Dean Del Mastro

[Economic Recovery Act (stimulus), October 6th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I have never run in a B.C. election campaign, which is good for the NDP because I am a real campaigner.

I must say that when it comes to the HST, this was a decision made by the B.C. government. If people in B.C. have concerns or questions about it, they should talk to their government about it.

Every time we have reduced taxes in this country, members of the NDP have stood against it. They have stood against reductions in the GST, not once but twice. They have stood in opposition to reducing taxes for seniors. Who could oppose tax reductions for seniors? When we removed over 800,000 low income Canadians, predominantly seniors, from the tax rolls permanently, members of the NDP took pride in saying that they voted against it. They personally called for reductions in the GST. It was their party's position. However, when they had a chance to vote in favour of reducing the GST, not once but twice they voted in favour of the GST remaining at 7%.

Canadians want a 5% GST, which is why the NDP is so wrong. For members of the NDP to stand up now and say that they are tax fighters, nobody believes them. They have no credibility on this. There is not a tax the NDP would not raise in any category. Higher taxes make a happier NDP. That is the way it is.

Canadians can count our party to maintain taxes at the lowest possible rate. Tax freedom day is 20 days earlier in Canada under this government. Under the NDP, I do not think we would ever get out from under taxes.

[Economic Recovery Act (stimulus), October 6th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I took a lot of economics courses at university, on top of finance, accounting and a couple of political science courses, and I would like to go back to the professors and tell them how politics really works. That said, one of the things I did study was economics.

One of the problems with a PST, the way it is currently administered, is the cascading effect of taxes. It becomes a surtax on business, because when businesses buy inputs, they have to pay tax on them. It discourages investments in Canadian business.

I will not get into the politics of the HST. I will say though that Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty was the gentleman who made the decision. He is the leader of the government in Ontario. He made the decision in Ontario, as did Premier Gordon Campbell in British Columbia. Nobody is forcing them to move toward an HST.

That said, be under no illusion, they are reducing the input tax into investment into Canadian jobs. That is why they did it, to make Canada more competitive, not less competitive.

[Economic Recovery Act (stimulus), October 6th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, although I am of a diminutive age, I do understand that big business is very important to Canada's overall economic strength. I look at my own riding where there are companies like General Electric, which the member would like to tax at a higher level, and Quaker Oats, which the member would like to tax at a higher level. They both employ several thousand CAW workers. By reducing their taxes, we are making them more competitive so the workers can continue to hold those jobs.

I would like to point to a very significant company that recently returned to Canada, which had expanded abroad and moved its corporate head office. It is called Tim Hortons. It came back to Canada because we have put Canada on a competitive footing so that we can compete for business investment.

These large corporate entities employ hundreds of thousands of Canadians and further drive the small business economy in this country. Small entrepreneurs cannot do it on their own. They need investment. We need global investment in this country. That is what will make Canada stronger.

[Economic Recovery Act (stimulus), October 6th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, they do not want the bill on OAS put forward by the Liberal member for Brampton—Springdale and they do not want an election.

The measures in Canada's economic recovery bill are important. We have broken ground on so many public investments over the last number of months and we are going to break ground on many more.

We have been working in partnership with the provinces and municipalities at a time when Canadians are demanding that their representatives work together in their interests, not in politicians' interests. At a time when Canadians are asking us to work for them, the Liberal leader is saying, “It's about me”. That is wrong. It is the wrong time for that type of thing to be happening.

When I go out and meet with Canadians, not just in my riding but broadly, they say to stay the course.

We are working together. We are working to build a Canada that is better, safer and stronger. We are taking these economic head winds head on. They are rising to the challenge once again, as Canadians always do when they face adversity. Canadians are meeting the challenge. They are saying to the Liberal Party to get behind the recovery. The Liberals are missing the message: get behind the recovery. They should not stand in the way of Canada's economic action plan.

Daily we hear the Liberal Party say that the government is promoting itself. No, we are not. We are working for Canadians. When we tell people about the home renovation tax credit, that is to make sure that people know they can take advantage of the tax credits that are available to them. When we tell them about Canada's economic action plan, we are making sure they know the measures the government has put in place during this difficult time to rebuild the Canadian economy. This type of awareness is critical. It is critical for consumer confidence.

I come from small business. The driver in small business is consumer confidence. There are a lot of factors that come into play, but frankly when consumers are confident that things are good or that things will get better, they will spend money. They will invest. They will invest in their homes. They will invest in cars. They will invest in so many of the things that drive our economy.

That is why the government has a role in making sure that Canadians know that we are working, that we are focused on the situation and that we have a plan that will make it better. As I said earlier, that plan is getting international recognition. That plan is going to do Canada well in the future. That plan is going to put Canada in a position where we come out of this economic recession stronger than when we went into it.

That is what the IMF said last week, was it not, Mr. Speaker? I am sure the Speaker follows everything in the news, just as many good representatives do. He would have seen last week when the IMF specifically indicated that Canada will lead the G7 out of this economic recession, that we were the last to go in and we will be the first to come out. We will lead the G7 in economic recovery.

That is exciting because that is what we have been fighting for in this chamber. On this side of the House that is what we have been fighting for. That is what we have been working for. That is what we believe in.

We are determined to get Canada through this in a better position than any nation we compete with. That is our commitment. That is why we must focus on the economy. We must focus on the economic recovery bill that is before the House and people should not be looking for an opportunity to bring the House down just because they think the opportunity is there to do so.

The Liberal leader spoke last week, I believe, at the Economic Club of Toronto. We looked for some kind of alternative plan since he is trying to bring the government down, some kind of alternative or credible economic plan. What we saw was a dusting off of the 1993 red book, billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars of new spending promises and no idea of how we would pay for them, but apparently he is not going to raise taxes. If he is on one side saying we have to do everything we can to get rid of a deficit and on the other side saying we are going to spend billions and billions and billions of dollars and in the middle is saying that we have creative accountants that will be able to do that without raising taxes, forgive me but just about everyone in the country knows that is not on. Certainly the people in the electric city of Peterborough, Ontario know that.

[Economic Recovery Act (stimulus), October 6th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague corrects me that it is hundreds of thousands of Canadians who have taken advantage of the home renovation tax credit. That is providing jobs in Canada's forestry sector and is supporting the construction industry at a time when it is needed. People are reinvesting in their homes because of this stimulus. The Liberal Party voted against it. Who could vote against this? It is unbelievable. The Liberals are voting against things that only a number of months ago they supported.

Post-secondary education leaders from Ontario's community colleges were here last week. The president of Sault College said to our finance minister, the G7 economic leader award winner as indicated in question period and the best of the best according to Euromoney magazine, that this is the first money the college has received in decades for upgrades. Furthermore, he said that the morale at Sault College could not be higher. It has broken ground. It is creating jobs. Sault College is being improved. These improvements will lead to a better educated workforce and a stronger Sault Ste. Marie.

That is what we are doing. This is all part of Canada's economic recovery plan. Who could stand against Canada's economic recovery? The Liberal Party could stand against economic recovery. While we are fighting the recession, the Liberals are fighting the recovery.

I can say with clarity that there is nobody in my home riding of Peterborough who does not want economic recovery. There is nobody who does not want pension certainty. The reforms to the Canada pension plan that I mentioned are things the people in Peterborough want.

[Economic Recovery Act (stimulus), October 6th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure once again to rise and speak to Canada's economic recovery legislation.

Members may recall that just before the break I was talking about important provisions to improve the Canada pension plan. As I said earlier, the Liberals have already indicated that they are going to vote against this. If they do not support improvements to the CPP, just going along with their direction in question period, if not, why not? Who could stand against improvements to the CPP? These recommended reforms are incredibly important.

Mr. Finn Poschmann, a significant individual from the C.D. Howe Institute, has given these adjustments high marks. He said:

The proposed adjustments mark an important sea change in government pension policy approach to dealing with population aging and, in particular, making it easier for those people who want to work later in life to do so.

TD Bank's chief economist, Don Drummond, also said that this is a “positive development as it provides further options for Canadians in the tail end of their working careers”.

These are the things people are saying about the reforms to CPP that our government has brought forward. These reforms are in our economic recovery legislation. This is what Bill C-51 is about.

The Liberal Party has indicated that it is not too concerned with economic recovery. The Liberals are not too concerned with supporting Bill C-51 because they are more concerned about forcing an election that nobody wants. That is reprehensible.

I am quite surprised with the number of things the Liberal Party has voted against. The Liberals voted last week against the implementation of the home renovation tax credit. Thousands of Canadians from coast to coast--

[Economic Recovery Act (stimulus), October 6th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, it is obviously a great opportunity to speak today in support of the economic recovery act, an important piece of legislation to enact key parts of Canada's economic action plan, along with other crucial initiatives.

I understand the Liberal Party will vote against this legislation, sight unseen, for no reason other than to force an unnecessary election which no Canadian wants. It is my hope in today's debate, along with colleagues on this side of the House, to show that now is not the time for that sort of self-serving opportunism.

The stakes for Canadians and their families are high. The member for Scarborough—Guildwood does not understand that the stakes for his constituents are high. He mentioned a moment ago that he is surprised I spent so much time on the finance committee and did not get it. He has been on the finance committee a lot longer than I have, in fact he is a former parliamentary secretary to the minister of finance, and he still does not get it. So I guess I still have some time by his scale to get it. Maybe I will catch up, I do not know.

We simply cannot play political games because we cannot jeopardize a recovery with an unnecessary election. Catherine Swift, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, warned recently:

We've got some good news.... [W]e've been seeing three months of good recovery...we got the highest confidence level in over two years.... All we need is a stupid election to put things right back in the tank. What we need is certainty. Elections do not produce certainty.

I am going to digress for a minute. I mentioned the Liberal green shift. The Liberal green shift means anything but certainty for business.

Catherine Swift said that what we need is certainty and that elections do not produce certainty. With the economy turning right now, this is a bad time to have it. She said that we are just seeing things come back, that we are just seeing confidence come back.

It is clear that we must stand together with our global partners and stay the course. We must keep our focus squarely on protecting our economy and building on the success of Canada's economic action plan and stabilizing our economy.

As declared in the G20 leaders' statement following the Pittsburgh summit:

Our forceful response helped stop the dangerous, sharp decline in global activity and stabilize financial markets.

A sense of normalcy should not lead to complacency.

The process of recovery and repair remains incomplete. In many countries, unemployment remains unacceptably high. The conditions for a recovery of private demand are not yet fully in place. We cannot rest until the global economy is restored to full health, and hard-working families all over the world can find decent jobs.

Clearly, Canada must stay on track by continuing to implement our economic action plan and its related components, like the economic recovery act. This is fundamental to securing Canada's success in the face of ongoing economic challenges.

As expected, to date, Canadians have risen to face these challenges head on and allowed our economy to outperform where others have struggled. This has lessened the recession's relative impact. A sentiment shared by private sector economists, CIBC World Markets forecast that Canada will lead all industrialized nations in economic growth next year, while RBC economists expect that Canada's recession will turn out to be the least severe of the past three.

Our Conservative government has supported the efforts of Canadians with an unprecedented and timely stimulus contained in Canada's economic action plan, representing $61 billion in effective targeted measures.

Only last week we confirmed in the third report to Canadians on the implementation of the action plan that 90% of its 2009-10 funding is now committed. Canadians will continue to benefit from what is proportionately the largest fiscal stimulus package among all G7 partners with a projected 220,000 jobs being created or maintained by the end of 2010.

As Scotia Capital economist Aron Gampel points out:

The substantial stimulus injected into the economy from both monetary and fiscal measures is beginning to show more signs that the economy is regaining traction, but the full impact will become more visible in the months ahead.

Contrary to the views of the doom and gloom Liberals, there are more encouraging signs that Canada is leading the recovery with our strong fundamentals intact. Indeed, last week the International Monetary Fund, IMF, forecast that Canada will be the least affected by the global downturn and that our recovery will be the strongest in the G7.

Contrast that with what we are hearing from the Liberal members. We are not hearing these things. They are talking down the Canadian recovery. They are talking down the Canadian economy. For whatever reason, they do not want to see things recover in Canada because they think that hurts their political fortunes. Canadians do not care about the Liberals' political fortunes. What they care about is their families and their jobs. They want Canada to work. They want parties working together provincially and federally. They want municipalities to be engaged. That is what our government is doing. It is not what the Liberal Party supports, by the way.

Nevertheless, Canada and the global economy will continue to be challenged. As noted in the G20 leaders' statement, we have yet to sustain a full private sector supported recovery. Likewise, as IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn conceded recently, even though we are seeing tentative signs of recovery it remains fragile. I quote, “I want to be crystal clear. Until unemployment will decrease, it is difficult to say the crisis is over. It is too early to crow victory”.

Without a doubt we are at a critical juncture. If we hope to stabilize our economy and secure this recovery, we must stay the course and stay focused on the economy. Parliamentarians of all stripes can accomplish that, not by throwing Canada into an unnecessary election, but by passing the economic recovery act into law on a timely basis.

The economic recovery act is a complex and multifaceted piece of legislation with many components that have been highlighted by previous speakers.

For the remainder of my allotted time, I would like to focus on the reforms to strengthen the Canada pension plan, or CPP, that are included in the economic recovery act. However, before continuing, I should point out that the CPP is a jointly managed federal-provincial plan. Neither the federal government nor provincial governments can unilaterally alter the CPP.

The reforms laid out in the legislation were unanimously agreed to by federal, provincial and territorial governments this past May as part of a mandated triennial review of the Canada pension plan. Moreover, these reforms were made public at that time, available for all to review.

Before these reforms can take place, they must be officially approved, not only by Parliament, but by two-thirds of the provinces with two-thirds of the population of Canada. Moreover, the approved changes will start to take effect in 2011 and will be gradually implemented with all the changes expected to be in effect fully by 2016.

In short, the reforms agreed to by federal, provincial and territorial governments are intended to modernize the CPP to better reflect the many different paths people take to retirement today.

As Patricia Lovett-Reid, host of Money Talk, a popular Canadian personal finance television show and senior vice-president with TD Waterhouse Canada, noted that the CPP reforms speak “to the fact that we are living healthier and longer”.

Increased flexibility will be offered through the removal of work cessation tests that require individuals who apply to take their CPP benefit early, i.e., before age 65, to either stop work or reduce their earnings. The economic recovery act will remove the work cessation test in 2012 so that individuals will be able to take their benefit as early as age 60 without any work interruption or reduction in hours worked or earnings. This change will benefit those who would like to take their CPP pension while continuing to work either full or part time and could help individuals to use income from their CPP to phase in retirement or supplement their earnings.

Such a proposed reform has been particularly welcomed, as an Edmonton Journal editorial applauding it noted:

--the prospect that thousands will be able to discern a horizon when they can not only choose to be gainfully employed but also collect on a pension they paid into for years must come as some relief....

Older Canadians are healthier than ever and getting even fitter. If they want or need to continue to make a material contribution to the nation's productivity, they mustn't be discouraged.

Increased CPP benefits for a number of Canadians will continue through an increase in general lowering dropout which currently allows for 15% of the years where earnings are low or nil for whatever reason, to be dropped from calculations used to determine an individual's CPP retirement pension amount. The economic recovery act will gradually enhance the retirement pension calculation to allow up to an additional year of low earnings to be dropped from the pension calculation. By 2014, it will allow a maximum of eight years to be dropped.

This will benefit virtually all CPP contributors and improve their basic retirement pensions. It will also increase the average CPP disability and survivor pensions, as a calculation of these benefits would be based on the retirement benefit calculation.

It would be particularly helpful to those whose careers suffer more work interruptions for a variety of reasons like those who pursue post-secondary studies or other educational opportunities, those who reduce their participation in the labour force to provide care to a family member, or those who immigrate to Canada as adults.

Respected Sun media financial advice columnist Alan Caplan approved this reform noting:

It's intended to smooth out the earnings history for each pensioner who stopped working. The reasons vary, but may include job loss, further education, illness or care giving and child rearing. Almost everyone benefits from the provision.

[Economic Recovery Act (stimulus), October 6th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with some interest to the member. He talked about how he likes lower taxes and so forth, but that was not true in the last election campaign.

That member wholeheartedly supported the green shift massive tax increase on Canadians. That tax increase was why Canadians voted largely against the Liberals. The Liberal massive carbon tax was rejected by Canadians. Everyone remembers that. I do not believe that member has ever actually supported any of the tax cuts that we brought in that have brought tax freedom day 20 days sooner.

A lot of other jurisdictions in Europe, and even the United States under President Obama, have brought tax cuts in for families and individuals and seniors as a method of boosting their economies. The member does not understand that.

He said that he has lost faith in the government and in the finance minister. Euromoney magazine has not lost faith in our finance minister. It named him G7 finance minister of the year. Maybe the member would like to speak to that. It is quite an honour for our finance minister to be acknowledged in such a fashion.

[2010 Winter Olympic Games, October 2nd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the government was not involved in any way, shape or form in the design of Olympic clothing. The clothing was designed by the Hudson's Bay Company in consultation with the Canadian Olympic committee and with an athletes panel.

I would just reference, for example, Suzanne Timmins, fashion director at Hudson's Bay Company. This is good to remind the opposition. She says, “Canada starts with a C, and yes there’s a leaf” in our flag.

Steve Yzerman, former captain of the Peterborough Petes and Canada's men's hockey team executive, says that our new Olympic uniforms are “very stylish, comfortable and easy to wear”.

Now that is a great—

[Canadian Heritage, October 2nd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the member knows full well that this was not a decision made by the government. This is was a decision made by the Office of the Secretary to the Governor General and our government was outraged by this decision.

We are reforming the process through which these unique and attractive items are dealt with by making appraisals mandatory. We are outraged by what happened.