Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-37, an act to amend the law governing financial institutions.
I was glad to see that all the members of the Standing Committee on Finance delivered the bill back to the House in such an expeditious manner. We certainly look forward to continuing the debate here.
A vibrant 21st century economy requires, at its bedrock, a strong and well regulated financial sector that is not needlessly bound by red tape and yet, at the same, protects the interests of its citizens.
In many respects, Canada's financial services sector is the envy of the world. The expertise of our financial services sector is often sought out by our international friends. It has also helped our homegrown Canadian banks make real progress in expanding their services to other countries.
In fact, while our banks currently employ about a quarter million Canadians here at home, they now employ roughly 40,000 other people around the world. Indeed, this function of our banks, and at least as much our insurance companies, in taking on the world overseas in China, in India and in many other countries, is a very good thing for this country. Canada, as a whole, needs to take on the world. We need to compete with China, India and other emerging economic giants and, therefore, it should be core and central to government policy to prepare us for this new, highly competitive 21st century.
While our banks are certainly doing well, our government in the past year has been totally asleep at the switch. In terms of preparing Canada for the 21st century economy, I would contend that just as the government wasted a year when it came to the environment, cutting environmental programs until it woke up and looked at the polls, similarly, it has been totally asleep at the switch and totally wasted the last year when it comes to building a strong economy for the 21st century.
It is not a great puzzle what has to be done. We in Canada will compete with China and India, not through low wages, which is the last thing we want to do, but through good ideas, a highly educated workforce and research and training, which are all the things the government has cut.
We must also compete through lower income taxes and competitive taxation but the government raised income taxes.
At a time when the government has literally been swimming in money, with huge surpluses bequeathed to it by the previous government, it saw fit to slash funding for research, cancel programs for training Canadians and to raise income taxes. Those are all things that are the antithesis, the opposite of what has to be done in order to prepare Canada for the 21st century economy.
It is not as if our competitor countries have been standing still. We can look at what Australia has been doing. While our government insults China, Australia has been negotiating agreements with China. While Australia has reduced its income taxes, increased credits for low income Australians and made company taxes more competitive, what has our government done? It has raised income taxes. Yes, it has reduced the GST but that does nothing to make our country more competitive. While Australia forges ahead, Canada sits back and does nothing.
The United Kingdom is another example. It has ambitious targets for research and development over the next decade, backed by government support to achieve those targets. The European Union has even more ambitious targets for research. What do we do? We slash research funding.
I think this is totally irresponsible behaviour on the part of the government. When it is swimming in cash, it has no excuse for raising income taxes, no excuse for slashing research funding and no excuse for slashing support for training Canadians because it is only through well-trained, well-educated and innovative people that we will be able to take on the world, and the government has gone in the opposite direction.
I applaud our financial institutions for taking on the world and for showing success in Asia, but the government has to go beyond those successes that we see today. The government has to build a strong economy. It has to put in place policies that will create jobs for the future. The government, sad to say, has done precisely the opposite.
To return to the Bank Act, the five year review of the act is not something that happens overnight. In fact, it began more than two years ago, when the previous Liberal government began a consultation process and outlined what ground it expected the review to cover. While it is good to see good Liberal policy brought to this place--