Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate a number of the members who took the time to review some of the provisions of Bill C-40 as they relate to their regions or matters which are of particular interest to them or their constituents.
In the question I asked of the previous speaker, I was not being facetious. I looked at the bill and took the opportunity to review its various provisions. Being the co-chair of the scrutiny of regulations committee, it made me wonder why so many of these provisions which appear to be clarifying or directed at operational efficiency are not necessarily changing the legislation with respect to the exigency of a tax.
One member described this as an omnibus bill. That is exactly what it is. It touches a number of acts. It does not read as a story from beginning to end where everything builds on everything else. In fact, one has to have in hand the related legislation and the specific sections to which those changes may relate and then they must be looked at in context. I suspect that if we were to take all of the related documents that tie into this to help us understand what it really meant, it would probably take days and days simply to peruse everything.
Having said that, it certainly makes a good case for those who craft the legislation to consider the use of regulations more fully in terms of providing the tools to those responsible for accountability of the legislation to be able to make the kinds of changes where fairness or operational efficiency, et cetera, may be the object. Any regulations appended to a piece of legislation must be authorized by the legislation itself. We cannot make law through regulations, but we can certainly provide the detail.
As a chartered accountant I have spent many years playing around with provisions within the income tax system. That document is very unwieldy and cumbersome, but in some respects it takes into account some of the other tools that are available to modify legislation or at least the application of legislation by the use of regulations. There is a variety of other documents, whether they be interpretation bulletins or information circulars, which also help Canadians.
I wanted to raise that point simply because it happens a lot in this place. It is very difficult for members of the finance committee who have the opportunity after second reading to have witnesses from the department come forward to provide explanations. Everyone is not a tax expert. What is needed is the lay language, what we lay out for other parliamentarians.
The way this place operates, very often parliamentarians have seconded the responsibility to do the due diligence on legislation to their colleagues at committee. They accept that the work has been done in a proper fashion and that the key elements of concern have been raised with officials and other witnesses, who may be stakeholders and have come before the committee to deal with it. It makes it very awkward to ask what the relevance is of the third reading debate if we cannot really get into some of the detail.
There is a lot of detail here. I am not sure whether or not there will be many answers forthcoming from the House. It would be a very interesting process to try to explain some of these measures. For instance, there is a page and a half which deals with the definition of what a returnable container is and a returnable container charge. The amendment in one aspect takes about a half a page to insert the words “the returnable container in a province”. That is the change. I am not sure whether or not there is anything more to that, other than there has to have been a dispute at some point in time where someone challenged the legislation on a clarity issue and this was simply a matter of trying to resolve that and put that issue to bed.
A number of members talked very well with regard to the changes as they affect charitable groups and organizations. I certainly concur with the direction of the changes that have taken place, particularly since most members of Parliament have been extensively involved with charitable groups. Those groups have had very good representation on the Hill. A number of the points they have raised, whether it be directly with members or through related committees, have been very helpful.
Scanning down the list of issues, some who may be watching will probably wonder why we are talking about the GST and HST. That came up in the 35th Parliament when there was legislation to provide for the replacement of the GST with a revenue equivalent, which was taken up by certain provinces. The HST, which stands for harmonized sales tax, rather than goods and services tax, combines both the federal and the provincial taxes into a one line item.
In this bill the principal measures that were taken with regard to the goods and services tax, or where applicable the harmonized sales tax in certain provinces, have to do with a couple of key areas, certainly in the area of health. With regard to health, Bill C-40 confirms the GST-HST exemption for speech language pathology services. It also exempts health related services rendered in the practise of professional social work, zero rates sales and the importation of a blood substitute known as plasma expander. It restores the zero rated status of a group of drugs collectively known as benzodiazepines. It broadens the specially equipped vehicle GST- HST rebate so that the rebate applies to motor vehicles that have been used subsequent to being specially equipped for use by individuals with disabilities.
I looked at those specifically. I cannot say that I have looked at much more in the bill simply because there was not sufficient time to do it properly. The one area where I thought the bill opened up some interesting horizons has to do with the exempt status of health related services rendered in the practise of the profession of social work.
If we look at the related legislation and look at the practise of social work, I have a feeling that the discussion of this and maybe the change that has been made here may open up a broader range of requests for the same exempt status with regard to social work as defined. I am not sure that is a bad thing either, but it does point out that the tax system is never static.
When certain changes are made, others in the same or similar activity want to examine the rationalization for a change in the Excise Tax Act or the Income Tax Act. They want to more fully understand whether or not we are talking about providing benefits to certain groups that may have a stronger lobby or that may have come up with certain other challenges or interpretations to the application of existing rules, to changes in regulations or to changes in the laws in other jurisdictions. We often want to look at those to ensure we are keeping up with the trends with an international filter on what we do.
I thought that was interesting and I certainly support it conceptually. I do not know what might come up, but every time we touch something, others see a relation to their work somehow.
On Friday I had an opportunity to work in my constituency office. I had a visit from a gentleman who has a business which provides home care for seniors. It is an expansive home care service, and includes such things as bathing, medication, shopping, almost whatever service the senior might need. The gentleman asked whether there was any way he could get some breaks. It is an important job and he has to pay people, which is his biggest expense. He would like some sort of subsidy or assistance because, like most social work, it is generally some of the lowest paid work on a per hour basis of most professions. There are a lot of people who are paid very, very poorly in the provision of social related work.
I am not sure how we get from here to there, but this is part of that whole argument about the prosperity gap, about the difference between the rich and the poor. That gap is widening. There are only certain amounts of money. For people who require social assistance, as related to the social work definition, there is only so much that can be afforded and only so much that can be taken out of the customer to provide the services. I flag that issue. This may open up some interesting horizons for a number of businesses that qualify under the current definition of the profession of social work.
There is the discussion also related to charities. As I said, I certainly agree with the exemption of supplies by charities of real property under short term leases and licences.
There is a section on business arrangements. I do not think I can add any more to the debate on that.
There was some discussion about tobacco and alcohol. I thought it was interesting. This morning my private member's bill related to alcohol warning labels was before the House. I looked very carefully at the provisions in Bill C-40 to see if there was a tie-in. I suppose the only tie-in is that they both relate to alcohol, but not with regard to the tax.
In any event, with regard to tobacco, this bill extends the requirement to identify the origin of tobacco products to all products, including those for sale at duty free shops or for export, consistent with the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which is an international treaty on tobacco control. It also clarifies that cigarettes, tobacco sticks, fine cut tobacco and cigars, but not packaged raw leaf tobacco, may be supplied to the export market or the domestic duty free market. These changes were made, I am sure, from the interventions of the duty free industry and certainly those who are involved in the export market. We have had a number of discussions over the years about how we operate vis-à-vis other countries with which we have trade relations.
With regard to alcohol, the bill authorizes private laboratories, provincial liquor boards and vintners to possess a still or similar equipment to produce spirits for the purpose of analyzing substances containing ethyl alcohol, which is beverage alcohol. Ethanol is another word that is used to describe it. It is a poison, but I will not go there because that is a whole other area of interest, certainly with regard to me, but in any event, with regard to analyzing substances containing ethyl alcohol, it authorizes laboratories, boards and vintners to possess a still or similar equipment without holding a spirits licence.
That is interesting because it seems to me that in our legislation having a licence to do something, to possess things and so on, is a precursor to doing certain activities. In this particular case, I am sure that probably a number of petitioners made argument before the tax authorities that in the case of private laboratories or provincial liquor boards and vintners, where the analyzing of substances takes place, the need for a licence was not necessary. I suspect that we are talking about some other regulatory implications, but in this particular case I suspect that the licensing process may be a problem for some of them.
The other area I simply want to comment on is the GST rebate program for tourists. As we know, this has been a very contentious issue for a number of members of Parliament, particularly with regard to those members who are in border areas.
Tourism is an extraordinarily important part of the Canadian economy. I had the opportunity to chair the outdoor caucus of our caucus in the last Parliament and I got to know quite a bit about the tourism industry. Particularly after SARS, which was I think what spawned that caucus, that group of parliamentarians interested in the tourism impacts, it was amazing to find out how sensitive the industry was to disruptions that in fact really did not affect tourist areas but were more in the urban centres. Yet we found that in a broad range of goods and services, whether it was lodging, rental of boats or fishing equipment or other purchases of equipment, all of those things took a dramatic decline.
There is another aspect. I think those members who are from the Maritimes, and in particular P.E.I., will tell you that tourism is down very substantially now. They believe, whether because of SARS or because of the GST rebate program for tourists, that those who had come here in the past suddenly found that this was enough to make them look for substitutes. They started to look for other options. In fact, many found that the substitutes, which were a better economic deal for them, had the same or similar benefits or enjoyment they had when coming to Canada.
Therefore, I am very pleased to see that this also has been resolved. I think it is important that Canada's tourist industry continue to be well supported. It is unfortunate that some damage has been done. In an economic downturn, and in particular where the dollar has been quite strong, we have to be vigilant about the unintended consequences of certain moves.
I think it behooves all of us to continue to urge those responsible for the accountability of our financial policy to think it through very carefully and to do the consultations that are necessary to ensure that our tax system remains not only operational but fair.