Debates of Nov. 14th, 2016

(Return tabled)

Questions Passed as Orders for Returns

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Finally, Mr. Speaker, I ask that the remaining questions be allowed to stand at this time.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

The House resumed from November 2 consideration of the motion that Bill C-29, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 22, 2016 and other measures, be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the amendment.

Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 2

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to start the debate today on Bill C-29.

Rather than getting into the technical tax elements of it, I would like to go on about my riding. People know from when I spoke about the budget previously how delighted I was at the number of things that were in it for the north. An unparalleled number of things were put in for my constituents. I could not even get to them all in a 10-minute speech and my colleagues were asking me what was left for their ridings. Nevertheless, I am very happy for everything that was received by my riding.

I will start with the huge increase to the northern allowance, from $16.50 a day to a maximum of $22 a day. This is a huge emphasis on the people of the north. We can see our northern strategy is based on helping the people of the north in a very high cost-of-living area, where poverty could easily occur. This is the type of support we need and it was wonderfully received, of course, by the people of the north.

Our two biggest sectors are mining and tourism. Mining is the biggest gross territorial product, basically, since the gold rush; and tourism is the biggest private sector employer.

In mining, we continued in the budget the mineral exploration tax credit and the flow-through share regime. These are very important, especially, for exploration companies. There may be only one or two hard rock mines operating, and they have a limited number of employees. Those mines have a product that they can get loans against and get financing against. Exploration companies really have no credit, they do not have buildings, they do not have product, and it is very hard for them to get financing.

The METC and the flow-through share regime are very important for them. I would certainly like to thank the Minister of Natural Resources for lobbying for this and the finance minister for putting it in place.

With respect to the tourism sector, my riding has the highest percentage of our gross territorial product related to tourism of any province or territory so that a cut to tourism marketing in Canada would hurt my riding more than anywhere else. That is why I am delighted with the $50-million increase to that this year.

With respect to infrastructure, once again, as everyone knows, the fact that the government planned to have the largest amount of infrastructure in history is music to the ears in our riding. First, we have kept the building Canada plan that was in place for 2014 to 2024, we have accelerated the approvals, and we added some categories such as recreation, which is very important to my communities. They really wanted to build recreation facilities out of that fund, and now they can.

At the same time, phase two of the new infrastructure funding is going on. We have already announced the entire amounts of money for projects for most of my communities for the next three years. A lot of them are based on water and waste-water improvements, which is very important infrastructure. The minister has done extensive consultation. When phase two starts, we will be able to get more money for our transit. We do have a transit system in Whitehorse and it has already received money.

The green infrastructure fund is very forward-thinking.

I have been saying for a couple of decades, and everyone I think now knows, that climate change is affecting the north more than anywhere else in the world. It was very perceptive to allow funds to be put in the budget for mitigation and for preparing infrastructure to withstand the effects of climate change, which can be seen in the foundations of our buildings, under melting permafrost, and on our highways. Those funds will be welcomed.

Another thing is the social infrastructure. I visited some of the day cares that would like to expand the number of spots. That money will be very welcomed.

Then there is affordable housing and the national housing plan. I have been on the anti-poverty coalition for years. We hope that the infrastructure bank will work; I will talk about that a bit later. The AIDEA bank in Alaska is very successful in an economy like ours.

Finally, I would like to talk about the recently announced $2 billion for rural and northern regions for roads and bridges, green infrastructure, and Internet connections. Earlier in the day today, the opposition brought up how important the regions are. This is a massive signal. It is the biggest amount of money for the region.

For all those reasons, I am very excited about the budget and its initiatives. However, I do not want to let the finance minister off that easily. I want to now morph into our wishes for the next budget, based on consultations I have had in the riding. Some of these things could already be funded under the various programs I have just mentioned.

First, homelessness and the national housing strategy is very important to the people who gave me input on the upcoming budget. Affordable housing for employers is very important. They hire people. They come to the north and cannot find affordable housing, so have to leave again.

There is the suggestion of the electrification of transport routes so electric vehicles can be used. Of course, in the cities they can plug in and recharge. Along the Alaska Highway, for instance, we could have that all electrified.

Another suggestion, which happens to also be eligible and already announced, is the retrofit of old buildings and higher standards for new buildings.

Renewable energy of course is something people in my riding want to invest in, and it is a big part of the government's plan. There is a way of storing energy in off-peak hours, so a storage mechanism is also important. Certainly, that is eligible, and there are keen proponents of that in my riding.

Also, local food production in the north, rather than shipping things thousands of miles, and funding for social enterprises are suggestions.

A redundant fibre is very important for us. The Yukon has one Internet line cable going in and every time a backhoe cuts a line it shuts everything down. We would like to make a loop through the Dempster Highway through Inuvik. In fact, part of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories also only access through our hub, or only have one route. This would put a redundancy in place for a lot of people in the north so they could have access similar to what we have. These would be eligible under these new infrastructure programs, and I hope their funding is included.

We have one area where a hydro line needs to be replaced. We could go to several mines that would otherwise use LNG, and they would then contribute to greenhouse gases.

The IT sector is flourishing in the north now, because we do not need to transport heavy things. It is all done over the lines. We certainly appreciate the support for that.

We want the mining supports that I talked about earlier to continue. We would like the tourism marketing supports to continue. We would like support for business incubators. Once businesses have started, in many ways they have a record and they can get financing. They have partners, but when they are first starting up the costs for mentoring and cheap infrastructure, just getting going, is a hard part in the life cycle of a small business. We would like to support that.

There is room to support IRAP. It has been an incredible program for the last three decades at least. It is very instrumental for innovation. We would like to continue with that.

I said about 20 years ago, we need research in the north, by the north, and for the north. We have great research up there. We would like that to continue.

Yukon College has a plan, with the other three northern colleges, to take adults who may not be literate and upgrade them to the next stage. It is about $56 billion for the three colleges that cover half of northern Canada. That would be a great project to fund in the new budget.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for his speech and for talking about investments in mitigating the impact of climate change in particular.

Right now, heavy rainfall has led to a state of emergency at the Tseshaht First Nation in Port Alberni. These flood warnings are expected to continue throughout the coming week.

We know that climate change has moved from a future threat to a present danger. Extreme weather events such as floods are increasing in frequency and in severity. The PBO predicts that storms, hurricanes, and floods linked to climate change will cost the federal disaster fund $900 million annually over the coming five years. That compares to an average of just $54 million a year for the period from 1970 to 1994.

The disaster financial assistance program operated by Public Safety Canada is heavily underfunded. Therefore, I would ask the member if he supports increased funding to mitigate climate change, to invest in a national flood strategy so that we have a plan, so that we can budget and pre-empt a lot of the costs that are going to be created by flooding in our communities.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question. However, I think the member is preaching to the converted on this side. He might talk to his colleagues to the right.

For a long time, I have been supporting investment in mitigation, because, as I said earlier, it is hurting us more than anyone else. Therefore, I am certainly in support of this type of funding, and, in fact, even internationally. I tabled a bill about eight years ago for those people who had lost their country because of this type of disaster and had no place to live as their homes were inundated, and that would make them eligible for a category under immigration as refugees.

I certainly support the direction the member has suggested, but I do not know the technical details.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, when I think of the budget implementation bill, there are a lot of things that we could be talking about. However, one of the big policy announcements that was made early on upon taking government was the idea of having that extra tax on Canada's wealthiest, the 1%, and at the same time producing a tax benefit for Canada's middle class. This is something I expected all members of this House would support, but, unfortunately, that is not the case.

I wonder if the member would provide his thoughts in terms of how important it was to provide that tax break for Canada's middle class.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for the question, because it allows me say something else. As I said, I did not have time to get in a couple of other things from the budget that were so exciting for us, which were pan-Canadian.

First of all, of course, the middle-class tax credit goes to so many people in the north. It helps us more than anything else, because the cost of living is so much higher.

One of the reasons I got into Parliament was to fight poverty. We have increased money for low-income students, for the poorest of seniors in the OAS supplement, for women's shelters, and for services for veterans. There are also the categories for people in the housing strategy and poverty work, as well as money for the people who really need it, which is very important to me.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the BIA will not index the new Canada child benefit to inflation until 2020. The member spoke about his role in wanting to reduce poverty. I wonder whether he can comment on that, and if he would agree and urge the government to index it so that it would not fall behind with respect to inflation.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, yes, the child benefit is a sea change in Canada, it is huge. It is the biggest thing for my riding with thousands of new dollars for parents. I think it went way ahead, and would have covered indexing for a few years. The sooner indexing comes in, the better for me. I am happy when the government does put it in.

[John McKay, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence]

Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to participate in this debate. It gives me an opportunity to talk about a town hall I attended a week ago today. The town hall was at the University of Toronto's Scarborough Campus, UTSC, and was hosted by six Scarborough MPs: the members for Scarborough Southwest, Scarborough Centre, Scarborough—Agincourt, Scarborough North, Scarborough—Rouge Park, and myself, the member for Scarborough—Guildwood. It was a really good event. It was an opportunity to invite the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance to talk about the very subject we are discussing today.

As everyone can appreciate, this budget is of great interest to the people of Scarborough. In particular, as we know, Scarborough is the eastern cornerstone of the GTA. It has a population of 600,000 or 700,000 people and is very ably represented by all of its MPs.

The big message out of this town hall was transit, transit, transit. The reason it is transit is because this is a severely under-serviced area in the GTA.

The location where this town hall took place, as I said, was UTSC. UTSC is a community of scholars. At this point, there are 13,000 students, a mix of both graduates and undergraduates. It is going up to 15,000 in a couple of years, yet it can only be accessed by TTC buses. That is a very poor way of getting that volume of people on and off of the campus on a daily basis.

Principal Kidd introduced the evening by talking about this need, but also the larger needs of the campus, particularly with respect to infrastructure. He made the point, or maybe I made the point for him thereafter, that UTSC had been home to the top scholars at the University of Toronto for the last four years running. Think about that. This is a suburban campus in the eastern-most part of the GTA and for the last four years it has been home to the top scholars at the University of Toronto. This gives us a feel for the quality of education that one would receive on a campus like that.

In addition to UTSC, there is also Centennial College, which would probably have double the number students if we add in part-time and full-time students. We are talking in the order of 40,000-plus students coming and going in the eastern GTA, in Scarborough, from two of the top schools not only in Ontario but in all of Canada. Centennial College has received quite a number of awards recently for the quality of its scholarships and job training.

The point of the principal and of the people who attended the event, and the point of us in Scarborough, was that transit was the number one ask. That is entirely consistent with the direction this government is going. There is a consensus that governments need to invest not only to boost economic growth in the short term but to set the stage for long-term growth as well. That is exactly what the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister are doing today.

They are talking to some of the most savvy investors in the world, inviting them to give Canada a real look. In giving Canada a real look for potential investments in all kinds of infrastructure projects, we may actually be able to free up a serious amount of money so we can make the investments necessary to address what I and others have described as an infrastructure deficit.

The beauty of having a town hall such as this is that we get to hear what the people want. The worst thing in politics, and I know because you are a very successful politician, Mr. Speaker, is that 90% of politics is just showing up, listening to what people want. When we can have a useful and constructive dialogue such as we had last Monday night, we can then respond in a way that deals with fiscal realities, but also deals with the needs and wants of Canadians.

This is why that town hall in particular, which was well attended, was very successful. We heard from a variety of interests. Naturally because we were on a university campus, the interests of students was of considerable concern. They particularly appreciated some of the relief that had been given to students in the last budget. Naturally, and not surprisingly, they are looking for more. Nevertheless when we hear what they have to say and they hear about other competing needs, they realize the government has a bit of a balancing act to stay fiscally sustainable but simultaneously that they may also be able to meet many needs right across the spectrum.

We are rather fortunate as a nation that we have some fiscal capacities. The discipline from the Chrétien-Martin years has stood us in good stead. We drove down the amount of the national debt. We had our debt-to-GDP ratios down to levels that were sustainable. Because of the work of Prime Ministers Martin and Chrétien, we are able to contemplate investments in the future.

I would like to say the same would be true of Mr. Harper's government, but I would note that the Conservative government added $150 billion to the national debt. I would not say that totally constrains our fiscal capacities, but it does have some constraint. One wishes that some of the decisions around revenue depression and expenditures had been made differently, but we are where we are. It is still a position that is relatively good, and exceedingly good compared to many other nations.

Hence the sales job by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance gets a lot easier when they can say the debt-to-GDP ratio runs around 30% on an annual basis and is on track to maintain or reduce that slightly. That enables those who would be investing literally billions and billions of dollars in our country to have some confidence that the fiscal management of our nation is in good hands.

The final point I want to make is with respect to many middle-class Canadians feeling they are working a lot harder. This speaks to an alienation that we have seen reflected in other countries, but we are not immune from it. It is the distribution of the wealth in our country. There is a feeling of concern that some people are doing exceedingly well, referred to as the 1% and sometimes as the 1% of the 1%. In the efforts on the part of the government in the last budget and in this budget implementation bill to address that concern, there is a need to have some redistribution of wealth so all Canadians feel they have a stake in this nation.

We have seen populist uprising in a whole variety of nations. A lot of that is driven by the fact that some people feel they are getting left behind. Fairly, unfairly, rationally, or otherwise, that is the feeling. The Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance addressed that somewhat in the last budget. None of us are immune from that sense of alienation.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague mentioned the good management of the Martin-Chrétien years. I need to remind him that was done by simply cutting $25 billion from transfers to the provinces and municipalities. The municipalities are still suffering from those cuts.

Later on in his speech he said that the fiscal management of the government was in good hands. How can actually say that when we realize that the interest costs alone between today and 2020 are rising by $15 billion per year? The interest costs per year that we will pay on our deficit will be $15 billion higher in 2020 than it is today. Yet he says that the fiscal management is in good hands.

Could he square that circle for me?

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague has been here for quite a while. He would know that when Prime Minister Chrétien and then-finance minister Martin took over from the previous Conservative administration, the New York Times had designated Canada as an honorary member of the third world based upon its debt-to-GDP ratio, which was approaching, if not north of, 70%. Something major had to be done so there was some fiscal discipline imposed upon all levels of government.

I would take note that the relationship between the federal government and municipalities has substantially improved, primarily because we are now in a fiscal situation where we can.

On the interest costs, it is a Conservative double-think to prattle on about how the Conservatives think they are great fiscal managers when, out of the 10 budgets they presented, eight were deficit budgets and one was the biggest deficit budget in the history of our nation. They pretend they know something about fiscal responsibility. They added $150 billion to the national debt, and the rest of us are paying for that.

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, when my colleague mentioned that he thought politics was only 90% showing up, I hope he misspoke. Clearly the people from Essex who elected me to be in the House expect more than just showing up. If that is what the Liberal government represents, the member opposite will have questions to be answered in his own riding.

He mentioned setting the stage, and that is true. However, the government is setting the stage for privatization, something it has no mandate to do, something the Liberals were not elected to do. There is a danger in this.

As we face trade deals like CETA coming forward, the TPP, the potential of reopening NAFTA, there is a danger in privatizing things that are in the public sphere because of investor state challenges that can brought against us for doing so.

In these trade agreements, there are clauses called “ratchet” and “standstill” that determine things that can be brought back and forth between public and private. There is a real danger that once it is privatized, these deals will make it nearly impossible for us to bring things public again.

Does the member understand that this is a threat to Canadian democracy?

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

I just take note, Mr. Speaker, that I have enjoyed some success in this place. I have gone through seven elections and this is my 19th year. When I offer my hon. colleague some advice, it is gratuitous. I appreciate that maybe it is not worth what is paid for it. However, I take note that Canadians like to be talked to. The strange concept is that they are asking us to talk to them because they are reasonable people and, by and large, they are. We return the telephone calls and answer the letters. When I say that 90% of the game is showing up at the events, that is actually fairly good advice, which I gratuitously offered to the hon. member.

As to trade deals, I have yet in 19 years to see a trade deal that the NDP could endorse—

[Don. Davies]

South Korea and Jordan.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

South Korea, son of a gun, we nailed one. I appreciate the clarification from the hon. member, Mr. Speaker.

As to privatization, there is good privatization and there is bad privatization. I will give an illustration of bad privatization. When I say transit, transit, transit, the 407, handled by the Conservative government of Ontario, was a bad privatization. It was a good privatization under the previous NDP government.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-29 and some of the budget provisions. I would like to put some things on the record and frame them in the context of what is happening in my riding.

Under Bill C-29 the child benefit will not be indexed. It is estimated that low-income families will lose roughly $5,500 by 2020. If we consider the rising cost of living, low-income families will lose roughly $500 in four years. It is sad that no one thought about the fact that the cost of living will continue to rise for families and that the child benefit was not indexed accordingly.

There are some things people fail to mention about the child benefit. For example, people keep saying the child benefit will help lift children out of poverty, but no one ever says that to be entitled to it we have to have an up-to-date tax file, as do our former spouse and our new spouse. If not, benefits will not be provided until the situation is rectified.

Some services are available only during tax season, which means that people can get help with their returns for the current year, but no help is available to them if they have not done their taxes for four years. Help is not available.

Every week, people come to my office to tell me that they have not received child benefit payments for months or years because they cannot get their Canada Revenue Agency file in order. They may be asked to produce documents proving that their child lives with them. In shared custody or access rights situations, among others, that can be extremely complicated. A parent with a two-year-old or a three-year-old who does not go to day care may have a hard time proving that the child actually lives with him or her. A friend has to declare that he or she knows the parent well and that the child lives with that parent.

Also, information provided by both parents has to match up. Is a former partner who does not receive the child benefit because he or she has access rights but not custody likely to get in touch with the Canada Revenue Agency in a hurry to sort things out? Sometimes the answer is no, and that can create very complex situations that result in some people being denied the child benefit for long periods of time.

My riding office has helped fix the situation for some people who have not been receiving any child benefits for years. They were sometimes owed $20,000 in unpaid benefits from the federal government alone. That money could have helped them when they needed it. However, this is difficult to do because the appropriate services are not in place. People do not always think to contact their MP.

In the past, there was a Canada Revenue Agency service counter in Rouyn-Noranda, in my riding, but it is now closed. The government no longer provides direct services to people. The counter is still there and the office is still open because there are still investigators who work there, but people can no longer go to the CRA office to get help. People are being left with no resources. Often it is those most in need and with a lower level of education who are unable to resolve their situation and get access to the money they are entitled to.

This bill does nothing about the tax system, which most people find extremely complicated. How many people are owed tax refunds each year but do not get them because they do not realize they are entitled to them? These people do not have the money to pay someone to file their tax return for them. They do their best to do it themselves.

Every year, some of the money that is earmarked to help poor people remains in the government coffers because people do not know that they are entitled to it. However, the government is not doing anything to fix that situation.

Child benefits can in fact help lift people out of poverty, but for that to happen, parents need to have access to those benefits and be able to receive that money. If CRA does not offer services that enable people to access their money, we go around in circles, because people are not getting help.

Consider the example of a family of four children where the eldest has a different father than the other three. More information will be needed on that child, because the statements from the two former spouses will not match. The child benefits will be frozen not only for the child in question, but for all four children, even though there is no problem with the other three children's benefits. We want to make sure that people can get their money if there is a problem regarding the amounts.

Also, the new calculation is done in July. This means that if any clarifications are needed, if there is a problem with the file, it will be frozen in July, right before kids go back to school, which is when parents need to spend a bunch of money on school supplies and clothes to make sure that their kids are ready for school. However, that is right when the family benefits would be frozen.

Often services are not accessible. A person tries calling and it may take three or four tries and three or four hours of waiting before they manage to get someone on the phone. People get discouraged. It takes months to correct the situation. For many people, the family allowance represents more than half their income.

I want to move on to something equally important and that is the infamous infrastructure bank, which is actually a privatization bank. The $15 billion that was earmarked for government-funded, public infrastructure projects is being put in a bank, and foreign investors are being sought to fund the infrastructure projects. Obviously, if we are getting foreign funding from private investors, they are going to want a return on their investment. What these private investors want is to get money back in exchange for their investment.

In other words, how do they get a return on their investment when we are talking about roads, bridges, and other infrastructure such as water systems? By charging surcharges, tolls, and user fees. The Liberals never mentioned during the election campaign that they were considering using these fees and privatizing our public infrastructure network to help rebuild what we need built.

What is more, these projects and programs are designed for big cities. What are the chances that I will be able to attract a foreign investor who is willing to invest in a bridge in a small town in northern Abitibi—Témiscamingue? They are very slim.

In reality, the small municipalities and rural regions will be the ones that suffer. They will be completely forgotten in the Liberal government's infrastructure plan. That is a surprise because the Liberals never spoke about privatization. Meanwhile, these municipalities will continue to struggle to try to find solutions to keep their heads above water.

In many cases, the needs are great because all the villages in Abitibi—Témiscamingue were settled around the same time. As a result, the infrastructure was all built around the same time and will all need to be replaced at the same time. That time is now. Some municipalities have five or six bridges in their villages that need to be replaced. They do not have the money to do that. It is impossible for them. What will the municipalities tell people? Will they have to buy people's houses from them and tell them to go live elsewhere because they do not have the money to pay for infrastructure and the government is privatizing infrastructure and investing in Canada's big cities? The government has completely forgotten that people live a few kilometres north of the St. Lawrence River.

That is not what we should have to tell people. Canadians who live in rural regions contribute greatly to Canada's economy. They make sure the large corporations in the big cities have the resources they need. If the government does not support Canada's rural regions, it will destroy our country's economy.

I look forward to my colleagues' questions.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister (Intergovernmental Affairs)]

Mr. Speaker, the concerns raised about small towns not having the borrowing capacity to participate in the infrastructure program are exactly why the campaign promise was fulfilled. We have moved to create an infrastructure bank that would give smaller communities, in groups, access to world markets, to borrow and to do things like build water plants, which cost an extraordinary amount of money, which small towns quite often do not have the capacity to build. It is not a program for privatization. It is specifically designed to give smaller communities access to world capital.

If this happens, would the member opposite not agree that the increased capacity to build cleaner water plants might result in the delivery of clean water to smaller communities at a rate they could afford, as opposed to previously, according to even her own admission, when they had no access to world capital because they were too small?

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I invite my colleague to venture outside his riding and travel a little. He would realize that sometimes there are 30, 40, or 50 kilometres between some small towns. These people cannot join forces to build a water filtration plant. The cost of the pipes alone would be more than the cost of building the other plant. What he is saying does not make sense.

Yes, sometimes municipalities can work together to obtain certain services, such as snowplowing. However, for other things, towns cannot work together. What the Liberal government is doing will not help these people in the least. It seems that he really does not understand what it is like for these small municipalities.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, one issue that my colleague brought up was with regard to this particular budget. We have seen a significant amount of redistribution of wealth, if I can put it that way, including a substantial increase in taxes on Canada's wealthiest, a substantial decrease in taxes on Canada's middle class, a substantial increase in the Canada child benefit program, and a substantial increase in the guaranteed income supplement for seniors, not to mention the significant benefits given to students.

Given the fact that New Democrats are voting against the budget implementation bills, they are saying they oppose the budget. Can the member tell the House if she is aware of any budget prior to this one that provided so much redistribution of Canada's wealth, in which the greatest benefactors are the middle class or those aspiring to be part of it and, in many ways, some of the most vulnerable people in our society, literally lifting thousands of seniors and children out of poverty?

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is talking about the tax cut for the middle class. However, more than 50% of the people in my riding are not even part of the middle class and are not entitled to any tax reduction whatsoever.

Let us look at my situation, for example. My husband is not entitled to anything because he does not make the $40,000 required to belong to the middle class. However, I do not make more than $200,00 and therefore I can get the full tax reduction without any problem. The Liberals missed the boat.

We had suggested that they not apply the tax reduction to the second tax bracket, but to the first, so that everyone, including the poorest in our society, would get a tax reduction. They refused to do it. They do not realize that many people are still earning less than the $45,000 that would make them eligible for a tax reduction.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak about Bill C-26. In my speech, I intend to discuss how this bill is focused on the long term.

I would like to start by simply reminding the House of the stark difference in our approach. The previous government spent a decade seeing the provinces as hurdles or opponents. Negotiation was done one by one. It was negotiation through division. Our approach is different. It is collaborative.

Our Prime Minister and the cabinet of our government have been working with the provinces as partners. Earlier this year, Canada's finance ministers reached an historic agreement to make meaningful changes to the CPP. This is what a collaborative approach looks like.

First and foremost, we believe that every Canadian deserves a secure and dignified retirement after a lifetime of hard work. Today middle-class Canadians are working harder than ever, but many are worried that they will not put away enough money for retirement.

I think about my three kids, who are in their early twenties. They are all in school. They are hard-working and brilliant people. They did their homework, got good grades, and got into post-secondary education with few challenges because of their work ethic and thirst for knowledge. Even so, many of their generation and friends are in a tough place. They are not saving now, because they have to think about paying down their student debt, paying for car repairs, or saving for their first home, let alone the cost of weddings these days. There are a lot of big expenses—