Debates of Feb. 2nd, 2017

Opposition Motion—Taxes on Health and Dental Care Plans

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to read a bit of a letter written by Debi Daviau, who is the president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada. She wrote this letter to the Minister of Finance. She said:

If anything, the government should be looking at ways to incentivize all employers to offer employer-sponsored health care benefits and improve access for all Canadians, which we believe would generate net savings to the government through decreased reliance on publicly funded medicare.

We instead encourage the government to explore other ways to boost federal revenues through, for example, reinvestments in the staff and structure needed at the Canada Revenue Agency to recoup unpaid taxes from international tax havens and harder-to-investigate cases, and/or by eliminating other tax deductions or credits that primarily benefit high-wealth individuals or corporations. Curbing costly and wasteful outsourcing of public services would be another effective way to save on government expenditures.

Does the member realize that implementing the Liberals' tax cut, which they inaccurately claimed would help the middle class, is a far more regressive tax policy than the health and dental benefits exemption they claim to be targeting as a loophole for the rich?

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Mr. Speaker, indeed, I enjoy having the opportunity to work closely with my friend here.

I thank him for quoting that letter from Debi Daviau, who is doing a wonderful job as head of PIPSC, the union for public sector professionals in our government. I might add that she is a constituent of mine in Hull—Aylmer, a recent constituent, and I am glad to have her there.

For her to say that she wants to increase human resources over at the Canada Revenue Agency, well, that is exactly what we have done. That is exactly what we did in the last budget. We made an allocation of $444 million.

I would like to mention auditors. Public servants were hired to do research and verify whether people are avoiding paying their share of taxes in Canada or abroad. We therefore support the desires and wishes of Ms. Daviau and the union she represents.

[Linda Lapointe, Liberal, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise for the first time this year. My greetings to everyone here, and a happy new year to all.

As we all know, the government has a bold and broad-ranging plan to help the middle class and those working hard to join it. Yesterday, our Prime Minister made it clear that we are not planning to introduce a new tax on health and dental benefits.

Rather, our plan includes significant tax cuts to restore hope and optimism while creating new opportunities for inclusive growth that will strengthen Canada now and in the future. These tax cuts will result in a better, fairer Canada in which everyone has the opportunity to succeed and be part of our success as a society.

That is why one of the first things we did was lower taxes for the middle class. Now, nearly nine million Canadians are paying less tax on every paycheque.

Cutting the personal income tax rate for the middle class by 1.5 percentage points, from 22% to 20.5%, was our first big step toward keeping our promise to strengthen the middle class.

The next step was to introduce the Canada child benefit, or CCB, in budget 2016. The CCB is bringing us closer to our vision of a stronger middle class by giving families more money to spend on what matters to them, such as new winter clothing, healthier food, sports activities, or back-to-school supplies.

The CCB is especially important because it provides more support to low-income families, including many single-parent families. In fact, about 65% of the families who receive the maximum CCB amount are single-parent families. In most cases, they are single mothers. For hundreds of thousands of Canadian children, the CCB represents a crucial and effective step towards getting out of poverty.

Indeed, this new support will help them stay healthy as they grow up, so that they can do well in school and work towards building a successful career. With this support, they will be able to build better lives for themselves, their families, their communities, and their country.

In order to ensure that the value of the CCB does not drop over time through inflation, the government took action to index the CCB beginning with the 2020-21 benefit year. By indexing the benefits to inflation, we will preserve the gains Canadians will have made thanks to the CCB and we are investing in a better Canada for the years and decades to come.

In my riding, in the northern suburb of Montreal, 10,300 families are receiving more as a result of the CCB. In fact, 18,870 children are benefiting from it. On average, families in Rivière-des-Mille-Îles are getting monthly payments of $530. This help is very much appreciated and, let us not forget, it is tax-free.

A key aspect of our effort to build a better Canada is to provide health care to Canadians. We all know that Canada's public health care system is a source of pride to Canadians. The idea that health care should be based on need and not on the financial means of the individual is a fundamental part of our identity.

We are working openly with the provinces and territories in order to guarantee that our health care system is there to meet the needs of Canadian families. Our approach thoroughly considers and respects the roles and responsibilities of all levels of government, and it will deliver tangible, positive results for Canadians and provide them with better health care.

At the meeting of finance and health ministers held December 19, the federal government offered to pay $11 billion over 10 years to the provinces and territories, beginning in 2017-18, to support home care and mental health initiatives. I hear about these issues all the time in Rivière-des-Mille-Îles.

To date, we have reached agreements with New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Saskatchewan, and Prince Edward Island for new funding over 10 years for these new investments in home care and mental health care.

According to the terms of these funding agreements, each province will receive its respective share of $11 billion for home care and mental health care offered by the federal government at the health and finance minsters' meeting held December 19. These investments will help provide Canadians with better health care and also support positive change in these priority sectors.

What is more, new investments in home care and mental health care funded by these agreements are in addition to existing funding through the Canada health transfer under the Canada Health Act. These amounts will continue to grow in the future from $36.1 billion in 2016-17 to a projected $43.1 billion in 2021-22.

With these agreements, governments will work together to develop performance indicators and annual reporting mechanisms, and also detailed plans indicating how these funds will be spent on existing programs.

The governments will work together, like Canadians want them to, to hammer out the details of their agreements' reporting requirements and ensure they are consistent with the pan-Canadian approach provided for in the December 19 offer of federal financing.

We expect these agreements will lead to improved access to mental health care services for children and youth. We also expect the number of patients in hospitals to decrease since some people will be able to be looked after at home and will receive better care there. People are happier when they can get care at home with their families.

Given this enormous potential, the Government of Canada is keeping its commitment to implement agreements with the remaining provinces in order to make it easier for Canadians to get the health care services they need when they need them.

Those are just a few of the areas in which the government's investments in Canada's middle class are paying off, not only for Canadians but for Canada itself.

We will work tirelessly to make Canada even more prosperous, inclusive, innovative, and fair for present and future generations.

However, as I clearly indicated at the beginning of my speech, our government does not intend to impose a new tax on health and dental benefits.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to my colleague's speech. We have been colleagues before. Well, not really, because when I was elected to the National Assembly, the member had just finished her term in office. I am sure that, on March 26, she will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of her first election to the National Assembly.

Back then, we were members of the ADQ, a party whose rigorous approach to the management of public funds and opposition to debt and deficit was unprecedented in Quebec. It was really something.

The member just talked about how, yesterday, the Prime Minister confirmed that there will be no tax on dental and health benefits. I heard him say that too, but I also heard the Prime Minister say two weeks ago that the voting system was going to change whereas now he says that it is not. The Prime Minister was voted in on a promise of a small $10-billion deficit, but the deficit has now reached $30 billion.

The member is also well aware that, during question period earlier today, I gave the Minister of Finance two opportunities to say that there will be no tax hikes and that he will regain control of the public purse. He was not forthcoming.

Fine, we will take the minister's word for it that there will be no tax hikes. He gave his word. We will see at voting time. Can the member assure us that her government will not touch the tax credits for charitable giving, volunteer firefighters, and public transit?

[Linda Lapointe, Liberal, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am also very pleased to see my colleague once again. Although we did not serve at the same time, we often saw one another in the National Assembly when he was a journalist and I was a member there.

Now we have different reasons to be pleased to see each other. He is on one side of the aisle, and I am on the other, the government side. I understand his concern. What I am saying is that there is nothing in our plan that raises or creates a new tax on health care or dental care. That is not part of our plan.

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

Mr. Speaker, Liberals often talk about the middle-class tax break and how they have done Canadians a great favour, but anybody who earns $45,000 a year or $23 an hour or less, some 17.9 million Canadians, will get nothing. They have identified that nine million Canadians get a benefit, and we know that 17.9 million Canadians will get nothing. Now they are going to implement this tax on 13.5 million working Canadians.

So many people are being left behind by the Liberals' promises and their commitment to help the middle class, which they have not identified, but I will help them. Someone earning $31,000 a year, which is the median income in our country, will get nothing. That is the median income for Canadians.

The purpose of this exemption of private health and dental insurance benefits is to encourage employers to offer them to their employees. The government's proposal goes against this. Liberals are going against working Canadians on their middle-class tax break. They are going against Canadians with this idea to tax their benefits and discourage them from getting coverage.

I want to hear from the member what she is going to do for the 17.9 million Canadians who were left behind on the middle-class tax break and why those people, who got nothing from the Liberals' false promise, are going to be taxed.

[Linda Lapointe, Liberal, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his question.

We share these concerns about taxes and the middle class. Nine million Canadians are going to pay less tax, and that is a lot of people.

As I was saying earlier, in my riding, the Canada child benefit is helping 10,300 families and 18,860 children. Those people receive an average of $530 tax-free every month. This all helps people buy things, play sports, participate in various activities, and buy healthier food or winter coats.

Clearly, this is helping people, and together, we will make Canada more prosperous.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to note that I am going to be sharing my time with the member for St. Albert—Edmonton.

Certainly the debate we are having today is absolutely critical. The role of the government is to ensure its own fiscal health, deliver important programs and services, while being very cognizant of the burden on families, communities, and taxpayers. There is a growing concern that the government is failing miserably at that very important balance.

I would like to note what Michael Smyth said today in The Province. He noted the problem for our Prime Minister is that, while he promised to eventually balance the budget, he is spending like a drunken sailor and racking up deficits instead.

The reason we have this issue before us today is that my office had an onslaught of emails and phones calls from people who are horribly concerned about the thought that there might be a tax on their dental benefits or health benefits. We did hear very vague responses from the finance minister for a long time, and it was not until yesterday that there was perhaps a slight bit of reassurance that it is not going to happen. However I am thinking that the reassurance only came as Liberals realized the absolute outrage that Canadians had when they thought that someone who made $45,000 a year would be looking at an extra thousand dollars in their tax bill.

It is important to really understand the concerns that are expressed in the motion. We need to reflect on the current fiscal situation, which is really driving the Liberals zest for their tax grab. Most Canadians are not economists, myself included, but most Canadians understand the basic principles of a household budget. It is not really all that different for government. A federal budget adds a whole lot of zeros and has a lot more line items, but the idea of a balanced budget is something that we all have to deal with from households, to municipalities, to provinces. Actually municipalities are limited, at least in British Columbia, in how much they can actually borrow, because they realize that they cannot keep borrowing. Therefore the legislation for municipalities places limits.

We all know that sometimes Canadians borrow for a car or a house, but the proper way to do that is to know they are able to cover the payments as they go. If people live on credit cards for groceries, gas, or electricity—increasingly in places like Ontario—they know they are heading down a path that is absolutely unsustainable. The government has that same kind of responsibility. At times, borrowing for infrastructure is appropriate, but that is infrastructure. That is not borrowing to pay for the gas or food.

I cannot see citizens going to their employers and saying they need more money because they need to spend more money and would really like a raise. I think we could understand what most employers would say to anyone who came to them with that kind of request. However, the government is in a unique position. Liberals are saying they are spending more money, so they are going to take more money from Canadians. They really have a position that they have to treasure and be so careful about what they are doing, and again that very important budget.

Sixteen months ago the Liberal government took office, and it has been confirmed by the parliamentary budget officer that they were left with a surplus. In spite of their trying to indicate otherwise, that is very clear and it has been documented.

The election commitment Liberals made was a very tiny $10 billion and they would get back to balanced budgets. That was the commitment they made to Canadians. We know now that it is wrong. They made some very obvious big mistakes. They talked very proudly about middle-class tax cuts, but we know they mis-estimated that by billions of dollars. They talked about the child benefit—and for some families the universal child care benefit was very important—but they did not budget it properly, so it was another one. They changed eligibility for the OAS. Every time they travel they seem to be announcing money for new programs and services, in other countries.

We have been really concerned, at least I have been very concerned as I have been watching what has been happening. The finance department, on December 23, really confirmed what were my worst suspicions. We could sense it. We heard about different things the government was spending money on and thought that we were heading down a bad path.

We were on a trend to actually start paying down the debt, but what we know now, and we have heard many times today, is we are not going to get back to a balanced budget until 2055. We will have an accumulated debt of $1.5 trillion by 2050. That is very frightening to me.

Perhaps the Liberals do not want to listen to what the Conservatives have to say about this, because the Liberals have this idea that they have a better way to deal with things. However, maybe they should listen to a former Liberal finance minister, John Manley. In a written letter to the current finance minister, he warned that the government's acceptance of long-term deficits will hurt the Canadian economy by weakening business and consumer confidence. That is from a former Liberal finance minister. He also described Finance Canada's latest projections as ominous. Again, if the Liberals are not going to listen to us today, they should take heed of their former finance minister.

Clearly, the Liberals have a really big spending problem, and they are desperately looking for revenue sources instead of looking to revenue sources in terms of creating an environment where businesses can grow and thrive.

One of the Liberals' broken promises was actually raising business tax for small businesses. They are saying that they gave them a little money with the middle-class tax cuts, but it was really bizarre because the people who benefited the most were those in the over $150,000 range. The Liberals said they gave them a little money, but they are trying to find a way to pluck it out. If we look at the people who are in that $45,000 to $100,000 range, they are the ones who are going to be suffering the most.

The Liberals, under the guise of tax fairness, have this medical and dental piece. We know that they are out there looking at all these different ways to get money, under the guise of tax fairness.

Going back to the household analogy, this is not the way to do things. The government has to look at what it is doing and create the environment for success for revenue, and not keep picking the taxpayers' pockets.

I also want to note some very scathing comments. They are more general, but they do sort of reflect what the government is doing. This is from Andrew Coyne's article today:

But that is because you are still, even at this late date, investing some literal meaning in the prime minister’s words, as if what he said and what he intended bore any relationship to each other. But if there is anything that you should have learned by now, after the two deficits of $10 billion that turned into 40 years of deficits as high as $30 billion — and the non-combat mission against ISIS that turned into troops on the ground firing and being fired upon; and the open competition to replace the F-35 that turned into another sole source contract; and the Saudi arms deal and the “revenue neutral” tax cut and all the rest — it is that you have no business believing a word that comes out of this prime minister’s mouth....

That is a horrific thing to hear, that the most solemn promises, however unequivocal and however often repeated, are to him and other people around him, mere bait for the gullible. That is an absolutely horrific thing to hear.

I had an email today from a constituent who said that he does not agree with deficit spending right now as our country is not in a recession and only has pockets of economic issues. He has no problem paying taxes, as long as they are not wasted.

Most Canadians feel that when the government wants more money, it just invents another tax. I think that is what we might be seeing here. To summarize, the government needs to get its spending under control as opposed to increasing its revenue through tax grabs from hard-working Canadians.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, Humber River—Black Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, clearly the member is quite concerned with the direction in which our government is going. I want to assure her that we are very prudent fiscal managers. In case she or the members have forgotten, when we came into office in 1993, we were left with millions of dollars in deficits, and when the Conservatives came into power we had left them with a surplus. We are very experienced on this side of the House at being able to make the right decisions, and we are very committed to ensuring that Canadians will be better off at the end of the four-year term we are serving.

I want to assure the member that she need not worry so much, as she clearly has, because I think Canadian citizens are in very good hands. We have a proven track record, one that is far better than that of the previous government.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will give the former Liberal government credit for balancing the budget, which it did on the backs of the provinces and not through looking at its own fiscal situation, but the current Liberal government is a very different beast indeed.

It is also important to note that we had a global recession, and that Canada's record was well looked at by the rest of the world.

Most important, this is not the Liberal government of the Martin days, which at least showed some semblance of attempting to balance the budget. We have regularly asked the current government when it will balance the budget, and we have not received an answer. To suggest that perhaps the current government is like the government of old when we cannot get a simple answer to when it will balance the budget I think speaks for itself.

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

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from British Columbia and I know how hard people in the forest sector in our province work for every dollar they earn. Forestry workers in British Columbia earn, on average, $60,000 a year, and with family coverage they would pay more than $1,000 because of this tax that is being brought forward. People earning $60,000 would probably get about $150 through the Liberal middle-class tax break. When we combine those two, they would see a net loss.

I received a note from Mike Maddison, who is a mill worker in Port Alberni, who said that the government wants to “once again take away from our benefits; benefits that were once fought [for] and some even died to get for the working men and women of Canada. Union and non-union alike are able to have healthy families, productive, safe and happy children. It helps support the base of what we hold dear in Canada, and that's our right to be healthy.”

We should be looking for policies that will increase coverage for Canadians, not this proposal that will cost Canadians, and lead to lower health and dental coverage.

I look forward to hearing the member's comments.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member makes a good point with respect to the importance of medical and dental benefits, and what this tax grab would cost. However, he also brought something up that is even more important.

In my speech, I talked about creating an environment for businesses to be successful. In our province, the softwood lumber agreement is absolutely essential for the forestry workers. If they did not have those jobs, they would not have medical and dental benefits. That agreement expired a long time ago. The Prime Minister and the former U.S. president said that they would get the deal done. We were very optimistic. Obviously, they failed. I am becoming increasingly concerned about getting a proper softwood lumber deal done, and ultimately about those jobs in the forestry sector in British Columbia.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise to speak to this most timely motion as this tax-and-spend government sets to increase taxes even more on hard-working middle-class Canadian families.

The Prime Minister talks a lot about the middle class. He talks a good game about the middle class. During the last federal election, the Liberals boasted that they would bring back fairness for middle-class Canadians. They have been in office now for 15 months, and the question arises, what exactly have they delivered for middle-class Canadians? What have they done to restore fairness to middle-class Canadians? It seems that the only thing the government has done for middle-class Canadians is increase taxes on middle-class Canadians.

Let us look at the record over the last 15 months.

Let us start with the children's arts tax credit of $250 per child. It is gone, eliminated, taken out of the pockets of middle-class Canadian families. What about the children's fitness credit of $1,000 per child? It has been rolled back to $500 and is scheduled to be eliminated next year. That is $1,000 gone, eliminated, taken out of the pockets of hard-working middle-class Canadians by the government. There is the universal child care benefit, which has been eliminated by the government, taken out of the pockets of hard-working middle-class Canadians. In many cases it is thousands of dollars which have been taken out of Canadians' pockets.

What about hard-working families who benefited from income splitting? They can forget about it with these Liberals, because that too has been eliminated.

What about the textbook tax credit to help students and parents pay for the cost of post-secondary education? That is done like dinner, just like many other tax reductions which our previous Conservative government brought in, and the Liberal government has rolled back.

Just when we thought it was getting bad, and perhaps when we thought it could not get worse, guess what? It did. Last fall, the Liberal government brought forward two massive tax hikes that disproportionally impact middle-class Canadians, starting with a massive CPP tax grab, taking some $2,200 out of the pockets of the average family.

Not to be outdone by their massive CPP tax hike, the Liberals then introduced the mother of all tax increases, a tax on everything, a massive carbon tax, which is going to take $2,600 a year out of the pockets of the average Canadian family. Let me repeat that: $2,600 a year. It is taking some $38 billion out of the pockets of Canadians each and every year. Premier Brad Wall called the Liberal carbon tax one of the largest tax increases in Canadian history. Premier Wall is exactly right.

The Liberals say, “Don't worry, be happy. Help is on the way.” Help is on the way by way of the Liberal so-called middle-class tax cut. It all sounds pretty good, a middle-class tax cut. Who could be against that?

Like anything, the devil is in the details. When we look at the details, we see there is much wanting in the so-called Liberal middle-class tax cut. Take, for example, someone earning between $62,000 and $78,000 a year. How much would they save under the so-called Liberal middle-class tax cut? The answer is $117. Is that $117 a week or maybe $117 a month? No, it is $117 a year. What a joke. That works out to about $2.25 a week. Let me put that in some perspective.

Every morning I go to Tim Hortons and buy an extra large black coffee. That costs me $2.10. This so-called middle-class tax cut to Canadians earning between $62,000 and $78,000 a year is the equivalent of an extra large cup of coffee at Tim Hortons per week, plus a bonus of 15¢ to pocket or spend on whatever one can buy for 15¢ these days.

What about someone who earns $31,000, someone who earns the equivalent of the median income, someone who is smack dab in the middle of the middle class? How much would that person save under the so-called Liberal middle-class tax cut? The answer is a big fat zero. I have said it before, and I will say again, that the Liberal middle-class tax cut is nothing more than a Liberal middle-class tax cut fraud. That is what it is.

While the Liberal government is increasing taxes on hard-working Canadian families, the government is increasing Canada's deficit and national debt. We know the Liberal government inherited a $1 billion Conservative surplus and, in a year, turned it into a $30 billion deficit. As bad as that is, it gets even worse because there is no end in sight to the red ink.

During the last election campaign, the Liberals said they would run what they characterized as modest deficits in 2016, 2017, and 2018, but by budget 2019-20, the budget would be balanced. We know this promise happens to be like so many other promises from the government: another Liberal promise made and another Liberal promise broken. The budget will not be balanced in 2019. It will not even be balanced in 2029 or 2039, or 2049. According to the Department of Finance, it will not be balanced until 2055.

I would characterize this Liberal fiscal policy as a fiscal policy of generational theft. It is a policy of fiscal vandalism. That is what it is.

It is not surprising that this is coming from a Prime Minister who said, after all, that budgets balanced themselves. As the Liberal government and the Prime Minister wait for the budget to magically balance itself, Canadians are left to ask, as a result of the comprehensive review that the government asked the Department of Finance to take, just how many more taxes will go up. How much more is the government going to take out of the wallets of hard-working Canadians?

The government has a spending problem that has resulted in higher taxes and Canadians cannot take it anymore. They cannot afford the Liberal government anymore.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting. If we listen to the member, we get the impression that the Conservative Party supports tax cuts, when, in fact, the record will clearly show that not only the Conservative Party but the member as well voted against the tax cut for Canada's middle class. Imagine, nine million-plus Canadians benefit from the middle-class tax cut, whether they are farmers, factory workers, teachers, or health care workers.

One would think, listening to the member across the way, that the Conservatives would vote for that. However, the member and the Conservative caucus voted against that tax cut. Why did the Conservative Party vote against tax cuts for firefighters, factory workers, teachers, and other private sectors that warrant that tax cut?

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal so-called tax cut gave middle class Canadians precisely zero in tax reduction. By contrast, our government cut taxes in all shapes and sizes. We cut personal income tax. We cut small business tax. We reduced taxes on Canadians to the lowest level in more than 50 years. We continue to fight for lower taxes for working families against the tax-and-spend policies across the way.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for St. Albert—Edmonton for his straight shooting on calling the so-called middle-class tax cut by the Liberals a fraud. It is just that. In my riding, the median income is $25,000. Less than one-quarter of the people in my riding benefit from the so-called middle-class tax cut.

We know the Conservatives proposed this motion, and we share their reservations. We do not share their position, maybe, on taxation, as presented in the preamble to the motion, but the motion shows the adverse effects of the Liberals looking to save $2.9 billion on the backs of Canadians. That we share with the member and with the Conservatives.

In my riding in British Columbia and on Vancouver Island in southwestern B.C. we are facing a housing crisis. I just received a note from a mill worker who says he may have to leave our community because he cannot afford to buy a house. To add more tax to him, to take away more of his benefits, will make it even more difficult for him.

Is not the purpose of the exemption of private health and dental insurance benefits to encourage employers to offer them to their employees? Could the member address that and how can we really benefit the middle class by protecting this, because it is necessary?

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is absolutely essential that health and dental benefit rebates remain in effect. It was good news to hear that yesterday the Liberals reversed their policy of planning to remove those tax credits. The consequences of eliminating those tax credits would be very significant.

The province of Quebec, for example, moved forward with legislation and it caused employers to drop about 20% of employees who had previously been covered. People who had been covered suddenly were not covered.

The effect of such a reduction or elimination of those tax credits would mean another hit in the wallet of about $1,000 to the average Canadian. That is why it is time for the government to come clean and tell Canadians just which taxes will go up in the next budget.

Alleged Use of Office Space in Parliamentary Precinct

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Speaker. In response to the question of privilege brought up by the member for Red Deer—Lacombe, I would like to keep my comments brief.

It is not for the government to comment on the veracity of Tweets emanating from private organizations. Moreover, it is our understanding that the building to which the member refers is privately owned and, while it does exist in downtown, it does not form part of what is officially the parliamentary precinct.

Speaker's Ruling

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

I thank the hon. member for Laurentides—Labelle for his intervention on the matter. I am prepared to rule on this issue at this moment.

In the second edition of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, at page 144, it states:

In deliberating upon a question of privilege, the Chair will take into account the extent to which the matter complained of infringed upon any Member’s ability to perform his or her parliamentary functions or appears to be a contempt against the dignity of Parliament.

In my view, the issue at hand, as presented by the hon. member for Red Deer—Lacombe, does not in fact rise to the threshold required for the Chair to find a prima facie question of privilege.

The House resumed consideration of the motion, and of the amendment.

Opposition Motion—Taxes on Health and Dental Care Plans

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River.

The subject matter before the House today is not only of pivotal interest to just about every Canadian from coast to coast, but it is of profound importance to members of the House because it fuses together two subjects that are of fundamental importance to the operation of the government and to the lives of Canadians, and that is tax policy and health policy.

For Canadians who are watching this or are interested in this issue, the motion before the House concerns the proposal by the current Liberal government to examine the possibility of ending the tax-exempt status of the extended health plans of Canadians, which include their dental plans, their prescription plans, their vision plans, their chiropractic and massage plans, any kind of extended benefit they may enjoy as a result of extended health care plans provided by their employers.

Currently, and for a significant amount of time in our country in just about every province except Quebec, which I will talk about in a moment, the provision of extended health plans to employees enjoys tax-exempt status, and there is a fundamentally sound reason for this. This represents a very considered approach of government to encourage the provision of these necessary and essential health services by employers to their employees and to ensure these very important parts of our health care program are incentivized and delivered to Canadians. The fact that this is very successful is borne out by the fact that some 13.5 million Canadians currently enjoy extended health plans from their employers and benefit from the tax-exempt status.

Canada's New Democrats believe that the proposed health benefits tax is a symptom of a government not only with the wrong priorities for health care, but also early on in its mandate displaying a rank incompetence in its ability to manage the finances of our country. This measure would do nothing to expand or improve services in health care. It would jeopardize coverage for millions of employees. It directly contradicts the Minister of Health's own mandate, which is “improve access to necessary prescription medications”.

Health policy analysts estimate that the proposal to tax Canadians' prescription, dental, and vision benefits would cost the average middle-income earner over $1,000 annually. Additionally, data show that Quebec, the only province that currently taxes these benefits, saw a 20% reduction in the number of employers offering extended health plans to their employees after the tax was introduced in 1993.

The government often claims to want to make decisions based on evidence. We have a very solid piece of evidence from a major province that shows that the result of this policy is very predictable. It would result in employers not offering extended health care plans to their employees. One out of five Quebeckers lost that benefit when this proposal was introduced in that province.

If imposed, this proposal would levy a heavy tax on 13.5 million working Canadians, result in lost benefits for millions of Canadians, and represent a tax grab of some $2.9 billion by the federal government.

In the view of the New Democrats, the goal of tax policy should be to encourage positive economic activity and promote social progress. The purpose of tax-exempting health benefits is to incentivize the provision of extended health benefits by employers to their employees. Clearly, taxing these benefits would remove this incentive and result in decreased coverage for Canadians. That is a lose-lose proposition.

I want to pause for a moment and think about what government would possibly do this. Why would any government possibly consider adopting a measure, like the Minister of Finance has repeatedly said is being considered right now by the government, that it knows would cost employees their benefits, cost the average worker making $45,000 a year an extra $1,000, and jeopardize the provision of necessary health services to Canadians? Why would a government do that?

I think we have 30 billion reasons for that. As Canadians will know, this week we saw an example of the government and the Prime Minister breaking yet another pivotal, clear, campaign promise to Canadians when he announced that the government was abandoning his solemn pledge to Canadians that 2015 would be the last election with first past the post.

Canadians will also remember, in that same election, after promising Canadians that he would balance the budget, right through July 2015, that suddenly, in September, he did an about-face and told Canadians that no, his government would run deficits. Specifically, the Liberal government, if elected, would run three successive $10-billion deficits and then balance the budget, magically somehow, because the Liberals never explained how, in the fourth year of their mandate. That was the promise.

What happened? In the Liberal government's first budget tabled in this House, it tabled a budget that indicated that the first deficit would be $29 billion. The Liberals also tabled in that document six successive years of estimates that showed that they would run deficits in every one of the next six years, totalling $120 billion in deficits over six years.

Actually, I correct myself. There are not 30 billion reasons why the government is considering grabbing $2.9 billion in taxes from ordinary working Canadians and jeopardizing their health benefits in the process. There are actually 120 billion reasons why, because the government, with its fiscal incompetence and its dishonesty during the campaign, is now scrounging, looking for tax revenue to cover up the fact that it misled Canadians and is mismanaging the Canadian economy.

Rather than imposing new taxes on workers who have been able to negotiate group insurance plans, the Liberal government instead should heed the call from New Democrats, medical experts, health economists, and concerned citizens to renew our public health care system for the 21st century.

Of course, in extended health care benefits, one of the most important aspects of benefits, besides vision care and dental care, is prescription coverage. I will focus on that for a moment.

Canada is currently the only country in the world that provides medicare for all while excluding universal prescription drug coverage. This has effectively created a health care system that will cover a doctor to diagnose the ailment, but not the medication to treat it.

Canadians also currently pay among the highest prescription drug prices in the industrial world, second only to the United States. Compounding this, 20% of Canadians, 7.5 million Canadians, are walking the streets of Canada today effectively with no prescription care coverage whatsoever. Consequently, nearly one in four Canadian households report family members who struggle and neglect to fill prescriptions due to cost.

Here is an opportunity to have a clear contrast between the NDP and the Liberals. The Liberals are actively considering a proposal to remove health care extended benefits from Canadians and tax Canadians, whereas New Democrats are working on a universal prescription drug plan that would actually look to expand health care coverage for Canadians to make sure that every single Canadian in this country has access to the medicine they need when they get sick.

The Conference Board of Canada study, I have a few figures here, suggests that someone earning $45,000 in full-time employment in this country, with family coverage, would pay an extra $1,167 in tax, were the Liberal proposal to go ahead. Those earning $60,000 would pay an additional $1,043, while workers earning $90,000 would pay $1,277 more. These numbers are reasonably consistent across the country, except maybe in Quebec, of course, where already this proposal is in place. Obviously, if two wage earners in the same family have coverage, the amount will double.

The New Democrats will stand against this ill-thought-out proposal by the Liberal government. We will make sure that Canadians know that the Liberals are considering taxing their health care benefits, and we will stand in this House and fight tooth and nail against this ill-conceived policy that will not only hurt Canadians' health care but will take money out of the pockets of hard-working Canadians at a time when they can least afford it.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would say that it is dishonest to tell Canadians something that members know is boldly untrue. The Prime Minister and this government have been very clear. There is not going to be a tax on health and dental plans. Opposition members know that, yet they like to try to stir the pot, and there is absolutely zero merit in it.

The member says he wants this for health care and that for health care, when at the end of the day, there was a very clear election platform from the New Democrats saying that they would not run a deficit. That means they would have had to cut billions of extra dollars to fulfill that election promise. They have not been exploring where they would be cutting. All I have heard from New Democrats in the last year is how they would spend billions and billions more if they were in power. They are inconsistent in what they are advocating.

The Liberal government has advocated for a reformed health care accord. The Liberal government has provided tax breaks for Canada's middle class and those who are aspiring to be part of it. When will the NDP members be consistent with their thoughts and policies?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I can tell my hon. colleague that he will have an opportunity to see a New Democratic government, and actually a government Canadians can see actually keeps its election promises and does what it says it is going to do not just during the campaign but after the campaign.

It is flabbergasting that any Liberal, especially today, would stand in the House and lecture anyone in the House about keeping promises. During the election campaign, the Liberals misled Canadians about the deficits they were going to run. They told Canadians they would not approve pipelines under the old environmental assessment process but would redo them under new processes. They broke that promise and then approved the Kinder Morgan pipeline in my province. The government told Canadians it would not adopt the health accord escalator clause that had been imposed by the previous government but would negotiate with the provinces, then it came into office and immediately imposed that exact same standard on the provinces.

I will take no lessons from the member opposite about integrity in politics. In fact, what he should do is take the weekend coming up and reflect on why his government is violating that concept so regularly.

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

Mr. Speaker, the member spoke about broken promises. I just read a piece in the Huffington Post by the member for Beaches—East York, who recognizes and apologizes for the government breaking its promise on the issue of electoral reform.

Returning to the topic of the so-called middle-class tax cut, we and the NDP have said that people making $45,000 or less definitely belong in the category of either, depending on their income, the middle class or those working hard to join it, yet they do not benefit from the government's tax proposals, and they will suffer under all the changes being contemplated with respect to tax expenditures.

Would the member agree with me on that? Would he also comment on the Liberals' review of tax expenditures, which are actually going to, in perhaps a less direct or public way but in a very real and impactful way, raise the taxes of Canadians?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I agree fundamentally with the premise of my colleague's question and the aspects he raised. Our analysis of the Liberal government's so-called middle-class tax cut is that it gives precisely nothing, not a penny, in tax relief to those earning under $45,000 a year.

I do not know what the definition of middle class is for the Liberals, but in my riding, individuals earning $40,000 or $45,000 a year consider themselves middle class, and they did not get a nickel from the government. In fact, the proposal of the Liberal government skews higher. The more people make, if they get $90,000, $100,000, $110,000, $120,000, or $130,000 of income, the more they actually benefit disproportionately from the tax cut. That is not a middle-class tax cut to me at all.

To my hon. colleague's question about the matter at hand here, the Conference Board of Canada, hardly a left-wing organization or a biased one or partisan, has very clearly indicated that the proposal under consideration by the Liberal government to tax the health care benefits of Canadians would result in $1,000 coming out of the pocket of an individual earning $45,000. It is a lose-lose situation. They do not get the benefit of any tax cut. Instead, they actually lose $1,000. That is a devastating problem in an economy like ours, where people are struggling right now with affordability issues.

Might I just conclude by saying that the finance minister, when this issue has been brought up, has repeatedly confirmed that this was actively under consideration by the Liberal government right up until a day or two ago, when the NDP and Conservatives started bringing focus and attention to this issue in the House.