Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to enter the debate on the report stage amendments to Bill C-28, the budget implementation act, 2003. Budget 2003 was an important budget and another budget which continued the tradition of the government of dealing with deficits, creating more budgetary surpluses, reducing taxes, paying down the debt, and investing in priorities that are important to Canadians.
Budget 2003 was the fifth budgetary surplus that the government has experienced in the last few years. We have paid down the debt by $47.6 billion and reduced the federal debt to GDP ratio to 46.5%, which will diminish to just under 40% in the next few years. At the same time, unlike what the member opposite said, the government made some enormous investments in families through the Canada child tax benefit which it introduced. In fact, it will cumulatively reach just over $14 billion over the next five or six years, a huge investment which did not exist before.
Every single year we have introduced more measures to help those with disabilities and this budget was no exception. In addition to that, there were huge investments of approximately $3 billion in Canada's physical infrastructure which will invest in sewers, highways and public transit, and renew Canada's physical infrastructure.
The budget invested $35 billion in the health care system and called for greater accountability by the provinces so that Canadians from coast to coast to coast will have a better understanding of what their health dollars are purchasing, what outcomes are being obtained by the health care system, and how the health care outcomes in Yukon compare to those in New Brunswick. This will allow us to measure what health dollars are buying with the money, tax dollars which are very important to all Canadians.
In addition, the budget built on the measures of the past by protecting the $100 billion tax cut, the largest tax cut in Canadian history, and included other tax measures. It helped small businesses by eliminating or phasing out the capital tax, a tax which had no policy rationale and was basically a penalty on investment. It will be phased out and that is a very positive thing.
The small business tax rate limit was increased from $200,000 to $300,000 which will help small businesses grow and prosper in Canada. They are one of the largest engines of job creation in our economy. Again we will add to the favourable tax rates as they relate to small business in Canada.
I could go on and on about the attributes of this budget. That has been lacking in the debate heretofore apart from my colleagues who have studied the budget on this side of the House in more detail and are aware of the many attributes and positive things that this budget will bring to Canadians.
There were investments in affordable housing. In my riding of Etobicoke North we have an affordable housing crunch. I was pleased to see that the federal government and Ontario recently concluded an affordable housing agreement. We are working in Etobicoke North to capture some of the benefits of that by getting some initiatives moving. Too many people are paying too much in relation to their income on rents and too many people on fixed incomes are being forced out of their homes because of property tax increases. I was happy to see investments in affordable housing.
The budget covered a whole myriad of other things, but I would like to turn to debate the report stage amendments. These are amendments that came through the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance. I believe there was a whole raft of amendments. I cannot remember the exact number, but these amendments were passed in committee and are now on the floor of the chamber.
I should say too that there has been some cynicism about whether the Minister of Finance and the government actually listen to Canadians. I am on the House of Commons finance committee and we do a prebudget consultation every year. We travel from coast to coast to coast, submit a report to the House and to the Minister of Finance.
Just out of curiosity, I wondered how many of the recommendations that were in our report made it into the budget. We went out and asked Canadians what priorities they felt should be reflected in the upcoming budget and they told us. We put those recommendations into a report, took it to the Minister of Finance and we tabled that report here in the House. Two-thirds, or thereabouts, of the recommendations of the House of Commons finance committee found their way into budget 2003.
I would like to congratulate the Minister of Finance and previous ministers of finance for listening to Canadians, for starting the process of prebudget consultations, for not staying in Ottawa to listen to the same old voices, but to actually go out and listen to Canadians across this great land, to find out their priorities, their needs and to listen to what they thought we should do in the next budget.
As I said, two-thirds of the recommendations that were in the finance committee report made it into the federal budget. My colleague, the member for York West, who chaired the urban task force of our caucus, also cited many of the recommendations that were in their task force report that made it into the federal budget.
Let me move on to Motion No. 13 which would affect school boards. It is a very important matter and it has to do with the GST and the application of the GST. Many school boards contracted out their school bus operations which created a GST issue. By doing that, it was argued, they should have a larger rebate than would otherwise normally be available to this type of institution. There were court cases on this particular point and the federal court ruled in favour of some of the appellants. However, at the same time, the government looked at this particular tax policy and said that it really was not its intent, that this was a misuse of that provision.
The government indicated through policy that it would react to that and change the policy, and change it retroactively. Some people might find that somewhat abhorrent. Frankly, the government uses that only in very rare circumstances, but there have been times when the tax policy has been interpreted in a way that clearly was not the intent, and any reasonable person would say that was not the intent or the spirit of the measure. The government did say that of the court cases that had been decided, those school boards would get the benefit of the higher GST rebate, but it signaled that that would be the end of it.
Notwithstanding that, some of the school boards continued through the court system, and therefore the act was changed to reflect the government's stated intention. This motion would undo some of that and it is for that reason that the government is not supporting it. Frankly I see the wisdom behind that particular stance.
We have had discussions here about the motions as they relate to the disability tax credit. By defeating these amendments, we would allow people who have a disability with respect to feeding themselves or dressing themselves, and it does not have to be in combination, the tax credit. It seems to me that is a very reasonable stance to take and I will be supporting that. I will be voting against that particular amendment, which for some reason would take that away from people with disabilities.
However, by the same token, the government is saying that it will not go so far as to say that people will be entitled to the benefit if they have certain allergies to certain types of food which increases their time for shopping, et cetera. I have some friends who have this type of challenge and, while we all empathize with it, the tax system is not really designed to deal with things like that.
I will end things there and say that I will be voting against those amendments and I encourage other members in the House to do the same. I would like to encourage members to support this budget, which is a very fine budget.