Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to give the perspective of the constituents of Vancouver Kingsway to Bill C-13. I have read the bill and given a great deal of thought and analysis to it. I would like to point out a few things that come to my mind as some preliminary observations about the bill.
First of all, the bill provides some positive measures. The bill also contains some negative measures and most notably from my analysis, the predominant feature of the bill is that it is marked by what it does not deal with, what it is silent on.
In terms of some of the positive measures that are contained in the bill, I would like to point out some of them and congratulate the government on picking up what are some policies that most Canadians would support. First, the bill offers partial loan forgiveness for family physicians, nurses and nurse practitioners who begin practising in underserved rural or remote areas. This is a provision that I personally must stand in support of in the House because it mirrors in part a private member's bill that I drafted a year and half ago and introduced in the House.
I proposed a bill that would reward doctors, nurses and nurse practitioners who serve in underserviced areas with a freeze on their Canadian student loans for the first five years of practice and then for each year from year 6 through 10, they would have their loan erased at the rate of 20% per year meaning that rural and underserviced areas in our health care system in terms of family doctors, nurses and nurse practitioners would get that very important service. People who practised in those areas would have their federal loans forgiven as a result of that commitment.
The bill also introduces a family caregiver tax credit for caregivers of infirm dependants. Once again, that is a positive measure although, as has been pointed out by many experts in the tax field, the government is moving toward increasing reliance on the use of tax credits and that reflects a certain philosophy of delivering government programs that is not without its problems. Most notably, it requires Canadian families to lay out the money first and then claim the tax credit much later. For millions of Canadians that is simply not a reality. For millions of Canadian families they simply do not have that money to lay out at first and so tax credits are of limited utility.
The bill also provides a temporary measure to refund a portion of employer premiums for small business. This is truly a case of giving with one hand and taking away with the other, although one must support a measure that would refund a portion of EI premiums for employers and workers in this challenged economic time. On the other hand, we must also remember that it was the government that is raising EI premiums starting in January to the tune of $2 billion per year.
Taking back money or giving businesses the ability to save some money after having their overall premiums raised is a cynical approach to politics that Canadians should be aware of. Also, Canadians must always remember when we talk about EI that the EI surplus of over $50 billion, premiums paid by the businesses and the workers of this country to create an insurance fund for them to draw in times of high unemployment, which as I will talk about in a few minutes we are experiencing right now in Canada, and taking that money and putting it into general revenue is still an unredressed problem that cries out for redress.
The bill also expands the eligibility for accelerated capital cost allowance for clean energy generation and conservation equipment. Again, that is a positive measure; however, in the grand scheme of things and I see my colleague from Halifax is here who has done wonderful work on the environment file, I am sure she would point out to the House, as has been done day after day, that this measure is really a drop in the ocean in terms of what Canada must do in terms of clean energy creation and environmental protection.
In terms of some of the negative things in this bill, as we have heard, the bill proposes to end the per vote subsidy for political parties that receive more than a certain percentage of the vote. If I am not mistaken, I think it is more than 5% of the vote. In my view this is a regressive policy and it amounts to poor public policy at the same time. Canada has created what can be fairly regarded as one of the finest and fairest election finance systems in the world. Canadians want an electoral system that is fair and is controlled by the citizens of our country.
The features of our federal campaign and electoral finance system are as follows. We have put in measures that limit the contributions of any one person to $1,100, so that takes big money out of politics. It has eliminated donations entirely from corporations and trade unions. That has taken the influence of non-individuals out of politics. It has set spending limits in what we can spend in a particular riding in an election and what we can spend nationally in a campaign. It evens the playing field and again it takes big money out of our political system. In short, it is a system that enshrines the concept of democracy run by people, paid for by people and to serve the people.
Canadians have a great interest democracy. Democracy is not free. A democratic system must be paid for. However, a democracy that is paid for by the public means that we do not have a democracy that is bought and paid for by private interests. I think that is what Canadians want. They want a publicly financed democracy, not a privately financed democracy.
Interestingly, in Afghanistan right now our troops are fighting ostensibly for the establishment of democracy in there. The public financing of the electoral system here in Canada helps maintain a democracy in our country.
As has been pointed out by my colleague from Newfoundland just a few moments ago, providing public money based on the number of votes that a party gets at the rate of $2 per vote is the fairest way of all to finance political parties in our country. The government has said that it does not want that. It wants parties to go out and raise money from private sector citizens, that this does not represent a subsidy, but we know that is not true.
People who contribute to a party get back, at taxpayer funded expense, 75% of the first $400 they donate and that declines to 66% for the next $350 and then 50% for the remainder of the $1,100. Therefore, we do have public subsidies of donations to political parties. The only question is one of philosophy, whether, as the Conservatives want, we do that through private interest as opposed to public funds, which the New Democrats support.
I want to talk briefly about the economy in our country. Millions of Canadians across the country know they are having a difficult time right now. They know this economy is not working for them. Statistic after statistic shows that over the last 25 years there is a growing gap between the wealthy and the poor in our country.
We also know, with statistical certainty, that the middle class is shrinking. That is because of policies pursued by the Conservatives and the Liberals before them for the past 25 years, policies of incessant corporate tax cuts, of shrinking government, of reducing public services, of pursuing free trade agreements and lowering tariffs and of attacking workers and the trade unions, which is one of the only forces that is serving to create and fight for good, family-sustaining, middle-class jobs with benefits.
The government stands in the House every day and brags that it has created 600,000 jobs since the recession began, but what kind of jobs are those? We do not hear it talk about the quality of those jobs. Those jobs are temporary, in large part, they are part-time, they are low-paying, they do not have benefits and they are primarily in the service sector. Hundreds of thousands of those jobs are those types. The government cannot take the good, middle-class, family-sustaining jobs with benefits, erase them and then replace them with $10 an hour mc jobs and call that an economic success. The government is doing exactly that.
Millions of people around the world are talking about the 99% of us who are no longer going to tolerate 1% owning 40% of the wealth in our country. The government should pay attention to that sentiment and start pursuing policies that reflect equitably a better share of the wealth of the country so we have an economy that works for everyone.