Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise in this chamber on behalf of the constituents of Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola.
I appreciate that we are at the eve of our rise, although it is neither your job, Madam Speaker, nor mine to say when that is. However, I want to thank every member I have had the opportunity to work with in this chamber during this opening round before we rise for the summer and thank the pages and the table staff for their commitment to this country.
I am here to speak to Bill C-2. It is an important bill, because it lays out the philosophy of the current government. The Liberals believe that raising taxes on the highest bracket will benefit this country. It is perfectly all right for them to contend that. They won the election. However, it is also perfectly all right for us, as members of Her Majesty's opposition, and all opposition parties, and even their backbench, to question the government.
Oftentimes in our system, members of Parliament are more relegated to being an approval body in this chamber and are not necessarily directing policy. However, I think one of the strengths of our system is when governments of any stripe take the policies of their predecessors, evaluate them, and continue them, if they are good for Canada.
In the same spirit, I would also suggest that we must remember that a broken clock can be right twice a day, but once in Quebec, I believe, because they go by international time. However, even in opposition, we may strike on an idea whose time may have come. I would hope that the government and members of the governing party will listen and take that forward. This country is great because of continued work toward policies that support all Canadians.
With that in mind, I will raise a few points about what I think could be improved and what the government, or ministers themselves as they work with their deputies, maybe not through this legislation but through their deliberations on future legislation, might take into account.
I have had the great opportunity to work with some members of the finance committee by subbing in from time to time. It is a very good group. The members seem to have a good understanding of the bills before them, and they seem to get along quite well.
One of the interesting concepts we heard about in committee was from Dr. Jack Mintz. Dr. Mintz raised a concern that taxing at the highest bracket would put pressure on some people of higher means, who may say that they are going to move to a different province or offshore to another country. When we lose those entrepreneurs, because 60% of small business owners are in that bracket, we lose collectively. We lose their innovation, and sometimes their capital, because they may begin investing in other countries.
The current government has said that it will use evidenced-based decision-making. Evidence means that there is theoretical evidence provided through academia, governmental reports, or think-tank studies or through actually collecting the data and creating an inventory, so to speak, on whether a policy is in the long-term interest of this great country.
In regard to Bill C-2, Dr. Mintz made the suggestion that the Canada Revenue Agency has the ability to track whether someone in this higher income bracket, who the Liberals will be taxing at a higher rate, moves or migrates to other lower-cost jurisdictions to operate, such as my province of British Columbia.
I am sure that Premier Christy Clark would love me to take a moment to sell all the high points of locating to British Columbia to entrepreneurs, but I will not do that. I am not going to speak to the parochial interests of my home province. I refuse to. However, what I will say is that there could be interprovincial or offshore migration.
If CRA was to collect the information, we might be able to get a tale of the tape.
I realize that people move for all sorts of reasons, but economists will tell us that incentives matter and people do make decisions, particularly in the higher income brackets, to find places where they can maximize their capital and where they feel welcome.
As a starting point, this is something the government can do on behalf of all Canadians to ensure that its policies are to the benefit of the long-term interests of this great country. I hope the government will give that full consideration.
I will also step back and tell the House about a personal experience. I love this chamber. I love this country. However, one of the things about our politics that we could change would be to stop judging an idea because of the messenger. If a former minister of the previous government gets up and makes a suggestion based on his or her experience, or someone from some think tank who people believe has some sort of ideological background says that this is a good policy for Canada, we should listen and evaluate it. We should not simply dismiss it because we disagree with some sort of vaguely placed ideological position. Let us start judging policies by their merits, not by the people who espouse them.
There are many things this government is going to be looking at. Trade, for example, is going to be an extremely difficult file for the Liberals, because Canadians have different views. Ultimately, the government is going to have to look at the evidence, look at how our economy has grown over the past 30 years by becoming a free trading nation, and then evaluate how that helps all of us.
We all have a different reaction when we suffer a loss, whether it be an electoral loss or a personal loss. We face denial, then anger, sadness, and acceptance. I am getting close to the acceptance stage on many of the government's policies, but members on the other side continue to get up and criticize the opposition for having a different view. We need to embrace the views, respect the views, and not cut each other down.
That being said, I will go to the subject of tax-free savings accounts. My riding is made up of an older demographic. Broc Braconnier is a veteran and one of the volunteers on a volunteer tax group. This is a group of individuals that helps seniors, usually low-income seniors at risk, file their tax returns so they can get the benefits they so desperately need. He mentioned to me that the tax-free savings account offered seniors two important steps. First, if they sold a home and downsized, a lot of the money from the sale of that home could go into a tax-free savings account if it had not been used before. They could also draw income from that account at an accelerated rate, which could make them feel that they had the nest egg they worked for. The same applies to the RRIFs.
I would just say to members on the other side that it is perfectly legitimate for us to raise concerns about certain policies. I do not mind being criticized, but let us talk about the ideas, and let us make sure that we are not skating around the area we like or the area we dislike. Policies are not so simple that they can be dismissed in one statement in this place.