Caroline St-Hilaire

[Sponsorship Program, April 2nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, let us not be taken for fools. Richard Mahoney is one of the PM's close advisors, as the Deputy Prime Minister is well aware.

Will the government acknowledge that, if Richard Mahoney is today refusing to comment on these embarrassing revelations, it is because the Prime Minister had been aware of the situation since at least the year 2000 and deliberately chose to keep quiet?

[Sponsorship Program, April 2nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, this morning's Globe and Mail revealed that the Liberal candidate in Ottawa Centre, Richard Mahoney, has privately confessed that the team of the current Prime Minister discreetly intervened with Jean Chrétien to get rid of Chuck Guité, having known well before the first reports came out in 2000 that the sponsorship program posed a problem.

How can the Prime Minister, who knew about this and is now telling people, “If you know something, speak up”, explain that his people stopped there, and decided to keep the problem a secret, in short, allowed the sponsorship scandal to continue?

[Health, April 1st, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the Quebec Minister of Finance, Mr. Yves Séguin, said, “It is obvious that the federal contribution to health care funding is clearly insufficient. We also know that Ottawa imposes more restrictions on Quebec today than it did when it was paying a larger share of the bill”. That is the reality.

How can the Prime Minister claim in his ad campaign that he will do something about health after the election, when he has had the means to do something about it now, but has not?

[Health, April 1st, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is running an ad campaign in which he would have us believe he listens to everyone.

How can the Prime Minister promise to listen to everyone when, in reality, he has not listened to the ministers of health or the premiers of Quebec and the provinces, who keep telling him that the health care system is on the verge of collapse? Why pretend to listen in the ad campaign when in reality he listens to no one?

[Petitions, April 1st, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to present a petition signed by civil servants from the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development concerning the complaint about the retroactive payments of pay equity adjustments in the public service.

After all the years it took to get a settlement on pay equity, it is totally unacceptable for interest to be charged on unpaid income tax.

[Income Tax Act, March 31st, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I very pleased to speak to Bill C-210. Furthermore, I would like to acknowledge the initiative taken by my colleague for Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore.

Straight off, I will tell you that the objective pursued by this bill is absolutely commendable. As the Bloc Quebecois critic for amateur sport, I have always been in favour of the idea of taking various measures to promote physical activity and participation in sport. It is also crucial to promote a better quality of life, better health for our fellow citizens. In this regard, we can only encourage a greater awareness of the benefits of sport and sport activity. A healthy mind in a healthy body is the most eloquent expression of this.

Thus, in the face of it, it is easy to recognize the relevance of this measure, whose purpose is to provide families with more money for participation in sport activities. But what does this really mean?

Although I support the purpose of this tax credit, I am still convinced that this is not an appropriate measure, and I will explain why.

What my colleague really wants with this new provision is to reduce the tax burden of families, thus allowing them to afford the sport activities that they want. However, I believe that it is not necessarily the families in question that will take advantage of this reduction. And to demonstrate this, I would like to make some comments on tax credits in general.

I am not totally against this kind of measure. Under certain circumstances, it can be effective. However, with regard to the current debate, I humbly believe that there are many other ways that are much more worthwhile and especially much less costly to achieve our goals.

First, the implementation of a tax credit is sometimes extremely costly for the government, before, during and after. This does not include the administration costs and also the fact that it would take two to three years to calculate the indirect costs, and we would not even be sure that this tax credit would really achieve its objectives, which are to put more money into the pockets of families. Ultimately, this may cost more in expenses than in direct benefits for the taxpayer.

Other areas of this bill also require our attention. I consider that the bill is not only inappropriate, but also somewhat discriminatory. Why limit the tax credit to sport activities? Why not other areas, such as cultural activities? What is being done for musicians, considering the exorbitant cost of some musical instruments? What about people engaged in other interests that are equally worthwhile as far as their health and well-being is concerned?

A brief analysis quickly reveals that the scope of what is being proposed in this bill is much too limited. Besides, it is about time we stop deciding everything for our fellow citizens. I think that this tendency to want to centralize everything and have the state decide for the taxpayers is becoming less and less acceptable.

Personally, I would rather leave more money in their pockets and let them make their own decisions. After all, this is their money; they should get to decide. This is a matter of respect and fairness

I would also like to touch on some aspects of the bill, particularly in reference to the formula for calculating the credit. Under the bill, the formula takes into account the total of all fees paid by the individual in the year for the individual to participate in amateur sport. Personally, I think this provision would lend itself to abuse. No limit for the fees is provided. Does it mean that golf club membership fees would be deductible? If I want to play golf, I need equipment and a club membership. So, as hon. members can see, this is opening the door to huge abuses.

Of course such is not my colleague's intention, but the lack of clarification is, I think, risky.

As well, it would have been wise and logical to establish the maximum amount that can be deducted, as is the case for most other tax credits, or at least to give explicit power to regulate the amount of the fees.This has not been done.

For all these reasons, therefore, the Bloc Quebecois cannot be in favour of this bill in its present form. I believe that the objective sought will not, unfortunately, be achieved.

However, the federal government has the key to allowing everyone to breathe easier and to improve their quality of life, whether through sport, art or any other endeavour.

For several years now, the government has had surpluses coming out of its ears, and it is our money. Therefore, it has an obligation to return part of these surpluses to those from whom it took that money. This way, people will be able to decide for themselves what they want to do with this extra money, whether they want to spend it on sport activities, on leisure activities or on anything else. I truly believe that each person should be able to decide what his or her priorities are.

In closing, I would like to congratulate my colleague on his initiative and express to him my respect for the interest he has shown in trying to improve the well-being of families. My disapproval has certainly nothing to do with the principle, quite the contrary; it has to do with the process. I would also like to remind the federal government of its commitment to play a key role in promoting and developing physical activity and sport.

Once again, I want to express my disappointment in this government, which has done nothing, included nothing for amateur athletes in this budget. It missed an excellent opportunity to show its leadership and its interest in amateur and elite athletes.

This government certainly has the means to do this. As for the families, the athletes and all the organizations that are working toward that end, they are greatly in need of that money. What is the federal government waiting for? It must act. It is swimming in millions of dollars in surplus funds. We are expecting the government to act rapidly to help older and younger athletes, both at the amateur and elite levels.

[Sponsorship Program, March 26th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, in an e-mail dated March 17, 2000, the director of the national sport policy task force, Roger Farley, wrote, “The firm the secretary of state wants to hire is Everest”. There it is in black and white. The President of the Treasury Board did indeed interfere in the contracting process in favour of Everest.

How, in that context, can we believe the President of the Treasury Board when, in connection with the sponsorship scandal, he claims to have never told Pierre Tremblay, “You will take this or that agency, this or that contract. You will give it to this or that person”? How can he be believed?

[Sponsorship Program, March 26th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, Huguette Tremblay confirmed that the President of the Treasury Board regularly telephoned Pierre Tremblay, the director of the sponsorship program. The President of the Treasury Board himself acknowledged this, adding that he had never exercised any pressure to help a communications firm secure a contract.

Can the President of the Treasury Board tell us whether he followed the same policy of non-interference when he was the Secretary of State for Amateur Sport and a senior official wrote, “The firm the secretary of state wants hired is Everest”?

[Sponsorship Program, March 25th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, since the start of this secret fund which fed the sponsorship scandal and the scandal at Option Canada, people very close to the Prime Minister played very important roles. The Prime Minister's advisers, ministers, friends and colleagues were all involved at one level or another in this affair.

How can the Minister of Health and the Prime Minister try to convince us that the latter was outside all this and was not informed, when his close advisers were part of the gang gravitating around the secret fund from the start?

[Sponsorship Program, March 25th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, if anyone is hypocritical here, it is him, the king of all hypocrites.