Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to the first group of proposed amendments to Bill C-10.
Although I believe that the bill still does not go far enough to ensure that municipalities get their fair share of property taxes from federally owned property, I believe that it is an improvement to the original Municipal Grants Act.
When the bill went to committee, my colleague, the member for Tobique—Mactaquac, was successful in having his amendments adopted by the Commons committee. One of the provisions of the bill would create a new advisory panel to resolve disputes between the government and municipalities over evaluation of federally owned property and payments owed to municipalities.
Originally Bill C-10 proposed that the Minister of Public Works and Government Services appoint all the panel members, pay them, choose the chairperson, and he would be able to fire them at any time if he disagreed with any of the panel's decisions. This was a problem because public works is involved in most of the disputes.
One of my colleague's amendments would give the panel members more independence by having them appointed and paid by the cabinet instead of the minister. This would ensure more balance and fairness within the panel, although I personally would have preferred a much more independent structure.
It is very clear that municipalities are not being treated fairly with the system that is now in place. I met with the people of the municipality of Alma last week and they have very good reason to be upset with the government. This is what the citizens of the municipality of Alma had to say about this matter:
We are very concerned with this government's cuts in federal payments in lieu of taxes that our municipality has been recently experiencing. We are the Service Centre to Fundy National Park, which is located in the Alma Parish. We have federal buildings inside the municipality as well, those being the Alma Post Office and housing owned by Fundy National Park.
Also they obtain money from the provincial government to help cover fire protection for the local service district, which includes the national park.
They go on to say that the assessments for the outlying areas were cut by $2.5 million, which was reflected in a decrease to the municipality over $3,000. They also lost $34,166 in federal assessments, which cost them a decrease of another $3,921 in revenue.
A small community with a population of approximately 312 residents cannot afford these cuts, as it cripples a community such as Alma.
I agree with the people of Alma and I must add that the citizens of the community of Dorchester in my riding are finding themselves in the same situation because they have in their community a federal correctional building.
I sometimes wonder if this is part of the government's long term plan in closing rural communities.
Let us face it, first we took away employment insurance benefits, which directly affected small rural communities. That forced people to leave their communities, which forced schools to close, meaning less families building in communities. If that is not enough to shut down the community, the government cut federal payments in lieu of taxes to make sure these municipalities could not survive. That is the Liberal way.
Unfortunately the amendments we are debating today will not fix all of the problems within the Municipal Grants Act and I will explain why. One of the amendments proposed today is that we change the language of the legislation so that the federal government is compelled to pay its tax bills just like every other municipal taxpayer. I certainly agree with the intent of this amendment, but unfortunately municipalities are not recognized as a level of government in the constitution or by the federal government. They are entirely a creation of the provincial government. It is understandable that my friend would come up with a simple solution, which, on the face of it, would appear to make sense. Why not treat the federal government like any other taxpayer?
The problem is that we have a constitution that we have to live with today. Although I am sure that we all have things we would like to see changed in the constitution, none of that will happen today. According to our constitution, as it is now, municipalities do not exist, they have no jurisdiction in law and they do not have any official relationship with the federal government or the crown. Therefore, the federal government cannot be bound by any decisions made by a municipality. It can only undertake to voluntarily follow a decision or a bylaw passed by a municipal government.
These amendments, although well meaning, would have the effect of changing the constitution without going through the constitutional amendment process. Nevertheless, I congratulate the member for having brought forward this point for debate. This is a subject which merits further discussion.
With respect to Motion Nos. 8, 9, 11 and 12, the member for Kelowna is attempting to address the outstanding issue concerning business occupancy taxes and certain crown corporations. Specifically these amendments would require Canada Post, the Royal Canadian Mint, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and similar crown corporations to pay business occupancy taxes.
Certainly the mandate of these crown corporations has changed over the years since the Municipal Grants Act was last updated. It used to be that these crown corporations served a purely public policy purpose and in the unlikely event they every made a profit it was more by accident than by design. Now these corporations serve two purposes. Not only do they continue to serve an important public policy role, but they also have the mandate to earn a profit in order to recover costs and to lessen the burden on taxpayers.
I agree with the hon. member for Kelowna that if these crown corporations are conducting business and earning a profit they should be paying business taxes. The question is how much. After the discussions our party had with representatives from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, and after having questioned witnesses from the FCM at the public works committee, we are convinced that this is a problem that will soon be solved.
Municipalities and the federal government are continuing to negotiate over what portion of each crown corporation is devoted to purely profit making activities. That discussion is not yet finished. Municipalities have asked us not to hold up this bill while those negotiations are ongoing as there will be an opportunity to fix that issue in the very near future.