Debates of Nov. 3rd, 2010

Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Madam Speaker, the member for Churchill mentioned in her remarks the mining company Vale. When that company was given the authority to take over a couple of mines, it gave many wonderful assurances.

I ask the question because today seems to be decision day for the future of PotashCorp, a tremendous Canadian resource that seems likely to be sold out by the Prime Minister, who is selling our resources out from under us again. Maybe we will be greatly surprised, but I doubt it. There will no doubt be some conditions put on the sale, but in similar cases, I believe the conditions have been broken.

I am wondering if the member could comment on her experience with other multinational corporations, foreign corporations from around the world, taking over, under certain conditions, Canadian mining companies.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Madam Speaker, the NDP has been clear in the message we are sending to the Conservative government that we want our resources to stay in our hands. We do not want to repeat what has so negatively affected so many of our communities.

We see nickel, steel, and other elements of our mineral wealth moving out of our country, to the detriment of our working people. We see that foreign companies have undertaken an attack on benefits, pensions, and even communities themselves. This is why we ask our federal government to stand up for our communities and make sure that our resources stay in our hands.

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

Before resuming debate, it is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, Copyright; the hon. member for Nanaimo—Cowichan, Aboriginal Affairs.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Malpeque.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak on Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures.

Speaking in my role as agriculture critic, I can tell this House that the budget was one of the biggest disappointments ever for the farm community. There was not a new dime for primary producers in that budget, even though many in the livestock sector were facing the worst crisis that Canada's beef and hog industries have ever seen.

Sadly, the government has become known as a borrow and spend government, with both the debt and the deficit out of control. We heard some of those remarks in the House today with respect to the budget officer.

One of our worries with this Minister of Finance was that he might do to Canada what he did to Ontario. Certainly, this has come to pass. We all know that this minister is more responsible than anybody else for Ontario's fall from a have to a have not province. He cut services, downloaded costs, and drove up the deficit, hampering the ability of the Ontario government to do its job. Now he is doing the same thing to Canada.

What do we have for the farm sector? We have two of the biggest spending budgets in Canadian history, together with the biggest deficit in Canadian history. And what did the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food provide for the farmers in their time of need with all that spending? Zero. Nothing.

The minister claims that he puts farmers first, but the only area where the minister has put farmers first is in the area of debt. Since the government came to power, farm debt has reached $64 billion. That is up $9 billion under the Conservative government's watch. Net income on the farm has gone down, especially in the hog and beef sectors.

We worked with the government. We tried to work with the government to get money to the livestock sector when commodity prices were at an all-time low. For beef and hogs, we actually managed to get a program through; the government committed itself at the time. However, we warned the government that it could not expect the moneys associated with the emergency advance payment program to be repaid until the market improved.

Our worry was that the government would not stick to its word. Now we know it did not. In fact, on August 6 of this year, the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food made an announcement in which he basically demanded that those moneys be paid back. The announcement, which was made in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, lays out the terms of repayment.

This is how bad it is. Starting on June 1, 2011, just a few short months away, producers who took the $400,000 advance have to pay that money back in 10 short months. That is $40,000 a month in an industry that is barely able to get back its cost of production.

That was not the original commitment of the Government of Canada. The government assured us at the time that farmers would not have to pay those moneys back until prices improved. Farmers again were given a line.

Now in my province, in Prince Edward Island, I am told by the cattle industry that effective next June or July, as high as 70% to 80% of those livestock operators could find their loans in default. That is unacceptable. The government has to support the farm community and find a way of doing that. I am asking the minister to support the farm community, to not put farmers in the position of where they are in default.

Last night I spoke with a key Prince Edward Island producer. He said that the livestock industry is hurting, especially so in Atlantic Canada. Atlantic Canada is a deficit area in beef production and prices are discounted by 10¢ a pound as compared to Ontario. Ever since we have had BSE in this country, prices for cattle over 30 months are discounted by 20¢ a pound. Producers cannot survive in that kind of regime. They are not getting their costs.

We offered suggestions of things the government could do that would assist farmers in their time of need. In the livestock sector, it could eliminate the viability test. It could change the reference margins and get moneys out there under the safety net program, but there is not the political will. The government has money for everything else. It has $16 billion for untendered airplanes, $9 billion for expanding the jails, over $1.2 billion for the Prime Minister's photo op, but it has no money for primary producers. That is unacceptable.

It is not just in Prince Edward Island. The minister gets up in the House and quotes a farm leader from somewhere. We do know, strangely, when the minister makes an announcement, his office calls up some of the farm organizations and asks, “Could you praise the minister on this a little bit, please”, and then he uses the quotes in the House.

However, when we talk to producers on the ground, we get an entirely different story. Linda Oliver from Mozart, Saskatchewan said that the minister “turns his back on the livestock sector”. She said that approximately 125 producers and supporters at a meeting in Weekes, Saskatchewan sent a message that contradicts that of the Minister of Agriculture. She said that cow-calf producers are in a dire situation. She also said:

However, we, at the same time have to make a living at this farm. We have not been very self-sufficient for many years now because of the lack of response to the situation by the [Minister of Agriculture].

It is just unacceptable that in this budget, primary producers, farmers, the suppliers of food in this country, the people who are really responsible for food security in Canada, who bring in dollars to the country because of their exports, are basically left to wither on the vine. While exports increase, farm incomes have gone down.

Last week I was at a farm meeting at the Ontario Federation of Agriculture. There was the same strong message from farmers in financial difficulty, especially in the livestock sector. They asked the government for a risk management program. They asked that at least under the agri-flexibility fund the Government of Canada allow that to be used for the farm program that farmers want jointly with the Ontario government. The Government of Canada has again refused.

On Thanksgiving weekend I was in the Interlake region, and the crop damage there is phenomenal. It is in a quarter section of land of canola. There are well over 100,000 acres of land that have been affected by water damage. Those farmers have said consistently that agristability, the safety net programs do not work. Where is the backbench in the government party? Why are those members not arguing for these moneys and telling the government the concerns of farmers in the Interlake region? Why is the minister not coming forward with a program to assist?

The bottom line is that the Government of Canada has seriously failed the farm community in this country. While the government has the biggest spenders and the biggest deficit, the farming industry has been left with virtually nothing. Those in the farm community are the generators of wealth, but the Government of Canada has failed them.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Madam Speaker, I compliment the hon. member on raising such an important issue.

Wherever I go throughout rural Canada I hear from a lot of farmers about their frustrations and their challenges and whether they should continue on in the farming industry.

The hon. member mentioned having to take 20% less in many areas. In the hog and livestock management situation, what would the member suggest the government actively do? Does the member have a plan for the necessary changes the government should make to protect those farming industries?

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Madam Speaker, in terms of the hog and livestock industry, the safety net program, agristability, needs to be changed so that it will work for those commodities that have lost their margins. It is allowable under the trade agreements. I do not understand it. Last year the government could have put out $900 million to the farm community that way, but it failed to do it.

It is a complicated area, but all the government needs to do is change the viability test and the way the reference margins are calculated. That can be put over three good years, or over a longer period of time, so that it would trigger a payment. That is where the government goes seriously wrong. The government believes that our farmers can do it on their own.

The European Union and the United States stand up for their primary producers. In fact, in the United States, between 1995 and 2009, there was $245.2 billion paid out to the farm communities. The White House this year recognized there was a problem in some of the commodities and recently announced a new disaster aid program, which would cost an estimated $1.5 billion annually. The United States stands up for its farm community.

This government is allowing our farmers to go under. The only thing farmers are coming first in with this government is first in debt. Our debt of $64 billion is roughly four and a half times per farmer what it is in the United States. It is unacceptable.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Madam Speaker, I would like to ask my hon. colleague from Malpeque about the Wheat Board.

It may surprise the hon. member to know that my grandfather, Jack Harrison, was a member from Saskatchewan from 1949 to 1958, from the area of Meadow Lake and North Battleford. My mother was born in Glenbush, Saskatchewan and grew up in a little place called Medstead.

My grandfather would have spoken in this place and defended the Wheat Board. He had spoken about the Wheat Board many times and I am sure he would have been appalled at what the government has done to the Wheat Board. I wonder if my colleague would like to speak about the situation.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Madam Speaker, the Canadian Wheat Board, being a single desk selling agency, maximizes returns back to primary producers on the moneys that are in the international marketplace. Western farmers support that board.

It would take me too long to go through the list of ways in which the Conservatives have tried to undermine the board, but I will mention what the minister said in this House yesterday.

When the Wheat Board had asked for the initial prices to be raised, in other words, an increase in what we call the interim payments, the minister tried to blame the opposition parties for that taking so long to happen and said it was because we would not support his bill last spring.

There was a problem with his bill. One part was good in that it set a timeframe and Treasury Board would have to respond quickly to initial prices. However, the other part of the bill would have undermined the ability of the board to do its work.

In a letter to the minister, I offered that the bill be split and we could deal with the initial payment part in a matter of one day in this House with tremendous co-operation. If the minister would have acted on our request, farmers would have had that money in their pockets right now.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have a chance to raise some of the concerns I have with respect to Bill C-47. It is difficult to follow my hon. colleague because he speaks very well and raises the issue with such compassion and caring, but I will do the best I can.

Let me say at the outset that I do not accept that the government has demonstrated either the will or the skill to manage any economic recovery. While the Conservatives may claim to have a steady hand on the wheel during a raging storm, I suggest that if they looked more closely, they would find that they are standing on the docks as the good ship Canada has left without any predetermined plan.

The only saving fiscal grace that we have seen is the thousands upon thousands of small businesses pressing for success, a banking sector that is stable and secure as a result of the previous Liberal government, and a labour force that is skilled and dedicated. The government has been too busy developing sound bites and using the treasury for self-promoting commercials.

In the election of 2008, the Prime Minister insisted that Canada would never fall into a recession, that we were all dreaming. He suggested that the warnings of a global meltdown were nothing other than alarmists bent on undermining the Canadian economic success story. He dismissed any public discussion of advance preparedness as fearmongering and said that slashing taxes to Canada's largest corporations would prevent any global economic calamity from touching down domestically. How wrong he was and how right we were.

Today looking back, it is very clear that the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance were either hiding something for partisan electoral reasons, or they were totally oblivious to the impending economic difficulties. Either way, their approach has been unacceptable, shortsighted and damaging to all Canadians.

Setting all that aside and ignoring the fact that the government has abandoned any semblance of fiscal prudence or long-term planning in favour of a borrow and spend approach to public policy, we now need to focus on the task at hand.

Bill C-47 does have a very few redeeming qualities. For example, in part 1 it seeks to allow for the sharing of the Canada child tax benefit, the universal child care benefit and the HST tax credit for eligible shared custody parents. It also expands the availability of accelerated capital cost allowance for clean energy generation. While, yes, these are good measures when viewed in a singular fashion, when viewed as part of a larger picture, I fail to understand how these items address the impacts of the global economic slowdown in Canada.

While it is true that Bill C-47 makes some technical amendments to the tax free savings accounts and allows registered retirement savings plan proceeds to be transferred to a registered disability savings plan on a tax deferred basis, it fails to address some of the most serious problems faced by individual Canadians and Canadian business leaders.

For starters, Bill C-47 is silent on the fact that Canadians are being forced to carry greater amounts of personal debt just to survive. It is silent on the looming pension crisis that many of us know about. It does nothing to help stabilize the increasing gap between government revenues and government spending.

The Prime Minister inherited a $14 billion annual budgetary surplus from the Liberals. Then, in one of his first fiscal decisions, he moved to slash the federal fiscal capacity. We watched as government revenues plummeted, something that eliminated any ability for the government to make strategic investments or to help business, labour or seniors when times get tough.

The government took Canada from the economic envy of the world to what the finance minister now suggests is no worse than everyone else. Imagine crowing about mediocrity. That might be acceptable to that borrow and spend gang of mismanagers, but it is certainly a far cry from what Canadians had come to expect under the previous Liberal administration.

The government has used the word “stimulus” to justify everything it ever wanted to do. I will give the House a few examples.

The government recently billed Canadian taxpayers, all of us, a substantial sum of money for a so-called town hall meeting in Cambridge, Ontario, to release the second economic action plan report card. The cost was $108,000 just to make an announcement that clearly could have been made here in the House or anywhere here in Ottawa.

Then just three months later the government did it again, to release the third report card in Saint John, New Brunswick, at a cost of $143,000.

That is more than $250,000 for stunts to tell Canadians we are in good financial shape when it is untrue, because we are not.

That is over and above the 332% increase in the amount the PMO is currently spending on communication consultants, or spin doctors, beyond its internal communications staff, which is immense to begin with and has also increased by 30% in two years.

Canadians can only be fooled for so long.

Canada's fiscal capacity was damaged long before the Conservative government ever began spending on stimulus.

In the name of stimulus and promoting Canada, the Conservatives have spent billions on faster jets, bigger prisons and caviar summits. But when it comes to pension reform, or putting money into the pockets of our seniors, our small businesses or our vital social programs, the Conservatives cry poverty at that point.

Canadians are catching on to the kind of games being played.

In part 5 of Bill C-47, there is an amendment to the Canada Disability Savings Act to allow a 10-year carry-forward of Canada disability savings grants and Canada disability savings bond entitlements. I have no problem with that and I do not think most of us do.

Bill C-47 proposes to make changes that would require consent of a member's spouse or common law partner before the transfer of the member's pension benefit credit to a retirement savings plan. Again, I am not complaining about that.

My greatest concern with Bill C-47 is what is missing from these pages: fiscal prudence, long-term planning, compassion, a real plan for economic success. These are the things Canadians want, need and expect from their government.

During the Chrétien and Martin years, Canada went from the massive Mulroney debt to a global position of strength and envy. Liberals worked and Canadians worked to eliminate the deficit, to reduce the national debt, to make the largest series of strategic tax cuts in history and to pump billions into vital programs such as health care.

But in just four short years the government has transformed itself from alleged fiscal conservatives to the largest and most lavish spenders in Canadian history. Our deficit is now larger, if one can imagine that, than it was during the Mulroney years.

I guess we should not be surprised though. After all, when the same finance minister was the minister of finance in Ontario he pulled the same stunt along with premier Mike Harris. He sold provincial assets such as Ontario Hydro in order to pay for his mismanagement, and then he promised that hydro bills would not go up. But they clearly did.

While Paul Martin's legacy as finance minister is one that demonstrated a real ability to manage the finances of a nation, the current finance minister can only crow that Canada is not the worst kid on the block. But I guess we all gauge success differently.

Bill C-47, like budget bills before it, has its strengths but it does nothing to show real leadership. It fails to address real problems and it fails to chart a long-term, sustainable course for Canada's economic success.

I know the minister and the Prime Minister say it cannot be done. They say there was no way to see the storm clouds gathering on the horizon, but I wonder why almost everyone else saw it coming.

In the election of 2008, the member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville devised a detailed plan to help Canada stay off the rocks, but the Conservatives said that our economic fundamentals were wrong. They dismissed it as not being prudent and proactive.

I say to the emperor and the keeper of the purse that perhaps they should contact Paul Martin or the member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville or the member for Etobicoke—Lakeshore, who saw this economic slowdown coming.

Just as we did in 1993, the Liberals stand ready to clean up this mess left by the reckless, short-term habits of the Conservatives.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Madam Speaker, I know the hon. member has worked long and hard on the pension issue and has had quite a number of town halls and various other meetings with people affected, and there are a couple of ideas that are floating out there with respect to creating a stranded pension agency and a supplemental plan for Canada pension so that Canadians are not stranded. Yet in Bill C-47 I see nothing on either issue.

I would be interested in the hon. member's views with respect to both of those ideas and whether the government would reorganize its priorities so that these kinds of issues of keen concern to senior Canadians would be addressed.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Madam Speaker, clearly these are issues that are of extreme importance. I have been asking questions of the minister for more than 650 days about just what the plan is. We have been told for more than 650 days that there is a plan, but nothing is being done currently that is going to have any kind of a vision for the future. Our supplementary Canada pension plan program that we are suggesting and we want to move forward with is a way to offer another vehicle for Canadians to be able to save money for retirement.

Clearly as a result of the bankruptcies we have heard about over this difficult last couple of years, many pensioners are also looking for other vehicles to help them. We were suggesting that a stranded pension agency be created so that when companies are going bankrupt, instead of individuals having to receive those pension moneys in an annuity and losing 30%, 40% or 50% of their savings, that could be folded into a stranded pension agency that the government would oversee.

Quebec already did this some months ago because it recognized the problem. We are still waiting for the government to do something for the Nortel pensioners and for those on long-term disability who are suffering. We have a bill coming up in the Senate that asks for that very issue, to try to get the government to support it so that we can help those on long-term disability.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, we just heard that it has taken more than 600 days for the minister to respond. My goodness, for our seniors who have contributed so much to building this great country, in the twilight of their years when we should make sure that they live in comfort, we are condemning and the minister's inaction is condemning them to live those final days, in many cases, in poverty.

How many seniors has the member heard from who are in those last days of their lives unfortunately having to live in poverty while the government continues not acting on this file?

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Madam Speaker, I have toured the country and talked to many seniors and listened to their frustration about struggling to live on $11,000 a year. I ask anyone who is watching if they have ever thought how they would live on $11,000 a year. Some of them live on even less. We know that, in spite of everything that has been done, we still have more than 200,000 seniors who are living below the poverty line. We should ask ourselves, never mind $11,000, how we would live on $9,000 or $8,000 a year. How would we possibly manage to do that? It is very difficult. We hear about seniors struggling and going to food banks. This is Canada. That is not the way things are supposed to be.

There has been very little from the government as far as increases toward pensions are concerned; $1.42 I believe was the cost of living increase that many seniors across Canada received. There is no sense waiting. It must cost far more than $1.42 just to implement that increase. We need to seriously look at what else we can do to ensure seniors have a good quality of life.

Today, though, it is going to have start with planning for young people like our pages. We need to put more vehicles to be able to save money and make sure there is a financial literacy program out there so that people understand that when they get to age 65, they cannot expect that their old age security and Canada pension plan will be sufficient. They need to have a retirement savings plan, which is why we are suggesting the supplementary Canada pension plan would be a great vehicle to help with that.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in debate on Bill C-47.

I want to begin by congratulating my hon. colleague from York West on the excellent work she does on behalf of seniors. She shows great concern for our seniors who are struggling these days. Imagine being on a fixed income that is tied to interest rates when interest rates are as low as they are these days and what a challenge that is to live on very low incomes. When she spoke of people living on incomes of $11,000 a year, it is heart-rending to consider what kind of a life that means for a person. Think of widows, for example, living on that income or sometimes less and how they manage to eke out, to survive.

I want to extend my appreciation for her excellent work in this regard and also my appreciation for my colleague from Malpeque, who spoke before, who has always been a powerful voice for the farmers of Canada and who has great passion for agriculture and for the challenges farmers face. Thank goodness they have a voice like his in Parliament.

During the worst recession in decades, at a time when Canadians families have been struggling to care for sick loved ones, to save for the kind of retirements we were talking about a moment ago and to pay for their kids' education, these borrow and spend Conservatives spent the last four and a half years, almost five years now, wasting billions of taxpayers' dollars.

By the year 2015, the Conservatives intend apparently to add $170 billion to our national debt. Imagine that. When we came into office as the Liberal Party back in 1993, we came in with a Conservative deficit of $42 billion and we managed through the hard work of Canadians. Government obviously played a role, but Canadians sacrificed and got us into surpluses nationally and gradually paid down the debt, year after year for eight consecutive years of balanced budgets, paying down our national debt, moving our country in the right direction and helping to lower our interest rates.

When we lower interest rates, what happens? People can more easily afford to spend on things because they are not paying as much on their mortgage or on their car loan and they can afford perhaps a little more. They can afford to live a little better and it makes a difference in their lives. It makes it a little easier to go to the grocery store. That is important to people.

When interest rates come down as a result of the kind of work done by the Liberal government in the 1990s with the support of Canadians, it benefits the whole economy. There is more money flowing through the economy and that makes a big difference.

The worry is that, with the kind of spending the government has been engaged in, we are eventually going to see inflation and very high interest rates quite possibly. That is good if one is on a fixed income and receiving interest, but it can get too high obviously, so that it hurts the overall economy and it is bad for all of Canada.

The government has been racking up deficit after deficit over the past few years. Its fiscal mismanagement has meant that Canada was in deficit before the recession began. Imagine. The Conservatives came into office with a surplus of $13 billion and within a very short time they turned around in the wrong way and put the country into deficit before the recession began. They can talk all they want about how there was a need to respond to the recession. They did not believe there was a need at first. The Prime Minister said it was a good opportunity to buy stocks. He said things were a bit bad but everything would be fine.

Things got a lot worse. He was wrong. Things got a heck of a lot worse. In fact it was a lousy time to buy stocks as it turns out. It might have been better later if anyone had the money to do it, but most folks did not. Perhaps some of his prosperous, wealthy friends did, but most Canadians did not have the funds to buy stocks at that time.

Here we had a situation where the Conservatives put us in deficit before the recession hit, through their own mismanagement, with some of the biggest increases in spending in history. In the first year they increased spending by 18%. That is incredible.

This year they have done something else, something really spectacular in the annals of deficit creation, I suppose. They have recorded the biggest deficit in our history, $55.6 billion.

There is no question that the Conservative government is the biggest spending, biggest borrowing government in Canada's history. I hope they are not too proud of that record, because it is certainly not a record to be proud of.

It is remarkable to think that the Minister of Finance, also known as the minister of debt and deficit did the same thing in Ontario. I guess we should have known it would happen again when the Prime Minister made him finance minister in Ottawa.

Somebody has to tell the Minister of Finance that before he can do things like increase spending and lower taxes, first he has to balance the books. First he has to get rid of the deficit and then he can do those things, as the Liberal government did in the 1990s, but it is a lesson the finance minister sadly has not learned.

It is really a highlight of his mismanagement and of the government's mismanagement. They fail to understand that they do not start increasing spending dramatically and cutting taxes dramatically, as they want to do with corporate tax rates with the big corporations, until they have balanced the books. If they can balance the books, get things under control and get surpluses, then they have the room to do things like that, but not until then. Why they cannot understand that is startling. Their bad choices will mean that future generations are saddled with more and more debt. Those same choices are not helping hard-pressed Canadians today.

This right-wing Republican-style government, and I do not know if we say a tea party-style government these days because it is pretty right wing, is turning its back on people who are struggling to make ends meet in these tough economic times. Some of my colleagues have talked about this already. It is pouring billions of dollars into U.S.-style prisons and doing nothing about prevention of crime. It is pouring billions into untendered fighter jets and tax breaks for wealthy corporations.

It is interesting that the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defence say that there was a competition for these fighter jets. Yes, there was, in the U.S. 10 or 11 years ago. When was there ever a competition in Canada? Canada was not part of that competition. Since when do we outsource our decisions about making a $16 billion purchase? That is hard to imagine.

Even today in question period, the Prime Minister talked about how there was a contract for the F-35s. The fact, as members of the House know and as the Prime Minister ought to know, is there is no contract yet. The government has signalled its intention, but it certainly has not signed a contract yet. For the Prime Minister of Canada to say in the House that there is a contract when there is not is truly outrageous. If that is not misleading the House and Canadians, I do not know what is. It is very disturbing.

When we look at the government's treatment and we look at how it spends wastefully, is it any wonder that poverty is on the rise under this regime? Instead of punishing homeowners in March by killing the home renovation program, it should have taken the knife to some of its own pet projects. It could have started by cutting costs, for example, at the G8 and G20 summits, the 72-hour, $1.3 billion photo op to satisfy the Prime Minister's vanity.

Imagine what the money was spent on. The government wasted millions of dollars on fake lakes, glow sticks, gazebos and steamboats. It had a department responsible for summit infrastructure supporting the building of a gazebo that was kilometres and kilometres from any summit activity.

It had also supported the development of a steamboat that was not even ready to go in the water until three months after. What that could possibly have had to do with the summit is hard to imagine, except that it helped out perhaps the electoral prospects of the Minister of Industry in whose riding it was held.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the remarks made by my colleague because he certainly has laid out many of the areas of wasteful spending by the government.

The amount of money that is spent on consultants and the increase in the cost of the PMO was mentioned earlier. However, something that really goes unnoticed, and I would like the member to comment on this, is the size of the cabinet. Most Canadians could not name 10 cabinet ministers because everything is run out of the PMO, the man who says, “I make the rules”. They are all full-fledged cabinet ministers, with their drivers and their full staffs. I do not know what some of them do, but it is certainly a cost to Canadians.

Could the member comment on that? Also, how could that $6 billion tax cut to corporations, when we are already below the United States, be spent better with wise decisions?

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, those are good questions. Let me start with the question about the $6 billion tax cut that the government is planning for corporations. Let us remember that the tax rate for corporations in our country has come down from 29% to 18%. When the Liberal Party was in government in 1993, it was 29% and we brought it down to about 20%, as I recall. Since then, it has come down to 18%. Now the government proposes to bring it down another 3%.

I am sure it is attractive to businesses, especially big corporations, to hear about their tax rate being lowered, but it would make a lot more sense if it were done in a time when we had surpluses.

The other thing is there are people who are in need. Think of the families these days that are supporting a loved one who is sick or who is elderly and requires a great deal of care. Our family care plan is something that would respond to that and it would be a much better way to spend that kind of money.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And five or more members having risen:

Call in the members.

And the bells having rung:

The vote will be deferred until tomorrow at the end of government orders.