Thank you, Minister, for appearing.
I don't think you could have a budget that spends as much money as you have here and not get a few things right. So I will point out that there are some things that are right.
I did like the capital gains exemption in the fisheries. It met the commitment that we had made in our electoral platform. Congratulations for doing it. But I have to tell you, our fisheries minister went one up on you, in that he made a licensing announcement a couple of weeks ago that has completely eliminated the capital gains itself, bringing the licence value down about $300,000 each. I agree with what he's trying to do. Everybody agrees with that. But making the announcement without having it fleshed out creates some anxiety in the industry and has forced down prices.
That's what I think your party did with income trust, where you made a commitment, you made a promise during the election, and then you broke that promise. You end up in a situation where people lose a lot of money on capital value and you have a loss of Canadian assets. We had the governor of the bank tell us that it was an ideal vehicle for certain sectors, that there were problems within the sector. I think everybody agrees with that.
It's the same thing on interest deductibility. Everybody agrees that where there is abuse of foreign low-tax jurisdiction, that has to be cleaned up. But you made the announcement initially on all the interest for investments in foreign markets for our Canadian corporations, which was disadvantaging them. A big fear was put into corporate Canada, into confidence, internationally and in our country, without having it fleshed out.
Since then, you flip-flopped on that issue. You brought it back to a minute point of interest deductibility on the question of double-dipping. You're talking now about towering, and I look forward to seeing how that plays out and how that works out, to make sure that we don't throw out the baby with the bathwater, that we do stop the abuses that are there. But you said you would have that in place by 2012, and you further said that the savings to the Canadian treasury would go to lower corporate tax rates.
Your expert, your Mr. Ernewein, testified that the analysis hasn't been done. There's no evidence that it will bring any increase in revenue to the treasury, and some tax experts suggest that it might reduce the revenue. So I would have to surmise that you're going to increase their corporate taxes, in that case, to balance it out.
But I want to bring you to the point that's the most egregious to me, and that's the Atlantic accord. You weren't in the House at the time, but your colleagues supported the Atlantic accord in the House, supported it to the point that they asked for the budget bill to be split so that they could vote against the budget but support the accord. The accord went through. It's a very good tool for Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, a very good tool. What the accord says is that the revenue from gases, from these non-renewable resources, would be above and beyond any other program of government, not instead of. You have turned it into an “instead of”, where the Province of Nova Scotia, my province, although you've extended it for one year, has to decide if they're going to keep operating under the Atlantic accord, the Canada-Nova Scotia accord, or whether they're going to accept the ready money under the new equalization formula, which, by the way, the Atlantic provinces all agree has a cap.
In your ongoing negotiations with the province, will you withdraw your position? Will you honour the Government of Canada's commitment to the Province of Nova Scotia and respect the full intent of the accord?
