Jean-Yves Laforest

[Budget Implementation Act, 2009, February 9th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to comment on this budget implementation bill.

Some of the Liberals liked the budget, and some did not, but as we know, all members of the Bloc Québécois voted against the budget. It is clear that the budget implementation bill does nothing to correct the fundamental flaws that made it impossible for us to support the budget.

I want to go over the major issues we disagreed with. These issues are really important because they affect everyone in Quebec.

As I was saying earlier, the proposed changes to equalization are still a fundamental issue. Proposed amendments to equalization would cause Quebec to lose $1 billion of the money it was expecting for next year, and even more the year after that. That is completely unacceptable, and I will come back to that later with some examples of how badly that will hurt us and the tough choices Quebec's National Assembly will have to make.

I also want to point out that Quebec's National Assembly passed a unanimous motion that addressed equalization. In it, Quebec's National Assembly demanded that the federal government maintain the current equalization formula as is, which included additional revenues of over $1 billion for next year alone.

As the Liberal member mentioned earlier, this bill does not fix the pan-Canadian securities commission problem. Quebec's National Assembly has conveyed Quebec's traditional strong opposition to the proposed pan-Canadian securities commission. We know that the Government of Quebec has also said that it is prepared to take the matter to court because this is about jurisdiction and the powers that belong to the Government of Quebec. Naturally, the Bloc Québécois is completely opposed, once again, to a bill that does not reverse the budget's intent in this regard.

The other major problem we have with the budget implementation bill has to do with access to employment insurance. The Conservative government wants to improve the employment insurance system, but is not going about it the right way. The government is not going to help the unemployed by giving them five more weeks of benefits.

During the debate on the budget speech, I said that people who have just lost their jobs need access to employment insurance and that the waiting period should be abolished. The two-week waiting period is what hurts the most, because people who lose their jobs—and many in my riding will lose theirs—often find a new job by the end of their benefit period, so the extra five weeks do them no good.

They will find a new job and keep on paying employment insurance contributions. Then, in another six or seven months, they might lose their job again. So every seven, eight or nine months, they are faced with a two-week waiting period, and they can never make up for those losses.

When both parents in a family lose their jobs, they are hard-pressed to meet their family obligations, such as covering their mortgage, taking care of their children's needs and paying for the cars they need to get to work. The government is not choosing the best way to help the unemployed so that they can have more flexibility and some breathing room.

There is also the whole issue of accessibility. Why did the government not make employment insurance more accessible if it really wanted to help the unemployed? In January, Statistics Canada said that nearly 40,000 jobs had been lost in Quebec alone and 129,000 across Canada. That is huge. We know we are in the midst of a crisis, and these statistics prove it.

The government should have opted for much better targeted measures to help all these people. What is more, this is happening during the winter. People's heating and electrical bills are even higher than usual. The government really did not listen and is not doing the right thing to help people.

This bill, once again, does not improve the budget or the whole question of the misguided tax cuts—and I will come back to that later—for both individuals and businesses. The bill eliminates a provision in the Income Tax Act aimed at preventing companies from using tax havens to avoid paying taxes. I will also come back to this, because it is completely unfair.

Even the current Minister of Finance said in 2007 that it was unfair and inequitable to allow companies to write off interest from some of their loans, for example, because they will invest outside of Canada. Creating jobs outside of Canada and allowing companies deductions in two separate places, that is, allowing them to twice write off the interest they have to pay, is completely unfair. The Minister of Finance said so in 2007. He said it was completely unfair. Small and medium-sized businesses as well as individuals must pay higher taxes because big businesses that invest outside of Canada are allowed to take advantage of such benefits and pay less tax. It is completely unacceptable.

The budget implementation bill still contains those measures. The minister is going back on his word. This is a scandal. It is completely unacceptable that big businesses are being allowed to take advantage of undue benefits, while unemployed workers and people who are struggling to get by every month will have to pay more taxes. We are also thinking about the next generation. As we all know, we will be facing deficits for some time. It is completely unacceptable.

The bill also opens the door to deregulation in the area of foreign investments, which in turn opens the door to foreign takeovers, without taking into account the economic interests of Quebec and Canada. Many loopholes in the budget and the budget implementation bill will allow companies and foreign investors to take control of companies that are already being well managed in Quebec and Canada. This also shows a lack of economic vision towards Quebeckers and Canadians who are perfectly capable of managing their companies.

It truly goes against the economic interests of Quebec and Canada.

In this budget, funds have been allocated for social housing. However, they are misdirected. Once again, the government has targeted the renovation of social housing. Yet, it has been stated rather clearly that there is a need for new social housing rather than renovations. There is a dire need for new housing so that demand can be adequately met. Once again, they have missed the mark.

There is a very important component with which we disagree. I am referring to that part of the bill which, in some ways, completely ignores public sector negotiations and agreements concerning compensation by imposing working conditions

A number of employees at the Shawinigan tax and research centre in my riding of Saint-Maurice—Champlain find themselves in this situation. By wanting to impose salaries, the government is completely undermining a negotiating strategy that is of tantamount importance to labour relations and that ensures that there will be good relations between the employees and their employer, the Government of Canada. Once again, the rights of these individuals are being denied. The Bloc Québécois is totally against this. It is one of the reasons why we will vote against this bill.

Earlier I mentioned that this bill will implement tax cuts contained in the budget and I stated that they are misguided. We have checked the numbers and, based on our calculations, in order for an individual to take advantage of all the cuts, they would have to earn at least $81,500 per year. You will agree that this does exactly represent the middle class.

I do not believe that tax cuts for the middle class should be calculated based on a salary of $80,000. Middle class households or families—two people who have to work in order to pay the mortgage, heating, cars, children's clothing and food—do not have an income of $81,500.

If, by chance, two people make that type of salary, they are far from middle class. Before the budget, the Conservative government told us that tax cuts would target the middle class. But the targets were poorly defined, and this issue is being completely ignored. The tax reductions should really be directed at people with much lower incomes.

The Conservatives stated this and demonstrated it in their budget on page 239: a one-dollar drop in personal or corporate taxes does not have a significant impact on economic stimulation compared with aid for the poor or investment in other areas.

They themselves have said that it will not be a big help in fixing the economy. We are in the midst of an unprecedented crisis that, in January alone, left 129,000 Canadians without work. That does not even count those who lost their jobs in the fall and—we hope this will not be the case—those who will lose their jobs in February and the coming months. Hopefully there will not be that many.

It seems as though government analysis is lacking when it comes to tax reductions.

As for businesses, I am in total disagreement with the government on one major point. In 2007 the Minister of Finance committed to eliminating double deductions of interest for Canadian businesses that invest overseas. I spoke about this earlier. Without this provision, businesses will be able to continue evading taxes with impunity. And that is what is about to happen. We see that both the government members and the Liberal members will enthusiastically support this situation. The Liberals have shown the Conservative government how it is done. So, we are not surprised, but we are saddened.

I want to point out that the Minister of Finance already backed down on that. During certain election campaigns, the Conservatives made a number of promises. They made some progress in the fight against tax havens. They even demonstrated a degree of openness by saying that they would put an end to the practice because, as the Minister of Finance himself said, it was unfair. Now they have backed down because of an advisory panel made up of people whose independence and impartiality are questionable. We know that the panel was created to determine whether it was worth introducing a measure to prevent entities from double-dipping, a measure announced by the Minister of Finance. The group was made up of six members, four of them from private corporations that could easily have taken advantage of such a strategy. For example, one member is the former president and CEO of Scotiabank, the Canadian bank with the most branches in tax havens. We think that the authors of the report are clearly in a conflict of interest.

I have listed a some of the reasons why the Bloc Québécois completely disagrees with this bill. It does nothing to correct the problems that came up in the latest budget. There is no doubt that it is a direct attack on Quebec's jurisdiction, particularly in respect of equalization.

One example of a great injustice is the issue of a single securities commission. I would also point to the inequity in the budget, which allocates $170 million to the manufacturing and forestry industries, even though Quebec's forestry industry has been in crisis for a very long time. In Quebec, the sector has been dealing with these problems for three or four years now. Yet the government is giving Ontario's auto industry $2.7 billion. I agree that there is no doubt the industry is going through tough times. However, even though Quebec has been having problems for much longer, Ontario is getting a lot more, proportionally, than Quebec.

[Taxation, February 5th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives have not broken any new ground when it comes to tax havens. The Liberals blazed that trail.

The minister is using the international crisis to justify deplorable tax practices. We would like the minister to explain to laid off workers, the people we should be thinking about now, how tax evasion for his friends can solve the crisis they are going through today.

[Taxation, February 5th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, in his 2007 budget, the Minister of Finance said that it was important to make sure everyone paid their fair share. He complained that some foreign and Canadian companies use tax rules to avoid paying tax. Every time that happens, he said, workers and SMEs have to pay more tax. He concluded that that was unfair.

Why is the Minister of Finance allowing today what he considered unfair in 2007?

[Executive Pay, February 4th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States announced his intention to impose conditions on companies that will be receiving government help and to cap the salaries of their executives.

Does the Prime Minister intend to follow President Obama's lead and force Canadian companies that are receiving help from the federal government, notably banks, to limit the salaries and bonuses of their executives?

[The Budget, February 3rd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague, the hon. member for Sherbrooke, on that excellent speech. He talked about a number of important aspects of the budget, particularly, the lack of adequate measures to properly support people who lose their jobs. In Quebec, for instance, many people have lost, or will lose, their jobs and there is nothing in this budget to help such people through employment insurance.

Two important steps would have been to eliminate the two week waiting period and to make employment insurance more accessible. However there is nothing of the sort in this budget. I wonder if the member can tell us if he saw other potential, interesting measures.

Regarding what he said about Liberal members from Quebec who cannot vote against this budget like some other Liberal members, did he hear them express such an intention? I do not believe they have indicated they will do so. Clearly, things are not going very well for them.

[The Budget, January 28th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, obviously, I mentioned earlier in my speech that the Conservative government has poorly targeted assistance that should have been given to the jobless. And I said that it would have helped to abolish the waiting period. When the Conservative members and ministers tell us they held consultations, I wonder whether they held those consultations in hotels, where they listened to people express their concerns.

I held some consultations of my own, but I did it in the street, and the people I listened to were people who go on employment insurance every year, people who lose their jobs periodically and others who have lost their jobs permanently because a company closed its doors.

People in Quebec tell us that what hurts the most is the two-week waiting period, when they have no income to support their family and pay their bills. Those two weeks hurt the most. Certainly, any measure that prevents an infusion of new money into the employment insurance system once again deprives individuals and families of adequate income that would help them weather a crisis while looking for a new job.

[The Budget, January 28th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, when I mentioned the creation of this regional development agency, I did not mean to question the needs in various regions, be they in Ontario or elsewhere. However, in the proposed model for cutting or modifying the equalization system, we see that $1 billion will be deducted from the amount Quebec was counting on receiving this year. Curiously, the budget for creating this new agency is also $1 billion.

No doubt Ontario had no regional development agency because southern Ontario was already so well developed economically compared to the rest of Canada and Quebec that it did not need such an agency. Now, a region that was already very diverse economically is benefiting even more. That is what I meant to say.

[The Budget, January 28th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Alfred-Pellan.

The Bloc Québécois has already said it is in total disagreement with the Conservative budget. This budget is totally unacceptable for a number of reasons, some of which I will explain now.

Quebec and Quebeckers have been going through a major economic crisis, like many other regions, and were expecting much more vigorous efforts to re-start the economy. It is important to point out that the crisis now affecting other provinces arrived in Quebec quite a while ago.

When we talk about the crisis in industry in general, in manufacturing and especially forestry in Quebec, the areas where most of these industries are concentrated have been in crisis mode for four or five years now. Various communities in Quebec and the vast majority of its regions, whether involved in pulp and paper, softwood lumber, forestry or furniture, have been seriously affected for many years now.

We would naturally have expected the Conservative budget to come to the assistance of these communities and make up some of the lost time. The Conservatives have been doing nothing to support the forestry and manufacturing industries for quite a few years now. We would have expected them to take action for once. We said to ourselves, “Finally, they are going to make funds available, as they said they would”. What we saw instead, though, was that Quebec was completely forgotten in this budget.

The Conservative budget provides $170 million for the forestry and manufacturing sectors in comparison with $2.7 billion for the automobile industry in Ontario, which is generally agreed to have been in a crisis situation for six months or at most a year. Companies in Quebec have been closing their gates one after another, some temporarily but others permanently.

It is completely incomprehensible that the government is being so unfair in this budget. When we look again at what will be given to Ontario, we see a new agency for southern Ontario with a budget of $1 billion. Once more, there is an awful lot of money for Ontario. We said it before and will say it again: this is totally unfair to Quebec.

That is one of the measures that lead us to say it is impossible for members who really defend the interests of Quebec to vote for a budget like this, which deprives Quebec of large amounts of money and sends them elsewhere.

Another important issue is employment insurance. Rather than eliminating the two week waiting period, the Conservatives have chosen to do something—and will be supported in this by the Liberals—that will not help all the working people who lose their jobs. If the two-week waiting period had been eliminated, everyone who gets employment insurance would have been affected. The Conservatives decided instead, though, to extend the benefits for another five weeks at the end, when many people may have already found new jobs. Therefore it will cost less. Once again, the Conservatives are playing politics and saving money on the backs of people who have lost their jobs. Around 50% of people who lose their jobs do not qualify for employment insurance anyway. That is completely unfair. The Conservatives have refused to make employment insurance more accessible. The measures I have suggested would have really helped everyone who loses his or her job.

I was saying that the crises in the forestry and manufacturing sectors have hit Quebec especially hard in the past four or five years. Such measures might have been seen as a sign of the Conservative government's compassion for people losing their jobs. Not so. It is implementing a measure that will help only a few and gloating over its fine politics. That makes no sense, and we will most certainly oppose it.

There is another major item of discord, and I do not think we have heard the end of it, either. Apparent in yesterday's budget was the Conservative government's clear intention to put a cap on equalization. To do so unilaterally and without consultation is totally inappropriate and fails to respect the jurisdictions of those involved. Quebec is going to lose $1 billion in the next fiscal year and nearly $2 billion the following year. I can hardly imagine the difficult choices that will have to be made in Quebec.

Will educational and daycare services have to be cut. Will there be cuts to health care services, when people are already having a hard time finding a family doctor? These measures will have a very negative impact on Quebeckers.

As I was saying, will family policy be affected? While Quebec has been a leader for a number of years, the government is going to cause it to lose ground with measures like these, unacceptably.

By heightening the fiscal imbalance—I mentioned equalization—the Conservative government is breaking earlier promises, just as it did when it reiterated its intention to walk all over Quebec's jurisdiction over securities. I return to the subamendment proposed by the Bloc Québécois. It refers to a motion passed unanimously by the members of the National Assembly that says that the intention expressed by the Conservative Government in recent months to create a single securities commission is in contravention of Quebec's exclusive jurisdiction in this matter. It also is counter to the expressed wish of the Government of Quebec, which has made it clear that it is prepared to take this matter to the Supreme Court. It is quite out of the question for the Conservative government to heighten the crisis we are already in and to announce its intention to use this budget to open the subject and once again increase tensions between the governments of Quebec and Canada.

I add in closing that this Conservative government still without provision in its budget to implement the Kyoto accord is once again in conflict with Quebec's major economic interests. Many years ago, a system was set up in Quebec to reduce pollution significantly. Renewable energies and clean electricity are used with Hydro Quebec. Businesses and individuals have taken steps that have made Quebec a leader. Implementation of the Kyoto accord and the creation of a carbon emissions trading market would encourage Quebeckers and return to them the funds they have paid out of their own pockets.

I close by saying that this budget is totally contrary to the interests and values of Quebeckers.

[The Budget, January 28th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the majority of programs announced do not take into account the real needs of the regions; for example, Alberta will receive more support than it needs but Quebec will be deprived of substantial funding to deal with the crisis.

Does that not prove once more that the federal government, regardless of its stripe, defends only the interests of the Canadian nation to the detriment of Quebec?

[The Budget, January 28th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the unilateral and authoritarian decision to change the equalization formula will cost Quebec $1 billion this year and up to $2 billion next year for health and education. Quebec's minister of finance says that Quebec's loss will be Ontario's gain.

Why has the Minister of Finance, in his budget, reneged on the Prime Minister's commitment to Premier Charest made in a letter dated March 19, 2007?