Mr. Speaker, as the member for Windsor West just said in his presentation, we are going to continue the fight for the passage of Bill C-265. We are going to continue to press the Liberals to live up to their thus far broken promises of two elections ago.
We are going to continue that fight led by my colleague from Essex, a brand new MP who has a fire burning in his belly for the seniors who are a particular part of this bill. We are going to be joined by the NDP and the hon. member for Windsor West, who is leading the charge on behalf of that party, and by the Bloc Québécois. We are going to continue this fight because what we are dealing with is an attempt to rectify one of the cruelest tax grabs in the history of this country, a tax grab put onto over 80,000 seniors in this country by the Liberal government when the current Prime Minister was the minister of finance.
Mr. Speaker, I am going to tell you a little Christmas story if I may. I know you like Christmas. I just want to explain how the Liberal government, when the current Prime Minister was the minister of finance, spoiled Christmas and devastated Christmas dreams in 1995 for over 80,000 Canadians. I will be quoting as I tell this story.
During the Christmas season of 1995, most Canadians were enjoying Christmas, preparing for that special day when the family would get together and they would talk about how blessed they were to be living in such a great country, although yes, it is difficult to get by for some Canadians, including our seniors who are existing on pensions.
In this case they were seniors who had spent some time living in America, had qualified for social security benefits, and had moved back to Canada for whatever reason, but they were getting pension benefits. And particularly for those seniors, over 80,000 of them, here is what happened to them. They received a Christmas letter that shattered their lives.
It is important to point out that these were Canadian seniors who had already retired. They had already spent many years looking down the road to see how their retirements from their working days were going to be. They had made plans. They had set aside funding to supplement whatever pensions they were going to get, and for all intents and purposes, they had their plans all set.
They were on fixed incomes and they were going to receive pensions: first, a social security pension from the U.S., and second, a pension from the Canadian pension plan. They were quite satisfied to live with the fact that 50% of what they were receiving from the United States was going to be taxed in Canada. They were quite satisfied with that. They were getting by because they had made plans.
Suddenly they got a letter in December 1995 from the U.S. social security administration stating that beginning on January 1, 1996--and we must remember that this was December 1995--there would be a 25.5% non-refundable withholding tax applied to their benefits. This came out of the blue. Why? Because the Canada-U.S. tax treaty had been amended to allow the country that issues the benefits to collect the tax. We are talking about maybe three weeks' notice about this after they had spent years planning how their retirement incomes were going to go. We are talking about three weeks' notice that a tax increase was coming to these seniors who were living on their pensions and whatever other personal savings they had been able to put away. This was a life-changing thing.
The current Prime Minister, who was the finance minister back in those days, is the same minister who promised tax fairness to every Canadian in the 1993 red book. However, as the current Prime Minister says, he used some expletives in describing the red book, which I will not do in the chamber because it is not allowed, but he admitted that he wrote the red book and that fair taxation was in the red book. This is another example of a broken promise. He wanted to beat the crap out of seniors with punishing taxation measures and have them only three weeks' notice.
It was in December 1995 when they would have received it and it was to go into force on January 1, 1996. It did go into force and it caused severe hardship to this particular group of 80,000 and some seniors.
In 1997 or thereabouts the protocol changed again. Most seniors listening to the election promises of the Liberals prior to the 1997 election believed that they would revert back to the original 50% inclusion.
What happened was that the new protocol now said that Canada would collect all the taxes but that instead of the 50% threshold, it would be increased to 70%, up to 85% of what they were getting in social security payments. This represented a huge tax grab and would further destroy the financial plans of these 85,000 or so seniors.
I think it is important to point out that all the time that this was going on, the current Prime Minister, who was the minister of finance at that time, was also talking about closing some offshore tax havens, which he did. However, while he was beating up on this group of seniors with this punishing amendment to how the taxes between the two countries would be collected, he was closing some of the offshore tax havens for shipping but managed to leave open the Barbados connection to which most of his ships were registered. This multi-millionaire created a tax haven to unfairly collect tax refunds and tax exemptions that most Canadians could never in their wildest dreams imagine would happen to them, unless of course they were the finance minister making the rules.
I am very proud of the member for Essex who has made a commitment to the seniors in his riding. There was so much pressure on these seniors that they had to band together and form an organization in order to add a little more clout to what they were saying. The group is called seniors asking for social security fairness. I guess fairness is the word.
The member for Essex has spent a lot of time discussing this discriminatory tax protocol with them. He understands their plight and he understands how the sudden imposition of a new tax level has caused them a lot of distress, which is something they do not need in their golden years.
I congratulate the member for Essex who, given the demonstration since he came to this Parliament, will be around for many years and for many Parliaments to come. He is a dedicated young man and one who has just added a new member to his family but here he is today fighting on behalf of about 85,000 seniors who have been victims of this very discriminatory, unfair and cruel tax grab perpetrated by the Prime Minister of Canada, who was the finance minister back when this all took place.
I thank the NDP, the Bloc Québécois and all our caucus members. I hope all those over there who know this is right will have the courage to support the bill brought forward by the member for Essex.