Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to stand to speak to Bill C-26 in the House today. It has been referred to as the Canada pension plan tax hike bill brought on by the Liberals, and that is certainly what it is.
I want to welcome back all of my colleagues after Thanksgiving. I hope they had a good break and everyone enjoyed it. I know there are many happy Conservatives giving thanks in Alberta today and I would like to announce my support for Mr. Motz as he will be coming from the Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner constituency to join us in the House very shortly.
One of my colleagues said today that the numbers to remember were 70 for the Conservatives and 26 for the carbon tax. I only go there because my colleague from Richmond Centre indicated that the carbon tax is what would kill seniors. However, that is only one thing.
Forcing tax increases on people, such as Bill C-26 would do, is not very democratic, with the government saying it is going to help seniors when, clearly, the bill would not help them for 40 years down the road. Even my colleague from Winnipeg indicated earlier that it might be his children who would benefit from this, and that is absolutely true. My grandchildren would probably benefit from it a bit, 40 years down the road, and none of them are even 20 years old yet.
That is the kind of rhetoric that comes out of bills like this that are not well thought out. It would be a tax on the individuals who are going to put up this money, and because it would be such a long time before they would ever get a payback on it, it would be decades after they retire before they would get back what they put it into it themselves.
I want to go back to what my colleague from Chilliwack—Hope said today. When people put these funds into the account, it would be a long time before they would see any benefit. They would be putting their money into a plan that, if they die early, an unfortunate circumstance, the money they have put away for all of these years would not accrue to them. It would not go to their families upon their death like in a normal pension plan or their own private savings.
I want to make it very clear that I support the public pension plan, as was questioned earlier by my colleague from Winnipeg North. We have both debated a number of these kinds of bills in the Manitoba legislature when we were both there, but this is not the way to enhance the ability of seniors to have more money in their retirement years. If it is put in place to help those who need it today, then there are many other ways of doing that to make it easier for seniors to access those funds in the near future.
What scale of support would this provide? The tax itself could end up being $2,200 a year. That would be the increased premiums people would pay. Of course, $1,100 of that would be paid by the individual and $1,100 paid by the employer. Having been an employer and knowing how the system works, it is a matching fund. I do not have a problem with that, but what it would do is two things. It would not provide the benefit right away that the government may have been targeting and it would certainly, as my colleague just finished saying, reduce people's ability to put funds into their own private pension plans, if they were able to. It would decrease the amount of money they would get back in the near term. I think the number was that it would reduce it by 7%.
It would also make it tougher for businesses to survive. This is not just a Conservative number. There was a study done. If Liberals do not believe it, they should look at Finance Canada. It is the one saying that higher CPP premiums will hurt the economy, as was also just pointed out.
According to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business a full 70% of businesses in Canada today have indicated that they disagree with the notion that this would be just a modest little tax increase as the Liberals are saying. Actually, the Liberals do not use the word “tax”. The only one who uses that word is the environment minister on carbon.
There is a correlation here between the bills that the government is bringing forward. The government is dropping a carbon tax, which could be 11.5¢, on the same seniors whom it wants to put more money into their pension plans. It looks to me like everybody is paying and the government is taking. That is a concern.
It is ironic that the Liberal government is mandating a tax today on individuals to pay more for a benefit that would only be achievable in 40 years, when it cannot even balance its own budget today. Bigger debt hurts seniors more as well. It particularly hurts the very young who will have to pay all of this back in the future. It is a bit ironic for the Liberals to say that there will be a mandated tax and a benefit, but anyone over the age of 40 today would probably not see that benefit unless he or she lives to be 100 years old.
There are many other ways of helping seniors in the more immediate term. We did it by increasing the guaranteed income supplement, the GIS, when we were in government. The Harper government made the largest increase in the GIS in 25 years. The Liberals liked the idea because they implemented a small increase in that in their very first budget.
The Liberals also did away with the increase in the tax-free savings accounts that would have gone up to the $10,000 mark. This would have allowed many seniors to save. It may be a surprise to many Liberal members across the floor but the number of seniors who were using the TFSA was in the neighbourhood of 60%. That is a pretty clear indication that those people were doing what the present government is forcing them to do, which is saving for their own retirements. They were putting this money away so that they could use it in the future.
There are also many other ways to help seniors, whether it is through an increase in the basic personal exemption, or whether it is through a decrease in personal income tax. Those are a number of things that could be done, although the government is going the other way. It has increased taxes on small businesses. They certainly are not going to be at the level that we had announced in our election campaign. When a government is simply taxing these folks and saying it is going to be good for them, when clearly it is not, then it is not a clear direction to emulate.
A member asked the other day if we were in favour of the Canada pension plan when it was first put in place back in the sixties. Of course we were, but back then the plan was only to support other pension mechanisms. I would like to quote Judy LaMarsh in referring to the CPP, “It is not intended to provide all the retirement income which many Canadians wish to have. This is a matter of individual choice and, in the government’s view, should properly be left to personal savings and private pension plans.” Judy LaMarsh was the Liberal minister responsible for establishing the Canada pension plan in 1964. Even the Liberals felt that when the plan was set up it was only to be a supplement to the other mechanisms that were there.
I could go on with a number of other quotes, but instead I will say that 70% of employed Canadians oppose expanding the Canada pension plan, if it means a wage freeze. Over one-third of employed Canadians say that proposed increases are unaffordable, and 80% want the government to further consult before making any decisions.
I think it is very clear that there are a number of things that could be improved and could be done to help seniors. The bill does not do it and that is why I will be voting against it.