Mr. Speaker, it is certainly my pleasure to speak to today's motion, and to follow up on that great speech from my colleague for Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier.
In the 2015 election, the Liberal Party made a number of promises. Many of their best-known promises were spectacularly broken early on in their government, like the promise to run a relatively small deficit, strictly for the purpose of building infrastructure, and then to balance the budget by 2019. They blew every part of that campaign promise.
They promised they would create a brand new voting system. They promised to do away with the first-past-the-post system. They promised to hold an open competition to replace Canada's aging fighter jets. They promised to hold themselves to the highest possible standards for openness and accountability.
We know that all of these promises have been thoroughly broken. The government does not even admit to having ever made any of these promises in the first place.
However, today I want to draw to the attention of members of the House and those who are watching this debate or who will read about it in Hansard, that the Liberals in 2015 promised to deliver a “client-focused Canada Revenue Agency”. That was their promise. I would like to draw everyone's attention to page 33 of the Liberal Party's platform, where it says:
The Canada Revenue Agency exists to serve Canadians. We will overhaul its service model so that people who interact with the CRA feel like valued clients, not just taxpayers.
Today's opposition motion is a perfect opportunity for the government and its Liberal caucus to actually deliver on an election promise, and at the same time give Canadians in Quebec something that will make their lives simpler and less expensive: a single tax return. Most Canadians who have never lived in Quebec probably did not know that Quebeckers have to file two separate tax returns and have had to do so for decades.
This is a long-standing irritant to Quebec tax filers and something that any Canadian can understand. Nobody relishes filing their tax returns. It is complicated enough just to file one return, so today the opposition calls upon the government to work with the Government of Quebec to implement a single tax return in Quebec, as adopted unanimously in the motion of the National Assembly of Quebec on May 15, 2018.
All parties in Quebec support the idea of the Quebec government working with its federal counterpart to give Quebeckers a single return. This is not a controversial proposal in Quebec. Quebeckers are tired of having to file two forms or having to pay a third party to file two forms. The Liberal government that has done so much to make life more expensive for all Canadians, including Quebeckers, has an opportunity today to make good on its promise to make the Canada Revenue Agency more client focused, and give Quebec a single tax return.
After being elected with a campaign promise to improve the taxpaying experience of Canadians, let us examine what the government has done over the past three years. The government started out by giving a mandate letter to the Minister of National Revenue, which said, “As Minister of National Revenue, your overarching goal will be to ensure that the CRA is fairer, more helpful, and easier to use.”
Giving Quebeckers a single tax return certainly might be one way to make the CRA easier to use, but the mandate letter also goes on to say that the minister is to “lead the government's work to overhaul its service model so that people who interact with the CRA feel like valued clients, not just taxpayers”, which is right from the Liberal Party platform.
Again, this opposition motion gives theminister a perfect opportunity to actually take a concrete step toward fulfilling her public mandate and an election promise, yet the minister and the government have completely given up on even pretending to keep their election promises or carry out the tasks contained in their mandate letters.
The minister's mandate letter, of course, also contains the standard line about upholding the highest standards of honesty and impartiality, ensuring the highest standards for ethical conduct, and upholding the principles of openness and transparency. These are all laughable now, given the numerous conflicts of interest, the ethical lapses of her cabinet colleagues, and both the minister's and her department's failures to be open and transparent in this House, at committee, in Order Paper questions, and in response to access to information requests.
The minister and the department under her management have been anything but open and transparent. Today's motion is again a perfect opportunity for the minister and the government to make amends with Quebec tax filers, who, like other Canadians, have been subject to the spectacular failings of the minister and the department under her watch.
Since being sworn in as a minister under a promise and with a mandate letter to establish a more service-oriented agency, the minister has lashed out at some of the most vulnerable Canadians while making absolutely zero measurable progress in the fight against tax avoidance and tax evasion.
It was under the minister and the Liberal government that the agency mused about taxing employer health benefits. It was under the minister and the Liberal government that the agency targeted retail and service employees by announcing its intention to tax retail employee discounts and complementary meals for restaurant employees. It was under the current government, under the minister's watch, that the agency began targeting tips earned by minimum wage-earning restaurant servers and their employers.
It was under the current government and this minister that the agency targeted parents, especially single moms and dads, with onerous, sometimes impossible requirements just to prove that they are parents and entitled to child care benefits. It was under the current government that the finance minister decided to go to war with small businesses, calling them tax cheaters, creating new and onerous requirements for family-owned corporations, and attacking their life savings through draconian new taxes.
It was under—