Daniel Paillé

[Finance, December 6th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, he should answer the questions.

By taking privileges away from the wealthy, the government could balance its budget and have room to manoeuvre to help abandoned economic sectors like the forestry sector, the manufacturing sector and the fisheries.

Why does the government keep sparing the banks and the oil companies? Why not use the existing tax room? Why not show some leadership and help workers in the sectors in difficulty? Why not take action right now?

[Finance, December 6th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Finance is suggesting it will be well after 2016 before the budget is balanced again, which is not a fine example of leadership.

The Bloc Québécois has proposed a number of measures: no more tax evasion, no more tax havens, no more gifts to oil companies and bankers, and a higher tax rate for those who earn $150,000 or more, the top earners.

Instead of prolonging the imbalance, why does the minister not ask privileged taxpayers to contribute more?

[Tax Harmonization, November 30th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I never would have expected the Minister of Finance to be inspired by his colleague, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, who is stealing from artists. The Minister of Finance, however, wants to steal from Quebec, because the sales taxes are not harmonized quite to his liking and because he wants to collect the QST for Quebec. Quebec has been waiting for 18 years now. What is standing in the way of a positive agreement between the federal government and Quebec? Where is the problem? They have been negotiating for 18 years. They need to get on with it.

[Tax Harmonization, November 30th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative government often says that Quebec will not receive its $2.2 billion in compensation until the GST and QST are fully harmonized.

But unlike Canada, Quebec does not tax books. Quebec does not tax authors' creations.

Are we to understand that the Minister of Finance expects Quebec to tax books and authors' creations if it wants to receive compensation for tax harmonization? Is that what he wants?

[Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, November 29th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP member is quite right to say that Canada has a huge fiscal capacity that has not been tapped into. Some say maximum tax rates have been reached, and that is true when it comes to poor citizens, but not in the case of corporations, and more specifically, banks.

There are six major banks in Canada. As required by the Bank Act, every year, around pages 140 to 150 of their annual reports, the big banks publish a list of their investments in tax havens and the tax savings they achieve by putting money in those tax havens. In this case, the left hand knows exactly what kind of savings the banks are achieving in tax havens, but the right hand is too stupid to ask for the information and to tax the banks' holdings in tax havens.

There is indeed a huge fiscal capacity in Canada. I agree with the hon. member that borrowing more to pay for certain things is not the answer. Last year, when we proposed realigning spending—which we will do again this year—by helping the forestry industry, for example, we also proposed new financing formulas to go after more of the available tax room.

[Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, November 29th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, let us not get carried away. The minister said that I complimented the government. Hold on, now. Let us not jump to conclusions. All I said was that for this kind of technicality and this kind of technical bill, I was more or less in agreement. But let us not forget that the Minister of Finance was in favour of bank mergers. We should give the previous government credit for not letting banks merge. Of course, that government was later booted out of office, and deservedly so.

I also want to point out that some things are going well in Canada, such as securities trading, which works very well. Can anyone tell me why the government wants to mess with that?

Today we talked about how Quebec has been doing a good job of collecting harmonized sales taxes for the past 18 years. What does the government plan to do about that? I want to make one thing clear to the minister who asked me the question. When we say that we support this bill, he should not blow things out of proportion and say that the Bloc Québécois now supports the Conservative government. No, if the Conservative Party wants to form a coalition, it will find that other parties are much more inclined to form coalitions with it than the Bloc Québécois is. Something about that does not work.

[Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, November 29th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member, who is a valuable member of the committee. He did ask that kind of question, and we absolutely got that kind of answer. I remember making a comment, it may have been in camera, that that was the only answer the senior officials could give. That is why, in this kind of standing committee, it is a bit frustrating to ask questions to senior public officials because we know very well that although we have an excellent public service here in Canada, the officials can only give responses that correspond to what the government put in its bill or the government's tax policy.

Should the bill have some more teeth? Did the government look carefully at all the ways the law could be circumvented? We do not know. This is why tax laws have become so huge, because when a government introduces tax legislation, the main goal of tax experts, whether they are from law firms or major corporations, is to look for loopholes. That is why tax laws never last longer than a year or two. Then they need to be amended. That is how tax laws in Canada are created. Everyone knows that the goal of the vice-president of finance of a public corporation is to maximize profit, but the goal of the vice-president of finance or the CFO of a private corporation is to minimize taxes.

[Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, November 29th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to reassure the member for Mississauga South. There are days when a lot of talking happens, but I have no intention of taking as much time here in the House as he has, with so much imagination.

This bill is a perfect example of how thorough the Bloc is. Yes, we said that that we were against the overall budget speech and we voted against it. But now that it has been passed, we need to move on. That is what we are doing.

We have thoroughly analyzed this bill and our opinion is: why not? We should vote in favour of passing this bill at this stage because we have done a thorough analysis of it.

It is unfortunate that not all the opposition parties work like that. We know full well that the Liberals say they will vote against it, but when it comes time to vote, they will not be here. The NDP will vote against it because they are against it. Do not ask them why, but they are against it. At least they will be here.

Certain measures in this bill are important, and it would be proper for us to point out what we agree with. Some measures deal with personal income tax. The first measure I will talk about would allow the following benefits to be shared between parents who have shared custody of children: the universal child care benefit, the Canada child tax benefit and the GST or HST credit.

It can be a sad thing for families, but we have to accept the fact that, in Quebec and Canada, many families are blended and many children's parents do not live together. More and more parents share custody of their children. For example, the universal child care benefit is $100 per month, and as we know, it is given to parents of children under the age of six. This bill would divide that benefit between the two parents who share custody of their children. This is why the Bloc is so important. This is our hallmark. Having thoroughly analyzed this measure, how can we oppose it? The answer is clear for anyone who has done a thorough analysis. I cannot see myself telling my Hochelaga constituents that we will vote against this kind of measure because we are ideologically opposed to the government.

Another measure that we find completely acceptable is the one that would enable people to roll over the proceeds of a registered retirement savings plan to the lesser-known registered disability savings plan (RDSP), where investment income accumulates tax-free. Everyone knows about RRSPs, but RDSPs were created to enable parents to save for the long-term financial security of a child with a severe disability. These measures make it possible to save money depending on the degree of the child's disability. In many cases, parents of such children have RRSPs.

What happened when they die? These registered retirement savings plans have been taxed like any other. Now, parents and grandparents of a child with severe disabilities will be allowed to roll their RRSP, if they have one, into a registered disability savings plan, which will help meet the child's needs. If the child should pass away, it will be taxed in the usual way.

How can anyone be against such a beneficial social measure that—fortunately—will not affect very many people, but that can help families caring for a child with a severe disability get through the grief of losing a parent or grandparent?

These measures apply to personal income taxes, but there are also other measures that apply to charities. We all have charities in our respective ridings. Some of the administrative rules that were—pardon the expression—a bloody nuisance have been repealed. Everyone knows how hard the people who run charitable organizations work. These people work all day long, sometimes seven days a week, to achieve their charity's goals. Yet those organizations are weighed down by completely unreasonable administrative requirements.

Charities will now be allowed to give the Canada Revenue Agency information. That agency was already receiving information from charities, but it forced them to give information concerning the percentage of donations it had to spend in a year based on the tax receipts they had issued, for example. Thus, a charitable organization that has issued $100,000 in tax receipts for 2010 has to spend at least $80,000 the next year. Sometimes charities would not meet that standard and near the end of the year, they would have a tax problem. That standard will be reviewed and charities will simply have to fill out the information requested by the CRA, and that will be sufficient.

Charities were also obliged to spend the equivalent of 3.5% of the organization's assets every year. If a charity wanted to accumulate a certain amount of capital in a given year, it could not do so, because it absolutely had to liquidate 3.5% of its assets. That was another administrative nuisance.

The government finally seems to realize that the left hand was asking for information while the right hand—the Canada Revenue Agency—already had all the information. I do not see how anyone could be against more flexible requirements for charitable organizations.

As far as charities are concerned, there were different stories. However, we think that the government should not be saying that it was nice to charities while it is cutting funding to NGOs and development agencies around the world. The Bloc Québécois position on that is very well known: we must not stop pressing the government to give 0.7% of GDP to international development agencies. We will continue to press the government to achieve that objective, which obviously was set by the UN. Nevertheless, we must commend the establishment of more flexible administrative rules.

Other measures have to do with corporate taxation. In January, the Bloc Québécois toured Quebec. It asked the Minister of Finance to do better when it comes to taxing stock options. We said that a certain number of bonuses should be taxed more, in other words excessive bonuses should not be deductible from corporate profits as an expense. We regret that such a measure is not included.

Let us now talk about a measure related to performance bonuses. Sometimes corporations offer their employees stock options. There is nothing wrong with that. It is part of the benefits offered to the employees. However, when the stock options are issued, a loophole in the legislation allowed a double deduction, in other words, the employee and the employer could both deduct those options. That is no longer the case. The government is announcing that in 2014 and in 2015, it will bring in $400 million thanks to the elimination of this double deduction.

We agree with this measure, but it does not go far enough. The government could take this even further. What the government is showing us is that it is possible to close loopholes in the legislation and tax stock options. It is not as though the Conservatives are being adamant about not touching this. In fact, the Conservatives are handling this quite well in Bill C-47, and we are supporting them.

The measure is good, but the government could do better. That reminds us of school report cards. We have all received the comment “good behaviour, but could do better”.

The rules related to tax-free savings accounts, TFSAs, have also been tightened. Last week, my colleague from Saint-Lambert asked a question regarding the guaranteed income supplement. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development and to the Minister of Labour told her that the government was doing everything it could for seniors living close to the poverty line by creating TFSAs. Clearly, he did not understand the documents he had before him at all. The bill also resolves a number of issues with the TFSA. Everyone knows that someone can contribute $5,000 per year after taxes to a TFSA and that the income generated by the account will not be taxed.

Some wily investors were depositing much more than $5,000 per year into their TFSAs. They had to pay a penalty of 1%, which was not really a penalty at all considering that returns could be far higher than 1%. Now the bill will close the loophole. How? Any amount over $5,000 will be taxed at 100%. I find this interesting. What does this tell me? It tells me that this government, when it wants to close loopholes, can impose tax rates of up to 100% on excessive income. It is doing that very thing. However, last year, when we suggested a very high tax rate on extremely large bonuses, we were told that implementing such a measure would be impossible. I have been watching the government and I say that it is possible. Yes, it is possible. The government is doing that very thing and we support its actions. We are in favour of this bill because of these types of measures.

There are also clean energy measures. Very few people are interested in the phenomenon of capital cost allowances, or depreciation. Many people do not have any idea what that even means. I understand. When it does not fall within the realm of your occupation, it can be a bit of a dry topic, but capital cost allowances permit businesses or individuals who have investments to deduct the cost of an asset based on the useful life of that asset.

Naturally, when you own a business and you purchase a truck, you do not depreciate the truck over 20 years. It will not last 20 years. There are many formulas and tables used to calculate depreciation of an automobile or computer hardware, for example, over three years. However, when the goal is to help the business and to foster a form of investment, accelerated capital cost allowance makes it possible to recover the cost more quickly. This is the case for geothermal equipment.

Our colleague from Brome—Missisquoi is an expert in geothermal energy in Quebec and Canada. He could talk about it for hours. When we examined solar heating, geothermal energy and distribution equipment for district energies, we obviously agreed.

For that reason, the Bloc Québécois, which is known for its thoroughness and which examines bills one after another, says that unfortunately with regard to geothermal equipment, we agree. We have to agree.

The bill also contains measures concerning the implementation of international standards. It will allow international accounting standards adopted by everyone to be used by public corporations. We will no longer use generally accepted Canadian accounting principles. We will be using accounting principles from international financial reporting standards. Can we oppose this? Everyone uses them. Therefore, we support this measure.

This bill will also authorize the Canada Revenue Agency to issue online notices. It is about time. The time has come to issue online notices of assessment. Everything is online. Is the Conservative government behind the times? Yes. Is it far behind? Yes, but it is catching up. It is getting there, and we cannot vote against that. We must at least mark the gesture. It is behind the times but at least it is getting there in situations such as these.

It is because of these types of measures, and after thorough study of the bill, that we are making an exception and voting in favour of the bill. However, we voted against the government's budget as a whole and we were present. The Liberals were against it but they were not present. The NDP were against it, although they do not know why, but at least they were present.

[Privilege, November 29th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, it will be up to the committee to decide. Unfortunately, it is currently sitting. It is continuing as though nothing has happened. Clearly, there are other members that sit on this committee but, in my opinion, they could have desisted. Nevertheless, the committee is currently sitting and we have to decide what to do with our report, which has two parts. The first part provides the context while the second makes recommendations. If we were to publish only the context, we would be publishing a truncated version of the report. But, how are we going to be able to discuss all of the recommendations? This is an issue that must be addressed by the committee members.

We have already discussed meeting with lobbyists, since we have already met with some. It bothered me to meet with, for example, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who was speaking to us about economic variables, and two or three private economists, one of whom was apparently a lobbyist, at the same time. Everything was a bit mixed up. I think there is a lesson to be learned here. Lobbyists do have a job to do but, as parliamentarians, we should meet with individuals and organizations mandated by the public rather than by special interest groups.

[Privilege, November 29th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I believe that we should very sincerely applaud the Speaker's decision to refer this matter to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

Sadly, the current Speaker has informed us this year that this is his last term of office. This ruling will be part of the remarkable legacy that he will leave behind. We should now have even greater respect for this Speaker and his ruling on the motion that this ethical issue must be addressed by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

We and the members on the other side of the House have spoken at length about the fact that the member for Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar has apologized. I have already said, here and elsewhere, that it was easier to beg forgiveness than ask for permission. In this case, we were told that action was taken as quickly as possible, which is untrue. I believe that we have to recognize this. It is untrue. Although this incident may have occurred inadvertently or innocently, it is still untrue.

As everyone has stated, my colleagues and I received the report from our committee clerk at 8:31 a.m. on Thursday. The first emails were sent six minutes later. Our Liberal colleague from Mississauga South gave some background on the person who sent these emails, Mr. Ullyatt. He said that Mr. Ullyatt even has a company that specializes in sending these types of things. This person did not act innocently; what he did was premeditated. It was done right away, immediately.

I was personally informed of the situation on Friday at lunch when I was told, in a trembling voice, that it had been learned the previous evening that three emails had been sent inadvertently. Three copies of the report were sent to three people. However, that did not happen on Thursday evening but on Thursday morning. We were told about it on Friday at noon. And that is where it ended. It just hung in the air. The committee met last Monday, at about 3:30 p.m., and we began talking about it. And now I am being told that due diligence was done and apologies were made as quickly as possible?

Last Monday, the member for Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar spoke at 2:05 p.m., relatively early in the day, to congratulate the Saskatoon Hilltops, but she said nothing about the oversight, the error in judgment, the fundamental mistake that occurred in her office. Not a word.

At 2:55 p.m., 50 minutes later, like other committee members, I told myself that perhaps she had warmed up and was ready to talk about it, but the same member instead rose to ask a question about her bill on accountability and enhanced financial transparency.

Enough is enough. Accountable to whom? Three days earlier her office was accountable to a Conservative Party lobbyist. As for the financial transparency of elected officials, I will not even go there. It was not until 5:50 p.m., three hours later, that the member said she acted as quickly as possible and apologized. We accept her apology, but there comes a point when, as the expression goes, enough is enough.

This is a question of responsibility. Here in this parliament, as in many others, there is ministerial responsibility. When someone makes a mistake, the minister is responsible. In my opinion, a member of Parliament or parliamentary secretary is responsible when a mistake is made. Of course, we need to look at the kind of mistake, but the more we dig and the more the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs digs, the more we will realize that this is no trivial matter. It is not a question of someone accidentally hitting “send” and wondering what he did. The person did it again. Who gave the order to hit “send”? No one knows.

The government is a control freak when it comes to sending information. Everything is managed by the Prime Minister's Office: press conferences, statements and so on. Everything is managed from above. Do we really believe that it was a young rookie who hit the wrong button on his computer, not knowing what he was doing? Perhaps it was something else.

We were in the midst of our work, and some members said that the Standing Committee on Finance was a serious committee. As one of the authors, I have a copyright on the report that will be released, but they went ahead and copied it. That is what she did. They copied certain things, even though the committee—my Liberal, Conservative and NDP colleagues and I—still had serious work to do.

Ministerial responsibility is reflected in the answers. On Monday, we asked the hon. member whom she had sent the unanimous report to. She swore that she had sent it to three people only. One of those three people sent us a message saying they had not received the report. That is odd. The other two then said they did receive it. The answer provided by the hon. member, maliciously or innocently, was not worth anything. We have to find out exactly what is behind such an answer.

We received other vague answers. We were told she had checked her BlackBerry, but it was turned off. Give me a break. Who does she take us for? When it comes to responsibility, the other members of the committee, including the Conservative members, should not be taken for fools. Perhaps someone has something to hide. That is why we support the motion of the hon. member for Outremont to refer the matter to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

We still do not have an answer. Who received the report? It is highly likely that many people in Canada received this report and are smacking their lips. I am sure of it. They have the list of recommendations made by each party, which is rather unusual. They are seeing what was kept and what was not, and how we proceeded. The documents were confidential.

I have asked whether we could have assurance that the documents were received, whether they were destroyed and whether we could get what we call in financial jargon, certification of destruction. So far, no one has given me any certification of destruction. I was told in one case that the document had been deleted and in another case, that it had never been received. In yet another case, the response I got was, “I heart you”, which is more than just a thank you very much. It is a declaration of love. That goes above and beyond appreciation. That is what we got. Those are the types of questions that need to be asked.

The Standing Committee on Finance plays an important role. Any finance minister faced with the leak of his budget or a draft of the budget would have to resign. We are talking about fiscal matters here. Does the member who was here earlier understand how important that is? Does the House understand how serious this work and the leak that happened are?

We conduct serious consultations about fiscal matters. These are either serious or not, either bogus or not. Consultations took place. Earlier, one of our colleagues said he sat on the finance committee for six years and went from coast to coast to coast. These are my second prebudget consultations. We have heard from more than 100 people, and nearly 500 wanted to appear before us. This is an important fiscal matter.

I will draw a parallel with something that has been on everyone's mind in recent days. Could this be insider trading? For the past three or four days in the House, questions have been put to the government about the sudden drop in the Taseko Mines stocks because insider trading was suspected. In that instance, a 165-page plus fiscal document was leaked. We are told that the member made a mistake, and we forgive her. I want to believe her, but this is more serious than the lump in her throat as she spoke. This is a serious matter.

Were any sanctions imposed? We were told that she booted out her secretary, Mr. so-and-so. Fine, but under what terms? Where is he now? Has he been recruited by a lobbyist of hers or by the Prime Minister' office? Who hired him? Will this be taken further? Someone who gets caught insider trading is prosecuted. Who will be prosecuted? Who is responsible? Someone in that office is the boss.

A simple apology is perhaps not enough. We are proud of the ruling made by the Speaker. I have been a member of another parliament, and I know that the rights and privileges of parliamentarians are sacred. We were all elected. We very often have differences of opinion. We sometimes make somewhat disparaging remarks and you are right to call us back to order, Mr. Speaker. I sometimes cannot contain myself when confronted with the slanderous remarks from the other side of the House, but we respect the fact that everyone here was elected by the public and was chosen to represent them. Our privileges are our rights as parliamentarians.

As vice-chair of the Standing Committee on Finance, I get the impression that my rights and those of the people of Hochelaga who elected me and the people who elected the 13 members of the committee have been violated. That is why the Speaker's ruling is special; the Speaker is showing respect for all the witnesses who have appeared since the beginning of the fall and who will appear in the future.

Next year, when we ask someone from Nova Scotia, Quebec, Winnipeg, British Columbia or Prince Edward Island to come and tell us what they think about the upcoming 2012 budget, they will say that there is no point, since anyone can hit the send button and send that information anywhere. Is that serious?

That is why this ruling is so important. I have been a member of this Parliament for one year, and I am very proud of this ruling. Obviously, the members of the Bloc Québécois are in favour of the motion by the member for Outremont. I should point out that that does not happen often.

I am sure that the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs will ensure that these actions are punished—that word is justified—because our reputation, our loyalty, our rights and our privileges are at stake.