Debates of June 23rd, 2005

An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to make Certain Payments

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. We have been debating Bill C-48 for a week and that is what we are on now. We are not on Bill C-38.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Marcel Proulx)]

I thank the hon. member for reminding us of that, but the hon. member is coming around to discussing exactly that.

[Leon Benoit, Conservative, Vegreville—Wainwright, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member had connected it to Bill C-48 already. Liberals do not want to hear about this, but they are going to hear about this.

These 30 Liberal MPs will not, because they do not have the courage, vote against Bill C-48 and defeat the government, so we can go to an election and through an election decide the outcome of the marriage bill. Because they do not have the courage, Bill C-38 will certainly pass. Many members of the government will not even have a free vote on the issue. There are 30 MPs who will not take a stand for their constituents. They will be responsible for same sex marriage coming into place in this country in spite of them saying exactly the opposite.

Then we have the whole two front rows in the government who do not have a free vote. They are not allowed to represent their constituents. For these reasons, Bill C-38 will pass. It is on their heads.

[Jack Layton, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, either the hon. member agrees with everything I had to say, as he really had no question, or he is choosing to speak on another matter that is not before us.

When it comes to the whole issue of people's tax dollars, it was interesting to note that the Conservative Party chose, without the debate having even begun, to support a very large tax cut to the corporate sector.

We had a view regarding these hard earned tax dollars. People spend a certain amount of each hour of their working day to produce taxes. Rather than give them away to the largest corporations that have done very well in the last little while, as profits are at an all-time high as a percentage of our economic activity and we are below the taxation levels in the United States, we felt, to build for the 21st century economy and to respond to people's needs right in their communities, that it made more sense to invest those hard earned dollars in the priorities of education, housing, the environment, foreign aid and protection in case of bankruptcy.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in the way that the bill is constructed, there is a portion for an education reduction in tuition. In Ontario, for example, we have a clawback. The result of this clawback is that if a high need, low income student were in a situation and this discount were to come into play, then because of the tax credits not being realized, this student would end up with less money than if there had not been this budget at all. Conversely, an affluent student would end up further ahead.

How does the NDP justify this? We, the Conservative Party of Canada, the champions of the poor, want to know how the NDP can justify this?

[Jack Layton, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the whole concept of clawing back was developed by the Conservative Government of Ontario. Actually, I have never heard the phrase “champions of the poor” associated with the Conservative Party. Certainly not in recent decades. It is a bit of a puzzle, given that all of the evidence suggests that the policies advocated by the Conservative Party and implemented by the Conservative Party have increased poverty and made life easier for those who already have a great deal. The question, frankly, is a bit of a puzzle and therefore, I am going to stick with my support for Bill C-48 which is where most Canadians are.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak this evening to Bill C-48, which proposes further investments from unplanned surplus funds.

Not so long ago, less than a year ago, the citizens of Canada asked us to work together here in Parliament. They asked us to make sure that Parliament worked and to make sure that we did a good job.

I want to mention that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Etobicoke North in a few minutes.

As I was saying, we have been working the way the public asked us to. They told us to work together, in partnership, and that is precisely what we have done. We have worked on making sure that the people of this country can receive excellent services. We have also worked on ensuring that their quality of life can improve.

Canada's social foundations are key to our Canadian identity. The Government of Canada has invested heavily in these social priorities in past budgets.

This bill is a natural extension of those initiatives. Nonetheless, before addressing the measures in this bill, I want to briefly explain how the government is able to make these important investments today.

As you know, Canada reported its eighth consecutive surplus in 2004-05, the first time this ever happened since Confederation. I think it is very important to point that out. The members opposite often forget that they put us into a deficit position lasting many years and that it was our government that reinstated surpluses for the Government of Canada. Who did we do that for? The people of Canada.

Canada was the only country in the G7 to show a surplus, considering all administrations, during this fiscal year. The net improvement in the Government of Canada's financial situation allowed the government to invest heavily in the priorities of Canadians.

However, our financial outlook was not always so encouraging.

When we came to power in 1993, as I just mentioned, we had to deal with an annual deficit of over $40 billion. I am not talking about a $40 billion debt. I mean that, in one fiscal year, the then government was in the hole to the tune of $40 billion. This is unacceptable. This mortgaged not only my generation's future but also the future of generations to come, including the generation to which my new daughter belongs and that of millions of other Canadians. We must do whatever it takes to ensure we never generate another deficit. In addition to this, the unemployment rate was high, economic growth was weak and consumer and business confidence was low.

We realized that we needed to act in order to protect the future of generations to follow. And we acted. The government adopted a number of measures reducing spending and restoring fiscal order. As a result, we eliminated the deficit in 1997-98.

Obviously, as athletes know, success takes work. We worked hard. Canadians worked hard. They made sacrifices to help the government improve its fiscal situation. Everyone's hard work paid off big time.

Canada's financial recovery is quite simply remarkable, and the countries that point to us as an example of what to do have clearly noted how we achieved this.

Thanks to these sacrifices by Canadians, consumer and business confidence has been restored, economic growth has picked up and, better still, so has job creation in this vast and beautiful country of ours.

With its finances in order, the government gave more money to individuals and families by introducing the biggest federal tax cuts in Canadian history. It also made major investments in the priorities identified by Canadians, such as health care. As we know, our government has invested $41 billion in order to improve health care for Canadians. Also, we have done work in education, infrastructure, research and innovation, national security and the environment.

The bill we are introducing and ultimately want adopted today, builds on these investments in a number of key areas that are priorities for Canadians. The government shares these priorities.

More specifically, Bill C-48 creates a framework for new investment in important sectors, such as social housing, post-secondary education, the environment and foreign aid.

I can assure you, however, that these measures will not eliminate the old budget deficit rut.

When the government makes decisions, they must be solid and fair. The government must have a financial framework to prevent a return to a deficit, as has been the case for many years in this country.

We also have to pay down the debt, because each dollar of debt we have costs us in interest. Each dollar of interest we pay costs the public in terms of reduced services.

The government has promised to invest $4.6 billion in these areas. These investments will come from the surplus in excess of $2 billion in 2005-06 and 2006-07. According to the estimates, we will also have the means to continue, as I mentioned earlier, repaying our national debt to make sure we can deliver the best possible services to future generations.

I would now like to summarize the investments I mentioned previously that we are proposing for the Canada of tomorrow.

First, for affordable housing, which is social housing, there is $1.6 billion of new money.

I have a very hard time imagining the people on the other side of the House coming to my riding, when we have made very important announcements on affordable housing, and telling the people of Madawaska—Restigouche and the rest of Canada, that it is not important for families to have housing. It is very hard to imagine that there are members in this place, and, worse yet, parties, that think people do not deserve affordable housing.

We, as a responsible government, are working to make sure that as many Canadians as possible get services and housing in keeping with their ability to better manage their personal finances.

Second, as mentioned earlier, the government recognizes that Canadian communities are the social and economic foundation of this country. Be they vast metropolitan areas, cities or hamlets, the communities Canadians choose as their home have a considerable effect on their quality of life and the opportunities for socio-economic success available to them.

The reality, however, is that at the heart and in the disadvantaged neighbourhoods of many cities, poverty creates a demand for affordable housing.

In recent years the government has made a number of investments totalling $2 billion in the area of affordable housing and homelessness. These programs are still being rolled out and in most cases the funding will continue to ramp up over the next year.

We have done the following. In 1999 the government launched a three year national homelessness initiative. A key element of that was the supporting communities partnership initiative, which provided $305 million for local community groups to offer supportive services and facilities for the homeless. Budget 2003 provided a further three year extension to the SCPI initiative at $135 million per year.

Furthermore, budget 2001 announced $680 million over five years for the affordable housing initiative to help stimulate the creation of more affordable housing. Bilateral cost sharing agreements were subsequently signed with all 13 provincial and territorial governments.

I do not have very much time left, so I will now say a few words about post-secondary education.

I graduated from university in 1997. I continue to pursue my studies to ensure the best possible future for myself in terms of training.

To help young people and the not so young in our society, we implement systems, better places to study, facilities to allow young people—not the wealthiest—to get the help they need the most.

Bill C-48 will provide $1.5 billion more for post-secondary education.

In closing, I call on all the members of this House to vote in favour of Bill C-48, which is in the best interest of our constituents and will improve their quality of life.

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this is an opportune time to do a quick review on what got us to this very dismal state of affairs tonight, a true case of foreign affairs I might add.

What is taking place tonight is actually foreign to most Canadians. What the Liberals and the NDP are counting on is that people will not understand the travesty that is taking place before our eyes tonight. They know there is no session tomorrow. There may be one on Monday, although we will wait and see, and then it will be summertime. The chances are that the government will be able to gloss this over.

We need to remember that the government brought forward a budget called Bill C-43. At the time, we looked at it and found that a host of issues, for which we had advocated, were actually in that budget, such as the gas tax that goes back to municipalities. For that reason we gave Bill C-43, which was the main budget bill, tacit approval. We felt that was the responsible thing to do.

At the same time, however, the government was dropping like a stone in the polls. The Liberals had gone into the last election with great predictions that they would sweep the election and come up with something like over 200 seats. However they barely survived because of the good job done by the leader of this party and all of the candidates across the country.

As the Liberals watched themselves drop like a stone in the polls, the Gomery inquiry every day backing up what the Auditor General had said, that this was the worst and most corrupt government in the history of Canada, they were faced with a real difficulty and that was surviving a confidence vote here in the House.

What did the Liberals do? In the middle of some night they crept down the House and told the NDP members at the end that the bedroom door was open if they wanted to crawl and then asked them what would be their price. The price was $4.6 billion to buy 19 votes.

The $350 million scandal in Quebec--

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Marcel Proulx)]

Order, please. I would like to listen to the entire question.

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

The Liberals realized that a confidence vote at that point in time was imminent and that they would not in fact survive. They spent $4.6 billion of taxpayer money without asking the taxpayers to buy 19 votes to bring them to this present state of affairs.

We have less than one hour to talk about $4.6 billion of unplanned spending, the very type of spending in the Trudeau years that plunged the country into deficit depth, the likes of which we had never seen, which the hon. member for LaSalle—Émard managed to deflect by reducing the amount of the Canada health and social transfer by 34% overnight in 1994 and starved provinces in the health and education transfers.

A person 250 years ago, who worked on the very foundations of building democracy and the principles of democracy, and those members need to remember this, made the prediction that one day democracy could collapse under the weight of its constituent demands.

That is what we risk, not the total collapse of democracy. We have seen a democratic deficit. Democracy will survive in Canada because no regime lasts forever. The people of Canada will remember this. They will not be forgetful. They will be reminded of how this bill was rammed through and how the marriage bill was rammed through.They will be reminded. Democracy will reign in this country. This corrupt regime will be thrown out because the people will remember.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Mr. Speaker, let us talk democracy. On June 28, 2004. the people of Canada voted for a minority government, for a Parliament that would operate in a minority context. That is exactly the democracy that the people of Canada asked for, not just of the present Liberal government, but of all of the members. They have asked us to work so as to make sure the country advanced. Democracy has spoken. That same democracy is what I believe we should bear in mind in continuing to work together.

They say the government is corrupt. So why, I wonder, have the hon. member and the members of his party voted in favour of Bill C-43? If the government was so corrupt, why was Bill C-43 so great?

If we look at the environment, we are investing $300 million in the green municipal fund, which ties in with the gas tax rebate this party accepts. Yet it does not accept improvements for our municipalities. That is hard to grasp.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to enter the third reading debate on Bill C-48. I congratulate my colleague from Madawaska--Restigouche for making some very salient points. He took many of the points that I was going to make and he made them very strongly. I will try to recover from that and comment on some features of this budget. I think I should start by laying out some of the things that we do know, some of the background to this budget.

First, we know that Canadians do not want an election right now. Second, we know they do not want the Conservative Party in power. Third, we know the Conservative Party members at one point in time were supporting the federal budget, Bill C-43 but then suddenly they saw the polls and heard the daily testimony at the Gomery inquiry and tried to bring that to the floor of the House of Commons. They thought that maybe they should not support the budget bill after all because it might be a great opportunity to try and force an election.

However, knowing that Canadians did not want an election, the government went to the NDP to see if we could form some consensus around building a better budget and how we could get this Parliament to work. Canadians want this Parliament to work notwithstanding the antics of Conservative members opposite.

What was accomplished? What was accomplished was very important. With the support of the NDP and against the coalition of the Conservative Party and the separatists, we were able to pass Bill C-43 and now we are now debating third reading of the second prong of that legislation, Bill C-48.

Members opposite talk about the government moving forward and how that will eat into all the surpluses. They seem to forget that the government has demonstrated that it can generate surpluses each and every year. This will be our eighth consecutive surplus.

The fact that parties opposite have failed to recognize is that we have turned the economics of this country upside down. We have made the sound financial circumstances that allow us to build on some of the initiatives that we have already started in terms of the environment, affordable housing, foreign aid, training and post-secondary education.

Those were not initiatives that we pulled out of the air, as members opposite would have Canadians believe. Bill C-48 builds on the very initiatives of the government. I am very proud that we are able to do that. We are able to do that because our economy is strong and the government's fiscal capacity is intact after many years of under-performance and of deficits and a deplorable fiscal situation that the Conservative Party created after its eight years in power.

If I could indulge the House, it might be useful to talk about some of the backdrop to this budget. For example, I talked about this being the eighth consecutive budgetary surplus. Within the OECD countries, Canada is considered an economic miracle. As a country, we have consistently performed at about 3% gross. We have unemployment around 6.8%, which is the lowest level in about four or five years. Of course we can do better and we will do better, but 6.8% is pretty sound stuff.

We have low interest rates because of a sound monetary policy of the Bank of Canada that is creating the environment for low interest rates. What does that mean? It means that average Canadians can buy a home and take on a mortgage. We all see that, if we are honest, in our own ridings. People are getting out of rental units and going out and buying a home for the first time. That is what the Canadian dream is all about, and that is possible because the government took the action that was necessary to turn this nation's finances around.

What else has the government done? I will lay out another fact. Because of the budgetary surpluses, we have been able to pay down in excess of $55 billion against the national debt. Is that an end in itself? Of course not. What does that mean? It means that each and every year into the future, not just today, we are saving over $3 billion a year in money that has been used to service our debt. We are going to do even better than that. Our government has set a debt to GDP target of 25%. In fact we are now at around 40%. We came from a position of roughly 75%.

That is what this government has done. While Canadians have set the economic climate, we have set the policies in motion to create the environment for sound economic growth, sound fiscal and monetary policy.

The debt to GDP is the amount of debt in relation to the size of our economy and it is a very relevant figure. In a nutshell, the country has demonstrated strong, sound fiscal and economic performance. The government is committed to moving in that direction. That is why we are able to deal with Bill C-48. It was not hatched in a hotel room on a napkin. It is based on building upon initiatives to which the government is committed.

Let me start with just one of those, affordable housing. The government has committed itself to spending money to help people with their housing needs.

In my riding of Etobicoke North, I visit people in high-rise apartments. They tell me that they spend 30% to 40%, sometimes 50%, of their income on rent for an apartment in a building that is not properly maintained. We have to do something and we are doing something. We also are doing something about the homeless. That is all part of the continuing program already in place and we are building upon that with Bill C-48.

We have many projects as a result of the Canada-Ontario affordable housing agreement in my province and city. We have a number of projects underway that will help with affordable housing for seniors and for people with low and modest incomes.

Then we have the environment. This is not a new concept for this government. Our government has consistently built a program to deal with our environmental performance. Bill C-48, does exactly that. It puts about $900 million to help with public transit and clean air.

I represent the city of Toronto. We have urban sprawl. We need to get higher living densities around public transit. We need to clean our air, reduce the smog and deal with the greenhouse gases.

All we have to do is pick up the newspaper every day and read about the impact of climate change. It is hurting our farmers and a number of people. It is hurting people in the north. We have to deal with that. We cannot put our head in the sand any longer. We have to deal with greenhouse gases.

The budget puts $1.5 billion into training programs and post-secondary education. However, this is not a new concept for the government. We have recognized for a long time that this is a new economy, it is a high tech economy. We have to build the skill sets and knowledge for the people of Canada to participate in our economy.

Finally, this budget puts another $500 million into foreign aid to help those who need our help, particularly in places like Africa. We will continue to do that.

We are committed to help countries around the world, those that are committed to good governance. We will help them show the world that they offer good governance. If they do that, Canada will be there to support them, to help them build their states and nations.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Marcel Proulx)]

It being 23:04 p.m., pursuant to order made earlier today, it is my duty, to interrupt the proceedings and to put forthwith every question required to dispose of the third reading stage of the bill now before the House.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Marcel Proulx)]

The question is on the subamendment. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the subamendment?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Marcel Proulx)]

All those in favour of the subamendment will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Marcel Proulx)]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Marcel Proulx)]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And more than five members having risen:

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Marcel Proulx)]

Call in the members.

(The House divided on the amendment to the amendment, which was negatived on the following division:)

[The Speaker]

I declare the amendment to the amendment lost.

The next question is on the amendment.

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, conversations have taken place among all the parties and I believe you would find unanimous consent to apply the results of the vote just taken to the question now before the House.