Debates of June 3rd, 2010

Jobs and Economic Growth Act

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

Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely right. He just talked about three more elements, which we cannot address in a 10-minute speech. The Conservatives are trying to impose closure on Bill C-9 when there are so many different ramifications from this monster bill that they have thrown in.

He has raised three important questions. I want to raise one more, since I did not have time to do that in the six minutes: They are raising the export tariff on softwood lumber products for Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. This is one of the worst of the very bad legislation that the Conservatives have brought in. We knew the softwood lumber sellout would cost tens of thousands of jobs. We knew it would close dozens of mills right across the country.

Again, because they are so embarrassed that their softwood lumber sellout was even worse than anticipated and predicted, we now have an export tariff tucked into this monster bill that is going to hit the softwood communities that have already been hard hit by the appalling irresponsibility and incompetence of the government on softwood lumber. In four provinces, Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, there will be a 10% export tariff rate.

That is going to kill the thousands of jobs that have managed to survive the Conservative meddling in softwood lumber thus far. Now we see that they have tucked it into the bill. So the member's question is absolutely appropriate. We could be going on for days and days exposing the many ramifications of this toxic bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, one of the Group No. 1 deletions that we are dealing with today is the air traveller security charge. When the government talks about reducing corporate taxes to 15%, it is actually increasing taxes on all air travellers in the country by 50%, making us the highest taxed in the world.

Where is this extra money going? We know it is raising far more than it is spending on security. Canadian taxes on foreign flights will be up to $25, while the United States flights are $5. We are already losing Canadian travellers to American carriers. We have been losing them for the last several years. This is going to make the situation worse.

Why is the government helping American airlines at the expense of Canadian airlines?

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

Mr. Speaker, the member for Elmwood—Transcona has been one of the foremost advocates for airline passengers, for consumers who use Canadian airlines. He has been a very, very strong advocate for their rights and better treatment, and the government simply has not been at all on the side of airline passengers across the country. As he mentioned, we are increasing the security fees paid for flights. That is another tax increase if we throw in the HST as well.

The Conservatives are tax cutters when it comes to big corporate CEOs and the banks. They will shovel that tax credit money off the back of a truck to those folks, but the moment we are talking about ordinary Canadians, they just want to punish them. Here is another case where they are increasing security fees paid for airlines.

The other thing I need to mention on this is the same government's wrong-headed intention of bringing in self-service safety in the airline industry and make it more dangerous to travel. Fortunately, the NDP headed that off and we stopped that.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have this opportunity to speak in the report stage debate on Bill C-9, the budget implementation bill. We are debating the first group of report stage amendments tabled by the New Democrats. I am pleased to say that I seconded all 62 of the amendments the New Democrats proposed to this legislation.

Why did we propose those amendments? We are very concerned about the scope of this bill and the huge size of this piece of this legislation. It includes many issues that should have been debated separately in their own pieces of legislation so that Parliament could give them the kind of scrutiny they deserve.

This is not a small issue for us, as members can tell. It is not often that an opposition party puts forward that many report stage amendments to a piece of legislation, but we feel very strongly that the government is doing something shifty. It is doing something that is inappropriate with this legislation by putting forward this monster bill of well over 800 pages, almost 900 pages, that includes all kinds of issues that should have been proposed, and in the past have even been proposed, as separate pieces of legislation.

This seems to me to be an abandonment of the Conservatives' commitment to accountability and transparency. They came into government claiming that they were going to change things around. They were going to do things differently than the previous government on any number of matters.

One of them we might have expected the Conservatives to take to heart was not proposing this kind of legislation. This is more American-style legislation. We all know of bills in the United States that have a title in one area that have a whole bunch of other measures attached and embedded into them. For instance, a defence bill could have a farm measure included in it. That is the system the Americans have come up with and I think it puzzles most of us here in Canada. It does not seem to be an appropriate way of giving appropriate scrutiny to many issues. That is the kind of bill we have before us today.

Bill C-9 is a huge piece of legislation that includes topics that range from the privatization of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, changes to the mandate of Canada Post, the ultimate depletion of the EI fund, the increase in the security tax that we pay when we fly on airlines, changes to the HST initiative, changes to the softwood lumber tariffs, and changes to environmental assessment in Canada.

Each one of those things and many others in the bill deserve their own piece of legislation. In the past the Conservatives have even proposed legislation separately on some of those issues. The Canada Post issue is one of them. In earlier sessions of this Parliament and the previous Parliament, there was a separate bill dealing with these changes to Canada Post where that issue could get the scrutiny it deserves.

We are standing firm that this is a change in the practices of this House. It is going down a road that we think is totally improper. We think it abandons the Conservatives' commitment once again to accountability and transparency. It is clear that is long gone.

We have seen it in their failure to live up to commitments around access to information and the terrible report card they got, particularly the ministry of foreign affairs for compliance with access to information requests. It was so bad that the Information Commissioner had to invent a new category. It did not fit in her scale of failure and she had to invent a red alert category, saying it was so bad in that department.

We have seen it in the Conservatives' failure and their refusal for such a long time to provide Parliament with access to documents around the Afghan detainee issue, and the concerns that people Canada had captured were being tortured when they were in the custody of Afghan authorities.

We have seen it in the denial of Conservatives to allow their political staff to appear before parliamentary committees and provide information that parliamentary committees need. We have seen it in the actions of cabinet ministers coming uninvited to parliamentary committees and demanding to be heard when they are not on the agenda of committees, disrupting committees and turning those committees into places of total chaos.

None of this goes to an agenda of openness, transparency and accountability. It all dramatically undoes that. It is the exact opposite of those kinds of things.

One of the specific aspects that I want to talk about particularly in this bill is the environmental assessment component. What it amounts to is the gutting of the environmental assessment process that we have in Canada. This bill would exempt certain federally funded infrastructure projects from environmental assessment, going well beyond what was even recommended by the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment to streamline the environmental assessment process.

We all know that environmental assessment is a complicated issue in Canada. It is a process that has the involvement of many jurisdictions. We all want to make sure that we have an efficient and effective process, but we want to make sure that we have a process, a process that works and that offers protection to the environment and to Canadians.

This proposal before us embedded deeply in this bill would say that the building Canada fund, the green infrastructure fund, the recreational infrastructure fund, the border infrastructure fund, the municipal rural infrastructure fund, none of these would have the same requirements around environmental assessment that they currently do.

This bill would also pre-empt a review of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act which is to go to committee this month for a scheduled five-year review. Here we are currently debating a piece of legislation that would change that existing legislation that was scheduled to be reviewed by Parliament where we could come up with suggestions for changes that needed to be made, where the government could present its suggestions for changes that should be made to that legislation. Why is it deeply embedded in this budget bill?

The bill would also allow the Minister of the Environment to dictate the scope of environmental assessments. This new concept called scoping allows for ministerial discretion to appoint someone to decide what should and should not fall within the scope of an environmental assessment. It could mean, for instance, the road leading to the mine needs to be assessed but not the mine itself, or vice versa. There is a huge opening here for discretion and for a deterioration of the kind of environmental assessment process that we currently have.

It also means that the bill would also weaken public participation in terms of environmental assessment processes by making certain exemptions for public notification. It would also contain the first steps to take away energy assessment programs from the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency and give them to the National Energy Board.

These changes are of great concern to people in my riding because these kinds of environmental assessments are crucial to issues that happened in my riding. Burnaby—Douglas is home to the only refinery on the west coast of Canada, the Chevron refinery. That refinery is on the shore of Burrard Inlet. It has been there for almost 60 years. It is also surrounded by residential neighbourhoods. I am sure members can understand that a refinery placed in an environmentally sensitive location is a very serious issue. A refinery that is in a residential neighbourhood is also a very serious issue. Over many years there have been many processes developed for the refinery to work with people who live in that neighbourhood, people who are affected directly by it, environmentalists, and first nations communities that live directly across Burrard Inlet from the Chevron refinery.

Right now we are going through a crisis at that refinery where there is a leak happening. So far about 50 litres of what the refinery calls an oily substance have leaked out of the boundaries of the refinery. The substance has shown up in the ditch running along the Canadian Pacific Railway right-of-way and on the foreshore of Burrard Inlet. Officials do not seem to know what this substance is. They do not seem to know where it is coming from. Many concerns are being raised by folks in the neighbourhood, and rightly so, about this situation.

This is a situation where we need to have effective environmental legislation, where we need to have effective environmental oversight. People depend on that. We all know that we use the products that come out of that refinery, but we also want to make sure that we are mitigating any of the damage the refinery causes to the environment and to the neighbourhood. We are seeing an example right now in Burnaby—Douglas of why that is absolutely crucial. Be assured that the people of Burnaby--Douglas, the people of the Burnaby Heights and Capitol Hill neighbourhoods are going to be keeping a close eye on the situation to ensure it is fully determined as to why the leak is being caused, that the cause is fixed and that the cleanup happens completely and that it never happens again. This is crucial to our neighbourhood, our environment, to Burrard Inlet and to the surrounding area.

People in Burnaby—Douglas do not want any weakening of environmental assessments. That is why this piece of the legislation should be debated separately here in this Parliament.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his eloquent speech and for pointing out what we should do.

I believe it was Yogi Berra who said that it was déjà-vu all over again. The front bench opposite, the Conservative government, for the most part was the front bench in Ontario back in the 1990s when we would see things like this omnibus bill. We know the havoc that wreaked on the province of Ontario when we had all those omnibus bills under the previous premier, Mike Harris, and some of those members on the front bench, including the Minister of Finance who is in the federal government today. They did the same thing then that is being done today. They rammed things through because the provincial Conservatives had a majority government, and the province was the worst for it.

What the federal Conservatives are doing today is going to make Canada the worst for it as well. The pieces that are in that omnibus bill that do not have anything to do with the budget are things that really should be debated before us today. Let me mention the things that are missing.

What is missing is a pension increase for those seniors living in poverty. The Conservatives decided to talk about getting rid of the environmental regulations, instead of increasing the GIS so that seniors could live in dignity and live without poverty. There was no mention of that.

I would ask the hon. member to comment on what he sees is missing here that really should be a budget item instead of all the other bits that make it an omnibus bill.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt that if we talk to Canadians about top of mind issues right now, the security of their pensions, their pension income, is probably the top issue that most of them are thinking about. We certainly have not seen the kind of attention to it that is needed.

I am glad that New Democrats have raised constantly in this place questions about that. We have put forward serious suggestions about where we should be going. We have clear policies about what should be done in the area of pension reform to ensure that Canadians have not only pensions they can depend on in their senior years, but also pensions that would support people to live well above the poverty line and live happy, healthy and fruitful years in their retirement. That is an issue many Canadians would like to see given the attention it needs.

We have seen the Canadian Labour Congress take the lead on forums across this country where Canadians have been coming together to talk about pension reform. Our own colleague, the member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, our pension critic, has travelled across Canada doing the same thing.

There is clearly a need and a desire by Canadians to see that issue seize this House, seize the government, to make some progress in that area.

[Bruce Hyer, NDP, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there are so many thoughtful ideas in the excellent analysis by the member for Burnaby—Douglas that I could ask many questions, but I will limit myself to one.

Years ago, for many years, I wrote and reviewed environmental assessments. It has been my experience that environmental assessments do not usually stop projects unless they are particularly bad in every possible way. What they usually do is function as part of an expanded business plan that takes all factors into consideration, including economic and ecological sustainability, and they make projects better.

I would like to ask the hon. member how he feels that we can persuade the current government to re-examine its faulty logic on stopping these environmental assessments.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad that the member has raised that important question about the environmental assessment process.

The member is right. In most situations the idea is not to prevent development. The idea is to ensure that development is sustainable, that it respects both the environmental needs and the economic needs of communities in our country. We want to make sure that happens. We want to do that in a way that takes into consideration all of the factors that are part of those kinds of decisions.

People in my own community realize that the Chevron refinery is an important employer in our community. It produces products that we all use. Even though we are seeking ways to reduce our dependence on those kinds of products, right now we do depend on them. At the same time we want to make sure that it functions in a way that respects the neighbourhood it is in and respects the environment where it is located. That means we have to have the participation of government and the leadership of government to ensure it is done in a way that respects people and the environment.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I greatly appreciate the time I will have to speak to Bill C-9.

However, before I speak to Bill C-9, I would like to point out that in game three of the Stanley Cup finals last night, the winning goal was scored by none other than Claude Giroux from Hearst. We are very proud of him.

I am honoured to have the opportunity to speak to the Conservatives' budget implementation bill, Bill C-9. Given that I have only 10 minutes to speak to this unbelievably huge bill, which is hardly enough time to detail all of the significant flaws and errors in judgment present within this 800 page document, I will give the simplified version of what is fundamentally wrong with the government's budgetary plan.

First, I would like to speak to the nature of the bill itself. To put it simply, the bill resembles some of the overly political, opportunistic, pork laden legislation that was the hallmark of the Bush administration. With over 800 pages, 23 separate sections and over 2,000 individual clauses, Bill C-9 has easily become one of the largest pieces of individual legislation ever to pass through these halls.

The sweeping nature of Bill C-9 could perhaps be a little easier to swallow if it were not filled with amendments that seem almost completely out of place in a budget bill. Perhaps that was the plan that the Conservatives wanted to present all along; a bill so massive that it becomes almost impossible to scrutinize in its entirety, something that they expect we, as members of Parliament, would not take the time to scrutinize and simply rubber stamp through.

The people of Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing did not elect me to rubber stamp anything. They elected me to represent their interests and the bill is not in their best interests.

I will take some time to speak specifically to part 20 of the bill, which would amend the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act to give the Minister of the Environment the authority to forgo environmental assessment of federally funded infrastructure projects. I am a steadfast believer that appropriate environmental assessment, now more than ever, is vital in ensuring our natural environment does not take a back seat to handful of special interests who seem to believe that a larger profit margin is more important than preventing an environmental disaster.

This authority should not be given to any single individual. This is particularly dear to me because I actually live in an area and represent an area that has a couple of Great Lakes, lots of rivers and lots of lakes.

The government never misses an opportunity to take away the power of everyday Canadians in order to please those select few special interest groups that it listens to. Who are these special interest groups? Big oil is a good example. We just have to look at the big oil spill with regard to BP. We are quite worried about what will happen here in Canada.

What are the big oil companies getting in this budget? What about corporate tax breaks or perhaps the gutting of Canada's environmental assessment regulations? Those are two examples of the way that the interests of the government's friends win out over the interests of Canadians.

There is a reason environmental assessment is so important. I am certain that the majority of people sitting here today have had a chance to catch the news at some point in the past month or so. Again I will talk about that oil disaster.

The disaster off of the Gulf of Mexico has been monumental. It stands as one of the greatest environmental tragedies of all time. Many argue that the simple drilling of a relief well, which is a standard practice of offshore oil drilling, could have kept the disaster under wraps.

What are we hearing now? We are hearing claims from BP that a relief well is currently being drilled but that it will likely not be finished until some time in August. I realize there will be some contention on this argument, but I will wrap up my thoughts on part 20 of Bill C-9. It is barely what should be considered a budgetary matter. It should given an appropriate forum for discussion in its own right. It should not be part of the bill whatsoever.

The next issue I would like to discuss is part 18 of Bill C-9. The summary of part 18 states that it authorizes the taking of a number of measures with respect to the reorganization and divestiture of all or any part of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. businesses.

The Conservative government seems confident that selling off Canadian firms and resources is the best way to ensure economic growth in this country. Sure, a few high profile individuals may make a quick buck, but what about the people on the front line, the workers?

Many people within my riding, and particularly those living just outside of my riding in Sudbury, know all too well the damage a sell-off of our companies and resources can be. Just last week a rally was held here in front of Parliament Hill by the United Steelworkers Union, Local 6500. The hard-working men and women of Vale mine have been on the picket line for almost a year now fighting to retain the fair pay and benefits for which they have fought for over a century to gain.

What will happen to the AECL workers if their company gets sold from under their feet, thanks to an amendment that has been crammed into a beast of a budget? Will they end up getting laid off? Will they lose their benefits? Will they be replaced by a cheaper workforce?

I would call on the government to remove part 18 from the budget bill so we, as elected officials, can take the appropriate time to fully discuss how this deal would affect working Canadians. I wish I had more time to debate the nature of this sell-off but my time is short and there is more, I feel, that is needed to be discussed here.

I will now detail some concerns I have with part 15 of the bill. In my riding, we are very worried about the weakening of Canada Post. Again we see the mantra of business first and are being told that a company can provide overseas service more efficiently and make a profit at the same time. How is that possible? To us, this is merely coded language that adds up to paying workers less and demanding that they do more. Efficiency is a good and desirable thing but hoarding wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people is not.

Increasing the workload stress in job security of the people who actually perform the work so investor can siphon off profits is not the best way to perform this service. Worse, if this is a way for Canada Post to make a few bucks, why would we want them to get rid of it? We need to allow Canada Post to make money so that it can afford to provide postal service to the people of Canada.

There is a situation right now in Constance Lake that I would like to share with the House. In Constance Lake, which is a first nation community, residents have lost their Canada Post outlet. For approximately the past one and a half years, residents have had to make an 80 kilometre round trip detour to Hearst simply to mail a letter. Luckily for Constance Lake, a Canada Post outlet is in the process of being rebuilt, because we have pushed for this, both Constance Lake and myself and the CUPW workers, but this is just an example of the concerns that have been echoed by the rural people living in my riding. Many other communities live with the fear of losing their postal outlets. People in towns like Moonbeam wonder if they are next when the Canada Post axe falls. Chapleau has also approached me on this before.

If Canada Post loses more revenue by cutting out its international mail revenues, how can it provide anything but less service? How is that efficient?

I wish I had another hour to speak to some of the issues I have with the bill. I call on my colleagues throughout the House of Commons to push to have this bill stripped down to its core. Many portions of the bill are out of place. I realize it is part of the Conservative agenda to slide things past the Canadian people without giving them or us, as elected officials, the time it takes to adequately examine the consequences of what is transpiring here.

I would like to finish by quoting one of the Conservatives' own senators, Lowell Murray, but I see my time is up so I will have to do it later.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would be interested in hearing from the member exactly what Senator Murray said because the Conservatives clearly are not listening.

I know the hard work that the hon. member has done on behalf of the labour movement. She has spent a great many years working on behalf of workers in this country and should be commended for that.

Besides the quote by Senator Murray, which I know the hon. member will be happy to give us, there is the stripping out of $57 billion from the EI fund, a fund that was there to protect workers. I would ask her to comment on why the budget bill is setting up an account for EI rather than the real progressive step of the government saying that it will refund the $57 billion to the EI account, funds that are owed to the workers of this country. In that way, if there were another recession or downturn in the future, which we know will occur, workers would be protected, as they should have been protected in the first place, with the very money they paid into that system and which belongs to them but was squandered by the previous Liberal government and now by the Conservative government.

At the very least, the government should have told workers that their sacrifices over the years are respected, that it respects the fact that it collected their money and, with that type of respect owed to workers, the government intends to give it back to them. However, there is no intention to do that.

I am hopeful that my colleague will comment on the stripping of $57 billion from the EI fund and then, of course, quote hon. Senator Lowell Murray.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will read the quote in a second, but my colleague is absolutely right with regard to the EI fund. These are workers' dollars, not government dollars. Yes, it is the former Liberal government's fault as to why the funds are not there anymore.

The Conservative government has a responsibility to ensure the money is refunded. We are not out of the woods yet with regard to the economic crisis in which we found ourselves. We need to continue ensuring there is proper training for workers, access to EI for workers, women being the ones least able to get benefits, and that there is a government in place that respects the rights of workers and the money of those hard workers.

With respect to the comment made by the Conservatives' own senators, Lowell Murray has gone on record stating that, “No self-respecting or Parliament-respecting MP or senator should allow C-9 to go through as is”. If one of their own cannot support this bill, why should we as opposition support it?

It is quite interesting that of the questions being asked in the House, we are not hearing the Liberals or Conservatives speak to this issue. I think the Conservatives have a reason for not wanting to speak. It is because they want to continue hiding what is in the bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is hard to believe that in the recession in 2009 the banks made $15.9 billion profits and yet the federal government is rewarding them with a reduction in corporate taxes to 15%. This is at a time when the government is increasing the air travellers tax by over 50%, making Canada the highest taxed country in the world.

I would like to know what the member has to say about that.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Elmwood—Transcona is an advocate for air travel passengers and the bills that he has put forward need to be passed in order to protect travellers here in Canada. What the government is doing really speaks volumes to whether people will want to travel either in or out of the country.

I appreciate the fact that he brought this forward. We do not need people being taxed more and we need to ensure that the money they are paying out is being used wisely. Based on this bill, we can see that the government is again putting its friends at the forefront.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to join the debate on Bill C-9.

I will start by talking about a visitor who came to Parliament a few weeks ago, Dr. Jane Goodall, and her remarks. Dr. Goodall is a world renowned primatologist and also a leader in thinking about the kind of world we want for the future. In her remarks she said that some say we inherit the earth and the world from our parents and some say we borrow it from our children. Dr. Goodall is concerned that we are stealing from the next generation because borrowing with no plans to repay is in fact stealing. I share her view that it is time we get together and start to pay back to ensure we create a better world for future generations.

Bill C-9 raises questions for me on issues such as the economy, the environment and democracy and whether we are stealing from future generations in the provisions contained in the budget implementation bill. There certainly is stealth in the bill and I will talk about that in my section on democracy. Major changes are hidden in it in such a way that we are unable to properly debate them. They should be in separate legislation.

Let me start my comments with the economy. This is another budget that borrows significant funds and the funds will need to be repaid in the future. This means the government is borrowing from the future. Are there proper plans for repaying these funds, which would indicate that the government is borrowing and not stealing?

The Parliamentary Budget Officer has raised questions about the competency of the Conservative government in terms of its financial projects and plans, as he has done repeatedly over the past several years. He has publicly stated that Bill C-9 falls short in its assertion that the books will be balanced in five years. He estimates that the government's budget predictions are inaccurate and off by about $10 billion. Mr. Page said that the government's budgetary assumptions were “not a prudent basis for fiscal planning”. The Parliamentary Budget Officer is bringing to light the fact that the government has failed to build in a cushion for the unexpected and failed to plan for tomorrow.

More than being concerned about weakness in the planning, I have huge concerns about the government's priorities. As was brought to light in the budget implementation bill, ideological cuts have been made to women's groups, to poverty alleviation groups and to very important education groups. What we see as the government's priority is its millions of dollars, and some assessments say over $100 million, in self-serving advertising paid by the taxpayer to promote the government's fiscal management. The Parliamentary Budget Officer is a more neutral commentator on plans and budgets.

There are five new tax increases in the budget. When I pointed this out to my constituents, they were very surprised. The Conservatives' expensive advertising campaign by no means suggests transparency with respect to these new tax increases, including $15 billion in payroll taxes, which are counterproductive and aggressive.

Is this budget stealing from the future or are we investing in the future? I am concerned about the funds that are being spent on the upcoming international meetings. Less than six months before these meetings, the venue for the G20 was changed. It is going to cost over $1 billion for a few days of meetings.

I know others have compared the spending for the summits with the spending on the Olympic Games, but it is not only 17 days of Olympic Games. There are also nine days of Paralympic Games, with heads of state and VIP to be secured and protected. To spend over $1 billion on these few days of meetings at a time when budgets are being cut for very important social issues and other issues is a huge mismanagement of public funds.

With respect to the environment, this budget continues the inaction on climate. Unfortunately, there are cuts to the eco-energy home retrofit program that brought homeowners and families into reducing the footprint of their households. There are cuts to climate science. Gordon McBean, the chair of the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, sums up the effect of budget 2010 on climate change research as follows:

Budget 2010 is basically the nightmare scenario for scientists across the country – our community is gutted.

Are we borrowing from our future generations or are we stealing from them? That is really the question that came to mind as I looked at the provisions in the budget. It weakens the federal oversight of the environment. It removes from the environment department the power to assess environmental projects and moves it into other organizations that have worse records in terms of public participation. It gives the minister power which he or she should not have, because ministers are subject to lobbying.

On the Gulf of Mexico oil leak, we see the ministers deferring to other regulatory bodies and not taking responsibility for answering whether we have strong enough regulations. They are being very evasive on the questions on oil tankers in the Pacific north coast, giving us a range of different answers designed to confuse. It is clear the government is paving the way for that super tanker on our vulnerable Pacific north coast, which we should never allow.

Last, I wanted to touch on democracy. I know some of the other speakers have been eloquent on the issue of combining a lot of different, non-linked policy and legislative changes in an omnibus bill. The Prime Minister commented on this a number of years ago. In 1994 he asked for a ruling to split a budget implementation bill, saying that it was becoming standard practice with governments to bring in omnibus legislation following every budget under what might be called the kitchen sink approach. He described that as improper and said it should be ruled out of order. That was referring to a bill of 20 pages.

What the Prime Minister is putting in front of the House is 900 pages. It is a far larger kitchen sink with far more in it. The hypocrisy is unfortunate. Democracy is impacted when Parliament does not have the opportunity to debate substantive changes around Canada Post, AECL and environmental assessment. This should be 14 different bills according to senior members of the Senate.

This is an abuse. Unfortunately, it is a corruption of Parliament. It brings me back to my question. Are we stealing from future generations? When we undermine democracy, we undermine the role of Parliament. I do not support Bill C-9. It is a very poor example of statespersonship. It is an unfortunate undermining of the Canadian confidence, both economically and environmentally. The government's priority should be to protect and strengthen our democracy.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, my question for my colleague from the Liberal Party is simple. She says in her final wrap-up of her speech that she does not support Bill C-9. I assume if one does not support it, one will vote against it. Certainly the members of the NDP will vote against it.

Is my colleague speaking on behalf of her party, or is she, as in individual, going to vote against it? Will enough Liberal Party members vote for the bill so it will pass? Will the rest of her party share her conviction that Bill C-9 is not worthy of the support of Parliament and vote against it as a group, or will they leave a bunch of their members at home again or tell them to leave the chamber when it comes time to vote?

On the opposition benches, we all need to know what the Liberal Party will do about Bill C-9. Will it force the government to split it? Will it vote against it at the report stage, knowing that this may mean an end to the Conservative rule of our country?

What are her colleagues going to do about voting on the bill?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, members of the Liberal Party will vote against the bill.

In a way I find it interesting to be scolded by the member of the NDP on this issue. He talked about an end to Conservative Party and the Prime Minister's governing seat. That party, in December 2005, undermined its policies, which it had brought to the fore with the Liberal Party of the day, by ensuring that the government fell before Kelowna and before many of the important policies the Liberal Party was bringing forward in its upcoming budget.

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

Mr. Speaker, I think Canadians find it hard to believe that in a recession in 2009 the banks made $15.9 billion. The federal government rewarded them by reducing their corporate taxation rate to 15% and this was while the CEO of the Royal Bank, Gordon Nixon, and Toronto Dominion Bank's Edmund Clark were earning around $10.4 million.

What do Canadian citizens get as a reward for this? A 50% increase in the air travellers security charge, making Canada the highest taxed in the world. This is up against an American security charge of only $5. The government is driving Canadian customers to fly on American carriers. How is that smart economics?

Does the member have any comment on these points?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly do have comments on those points.

The member points out one of five tax increases, and that is to the travelling consumer, at a time when our corporate taxes are far lower than our neighbours to the south. This is the reason the Liberal Party is committed to not do further tax cuts for corporations until such time as we do not have to borrow money.

While the government is adding taxes to workers through payroll tax increases, it is planning to cut the taxes of corporations, which I support when we can afford it. However, I do not support doing that with borrowed money, digging future generations further into debt. This debt will have to be repaid at a time when it will be more difficult than ever, with fewer people in the workforce and other demographic pressures that we will face as Canadian governments.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity on behalf of my constituents of Winnipeg Centre to enter into the debate on Bill C-9 at report stage amendments.

I think it is important to put in perspective what we are doing here at this point in time on Bill C-9 and on behalf of the people I represent.

We should remind Canadians that this is the point in the legislative process where the government of the day comes to Parliament to ask permission to spend the taxpayers' money in a certain way. The government introduces its budget, and then, by virtue of a budget implementation bill, the government outlines the detailed way in which it intends to spend that budget.

The government comes to Parliament for our permission, and it needs our permission to go ahead. This is why there is the urgency with Bill C-9. This is why the government is going to put time allocation on the debate, if it can, to ram this thing through by the end of June when Parliament adjourns for the summer recess.

Technically, the government does not have permission to spend the money it proposes to spend. It is coming to us. I wish the government would show a little bit more humility when it comes to us, because it does not even have a majority. It cannot force anything in this Parliament. It needs the co-operation of the members on this side of the House to get permission to spend that money.

A lot of Canadians would like to believe that members of Parliament could work together in between elections to paddle our canoe in the same direction, as it were, to do what is best for the country. I think if people sought it, they would find a fair amount of goodwill in the House towards that, because we all recognize we have been going through difficult economic times. The opposition parties did not try to interfere, block or stop the massive stimulus spending. We accepted that this was what was going on in the world.

What is mean-spirited about this and what is wrong with the way the Conservatives are handling this is that rather than seeking the co-operation of the House for the implementation of the budget this year, they tried to insert a bunch of things that do not properly belong in a budget implementation bill. Canadians should understand that.

It is deceit of the highest order to ram this bill through. For the necessary spending, or at least giving permission for the government to spend, they are including a bunch things that do not belong here. It is a very American-style thing to do. Those of us who are observers of politics in other countries will recognize this as earmarking, as they call it in the United States, where a budget bill will start out at, say, 30 pages, and by the time every senator adds their special spending bill that they trade their support for, it will be 200 pages long. There will be all kinds of irrelevant additional material rammed into that bill.

This is what is happening here today. In terms of implementation of the budget, I do not think there would be great opposition to some parts of the bill. We are clearly against other things that deserve debate. However, there are some things that clearly should not be in this bill at all, and that is what speaker after speaker on the part of the NDP have been trying to point out.

I know the people in my riding would be disappointed in a number of the aspects of this budget implementation bill. In its current form, it does not deserve our support. Any opposition member worth his or her salt would vote against this bill.

My colleague from Hamilton is exactly right in saying that we should not only be opposed to this bill, we should be willing to stand in our place and be opposed to this bill and be counted in our opposition to this bill.

Believe me, we will be counting the heads on those vacant benches over there when it comes time to vote against this bill. It is unworthy of our support. Never mind the merits of the bill or the faults of the bill, by principle we should be voting against this bill because it sets a dangerous precedent that they are trying to insert a number of things that clearly do not belong here.

In the brief time I had to research the part 1 amendments, I counted up a number of tax grabs in Bill C-9, the current budget implementation bill, that should be of grave concern as well. They are clearly contrary to what the Conservative government would have us believe, that they are all about tax cuts and not tax grabs.

Clearly, a lot of these measures are tax grabs in no uncertain terms, yet the Conservatives have left opportunities for revenue without any comment at all. For instance, a budget implementation bill or a budget itself is the opportunity to finally plug the outrageous tax loopholes that exist for offshore tax havens. This is money left on the table that the Minister of Finance does not see fit to pick up and put in his pocket.

I cannot understand it, because I used to hear Conservative MPs, when they were in opposition, rail about the outrageous tax havens, rail against the former prime minister, Paul Martin, for shielding a lot of his assets in offshore tax havens with his 13 shell companies to hide the profits of Canada Steamship Lines, but they have not taken any active steps to deal with this.

I forget what the chartered accountants call it, but it has a fancy name in terms of hiring a tax avoidance lawyer; “tax-motivated expatriation”, those are the words I was groping for. It sounds like a legitimate move that a tax consultant would advise. In the cocktail party circuit, it almost sounds respectable. For people to say they are going to take part in some tax-motivated expatriation almost sounds as though they are going on a holiday to some warm country. In actual fact, it is a sleazy tax-cheating loophole that the Conservatives are afraid to close because it is their friends who avail themselves of it. So they do not want to offend their friends.

In the U.S., an estimated $100 billion a year in revenue is lost through its tax haven regime. Other experts have taken that money down with our economy and it would be a minimum of $7 billion per year of lost revenue that our tax havens are costing the taxpayer. So as we are offloading this tax burden with tax grabs from ordinary Canadians, we are leaving this money on the table. It is incomprehensible to me and it is contrary to what we were led to believe about the policies of the Conservatives.

The other thing that should be pointed out, and again the people in my riding of Winnipeg Centre deserve to know that someone is raising this in the House of Commons, is the very valid and legitimate point that my colleague from Elmwood—Transcona made, that the current round of corporate tax cuts that the Conservatives have not only contemplated but are implementing are going to cost the general revenues in the neighbourhood of $7 billion to $10 billion. I have heard as high as $15 billion. We do not have that money. That is money we have to borrow. We are going to be borrowing money to give to already profitable corporations in terms of yet another handout. This is what is incomprehensible to ordinary Canadians.

It is not as though we are giving a struggling industry some kind of helping hand up. That is one thing. We can talk about whether that is corporate welfare, but we are not opposed.

For instance, if it were the shipbuilding industry and we wanted Canada to get back into shipbuilding, some kind of help to get the industry back on its feet can be justified, but the already most profitable industries, the oil industry, as well as the big banks who are showing record profits, are now going to get another gratuitous handout of up to $15 billion of money we do not have. So we are going to be raising taxes of ordinary Canadians to give a handout to the banks who in turn gouge those ordinary Canadians and have both hands in their pockets.

There is something fundamentally wrong with the mindset of anyone who would craft a financial instrument such as Bill C-9. It should be rejected, it should be opposed, and every member of the New Democratic Party can be counted on to oppose the bill and send it back where it came from for a complete rewrite, I would hope.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, given the fact that the member for Winnipeg Centre is a former labour leader who I believe was the president of the carpenters in his province, which is a huge responsibility, and of course, representing workers who have seasonal work, EI matters large. Given not only his experience as a long-term veteran MP but also as a former labour leader of his entire province, what does the member think about the idea that $57 billion is literally being stolen from the pockets of unemployed workers?

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Hamilton Centre for giving me the opportunity to touch on something that time did not permit me to deal with in my original speech.

It is quite true. As a former labour leader, I have a great deal of working knowledge of the EI fund. I can tell members that when the original cuts to the unemployment insurance program were made by the Liberals in 1995 and 1996, those changes in eligibility rules took $20 million per year of federal transfers out of just my riding of Winnipeg Centre alone. It is no wonder the fund went into surplus.That money, we should remember, is only money from the employer and the employee. The federal government pays nothing into the EI fund. Brian Mulroney stopped doing that in the mid-1980s.

Can members imagine taking $20 million a year of income maintenance from the federal government out of one of the poorest ridings in Canada? That would be like losing the payroll of two major factories of 2,000 employees each. That was the net effect of the Liberals' cuts to EI.

But then the surpluses started building up, because they created an unemployment insurance system where nobody qualified any more. So it is no wonder. The Liberals milked it like a cash cow. There was a $57 billion surplus that was spent on everything except income maintenance, and now the Conservatives have driven the final stake through the heart of the unemployment insurance program by saying that reserve is gone, that we have to start from scratch and raise premiums.

Clearly there is no working-class consciousness on that side of the House.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for an excellent speech on Bill C-9.

He talked about tax havens. I guess it points to the power of one individual. When a low-level computer worker, two years ago, in a Liechtenstein bank, rose up and sold a computer diskette with the information of thousands of tax evaders to the German government, the Canadian government got onto this, and guess what? Now across Canada we have these tax evaders running to Revenue Canada locations to take advantage of our tax amnesty.

The current government is so tough on tax havens and tax evaders that it says to people, “Go ahead and put your money in the tax havens, because if we catch you, all you have to do is go down to Revenue Canada and take advantage of our amnesty and pay the tax and you're scot-free”.

That is our tough approach.

I would like to ask the member if he has any comments on that.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it does speak to a larger problem. It is an attitude problem, I suppose. The government is willing to forgo this lost revenue to tax havens. Even Diane Francis, not exactly a left-wing author, did a five-part series in the National Post, calling on the Conservative government to plug egregious tax loopholes that are just fundamentally wrong, that no decent person would avail themselves of if they had any conscience or any pride in being a Canadian.

One of those was the family trust loophole where we give a one-time payment of 25% and that gives us permission to send the whole family trust of billions of dollars offshore, and from that day on, all the revenue from that investment comes back into the country tax-free. We can have all of our family and friends living on these tax-free earnings offshore for the rest of their lives for generations.

Why would anybody craft such a thing that is clearly against the best interests of all Canadians except for that one billionaire? Why would we tolerate giving money away like that? Can we really afford to be so generous?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the chance to comment on the bill.

I have to say that in large part this is very much like a trip down memory lane for me because I have been here before with a Conservative government in the province of Ontario, and interestingly, who was the chief of staff to Premier Mike Harris who brought in the infamous omnibus bill 26? Guy Giorno, the same chief of staff to the current Prime Minister.

My colleague from Sault Ste. Marie is nodding his head. He remembers what went on when we had that bill. It was the same sort of thing. Bring in a bill that is meant to be one thing and then load it up with everything else that is problematic, that is going to involve a lot of debate, that is controversial and ideological. Just stuff it all in there and refuse to talk beyond the cover page. The government wanted it to go through. It was massive. It led to a major upheaval, which is putting it mildly, of our health care system. It brought in a massive review. It really set the stage for what became the dark years of the Harris regime in Ontario, years of governance which we are still trying to climb out of in terms of the damage that was done.

One of the things that is interesting and is different in this House from what I experienced the better part of 15 years ago was that the opposition actually stood up and fought. There were two opposition parties, the Liberals and the NDP, in that legislature. Not only did they stand up for the best interests of Ontarians and take on that kind of undemocratic governance, and I definitely use the term “governance” loosely, but we united around that fight. That was a majority house, not a minority where the majority vote is actually on this side of the House. We united and took on that government, head on.

In fact we had filibusters that went on for days. It was the focus of the entire provincial media. People were watching it around the clock, going to sleep while catching what as going on and waking up in the morning and plugging back into it. There were rosters that we had for going around the clock, just like picket duty, 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. could be house duty time. We went around the clock for days on end. We had the same kind of fight for the same kind of reasons against the same kind of undemocratic procedures.

What am I looking at here? I see my NDP colleagues standing up one after another going at this tooth and nail. We are doing everything we can to try to stop the bill. If we had the support of the official opposition, whose job it is to oppose the government of the day, we could do something, particularly since our leader, the member for Toronto—Danforth has made it clear that he is prepared to work with the other two parties to leverage the situation we are in right now, which is that there is still a lack of desire for an election. There is certainly a lack of desire on the part of the opposition even to threaten a possible election. Set that aside, but that is not the circumstance right now.

We know the government does not want an election right now. It might in a month, two months, a year but it does not want one now. The G8 and G20 summits are coming. The Prime Minister is over in Europe lining up the agenda.

Fine, if the Conservatives want to play hardball in terms of the bill they are trying to ram through, we ought to be playing hardball too. We should hold them to account and use that leverage. That is the whole idea of being the official opposition, not the official lapdogs of the country. It is infuriating.

[Gary Goodyear]

I have a headache.