Mr. Speaker, I am rising to add to the point of order yesterday by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance.
Yesterday the parliamentary secretary raised a point of order after question period challenging my private member's Bill C-259 as amended and reported back to the House of Commons as being out of order.
This was not a surprise to me. The government has opposed this bill in every forum on almost every occasion, even though it passed second reading on January 31 without opposition and with support from many members of all parties.
The reality is that the government opposes my private member's bill in any format. If it were the same as the original wording at second reading, it would say that it did not include watches. Therefore, it is not inclusive and, therefore, it is inconsistent with the application of the excise tax to jewellery.
As amended at committee, the government has said that the inclusion of watches is outside the scope of the bill at second reading in the House of Commons because it expands the bill to include watches as jewellery.
To respond, I would first like to correct the statement made yesterday by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance that Bill C-259, as reported back to the House of Commons, repeals the excise tax on jewellery, watches and clocks. This is not correct. Clocks are excluded by the wording of my amended Bill C-259. It is extraordinary that the parliamentary secretary could get this so wrong.
The central argument that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance is making is that watches are defined separately from jewellery in the Excise Tax Act. Therefore, the bill is out of order because it deals with jewellery in the original text and not watches.
I submit there is clear language in the Excise Tax Act which includes watches as jewellery. Section 23.11 and section 43, which I will quote, clearly support the notion that the term jewellery is intended to include watches by providing the following enumeration, “watch, clock, ring, brooch or other article of jewellery”. If watches were not supposed to be included in this enumeration of items of jewellery, then it would have been written as, “he shall, for the purposes of this Part, be deemed to have manufactured or produced the watch or clock, or ring, brooch or other article of jewellery in Canada”. This construction would have clearly excluded watches from the enumeration of items of jewellery, but this was not done.
Bill C-259 deals with section 5 of the Excise Tax Act, which consists of three paragraphs. On the issue of whether section 5 is separately defining jewellery, I submit that it is clearly not. Legislative counsel argues at worst it leaves the term undefined. Therefore, it is within the jurisdiction of committee to decide for itself whether the amendment to Bill C-259 that was reported back to the House is within the scope of the bill at second reading.
Legislative counsel has dealt with the issue of whether the amendment was out of order both with my office and at committee. I am sure that the Speaker may also wish to seek their counsel or perhaps you have already done so.
Legislative counsel was in attendance at committee and was consulted. I think it is fair to say that legislative counsel was under considerable pressure to clarify his position and was very careful in the choice of language as a result.
I can quote from the last meeting of committee at which Bill C-259 as amended was adopted. That was the meeting of May 19 of this year.
As the sponsor and as a witness at that meeting, I said:
What I would like to do at this time is ask legislative counsel, who is here today at my request, to explain further as to how the term “jewellery” is an undefined term in legal language.
Mr. Doug Ward, legislative counsel, law clerk and parliamentary counsel officer of the House of Commons said, and I quote from the minutes of the meeting:
It's just a straightforward fact that in this particular act there is no definition of jewellery, so jewellery just has the ordinary everyday meaning of that term. There's really nothing more to that point than this.
Later Mr. Jean-François Lafleur, procedural clerk, stated at the same meeting:
When we are dealing with an amendment to a bill, the first rule is that the amendment must respect the section in the bill under consideration. In the bill that concerns us here, C-259, there is an amendment to section 5 of Schedule 1 to the Excise Tax Act. At that point, section 5 is open. It is not just paragraph 5(c). That is the first rule.
The second rule, as the Chair said and as you were saying--
He was referring to the member for Mississauga South:
--is that there is still the question of the scope of the bill. That is the second rule.
[The member for Vancouver Island North's] amendment is fully consistent with the first rule, in that it is an amendment to a section that is already open. There is no problem in that regard.
As for the whole question of the scope of the bill, excuse me for repeating myself again, and I know that you might not like this. I understand full well that the purpose of the bill is to do away with the excise tax on jewellery, but the definition of jewellery would have to be clear. That would enable us to determine precisely what the parameters of the scope of the bill are. But in this case, the definition is not at all clear, as far as I am concerned. An attempt was made to come up with a definition, but it could not be done. That is the conclusion I drew after a few consultations.
That states my case. The finance committee considered all the arguments and the committee chose to amend the bill and report it back to the House. The lack of clarity of the language of the Excise Tax Act, which is demonstrated by this discussion and point of order, is demonstrable of what is a nightmare for the industry also.
For example, three different Canada Customs and Revenue Agency audits of the same set of business activities by the same company have come up with three vastly different results. These results were a multi-million dollar reassessment or tax billing in the first instance, a revised tax assessment of about a half a million dollars in the second instance and a credit from the government in the third instance. This is a matter of public record.
Adoption of Bill C-259, as amended and reported to the House and up for report stage debate today, would terminate this confused state of affairs. The committee, by voting that the amended version of my bill was within the scope of the bill and was consistent with the advice of legislative counsel, has now placed the House of Commons in the same position. I cannot comprehend why this advice would be any different to the House of Commons than it was to the finance committee.
I ask the Speaker to reject the request by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister to Finance to rule Bill C-259 out of order. The bill is in order and I request the Speaker to so rule.