Debates of Dec. 7th, 2009

(Return tabled)

Question No. 526

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

With respect to the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games: (a) since fiscal year 2006-2007 and beyond, how much money has the federal government allocated to the games and what is the total amount; (b) to what entities has the federal government allocated funds and for what purpose; (c) in what amounts have those funds been distributed and on what dates; (d) how much money is being spent on the “Canada Pavilion” and to whom is its construction and preparation being contracted; (e) what are the requests for proposals that the government invited contractors to bid on; (f) who was invited to bid on government requests for proposals; (g) who submitted bids related to government requests for proposals; (h) who adjudicated the bids related to government requests for proposals and based on what criteria; (i) who successfully bid for government requests for proposals, for what amount were the contracts and what was the purpose of the contacts; (j) how much money has been allocated for promoting bilingualism and French translation, on what dates was it distributed and for what purposes; (k) what is the government’s plan to address the H1N1 influenza pandemic before and during the games; (l) how much money is being spent in regard to an H1N1 plan at the games; (m) what is the lead department or agency in charge of overseeing and executing a plan related to H1N1 influenza at the games; and (n) how much money has the government spent on including aboriginal communities in the games and for what initiatives?

(Return tabled)

Questions Passed as Orders for Returns

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I ask that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.

[Speaker]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I listened very closely to my hon. colleague, just as I did the other day. I still have not heard whether he has answered Question No. 537. Could he go through the list again and let us know? A number of my constituents have been writing letters, emailing and phoning me about Question No. 537.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

It was on the list the parliamentary secretary read off. I followed along, and he did indicate Question No. 537. The member should be able to find the answer.

The House resumed consideration of the motion, and of the amendment.

Disposition of an Act to amend the Excise Tax Act

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

The amendment moved by the hon. member for Vancouver East is in order. Therefore, the debate is on the amendment.

I believe the hon. member for Vancouver East has questions and comments consequent upon her speech. I therefore call for questions and comments.

The hon. member for Mississauga South.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, during her speech, as I recall, the member made note that pursuant to the memorandums of agreement with both Ontario and British Columbia that the arrangement was to take effect for March 31, 2010.

That is true, however, I am not sure if she is aware that the province of Ontario has announced it will pass its legislation before Christmas. The reason for this is that part of the arrangement it is making is to introduce personal income tax cuts effective January 1, 2010, and it wants to have that legislation in place to provide these legislative tax changes to the citizens.

I want to advise the member that those are the facts, which the provincial revenue minister had indicated to us in a meeting last week. It would appear that at least the province of Ontario is anxious for the Government of Canada to provide the facility for it to proceed with its legislation.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is too bad that the member has become such an apologist for ramming this bill through.

As he just heard, we moved an amendment to the motion that would at least require public hearings by our finance committee in the federal Parliament. I am astounded members could not agree that even holding hearings to hear from people in Ontario and B.C. is somehow too much for the House to deal with.

I listened to the hon. member. He has just bought, hook, line and sinker, the argument of his own government. I guess he wants to ram this through, too. We want to ensure people are heard. We want to ensure the bill is not rammed through over people's objections.

Why is the hon. member not supporting the need to have hearings in this Parliament at the finance committee so people in his province and my province can be heard on this question?

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this gives me a chance to answer the member's question, because I think all members of Parliament have received communications from their constituents on the harmonized sales tax question, which has a number of elements to it.

The member who just spoke is quite right. What the Conservative government is doing now is putting closure on the whole process of dealing with this bill. That is reflected in Motion No. 8, the matter that was first raised here, for which the member has now tabled her amendment.

I do not have the amendment. However, if one of the pages could get me a copy of the amendment that was tabled, it would be helpful.

My constituents have been trying to understand what exactly is the role of the federal government here and I have been trying to provide them with some detail. However, I thought it would be helpful for others if there were at least some recognition of what is happening here in the chamber and what is going to happen as we move forward with this bill.

The government has in fact tabled Bill C-62 in the House, the bill that would amend the Excise Tax Act and make all of the necessary changes to permit Ontario and B.C. to pursue harmonization of their sales taxes.

That bill is not before us yet. It has been tabled and printed and is here and members can look at it. They had better have a copy of the Excise Tax Act, because it will be very difficult for members to understand what this means without putting it in the context of the Excise Tax Act itself.

There has also now been an amendment made to change the process. However, the process before the House is such that we will only have one day to debate Bill C-62, when it is finally called. That will be before the end of second reading stage, and 15 minutes before expiry of the time provided for government orders on the day on which this bill is going to be called, we will have votes. We will vote on this bill at second reading, which is basically to provide approval in principle.

Normally, what we would do is to refer it to committee for committee hearings. However, Motion No. 8 goes on to say that the committee is only going to have four hours. This is where the previous speaker decided to move an amendment. What it says in paragraph 2 is that:

not more than four hours following the adoption of the second reading motion, any proceedings before the Committee to which the bill stands referred shall be interrupted....

Hence, it basically says that the committee is going to have four hours.

I can tell members that there are a number of constituencies that are impacted by the potential imposition of an HST, but the discussion in committee will be four hours. It says that the committee has to report the bill back to the House by 11 o'clock that night.

The next part of Motion No. 8 has to do with report stage motions. I raised this earlier as question for a member who spoke. As a matter of fact, it was a question to the finance minister this morning, saying that members of Parliament who were not on the finance committee could attend and listen to a committee meeting, but without the unanimous consent of the members of the committee, they would not get a chance to ask any questions or speak.

Therefore, what is going to happen is that they are going to do their work and at the end of four hours, they are going to have to vote and send it back to the House. The next morning, what is going to happen is that any member who wants to make a report stage motion, i.e., to propose a change to that legislation, he or she will have to submit it by 3 a.m. There are some rules surrounding report stage motions, one of which is that if a matter has been disposed of or considered and negated in committee, it cannot be raised at report stage.

The question I raised with the minister was that it did not seem that members were going to have much of an opportunity to determine whether or not any other amendments would be admissible, simply from the standpoint that they would have to be advised first of exactly what was dealt with in committee. Theoretically, I guess 308 members would have to attend the finance committee meeting to determine what amendments they might be able to make.

Obviously, that is ludicrous. It is not going to happen, unless the meetings are held in West Block and members are provided at least some water while they do their work.

The deadline for getting to the report stage motion is 3 a.m. The bill is then going to proceed on the next sitting day at report stage, if there are any amendments. I suspect there may not be, but if there are, no more than one sitting day is going to be allowed for both report stage and third reading. I am not sure there is going to be a report stage motion. There may be some ingenious way of getting the amendments through, but it is very unlikely we will have an opportunity to debate them in a normal fashion.

My comment to the minister was that we are basically going through a charade. I really do not appreciate it, because the committee ought to be relied upon to carry out due diligence on a bill and to report to the House that it has looked at it and there are no problems.

There are also some stakeholders who may want to appear before the committee and they are not going to have the chance. In a four-hour meeting, after the presentations by the Finance officials on the various aspects of the bill, explaining why they are there and answering questions from members, et cetera, it is very unlikely there are going to be any witnesses.

Quite frankly, we are going through a process wherein we are really not going to be able to do much to change Bill C-62 as presented to us now. The motion before us pretty well shuts down all venues that members normally have to advocate for certain changes.

If we get to a point where the bill is not read a third time and passed by this coming Friday, the House will adjourn on Friday and reconvene on Saturday and we would here then to dispose of the remaining business related to third reading.

I know that many of the members do not like the idea of closure. It is another reason to oppose the bill for those who have a profound disagreement with the introduction of the harmonized sales tax in their province, whether it be B.C. or Ontario, or maybe another province that may ultimately decide to go forward with that.

I and a number of other people met with a provincial minister of revenue on this just to try to understand it a little better. One of the things I really had to understand was the agreement the Province of Ontario entered into with the Government of Canada. It is my province. I have not read the memorandum of agreement between B.C. and the federal government, but I took the opportunity to print it and look at it. There certainly is a lot of ministry involvement.

The memorandum of agreement is referred to in the debate as the MOA. We will also hear about the Canada-Ontario Comprehensive Integrated Tax Co-ordination Agreement, referred to as the CITCA. There is also the Canada Revenue Agency and a lot of people will talk about the CRA, as well as the Canada Border Services Agency, the CBSA, which will administer the Ontario value added tax, the OVAT. If people are not confused yet, they will get confused unless they have a glossary of terms and acronyms.

For this agreement negotiated by the Conservative Government of Canada with Ontario and B.C., the necessary legislative process and the signing of appropriate agreements have to take place before March 31, 2010, except where otherwise authorized by the MOA. Canada also undertakes to seek approval of the Governor in Council to enter into the agreement.

As for the implementation date, Canadians will probably know that the proposed date for the harmonization of sales taxes in the two additional provinces to be effective is Canada Day, July 1, 2010.

The transitional provisions are important. There is a provision under the provincial tax policy flexibility that, subject to reasonable notice, the province, in this case Ontario, could increase or decrease its value added tax rate two years after the date of implementation. So there is actually a freeze on this, and there is not going to be a change before the two years are up.

It is important that people understand in regard to the implementation of a value added tax and a harmonized sales tax that when taxation systems get too many exceptions and too many details, they become very cumbersome to administer and, certainly, to apply, which causes an awful lot of difficulty. Therefore, the agreement stipulates that there will be a designated, limited number of OVAT point of sale rebates, that is, for the Ontario value added sales tax, not to exceed 5% of the aggregate. It means there will be a limit in place in the agreement on how many items can be exempted from the harmonized sales tax, and that is why there are a number of items that members have already noted do not currently attract a provincial sales tax. I think there is provincial sales tax on shoes of over $30 in value, but not those under $30. Now shoes are not even going to be exempt at all. It is not easy to say that we will now implement an 8% tax increase on shoes under $30. A lot of these kinds of examples will come up, but we have to remain focused on what this chamber has been asked to do.

There are some other provisions with regard to input tax credits. I do not believe they have agreed yet, but there is an undertaking to agree on the rebate rates and thresholds for the MUSH sector. Members may recall the discussions with regard to municipalities, universities, schools, colleges and hospitals; and charities and qualifying housing NPOs. I am sure there will be significant discussions with those sectors because, currently under the GST, they do get some extra assistance with regard to rebates or input tax credits, for which they are eligible.

This whole agreement is based on a common tax base, and I should indicate that all of this information is available on the Ontario government website. There is no questions that if one took the GST collection system and the provincial system and combined them into one, then one would have a whole administration for collecting the taxes, processing the documents, doing investigations, fixing errors, et cetera. It is a tremendous cost. As a matter of fact, there are some provisions in the agreement whereby it is mutually agreed that the provincial tax policy flexibility provisions will be collected and administered at mutually agreed upon service and compliance levels by the Canada Revenue Agency and the Canada Border Services Agency at no cost or charge to Ontario.

In addition, Canada will be solely responsible for all the revenue agency and border services agency start-up and ongoing costs, including their development and systems costs, so there is a substantial savings in terms of eliminating costs at the provincial level. These costs will in fact be billed to the province on the basis of usage in terms of the processing involved with the provincial taxation component.

The agreement says, “Canada agrees to pay Ontario its revenue entitlements on a daily basis. For greater clarity, the allocation for a tax entitlement year will be paid to Ontario in estimated daily amounts determined using the revenue allocation framework beginning July 1, 2010”.

There are some provisions with regard to the exchange of information agreement with regard to human resources. There are some other changes. During the transitional period, though, the province will be able to continue to operate the system so that a transitioning happens when things get sorted out. Whenever we have a change, there are always things that are going to come up, so they have made some transitional provisions.

I was not aware of this, but there is going to be an appointment of a panel. Both the Government of Canada and the Government of Ontario have agreed to appoint a panel or an individual within six months following the implementation to review and make recommendations on possible improvements to the administrative and policy information available; the revenue allocation framework, such as replacement by a system that would provide distribution of revenue to Ontario, and harmonized sales tax provinces, based on actual sales of goods and services in such provinces; and finally the governance and organization structures of the various committees under the Canada-Ontario agreement.

Therefore it is anticipated that there will be ongoing fine tuning with regard to the agreement.

I encourage members to consider looking at the agreement. I understand that once we get through this procedural phase, it would appear there is not going to be much chance of amending Bill C-62. It is going to be presented to the House on probably the fastest track one can ever imagine.

What members probably should consider is the fact that Ontario and B.C. have made a judgment: in their judgment, this policy of harmonizing the taxes makes sense for their economies.

Having met with the Ontario Minister of Revenue last week and having seen the presentation on how this would work, I could see clearly that the Province of Ontario is hurting badly; in fact, its projected deficit for the current year is about $24 billion. The job loss in Ontario is extraordinary.

Faced with the prospect of having this implemented now, people were saying it might make good policy sense, but the timing is not good because everything is so bad in the economy. However, both B.C. and Ontario have been arguing that it makes sense because it is going to provide an additional stimulus in their provinces to create jobs. In fact, about 591,000 jobs will be created in Ontario, according to Jack Mintz .

We might wonder where this money is coming from. Earlier I had an opportunity to pose a point to a member and ask for his comment. It had to do with the difference between this tax and what happens when GST is charged on a product.

As most Canadians know, GST is only paid once, and that is by the end user or consumer. For any GST paid by a wholesaler there is an input tax credit, so in the case of the GST only the 5% is ultimately paid.

The provincial sale tax is different. At every level of motion through the economy until it gets to the consumer, provincial sales tax is charged; then it is added to the input costs of the next buyer, and then it is charged again, and it cascades. That cascading of the provincial sales tax is really where it is coming out.

Canadians in Ontario can look forward to tax cuts on their personal income tax effective January 1, 2010, as well as a credit of up to $1,000 to help with the transitioning. I hope they will have an opportunity to be well informed about the implications of this bill on the economy of Ontario.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague and I did not hear a word on the issue of closure or the fact that just a few weeks ago members of the Liberal Party were standing in the House telling the Prime Minister that his time was up.

At the end of his long soliloquy supporting the Conservative government, that member expects us to believe that 591,000 jobs, or maybe 592,000 jobs, would be miraculously created in Ontario if the tax burden were shifted onto senior citizens. We are supposed to accept that blather without being able, as politicians, to do due diligence, to hear from witnesses, to hear from senior citizens.

I have heard from senior citizens in my riding and from right across Ontario. They have spoken out consistently on this matter, but they are not getting the opportunity to speak here because they are being shut down.

I did not hear a single word about first nations people in Ontario, first nations people whose treaty rights are going to be erased at the stroke of a pen for the convenience of the Conservative Party and the greater convenience for the Liberal leader from Harvard, who simply wants this to go away.

If the member believes that this carbolic syrup is so good that it should be forced down the throats of Ontarians, why is he supporting the Conservatives in shutting down discussion that would allow witnesses to be brought forward so that they could speak to the reality of what this tax burden would--

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The hon. member for Mississauga South.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, those who are going to be affected with regard to this tax in their province will have the opportunity at the provincial level to deal with its implementation. We are not dealing with it. As the member knows, we are only dealing with an agreement with the provinces. That is what we are debating. We are playing an enabling role, not a detailed role.

What this means to Ontario is the creation of 591,000 new jobs, an increase in capital investment of $47 billion, and an increase in annual incomes of up to 8.8%, or $29.4 billion.

The member also mentioned seniors, and we will learn more about this as we go through the process.

About 93% of Ontario taxpayers would get a permanent income tax cut. Eligible families earning less than $160,000 would receive $1,000, and individuals earning less than $80,000 would get three payments totalling $300 each. There would be new refundable sales tax credits, similar to the GST credit, that they would get at the provincial level. I can talk only for my own province, but 93% of people in Ontario would be better off under the harmonized tax system than they are today.

Those are the facts. We will get a chance to debate it a little further.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member should start practising his lines for next July 1, when taxes go up all over Ontario and people start paying tax on a lot of things that they did not have to pay tax on before.

The member is trying to have it both ways. He is following his caucus line here in supporting the Conservatives and the closure motion on the actual bill itself and trying to defend it. I do not think it is going to wash, because we have done enough surveys to know that 80% to 85% of the people are against this tax.

The minister is basically trying to drive this through the House just days before the Christmas holidays and pretending that somehow the devil made him do it and that he really did not want to do this, but we have numerous quotes that we can give in the House. One of them is from the 2006 federal budget. It says, “The government invites all provinces that have not yet done so to engage in discussions on the harmonization of their provincial retail sales taxes with the federal GST”, yet the member is trying to pretend that this is all being driven by the provinces.

Manitoba had the good sense to say no. The throne speech given on November 30, just a few days ago, stated, “Manitoba is rejecting an invitation from the federal government to introduce a harmonized sales tax. As proposed, the HST would impose more than $400 million in new sales tax costs on Manitoba families at a time of economic uncertainty”.

Who is the member trying to kid?

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am not afraid to stand up in the House and give my opinion to the member. I can tell the member that the Government of Canada and the Province of Ontario entered into an agreement to move forward with this.

In my view, this has an awful lot to do with the economic recovery of the Province of Ontario with regard to creating jobs and increasing business investment. In fact, 93% of Ontario taxpayers will get a personal income tax cut, and in fact all Ontario taxpayers will see a 16.5% cut in the income tax rate on the first $37,000 of their taxable incomes. That will be the lowest rate among all the provinces in Canada. Ontario families and individuals with incomes up to $80,000 will get an average personal income tax cut of 10%.

These are the things that have to be taken into consideration. If I wanted to argue the other side of it, I would say it is increasing a tax here. However, if I put everything on the table and look at it carefully, I know that the vast majority, 93% of Canadians, will have more money in their pockets after this measure is implemented than they do now.

[Greg Kerr, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Veterans Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, I am just wondering if the member, in doing his extensive research on this important topic, found out whether the NDP had contacted any of the provinces in Atlantic Canada that implemented this measure several years ago to find out how they have made out. As a matter of fact, I think the new NDP Government of Nova Scotia seems to be quite comfortable with this arrangement. It serves people very well.

I wonder if he might comment on that for us.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I can only speculate. I do not think that the members are looking for reasons for them to support this motion and the bill on the agreement.

I think the important thing here is to be honest with Canadians about what is happening and why. If we look at the circumstances that all our provinces are finding themselves in, the challenges of job creation, business investment and reducing personal taxes are all extremely important.

I could put it all on the table, look at it, and ask people if they would be prepared to take an income tax cut that on average, for most people in Ontario, would be a 10% cut. For those with lower incomes, it would be a 16.5% personal income tax cut. Would that be a good thing? What would people say if they had to pay a little bit more on a product because the government is trying to make the taxation system a little simpler, but they got the tax credits and the personal income tax cuts? If they looked in their pockets and found that they had more money in their pockets after government made this efficiency change in the tax systems of Canada, would that be okay?”

I have found that a lot of people did not know about that. That is what is happening now. The bill has not passed yet. The province has not yet passed its bill. I do not know on what basis people are being asked for their opinions, when the bill is not even before the Ontario legislature.

I believe members should be careful about what they say is going to happen, because it is not--

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

We have time for one more question or comment.

The hon. member for Burnaby--New Westminster.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Mississauga South called this a charade. He is absolutely right, but the real problem here is that we have Liberals supporting this Conservative attempt to run completely roughshod over every democratic principle we have in Parliament. Parliament, dating back centuries, was established in order that there would not be the kind of taxation that these Conservatives are bringing in without the types of public hearings, representations, democratic votes, checks and balances and procedures that these Conservatives are destroying with this closure motion.

My question is very simple: why are the Liberals supporting this Conservative attempt to crush the opposition that comes from nearly half the country, including 74% of Ontarians and 83% of British Columbians? These Ontarians and British Columbians oppose this massive tax shift from big corporations to ordinary families, who are going to be paying $500 to $2,000 more a year. Why are they supporting this?

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the reason is quite simple. It is because the income tax cuts that the Province of Ontario is going to be extending to all taxpayers in Ontario are going to be effective January 1, 2010. That means that this House has to ratify the agreement and the bill to amend the Excise Tax Act.

This, to me, is part of the economic recovery for Ontario. If Ontario is doing better, Canada is doing better.

[Jean-Yves Laforest, Bloc, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Finance introduced his budget in late January 2009. In it, he announced compensation for British Columbia and Ontario for harmonizing their sales taxes with the GST. Since then, the Bloc Québécois has asked I know not how many questions in the House about when the federal government plans to do the fair thing and compensate the Government of Quebec and the Province of Quebec for having harmonized its tax 18 years ago.

Quebec has been doing what others are doing now for 18 years and has never received compensation. In January, the government's Minister of Finance announced that he would provide billions of dollars in compensation to Ontario and British Columbia, but nothing has yet been done.

Today, we have before us a motion to hold the debate on the bill relating to compensation for British Columbia and Ontario in two days, but we have not even seen the bill yet. The government has started debating the motion before the bill has even been introduced in the House and before the Bloc Québécois has had a chance to speak to part of the motion. We voted on part 8 of the motion before even seeing the bill. Of course the Bloc Québécois members will vote against this motion. It is unacceptable for the government to ask us to agree to a debate on a bill that may—I have to say “may” because we have not seen it, so we do not know—have repercussions on potential harmonization and potential compensation paid by the federal government to the Government of Quebec. That is what the government wants.

We are being asked to accept that a bill be introduced, read and agreed to, all in just two days, when Quebec has been asking for $2.6 billion in compensation for years now. Why should we concede so easily? It makes absolutely no sense, that is for sure. I said 18 years, but really it has been 17 years. Quebec harmonized its sales tax in 1992. Imposing a framework to deal with such a major and important issue, and expecting us to debate it for just a few hours makes no sense. We know that this will very likely affect Quebec, because the federal government cannot continue treating Quebec unfairly forever. We are sure of that. Sooner or later it will have to loosen its purse strings to compensate the Government of Quebec and the Quebec nation for harmonizing its tax several years ago. I will not keep on repeating the same arguments, but we cannot support this motion.

As I said earlier, the government harmonized its sales tax in the early 1990s. The GST had just come into effect. Quebec already occupied this tax field. The federal government agreed to allow Quebec to manage the GST within its own jurisdiction. That is still the case. We heard the Minister of Finance say last spring that Quebec did not really harmonize its sales tax, but that is false. It is merely a matter of perception and a point of contention for them. However, it really is not an issue, since it was all framed in an agreement.

Consequently, this is no reason for the federal government to deny Quebec the same compensation that it will pay to Ontario and British Columbia and that it previously paid to the Maritimes. In 1997, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland harmonized their sales tax and received federal compensation.

That compensation exists because harmonization leads to loss of revenue for the provincial governments. That happened in New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, and the federal government compensated them to make up for the losses these provinces were suffering in harmonizing their sales tax. The federal government plans to do the same thing for Ontario and British Columbia, but it has never compensated Quebec. It always has the same excuses. We have not even seen this bill, yet the government wants us to agree to pass it in two days. That is incredible, and it shows a lack of respect.

The Government of Quebec has demanded compensation from the federal government for harmonizing its sales tax, but the federal government has always refused, claiming that the Government of Quebec did not lose sufficient revenue because of harmonization to warrant compensation.

How can the government claim that Quebec lost less revenue than the other provinces? We have not seen any figures and have never heard any solid arguments.

It also said that neither Ontario nor British Columbia would be entitled to compensation in the event of harmonization because British Columbia and Ontario also, emphasis on “also”, did not meet the criteria used for the Maritimes.

In January, the Conservative government did an about-face on its rule for lost revenue and concluded an agreement with Ontario and British Columbia to harmonize their sales tax. This agreement included major harmonizations. In its budget, the government earmarked $4.3 billion for Ontario, $1.6 billion for British Columbia and still nothing for Quebec.

Now it is getting ready to introduce legislation to implement a framework for harmonization and compensation for both provinces. Before Parliament even had the chance to read the bill, the government tried to force us to adopt a motion for the bill to be fast-tracked before the holidays, but there was no argument to support such a motion.

It is the duty of the Bloc Québécois, and we are convinced of this, to examine the bill before voting on a time allocation motion. That is the crux of the argument for Quebeckers and Quebec in order to ensure that this legislation does not obstruct negotiations with the Government of Quebec on the compensation plan it has been calling for for a number of years now. That is why the Bloc Québécois is against this motion.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened to the Bloc's position on the overall issues of legislation and the harmonizing of taxes and the closure motion. I can say that the party has been very consistent on it.

What concerns me about the motion we are debating today is the fact that the House of Commons, where people are elected from every region of the country to bring forward their concerns, to carry out due diligence and to examine legislation, has been turned into some kind of rubber stamp charade show for the benefit of the Prime Minister's office and the Conservative war room.

We are being told that a major change in legislation that will affect millions of families across this country in terms of taxation has to be done quickly and painlessly for the Conservative Party and, by extension, for the pitiful state of the Liberal Party in the House, and that we as members are not to see the bill. We are supposed to simply rubber stamp it, regardless of the implications it will have.

This closure motion presents a profound threat to democracy and a complete undermining of our roles, which are to examine legislation and understand its implications for individuals, our constituents and our regions. We know where the Conservatives come from on these issues. They are rotten to the core. It is not surprising. The pitiful Liberal Party next to them has completely refused to carry out due diligence and act as any form of organized opposition.

I would like to ask the member why he thinks it is that the Liberal Party is in such a pitiful state going along as meek little brothers and sisters behind their big Conservative bully cousins.