Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Chair, I am concerned by the motion for a couple of reasons.
First of all, I think it has the propensity to pit one group of Canadians against another. I don't think that's positive. Mr. Turner is well aware of this situation. He understands the extenuating circumstances that extended from this situation. Families that lost their homes, that received stock option payments in lieu of payment.... These stock options did go up in value rapidly. They dropped in value even more rapidly. They had a gain on paper, but they never saw a dime of the money, and they had millions of dollars of tax liability with no ability to pay it whatsoever.
The government...and indeed former Prime Minister Martin was quoted publicly numerous times as saying that he had instructed the finance minister to fix the problem. We ran on a promise in 2005 and 2006 to address this specific problem--not for everyone, but for this specific group that were terribly discriminated against by the tax laws in this country. It was a specific situation with extenuating circumstances. That's why the government acted. That's why the previous government thought the right thing to do was act, but they did not.
I think this motion only has the ability to pit groups of Canadians against each other. It's not a study that this committee should be entering into. If the member decides to do so, he needs to understand that his new party is on the record as supporting this position, supporting this action. When he ran in 2005, he specifically ran with this as part of the agenda of the party that was ultimately elected to government. Now he wants to do a study into it and pit Canadians against Canadians. I think that's awful. I don't think it's productive. I think we can find better ways to spend our time.
I strongly urge everybody on the other side of the table not to do this. This is about people's lives. This is about families that couldn't pay their bills. This is about people who lost their homes through no fault of their own. That's what this is about. If you really support going on a witch hunt to drag these people before us and try to make some kind of big stink about it because you think there's a scandal there, that's outrageous. It's awful. These people were wronged through no fault of their own, and they stood to lose everything. Thank goodness the government had the integrity to act on a promise to these people.