Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent.
As the member of Parliament for the riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, I appreciate the opportunity to voice the objections of my constituents, who are opposed to paying for the bad spending of the Liberal Party.
As a 17-year veteran of Parliament, I can confirm for the newly elected MPs that substantive changes in tax policy are typically the subject of a federal budget. They are well publicized in advance, released while the House is in session, and delivered by the Minister of Finance in a speech to all parliamentarians and Canadians. Our Conservative government gave opposition parties the opportunity to comment on proposals and offer their assessment to their constituents. In short, a better-informed public and an opportunity for dialogue and debate results from this time-honoured approach.
I can confidently say that the proposals of July 18 are some of the most sweeping and dramatic I have ever seen. The manner in which the Department of Finance released these proposals was not fair, and the comment period was not adequate. Media outlets and the public should have been advised well in advance of the Minister of Finance's speech, to provide an opportunity to assemble experts to review and comment on the proposals. Changes of this magnitude should have been announced when the House was in session. The delivery of sweeping tax changes, which contain very controversial provisions, while Parliament was in recess thwarts rebuttal and effectively reduces exposure of the measures, and it is not right or reasonable. It is an affront to democracy, which leads to the substance of the Conservative motion before the House today.
A 75-day consultation period is unreasonably short, given the timing and manner of the announcement. Legislation continues to be built providing the Canada Revenue Agency with an increasing level of interpretative powers. The predominance of phrases such as “reasonably being considered” and “reasonable to conclude” throughout the draft legislation increases uncertainty for taxpayers. It opens the door to abuse by government authorities. The Finance Minister should ask this. If he were still at his Toronto Bay Street corporation, would he or his employees conclude, as tax shelter advisers, that the method of announcement could be considered reasonable or reasonably fair? The answer is definitely not, and in a democratic society as we have in Canada, future announcements of this magnitude must only be made when the House of Commons is in session where the full scrutiny of all Canadians can be brought to bear on whatever is being proposed.
I know how my constituents feel about the Liberal Party's tax proposals, because I spent the summer talking with them. I am pleased to thank the many constituents who attended a packed meeting at the agricultural hall in Cobden last week to voice their opposition to the plan by the federal government to raise taxes on farmers, small business, and a variety of professionals such as engineers, doctors, building contractors, plumbers, and electricians, to name a few trades. In addition to Mayor Hal Johnson and Reeve Terry Millar of Whitewater Region Township, which hosted our tax town hall, and councillor Stan Pecoskie and John Jeffrey of Killaloe, Hagarty and Richards Township, we welcomed a mayor from a neighbouring municipality in Quebec, Jim Gibson. He was looking for information that he obviously was not receiving from his Liberal MP, and there was no charge to constituents to attend the information session that I hosted.
Since the Minister of Finance and members of his party claim that Canadians should not have had the opportunity to be consulted about their sweeping tax-change proposals unless they paid $1,500 for the privilege to do so, I am pleased to share excerpts of a letter from a constituent who just happens to disagree with the government. For the record, I did not ask for $1,500 to read excerpts from this constituent's letter:
“Good morning. I've sponsored events to raise funds toward the local hospital for years. I've personally donated and raised well over $100,000 for the hospital and well over $1 million for our community, from junior hockey programs, minor hockey, figure skating, girls hockey, soccer, to minor softball, to name a few of the causes.
“Under these new tax laws, I would have to re think the programs I sponsor. I am now more than a little embarrassed to admit that I voted Liberal in the last election. I truly believed they supported small businesses and understood that we were the back bone of our economy.
“If I thought small business and the economy would continue to purchase our product at the higher rate I would not say anything. However, I do not believe that. My savings and my retirement funds, at one time, which was considered good and responsible business practice, was just attacked by the liberal Government.
“Accounting firms from either side of our country agree that the Liberals are deceiving business people. They are trying to sneak in a major tax sweep and hoping no one would notice. They point out the fairness of these new proposed tax laws, not only how they will effectively attack business, but also the underhanded way in were introduced. One cannot even begin to argue that.
“When you own your own business you starve as you pay your suppliers and tradesmen in the beginning and that's after you work your normal hundred hour week, and find there's no money left for yourself, all in the hopes that in the (end) eventually it will pay off.
“Income sprinkling. Did the Liberals miss the part about hundred hour work weeks with NO pay cause there was no money left? Whose house was used to finance the start-up, just mine or was I putting my wife and children's lively hood in grave danger also? Who shared the responsibility of working in the store or business office because we couldn't afford to hire anymore help? How many husbands and wives to to go out and work to help support their struggling spouse?
“Attacking doctors, something every small community is screaming for, small communities organizing fund raisers in order to try and entice any new young doctors to come to our communities.
“Does (the Prime Minister) really believe there is this doctor shortage because the business is so lucrative, or perhaps fewer people want to go into that kind of school debt for such a long term return?
“I believe he is attacking our doctors as a smoke screen to hide his direct attack on small business.
“I've dealt with Canada Revenue Agency on a number of occasions. I filed an HST rebate for about $155,000.00. They declined my request for rebate, said I put it on the wrong form. We informed them that in 2011 we had this same issue and CRA ruled I had deposited on the wrong form then and insisted I resubmit on the same form submitted, contradicting themselves.
“They then started charging me 5% compounded daily until I pad the $155,000.00 and my file was sent to appeals. It was two years later when they agreed we had submitted correctly and my money was finally returned. I think it bore 1/2% interest.
“Do you really think as a small business owner I want, as these new laws indicate, to give CRA any more Interpretive Powers? They can't make their minds up when it is in black and white.
“If I had no passive investments where would the $155,000.00 come from? Attacking passive income, as a business owner I have to have passive income, I need funds to pay for future purchases, future development costs and letters of security in order to develop.
“This summer I had to come up with 6.3 Million dollars. The banks do not simply lend you 6 million on past performance in the hope you can or will pay them back.
“Does the (liberal) government really believe they can tax the passive investments, which finance the small business owner's future growth, or pay their employees when business is slow? The banks want security for every dollar they lend you, and if you are offering real-estate as security they may give you 50% of the appraised value.
“How can we make it even harder for small business to survive?
“I've been in business 30 years, in the last 12 years of that time we have been able to start accumulating wealth. 30 years in the business, with all my past track records of making sure everyone was paid, yet I still had to put my house up as collateral to get the funds I needed to proceed with the 2 new jobs this year, and now the liberal government wants to start attacking my passive investments.
“The funniest part of all of this is, the Prime Minister wants to start attacking dividends. I guess now that he has a pension he can take the silver spoon out of his mouth and stop depending on all the dividends, or perhaps income sprinkling that his father set up for those boys and that he took advantage of for years.
“Please do not forget, the majority of small business owners do not know or understand the magnitude of these changes They were all hard at work all summer trying to make money through this soggy year as the government employees were on their paid holidays.
“Please, understand that it is hard to camouflage my bitterness, and I do not only mean government employees. I missed your meeting in Cobden last night (federal member of Parliament), but I can only imagine the eye opening that small business owners got from that meeting.
“I know you are going to fight this, and I hope, for my company and retirement and my employees' future you are successful in defeating it.”
It is time for the finance minister to go back to the drawing board. Canadians are tired of being asked to pay for this government's bad spending.