “child tax benefit” with “Canada child benefit”. It also amends that Act to change the manner in which the eligibility for the Canada Learning Bond is established, including by eliminating the national child benefit supplement as an eligibility criterion and by adding an eligibility formula based on income and number of children.
Division 4 of Part 4 amends the Canada Disability Savings Act to replace the term “child tax benefit” with “Canada child benefit”. It also amends the definition “phase-out income”.
Division 5 of Part 4 amends the Royal Canadian Mint Act to enable the Royal Canadian Mint to anticipate profit with respect to the provision of goods or services, to clarify the powers of the Royal Canadian Mint, to confirm the current and legal tender status of all non-circulation $350 coins dated between 1999 and 2006 and to remove the requirement that the directors of the Royal Canadian Mint have experience in respect of metal fabrication or production, industrial relations or a related field.
Division 6 of Part 4 amends the Financial Administration Act, the Bank of Canada Act and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Act to clarify certain powers of the Minister of Finance in relation to the sound and efficient management of federal funds and the operation of Crown corporations. It amends the Financial Administration Act to provide that the Minister of Finance may lend, by way of auction, excess funds out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund and, with the authorization of the Governor in Council, may enter into contracts and agreements of a financial nature for the purpose of managing risks related to the financial position of the Government of Canada. It also amends the Bank of Canada Act to provide that the Minister of Finance may delegate to the Bank of Canada the management of the lending of money to agent corporations. Finally, it amends the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Act to provide that the Bank of Canada may act as a custodian of the financial assets of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 2

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-29 and some of the budget provisions. I would like to put some things on the record and frame them in the context of what is happening in my riding.

Under Bill C-29 the child benefit will not be indexed. It is estimated that low-income families will lose roughly $5,500 by 2020. If we consider the rising cost of living, low-income families will lose roughly $500 in four years. It is sad that no one thought about the fact that the cost of living will continue to rise for families and that the child benefit was not indexed accordingly.

There are some things people fail to mention about the child benefit. For example, people keep saying the child benefit will help lift children out of poverty, but no one ever says that to be entitled to it we have to have an up-to-date tax file, as do our former spouse and our new spouse. If not, benefits will not be provided until the situation is rectified.

Some services are available only during tax season, which means that people can get help with their returns for the current year, but no help is available to them if they have not done their taxes for four years. Help is not available.

Every week, people come to my office to tell me that they have not received child benefit payments for months or years because they cannot get their Canada Revenue Agency file in order. They may be asked to produce documents proving that their child lives with them. In shared custody or access rights situations, among others, that can be extremely complicated. A parent with a two-year-old or a three-year-old who does not go to day care may have a hard time proving that the child actually lives with him or her. A friend has to declare that he or she knows the parent well and that the child lives with that parent.

Also, information provided by both parents has to match up. Is a former partner who does not receive the child benefit because he or she has access rights but not custody likely to get in touch with the Canada Revenue Agency in a hurry to sort things out? Sometimes the answer is no, and that can create very complex situations that result in some people being denied the child benefit for long periods of time.

My riding office has helped fix the situation for some people who have not been receiving any child benefits for years. They were sometimes owed $20,000 in unpaid benefits from the federal government alone. That money could have helped them when they needed it. However, this is difficult to do because the appropriate services are not in place. People do not always think to contact their MP.

In the past, there was a Canada Revenue Agency service counter in Rouyn-Noranda, in my riding, but it is now closed. The government no longer provides direct services to people. The counter is still there and the office is still open because there are still investigators who work there, but people can no longer go to the CRA office to get help. People are being left with no resources. Often it is those most in need and with a lower level of education who are unable to resolve their situation and get access to the money they are entitled to.

This bill does nothing about the tax system, which most people find extremely complicated. How many people are owed tax refunds each year but do not get them because they do not realize they are entitled to them? These people do not have the money to pay someone to file their tax return for them. They do their best to do it themselves.

Every year, some of the money that is earmarked to help poor people remains in the government coffers because people do not know that they are entitled to it. However, the government is not doing anything to fix that situation.

Child benefits can in fact help lift people out of poverty, but for that to happen, parents need to have access to those benefits and be able to receive that money. If CRA does not offer services that enable people to access their money, we go around in circles, because people are not getting help.

Consider the example of a family of four children where the eldest has a different father than the other three. More information will be needed on that child, because the statements from the two former spouses will not match. The child benefits will be frozen not only for the child in question, but for all four children, even though there is no problem with the other three children's benefits. We want to make sure that people can get their money if there is a problem regarding the amounts.

Also, the new calculation is done in July. This means that if any clarifications are needed, if there is a problem with the file, it will be frozen in July, right before kids go back to school, which is when parents need to spend a bunch of money on school supplies and clothes to make sure that their kids are ready for school. However, that is right when the family benefits would be frozen.

Often services are not accessible. A person tries calling and it may take three or four tries and three or four hours of waiting before they manage to get someone on the phone. People get discouraged. It takes months to correct the situation. For many people, the family allowance represents more than half their income.

I want to move on to something equally important and that is the infamous infrastructure bank, which is actually a privatization bank. The $15 billion that was earmarked for government-funded, public infrastructure projects is being put in a bank, and foreign investors are being sought to fund the infrastructure projects. Obviously, if we are getting foreign funding from private investors, they are going to want a return on their investment. What these private investors want is to get money back in exchange for their investment.

In other words, how do they get a return on their investment when we are talking about roads, bridges, and other infrastructure such as water systems? By charging surcharges, tolls, and user fees. The Liberals never mentioned during the election campaign that they were considering using these fees and privatizing our public infrastructure network to help rebuild what we need built.

What is more, these projects and programs are designed for big cities. What are the chances that I will be able to attract a foreign investor who is willing to invest in a bridge in a small town in northern Abitibi—Témiscamingue? They are very slim.

In reality, the small municipalities and rural regions will be the ones that suffer. They will be completely forgotten in the Liberal government's infrastructure plan. That is a surprise because the Liberals never spoke about privatization. Meanwhile, these municipalities will continue to struggle to try to find solutions to keep their heads above water.

In many cases, the needs are great because all the villages in Abitibi—Témiscamingue were settled around the same time. As a result, the infrastructure was all built around the same time and will all need to be replaced at the same time. That time is now. Some municipalities have five or six bridges in their villages that need to be replaced. They do not have the money to do that. It is impossible for them. What will the municipalities tell people? Will they have to buy people's houses from them and tell them to go live elsewhere because they do not have the money to pay for infrastructure and the government is privatizing infrastructure and investing in Canada's big cities? The government has completely forgotten that people live a few kilometres north of the St. Lawrence River.

That is not what we should have to tell people. Canadians who live in rural regions contribute greatly to Canada's economy. They make sure the large corporations in the big cities have the resources they need. If the government does not support Canada's rural regions, it will destroy our country's economy.

I look forward to my colleagues' questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

I think probably procedurally the best way to proceed is we need basically an agreement to adopt the subcommittee report, and if there's anything we want to pull out of it and deal with differently we can do that. Perhaps I could finish quickly going through the report and then come back to those sections that people want to deal with separately.

The second section really deals with the procedure and how we would deal with Bill C-26, which is the amendments to the Canada Pension Plan, the schedule that we would set up. It's listed on the paper.

The third section lays out, on a motion from Steven MacKinnon, the procedure that would be followed relative to votes on Bill C-26.

The fourth section lays out the plan of the committee to deal with Bill C-29, a second act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 22, 2016, and other measures. That procedure on timing is laid out there.

The fifth section in the subcommittee report points out that we agreed to a motion by Steven MacKinnon that lays out how we would consider Bill C-29 and when the votes would have to take place.

The sixth section is laying out that in relation to the pre-budget consultations on the 2017 budget, if we can find the time, the committee would convene an in camera post-mortem meeting before the holiday break to discuss this year's progress and how we could do it differently.

The seventh section of the subcommittee report talks about how we would deal with Bill C-240, an act to amend the Income Tax Act (tax credit—first aid), which was referred to the committee on October 26, 2016, and that the committee consider this bill at the end of January or in February 2017, as the bill must be reported back to the House for March 23, 2017.

That's the subcommittee report. Have we got agreement on that?

You want to come back and deal with the first section, I gather? Okay.

Dan.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to start the debate today on Bill C-29.

Rather than getting into the technical tax elements of it, I would like to go on about my riding. People know from when I spoke about the budget previously how delighted I was at the number of things that were in it for the north. An unparalleled number of things were put in for my constituents. I could not even get to them all in a 10-minute speech and my colleagues were asking me what was left for their ridings. Nevertheless, I am very happy for everything that was received by my riding.

I will start with the huge increase to the northern allowance, from $16.50 a day to a maximum of $22 a day. This is a huge emphasis on the people of the north. We can see our northern strategy is based on helping the people of the north in a very high cost-of-living area, where poverty could easily occur. This is the type of support we need and it was wonderfully received, of course, by the people of the north.

Our two biggest sectors are mining and tourism. Mining is the biggest gross territorial product, basically, since the gold rush; and tourism is the biggest private sector employer.

In mining, we continued in the budget the mineral exploration tax credit and the flow-through share regime. These are very important, especially, for exploration companies. There may be only one or two hard rock mines operating, and they have a limited number of employees. Those mines have a product that they can get loans against and get financing against. Exploration companies really have no credit, they do not have buildings, they do not have product, and it is very hard for them to get financing.

The METC and the flow-through share regime are very important for them. I would certainly like to thank the Minister of Natural Resources for lobbying for this and the finance minister for putting it in place.

With respect to the tourism sector, my riding has the highest percentage of our gross territorial product related to tourism of any province or territory so that a cut to tourism marketing in Canada would hurt my riding more than anywhere else. That is why I am delighted with the $50-million increase to that this year.

With respect to infrastructure, once again, as everyone knows, the fact that the government planned to have the largest amount of infrastructure in history is music to the ears in our riding. First, we have kept the building Canada plan that was in place for 2014 to 2024, we have accelerated the approvals, and we added some categories such as recreation, which is very important to my communities. They really wanted to build recreation facilities out of that fund, and now they can.

At the same time, phase two of the new infrastructure funding is going on. We have already announced the entire amounts of money for projects for most of my communities for the next three years. A lot of them are based on water and waste-water improvements, which is very important infrastructure. The minister has done extensive consultation. When phase two starts, we will be able to get more money for our transit. We do have a transit system in Whitehorse and it has already received money.

The green infrastructure fund is very forward-thinking.

I have been saying for a couple of decades, and everyone I think now knows, that climate change is affecting the north more than anywhere else in the world. It was very perceptive to allow funds to be put in the budget for mitigation and for preparing infrastructure to withstand the effects of climate change, which can be seen in the foundations of our buildings, under melting permafrost, and on our highways. Those funds will be welcomed.

Another thing is the social infrastructure. I visited some of the day cares that would like to expand the number of spots. That money will be very welcomed.

Then there is affordable housing and the national housing plan. I have been on the anti-poverty coalition for years. We hope that the infrastructure bank will work; I will talk about that a bit later. The AIDEA bank in Alaska is very successful in an economy like ours.

Finally, I would like to talk about the recently announced $2 billion for rural and northern regions for roads and bridges, green infrastructure, and Internet connections. Earlier in the day today, the opposition brought up how important the regions are. This is a massive signal. It is the biggest amount of money for the region.

For all those reasons, I am very excited about the budget and its initiatives. However, I do not want to let the finance minister off that easily. I want to now morph into our wishes for the next budget, based on consultations I have had in the riding. Some of these things could already be funded under the various programs I have just mentioned.

First, homelessness and the national housing strategy is very important to the people who gave me input on the upcoming budget. Affordable housing for employers is very important. They hire people. They come to the north and cannot find affordable housing, so have to leave again.

There is the suggestion of the electrification of transport routes so electric vehicles can be used. Of course, in the cities they can plug in and recharge. Along the Alaska Highway, for instance, we could have that all electrified.

Another suggestion, which happens to also be eligible and already announced, is the retrofit of old buildings and higher standards for new buildings.

Renewable energy of course is something people in my riding want to invest in, and it is a big part of the government's plan. There is a way of storing energy in off-peak hours, so a storage mechanism is also important. Certainly, that is eligible, and there are keen proponents of that in my riding.

Also, local food production in the north, rather than shipping things thousands of miles, and funding for social enterprises are suggestions.

A redundant fibre is very important for us. The Yukon has one Internet line cable going in and every time a backhoe cuts a line it shuts everything down. We would like to make a loop through the Dempster Highway through Inuvik. In fact, part of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories also only access through our hub, or only have one route. This would put a redundancy in place for a lot of people in the north so they could have access similar to what we have. These would be eligible under these new infrastructure programs, and I hope their funding is included.

We have one area where a hydro line needs to be replaced. We could go to several mines that would otherwise use LNG, and they would then contribute to greenhouse gases.

The IT sector is flourishing in the north now, because we do not need to transport heavy things. It is all done over the lines. We certainly appreciate the support for that.

We want the mining supports that I talked about earlier to continue. We would like the tourism marketing supports to continue. We would like support for business incubators. Once businesses have started, in many ways they have a record and they can get financing. They have partners, but when they are first starting up the costs for mentoring and cheap infrastructure, just getting going, is a hard part in the life cycle of a small business. We would like to support that.

There is room to support IRAP. It has been an incredible program for the last three decades at least. It is very instrumental for innovation. We would like to continue with that.

I said about 20 years ago, we need research in the north, by the north, and for the north. We have great research up there. We would like that to continue.

Yukon College has a plan, with the other three northern colleges, to take adults who may not be literate and upgrade them to the next stage. It is about $56 billion for the three colleges that cover half of northern Canada. That would be a great project to fund in the new budget.

The House resumed from November 2 consideration of the motion that Bill C-29, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 22, 2016 and other measures, be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the amendment.

Business of the House

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of Small Business and Tourism]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon we will continue to debate the Conservative Party motion.

Tomorrow, we will resume debate on Bill C-26, on the Canada pension plan.

Next week, as the hon. member said, we will be working hard in our constituencies and attending Remembrance Day ceremonies on Friday to collectively stand in honour of all who have fallen in the service of Canada.

When we return on Monday, November 14, the House will then have the fifth day of second reading debate on Bill C-26, the CPP enhancement bill. On Tuesday, the House will also have the fifth day of second reading debate on Bill C-29, the second budget implementation bill.

On Wednesday, the House will consider Bill C-16, the gender identity bill, at report stage, and hopefully at third reading. On Thursday, the House will debate Bill C-25, the business framework bill, at second reading.

Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 2

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.

Regarding budget implementation act, 2016, No. 2, the second budget implementation bill, and the economic update delivered yesterday in the House, I wondered if my colleague thought that the government was going down the wrong path with its current strategy.

The past year's economic results show no sign of improvement; they indicate no positive growth or job creation. Does the hon. member think that the government is doubling down on a strategy that does not seem to working?

Albert Einstein said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Does the hon. member agree with that quote and our opinion that the strategies are not working and that the government should consider changing tack in order to create jobs and grow our economy?

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by telling the House how disappointed I am with Bill C-29 and the measures it contains, or rather the measures it does not contain. More specifically, there is a significant lack of practical measures for SMEs, families, the middle class, unemployed workers, and the most vulnerable members of our society.

I would also like to point out that this bill, which was introduced on Tuesday, October 25, contains 146 provisions and amends 13 laws, and we started debating it just three days later. We had only three days to grasp the scope of the changes that these 146 provisions make to 13 laws. Members will agree that that gave us very little time to conduct a full and comprehensive review of the bill and to properly understand all the details and the scope of its content. It is very easy to see what is missing from this bill, and that includes larger health care transfers for the provinces and many other things.

As a progressive MP who represents the people of Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, I am opposed to this bill because it is sorely lacking in substantial measures for middle-class families, unemployed workers, and the most vulnerable members of society. This party promised to stand up for the middle class, but we are once again seeing that all of its fine promises were nothing more than empty rhetoric.

Yesterday, we got the government's economic update. It offered no compensation for dairy producers and nothing for Bombardier. Basically, all it contains is a privatization plan that will take $15 billion of the funding promised for infrastructure and invest it in a privatization bank designed not to meet the needs of communities but to meet the needs of companies and provide investment returns. It means that much less funding for municipalities in my riding, which will be disappointed.

My riding has massive infrastructure needs, including the Casavant Boulevard tunnel, the Saint-Pie and La Présentation community centres, and dire waste water treatment needs. These are just some of the major projects that are very important to my riding.

Municipalities and citizens were under the impression that money would be allocated to these projects because that is what they were told repeatedly. What the Liberals never told us was that their plan was to make investments by privatizing our infrastructure. In the 2016 budget, they brought up the possibility of asset recycling. That sounds pretty good, but what it really means is privatization.

Why did this government not promise privatization during the election campaign? Because it is not something that works. That is why we did not hear a peep about this during the election campaign. On the contrary, any time we talked about tolls or the Champlain Bridge, the Liberals kept saying that they would never ask the bridge users to pay a toll. That might be true, but what they failed to mention was that they would charge tolls everywhere else.

When did the Liberals tell Canadians that instead of the public infrastructure and public investments promised, Canadians would have to pay user fees and tolls, because their taxes would not be used for those things? They never said anything of the sort.

Bill C-29 does contain some positive measures that of course we support, but its contents do not even come close to fulfilling the Liberals' election promises or combatting inequality.

As my party's critic for families, children, and social development, I am still disappointed that the Liberals decided not to index the Canada child benefit to inflation. They could have fixed that yesterday, but no, they are going to wait four years.

The result of that political decision is that families back home in my riding, and all across Canada, are going to be out over $5,000. The Liberals keep repeating that that benefit is going to lift thousands of children out of poverty, but in reality, families are going to have $5,000 less over the next few years.

In the end, this benefit lifts families out of poverty for a month or two. To a family struggling to make ends meet every month, $5,000 is a lot. It boggles the mind to hear my Liberal colleagues brag about lifting children out of poverty, when in fact, families are losing thousands of dollars.

Families cannot afford to wait for the new Canada child benefit to be indexed to inflation in 2020. By 2020, low-income families will be getting only $6.50 more a month than they were from the Harper government. The difference between the Conservatives and the Liberals is $6.50 a month.

Giving an extra $6.50 a month is hardly anything to brag about. That is not even enough to buy a loaf of bread and some milk. When I talk about this with organizations in my riding that work with low-income families, they are shocked to learn how much families will really be getting at the end of the day. They are disappointed and I understand that. They know that families have felt the difference since July and are disappointed.

This decision will clearly hurt families, especially low-income families that are counting on this money. In the next four years, low-income families will receive about $500 less. Canadians are disappointed with all these broken promises.

That said, I applaud the measure that will prevent a multiplication of access to the small business deduction, and prevents tax avoidance to some extent. This will help the government recover $55 million to $60 million a year, but many other measures could have been introduced.

For some time, the NDP has been calling for measures that would provide tax relief to SMEs, which are the real drivers of job creation. We are disappointed that the Liberals have broken their promise to reduce the small business tax. They had promised to lower it to 9% by 2019. Job creators in our ridings were counting on this tax cut. It is disappointing that another promise has been broken. The Liberals, and the Conservatives before them, gave huge tax breaks to the most prosperous corporations in Canada. They have once again let down our SMEs.

I am so proud to represent a riding with SMEs that are constantly innovating. According to a Canadian Federation of Independent Business study, Saint-Hyacinthe is the sixth most entrepreneurial city in Quebec and the 20th in Canada. However, in order to ensure that these businesses survive, we need to give them a leg up. That is why the NDP cannot accept a bill like this one that does nothing for families, SMEs, or the middle class.

In short and in conclusion, I want to repeat that I am disappointed, as are the people of Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, with these measures that do nothing to help our SMEs, the many dairy producers in my riding, Bombardier, located in the neighbouring riding of Valcourt, municipalities, families, unemployed workers, the most vulnerable members of our society, or the middle class.

[Dianne Lynn Watts, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-29 aims to implement a series of budget measures and tax changes in budget 2016, which was tabled in Parliament on March 22 of this year. We have heard from the government over the course of this year how going into debt would help the economy and would create jobs. We also heard from the government how increasing taxes would help the economy and the middle class and create jobs. We heard from the government how the tax-free savings account was not for seniors and not for students and not for people trying to save and get ahead, and therefore, it could be cut in half and it really would not make any difference.

Then we heard from the Prime Minister on September 8, 2015, while he was being interviewed by Peter Mansbridge, “a large percentage of small businesses are actually just ways for wealthier Canadians to save on their taxes”. Now even though there are 1.14 million small businesses in Canada, employing 8.2 million people, plus another 2.3 million people employed in medium-sized businesses, those small businesses did not get the reduction in taxes as promised in the platform by the Liberal government and to be clear, the promise was to reduce the small business tax from 11% to 9%, to assist with job creation. However, that did not happen.

Instead, the Liberals increased the CPP contribution so that workers would have to pay more and see less of their paycheques, and employers will also have to pay more, which goes against the internal documents from Finance Canada. Those documents show that financial officials advised the minister that higher CPP premiums will reduce job growth until 2035. That advice was ignored.

The government decided to implement the so-called tax cut for the middle class and then announced to the general public it was going to be revenue neutral. The plan is not revenue neutral. A report from the parliamentary budget officer puts the cost at $1.7 billion, which is now added to the growing tax burden for Canadians.

However, it gets better. The Liberal government told taxpayers that for a tiny small deficit of $10 billion, infrastructure projects will grow the economy and create jobs. The Liberals burned through a $1-billion surplus and created a deficit that is over $30 billion, but it still gets better. With all these job-creating measures the government has come up with, one would think that jobs were really being created. This is not so. A report just released last week by the parliamentary budget officer states that job creation over the past year was half of what it was over the past five years and that there have been no net new full-time jobs.

The Liberal job creation plan is simply not working.

Let us just recap. We have a $30-plus billion deficit, $7.1 billion spent overseas, $2.9 billion committed to an Asian infrastructure bank, new housing rules that will cost the economy $6 billion by the end of 2018, a national carbon tax that will increase the cost of heating, groceries, and gas, and just announced yesterday by the Minister of Finance was that he has spent the $6-billion contingency fund and is borrowing another $32 billion. As well, $15 billion is being put into a newly created infrastructure bank and the $15 billion “will be sourced from the announced funding for public transit, green infrastructure, social...and rural and northern communities”.

We already have a structure in place with $1.3 billion available and it is called P3 Canada. It was specifically set up to leverage private sector dollars. Pension funds can invest anywhere they choose; they do not need an infrastructure bank. That was stated by the CEO of the largest pension fund in Canada.

Let us hear from the experts. Craig Alexander, chief economist at the Conference Board of Canada stated, “The part of the fiscal plan that hasn't shown up is the infrastructure spending”. Stephen Poloz, Bank of Canada governor, said that in the data “there are no signs yet” of a boost to grow. Benjamin Reitzes, senior economist from the Bank of Montreal, said, “It's certainly very fair to say that impacts were overestimated”. The TD Bank and the Bank of Montreal projected that the government spending plan would add less to growth in 2016 than the finance department or the Bank of Canada had estimated. They have now publicly called on the government to halt additional spending.

There is a way to stimulate the economy and create the environment for job growth and job creation. The Liberal way is just not that way. Governments do not create jobs. Governments create environments in which job creation either flourishes or it stagnates. Unfortunately, what we are seeing from the current government is stagnating the environment for job growth through out-of-control spending, deficits, higher taxes, red tape, and frankly, not knowing what job creation really means.

Creating the environment for job growth means low taxes, less red tape, working with all levels of government to create livable cities, transportation to move people and goods to market, and fiscal responsibility to pay down any debt and balance the budget. In the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, the Conservative government had the lowest taxes in 50 years, balanced the budget, completed over 7,500 infrastructure projects, and created the environment for 1.3 million new jobs. That is how it is done.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I just want to take a moment to say thanks to all the Olympic athletes and Paralympic athletes who were here today. It was quite an honour to see that. For 15 minutes, the whole House kept applauding. It was great to have had them represent us in Rio the way they did. I want to give a special shout-out to Olympic boxer Mandy Bujold and Paralympic swimmer Alexander Elliot, who live in my riding of Kitchener South—Hespeler.

During last year's election campaign, I spoke confidently to the residents of my riding of Kitchener South—Hespeler about our plan to grow the middle class and revitalize the Canadian economy by doing three things.

First, I talked about our plan to reduce income taxes on the middle class and those aspiring to join the middle class. Lowering taxes means leaving more money in the pockets of those who need it most and having more money to spend on goods and services in our economy.

Second, I explained our plan to implement a tax-free, means-tested Canada child benefit to replace the patchwork of existing programs. The Canada child benefit will assist families with the high cost of raising their children.

Third, I talked about our plan to borrow at current historically low interest rates to make very large investments in both physical and social infrastructure.

As I spoke to people, I stressed that these programs would not only help individual families that were struggling after years of stagnant growth but would grow our economy, generate economic activity, and create jobs by way of what economists call the multiplier effect.

As I spoke with people at the door, I did so with confidence, because I believed that our plan offered immediate help to those who needed it most. It set an ambitious long-term approach for growth by strengthening the heart of Canada's consumer-driven economy, the middle class.

A strong economy starts with a strong middle class. When middle-class Canadians have more money to save, invest, and grow the economy, everyone benefits. A strengthened middle class means that hard-working Canadians can look forward to a good standard of living and better prospects for their children. When we have an economy that works for the middle class, we have a country that works for everyone.

Judging from the reaction I got from people throughout my riding, the message I was delivering resonated with voters. The results of the election speak for themselves. Our message of hope caused voters across the country to raise us from a distant third place in this House to a majority government. On election night, Canadians saw the merit in our plan, and Canadians chose a plan to invest in our future for generations to come.

Our plan increased again, when legislation to reduce personal income tax rates, as promised, was introduced by this government last December as the second piece of legislation proposed in Bill C-2.

The hon. Minister of Finance tabled the government's budget in Parliament on March 22 this year. A budget is more than a mere forecast of expenditures and revenues. A budget is a financial strategy to fulfill what a government sets as its mission. A budget is a comprehensive plan of action designed to achieve the policy objectives of the government. A budget is a financial blueprint for action. A budget will remain only a blueprint unless there are the workers, materials, coordination, skills, and activities necessary to construct it.

Real change will remain only a vision unless there is legislation to implement the budget that flows from that vision. Following quickly on the heels of the budget, Bill C-15 was the first legislation introduced by the government in April. It was the first budget implementation bill. It turned the second major promise I made to the constituents of Kitchener South—Hespeler, as I went door to door during the election, into a reality.

Bill C-15 brought in the Canada child benefit. Simpler, tax-free, and more generous, the Canada child benefit replaced existing child benefits. Bill C-15 passed quickly through this House and the Senate and received royal assent in the third week of June.

Immediately afterwards, in July, the Canada child benefit payments started flowing to families to fulfill their financial responsibilities in raising the next generation of Canadians.

The Canada child benefit is a social program of unprecedented generosity. Since July 1 this year, families can receive up to $6,400 per year for each child under six and $5,400 for each child aged six to 17. Nine out of 10 families are better off. They are receiving higher monthly benefits, and hundreds of thousands of children will be raised out of poverty.

This government has taken a long-term approach to helping families, who will be able to count on extra help now and for years to come. When Canadians look towards the future and think about planning, they know that the Canada child benefit will be there to help fulfill their financial responsibilities.

Today before the House is Bill C-29. It is the second of two pieces of legislation intended to implement the budget tabled in the House in March. Bill C-29 is the second act to implement this year's budget. It contains a number of consequential housekeeping amendments to various acts, such as the Employment Insurance Act, the Canada Education Savings Act, and the Canada Disability Savings Act, to replace references to “child tax benefit”.

However, for most Canadian families, the most important part of Bill C-29 is the introduction, as promised, of indexation of the Canada child benefit. Bill C-29 would implement the budget by indexing to inflation the maximum benefit amounts and the phase-out threshold under the Canada child benefit, beginning in the 2021 benefit year. This means that the benefits will increase if prices increase, and thus the purchasing power of the benefit will remain the same after 2020.

I would now like to turn to a couple of articles.

The first article is from The Economist, which said, “Canada is in a better position than almost any other rich country to take advantage of low rates”.

With the historically low interest rates, this is the time to invest in Canadians, in our future, and in the young generation to take advantage of these low interest rates.

The second article I want to refer to is from CBC News:

The IMF head [Christine Lagarde] said economic growth has been “too slow for too long” and the IMF advocates a “three-pronged approach” from governments trying to kick-start the global economy.

She said the [Liberal] government is following that approach with monetary, financial and structural reforms that will mobilize the resources of the state to increase growth.

For those reasons, I would therefore encourage all members of this House to support Bill C-29.

The House resumed from November 1 consideration of the motion that Bill C-29, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 22, 2016 and other measures, be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the amendment.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise on behalf of my constituents to talk about Bill C-29.

The first thing I note about Bill C-29, a second act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament, is that it is an omnibus bill. In terms of size, it is 230 pages of omnibus legislation. I remember well when the member for Beauséjour was the House leader for the Liberals and they were the third party in the House, how he used to rail against bills of this size. It did not matter what was in them; it was the fact they were omnibus bills that created so much angst.

The member for Winnipeg North made a career in the last Parliament out of railing against omnibus legislation. It was said to be dastardly thing for a government to choose to implement its budget via a budget implementation act. That is what is happening today. We are talking about an omnibus budget bill. I guess the principles and policies the Liberals had when they used to sit in the third party seats change a little when they cross over to the government side. Now they are a big fan of omnibus bills. That was the first thing I wanted to mention.

This bill is supposed to be the plan to implement the budget. The government clearly has no plan when it comes to budgeting. During the election campaign, Liberals promised there would be a $10 billion deficit that would be paid back within the mandate of a majority government. How long did it take them to abandon that promise? Was it 10 minutes?

I remember Prime Minister Stephen Harper saying that the Liberals' position was that everyone should trust that it would be a modest, little deficit. How right he was. We are going to hear today at four o'clock just how much more than a $10 billion deficit the government has blown in less than a year. The fiscal update will show that the government is, by a magnitude of at least three times, past its initial deficit target. It misled Canadians during the election and has blown through it.

What do Liberals have to show for it? I would argue they have nothing to show for it. There is no increased growth and there are zero net new jobs. The parliamentary budget officer has confirmed that there are zero net new jobs as a result of $30 billion or so of borrowed money being spent. This was supposed to stimulate the economy and take us to untold heights. The Liberals have done nothing they promised and have blown through their deficit target, so they have no budget plan. The plan is just to borrow more money and spend it. Canadians know that debt has to be repaid, that borrowed money has to be paid back. If my generation does not repay it, it will be our children and grandchildren who get this bill, because eventually it will come due.

One of my constituents, a small businessman, has certainly seen that the Liberal government is no friend of his. He told me the government is like a teenager who has one parent who provides him with a credit card with no limit on it, and that parent is very popular, but the other parent who hands the credit card bill to the teenager and says it is his to pay back is the less popular parent. Right now, the Liberals are playing the role of the sugar daddy who hands out the cash, but what Canadians will soon realize is that the bill will be paid by them. That is clearly what is happening.

What have Liberals done in less than a year? They borrowed $30 billion, as I said, and they have also misled small businesses. All parties agreed that the small business tax rate would be lowered from 11% to 9%. How long did it take the Liberals to break that promise? It was broken in their first budget. They broke their promise to small businesses, and I think we know why.

During the election campaign, the Prime Minister made it clear that there were an awful lot of people who were using small businesses to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. That is what the Prime Minister said about the industry that creates the most jobs in this country. He said that small business was just a tax avoidance scheme. We found out during the election campaign that he has set up some of those companies himself to avoid paying a lot of taxes, so perhaps he knew what he spoke of. However, that is not what was promised to small businesses.

I spoke earlier this month in the House about Bill C-26, a bill dealing with CPP rates. Again, that would do nothing for seniors. It would do nothing for people approaching retirement. In fact, the finance minister has admitted that it would do nothing for anyone for more than 40 years. However, what it would do is reduce the incomes of Canadian families by up to $2,200. That $2,200 is taken from the paycheques of Canadians to go into a fund they likely will never be able to access. That is in addition to the $1,100 coming out of the pockets of small businesses who are paying their portion of that tax.

So they are increasing taxes on small businesses. They are also increasing taxes on Canadians through a carbon tax.

I was honoured to be given the role of critic for natural resources. Since the government has taken office, over 100,000 energy workers have lost their jobs. What do we see from the government? We see no jobs plan. We see no lifeline to families in the energy sector. Instead, we see them being thrown an anchor, the anchor of a carbon tax.

What would that do? The member for Oshawa talked about what it would do for manufacturing.

I will tell members what it would do for the energy sector. It would put an already crippled energy sector at an even greater disadvantage vis-à-vis the people we are trading with, the U.S., which has no intention of implementing a federal carbon tax any time soon. They are our major customer.

When we moved a motion at the natural resources committee to have the Liberal members tell us what analysis they have done to show what impact the carbon tax would have on the natural resource sector, they voted against it. We know why. It is because they have not done any economic analysis of that impact. They do not care. They do not care about those 100,000 family supporting jobs that have been lost. We have seen they do not care about that sector because they continue to layer regulatory burden after regulatory burden upon a sector that is already suffering. When there are pipelines to be approved, they do not allow for evidence-based scientific policy to take place. They layer on an extra political layer in which the minister will make the final decision, in which the cabinet will make the final decision, in which red tape is layered upon an already burdensome process. That would do nothing to protect public safety. It would simply add to the regulatory burden.

The government is fond of saying how it has cut the taxes of middle-class Canadians. It is just not true.

The average income of people in my riding is under $40,000 a year. Guess how much they receive from the income tax cuts from the Liberal Party? Zero. They receive nothing. The most vulnerable, low-income Canadians got nothing from the Liberal tax cuts, while people like members of Parliament, who make up to $150,000 a year, get the most benefit one could possibly get out of that tax cut. The Liberals have done nothing for an average family in Chilliwack—Hope with that tax cut, and anything they have done for some families, they are going to tax back with the extra carbon tax and additional payroll taxes. Canadians are not better off.

They also cancelled things like the child fitness tax credit, the child arts tax credit, and tax credits for textbooks. They said that is because they do not like to complicate the Income Tax Act. They do not like those boutique tax credits, they said, that help families, that help moms and dads put kids in sports and in dance lessons. However, what they do like are boutique tax credits for talk show hosts for Canadian shows, or for someone who needs to take a first aid course. They are all for those tax cuts. It does not seem to matter, as long its not a family, as long as it is not people supporting their children. We do not want to support people like that. However, if people are creators of content, then they need a tax break from the Government of Canada.

Their priorities are wrong. They are not looking after Canadian families. They are looking after special interests. We have certainly seen that over the last little while, with the revelations about their fundraising practices, in which they are meeting with the well-heeled insiders they regulate, who are giving them money for access. It is not the right way to go. This is not a budget plan, and we cannot support it.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-29, a second act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 22, 2016 and other measures. Since that time, we can say that sunny ways have come and gone. Over the past 12 months, we have seen countless promises broken, a ballooning deficit, and a stagnant economy.

We are also watching as the federal government picks too many needless fights with the provinces. The separation of powers that is a fundamental part of Canada's Constitution appears to be an afterthought for the Prime Minister and his government.

The cornerstone for the government is to tax and spend and get more and more involved in the day-to-day lives of Canadians. There is no decision too small for the government to make, no area in which it should not intervene. A day does not go by in the Chamber that I do not hear the Liberals take pride in repeating some platitude like “what we promised to Canadians is to help them throughout their lives”. We know that for the Liberals, government knows best.

Unfortunately, big government costs a lot, and the money to pay for it all comes from Canadians paying taxes on their income and on most goods and services, and from mandatory fees. To these Liberals, government is not the last resort, it is the first call. The idea that government should serve as a safety net has outlived its usefulness. Instead, the government should be omnipresent and helping Canadians each and every day.

Right now, the resource sector in western Canada is struggling because of low commodity prices, but rather than focus on the underlying long-term issue, which is the discount Canadian energy products are sold at due to a lack of access to markets, the Liberal solution is to provide a temporary bump in employment insurance to folks who are out of work. This bears repeating. Rather than put in place the conditions needed to create real jobs and opportunities, the government's preferred course of action is to increase employment insurance. This exemplifies quite well what the Liberal vision is.

I also find the ideological elastic demonstrated by the government on the child care benefit astounding. It was not long ago that the Liberal Party's official position on allowing families to make their own decisions when it came to child care was that parents could not be trusted, that they would spend more on beer and popcorn than on their own children. Now we learn that the new Liberal program for child care is fraught with problems. Bill C-29 would index the Canada child benefit to inflation beginning in 2020. The parliamentary budget officer has estimated that this would cost $42.5 billion over the next five years. That is double what the Liberals budgeted when they originally introduced the program.

I have spoken to many young families who wonder where the money for this is going to come from, how much debt will be incurred, and how much their taxes are going to have to go up in the medium and long term to pay for it. They do not want to trade short-term gain, if there is any, for long-term pain. Then there are those families that are receiving much less than they did in 2015.

Furthermore, the budget has cut the child fitness tax credit, the children's art tax credit, and tax credits for post-secondary education and textbooks. To the Liberal member for Newmarket—Aurora, who stated on Friday that “tax credits do not work”, can he honestly tell the House that the post-secondary students in his riding did not utilize the tuition tax credit?

“Big government knows best” is a broken model. European countries that have tried to spend their way to long-term prosperity have more often than not failed. This debate is about whether we believe, as a country, that the individual financial choices Canadians make are better or worse than those made by government.

Last week I noted that according to the 2016 Index of Economic Freedom, government expenditures presently represent 40.7% of GDP here in Canada. Australia, by comparison, sits at 35.7% and the United States at 38.9%. Are we better off in Canada than in Australia, for example, because more of our economy flows through Ottawa? I do not think so.

Is Canada a better place to live because this bill will compel banks to publish a description of the consultations undertaken with the public on their existing products and the development of new products and services? That is right. One particular measure in the bill will require financial institutions to provide a description of the consultations they have done to identify trends and emerging issues that may have an impact on their customers or the public. This should not surprise us, given how much the Liberals love consultation. In other words, the government is asking banks to make publicly available consumer and societal trends that would normally be considered commercial proprietary data.

Furthermore, major banks will also have to provide to the regulator a description of their consultations on matters on which the bank has received complaints. Why the federal government needs a description of the consultations banks hold on each and every complaint they receive is beyond me. While these legislative requirements will apply only to Canada's largest banks for now, is the next step asking smaller institutions, like credit unions, which are owned by their members, to do the same thing? The compliance costs for smaller institutions could drive them out of business. This would have a devastating effect in small communities all across the Prairies.

Let us look at the ways the Liberals have increased the overall tax burden on Canadians. They have given Canadians a carbon tax that will cost approximately $1,200 per person, and they have not even bothered to figure out how interprovincial emissions will be regulated or priced. They have raised contributions to the CPP from 9.9% to 12%. As a consequence, Canadians will get 2% less on each of their paycheques. This CPP contribution increase will cost families more than if the government had raised the sales tax from 5% to 7%.

It goes on. The Liberals are freezing a planned tax cut for Canada's small businesses, a planned tax cut they campaigned on and that they supported while in opposition.

They are also imposing a myriad of new regulations that just drive up the cost of doing anything for Canadians. For example, the Minister of Transport just introduced new regulations on railways that will order them to provide detailed information on the emissions produced by every single one of their locomotives.

Rail is the most environmentally friendly means of moving goods. A gallon of diesel can move a tonne of goods over 800 kilometres. What is worse, the minister based these new regulations on data collected before 2010, which is now completely out of date.

As railways are working to move western Canada's harvest to market, they are being faced with added red tape and tougher emissions standards, on top of the new carbon tax on diesel. Ultimately it is the farmers trying to get their grain to market who will see their bottom line affected. These regulations will inevitably lead to increased costs that will be passed on to consumers. It is just another hidden tax.

At the end of the day, all Canadians, including the families the government likes to talk about, are being asked to pay up to finance the big Liberal society.

In conclusion, more and more Canadians are expressing not only their frustration but their deep concern about the direction the government is taking Canada. Governments should always act with great humility and modesty, as its actions impact all Canadians and cannot be reversed quickly and without disruption. In the eight years I have had the privilege of serving as a member of Parliament, my belief that Canadians, not government, know best how to manage their finances has only been strengthened. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister and his government's belief in big government permeates this budget, and that is why I will not be supporting the bill.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise to speak to Bill C-29, a second act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 22, 2016, and other measures.

I had spoken about this budget, initially, when it was tabled. At that time, I was very concerned with the numbers and the spending that I saw, but today I am even more concerned, especially when we have seen a lack of growth and a lack of support, with a number of groups jumping off the bandwagon, saying the Liberals are not doing what they said they would do.

When the bill was initially tabled, there was $113 billion that was being borrowed. TD economic services has now estimated that there is going to be an additional $16.5 billion in new expenditures.

Let us go back to what the government promised during the 2015 election. The 2015 election was just a year ago. We have seen so many changes in terms of what the government is delivering compared with what it provided in its platform.

I would like to go back to a debate that I had in the city of St. Thomas. It was one of our final debates. There were six candidates. I recall the Liberal candidate, at that time, saying that they would have shovels in the ground by December of 2015. Obviously, I am here and I am very grateful for that. However, she obviously heard that as part of the platform. She was being told by her leader and by the leaders of her party that they were going to have shovels in the ground doing great work for Canadians and building infrastructure. I think they actually believed it. I believe many of the members who are now sitting across on the government side believed when they came here that they were going to be doing some good work.

As I said, December 2015 was when they promised to have shovels in the ground. I can tell members I have not seen too many shovels in the ground. I have not seen these projects they were talking about and that they were going to be working on.

The infrastructure minister will come out and talk about the projects that have been proposed, the projects that the provincial governments have submitted, saying that, yes, they are going to support these projects, but that is only stage one of this process. That means there is only a finite number of people who are working on this infrastructure build. They may be the architects, the engineers, or the administrative people who are putting in these applications, but it is not the people with the hard hats and the workboots who are out there doing that work. We do not see that happening yet.

Of all of these communities and provinces that were promised more roads and better infrastructure in the 2015 campaign, where is it and where is the spending? We have seen spending from the government, but we have not seen any results.

I go back to when we go to the bank and we talk about good debt versus bad debt. It is simple. It is something I say to my children. A good debt is when you go and buy a washing machine because it's something that you need and that washing machine is going to stay with you, not just one day or two days, it's going to stay with you, hopefully, for 20 years, which is the way I like to buy my washing machines, at least. That is a good debt. That is when we are investing in our homes and in the things in our homes. Going out and buying a gourmet dinner that might cost $200 or $300, however, is good for one day, if that, or it might be good for three hours. There is a difference between good debt and bad debt. I am very concerned that the government does not know the difference between the two and that we are spending a lot of money for things that are hot topics, but we are not spending on long-time prosperity.

The Bank of Canada has actually lowered the forecast for the GDP down to 1.1%. That has not even been within a year. It was 1.4% that was forecast in January, prior to this budget, and unfortunately the Bank of Canada is seeing the light as well and seeing that it is going to be 1.1%.

When this budget was tabled, it was not just organizations like the C.D. Howe Institute or the Fraser Institute but also the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, along with the members of the Conservative Party, that were very concerned with what was in the budget.

As I said at the beginning of my speech, we are seeing more groups, more organizations, and more individuals jumping on board, saying that this budget is not delivering the stimulus that they thought it was going to, this is not what the Liberals promised, and this government is not doing what it promised. I think that is one thing people are saying. Yes, they cast their vote in 2015, and like I say, we talked about seven million compared with six million, some of those people, 39%, cast their vote for the Liberal Party and many of those people are sitting there with voter's remorse, saying that they are not getting what they thought they had voted for.

We now see the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, and the Business Council of Canada all being much more skeptical of the spending being done by the government.

However, there are also other groups. This is one thing I was really quite surprised about. We have a Prime Minister who talks about building relationships and one of the key relationships he is going to have is with first nations and aboriginal peoples.

Last week the Standing Committee on the Status of Women had the opportunity to listen to a lady by the name of Tracy O'Hearn. Tracy was representing the Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada. She talked about the work they had done regarding violence against women and a program that was done through phase one under the Conservative government.

Phase one of their program had some fantastic results, but they are ready to initiate phase two. In the last year, the current government, which is trying to build relationships with first nations people, has not been part of these negotiations and has not been at the table to communicate with them. We are not seeing a progression. We have seen some great things started, but they are now halted because the Liberal government has not acted.

This building of relationships with first nations is something Conservatives see as another broken promise. The NDP opposition has also had to put forward some of these concerns, because we have a government that is not listening. It is promising but not listening.

There was also confirmation by the parliamentary budget officer that the Conservative government left a $2.9-billion surplus in the 2015-16 fiscal year. The government proposed to spend its way to prosperity. If we just take the numbers out and do not look at what the Liberals were spending, we see that the Conservatives did very well as a government.

When this budget was proposed, a lot of economists said deficits can be good and in the previous session an NDP member asked my colleague if it was right to have a deficit. In 2008, 2009, and 2010 when Canada went through the worst economic downturn, Conservatives actually spent wisely. We had shovels in the ground and created retraining programs. We did everything we possibly could to get people back to work. That is why we were one of the first countries to recover from the economic downturn.

The current government is saying that it will spend its way to prosperity, something that seems to be okay because economists have said, yes, it could go into deficit as long as it spends money well, but we have not seen the money being spent well. The government is going into deficit and we are not seeing anything for it. Instead, people in Canada are floundering. The government is looking at employment insurance reform and things of that sort, rather than creating jobs.

One thing I am very proud of is being the critic for families, children, and social development, so in the last two minutes, I am going to touch on the changes to the Canada child benefit.

Once again, in the election campaign, it was all about nine out of 10 kids doing better under the Liberals' program. I have done the numbers and there is a lot more money being spent. I am not going to say there is not, but once again, the Liberal Party was selling something on which it had never put a pen to paper to see what the actual numbers were. There were not true estimates done.

As we debate Bill C-29, the CCB is being indexed. Back in July when these payments started, the first thing the media noticed was that the money was not being indexed and the programs by the Conservative government were actually better than the ones by the Liberal government today. With the indexing now, there is going to be double the spending on the Canada child benefit. A program that is already very large and questionably sustainable is going to be doubled in the next five years. That is absolutely poor fiscal management.

Yes, there are going to be hiccups and difficult things in the first year of taking over as government, Conservatives understand that, but there seems to be no focus. It is about spending and spending, but not creating prosperity or opportunities for Canadians. The government thinks if families have problems, it will give them more money, not opportunities to be educated or build new roads. The government is not going to do those things. It will just throw money at the problem, and that is not what is supposed to be done.

This government is in charge of the country and in charge of its finances, and I am very concerned that the promises the Liberals made in 2015 are extremely irresponsible. I am very concerned about where we will see our government and our country by the end of October of 2019.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

I completely agree with him. We did not hear the term “infrastructure asset recycling” during the election campaign. It is not until the end of Bill C-29, on page 228, that there is mention of what the Minister of Finance may do for the sound management of the consolidated revenue fund on terms and conditions he considers appropriate. Perhaps this would allow the creation of an asset recycling system. I believe it is essential, for everyone's well-being, that infrastructure remain in the hands of the public. Management of our public sector should not be privatized.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-29. I have been listening to all the debate that has been taking place, and I note that we as members of Parliament seem to be debating lots of different things all at once, and not necessarily always Bill C-29, especially on a day such as today when we are eagerly awaiting the Minister of Finance's update.

Obviously today we are anticipating the fall update on the economy and the state of public finances. I look forward to that. Although I have the opportunity to deliver a speech now, I plan to take part in the lockup on the economic update.

We know that any minute now we will be getting additional financial information from the Minister of Finance, and some of the media reports that foreshadowed what we may see in that report have become part of this debate as if they were in Bill C-29. They are not, so we do not know much about what will be proposed. There are concerns, as many colleagues have raised, about what might be proposed around infrastructure, what might be proposed around specifics of an infrastructure bank. It is not in Bill C-29. We are also talking today about the budget document itself, and much of what is in the budget document is not in Bill C-29.

Let me just clarify for parliamentarians and those who may be watching us today across the country what Bill C-29 is.

I try to be as fair as possible in all circumstances, and I railed against the omnibus budget bills of the previous government such as the spring omnibus budget bill of 2012, Bill C-38, which changed more than 70 different laws and regulations and abolished important institutions of public policy such as the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. It did many things that were never referenced in the budget. It extended itself well beyond what a budget should usually do. This was the spring omnibus bill of 2012. The fall omnibus bill was Bill C-45, and it completely gutted the Navigable Waters Protection Act, while the spring omnibus bill gutted the Fisheries Act and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

I reflect on that just to say that there are different kinds of omnibus bills. There are illegitimate omnibus bills and there are bills that take into account many different measures but all flow from the budget. This is in the category of legitimate omnibus bills. There is nothing in here that is not required by what was in the budget document that we received last spring. Last spring's budget set out changes, particularly to the Canada child benefit. It set out changes to various aspects of the Income Tax Act. If Canadians were to pick up Bill C-29 and read it, I do not think I am making too much of a stretch to say that they would find nothing that would be alarming.

There are provisions to begin to understand how we measure carbon emissions in terms of emissions allowances, how taxpayers would account for that, and how Revenue Canada and the Department of Finance would account for that. There are certainly new rules for charities and extensions for what kinds of donations could be considered charitable donations. There are provisions that are purely to do with the tax code, as one would hope when one is looking at a budget bill.

It is not an illegitimate budget bill, but it does of course allow us to turn our attention to the budget and to reflect on what was there and what was not there in relation to the promises made in last year's campaign.

We are just about at the one-year mark for this new administration and it is fair to reflect at the one-year mark on policies related to budget matters today, so I will stay within the frame of budgetary matters in my presentation. However, I have to say, in providing commentary on Bill C-29, and I want to be honest with Canadians, there is nothing here that gets me worried or upset except for what is missing. I want to be clear about that.

What is missing is that the Liberal platform last year committed to getting rid of subsidies to fossil fuels. There were really only three bullet points under the Liberal platform commitment to climate action.

One bullet point was that they would attend at Paris and negotiate. The Liberals did that and they did it superbly. The second was that they would put in place a national carbon price, and that is a work in progress. I bemoan the fact that the starting price is $10 a tonne but the architecture of it is fair and will only top up those provinces that have failed to define how they want to price their emissions.

This missing piece really deserves much more attention.

The commitment was clear that subsidies for fossil fuels would come to an end. The 2016 budget on page 221 commits until the end of the period in which the previous government had already committed subsidies for a new class of subsidies for liquefied natural gas in 2015. Some may say that LNG, liquefied natural gas, is a fairly clean burning fossil fuel but when it comes from fracked gas, which the LNG industry in British Columbia is projected to come from, it has the same carbon footprint as coal. Seeing a provision in the legislation that would continue this well into the future is a concern. That should come to an end much sooner.

We also were promised a lot of spending on infrastructure but when we look at the actual budget figures, only one-tenth of what is promised on infrastructure will occur before the next election. I really am keen to hear what our finance minister is about to announce later today. If we are trying to stimulate the economy through investments in infrastructure, then we really have to make those investments in infrastructure and we have to do it sooner rather than later. We have only one chance of the money flowing to things like public transit, which we urgently need.

There is reference in the budget to a small amount of money over a two-year period for examining what we need to improve Canada's east-west electricity grid. We need that urgently. Canada is a big country and we tend to have far too many interprovincial barriers. We are familiar with talking about interprovincial barriers to trade but we do not think so much about the interprovincial barriers to electricity. Why is it that provinces struggling to go off coal are having trouble buying renewable energy from the province next door? We really do need to invest in what is a real nation building project. It would create jobs and the fastest root to de-carbonizing our electricity grid is to improve access across provincial boundaries.

We can look at the absurdity right now of what is going on in Newfoundland with respect to Muskrat Falls. Nalcor is building Muskrat Falls, and CEO Stan Marshall has already referred to Muskrat Falls as a boondoggle that should never have been built. Newfoundland will be coming cap in hand to the federal treasury to look for money to bail out that project but it will find that it is throwing good money after bad. Nova Scotia says it cannot shut down coal until it gets an underwater cable all the way from Muskrat Falls.

Hydro-Québec sits right next to the Atlantic provinces. Hydro-Québec's electricity could get exactly as far as Moncton, turn a switch, open up the electricity grid, and work out the financing. Part of the problem may be that Manitoba Hydro and Hydro-Québec prefer to sell south to the United States because sales to the U.S. do not affect their equalization payments. If we start thinking like a country, we might figure out how to maximize the benefit from electricity generated in one province and ease access in another.

Going off fossil fuels as quickly as possible should be a national goal, while at the same time ensuring that the fossil fuels we use in Canada are the ones manufactured and refined in Canada. We have the beginning of a made-in-Canada solution for our energy, for our workers, for the Alberta economy, if we are willing to invest in refineries instead of pipelines and take away the subsidies to fossil fuels as was promised.