Madam Speaker, before I start my speech, I would like to comment on what was said by the hon. member for the Reform Party about simplification. Of course there is a case for simplifying the entire tax system, and I am referring to income tax returns as well as tax shelters, but I do not think we can agree on everything, and there are other options that should be considered very carefully.
Bill C-9, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act, has an aspect that may be somewhat odd, I suppose, for members on the other side of the House. In fact, we are legislating measures that arise from the last budget. I am not sure, and I did not go through Hansard to see what the reaction was to these measures when they were announced, although it might be interesting to do that, but now, they have no choice, and neither do we. These measures must be enacted. This legislation will implement measures which in fact businesses were able to take advantage of all last year. Legally, these measures had not been adopted, but they will be in the weeks to come, which will more or less finalize what was announced in the last budget. These are very technical aspects.
However, there are also some principles involved, and we could do a repeat of last year's budget debate, but we cannot really affect the outcome. The fiscal year will end in a few months, and by that time we will have a new budget, in a matter of weeks even, and there are rumours it might be in less than two weeks. At that time we may have something more interesting to discuss.
Nevertheless, there are a number of comments we would like to make about the last budget and the measures arising from that budget, in a final attempt to influence what will be in the next budget, and especially in next year's budget, because the Minister of Finance is already saying they will not have time to put everything they want in this year's budget and that it will have to wait until next year.
Whether that is the real reason, who knows? I think they are hoping for a strong economic recovery and that they are overestimating the positive impact of economic growth on the deficit, despite all the nice speeches by the Minister of Finance and despite his good intentions. He said that he would not repeat the mistake of the past, the mistake of the Conservative government in overestimating evenues. We can see from last year's budget that spending was grossly underestimated, and the Liberals say they will not do that. As far as revenues are concerned, I can tell you that we will be watching closely.
The dozen or so measures contained in this Bill were announced in the December economic statement and in the budget last May. The rest is made up of changes to the wording of the law. All that is very complex, given the number of areas covered by the Income Tax Act, and with time we even get conflicting clauses, but I will come back to that.
These measures were meant, to a great extent, to stimulate small and medium sized businesses. That was really the target sector. There was also something for research and development, and finally measures concerning exploration for natural resources.
That budget had extended for another year the use of registered retirement saving plans for home buying. This is a good measure which we hope to find again in this year's budget for application next year.
I heard some members say that representations were made by some of their constituents showing that this particular measure had a positive impact. Obviously this is a kind of measure which is easy to evaluate, and that is interesting.
I will conclude, not on the basis on my speech but on that of the proposed measures, that the government will have to do better in the future.
Last year's budget was very disappointing. It seemed as though the government wanted to preserve maximum flexibility so that the next Conservative Party Leader would have the leeway to adapt it at will. Maybe that was not a good idea. I do not believe that, in these difficult times, we can postpone for a year, not even for a few months or weeks, our fight against the deficit nor efforts towards better management of public funds. It seems we have wasted a year and that is very disappointing.
What do we expect from the next budget? A decrease in expenditures, naturally; but we also hope it will propose a complete tax reform. We have heard nothing along that line yet. We feel as though we were preaching in the wilderness. We
cannot wait for the government to announce even a slight intention of addressing that issue, of reviewing our very complex personal and corporate tax system. Such a measure would increase the confidence of Quebecers and Canadians alike in their taxation system and thereby, their confidence in their representatives and institutions.
We expect a simplification of the process. As my colleague, the member for Portneuf said: very few people can prepare their own income tax return. It is not an easy task to read the Tax Guide; even the one you receive with the short form is quite exacting. Just think of the elderly; it is not easy for them. Even if we prepare specific short forms for senior citizens, it remains too complex.
There are many measures that could benefit people who, unfortunately, do not understand them. They do not know that they apply to them. They are ill-equipped to use the tools they are told could be of benefit to them. They hear about them from a friend or a colleague, but more often than not, they ask an expert, such as an accountant, to prepare their income return for them. These people do not tell them what they should do to improve their financial situation and personal planning. It is very complicated and that is the reason why very often new tax measures bear more heavily on the middle-class since it is having a difficult time adapting rapidly to changes or even understanding quickly the tax system.
Those who can benefit fully from it are the most wealthy, which causes people to say that the system is unfair. You do not have to go very far. We all have heard, at one time or another, someone in our riding say that the system is unfair, that the rich pay less taxes. Even if there is a trend, statistics show that, on the whole, it is not true; of course there are exceptions, and even a few are already too many. They create a lot of discontent.
Let us look more closely at the dozen of provisions contained in the bill. The first one is interesting to look at and study from the following point of view. On this side, we often talk about overlapping jurisdictions. But we forget to mention interdepartmental co-operation, a very complicated issue. The Auditor General mentioned it and pointed at a lot of things that could be improved. The government is doing something with one hand and doing something else with the other that reduces the effect. In last year's budget, this first measure said that unemployment insurance premiums would be reduced as a way to create more jobs and to encourage businesses to hire more people. This year, it was already announced that unemployment insurance premiums would go up at the beginning of January. In the same year, they give with one hand and take with the other. People have trouble getting a clear message from that. There is something very contradictory. In the same fiscal year, there was a change of government, but the policy orientation is hard to grasp. I am the first one to say so. Why did they do that? We suppose that they took the money to finance the infrastructure program. That may be a reason or it may be to finance something else as well. But I have trouble understanding why with all those resources and so many competent people around, we find ourselves in situations where contradictory measures are taken, not by the same government but by the same level of government. To be sure, we can understand that in some cases the federal and provincial governments act differently, since they do not always share the same policy orientation, but it is very hard to accept the same level of government acting in a way that contradicts itself.
There are also temporary investment tax credits for small business. The temporary nature of this measure-
Madam Speaker, would you please ask hon. members to-