Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege for me to contribute to the debate on this prebudget consultation. As the chair of the finance committee, it is interesting to listen to the dialogues of the members.
Before I go on to what I would like to present, I would like to indicate that I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Northumberland—Quinte West.
I would like to describe to Canadians and to this House exactly the process that we went through to get to where we are today in tabling the report. It was a little bit late and we had to ask for an extension. It should have been done, according to the Standing Orders, in the early part of December. We had to ask for an extension because of the prorogation.
The prorogation also added more complications to our ability to travel as much as we wanted to across Canada to listen to people, but we did actually hear 400 different submissions and had 200 presenters before the committee, so it was not that we abbreviated it too much but it certainly was a little different than what was initially laid out.
Last June the committee decided it would study taxation, so we requested to have the submissions based on how the ideal tax system in Canada should work and what changes were to be made in that regard. That is what we listened to up until we got back into session and the committee was reconstituted in November.
At that time, the table had shifted somewhat and we had seen some different things happen in the Canadian economy that we wanted to address in our report. Therefore, there was a motion taken in the committee that we would expand our criteria from taxation to look at the higher dollar.
Before I get into what I want to talk about with regard to the higher dollar and some of the taxation recommendations that we made, it is important to understand the process of the committee and what we are actually trying to accomplish in the report.
Two days ago, on Tuesday, we had a delegation of Russian representatives come to our committee and their questions were actually very interesting. They asked us how we have accountability in our political process here in Canada, how we make sure we are getting value for money, and what the committee is trying to do with the prebudget report that would add to that accountability.
Those were the kinds of questions they were asking us. They are very good questions and questions that the Canadian public should understand because in the committees, particularly in a minority government where the opposition has the larger number of votes and outnumbers the governing party in the committees, we have to understand that we try to lower the political temperature in the committee meetings so that we can talk collectively about what is in the best interest of Canada because we do not report to a minister or a ministry. We report to this Parliament, to this House, and therefore the report contains recommendations to the government in power with regard to the things that it should do in the best interests of the people of Canada.
That is what we are trying to do in committee. That is what we tried to do in this report. I have heard a lot of the banter back and forth and it seems so political. I am sure people at home are wondering how in the world we came up with any consensus in this report. The reality is we came up with a considerable amount of consensus in the report.
We are now laying the report at the feet of the government and I want to just read a little bit of some of the backdrop of the Canadian fundamentals that we are living in at the present time.
Canada is in its 16th year of economic expansion, the second longest period in Canadian history. Canada is the fastest growing G-7 country over the past decade in employment and living standards. Canada's job market is the best in a generation. Our unemployment rates are at the lowest in 33 years. The share of adult Canadians working is at a record high. Inflation remains low and stable, the best in the past 15 years.
Canada is emerging as a superpower in energy. We are the largest producer of clean hydroelectric power in the world. We are the second largest in oil reserves next to Saudi Arabia, and arguably we are the largest but we will not get into that. We rank third in global natural resource production.
Canada is one of the few countries with a public pension system that is financially sustainable,and we are on the best fiscal footing of any of the G-7 nations. All levels of government are in surplus for the first time in 60 years, and we are the only member of the G-7 with a budget surplus and falling debt burden. Since coming into power, this government has created 700,000 new jobs in the past two years.
That gives members an idea of what we are now laying before this Parliament as far as recommendations in the upcoming budget, but a fiscal footing that is to be envied by any country in the world. It is important to look at some of the things that we did agree on when we look at the recommendations coming in this report.
We can talk about our supplementary reports and I like the words “supplementary reports” because they are not opposition reports. They are really supplement to what we are doing, but the things we do agree on are the basis of this report and are very important for us to consider.
We have said we wanted to increase the income threshold to cut personal income taxes. We all agreed on that to make sure the working class would be able to have the appropriate advantages. We all agreed that should take place. We wanted Canadians to withdraw money from their RRSPs to be able to purchase their first homes and to be able to fund their continued education. Those are things that we all agreed on that would be fundamental for enhancing the benefit of all Canadians.
The second thing we wanted to do is make sure we get people out of poverty and into the workplace as much as possible. We want to enhance the working tax credit benefit so that there would be no negative incentive for those who are not in the workplace, who are being subsidized, and who are trying get out of that situation and into the workplace.
We wanted to extend the five year capital cost allowance to manufacturers and processing for machinery and equipment. That one comes mainly because of the second priority when we came back in November. We realized that the climate we came into was not only the strong fiscal footing, but it also had something else that was looming that happened in the last five months prior to the committee actually launching into this study.
That was the massive, unprecedented increase in the value of the Canadian dollar with respect to American currency. It moved up 16% in five months. It went from 94¢ to $1.10 and that had major impacts with regard to manufacturing, the forestry sector, the agriculture sector, tourism and many others.
We wanted to do a quick study on that as well, so we incorporated that into our recommendations. We spent a week or more debating those issues and looking at what we should do with regard to the Canadian dollar in order to help. I believe we have seen the government react more quickly than I have ever seen before because we came up with $1 billion for the forestry and manufacturing sectors for those communities losing these different factories and plants, particularly in the softwood lumber industry.
I know all about that, by the way. My Bloc colleagues are saying it is all about Quebec which is being hurt more than anywhere else. In forestry, there is not a community in my riding that is not impacted negatively by the forest industry. The forest industry is going through a massive problem with regard to the slowdown in the United States. The demand is down. The high dollar has impacted it very negatively. In my area the pine beetle has impacted the industry even more significantly than both of those. So it is the ultimate storm. I know all about that.
I have lost a mill in a small community just recently. It has a major impact in the riding. We understand that full well. It is not just in one area of the country, it is the entire country. That is why the acceleration of the capital cost allowance would be very positive. It is one of the things we need to do. We need to do as much as we possibly can to get us through a short time. Before we get too far down on that thought, there is a quote that I would like to read from the president of the Forest Products Association of Canada. He came before the committee and said:
The best thing you can do for communities is to create a business climate where people want to invest in Canada...I want to be very clear, though, and this is something where I think there has been misunderstanding: we don't want subsidies. We don't want you to come in and save a mill that's uneconomic. What we want to do is make this a place where mills are economic.
That is the difference and that is what really we need to do, not pick winners and losers but set up a climate where whatever is being created is going to be a winning factor. I could go on in many other things. There are a couple more and I only have a minute.
I am going to lay out here other things we agreed on for consideration: one is the Olympics. We believed unitedly as a committee that the Olympics are important not only for the pride of our country but to make sure we deal with issues such as childhood obesity and others, and a $30 million investment to the Olympics for the road to excellence is something we all agreed on.
We wanted to make sure that we increased the capital cost allowance for the railways to make sure we are competitive on that footing as well.
There are many other things that are in the report that we agreed on. I encourage all members to read it carefully. I know the Minister of Finance has been following the dialogue. It is very important that all members read the report.
I will say in closing that we did not want to issue a report saying what we believed. We wanted to issue a report saying what we heard and what we recommended. That is why it reads the way it does.