Mr. Speaker, at the present time, the Governor General of Canada pays no income tax.
Under this motion, our Governor General would have to pay his taxes. For reasons of transparency, we agree with this motion, that is, that the Governor General should pay income tax.
Queen Elizabeth pays income tax. The Governor General of New Zealand pays income tax. Moreover, the Lieutenant Governors of all the provinces of Canada pay income tax. So why should the Governor General of Canada not pay income tax?
There is no reason why he should not pay taxes. He should pay taxes, just like the Queen, like Governors General in other countries and just like all Canadians.
There is a precedent for this. Before 2001, a portion of the salary of members of the House was not taxable. In 2001, for reasons of transparency, the Chrétien government canceled this non-taxable portion and increased members' salaries. This case is similar. It is not a good idea for part or all of the Governor General's salary not to be taxable.
However, I would like to add an important condition: the Governor General should not be punished. He began his term some time ago for a given salary, which he accepted. If he is now required to pay tax, the government should increase his gross salary so that his net salary is the same as before. This is more or less what was done for the members and it is what the government should do in the Governor General's case.
I know Governor General David Johnston quite well. In fact, he was my boss in the 1990s, when he was the principal of McGill University and I was the dean of the Faculty of Arts. I know he worked very hard as principal of McGill University and president of the University of Waterloo for some 30 years before becoming Governor General.
However, there is another important element here. Unknown I think to the mover of this motion, it turns out that the government is proposing to do something just like what I had said in the budget bill, and that is increasing the salary of the Governor General and making that larger salary taxable. However, the government is increasing the salary as if the Governor General paid the highest marginal rate. Therefore, some might say that he is getting a pay hike.
The reason I talked about his three decades at McGill and at Waterloo as president is to state with certainty that his income, other than Governor General income, must certainly be in excess of $138,000. Therefore, the government is correct, and this is one rare occasion when I agree with it, that by increasing his salary by the amount that, it will indeed leave his after-tax salary unchanged.
Therefore, the Liberal Party agrees with the motion subject to the caveat that the pre-tax salary has to be raised. While we deplore the budget implementation bill for 1001 reasons, in this case we agree with the government.