Mr. Speaker, I want to acknowledge that we in the New Democratic Party fully support the initiative of this bill and we will be voting in favour of it when it comes up for a vote.
However I do want to agree with the tail end of the speech by my colleague from British Columbia concerning the problems in the forestry industry. We believe the government should be attacking the softwood lumber crisis in a three-pronged attack.
First is the stabilization of the forestry workers in their communities by ensuring that those funds get to where they have to be. To delay it through bureaucratic means is simple nonsense, and that needs to stop right away.
Second, the government needs to go into the United States and, with their allies in the U.S. who are supportive of our initiatives, work toward changing the minds of those congressmen and senators.
Third, the government needs to continue the attack through the legal challenges of NAFTA and the WTO.
I have a very simple question for the member. When it comes to business deductions and expense deductions, what is the difference between a toolbox and a laptop? A business person with a laptop can travel across the country for his or her business and deduct those expenses, but a worker with a toolbox cannot. That has to change.
Although we do know what the member from the Conservative Party is saying, that this just targets one specific section of one specific set of workers, the fact is that we have to start somewhere. I am sure the hon. member from the Bloc would love to have included all kinds of people, like carpenters, metal workers, name it.
We have a tremendous amount of people who leave Atlantic Canada and move to the oil patch but they cannot write off their traveling and meal expenses, et cetera. However if they were accountants or lawyers they could write off those expenses. All we are asking is that there be a little fairness in the taxation system.
The Bloc member has done it very strategically. He has taken one section of the occupational workforce and one aspect of the tax deduction in the motor vehicle. We know this is a start, and no, it does not include all other workers at this time, but in opposition, sometimes we have to throw the Liberals a bone. Hopefully they will chew on it a bit, like the taste of the marrow and run with it, which is really what is required. We want them to say that it actually makes sense. We want them to ask what the difference is between a toolbox and a laptop.
My colleague from Yukon knows how many people travel up and down the Dempster highway, the Alaska highway and the Campbell highway to and from their jobs. If they are business people they can write off their mileage as an expense, but if they are forestry workers they cannot. We fully support the initiative of the Bloc member in this particular regard.
However, at the same time, we would like to see the government move fairly quickly in terms of including many other workers who come from here. We have workers from Nova Scotia, in the building trades for example, who have been asking for quite some time to be included in budgets, to be given the opportunity to deduct their meal expenses, their vehicle transportation costs and their lodging expenses. They do not want to sit at home and collect EI or welfare. They want to be able to follow a job somewhere else in the country in their trade because they have pride. However, if it is extremely cost prohibitive, if they cannot afford to get to a particular place, then they are behind the eight ball and that is unacceptable.
We need to allow these workers who wish to move to another part of the country, where they will have an opportunity for employment, to do so. We should be congratulating these people. We should be honouring the fact that they are willing to leave their homes in order to find work in other jurisdictions in Canada. We should be assisting them through the tax system so they are not prohibited from making that decision.
I do not want to be critical of the business community. If they are willing to move across the country and assist other businesses in their endeavours, that is great, but if they get to write off their expenses, then surely forestry workers should be allowed to do the same when it comes to their motor vehicles. When we as members of Parliament travel across the country to follow our critic areas, our expenses are covered.
We are just saying that if we are doing our job in terms of our constituents and the Canadian people, then we ourselves should apply those same types of principles to the workers of our country, especially to those forestry workers.
We thank the hon. member from the Bloc Quebecois for bringing this very worthy bill to the floor of the House of Commons where the debate should take place. We encourage the government and all opposition members to seriously look at this type of initiative to see where we can go forward on this to make it easier, especially financially, for workers who are transient in following their workplace.