Mr. Speaker, in two years in the House I have never seen a bill that all three parties support take so long to get through. Here we are debating the bill when all parties agree to it.
There are a couple of things I would like to say at third reading which I believe are worth clearing up. As everyone in the House has been informed, and for those taxpayers who have been watching the debate and seeing how a Senate bill gets through the House of Commons, there are some items in here that have caused some confusion.
The NDP member for Kamloops and the Liberal member for Gander-Grand Falls have raised some issues on specific items in the bill that have now confused the Canadian public. Now we have to participate in explaining why we support the bill or why some members are against it. There are only one or two people who are against it and it seems a shame that we have to talk about it.
The bill was done through negotiators on behalf of both countries. It was signed on August 31, 1994, so it is already a done deal. What we are doing is giving birth to it, endorsing it or whatever through the House of Commons.
As the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance indicated, it eliminates double taxation, creates a level playing field, reduces the withholding taxes on interest and dividends, royalties and technologies, et cetera. It keeps up with the global need to remain and to become competitive. It is for those sound fiscal and economic reasons that the Reform Party supports the bill.
The bill has a lot of upside to it and will generate a lot of investment opportunities for Canadians in the United States and vice versa with the amount of investment Americans make in Canada. It is a reciprocity agreement. Whatever we have negotiated is a two-way street; what happens in the United States can also happen up here. I remind everyone that in a reciprocity agreement sometimes we have to give to get and sometimes we get to give. It works both ways.
I would like to try to clear up some of the confusion on behalf of the member for Kamloops. My office received a lot of phone calls about the bill based on the tirade over the treatment of universities in the United States and Canadians being allowed to make charitable donations to American universities. If they send their children to those schools, it is an allowable deduction. In typical NDP fashion it is a tax for the so-called rich and the rich should not be able to do anything except look after those people who the NDP deem need to be looked after, rather than having a system that is fair for all at both ends of the scale.
Based on the fact that the member for Kamloops has raised the issue and is getting a bit of play out of it in B.C., I would like to answer some of the questions people have been calling our offices about. I will also address the specifics of the bill. Maybe some of the confusion can be cleared up.
I must admit I am a bit frustrated personally that we in the House of Commons have to enter into a debate over something we were not a part of because. It was in the Senate where all the specifics, details and all the justifications-