Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today on the supply day motion that we presented dealing with the federal government's overpayment to the provinces of approximately $3.3 billion due to its own accounting errors. This is one of those issues where we can take a couple of different approaches to resolving it.
Essentially what happened is that in late January of this year some provincial governments received a nasty shock. It seemed that the federal government's accounting error had resulted in $3.3 billion in overpayments to Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia. Ontario received the largest overpayment. These miscalculations happened over a period of time from 1993 to 1999. It also put out of line the equalization payments resulting in another overpayment of approximately $300 million.
Just this week the auditor general confirmed that the total overpayment was at $3.7 billion: Ontario was overpaid $2.8 billion; Manitoba, $364 million; British Columbia, $95 million; and Alberta, $3 million. Nova Scotia received $9 million and New Brunswick received $4 million in overpayments on equalization transfers. How did this happen? Where does the fault lie? We maintain that it lies with the Liberal government, which took power in 1993.
Under federal-provincial tax agreements the federal government, through CCRA, administers personal income taxes on behalf of the provinces, other than Quebec. The federal government has the responsibility for the collection of all provincial income taxes, except for Quebec, and for paying those amounts to the provinces. The federal government's miscalculation was on the refund for capital gains taxes on mutual fund trusts. Since capital gains are taxable only when an asset is sold, mutual fund trusts pay the required federal and provincial tax to the CCRA but are reimbursed when fund investors sell or redeem their units and pay tax on their capital gains.
What happened is that the CCRA never accounted for the refunds of the provincial tax assessed on capital gains when it calculated the federal reconciliation figures. CCRA used the gross figure instead of the net. The implications of this error are significant.
In addition to the overpayment of capital gains refunds, this miscalculation also put out of line the complicated federal-provincial equalization program formula. With the bulk of overpayment going to Ontario it artificially raised the equalization line, meaning that Canada's have-not provinces were overpaid almost $300 million in federal transfers.
What will the federal government do about its mess? So far we have seen two approaches.
The first approach is the co-operative approach. The former finance minister gave the impression to the provincial premiers that he would be lenient in terms of payback. Newspaper accounts reported that the federal and provincial governments were close to finalizing a deal last week before the finance minister was fired. The Manitoba government claims it was assured that the federal government would cover 70% to 80% and perhaps even the full amount of the overpayment.
This makes sense to us in the Canadian Alliance. It takes into account that this error was an error of the federal government. It did not happen just once. It happened year after year for almost 10 years. The same people at the CCRA were making this error over and over again.
It would also take into account the common law principle of estoppel, which is defined in Black's Law Dictionary as:
A bar that prevents one from asserting a claim or right that contradicts what one has said or done before or what has been legally established as true; and an affirmative defense alleging good-faith reliance on a misleading representation and an injury or detrimental change in position resulting from that reliance.
That is what I would call the equity argument. The federal government has to take responsibility for its error, in the same way that many of us would if we did not keep track of our household finances and we paid wrongly for a long period of time. The common law principle we are talking about is that when something becomes a practice over a very long period of time it comes to be accepted.
The provinces, not realizing that the federal government had made this error in calculation, were collecting this money, even though they did not realize it was overpayment. Therefore they were spending the money on program spending, on education, health care and those types of programs that entitle their citizens to services that the provinces provide.
This massive error was made by the federal government and was not a result of a miscalculation as to whether a province was entitled to a certain amount of money. Rather it was an error in federal mathematics. Therefore it was a mistake, in fact, not in law. In this sense the federal government would be hard pressed after almost a decade of acting in a certain way to say now that the provinces should not have relied upon the federal behaviour and calculations.
This was not a one time thing, as I have said. This went on for almost 10 consecutive years. Since the federal government was negligent for so long, it has a responsibility for the fact that it paid out the wrong amount of money.
In addition there appears to be a precedent set by the former minister of finance, Michael Wilson, in the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney 12 years ago. Way back then, miscalculations on corporate taxes between 1985 and 1990 resulted in a federal overpayment of $40 million to Manitoba. What did Mr. Wilson do? He agreed to a corresponding equalization payment at 80¢ for every dollar to the province to be paid back to the federal government. The Canadian Alliance certainly hopes that the federal government would be as generous to the provinces about its mistake as the former Mulroney government was.
This is what I call the co-operative approach and it is one to which we would agree. Provinces, through no fault of their own, received this money. It was part of their budgetary process. They spent the money and it would be very difficult for them to recover it.
The second approach seems to be the one that is favoured by the current Minister of Finance and by the Prime Minister, as opposed to the approach taken by the former minister of finance. This is what I call the confrontational approach. Under the new Minister of Finance it seems that things are not as clear as they were under the former minister. He and the Prime Minister have suggested that the federal government will demand an immediate payback for the federal government's mistake.
This is an approach we could use but it is fraught with difficulties. The question is whether it is a good approach. Canadians ask themselves whether the Prime Minister and the new Minister of Finance will force those provinces that have the hardest time balancing their books, in some cases, to pay for the federal government mistake. If we do go down that road and that is the road chosen by the federal government, it certainly will sour federal-provincial relations, something the Liberal government may be used to but it certainly is not good for the federation.
What are the options for the provinces under this approach? They could cut their own program spending in the next year or they could raise taxes. Basically those are the only choices they have. If the federal Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister insist that this has to be paid back, that is the reality. The provinces from where the paybacks have to come have to come up with the money somehow, money that has been long since spent.
It does not seem like either of these choices are a good way to resolve this because it will mean a loss of service or an increase in taxes for Canadians in the affected provinces.
If the federal government demands repayment for other logical reasons, what will it do with the $3.3 billion? It certainly does not have a good track record with Canadian taxpayer money. The provinces should be question whether, if it gives the money back, it will use it in a way that is beneficial to Canadians.
We have certainly seen in the last few months in this parliament in the current year many examples of waste of taxpayer money. We see it every day in the sponsorship program. The Prime Minister said the other day in Winnipeg “So we lose a few million dollars here and there. Well, it's probably good for the country”. I do not agree with him. It is never good when we are losing hard earned taxpayer money.
That is the record that they have over there. Let us have a look at it. We have wasted billions of dollars of taxpayer money on misguided ideology of state corporatism. Canadians have seen their tax dollars poured into blatant patronage projects, such as Shawinigate, sponsorship programs for Liberal advertising friends, a billion dollar boondoggle at HRDC, corporate welfare and wasteful industrial and regional development programs for well monied companies such as Bombardier, Pratt & Whitney, IBM, General Electric. These are some of the biggest corporations in the world. Here we are handing out money. What is the record on that money that they are handing out? I think they describe it as repayable contributions.
What does that mean? Repayable contributions is a real problem in itself. Either it is a contribution or it is repayable. It cannot be both.
In fact, I think the Canadian Taxpayers Federation just identified that in the seven years since the TPC, the technology partnerships Canada program, has been in effect, the federal government has recovered just 2%.