Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this bill, which the Liberal Party will oppose.
I notice that the member for Burlington just a few minutes ago spoke about Canada doing relatively well compared to some other countries, and certainly that is true. Compared with, for example, Greece and other countries, Canada is doing well. The point I would make is that to the extent that we are doing better than other countries, it is despite the actions of the Conservatives. It has all to do with the legacy of the previous Liberal government.
There are two reasons why Canada is doing relatively well. First, we have relatively strong banks. Second, we have a relatively favourable fiscal position. Members should ask themselves why each of these two points is true. If they were to go back a few years, they would notice that the previous Liberal government said no to the trend toward deregulation of banks that was taking place in the U.K. and the U.S. The Conservatives of the day said to deregulate. The Liberal government also said do not. The Liberal government also said no to bank mergers, and the Conservatives of the day pushed us to allow those bank mergers.
Because the Liberals stood firm on bank deregulation and said no to bank mergers, both things the Conservatives had the opposite view on, our banks today are relatively strong and solvent.
Second is the fiscal position.
As we all know, the Liberals in the mid-nineties inherited a $43-billion Conservative deficit. We proceeded to eliminate that deficit and paid down the debt over 10 long years. The Conservatives came to power, inherited a $13-billion surplus, and frittered it away by overspending, such that we were in deficit or approaching deficit before the recession even hit. Notwithstanding Conservative mismanagement, the fiscal legacy they inherited was so strong as to leave Canada in a relatively good position compared with other countries. Yes, Canada is doing better than Greece and certain other countries, but it has nothing to do with the Conservative government and everything to do with the legacy it inherited from Mr. Chrétien and Mr. Martin.
I would now like to turn to a quote from the current public safety minister, when he was in opposition. It appears that he did not like bills that contained many disparate, unrelated items. Here is what he had to say:
While past practice has often demonstrated that logic is not essential to the legislative process or for the legislative provisions themselves, there is a clear logic to grouping together the diverse provisions of this bill. It is a Machiavellian logic motivated by the politics of cynicism. It is a logic that raises the spectre of the worst of the American legislative process.
I remind the House that this was said by the current public safety minister when he was in opposition.
Maybe the Liberal Party pushed the envelope a bit far in the bill on which the public safety minister was commenting, Bill C-15 at the time, but in the end, we split the bill into two distinct sections and allowed all MPs to vote their conscience. In fact, the Liberal Party split that bill despite having a majority government at the time.
Bill C-9, the bill we are currently debating, is exactly as the public safety minister once put it. This bill does have a clear logic. It is a Machiavellian logic motivated by the politics of cynicism. It is a logic that raises the spectre of the worst of the American legislative process. However, this is by no means a recent problem.
Recently, and this will appeal to those in the House who have an interest in history, I came across a paper called “The Vote”, which was published around the time of the first world war in England. One article from 1917 lamented the diminishing power of the House of Commons as the cabinet assumed more of that power.
Specifically, the article, written in 1917 in Britain, stated:
The chief cause of the diminishing power of the House was the growth of the Convention regarding every proposal brought forward by the Government as one of confidence.
The article continued:
Sixty years ago the Government frequently accepted defeat on matters of detail and continued in office, amending its proposals in accordance with the will of the House. The present habit is seriously harmful. When Members now go into the division lobby, it is not a question whether a proposal is good or bad but whether or not they shall defeat the Government.
Today, 93 years after that article was published, we have a similar, in fact, only slightly different debate in Canada. Today, there are some bills which the government accepts defeat on and does not resign, but instead the government has crammed a whole series of unrelated measures into a 972 page budget bill, which it knows is treated as a confidence measure. It wanted the debate to be about whether we would go to the polls rather than about whether the measures were good or bad for Canada. It is this kind of cynical tactic that would make the younger version of our Prime Minister turn his back on the current version.
This is one reason why the Liberal Party opposes the bill, because it has so many unrelated items crammed together into one package. However, the budget also provides a clear contrast between a Liberal approach to the Canadian economy versus the Conservative approach. Unlike the Conservatives, the Liberal policy is to freeze corporate taxes going forward.
It is true that in the past, when we ran surpluses, Liberals brought down the corporate tax rate substantially. However, that does not mean at a time when Canada is already relatively competitive, we should go deeper into deficit to further cut corporate tax rates. This is why we have a clear policy, in contrast to the Conservatives, that we would freeze the corporate tax rate, thereby generating some $6 billion dollars in additional revenue. Part of the revenue would go to reduce the deficit and part of it would go to support middle-class families that live in extreme difficulty and anxiety today because of these difficult economic times.
How would we provide support to these middle-class families? Let me mention briefly four ways that we would do this.
First, post-secondary education is key to Canada's productivity, key to equality of opportunity, key to filling the jobs of tomorrow. Today, with the youth unemployment rate at something like twice the national average, young people are having increasing difficulty finding summer jobs to support their studies. We believe it is critical that the government provide support to those Canadians pursuing post-secondary education. Indeed, as our leader has said for years now, if they have the grades, they get to go. Therefore, support for post-secondary education is a top priority of this party, unlike the Conservatives, who would let middle-class families, including post-secondary students, simply fend for themselves.
A second source of anxiety, which at this time of aging population that will become increasingly an issue, is care for aging parents. We believe the Conservative government is not doing nearly enough to support those Canadians who are increasingly burdened by looking after their aging parents. By definition, as our whole society ages, this issue will become more and more important as time goes by. Rather than further cuts to corporate taxes, we believe some of that funding released should be used to support Canadians in their efforts to care for aging parents.
A third area is at the other end, not only care for aging parents, but care for young children. We have committed ourselves, as in the past, to a system of affordable early learning and child care. The previous Liberal government had implemented that plan with signed agreements with all of the provinces, only to see those agreements torn up by the present government.
The final area in which we distinguish ourselves from the Conservatives on the economic front has to do with pensions. There are significant problems with the Canadian pension system. A substantial number of Canadians fear, often with good reason, that they will have inadequate resources to support themselves and their families in their retirement years.
Strong action has to be taken by the federal government to improve our pension system and to take measures to enable Canadians to save more so they will have adequate income during their retirement years. The Conservatives are ideologically opposed to any kind of supplement to the Canada and Quebec pension plan. They do not like it.
The Prime Minister, when in opposition, spoke of privatizing the existing Canada pension plan. If that is his ideological starting point, how could we possibly expect him to support a strengthening or expansion of the Canada pension plan? I simply do not believe that it will happen. Such changes have to be done in coordination with provinces. Our proposal is that we move to create a supplementary Canada pension plan in consultation and negotiation with provincial governments.
In the recent past, two provincial governments proposed such systems, but it went nowhere. Nothing to do with the Canada pension plan ever goes anywhere without strong federal leadership, which has been totally absent in the case of the government. Under a future Liberal government, we would take the bull by the horns and work very hard to provide the federal leadership necessary, in conjunction with the provinces, to improve and strengthen the Canada pension plan.
Canadians will have a very clear choice. They can choose the Conservatives, who insist on taking corporate taxes lower and lower while failing to provide any assistance for the middle class, or they can choose us, the Liberals, who will temporarily freeze the tax rate, because there are more important priorities, and it is not a good idea to increase the deficit in order to reduce corporate tax rates. We will offer more assistance for the middle class in terms of post-secondary education, care for seniors, day care and a reform of the pension system in Canada. Too many Canadians are worried that they will not have enough resources once they retire.
We are at a crossroads. Come the next election, whenever that might be, the Conservatives will stand for further reductions in corporate taxes and leave the beleaguered middle class to fend for itself, whereas the Liberals will freeze corporate taxes at their current already competitive level and use the resources not only to address the deficit but also to address the needs, concerns and worries of middle-class Canadians in terms of post-secondary education, elder care, child care and pensions.
