Nothing.
Evidence of meeting #57 for Finance in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was year.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #57 for Finance in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was year.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Senior Economist, International Trade and Finance, Department of Finance
We are currently simply asking that it be listed as a statutory item--
Senior Economist, International Trade and Finance, Department of Finance
--to make it more credible to our stakeholders who are with us in this initiative.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
I have a follow-up question, then. I think this comes in at around 8%. Is there a percentage attached to that statutory item, or does it just allow you to do it? Who sets the rate? How much would you set it?
Senior Economist, International Trade and Finance, Department of Finance
Excuse me, do you mean the rate of--
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
I have it here that government is increasing our spending by 8%. Is there any spending attribute attached to that, or is it just that it takes it out of the vote and allows it to be statutory and it would be there permanently?
Senior Economist, International Trade and Finance, Department of Finance
My understanding is that your 8% increase is in regard to the increase in official development assistance. The bill in question is talking more specifically about a very small subsection of this expenditure, which does not grow at 8% a year. It's actually our decision to take part in this initiative, which was announced in Gleneagles in 2005, to basically compensate the World Bank and the IMF for debt relief they provide to countries.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
Does that compensation have a rate or a number attached to it?
Senior Economist, International Trade and Finance, Department of Finance
Yes. The compensation that is to be provided, the debt relief that is to be provided to client countries, is in the order of.... Canada's part of that commitment is $2.5 billion over the life of the initiative, which is until 2054.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
Okay, so that's an international agreement. We've agreed to that, I assume.
Senior Economist, International Trade and Finance, Department of Finance
Exactly.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
Okay. Thank you very much. I'll go to my second question.
I think there are amendments to Bretton Woods and a bunch of others. Can somebody just explain to me what we're doing there? I'm sorry, I'm being honest with you. What are these amendments actually going to do?
Senior Economist, International Trade and Finance, Department of Finance
I'll ask one of my colleagues to inform you on that one.
Conservative
Nicholas Phillips Senior Economist, International Trade and Finance, Department of Finance
I'm Nicholas Phillips, from Finance Canada.
These Bretton Woods amendments refer to treaty amendments that Canada has actually already ratified. This was announced back in July of this year. We're tidying up the act.
To answer your question about what these amendments deal with, in 2008 IMF member countries came to an agreement. They said a few IMF member countries, specifically the smaller ones and ones that have been growing really fast--developing countries, in general--had inadequate representation and voting power at the IMF, so a decision was made to nudge them up a little bit.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
These amendments allow those countries to participate to a greater extent in the IMF than they have in the past. Is that correct?
Senior Economist, International Trade and Finance, Department of Finance
Exactly.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
Okay. So we've agreed to that as an international agreement, and on our end we're just doing our share of changing the agreements to make that happen.
Senior Economist, International Trade and Finance, Department of Finance
Exactly.
Conservative
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to the witnesses.
Mr. Lalonde, we've often had you here before on technical bills, and we've had problems in the past. It's just a standard question, but given that this is a technical bill, what is your comfort level? We've had problems in the past with other bills, so what's your overall comfort level about how this bill compares with technical bills that you've tabled?
Director, Tax Legislation Division, Tax Policy Branch, Department of Finance
I guess you're speaking of the technical bill that was originally released by one side of the House and eventually tabled by the other. There were some representations, I think, at the Senate committee.
That was properly recognized as a technical bill. It was a very large bill with over 500 pages, as I recall; this is a much shorter bill. It's not a technical bill; it is a bill implementing the measures of the 2009 budget. We would draw a distinction between something that's responding to a number of technical amendments and something like this, which is responding to—in the case of the income tax amendments—the three remaining amendments from the 2009 budget, those being the doubling in the size of the WITB, the introduction of the first-time homebuyers' tax credit, and of course the home renovation tax credit.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
So it's purely an implementation bill, not a technical bill?
There's a whole bunch of other items, some of which Mr. Wallace asked about, that we didn't necessarily see in the budget. That's why I was asking.
Were those items in the budget?
