Ken Hardie

[Air Canada Public Participation Act, April 15th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member did not sit with her colleagues in the last government, but that government was saddled with the distinction of making changes to regulations in the tax structure that allowed 400,000 well-paying jobs to leave Canada. The Conservatives' idea was light touch regulation or deregulation.

Now I hear the hon. member talking about holding on to regulation to hold somebody's feet to the fire in order to make it potentially uncompetitive and less able to sustain itself and good Canadian jobs.

How does the member reconcile those two?

[The Budget, April 14th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member talked about leadership, but what we saw over the 10 years was leadership that put the country $150 billion more in debt.

Last year at this time, we were still waiting for a budget. We saw oil prices start to drop, yet the previous government was like a deer in the headlights. The Conservatives promised us that we would be an energy superpower, and put all our eggs in one basket. Where did that leave the people of Alberta, or Saskatchewan, or the Maritimes?

Would the hon. member care to speculate what life would be like had the Conservatives won the election and had to stare down the issues we face today and still balance their budget?

[Situation in Indigenous Communities, April 12th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it seems clear from the commentary so far that we have a really good grasp of the symptoms. I do not know, personally, if we know enough about the malaise, certainly not about the cure. As we approach this, the will that we hear from all sides of the House is that we have to do something, so let us get something done.

It occurs to me that Bobby Kennedy a long time echoed this quote, “Some people see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say, why not?” Maybe there is a germ of something in there that we should be thinking about.

Can we not ask the people right in the centre of this, the first nations people themselves, community by community, what their vision is of a good world, a good life, and work with them to reverse engineer that? As we understand what the end should look like, the steps that we take, which might have to be unique from community to community, will all of a sudden start to reveal themselves.

I was on the radio in northern B.C. playing rock and roll for the kids in Neskonlith, Greenville, and Kincolith. I was also in Kenora. I saw the grinding misery of the Whitedog and Grassy Narrows First Nation reserves.

Does the member from my old area of Kamloops think that this is a good place to start? Can we say, one day, the future is wonderful, and live up to it?

[Income Tax Act, March 11th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I caught the speech a little earlier by the hon. member from Saskatchewan. I have spent some time in Manitoba and I know about the concept of meadow muffins, and we have just been delivered a big plate of them.

Let us talk about the surplus.

The Conservatives tried to balance the budget. They tried to give us a surplus. I am sure they did. However, we found out just this morning that over $1 billion of that should have gone to first nations education, and billions more should have gone to our veterans and to people waiting extraordinarily long times for family reunification. The cuts that the Conservatives applied certainly contributed to the bottom line, and they still failed to balance the budget.

Let us talk about TFSAs.

I thought the member's comment was interesting when he said that tapping into government revenues is not such a very good idea. However, that is precisely what TFSAs do. As the Conservatives' own former finance minister, Joe Oliver, at least was prepared to admit, allowing higher TFSA limits in the future will in fact de-fund the government. When asked about the impact on the ability of governments in the future to help people, the answer was, well, we will leave that to the grandkids of the member for Calgary Heritage to figure out how to square that.

Who is actually benefiting from the TFSA, except for the very wealthy? Who suffers, except for the rest of Canadians?

[Income Tax Act, March 11th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite is focused only on the tax cut. Would she agree that cutting taxes for people who are earning below $45,000 a year would have limitations, because in general the lower one's income the less one pays in taxes?

A tax cut by itself might have only a limited benefit for those people. The complete plan, including the Canada child benefit, would tilt the balance of the benefits to the people with lower incomes. It seems that if a tax cut really would not deliver a great deal of benefit to people in the lower income bracket, then we must look at another mechanism to help those people, as well as the people in the middle income.

Could the member flesh out some of her ideas and the alternative ways we could help people who earn lower income and would not benefit from any kind of tax cut?

[Citizenship Act, March 10th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting that the hon. member talks about the need to not electioneer, but in fact this issue arose in what seemed to be an endless pre-election period last year.

It was an electioneering issue. Certainly people saw through it. A particularly interesting moment occurred just at the beginning of the campaign. I was in a studio of a South Asian station in Surrey. I was due to go on the air and talk about a variety of things, including Bill C-24.

Just prior to my segment, the member for Calgary Midnapore was interviewed over the phone. He made a point about Bill C-24 to the host and the audience listening to that South Asian station that the listeners did not have to worry because they could not have their citizenship stripped, because India did not permit dual citizenship.

That really twigged it for me. Okay, now all of a sudden, we have one group that can suffer a particular sanction, whereas another group, basically due to a technicality, cannot. Everyone saw through that.

How could the hon. member and his party support that kind of approach?

[Business of Supply, February 18th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask the hon. member to perhaps explain what signal we are sending to Canadians by adopting the motion that has been put forward.

[Business of Supply, February 4th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, once again, we have been treated to an example of economic delirium, really. We had a government that tried to sort of pull one over the public's eyes in the last election. They did not buy it then. I do not think they are going to buy it now. The fact is that the Conservatives ran up the deficit $150 billion over a succession of deficits and added to the national debt, with very little to show for it in terms of expansion and growth in the economy. In fact, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce said that job creation in Canada was very low grade.

We would remind the members opposite that about this time nigh on a year ago, Canada was technically in recession, the only one of the G7 to be in that situation. When we talk about leaving a legacy for the government of today, we need to remember that.

I would ask the member this question. Given his record, which is selectively interpreted, would he have been in any better shape to help the people in Alberta, who now are relying upon our government to come to the rescue with the kind of stimulus spending that we desire? Or would he still hang his hat on a balanced budget?

[Income Tax Act, February 1st, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to hear all the concern about future generations. When Joe Oliver was the finance minister and he was challenged on the increase in the TFSA limit and how that would de-fund governments in the future, he said that was up to Stephen Harper's grandkids to worry about. So much for that.

On financial literacy, remember the income splitting where 65%, $3 billion to $4 billion a year, would have gone to Canada's wealthiest people? At least some know how to read it. De-funding government over 10 years and yet spending us into the ground is the legacy of those guys.

The deficit the Conservatives claim to have eliminated, as close as they got and they did not get all the way, was done on the backs of veterans, on the basis of a fire sale of GM stocks, a one-time only thing, at a loss. Financial literacy, I do not think so.

Now with things going down the tube in Alberta, Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan, the Conservatives want the Liberal government to help after they have done all they can to weaken the government over the past 10 years. Therefore, which is it? Allow the private people to look after themselves and deprive the government an opportunity to help them when they need it, or—

[Income Tax Act, January 29th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, the members opposite are geographically well positioned, because prior to the last election, all of them together seemed to prefer a program that sent cheques to millionaires through their universal benefits and a program that, surveys showed, three out of 10 Canadian families did not need.

What we have here is an example of the difference between equality, which is a good value, and equity, which means that one focuses one's resources on the people who actually need it.

I am wondering if my hon. colleague can enhance this notion of equity.