They froze their grants right off. Imagine what that did to the leaders of the municipalities across the country. They were shocked. All of a sudden their plans went out the window. They had been dutifully planning, working hard on behalf of the residents of their cities, all for naught because the Conservative Government of Canada froze their grants overnight without telling them anything about it.
You know how wrong that was, Mr. Speaker. You know how wronged the people of Canada were at that point. You knew what a wrong and inappropriate decision that was to take, but the Conservatives took it nevertheless. It was a very dark day for our country and a very dark day for the House of Commons.
I know that my colleague from Winnipeg—Transcona remembers the day when that announcement was made. It was a very dark moment, but that is what we have to live with from time to time. My friend from Winnipeg—Transcona says that to this day he has not gotten over that shock. I know he means it because it was one of those dastardly deeds that takes place every now and again in the House of Commons.
Something had to be done. We could not allow the federal government to do whatever it wanted to anybody and at any time. Constitutionally it had the right, and it used it in a very brutal and inappropriate fashion.
I congratulate the people at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities for the excellent work they do on behalf of municipalities across the country. They have a thoughtful, very democratic, grassroots approach in terms of policy direction. They said “Something has to be done. We can't have this any longer”. Therefore, Bill C-10 started that long process and today it is at report stage and we are looking at some of the amendments put forward by my hon. colleagues.
It is a bill that we support as New Democrats. Anything that brings transparency, anything that brings a sense of reasonableness, of decency, of fairness, of equity has to be supported. This bill is a major step in accomplishing that.
Basically, the bill will change the term “grants”. Let us face it, today “grants” has become a four letter word. It has five letters, but basically it is a four letter word. It is a nasty word because of what the Minister of Human Resources Development has done. It is a very bad word because of the abuse, because of the political favouritism, because of the patronage, because of the pork-barrelling that the present government used when granting moneys to various organizations.
Government members said “We have to get away from the use of that term, so we will call it payments in lieu of taxes”, known as PILTs. That makes sense, payments in lieu of taxes.
I recognize the positive aspect of this legislation. If there is a federal piece of property in a municipality, the federal government is obligated to pay taxes to the municipality to reflect the property value. That is how municipalities raise their funds, through taxation, through property taxes. The government recognizes that federal properties must pay taxes; however, there is a wrinkle. There is always a little wrinkle. I applaud my friend from Kelowna for pointing this out.
There is a lot of discretion in the bill. This group of amendments speaks to how the minister can decide whether the government should make payments, whether it should pay penalties on late payments, whether it should hold off making payments and so on. There is a lot of discretion which is left to the minister.
If there is one thing we have learned in the last few days it is that when there is discretion left in the hands of ministers they sometimes seem to abuse it. I use the example of our friend, the Minister of Human Resources Development, whose constituency, by and large, does very well economically and gets tonnes of grants. As a matter of fact, I think we would look long and hard to find a single business or a single organization in her constituency that did not get a grant. She went up to people who were walking down the street and said “Excuse me, I am the Minister of Human Resources Development. Do you want a grant?” Why not? It is very serious. That was a clear abuse of that position.
We are trying to find a way to get around this in the legislation. I applaud my friend from Kelowna, who said that we must ensure there is a clause which requires the minister to explain why he or she is not doing what is asked by the legislation.
We support this group of amendments. They state that if the minister in his or her wisdom decides not to pay the taxes on federal property in a particular city, that minister has to explain why he or she is not doing that.
There are problems, and I will refer to two of them. My friend mentioned already the situation in Halifax with the Citadel and the discussion of who owns that piece of property, how much of it is federal and how much is municipal. There is also the issue of first nations properties within city limits. Is that federal property or is it first nations property? Where does that come in?
There are areas where it will take discussion and perhaps, in the end, even a court decision before the final outcome is determined.
This group of amendments would give the minister some flexibility. However, ministers who have flexibility cause Canadians to squirm. Therefore, we are saying “Yes, we will give the minister flexibility to deal with these special cases, but the minister must explain why he or she is not paying the taxes that the municipality is expecting”.