Mr. Speaker, I was surprised by the comments of the previous speaker, my friend from Riviere-du-Loup. I know the member quite well. We served on several committees together and I know him to be very thoughtful on policy. But he may have been mistaken when he came into the House. The bill we are debating today is Bill C-28, an act to amend the Income Tax Act, not legislation referring to employment insurance.
I would like to reflect a bit on the all of the debate I have heard here. I was not necessarily going to speak on this bill when it first came forward because I assumed that it would slip through this House very quickly because of what it contains. I am surprised by the speeches that have been made by the Reform Party and the Bloc and the New Democrats when they look at this piece of legislation.
The member for Riviere-du-Loup has just taken some time to tell us about a series of other very important issues of concern to him and his constituents. But I would ask him and I would ask other members, when it comes to the substance of this piece of legislation, exactly what part of it they are against. Are they opposed to the increase in funding for health care and education and social programs? Are they opposed to the improvements in the registered education savings plan that allow people who can contribute to registered education savings plans to have greater ability and greater flexibility in the management of those plans?
It is not the only answer for education savings. There need to be other strategies and other supports brought to bear, because people in Canada have differing levels of ability or differing levels of economic capacity. But for those who can save, the registered education savings plan is a very legitimate strategy. To make that more reflective of today's costs and to make that a more efficient instrument strikes me as a very positive change.
Perhaps they are opposed to the changes in transfer pricing. This has been an argument that as the economy has globalized I have certainly heard raised by the New Democrats and others in this House, the concern about companies being able to shift their profits across borders by the way in which they price internal services within their corporation. We have changed that. Is that not an improvement? Is that not something that if the member for Riviere-du-Loup went back to his 500 constituents and asked them what they thought about it that they would support?
We have increased the tax credits for film and video production services. We have introduced a new refundable 11% tax credit to provide economic development assistance to film and video productions produced in Canada. For those of us who are concerned about our cultural industries in this country and for those of us who see those industries as extremely important in terms of job creation and skill development and in terms of the economic strength they bring to this country and our ability to celebrate our own culture, is that not a good thing? If the Reform Party were doing what it claims to do, representing its constituents, would the constituents who have asked about that not feel that was a pretty positive move? Certainly the strength of the film industry in British Columbia and Alberta is well known.
If we go down to the other major changes, they are all changes designed to do something I have heard people on the other side of the House talk about repeatedly: make the tax system more fair, take out some of the inequities, prevent people from manipulating the system to gain additional benefit they would not normally be entitled to. That is what this bill talks about.
I wanted to stand up today in the end to thank and to congratulate the Minister of Finance. I was part of the SSR committee that first looked at changes in social service, as was the member for Riviere-du-Loup. When the question of the CHST was first raised, a lot of us were extremely concerned.
We were concerned both about the cut and the reduction in support for important and necessary social programs in Canada. We were also concerned about the loss of control, the loss of position, the loss of authority on the part of the Government of Canada to set a framework for social services across the country.
At that time it was pointed out to us by others, including the Minister of Finance, that we were in danger certainly in my province and the province of Quebec and some others of seeing the cash portions of our payments go to zero in health care and losing all of our ability to enforce the principles of health care. It was felt that by bringing all of these programs together under one legislative umbrella it would give us more strength to maintain a national presence and national standards in these important services.
After a long argument in our caucus the Minister of Finance agreed to set a floor of $11 billion. I am delighted to be able to stand here today after four years of very, very tough decisions by this government, courageous decisions. It is easy to make the spending decisions but it is tough to make the decisions to cut and this government has done that. It has taken the tough decisions and tough action to get its spending under control. Finally we are beginning to see some modest benefit from that.