Mr. Speaker, I spoke to Bill C-10 during regular debate earlier today. I opened debate on the bill on behalf of the official opposition and outlined our arguments for opposing the bill. As we hopefully come to a close in this sad affair, I would like to review the chronology of how this unfortunate conflict came to be.
It is often the practice of government to hope that opposition parties will accept the rapid passage of technical bills which make so-called housekeeping amendments to legislation. Bill C-10 amends various tax conventions and was presented to us and the other opposition parties as precisely such a bill.
Two years ago a similar bill was brought forward to the House, an amendment to the U.S.-Canada income tax convention. It was presented to the opposition then as a mere housekeeping bill, one without real substantive effect, one that we did not have to debate at any great length, one that could be passed if we were all to get along and do our business efficiently.
What that bill did by establishing the third protocol for the treatment of social security payments to both Canadian and American residents was to impose a considerable and burdensome and prejudicial tax increase on virtually every single Canadian collecting U.S. social security.
The members of the government, undoubtedly in good faith, took the mistaken advice of their officials who had drafted the legislation, advice which said this would not prejudicially affect Canadian seniors, that it would be revenue neutral, that none of them would end up paying higher taxes than they paid under the second protocol before 1995.
We took that on good faith. Seniors took that on good faith. The current deputy prime minister, the second highest authority in his government, said several times on the record that the third protocol would not increase taxes.
What happened? When Canadian residents got their social security cheques after that bill had been passed, many of them were financially devastated. Many were thrown into poverty. Members of the government know this is true. That is why we are debating this bill today. That is why we are trying to amend the mistake it made.
I go over this history not to be redundant but to make the point about what it is we are doing with procedure now.
It is necessary for opposition parties to identify flaws in bills that are presented to the Canadian people as merely technical amendments. Sometimes it is necessary because the government, lo and behold, does not actually get infallible advice from it officials. That was demonstratively the case in the passage of the third protocol two years ago.