Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate on Bill C-28, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on May 2, 2006.
As hon. members know, the Bloc Québécois supported this Conservative budget, essentially because the Prime Ministerand his government promised to correct the fiscal imbalance in the next budget, which is expected in February or March 2007 to cover 2007-08. Those were the circumstances in which the Bloc Québécois gave its support.
The budget also contained provisions that addressed issues raised historically by the Bloc Québécois, such as the tax credit for public transit. I remember that a member from the Chicoutimi area—from Jonquière, to be exact—had introduced a private member's bill along those lines. We are glad to see that Bill C-28 includes a tax credit for public transit. There is also a textbook tax credit, something the Bloc Québécois has consistently called for, to give students the easiest possible access to textbooks. In fact, we would like to go ever further. I will come back to this.
Lastly, there is the tax deduction for microbreweries. I would like to pay tribute to the extraordinary work done by my colleague and friend from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—I cannot say his name, but he knows who he is—who led the charge on this issue, which I also helped to promote and which was finally addressed in the last budget. I congratulate him on this work and on this success, which is due primarily to the efforts by the Bloc Québécois to convince the other parties, especially the Conservative Party when it was in opposition, that this request was worthwhile. I will come back to this as well.
Because of these provisions, we are going to support Bill C-28. I will describe the bill very briefly, because the people following this debate at home must sometimes be wondering what it is about. It is extremely technical—always a bad thing—but that is the way budget bills are. Nevertheless, it will affect the daily lives of a huge number of Quebeckers and Canadians.
The bill has five main provisions. The first implements a series of tax measures for individuals. For example, it implements credits for apprentices and tradespersons. I want to point out that this is something the Bloc Québécois has been seeking for a long time. Our member from the North Shore introduced—a number of times—a private bill along those lines. It also increases the non-refundable credit for persons receiving a pension, implements a public transportation credit, which I talked about earlier, and increases the refundable credit for medical fees. This is the first main provision, which affects individuals.
The second main provision is on extending benefits to businesses. For instance, it extends to fishing businesses a number of benefits that already existed for agribusinesses. There are various measures in this second section on businesses, capital gains, the transfer of a business to other members of the family and anything to do with agribusiness tax benefits. That is the second main provision, which affects businesses.
The third main provision in Bill C-28 implements various tax measures for businesses, but on other levels. Among the measures in this bill, we find the abolition of the surtax on the revenue of Canadian corporations and an increase of the amount a small business can earn if it wants to benefit from a tax credit. This last item is particularly interesting. Tax equity has not yet been achieved in the federal tax system. This is true for individuals and businesses alike, as we have realized. The purpose of this last measure in particular is to correct, but not entirely, this unfairness in the tax system for small and medium sized business, which, I would like to remind hon. members, are the lifeblood of the Quebec and Canadian economy.
The fourth main provision or series of legislative changes is on lowering the tax rate on capital property for Canadian banks. I will come back to that another time.
Finally, the fifth main provision is on a series of measures to lower excise tax on the first 75,000 hectolitres of beer brewed in Canada in order to stimulate the growth and emergence of microbreweries.
Members know that this is a very buoyant industry in the regions. This is true of Quebec, but it is also true of the rest of Canada. However, our industry is facing ferocious competition from foreign microbreweries, especially American ones, which are not so much on the micro side. They may not qualify as macrobreweries, but almost. These are breweries producing millions of hectolitres of beer each year, while ours produce less than one million. We called for a reduction in excise tax for these businesses, like the one most of our competition is benefiting from in Europe and the U.S. As I indicated, microbreweries are not the same size over there than they are in Quebec and Canada. It would therefore be important that ours have a comparative advantage.
I will not expand any further on that. I will not be able to address all the measures contained in this bill, which, as hon. members can see, is pretty thick. Nevertheless, I will focus on those measures I saw as the most worthwhile or interesting, which I mentioned at the beginning of my speech.
The first tax measure for individual taxpayers described in this bill is a deduction for tool expenses for apprentices and tradespeople. As I said, the government is allowing expenses to be deducted up to a maximum of $1,000 or the lowest of $1,000 or 5% of the apprentice's income over the year. If 5% of the income comes out to less than $1,000, the deduction will be 5%; if it comes out to more than $1,000, then the maximum deductible amount for tools will be $1,000.
Permitting the deduction of those tools is an important step because, as a rule, these people are self-employed workers who live on incomes that are extremely variable. Some apprentices and tradespeople who work for companies are required to buy their tools at their own expense. For example, in most of the garages where our cars are repaired, the tool kits belong to the tradespeople and mechanics. They have to pay for those and, even if they sometimes are on salary, that represents an extremely significant expense.
The maximum will be $1,000 for apprentices and $500 for established tradespeople. This is a measure that we have been demanding for a long time, as I mentioned. Once again, it is late in coming but at least it is there. Tradespeople will be able to benefit from it in coming years.
This tax measure also increases by $1,000 the maximum non-refundable credit to which pension recipients are entitled. The maximum non-refundable credit will now be $2,000. This is obviously a positive measure but it does nothing to correct the poverty in which many of our older people find themselves. In particular, this does not respond at all to the demand that the Bloc Québécois has made many times. Again, I pay tribute to our former member for Saint-Maurice—Champlain, Marcel—