Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the member for Essex. He is picking up on a real injustice that has taken place in Canada and that affects about 85,000 Canadians. I want to point out that a lot of those Canadians live in border communities. The hon. member is from the Windsor area. Hundreds of those individuals live in the Niagara Falls, Fort Erie and Niagara-on-the-Lake area. They are very much disadvantaged and hard done by.
What the parliamentary secretary did not point out was that those social security premiums those individuals paid all those years were not tax deductible against their American income tax. In fact, Canadians working in the United States were taxed at the very highest rate, much higher than if they had been residents of the United States. They were taxed at the highest rate. They did not get a deduction for the social security premiums, unlike his example of the individual who collects Canada pension plan. That individual did get those deductions all the way through. The 50% inclusion rate was a matter of being fair. What was unfair, was that it was changed.
He and all members of the Liberal Party know that this was very unfair to people who had planned their lives and their retirement upon getting American social security and then the tax changed from 50% to 85%. This is why I applaud and completely support the initiatives by the member for Essex. These people should not have to wait until there is a Conservative government. It should be done now. It should be done in this Parliament. This should be rectified. They do not have to wait until the Conservatives are the government of the country again.