House of Commons Hansard #68 of the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was jobs.
Robert Chisholm NDP Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Mr. Speaker, I have a few petitions here to table. The first is about unfair extra fees and consumer rip-offs. A number of my constituents and people in the surrounding area are calling on the government to take significant concrete steps in budget 2014 to make life more affordable for cash-strapped Canadian families.
Robert Chisholm NDP Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Mr. Speaker, I have another petition here from some Canadians who are calling on the government to develop a national dementia strategy. They are asking the Minister of Health and all members of the House to pass Bill C-356, an act respecting a national strategy for dementia.
Robert Chisholm NDP Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Mr. Speaker, I have another petition, signed by about 175 members of my constituency and the surrounding areas. With respect to veteran's services, they are asking the government to immediately address the mental health crisis facing Canadian soldiers and veterans by hiring the appropriate mental professionals, reverse its decisions to close Veterans Affairs offices, and prioritize and conclude the over 50 outstanding boards of inquiry on military suicides so that the grieving families may have answers and closure.
Robert Chisholm NDP Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Mr. Speaker, finally, I have a petition signed by a number of my constituents and people in surrounding communities calling on the government to stop cuts to our postal service.
Questions on the Order PaperRoutine Proceedings
Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre Saskatchewan
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski ConservativeParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons
Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.
Questions on the Order PaperRoutine Proceedings
Response to Question No. 176—Speaker's RulingPrivilegeRoutine Proceedings
The Speaker Andrew Scheer
I am now prepared to rule on the question of privilege raised on March 27, 2014, by the member for Avalon, regarding the government’s response to written Question No. 176.
I would like to thank the hon. member for Avalon for having raised this matter, as well as the hon. Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, the hon. House Leader of the Official Opposition and the hon. Minister of State for their interventions.
In raising the matter, the member for Avalon explained that the government's response to written Question No. 176, tabled on March 6, 2014, regarding projects approved in Avalon by the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency constituted a different answer than those previously supplied to similar questions.
The member stated that the accuracy of the information provided was not the issue; rather, he contended that by changing the departmental process by which information was gathered and responses made, the minister was obstructing the release of information and thereby infringing on the member’s ability to carry out his parliamentary functions.
In responding to the member’s claim, the hon. Leader of the Government in the House of Commons argued that, in fact, an answer had been provided, but without the amount of detail or exact information that the member sought. Thus, he felt that the complaint was actually a debate over the adequacy of the response. For his part, the Minister of State for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency explained in greater detail the response preparation process followed by his department over the past several years in responding to questions from the member for Avalon.
The Chair has been asked on many occasions to weigh in on issues with respect to written questions. Through these questions of privilege, the Chair has had the opportunity to confirm for all members the role of the Chair in this regard, as well as the practices and principles that govern written questions. Some of these bear repeating today.
House of Commons Procedure and Practice, second edition, states at page 522:
There are no provisions in the rules for the Speaker to review government responses to questions.
On February 8, 2005, Speaker Milliken, at page 3234 of Debates, made a similar point:
Any dispute regarding the accuracy or appropriateness of this response is a matter of debate. It is not something upon which the Speaker is permitted to pass judgment.
On April 3, 2012, in my ruling on another question raised with respect to the government’s response to a written question, I reaffirmed this practice.
The Chair understands that the member is not asking for a judgment on the accuracy of the answer provided. However, he is asking the Chair to judge the actions of the minister and the effect these have had on his ability to function as a member of Parliament. To do so would require the Chair to judge not only the content of answers provided, but also to delve into internal departmental processes past and present. Regardless of whether the department's internal processes on written questions have changed or not, it remains beyond the role of the Chair to undertake an investigation into any such matter or to render any judgment on it.
The Chair’s role is limited to assessing the evidence presented in order to determine whether there has been interference in a member’s ability to perform his or her parliamentary duties. In the present circumstances, the Chair can find no evidence to suggest that the member has been unable to perform his duties.
I therefore cannot find grounds to rule this matter to be a prima facie question of privilege.
I thank the House for its attention.
The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons is rising.
Remarks by Minister of State for FinancePrivilegeRoutine Proceedings
Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre Saskatchewan
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski ConservativeParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons
Mr. Speaker, as I promised on Monday, I am rising to respond to the question of privilege raised by the hon. member for Victoria. The hon. member rose to claim in the House that the House has been intentionally misled. No such thing has happened here.
Ultimately, what we have here is simply a matter of debate. The hon. Minister of State for Finance said that the proposal by New Democrats for Canada pension plan reforms could lead to 70,000 job losses in Canada, a reckless proposal in our current economy.
The finance department's analysis of a proposal to double the so-called replacement rate of the Canada pension plan, which is at the heart of the NDP proposal, would require a 5.45% increase to the contribution rate within the current range of pensionable earnings. The department concluded that such an increase in payroll taxes could see 70,000 Canadians without work.
As I mentioned earlier, it is clear that increased payroll taxes have negative consequences for the Canadian economy. However, members should not take it from me. Let me quote a third-party expert on this. Laura Jones, the executive vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business had this to say:
A mandatory CPP increase, however, is a bad idea. An increase in the CPP tax takes more money out of employees' and employers' pockets....
Worse still, small businesses report that a mandatory CPP increase would force many to lower wages and even reduce their workforce.
The hon. member for Victoria was at pains on Monday to point out that the finance department's analysis covered a one-year implementation window, not his seven-year phase-in period. In fact, the Department of Finance uses one year as a simplifying assumption adopted to compare the economic impact of various CPP expansion proposals. Shockingly, the New Democrat plan would see this economic pain spread over seven years as opposed to just one. That is not something that Canadians would appreciate, so it is no wonder the member was up on a question of privilege, trying to distract from the inconvenient truth that his party's pension policy presents.
I should note that a CFIB report on doubling the CPP replacement rate, which reflects the same phase-in period as the NDP proposes, claims that up to 235,000 jobs would be lost. That is a lot more than just 70,000. In this case, the Minister of State for Finance chooses to use the numbers provided by the Department of Finance, not the higher numbers used by the CFIB. We are not only mindful of the expert finance department analysis, but we also share the concerns of small business and the CFIB.
Citation 31(1) of Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules & Forms of the House of Commons of Canada, sixth edition, aptly sums up the situation confronting us here:
A dispute arising between two Members, as to allegations of facts, does not fulfill the conditions of parliamentary privilege.
That principle has been endorsed a number of times by the Chair, including for example, Madam Speaker Sauvé in her ruling of December 3, 1980, at page 5293 of the Debates.
More recently, House of Commons Procedure and Practice, second edition, restates this principle at page 510:
In most instances, when a point of order or a question of privilege has been raised in regard to a response to an oral question, the Speaker has ruled that the matter is a disagreement among Members over the facts surrounding the issue. As such, these matters are more a question of debate and do not constitute a breach of the rules or of privilege.
Even more succinct than that is this quotation from Mr. Speaker Fraser's ruling on December 4, 1986 at page 1792 of the Debates:
Differences of opinion with respect to fact and details are not infrequent in the House and do not necessarily constitute a breach of privilege.
In conclusion, this is simply a matter of debate and perspective about the walloping impact on the Canadian economy that would result from the New Democrats proposal for the Canada pension plan.
Whether these consequences for Canadians would be felt in a single year or spread over several does not change the fact that it would create serious discomfort and uncertainty for hard-working Canadians.
Therefore, Mr. Speaker, you can easily dispense with the complaint of the hon. member for Victoria because there is no prima facie case of privilege here.
Peter Julian NDP Burnaby—New Westminster, BC
It is hard to know where to start, Mr. Speaker.
Obviously, as happened last week, the parliamentary secretary is avoiding the real issue. It was the basis of the point of privilege raised by the member for Victoria. There is no document such as the minister attested to. Quite simply, the parliamentary secretary has reinforced the fact that the government does not have the document it has attested to having.
I will be reading the statement by the parliamentary secretary in the blues very carefully, and I will be coming back later today with a response.
The House resumed from April 2, 2014, consideration of the motion that Bill C-31, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 11, 2014 and other measures, be read the second time and referred to a committee.
Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1Government Orders
The Speaker Andrew Scheer
The hon. member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley has 15 minutes left to conclude his speech.
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Mr. Speaker, it is very difficult to limit my speech to just 15 minutes because this is a huge bill—it is over 350 pages long. It is hard to cover and explain everything in it. It is complicated and huge and fundamentally anti-democratic. I have plenty of quotes from the Prime Minister and other Conservatives who used to say that omnibus bills like this one were disastrous and tragic for Parliament.
We have learned to call these “ominous” budget bills because, while technically omnibus in nature, what we see in these 350 pages, with over 500 clauses and 40 laws being changed in this one act alone, is the Conservatives continuing down their very anti-democratic path of fundamentally disrespecting Parliament and the institutions. We see it in the unfair elections act, and we also see it in the next omnibus bill, Bill C-31, which contains so many aspects that it is difficult to cover in the short time we have.
Before politics, I was a small business owner. The riding I represent in northwestern British Columbia is both rural and resource sector based. I bring those experiences to bear as the finance critic for the official opposition. Therefore, my orientation toward matters of the economy, financial affairs, and the budget is based on those small and medium-sized businesses, which are at the very heart of our economy, providing more than 70% of all new jobs. At the heart of our economy lies the resource sector. Virtually 80% of the equity traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange relies on the resource sector of Canada, that natural wealth and endowment. Therefore, one wonders, while casting through the hundreds of pages in this omnibus bill, exactly what the government has done to help the resource sector, small and medium businesses, and the overall fragility of the Canadian economy.
Canada right now sits at a crossroads. Four hundred thousand manufacturing jobs have been lost and not replaced since the government took power. Three hundred thousand net jobs have been lost since it took over that have also not been replaced. Personal household debts are at record highs.
The trade deficit hitting $45 billion is now seen as a casual event; a country like Canada having massive trade deficits with our trading partners presents no problems or concerns to the government. We are a trading nation. We are not trading well right now, and the government seems not occupied with that. The Bank of Canada, the IMF, and the former finance minister have decried the half-trillion dollars of dead money sitting in our economy that is not being used by the private sector. It is simply because, when the government hands over its corporate tax cuts, they come with no strings attached. Its ideological drive, that all tax cuts must directly and implicitly lead to job creation, has shown not to be true in this case.
According to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, 85% of the jobs created last year alone were created in short-term, temporary, part-time jobs. These are not our numbers. These are numbers gathered by the business community in Canada. We have seen the government blow open the temporary foreign worker program. More than 300,000 temporary foreign workers went to work this morning in Canada. That has a dual effect. It replaces Canadian workers who were training to do those jobs. I had a phone call from a young woman this morning. She is fully ticketed. She has gone through all the programs, has taken out student loans, is ready to work in the resource sector, and cannot find work because the contractor working on the gas pipeline operation has hired temporary foreign workers from all over the world. She is frustrated. She is trying to pay the bills, and the government turns a blind eye. We saw it with the HD Mining case in British Columbia. Two hundred workers were needed to work in the mine. The way the company got around the small barriers that the Conservatives put up was to say workers must be fully ticketed to work in a mining operation and fluent in Mandarin. That was a requirement that was somewhat difficult to meet in the Canadian labour force market. The employer said they could not find 200 fluent Mandarin-speaking miners in Canada, so they would need a temporary foreign worker licence permit, which the government happily granted with no conditions attached, until it became public; then there was obvious backlash. Then the Prime Minister went with the ethnic media in Vancouver. We have all sorts of criticisms about the temporary foreign worker program, but just to one section of the media; it has never since repeated those criticisms out loud.
Royal Bank of Canada laid off workers and replaced them with temporary foreign workers. We have seen 300 welders recently laid off in Alberta and replaced with temporary foreign workers. The resource wealth that we are endowed with deserves to be respected.
Let us review the six principles of how to properly develop the oil wealth in Alberta, put forward by that lefty radical, former premier Lougheed. Let us review what this radical had to say.
The first principle is “[act] like an owner”. Is the current government doing that when it comes to resource wealth? Not at all.
Second, he said, is “[get] your fair share”. Particularly when it comes to natural resources, like oil, which cannot be replenished, one only gets to do it once. If they do not collect their fair share, it is a missed opportunity.
The third principle is “Save for a rainy day”. Can members imagine what former premier Lougheed would have said about Conservatives, who have not only accrued the largest debt in Canadian history, but they also have the record for our two largest deficits and adding to our largest national debt ever?
The fourth principle that former Premier Lougheed talked about is “[adding] value” to the resources. What do the Conservatives push? They are pushing raw bitumen pipelines. What do they allow? They allow raw log exports. What they allow for is not adding value to the mineral wealth of this country. We know that is where the greatest gain in jobs can be. For those Conservatives who represent parts of Saskatchewan and British Columbia and Alberta, one has to wonder about all those jobs that have been foregone by their policies. All of those jobs and opportunities are lost, and all those families who could be paying the rent and helping to raise kids on those value-added jobs are lost.
Fifth, former Premier Lougheed also said “Go slow”. Why? Because we see what the boom can do; it always leads to a bust. The former MP for Fort McMurray, Brian Jean, on his way out the door of this place, said that the main problem in the oil patch in northern Alberta is that we are going too fast. We see that those are wise words and correct, if one visits Fort McMurray and talks to the workers and the municipal leaders there. It is a bit of a shame that he only found that conscience when he was leaving Parliament and the Conservative caucus. He did not say it when he was here. I know that many Conservatives also share his views.
The sixth and last thing that former premier Lougheed said was “Practice statecraft”. What do we have from the current government when it comes to developing our economy and natural resource wealth? The Conservatives encourage conflict. They yell and scream at opponents and call them enemies of this state if they do not agree with Conservative ideology. They say that they must be foreign-funded radicals. They get into their “grassy knoll” theories over there in the Conservative Party, saying that this must be the problem.
However, here is the result of all that conflict and tension among Canadians and between first nations and the Government of Canada, which the current government has exacerbated time and again. It leads to uncertainty. Whatever the sector, whether the resource sector or the banking sector, uncertainty is a serious problem. It is impossible to plan if people within companies and industries do not feel they have any certainty. What the Conservatives have ironically and tragically done through their abusive and bullying approach to the conversation in Canada has increased the level of uncertainty and conflict.
Let us look at Bill C-31. Let us deal with what is in it. I can quickly walk through some of the positive measures because there are not many of them.
The government has finally reversed its policy on charging the GST on parking when visiting a hospital. It was something that the Conservatives put in the budget. We told them to take it out, and they listened for once. The Conservatives have also extended some tax credits for families who are seeking adoption. We think this is a very positive thing. They have also introduced another proposal that we put forward to allow for a tax credit for volunteers conducting search and rescue. We think that is very important. It is a small measure, but for those who risk their lives to protect Canadians, we think it is a good measure.
Now, let us get to the bad things that are in Bill C-31.
Let us start with the first one, FATCA. What a great deal it is that is buried in this bill. One would think that something like a major tax treaty with our most significant trading partner would have stand-alone legislation and its own debate. That is not so with the Conservatives; they bury it. When they bury something and they release it, as they did on a Friday afternoon when they released this bill, one can anticipate that there is something they do not want to talk about. We estimate that more than one million Canadians may be affected by this tax treaty. They are Canadians who do not even know they may be implicated by this by being married to an American or former American. They are Canadians who were born to American parents. Canadians who were born here may be implicated by this.
What this deal would do is to tell the banks in Canada to release the private personal banking information of those Canadians to the Canada Revenue Agency, which then ably and quickly would pass it along to the IRS in the United States. Passing the private banking information of more than one million Canadians to the U.S. government somehow does not seem to bother the Conservatives. There were no consultations with the Privacy Commissioner. They told the Privacy Commissioner it was happening, but did not bother to find out if it went against privacy laws in Canada.
We do not know if this is even charter proof. Constitutional lawyers have said that this is a mistreatment of Canadian citizens and it will face a charter challenge. Again, there were no charter questions. The banks have estimated that to collect this information may cost upward of $100 million. Some have already spent tens of millions of dollars; it is hard information to get at. We asked the government how much it would cost it to wade through these millions of documents and pieces of banking information, and the government said it had no estimate, that it does not know what it is going to cost. The banks have said it would cost upward of $100 million per bank.
The federal government signed this treaty and did not bother to find out what it might cost the Canadian taxpayer. In addition, there is no reciprocity. There is no agreement with the U.S. to have some sort of equal treatment of Canadians. Canada is not a tax haven for American money. It has never been described as such. Why institute a tax treaty to go after tax cheats and tax havens that do not exist? Why forego the privacy of so many Canadians?
What fight did the Conservatives actually do? The Minister of Finance wrote an op-ed. He did, and it was strongly worded. He put it into a couple of papers in Washington, and that was it. Compare that with the government having spent millions of dollars toward lobbying the U.S. government on Keystone. It has spent millions on a full-scale frontal attack. The Prime Minister said that if the U.S. does not agree, this is a no-brainer, and we will wait the president out. Was this all that could be done in diplomacy?
We spent millions, and are spending millions of dollars on diplomats running around Washington trying to convince the Americans to create 40,000 jobs in the U.S. to add value to the bitumen coming out of the oil patch in Alberta. Who came up with that number? The Canadian government did, when trying to convince American legislators. Compare that full-on assault in trying to convince people in Washington to do something, to an op-ed, when they were standing up for Canadians' rights. It is a no-brainer. This is bad policy to sell out Canadians at such a cheap level. There is so much more in this bill.
What is not in this bill is the consumer protection that the government so often talks about. The fact that people have to pay to get their bills from companies is not in this legislation; it was in the throne speech. It said it would go after payday lenders because it is extortion. It was talked about in the throne speech, but it is absent in Bill C-31.
On the passenger bill of rights, do members remember that one? The Conservatives had the industry minister talk about the passenger bill of rights. It is not in the bill. There is the small business hiring tax credit, something that New Democrats proposed in 2011 and the government incorporated into two subsequent budgets. According to small and medium-sized businesses, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, it works as an effective tax measure in creating jobs. Unlike the government's broad, blunt attacks on tax, it works, and the government left it out. When asked why, it did not respond and continued.
Last, on temporary foreign workers, there is a piece in the bill that is meant to punish employers who abuse the temporary foreign worker program. The government has a blacklist. It has had a blacklist, for two years, for employers who abuse the system. Who is on the blacklist? There is nobody, not a single employer. The Alberta government has cited over 100 employers who have abused the program, and the government cannot find one.
In summation, I will move the following amendment. However, allow me to say this. In the process that the government is using, this is fundamentally anti-democratic. It fundamentally does not help the Canadian economy, and it is more bad news for the Canadian people. I move:
That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following:
this House decline to give second reading to Bill C-31, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 11, 2014 and other measures, because it:
(a) amends more than 60 Acts without adequate parliamentary debate and oversight;
(b) does nothing to create quality, good-paying jobs for Canadians and fails to extend the hiring credit for small business;
(c) fails to reverse devastating cuts to infrastructure and healthcare;
(d) hands over private financial information of hundreds of thousands of Canadians to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service under Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act;
(e) reduces transparency at the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency;
(f) imposes tolls on the Champlain Bridge;
(g) jeopardizes the independence of 11 federal administrative tribunals; and
(h) enables the government to weaken regulations affecting rail safety and the transport of dangerous goods without notifying the public.
Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1Government Orders
The Acting Speaker Bruce Stanton
Debate will be on the amendment.
Questions and comments, the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands.
Ted Hsu Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON
Mr. Speaker, my comment is about the remarks that the member made about the intergovernmental agreement to respond to the United States Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.
As the member mentioned, there were a couple of things that the government did not do that it should have done: first, to perhaps ask the courts whether an intergovernmental agreement that was being negotiated would violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms; and, second, to get an official comment from the Privacy Commissioner as it was negotiating with officials from the United States.
I think the government could have done a better job of protecting the rights of Canadians, and I would ask if my colleague would like to comment on that.
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Mr. Speaker, do members remember that old slogan that the Conservatives used during one of the campaigns, “Stand up for Canada”? Was that the first campaign? It has been so long, I suppose, that they have forgotten what “Stand up for Canada” actually means. Both on the side of pushing back and negotiating a deal that protected Canadians' privacy and rights, they have capitulated entirely. Canada was one of the last G7/G20 countries to sign the deal with the United States. It is always a good sign when we are last up with our most significant trading partner.
This is the “ready, fire, aim” government. It puts it in place, and then after the fact says “This is a privacy issue, and perhaps we should check with the Privacy Commissioner. We'll do that later” or “Perhaps this might be unconstitutional. We have a whole bunch of lawyers here in Ottawa paid for by taxpayers, and they are constitutional experts”.
These guys are trying to run them out of work. They do not ask them anything, especially when dealing with something so fundamental as our constitutional rights.
“Stand up for Canada”; what a fascinating idea. They should perhaps dust off those old pamphlets from that election and actually do what they said they would do.
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley for raising the fact that one of the larger offences in all of the last number of years of omnibus budget bills is buried in this omnibus bill. This complex piece of legislation should never be put in an omnibus bill.
I have previously mentioned to the House Peter Hogg, one of Canada's leading constitutional experts, who warned the Minister of Finance that this bill would violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
I also want to draw the attention of the House to the opinion of Allison Christians, who is the H. Heward Stikeman chair in tax law at McGill, and Arthur Cockfield, a professor at Queen's University. I want to put their opinion on the record:
The proposed Implementation Act and the IGA do not enhance the reciprocal tax information exchange between the United States and Canada, nor do they create a workable regime for Canada to enhance its international tax enforcement efforts going forward.
Further they state:
Instead, the Implementation Act and the IGA raise a number of serious issues ranging from likely Charter violations to violations—
Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1Government Orders
The Acting Speaker Bruce Stanton
We have run out of time. I know we have a 10-minute timeframe for questions and comments, but we need some time for other members.
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Mr. Speaker, the challenges will come, and the courts will be seized with this.
This is such a bad way to run government. The Conservatives spent a quarter of a million dollars on the Nadon appointment to the Supreme Court and then had to go back and undo it, for the first time in Canadian history.
These things matter. Things like the Constitution actually seem to matter. Lo and behold, the Conservatives are finding that. On tax treaties, privacy rights will matter and constitutional rights will matter.
I have another point that I was unable to raise in my speech: the lack of transparency. After all the tragedies we have seen involving rail safety, one would think that the government would put something in here to help. What it has done is give the minister the power to change training, equipment, and safety regulations without having to notify the public.
The government has simply, unilaterally, within cabinet, decided that it is going to change the way the trains are run across this country, without ever notifying the public or the community. We would have thought, after Lac-Mégantic, that there would have been an increase in transparency to try to bring the public into what is happening on the rails, since it can so deeply affect a community and pose such a risk. Instead, the government has gone the opposite way.
It is a shame. It is a continuation of the Conservative tendency toward insulting all measures of transparency and accountability.
Guy Caron NDP Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC
Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by thanking the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley for his excellent speech. This is his first speech on an economic topic since he was appointed official opposition finance critic. I loved his speech.
The question I wanted to ask was already asked, in part, by my colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands. I would like to take that one step further. She talked about the constitutional issues related to FATCA. It is becoming increasingly clear in budget bill after budget bill after budget bill that the Conservative government's process does not include enough preparation.
They rush their bills through with very little discussion, and they introduce bills, like the last one, with monumental errors. We took a stand against that and warned the government, in the Standing Committee on Finance and in the House of Commons, that the provisions to change the appointment process for Supreme Court judges would not get past the Supreme Court itself. The Conservatives did not listen to us.
There are other elements, such as the Conservatives' decision not to charge GST and HST on parking fees after all, even though that was a measure they proposed. We pointed out their mistake to them.
I would like the member to comment on the growing number of increasingly serious mistakes resulting from the government's hasty approach time and time again.
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my dear colleague from Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques for his question.
The problem with the process they are using now is that it costs a lot of money, it is very complicated and it is unfair. There are many provisions in this bill designed to improve situations created by previous omnibus bills passed by the Conservatives. That is the problem with this bill. The Conservatives are going to use another huge bill to solve the problems created by previous omnibus bills.
Here is a very interesting quote by the Prime Minister. He said:
....in the interest of democracy I ask: How can members represent their constituents on these various areas when they are forced to vote in a block on such legislation and on such concerns? We can agree with some of the measures but oppose others. How do we express our views and the views of our constituents when the matters are so diverse?
Who believed that? It was the Prime Minister who used to believe that. What has this Prime Minister done? He has taken the omnibus abuses and put them on steroids. We now have omnibus bill after omnibus bill, with a kitchen sink full of measures. They are Trojan Horses that bury within them all these anti-democratic measures. The Conservatives then pretend to break it up at committee.
The process is complete sham. We need something better. We need a competent government. In 2015, we will get ourselves one.
Hélène LeBlanc NDP LaSalle—Émard, QC
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the official opposition finance critic for his speech, which showed just how deceiving this omnibus bill is and how it will do nothing to help the Canadian economy, growth or job creation.
I would like the member to elaborate on these issues. How are this Conservative government's successive austerity bills stifling Canada's economy and causing us to fall further and further behind?
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my dear colleague from LaSalle—Émard for her question.
It is interesting because everyone believes that there are some basic problems with the economy right now. A bill that is over 350 pages long should present an opportunity to improve the situation, add value and send a message to young people who are really struggling in today's labour market as a result of both Conservative and Liberal governance.
What does this bill contain? It contains many other things. One truly dangerous example is the Administrative Tribunals Support Service of Canada. What is that? It is the group of independent tribunals whose purpose is to defend human rights and aboriginal rights. With this bill, the government is going to change who has control over all existing tribunals, thus jeopardizing their independence. I know that the government does not really like to be criticized and it does not really like people who speak out against it, but we need these truly independent tribunals. This bill raises many concerns about what will happen in the future, since its provisions do little to help the economy and a lot to undermine democracy.
Scott Brison Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-31. This is the Conservatives' first bill to implement budget 2014. It is again another massive omnibus budget bill. It is 359 pages in length, with almost 500 separate clauses.
This bill includes a host of measures that have nothing to do with a budget bill in an effort to limit debate on important issues. Completely unrelated measures are grouped together in a single bill. The Conservatives chose this route in order to adopt these measures quickly and avoid having them reviewed by Parliament.
The inconsistency, and some would say hypocrisy, that the government is demonstrating is exemplified by the Prime Minister's own words as an opposition MP. I heard my colleague for Skeena—Bulkley Valley refer to this quotation a few minutes ago.
In 1994, the Prime Minister, as an opposition MP, said in this House:
...in the interest of democracy, I ask: How can members represent their constituents on these various areas when they are forced to vote in a block on such legislation and on such concerns?
We can agree with some of the measures but oppose others. How do we express our views and the views of our constituents when the matters are so diverse?
He went on to say:
The bill contains many distinct proposals and principles and asking members to provide simple answers to such complex questions is in contradiction to the conventions and practices of the House. ... I would also ask government members...to give serious consideration to this issue of democracy....
The Liberal omnibus legislation that the then opposition member, now Prime Minister, was talking about at that time in 1994 was 21 pages in length and altered 11 pieces of legislation. That is a far cry from the 359-page document that lies before us today.
I cannot for the life of me understand how the Prime Minister, and others who were part of that Reform movement at that time, could live with themselves today when what they are doing goes far deeper against the principles that they articulated at that time.
The Conservatives are continuing their reckless abuse of power by using these huge omnibus bills and underhanded procedural manoeuvres to force these policies through. They are ignoring public outcry from coast to coast to coast. They are also potentially creating bad public policy, because the committees, wherein greater expertise lies and which ought to be considering and ultimately voting on these pieces of legislation, are being cut out of the discussion. Perhaps there is some level of engagement of committees when it comes to the evaluation of the legislation, but not at the critical points at which we vote at committee to pass these pieces of legislation.
We are being asked to consider measures, for instance, of compassionate leave, sickness benefits, search and rescue volunteers tax credits, expansion of the adoption expense tax credit, and medical expense tax credits. We would actually be quite supportive of many of these measures as individual measures, and it is unfortunate that these positive measures are being lumped together with some very unreasonable and harmful and regressive measures that we cannot support.
The bill also includes new rules around FATCA, the U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. Under the bill, Canadians effectively are going to be doing the dirty work and becoming tax collectors for the IRS. Canada-U.S. dual citizens are going to be punished if they do not provide their U.S. tax number to the CRA.
If these Canadians provide their U.S. tax numbers, the Canadian government will hand over all this information, together with information on the Canadians' bank accounts, to the U.S. This will help the U.S. collect tax on registered Canadian savings accounts, including RDSPs, registered disability savings plans; RESPs, registered education savings plans; and tax free savings accounts.
The other night when we were at the briefing by the Finance Canada public servants, they could not answer a very simple question, and that was whether the contributions made to RDSPs and RESPs by the Canadian government as matching grants would be considered taxable by the Americans. They could not answer that basic question.
It was never the public policy intention of RDSPs and RESPs to subsidize the American treasury. They are for helping Canadian families with members with disabilities and for helping young Canadians get good educations. Yet the Conservatives are incapable of answering that question. They have not stood up for Canadian interests during these negotiations.
The budget bill would also change rules around rail safety, food safety, and hazardous products.
It would centralize control over regional development in my part of the country and ACOA. It would take away the authority of regional boards in ACOA. It would dissolve those boards and move all the decision-making to Ottawa. It would dissolve ECBC without real consultation with communities, again centralizing decision-making in Ottawa on matters on which Atlantic Canadians, frankly, may have greater expertise and understanding.
The bill would also change the number of federal judges. We would think the government would have learned something from the Nadon fiasco. Ultimately, one of the casualties of previous budget implementation bills was the government's credibility when it came to the appointment of Supreme Court justices. Members will recall that it was in a previous budget implementation act that the government changed the legislation, the Supreme Court Act, with regard to the appointment of judges to try to facilitate the appointment of Justice Nadon. We know how that ended up. It did not end well. The Supreme Court refused to go along with the government on that.
That is the kind of bad public policy outcome we have when we force all these unrelated measures through the House in an omnibus budget bill of this scale.
I want to talk a little bit about what is not in Bill C-31. There is very little in this piece of legislation to address some of the most serious concerns facing Canadian families today. There is little in the bill that would actually help struggling middle-class families who are having difficulty making ends meet. Conservatives have failed to recognize that large groups within the Canadian economy and society are being left out of this so-called economic recovery.
In my part of Nova Scotia, the Annapolis Valley, Stats Canada, which tracks unemployment and employment and labour figures, gives some very telling data. I represent Hants County, Kings County, and Annapolis County. Hants, Kings, and Annapolis are represented by me and the member for West Nova.
Since the recession, residents in this part of Nova Scotia have seen good-paying, full-time jobs replaced by temporary and part-time work. That data is laid out for us by Stats Canada. We have seen part-time jobs increase by 1,700. In the same period, the region has lost 9,800 full-time jobs. The percentage of residents in the area who are of working age and have a job, which is labour market participation, has plummeted from 61.6% to 54%.
This is what is happening in my part of Nova Scotia. We are seeing it in families. We are seeing it in small businesses.
We are seeing real economic challenges. The government seems out of touch when it talks about this recovery as if it were a monolithic recovery that is affecting and helping people in all regions of the country, because there are groups that are simply being left behind. A lot of families are struggling just to get by.
These Canadians are tired of the uncertainty. They are tired of struggling to find work to try to make ends meet when they have lost full-time jobs and have had to replace them with part-time work. They are facing record levels of personal debt. The average household in Canada now owes a record $1.66 for every $1 of disposable income. Instead of using this budget to help address some of these challenging needs of middle-class families, Conservatives continue to ignore them.
In the previous four Conservative budgets, the Conservatives actually raised taxes on hard-working Canadian families. Budget 2013 actually raised taxes on imported goods, everything from household goods to wigs for cancer patients. Sadly, the Conservatives raised taxes because they needed the money to cover for their waste and mismanagement. They spent hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising, and millions to advertise a jobs program that did not even exist. Meanwhile, the middle class is struggling under record levels of personal debt, and the Conservatives are raising taxes on it just to support its own profligacy and wasteful spending on advertising.
Canadian youth are struggling. This bill ignores the unemployment and underemployment challenges of young Canadians. Due to Conservative inaction on youth unemployment and underemployment, we risk losing a generation of potential. We will feel the economic consequences of this disinterest in young Canadians for decades.
For young Canadians, there are 265,000 fewer jobs than there were before the downturn. TD Economics has estimated that prolonged high levels of unemployment and underemployment among young Canadians will cost the Canadian economy $23 billion.
For those who like to argue that youth unemployment is always bad following a recession, it is time to look beyond the simple unemployment rate and examine the whole story. For example, the gap between Canada's youth unemployment and adult unemployment has recently reached an all-time high. Our young people are simply being left out of this so-called recovery.
What is more, the unemployment rate does not reflect the fact that some young people are so discouraged that they are not even looking for work any more.
Students are having a harder time finding summer work. Many of them are taking unpaid internships just for work experience. A lack of paid work means that students are graduating from university with high levels of debt. The need today for government intervention and summer jobs, post-recession, is actually greater than it was before the downturn, yet the Canada summer jobs program last summer created half the number of summer jobs it did back in 2005.
The need is greater today, and the government is doing half as much to create jobs for students during the summer.
This is not just affecting young Canadians. It is affecting parents, and in many cases grandparents, who are footing the bills. According to TD Bank, more than half of baby boom parents are providing financial support to adult children who are no longer in school. It is nearly half, and 43% have allowed their adult children to live at home, rent-free, for extended periods of time.
Helping adult children make ends meet is actually leading a lot of middle-class families into greater levels of debt. They are dipping into retirement savings. It is also one of the reasons Canadian parents 55 years of age and older with children are more likely than those without children to refinance their mortgages. Their average household debt is actually twice that of their childless peers. They are more likely to take on higher non-mortgage debt, such as higher credit card debt and lines of credit, which is one of the reasons non-mortgage debt in Canada continues to climb. The average Canadian owes $28,000 in non-mortgage debt today. That is a record high.
There are too many young Canadians looking for work and there are too many middle-class Canadian families struggling under crushing levels of personal debt. The bill would do little to help Canadian youth or middle-class families and offers no real vision for the future.
I would like to speak again about something in this budget implementation act, and these are the measures regarding FATCA. The Conservatives want to actually turn Canadians into American tax collectors through this budget implementation bill. Earlier this year, when the Conservatives signed an intergovernmental agreement with the U.S. to implement FATCA, we had hoped that some of the concerns we had would be addressed.
Canada and the U.S. had previously achieved an agreement to exchange information on suspected tax cheats, but FATCA goes a step further than any other tax-sharing legislation has. It requires Canadian banks to give the CRA the account information of every U.S. citizen living in Canada. The CRA will then give this information to the IRS, and those U.S. persons will have to file taxes in the U.S.
The problem is that there are many U.S. citizens living in Canada, and they do not even know that they are considered Americans for tax purposes. These include any person born in the U.S. or born to an American parent, even if they have not lived in the U.S. since they were toddlers. The Canadian government has agreed to help the IRS find these individuals.
This will also affect Canadians who are not even U.S. citizens but are married to one, because their joint accounts will now be reported to the IRS. This is a remarkable breach of Canadians' privacy by their own government. Not only will the CRA provide the IRS information with tax identification information and the account balances of U.S. persons without their knowledge, it will impose a $100 penalty for each instance of non-compliance. Why are Conservatives prepared to do Uncle Sam's work in this case and potentially penalize Canadians with dual citizenship or their Canadian spouses?
U.S. persons living in Canada would be required to report and pay taxes to the U.S. on their RDSPs and RESPs. These accounts are supposed to help Canadians pay for education or help disabled Canadians avoid poverty. The Canadian government money was not intended to be used to subsidize the U.S. treasury. Why are the Conservatives allowing this to happen, when it so clearly is inconsistent with the objectives of RDSPs and RESPs?
The other night, as I mentioned earlier today, we asked the public servants at the briefing whether Canadian government contributions, the matching grants to RESPs and RDSPs, would be considered taxable by the Americans, by the IRS. They could not answer the question. The idea that we would sign an agreement when we do not know something as basic as this speaks to the way the government has lost influence, power, and authority in negotiating with the Americans.
The FATCA agreement is very important, and it should be a stand-alone piece of legislation. We should be doing a more thorough evaluation of the agreement the government has signed, and it should not be part of a budget implementation bill, an omnibus bill. Constitutional law experts such as Peter Hogg have raised concerns about whether the agreement violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. There are real issues around this that will be given short shrift through the process by which a budget implementation act, which is such a massive omnibus bill, has been given to Parliament.
There are also provisions in this budget implement act for demutualization. I have heard from insurance providers in Nova Scotia who worry that these changes potentially will hurt rural Canadians. Even the government's own report on demutualization tells us, quote:
Concerns were expressed that demutualization could lead to consolidation, reduce competition, access to services, and weaken ties to rural communities in which most mutual companies are based.
Again, measures on demutualization are something we need to consider more thoroughly.
What is clear is that this tired, out-of-touch Conservative government is devoid of vision and ideas. It is not just anti-democratic; it is totally out of touch with young Canadians and struggling middle-class families. Canadians deserve better.
Guy Caron NDP Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Kings—Hants for his speech. I have the pleasure of sitting with him at the Standing Committee on Finance. We have had a number of opportunities to discuss important issues there, including one that is in this bill.
I am talking about the FATCA agreement between Canada and the United States. It has to do with the United States going through Canada to collect taxes from people it considers to be U.S. citizens. I raise this issue not just because it is important, but because we have studied the issue of tax havens and tax evasion at the Standing Committee on Finance. Some, including me, believe that we only scratched the surface, while others believe we studied the matter at length. Even though I do not feel we spent very much time on this study, it was extremely intense because the issue is quite broad and complex.
At the Standing Committee on Finance, we will be studying this budget implementation bill in its entirety, so the committee might need several weeks to get through all the complexities of the FATCA agreement. Can my colleague comment on that?