Debates of Oct. 3rd, 2017

Opposition Motion--Consultations on proposed tax changes

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is interesting that as a matter of process, when a Conservative member speaks, members of other parties normally want to pose questions of the member. It is probably a combination of the intensity and intelligence of the person who just spoke, but also the fact that government members do not want to talk about this issue, that they do not want to ask questions about it.

I wonder if the member for Calgary Nose Hill wants to reflect on the fact that government members are not even willing to stand and ask her questions on this issue.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Madam Speaker, I would be curious if this is a record. Has a member of the opposition party who has made a speech on an opposition day motion never been asked a question by a member of the governing party before? I think this is a first. It is certainly a first for me. It shows the public the extreme disinterest of the Liberal Party in this. Can anyone believe that? When I finished my speech, not a single Liberal MP got up to refute my argument, so I hope that failure will be reflected in their votes.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, for me the outstanding feature of the whole debate that was launched in July is that when the government decided to put out a discussion document about how to change the tax code, there were some proposals, but there was not actually a complete proposal for how to change the tax code.

The government identified three key areas where they think the tax code lacks fairness. The NDP has been a long-standing champion for tax fairness. We recognize that there are incentives within the existing tax code for people to incorporate, some for the right reasons and some for the wrong reasons. It is something we are keen to get to the bottom of, but it is hard to get to the bottom of it when the government announces just half a proposal.

It bears repeating that the tax code is one of the most complicated pieces of legislation we have in Canada, so for anyone to say that somehow this is going to be a simple debate is just simply not on.

We are discussing one of the most complex bits of legislation in the country. We want to get to the bottom of what are some pretty clever moves, in some cases, by certain individuals in order to be able to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. It is unfortunate that there is a legal structure, sanctioned by Liberals and Conservatives over the years, that gives them the legal tools to be able to do that.

What happened when that partial proposal came down in July was that all of a sudden people were taking very strong and clear-cut positions about the substance of the so-called proposal itself, when in fact that proposal has yet to land. We have some concrete proposals when it comes to income sprinkling within a corporation and when it comes to capital gains, but the government itself has said that those may not ultimately be what are tabled in the House, that those may not ultimately be the proposals it goes ahead with, that other mitigating measures may be introduced that have not been discussed and are not part of the discussion paper.

Here we are now, with everybody wanting to take a strong position on one of the most complex matters in Canadian law, but we do not know what it is yet. I kind of scratch my head, because I do not understand how we could come to such fervent conclusions about such an uncertain proposal. I hesitate even to call it that.

We have, in the Conservative motion today, some strong language about what these proposals are going to entail. For instance, the Conservatives say that the proposed changes to the taxation of private corporations would have a drastic negative impact on small and medium-sized local businesses. What I want to contribute to this debate is that I think that this language is far too strong, because we do not yet know what the impact of proposed potential legislation would be. We have some proposed legislation that was meant to be discussed, but it is not necessarily what is going to be tabled in the House, so I think it is far too soon to say that it is going to drastically negatively affect small business.

Of course, if it does, that would not be fair, and then as advocates for tax fairness, the NDP is going to have to oppose measures that have a drastic negative impact on all small businesses in Canada. That is not what tax fairness is about, but we are not in a position yet to make that judgment, because we do not have the full proposal.

There is an issue of rhetoric on the one side from the Conservatives, who want to say, I think prematurely, that this measure is going to have a drastic negative impact on small businesses, and then there is a problem of rhetoric on the other side from the Liberals, who want to vaunt an incomplete proposal as somehow ushering in a new era of tax fairness. We can hardly say that either, because they have not even tabled the legislation in Parliament yet. We have not had a study of what the real legislation is going to be, and we have not had an opportunity to try to understand what its effect is going to be in a very complicated legal structure that has to do with how certain Canadians pay their taxes.

What we have heard in the media since July and in the House since we have come back has been this polemic debate that has been set up between those who are fighting for tax fairness—although we do not really know how, because we do not know what the proposal is—and those who are certain that those proposals are going to harm small business, although it is not clear how we can be certain of that, since we do not know what the proposal is.

I hope Canadians listening at home will hear the message, which in this case is the truth: we do not know what we are talking about yet because we do not actually have a real proposal.

The only thing that is going to affect how small businesses pay their taxes in the country is real changes to the law, and until we have a bill, we do not have concrete suggestions about how the government is going to change those laws. If someone were to go to an accountant today and ask how this was going to affect his business, any professional accountant would have to say that they could not tell him how the Liberals' proposal was going to affect his business, because the proposal is not complete. If that person was engaged in any passive investment, the accountant, unless he knows how the Liberals are going to change the rules on passive investment for companies, cannot in good conscience, as a professional, tell him how his business is going to be affected.

That is why the NDP has called for, first, more consultation. The motion does that, but it does it in a way that does not do what we really need to do, which is tone down the rhetoric on both sides, get a concrete proposal, and then be able to talk about it. In that sense, the language of the motion contributes to the problem. It seem we are not able to have—or anyway we have not yet had—a sober conversation about how small businesses are taxed in Canada, about what is fair about it, what is not, how it might change, or how changing it in a particular way would affect particular businesses and classes of small businesses. If unfair negative impacts to small businesses—like a mom-and-pop shop, or whatever else—are going to have a serious effect on the owners' retirement plan, which they made in good faith under the existing rules, then we can have the conversation about what kind of mitigating measures we might make so that the unfair effect does not end up prevailing.

There are a lot of pieces to this puzzle. We are not there yet in terms of taking polemic positions. We do not have enough information. That is where the motion, unfortunately, contributes to that lack of clarity. It contributes to what has been a pretty poor quality of debate overall on how small businesses are taxed.

In addition to calling for more consultation because we want to better understand how the proposals the government has put out would affect small businesses, we are also anxious to know the other part of the proposal so that we can consult on the clear and full picture.

The other piece of the puzzle is that conversations on tax fairness are not just about how small businesses are taxed. They are about whether CEOs get sweetheart tax deals because they are paid in stock options instead of salaries. They are conversations about whether big companies or rich individuals get to stash their money in other countries because we have sweetheart deals between the Government of Canada and those other countries, such as Barbados—and we could name others—that allow them to do that.

Ordinary Canadians, even if they have a little savings, would never have the resources or know the right people to figure out how to take advantage of those tax shelters. Even if they could, that would not be right either, because taxation is important if we want to deliver good health services in Canada, if we want to build roads and bridges, if we want to make sure that people who cannot work because they have a disability continue to have an income and can live with dignity. Taxation has to be part of that conversation.

That is the other problem with this discussion. The rhetoric has been super-elevated, and we have not been getting to some of the real issues in terms of where the real revenue loss is when it comes to tax fairness. The biggest companies and the richest individuals are getting away with sheltering the largest amount of money from government and are therefore not paying their fair share.

That is the issue in this debate. We do not have the full proposal. We have not consulted enough or had lengthy enough consultations to know what the effect of a proposal would be.

If we do not have the full proposal, it seems to me that once the rest of the proposal is announced, any consultation they did earlier is not going to be that relevant because whatever the other measures are, they will change the overall tax situation for those small businesses, for better or worse. The Liberals will have to re-launch the consultation, as far as I am concerned, once they table their full proposals here in the House.

Not only did we not have enough of a consultation period—and I think we need more in order to understand better—but the hope would also be that at some point during that extended consultation period, the Liberals would reveal the rest of their plan so that it could be part of the consultation as well. If not, there would be a need for further consultation once we have the full picture.

We would hope, of course, that then, when we are considering the bill here in the House, it would not just be time allocated and we would not have just two committee meetings to look at it, because we would essentially have to redo a lot of the work that was done or was supposed to have been done by the government during the summer.

We do not have the full proposal and we have not had full consultation. We also are not talking about the full picture, and in some ways the real picture, when it comes to tax fairness, because the government is going after the small fish and letting the big fish off the hook. Members may have heard that phrase here in the House before. I repeat it because it is a good one. It captures well what is going on. Here we have two parties, which for their own reasons want to have a polemic, high-rhetoric debate about taxation, and the government is wasting a good opportunity to have a real conversation about tax fairness because they do not want to spend the time on consultation that they really ought to spend and they apparently do not want to table their full proposal before ending that consultation period, which to me just seems absurd.

To the extent that this motion contributes to the problem in terms of rhetoric, it is unfortunate. Again, that was a missed opportunity by our colleagues in the official opposition to try to tone down the rhetoric and get to the real crux of the issue, which is this: who in Canada are paying their fair share and who are not?

When I watch the news and when I read the paper, that is not what we are actually talking about. What we are talking about is just a classic dichotomy between “We are standing up for business because any tax is a bad tax” and the government's saying, “We are going to implement tax fairness, except we are not going to say how we are going to do it, so no one can judge if it is really fair or not.” They want to get people on board and write in the details afterward, and if the details are not what the government led people to believe, too bad.

. God knows, we saw that in the election, when civil servants were led to believe that they would have a government that they could actually bargain with and maybe get somewhere with at the bargaining table. That was certainly implied. First nations people in Canada got a big dose of that in the last election, when they were led to believe that they were going to have a government that was going to meaningfully embark on a path toward reconciliation, and then we continue to see the government fighting first nations people in court and not providing the kind of funding that is needed in first nations communities to bring fairness to those communities. We saw it on advocates for the environment, who believed that they were going to get a new National Energy Board, one that actually took into consideration what the climate change effects of large natural resources projects were going to be, and that the big projects that were already on the table would be reconsidered if they did not meet those standards. However, we did not get that either.

When it came to electoral reform, people clearly expected more. I do not know they how got the impression that 2015 might be the last election under the first-past-the-post system. It might be because the Prime Minister repeated it ad nauseam during the campaign and afterward, but of course that did not come to pass.

Now the Liberals are saying to trust them that they are going for tax fairness, but they are not going to show people the whole program. No, they want people to sign up to support something very general and trust them to write in the details later. I am sorry, but we have seen too many times that the current government is great on high rhetoric, which is why the Liberals are happy to engage in this unreal debate with the Conservatives on tax reform. We are not even talking about concrete reforms yet, but they want to marshal support for whatever it is they are going to do at the end of the day. That is something I object to. I object to it as a Canadian who wants some straight talk from my government and I object to it as a parliamentarian who is being asked to take a position on something that I do not know the details of yet, and I refuse to be bullied into that position.

We do have a great opportunity to talk about tax fairness. We do not realize the potential of that debate, because the other two parties have an interest in ramping up the rhetoric on this and not getting into the details.

The government has not provided us with the details that we would need to be able to get into it. It has not given us the time we would need in order to consult once we have those details. The government does not have sufficient scope for that study either, because a lot more people are legally evading taxes than some of the small business people who are being targeted by these so-called proposals. That is where we are at.

I hope people listening at home feel this is a worthy contribution to the debate. It is a different point of view from the one they have been hearing from Conservatives and Liberals today. Accepting those insights is just the first step toward having a real conversation in this country about tax fairness. I hope we can get there. What we have so far is not that, and that is disappointing.

The high level of rhetoric in this debate has not served people well. I have heard from people in Elmwood—Transcona who now, because of the way this debate has unfolded, are worried. They are worried about their retirement security and they are worried about their income. They are worried about whether they are going to be able to keep their business open. Why is that? It because they are being told, by people who do not have the full picture, that this is going to happen.

This is not a foregone conclusion. It is not being responsible when we make people fearful of losing their business when we do not have the full proposal yet. That is why the rhetoric needs to come down and consultation needs to increase. The details need to be provided and the scope needs to be expanded, so that we capture the CEOs and the large corporations that are by far the worst tax evaders.

That would help to bring some comfort to small business owners in Elmwood—Transcona and across the country who are worried about losing their business. They should not be worried until we see the government's full proposal. It would be nice to hear someone today tell us when we could expect that, because then we would have an idea about when we could have a meaningful consultation and start talking about taking a position on a concrete government measure.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Madam Speaker, my colleague always brings lots of thoughtful opinions to our discussions. We may not always agree, but I do appreciate his thoughtful comments.

I would agree with the part of my colleague's speech on the shortness of the consultation period, which is due to the industries being busy and the time frame it happened in.

The accountants in my part of the world have been helpful in the sense that they have been consulting with their clients and suggesting that there will be ramifications as a result of the proposals. Small communities have managed to gather 50, 60, or 70 people to attend meetings. At the meetings that I held, we expected 100 people, and 250 showed up.

The member's view is that we should have a longer consultation period. What type of consultation time period and what type of framework does the member think would be required to better serve us going forward?

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, the member may know that we have called for a doubling of the existing consultation period, but beyond that I would add that, in my view, part of the problem with the consultation period right now is that we do not have the full proposal. Call me a dreamer, but I think it would be nice to be able to engage in a consultation with Canadian small business owners, actually knowing what the real plan is in its full detail. It is hard for me to imagine that people could get a real definite sense of how these changes are going to affect their business overall if they do not know what the full suite of changes being proposed actually is. If we had that, then we could start a meaningful consultation.

In the meantime, there are things to talk about. One of the things I have appreciated as a parliamentarian in Elmwood—Transcona is that this conversation has triggered a great dialogue with small businesses in my community, and I am getting to understand better who they are, what their concerns are, and how their businesses operate. I do not think the consultation has been in vain; I just think it is not a comprehensive consultation and it is far too soon to end it. This kind of consultation could go on longer, but we are going to need some real time. We have seen from the government too often that, once it tables the legislation, it is keen to shut down debate in the House and speed it through committee.

When we actually get the bill, we are going to need some more time, and I hope that the government is budgeting that time so that we can go out and talk to Canadians about the real proposals that the Liberals are ultimately going to bring forward, because right now they are not committed to anything.

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

Madam Speaker, we are getting a sense of where the opposition is coming from on this issue. Whether members are New Democrats or Conservatives, it really does not matter because they have come together. I give my friends in the NDP a heads-up on this. The Conservative Party really does not want tax reform, so New Democrats are falling into the Conservative trap of delay, delay.

My colleague from across the way made reference to the fact that he hopes we have allocated time because this is going to be something that is thoroughly debated. I would suggest that I am giving my colleague this advice because I do not want him to continue to fall into the Conservative trap. The Conservatives do not support tax reform that is going to benefit Canada's middle class. That is really the issue that we have here.

My advice to my New Democratic friends is that, if they support Canada's middle class, they should be voting for things like the tax break for the middle class and the benefits that have been given to seniors and young people. I used to live in Transcona, and I know that if the member consults with his constituents, he will find that a vast majority of them are in favour of tax fairness.

Would the member not acknowledge that the Conservative trap is set for NDP members and others to fall into? I would suggest that he might want to stay away from it.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, although I thank the member for the reminder, I have a pretty good sense that the Conservatives tend not to be interested in anything that would increase any payment of tax by anyone, which is why they did not do anything on CEO stock option loopholes for 10 years.

However, I would let the member know that we are concerned that the Liberals do not really support tax reform that would benefit working Canadians. The evidence over decades of Liberal government is exactly that. That is what we are concerned about.

The idea that they are not interested in that and you obviously are is not obvious to members sitting here. It is not—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

Order. I want to remind the hon. member that he is to address the questions and comments to the Chair and not individual members.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the comments from my fellow Prairie MP. It is a delight to have him in our Prairie caucus. He always has very thoughtful ideas to share in this place, which bring us back to what we really should be talking about, which is tax fairness.

I wonder if the member would like to speak to the issue that was raised earlier by a Conservative colleague, that during this consultation period, many farmers were in the field, and many in our country, certainly in British Columbia, were busy fighting for their lives and to save their homes. Any reasonable person would listen to that request by Canadians and say that maybe we should extend the consultation period.

However, we are asking for two things: not to simply extend the consultation period on the very vague reforms that the Liberals are throwing out, but to genuinely put forward, frankly, the reforms the Liberals promised during the election. It would reassuring if we actually had a consultation on the election promises for tax reform, including lowering small business taxes and dealing with the stock option loophole, not to mention tax havens.

I would ask my colleague if he agrees that we should move forward with a longer consultation on the broader issue and that it is regrettable that apparently the Conservatives are not open to having a genuine, broader discussion.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for reminding me to mention that we did move an amendment to the motion, in part because we think it is not enough just to extend the length of these consultations. They do need to be extended. They need to be extended, in part, for the reasons the member mentioned, which I think are important to remind the House of and those who may be listening at home, which is that not only is 75 days pretty short work for changing one of the most complicated legal structures in Canada, but the timing of that short period was particularly bad. As she mentioned, we had wildfires in B.C., but it was also peak season for any small businesses in the tourism industry, farmers, landscaping companies, and construction in general. Therefore, the timing of those consultations was particularly bad.

Earlier in my speech I said that it is hard to consult on a proposal one does not have. I think that is part of the reason it also makes sense to extend the scope of that consultation. There is a lot more to talk about than just the small business piece. We are waiting for the other shoe to drop to actually know what the government is proposing when it comes to tax reform, because we do not actually know that, which is why I think it is inappropriate for the Liberals to be saying that they are champions of tax fairness. We will judge that when we actually know what they are proposing. However, in the meantime, we could be talking about all those elements that go into tax fairness that do not have to do with small business, like the CEO stock option loophole and tax havens.

Therefore, yes, absolutely, these are some very good reasons why we need an extended consultation period, and because the government has not been forthcoming with its complete plan, that is also why we need to extend the scope. It was unfortunate that we did not see that supported by the Conservatives today when we moved an amendment to their motion that would have accomplished that.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d'Orléans—Charlevoix, Taxation; the hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, Physician-Assisted Dying; the hon. member for Lethbridge, Indigenous Affairs.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Durham.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am proud to rise with my colleagues in the Conservative caucus today to point out the hypocrisy of the government when it comes to the changes it is making to how small businesses in Canada are taxed.

Our opposition motion is calling for the consultations to be extended, because of the outrage we are hearing from farmers, small businesses, tech start-ups, and entrepreneurs and their employees across the country. We have been talking about some of the farming families and small business owners affected by these changes, who are outraged, but there are hundreds of thousands of employees who are also caught by these changes as well.

The consultations need to be extended because of the subterfuge by the government on the issue. Announcing the most comprehensive changes to how our CCPCs, small private corporations, are taxed in a generation in the dead of summer when the consultation period would end only a few weeks into the House of Commons' sitting is shameful. For a government that came in on a platform of open and transparent governance, to do this in the midst of the summer was outrageous. That is certainly why we are hearing the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, chambers of commerce, and Liberal members of Parliament agreeing that it is outrageous.

At a bare minimum, I would like to see the hon. member from Toronto, the finance minister, extend the consultation period to at least allow those people who are very fearful of these changes to be heard. He started a call list a few weeks ago, and called one or two farmers. However, now that other people have been calling him, the finance minister has been leaving them hanging.

We have seen the staged consultation round tables, where the finance minister repeats his talking points in the midst of rooms where people are emotional, because they feel they are under attack by a government that is claiming, or setting up this debate to suggest, that they are not paying their fair share.

This finance minister and Prime Minister owe it to Canadians to at least hear them out. I think this is a modest request by the opposition today, and I hope that some members of the government caucus will see the extension of consultations as such.

We remember the big walk up to Rideau Hall, but in the two years since then, what has the government, with all its openness and transparency, done in that time?

It has raised taxes more than any government in the history of our country: an income tax increase; a small business tax increase with the end of the phased-in reduction for small business to 9%, which it had promised to maintain, as the MP for Carleton raised in the House of Commons today; a CPP payroll tax increase that taxes employers; changes to tax-free savings accounts, which many Canadians have relied on in their own tax planning for their future; and beer and wine taxes, so that if people have to drown their sorrows in the age of Liberal tax increases, the government is taxing them too; and a tax on ride sharing via an Uber tax; and now the CCPC small business tax changes.

That is seven substantial tax increases in less than two years. In the Canada of this Prime Minister, if something moves, it gets taxed. In fact, the rate of tax increases and the creation of new taxes is truly astounding. It is the centrepiece of the government. While it is breaking dozens of promises from electoral reform to support for our military, the one thing the government has not stopped is raising taxes.

What concerns me, as someone who worked in the private sector and with entrepreneurs, the engine of growth in our economy, is the way the government is framing this debate. I have never seen such a divisive approach to taxation and relations within our country when it comes to the government's suggestion that small business owners and farmers are somehow tax evaders. I was writing an essay a few weeks ago on this and the most common two-word phrase the Prime Minister uses is “wealthiest 1%”. When I researched this some time ago, he had used that phrase 65 times as Prime Minister, a phrase that is only surpassed by his most common expression, “the middle class and those working hard to join it”. I know, Madam Speaker, you probably join us in groaning when we hear the use of that term in the House, but why is he juxtaposing those things with each other and now bringing farmers and small businesses into it?

The Prime Minister is suggesting to Canadians that there are people who are not contributing. He is suggesting that the small business owner, the entrepreneur, the tech start-up, or the sixth generation farming family are somehow making things harder for middle-class Canadians. That is shameful. We have a progressive tax system in Canada that has long ensured that people making more will pay more and that those consuming more will pay more because of the GST. The Harper government cut the GST because it impacted lower-income people the most, so it was reduced.

I neglected to mention that I will be splitting my time with the member for Perth—Wellington. I got so passionate that I left that out at the beginning of my speech.

One can see that the Prime Minister is juxtaposing the people who he is claiming are causing the middle class to be held back, when in reality a lot of middle-class Canadians are employed by these same people, such as the manufacturers in my riding of Durham, the tech start-ups that I visited in Waterloo, and the farming families and processing businesses related to it. This is whom he is attacking. I have never seen such an approach in Canada, and it is shameful the way the government is framing it and limiting debate when proposing to make the the most substantive changes to the small business tax rate in a generation.

The issue is that there is no revenue problem in Canada. We should not be raising taxes at all. The government and the Prime Minister have a spending problem, not a revenue problem. In fact, in 2015-16, there was almost $300 billion in revenue. When the Harper government had to run a deficit in the midst of the biggest global recession since the 1930s, revenues were $233 billion. If it had had the revenues the government now has, there would have been no deficit. That is a difference of over $60 billion, but the problem is that the Prime Minister is spending more than the government is bringing in. It is bringing in more, but it keeps spending more.

When the Liberals asked Canadians for their trust in 2015 and promised that they would never run a deficit of more than $10 billion, they broke that promise in a few months. They cannot even get a deficit under $20 billion, and most of the money has not gone to infrastructure, as they like to suggest it has to Canadians. It is just over-spending. Why do they think they can get away with that? It is because, as I said, they have raised taxes seven times in under two years, and now they are targeting entrepreneurs and businesses, our employers.

What the finance minister does not tell the middle class and those working hard to join it is that entrepreneurs do not have EI, do not have maternity leave, do not have pensions, and do not have paid holidays. They are employing people in our communities and saving for their future. Female physicians are making sure they have enough to provide for their families while they take care of their own maternity leave. I am glad that a doctor in B.C. informed the Prime Minister of this, who is making tax changes while admitting that he does not even understand how they will impact the people he serves.

The Conservatives have a modest proposal: let us extend the consultations. This opposition day motion is not asking to shut down the whole thing like thousands of Canadians are asking. The Liberals should at least have the dignity to hear Canadians out.

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

Madam Speaker, suffice it to say I disagree with most of what the member across the way has said. If it were up to the Conservatives, this debate would never end. The consultations would never end. The funny thing is that their idea of consultations only emerged after they crossed the benches, because when they were in government they sure did not believe in consultation.

When I look at some of the rhetoric by the member opposite, let us look at some of the facts. When it came to tax breaks and tax cuts, the Liberals brought in a middle-class tax break. There were some of the largest redistributions of wealth we have seen in decades as a result of the tax increase on Canada's wealthiest 1%, the child care increase, and the increases for seniors. The Conservatives voted against those. They actually voted against tax breaks.

Now, on tax fairness, what do they want to do? They just want to see the wheels spinning, because they do not want any decision that would favour Canada's middle class. The policies of this government and Prime Minister have resulted in close to 400,000 more jobs in the last two years. We have seen infrastructure being built in every region of the country.

Why does the member opposite oppose tax fairness?

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Madam Speaker, in response to the member's raising of the issue of tax fairness, I will quote what his colleague, the MP for Whitby, said about the Liberal government's approach to tax changes. In an email to probably hundreds of entrepreneurs, she said, “Let me start by apologizing to each and every entrepreneur, small business owner, physician, and constituent in the Town of Whitby for the tone and the language that was used during the roll-out of these proposals.”

The rhetoric of my friend from Winnipeg in this place is legendary, but when he has one or two dozen members of his own caucus disagreeing that this is about tax fairness, apologizing to entrepreneurs, farmers, and to employers for the tone used by the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, that should be the signal to the deputy House leader of that party that consultation should be extended.

I remember that when that member was in the third party and there were a time allocation motion speeding things up, he called it “an assault on democracy”.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

It is a necessary tool at times.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Now he seems to forget that. All we are asking is that the Canadians who are emailing and phoning the Minister of Finance get at least a few more weeks to receive the apologies of their MPs for this tax plan.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I want to remind the parliamentary secretary, who knows that we have raised this on a number of occasions, that when someone has the floor that person deserves respect. I know he has been around long enough to respect that.

Questions and comments. The hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, I was actually glad for that heckle by the member for Winnipeg North because it was quite revealing. He seems to think that time allocation is an assault on democracy, and yet a necessary tool. I wonder if what we are seeing in the context of these tax changes is another thing the government might acknowledge as an assault on the democratic process, but also in their view a necessary tool.

I would like my colleague to speak to some of the conversations he is having in his riding, because I have been told by business owners that they would have a hard time advising young people to start a career in small business in light of some of these attacks or proposed tax changes. They would have a hard time making the case to the next generation.

That is a big concern that I have been hearing, and I wonder if the member has been hearing the same.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

The member for Durham has a little less than a minute left.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Madam Speaker, my most poignant connection to this issue was when I was with my friend from Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman and MLA Jon Reyes in Winnipeg, where we met small business owners from the Filipino Canadian community.

There was a woman there with three children, who had started her own physiotherapist practice. She is heavily leveraged because, like any smart entrepreneur, she bought the building she is in. She is leveraged to the hilt, and she volunteers with her church and community, and she is now going to volunteer with the Canadian Armed Forces reserves. This person is not a tax cheat. This type of person is the bedrock of our community whom we should be supporting. We should be applauding her risk-taking while raising a family and giving back to her community. These are the types of people they are stymying. At a minimum, let us hear them out.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Perth—Wellington.

I want to remind the member that the debate will end at 5:15, and therefore there might not be an opportunity for questions and comments.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Madam Speaker, in 1952, my late grandfather came to Canada. He travelled through Quebec and ended up in southern Ontario. Then, almost by accident, he bought our family farm. As family legend has it, he used his Harley-Davidson motorcycle as a deposit on our family farm. Within 48 hours of buying the farm, he was in the field harvesting a crop of wheat.

I say that because now, 65 years later, that family farm is still in our family. My parents still actually run and farm that land. A mile and a quarter north of our family farm is my in-laws' farm. It is a century farm. For over 100 years, their family has farmed that land and passed the farm down through the generations.

I share this because our family and our farm families are not that much different from other farmers and farm families in Perth—Wellington and across Canada. They work hard. They raise their families. They give back to the community. They are the bedrock of the community and the economy in our rural communities. To them, and to our farm families, the farm is more than a business. It is a way of life, but it is also a legacy that survives them. It goes on through the generations.

Unfortunately, some of the tax changes in the proposed legislation from the Liberal government would make it harder and harder for a farm family to pass that farm on to the next generation, for a daughter or son to buy into the corporation, to buy into the farm family, and to preserve that legacy for generations to come.

It is telling that the consultations proposed by the government were only for 75 days. These consultations took place at the height of summer, when farmers and farm families were busy. I know that today alone, many of the farmers in my riding are concerned about harvesting soybeans. They are combining. Yesterday, for example, my own father was combining soybeans at my father-in-law's farm. My wife took our two kids out to the farm to go on a combine ride with grandpa. It is a way of life. It is important to the community. However, here we are with a sham of consultations being done when farmers, farm families, and small businesses were busy.

As members know, Perth—Wellington has a strong agricultural community, but it also has a strong tourist and cultural sector, which of course is much busier during the summer. Many of the small businesses in Stratford and Drayton were busy working hard running their businesses, because summer is when the tourist season happens. The opportunity to provide feedback and to examine a number of these changes was not possible.

That is why to provide the most opportunity possible for the hard-working businesses and farm families to give feedback, we are asking to extend these consultations, as proposed in the opposition day motion.

I find it interesting as well that we had to wait until today, our third week in the fall sitting, to finally have an opposition day motion. The government House leader decided not to extend the courtesy to the official opposition or to the third party to have an opposition day to debate the important issues that matter to our constituents. Instead, it withheld the opportunity until today, a day after the consultations closed. That is unacceptable to so many Canadians who want to have the opportunity to have some input.

Like so many members of the House on all sides, Liberals, Conservatives and New Democrats, I have had hundreds of emails and correspondence and phone calls from so many people who are affected. For me, probably the most powerful and moving email came from a farmer in my riding. She was widowed. She lost her husband in a tragic accident. She wrote this to me, and it really reflects the determination of so many farmers.

She writes, “I was left with four teenage children, 55 cows, and 400 acres. I had decisions to make. I decided, along with my children, to keep the family farm and to continue the legacy in memory of my husband and to be able to keep feeding my family along with providing quality food for the world. I have never been so scared during all the struggles I have been through over the past 10 years as I am today. These new changes will affect me and my business greatly. I will not be able to pay the taxes that may be presented to me each year. My son wishes to take over the operation from me, and this will be highly impossible for him to do and be a successful farmer, pay his bills, along with providing mom the necessary living that I should be entitled to. We do not live high on the hog. We do not own fancy homes and don't drive fancy pickup trucks. We do not take vacations to faraway places. We try to make ends meet and pay our fair share. Please stand up for your local family farmers and all the small businesses and let our voices be heard.”

I am proud to stand and support farmers like Linda who work hard for their families and to preserve the legacy of our farm families in rural Canada. However, under these proposed changes it will be more beneficial for a farm family to sell its farm to a large corporation than to a daughter or a son. It will be more beneficial to sell the farm to McCain's than to a daughter or a son. That is wrong. We on this side of the House recognize the importance of preserving that legacy.

It is not just farmers and farm families but small business owners who employ so many people in our country. A small-business owner from Listowel, Ontario, wrote me. He wrote, “As a business owner, I am the one who wakes up in the middle of the night worrying about the future and planning to make sure that I can continue to employ the great people in my organization. If I am successful and able to save funds with my corporation, I will have to pay extremely high tax rates to take the funds out to use personally, and if my business fails, I'm the only one who will lose everything I have worked hard to accumulate.”

That is reflective of the small-business owners in my riding. They are not tax cheats. They work hard. They are up late at night working in their businesses, trying to preserve them, and trying to keep those jobs. They worry about making payroll. They worry about where that next cheque may come from during downturns in the economy. They take the risk. They take the risk without the pension plans, without the health and dental benefits. They do so because they are in it to create a good business and to provide for their own families and the families of their employees. That is who we, on this side, are fighting for. We are fighting to make sure that their voices are heard. We are fighting so that they have the opportunity to have meaningful input on the tax changes being proposed by the Liberal government.

I think as well of the many families in my community who do not currently have a family doctor. I have heard from many hard-working physicians who have expressed concerns about this. One female doctor in my riding wrote, “I have met with headhunters in the United States. I do not want to leave, but if these changes occur I will have to. These tax changes on doctors are equivalent to a 30% wage cut for a salaried employee.”

In an area where we are already having trouble attracting physicians to rural and small town Ontario, putting these changes in place would make it even more difficult to recruit and attract physicians. It would make it more challenging for those families that are already having trouble finding a family doctor to finally find a family doctor. It will affect patient care. We cannot have that happen. We need to fight for all small businesses across our ridings and across Canada.

I know my time is coming to a close, and I want to finish on one important thought. The Liberal government has a spending problem. The Liberals are eager to latch onto any revenue-generating tool they can find. That is exactly what is happening in this case. They are punishing small businesses. They are punishing farm families. They are punishing those who employ our neighbours and those in our community who drive our local economy. They are punishing local businesses because of their spending problems. It must end.

I am proud to rise and support my constituents. I will be voting yes to this extension, and I hope the Liberal Party will finally un-whip their back benches and allow them to vote in favour as well.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

It being 5:15 p.m., it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the business of supply.

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?