Brian Masse

[Financial Institutions, December 10th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, while the constituents in my riding and Canadians across the country are suffering under the recession, The Globe and Mail is reporting that the CEOs of Canada's six largest banks are pocketing $8.3 billion in bonuses. This comes less than one year after the government propped the banks up with $75 billion.

In the United States and the United Kingdom, the governments are taking this on and restricting executive pay. Why will the Conservative government not do the same?

[Provincial Choice Tax Framework Act, December 8th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I know the member has been in the chamber trying to talk himself into believing this is good.

It is important to note that this legislation can contain what it wants. It can contain exemptions. We have heard about aboriginal people who are being affected. There could be all kinds of different things attached to this legislation, there is no doubt about it, but the whole point is that it should go through the proper process so that amendments can be made. We amend government bills all the time.

In fact, it is even done by the unelected Senate. On Bill C-6 it brought in a number of amendments that the government does not agree with and I do not agree with, either. I am concerned about some of those as well. However, that is the normal process we go through.

I do not know how the member can actually participate in this debate with any sincerity. He always argues for due process in committees like the one he is on. We should go through that due diligence. We have seen the effects on this.

When the Conservatives changed the Investment Canada Act, they did not run it through the normal process. They attached it to the budget, then it got support from the Liberals at that time and the Investment Canada Act never went through committee. The result of that is there is actually a loop-out clause.

Nortel, just a few months ago, sold for over $1 billion. After the sale took place, Ericsson then suggested the listed price was under $321 million, which is the threshold for the Investment Canada Act to be triggered. What happened? The government agreed and it did not have to go through the Investment Canada Act. That was despite the fact that the day before it paid over $1 billion for Nortel.

It is an example of the problems that emerge if we do not do our job right and we are not doing our job right here. This is going to have an impact across a number of different sectors that are critical to the Canadian economy. It is going to create an imbalance.

Why would we not actually want to know what the issues are going to be, whether the concerns are valid, and how we could address the ones that are valid before we shove this out the door? It is unacceptable.

[Provincial Choice Tax Framework Act, December 8th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, this is really the most offensive thing and I think Canadians understand this. They understand the issue, not only in Ontario but in British Columbia where the polls indicate 80% of people understand the implications of the HST, what it means to them and their families. They are opposed to it.

The most offensive part about this is that the Conservatives and Liberals are telling people, who have concerns about the HST, that they do not matter. The Conservatives and Liberals do not care. It does not matter whether it is ordinary citizens who are now going to have to pay the HST when they buy something for their kids or a necessity of life. All the experts in the different industries that have analysed the effects of this type of policy have been told to get lost.

The government says it is not going to hear from them. It will not hear their concerns. It will not listen to ways that may improve the situation or soften the impact or look at a transition of some of the measures. All the concepts that are out there want to be proposed and are available from people who want to testify. The government, on the other hand, aided and abetted by the other parties, is basically saying it does not matter and it does not care.

[Provincial Choice Tax Framework Act, December 8th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the minister's comments. It is really symptomatic of the government's Jekyll and Hyde approach to this. It is saying that the world economy is collapsing, that it had nothing to do with it, and that it has no role or responsibility. We have all these job losses. However, it can become the government that creates all these jobs and takes credit for it.

I used to worked on behalf of persons with disabilities. When we look at the way in which we gather statistics through Service Canada and other measures, it is interesting that we do not count the people who have fallen off the system or are no longer looking for work. They no longer count. They almost do not exist in our society. About 50% of people with disabilities are unemployed in this country and many of them are not even counted in the actual roles that are out there.

In ridings like mine and other places, people are running out of employment insurance. That is why it was important to get some extension of benefits. I did appreciate working with the government on that extension of those benefits. It is an important thing that is helping some people, but the clock is ticking down on them. It is turning into a situation where people are getting a little bit more desperate. The statistics are very deceiving as to what the real economy is right now.

[Provincial Choice Tax Framework Act, December 8th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise and talk about this issue while we can in the House of Commons.

I agree with my colleague that it is also important to mention the tar sands. My community of Windsor, Ontario is going to be significantly affected by the tar sands, because the refining of that gunk is going to be done across the border in Detroit. Windsor is downwind of the refining facilities that are being expanded, so we are getting the consequences of it on both ends. That is a real issue. Progressive environmental groups from all political parties, both on the Canadian and American sides, have been trying to work together to prevent some of this from happening. It is critical because it affects not only our economy but also our health, as we are the people who are going to breathe this in.

On this bill, I think it is important to talk a bit about the process in the House of Commons and the “harpocrisy” of the Conservative government. It is really outstanding because on this issue, the government is ramming the bill through the House really quickly, whereas on other issues where the government could actually get support from all political parties and affect the economy, it could get a lot of benefit from but does not.

I would point to the process that the government is going through with infrastructure funding. The Conservative government is not using the gas tax, for example, as a model to get some of these projects out the door.

What we are getting here is not only a procedural ramming through of legislation in this session of Parliament, abetted by the Liberals and the Bloc, but we are also missing out on the important work that takes place in this place to ensure that when legislation goes through, it is done properly. The government is behaving similarly to the American-style Republican Party, adding riders to money bills to change legislation as opposed to actually doing the good work that usually happens at committees and providing the due diligence necessary to investigate the impact of legislation on various groups.

Specifically, we would have a debate here in the House of Commons and then we would move the bill to committee if there were interest. Then at committee there would be witnesses who would be called from all corners of Canada to provide testimony on the impacts of a policy.

The impact of the HST is certainly going to be significant for Ontario and British Columbia. It does involve other provinces, as was noted in the House before. There is actually a history of Conservative governments trying to ram such legislation down the throats of residents, aided and abetted by some of their provincial support mechanisms. This time it is the Liberal Party in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia.

However, in the past, I can think of the Grant Devine government of Saskatchewan, for example. That corrupt government was eventually thrown out of power and the HST was repealed by the Roy Romanow NDP government. That government then brought in great legislation, balanced the books, cleaned up corruption and set a significant mark for that province. Everyone remembers the corrupt Grant Devine Conservative government. That is important because it is tied to the HST.

We also see what has taken place with the Darrell Dexter NDP government in Nova Scotia. That government has rebated the home heating portion of the HST right away, as it starts to delist items from the HST.

Meanwhile, what we have here in Ontario and also in British Columbia is the new tax that is to be introduced. These provinces are not even considering removing a percentile point off the tax or delisting items that are important to consumers. We are not talking about luxury items, like jewellery or home entertainment devices or whatever; we are talking about haircuts or things that kids need to do, like going to camps or hockey practices. All of these things will now be subject to another level of tax.

Ironically, the supposed fiscal wizards on that side of the House are actually going to be borrowing money from Canadian taxpayers at a time when Canada is running a deficit, and that money will be taxed back from Canadians. Canadians are waking up to this. It is a sensitive issue and it is also an issue where they understand the economics.

Right now, the government has a large deficit and it is going to increase that deficit through some of its policies. One of its policies was large corporate tax cuts, and I will talk about the effects of those in a few minutes.

It is important to note that I had the parliamentary research bureau do some research for me. The bureau is available to every member. I submitted some information to the bureau and asked it to look at the costs of borrowing the funds from the public purse.

The bureau ran a model, and I am going to cite the results of this independent report from the economists at the Parliamentary research service. They said that the average annual interest rate on the market debt of the federal government from 1998-99 to 2007-08 was 5.3%. Should the federal government borrow $5.9 billion in order to finance the proposed transfer to British Columbia and Ontario, and should it repay that amount in exactly 10 years, and assuming an average interest rate of 5.3%, the total nominal cost to the federal government would be about $9.9 billion.

That is important. We do not know if we will, but the report assumes that we are actually going to be recovering and getting out of recession.

The minister mentioned a few minutes ago that the jobless rate was going down, but one of the reasons it is actually falling in a place like Windsor West is that people are running out of benefits.

There has been high employment for years. We have been warning the government and the previous government of a lack of sectoral strategy for the manufacturing sector. The member for Outremont was quite right in talking about how the petrodollar has raised the Canadian dollar so high and so quickly that we have been shedding tens of thousands of jobs in the manufacturing sector over the last number of years.

Therefore, in communities like Windsor, we now have people who are exiting the benefit system that was available to them.

It is important to recognize what we are going to borrow and what we are going to get in terms of a return. I have seen some of the documents and read through the argument on why do this for the manufacturing sector? The HST will eliminate some taxation that is happening on multiple levels. There is no doubt about that, because it does happen, and that is a fair argument to make.

However, then we have to believe that those savings will get passed on to the consumer. I do not believe that is going to happen. Those savings would have to be passed on to the consumer and then the theory is that people can buy more and can stimulate the economy.

I mentioned in earlier exchanges in the House that it was the argument put forth when we had no conditions put on the reduction of the GST on gasoline prices. What we saw was the GST reduced on gasoline. So the coffers of the nation lost that revenue coming in, but we have not seen that passed on to consumers. I have yet to see a study that shows that those savings have been passed on to consumers.

I would suspect many Canadians justly question gasoline prices, especially because the government killed the only program capable of monitoring that, a monitoring agency, a watchdog program, that would have been fairly and independently out there. We have the industry that is policing itself, which is ludicrous.

One of the reasons I talk about the important process when the legislation passes is that we do figure out ways to ameliorate problems when we have legislation in front of us. Earlier this past week, we had the Minister of State for Small Business and Tourism before us at committee, who admitted there had been no study done on the effects on tourism of this particular HST grab.

That is critical, because there was a study done by the Tourism Industry Association of Ontario and another done in British Columbia by Butchart Gardens, which show that tourism is going to be affected significantly by this HST grab, because hotels, restaurants, theme attractions, travel, and all of those things are going to have a big whack tax put right on top of them right now.

The tourism industry is the fourth largest sector in the Canadian economy, when all of its components are put together. It has been facing a perfect storm as well. Not only was there the introduction of the U.S. passport requirement, which is a real challenge, because only about 35% of Americans carry passports; but we have also had the petro dollar affecting the tourism industry, all the way from the Niagara region across Ontario, and even in my region, where the high dollar, especially its rapid acceleration, has resulted in a shift. It used to be an advantage for Americans to come over and take advantage of that.

Then the government whacked the tourism industry again when it cut out the GST rebate. This is the party of our good friend Brian Mulroney, who brought in the GST, and there were severe economic repercussions for the tourism industry from that.

In fact when he introduced the GST in 1991, the food service industry in Canada suffered a 10.6% decline in real sales, 7.3% of which was attributed to the GST. Once again, it was our Conservative friends who introduced that tax on Canadians.

We have a situation now where we have had a couple of hearings and some witnesses yesterday at the tourism committee. As we happened to be studying another sector of the economy in committee, we were able to get some testimony from them on the HST. They see this as a significant challenge. We had some good testimony, and that is important because they are calling for some rebates and a series of things to be delisted, but we cannot really get to that full evidence and analysis because there is no actual study at committee on this bill.

It is shameful for the Conservatives, and the Liberals in particular, not even to allow public debate to take place, not even to allow that evidence from witnesses who are important in our sectoral economies to come forward and to show what challenges would take place. There is complete ignorance on that. They prevented some really good evidence being heard on how this will affect the tourism industry.

People have to be wondering about their representation, when they are in southern Ontario and look at the Niagara region and elsewhere, where we have to compete so hard for dollars. What is interesting is that our tourism deficit has ballooned under this government, and I will get into that later. We have seen U.S. visits to Canada, which account for three-quarters of all tourist visits here, decline significantly. On top of that, we have actually seen that deficit expand quite significantly, and so we have been suffering job losses in those industries.

A number of different independent studies have been done by the Tourism Industry Association of Ontario. It looked at a number of different scenarios as examples of what the HST is going to increase and what the industry is going to face. Keep in mind that Canada is already one of the most expensive places in the world to visit. I believe we rank fourth in the world in terms of the overall expense of a visit, and now on top of that, we are going to have another level of taxation that will further add to that component. That is a real problem, especially given the fact, as I mentioned earlier, that the dollar is high and U.S. visits are down and we have a struggling economy.

Therefore, borrowing from our own taxpayers and from these businesses to throw another tax on top of them is going to affect a number of different scenarios.

One scenario is the weekend getaway, which has a base cost of $1,603. Currently we have an 8.3% tax on that, but when we actually add the HST and future taxes and incremental taxation, taxes on these visitors are going to increase by 43.6%. When we look at the incremental taxation related to activities in that type of vacation and take all the different components of that vacation and visit, we see that taxes are going up significantly.

Another scenario is a one week camping holiday. The government cannot even leave camping alone. This is one of the ironic things about this in Ontario. This is another Dalton McGuinty tax day on Canada Day; he cannot help himself, apparently. Maybe we need to have a motion in the House of Commons to have Dalton leave our Canada Day alone, because he brought in his health care tax a number of years ago after not telling the public about that, and then once again went through an election and did not tell the public about that. Now the Ontario government is introducing a new tax on camping.

My son is a Beaver and his Beaver group will be an example of the new taxation. We have to do fundraising for them as it is. We live in the inner city, where some of the kids cannot afford some of these events. In fact his troop, because there are kids in it that cannot afford the different events, was recently subsidized by the other troops for a fun day that we had in Windsor. I thank all the volunteers for that at the Cleary International Centre. It was a terrific family event day.

Now when they go camping they are going to get taxed. When they go camping now, the estimated base cost is $2,173 with current taxes of $188 at a rate of 7.9%. That will go up and there may be future taxation on the other things that are added on. So the association is estimating there will about a 33.2% tax increase overall when all of the activities of a camping trip are put together.

We could not even exempt camping in Canada. We could not even have a discussion or a debate about that; we just have to accept this is going to happen.

We also looked at a shopping weekend in Toronto where good friends of the Conservatives, the Liberals, are right now in the Toronto area. A shopping weekend of $4,856 is the average shopping weekend in Toronto according to the study and there is going to be a 14.2% increase on that when we add in the hotels and all the different things that people would have. So that is going to make it more challenging for Toronto as a destination.

We have already had a number of challenges such as SARS for example. In my riding people from the Detroit area refused to come to Windsor or Toronto explicitly because of the SARS issue and we had to debunk all that. It has taken years to recover from that issue.

There have been challenges and tourism destinations are very important for the country, not just for Toronto. Tourism is our fourth largest industry and once again we have not been able to study this issue or to have any meaningful input on it other than these outside measures others have been doing. They are from credible companies. HLT is the advisory group for this one.

A family ski holiday of $4,363 ends up with the incremental taxation resulting in a 25.3% increase. That is the estimation because things like lift tickets and a whole series of other things that did not have any tax now are subjected to this new tax grab.

In terms of the impact on the overall economy, it was good to have the Canadian Tourism Commission at our committee. It does a very good job. Madame McKenzie runs it. It has many challenges. It has a small budget, small department. Interestingly enough, the Liberals moved it toward the Olympics and that is a big event and destination that hopefully does take place. We hope that will turn some things around. The CTC said, “Canadian outbound travel spending continued to rise in light of a strong Canadian dollar to reach a record level of $26.9 billion in 2008, an increase of 15.5% over 2007. As a result Canada's international travel deficit, the difference between what Canadian residents spend abroad and what international travellers spend in Canada, rose to a record of $12.6 billion in 2008”.

That is devastating. When there is a significant deficit like that in one of our largest industries, it is critical to turn that around. We are not just talking about Americans or other destination marketers coming in that are going to have to pay the HST. When the government scrapped the GST rebate, they were very upset about that and many people said that was one of the reasons they would not come back.

With the HST imposed in Ontario and British Columbia there could be more incentives for more Canadians to spend their tourism dollars outside of Canada. Part of the CTC's mandate is to have Canadians spend money in their own communities or to travel around Canada. But now we are adding another level of cost when we are competing for tourism dollars at a time when we have the significant challenges of a crumbling economy.

This is just absolute utter nonsense that we would not get into a responsible evaluation about the impacts of this, whether we agree or disagree with the ideology of the bill, but we should be concerned about getting some empirical data to analyze and propose some solutions that would look at this and show some leadership. To simply say we are washing our hands of it is unacceptable.

It is important that Canadians realize this is the agenda. When the Conservatives brought in the GST supported by the Liberals, I remember the big scrap that was supposed to happen. It never took place and there have been successive attempts to bring in provinces. This is exactly what the Minister of Finance said on May 2 in budget 2006:

The Government invites all provinces that have not yet done so to engage in discussions on the harmonization of their provincial retail sales taxes with the federal GST.

That is what the minister said. That is the reality. Nothing happens without this. We need to have a proper study before we tear this at Canadians.

[Provincial Choice Tax Framework Act, December 8th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague a question with regard to the philosophy that he is embracing that automatic savings are going to be passed on.

Most recently we heard the same argument regarding gas prices. There was the argument that when we lowered the GST, gas price savings would be passed on to consumers. We all know that did not take place. In fact the profits are still up. Canadians actually have less tax revenue, and the companies did not pass the savings on to consumers.

How is the member going to guarantee that this ideological assumption is actually going to take place?

[Provincial Choice Tax Framework Act, December 8th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, the member is new here and probably does not remember the days when the Bloc unilaterally facilitated the government's first two budgets, capitulating at the expense of Quebec originally. I just cannot believe that the member does not realize the strategic importance of trying to get something on the table for the government.

Perhaps the Bloc members have a secret deal, who knows, but they are certainly giving up the interests of Quebec, which is of no value at all right now.

[Provincial Choice Tax Framework Act, December 8th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate the member on his maiden speech, which is important to recognize.

The member noted some of the independent research that I had requested which was done by the economists at the Library of Parliament. They reviewed the $5.9 billion that is going to be borrowed to bring in this tax in Ontario and B.C. They projected it over 10 years and applied the general borrowing rate of the Government of Canada over the last 10 years. The cost increases from $5.9 billion to $9.9 billion.

I am wondering why the Bloc is supporting this bill along with the Liberals and the Conservatives, given the history of how Quebec has been treated. It is giving up a negotiation tactic here by allowing this to go forward without that issue being addressed. I would like to know from the member what the Bloc's strategy is in terms of caving into this right now.

If the Bloc members actually were supportive of pushing this issue for fairness in Quebec, they would not give the government and the Liberals this easy out, especially over the holiday season, to close down debate this way and to limit committee hearings. If there were committee hearings, witnesses from Quebec could give testimony about what happened in the past and what should happen. They could make that argument, but the Bloc members are giving all that up.

On top of that, Quebec residents are going to have to contribute to that $9.9 billion because the money is going to come from all across Canada. They are also going to owe the $5.9 billion and the interest on that. That is going to be passed on to Quebeckers as well.

[Provincial Choice Tax Framework Act, December 8th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the speech by the parliamentary secretary was very interesting and reminded me of a couple of things. It reminded me of the Bart Simpson “I didn't do it” skit and the movie Naked Gun, where Leslie Nielsen is standing in front of a fireworks factory he has blown up and all of the fireworks are going off and he says, “There is nothing to see here”.

This is a remarkable implementation of a tax on Canadian citizens that can only be facilitated by this chamber. The parliamentary secretary should understand that we are going to have to borrow Canadians' own money to put this tax back onto them.

I had the Parliamentary library do some research and it estimated that the $5.9 billion payout or buyout that we are providing British Columbia and Ontario over 10 years to do this will actually cost us $9.9 billion over those 10 years at the annual borrowing rate of the Government of Canada. That estimate comes from the Parliamentary research service.

Therefore, we are borrowing Canadians' own money to bring in a new tax on top of them. This is only being facilitated by the actions of the government here today.

We heard testimony yesterday at that industry committee from the tourism sector. There has been no sector study done on the effect of this tax. If one looks at Ontario and British Columbia, we already have a declining rate of tourism right now. The parliamentary secretary noted that other nations in the world have this tax, but not United States, which is our number one source of tourists. The tourism industry is predicting right now that the tax will result in a loss from that market, and has done its own independent studies showing that.

Why is the government not studying the industries that will be affected by this new tax, which only it is capable of bringing in?

[Petitions, December 8th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to present a petition from members of the community of Windsor West who are calling for the introduction of a new volunteer service medal to be known as the Governor General's volunteer service medal, to acknowledge and recognize volunteerism by Canadian troops.

There have been two times in the past where there has been a Canadian volunteer service medal dating back to 1939 and most recently in 1953.

The petitioners respectfully call upon the Government of Canada to recognize by means of issuance of a new Canadian volunteer service medal to be designated the Governor General's volunteer service medal for voluntary service by Canadians in the regular and reserve military forces and cadet corps support staff who are not eligible for the aforementioned medals and who have completed 365 days of uninterrupted honourable duty in the service of their country since March 2, 1947.

It is an important part of our Canadian military forces that is often overlooked of.