Massimo Pacetti

[Jobs and Economic Growth Act, April 1st, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for asking me the question, but I cannot believe that this question is actually being asked.

It is fine that it has been asked during question period. The example of using any other country in the G7, no matter what other country has also fallen in recession, is the same example as a house on a street that has been totally renovated, with fire proofing, hurricane proofing and so on, and all of a sudden all the houses on the street are burnt down including the one that has been fire proofed and hurricane proofed because the person who did the job or the person who was living in the house forgot to close the door or forgot to do something like closing the shutters.

The Liberal Party prepared this country to be a leader of the G7. This country went in as a leader before the recession started. It came out as a leader, not because of what the Conservatives did but because of what the previous Liberal Party did while it was in government.

[Jobs and Economic Growth Act, April 1st, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to speak to the budget bill today.

When we talk about the budget, we have to talk numbers. Here are some numbers and some facts.

In September 2008, the Minister of Finance said that the country had not dipped into a deficit and that we were still running a surplus and would run one that year. The minister stuck to his guns and projected an $800 million surplus for 2008-09.

By the time he delivered his fiscal update two months later on November 27, 2008, the country already had a deficit of over $6 billion, even though he projected a $100 million surplus for 2009-10.

The same finance minister told Reuters that there would be a surplus in 2009-10:

It's a question of making sure that we maintain a surplus. I'm comfortable with a relatively modest surplus…I think we can maintain that. We're disciplined enough to do that and that's how we plan.

Yet one week earlier, on November 20, 2008, the Parliamentary Budget Officer painted a bleaker picture. He said:

Looking forward, assuming status quo fiscal policy, the downgraded economic outlook translates into a deterioration in the budgetary balance, putting the Government’s stated fiscal targets and objectives at risk. In the PBO survey average scenario, modest deficits are projected in the near term.

The actual results bear the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s forecast out.

On January 21, 2009, before budget 2009 was introduced, the Parliamentary Budget Officer revised the government's 2009-10 forecast to project a $13 billion deficit, four months after the finance minister projected a $100 million surplus. Thirteen billion dollars and $100 million are not the same. Millions and billions are not the same thing. The actual deficit before the economic action plan was $15.6 billion, well within the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s ball park.

Hon. members will recall this.

The Minister of Finance told the Edmonton Journal on October 9, 2008, that we would not run up a deficit. However, in his 2009 budget two months later, he projected a deficit of $33.7 billion for 2009-10. The deficit for 2009, after the economic action plan, climbed to $54 billion. That is $20 billion over the estimate. It is $20 billion more than forecast.

The finance minister is on record saying that for the year 2009-10, Canada's budget would be as follows, and it all depends on what time of year it is: October 2009, $6 billion surplus; November, not even a month later in the economic update, $100 million surplus; two months later, January in budget 2009, $33.7 billion deficit; and after stimulus spending, a $54 billion deficit.

Everyone knows that a country depends on the vitality of its economy. That is why the Liberal Party of Canada has always focused on creating a dynamic Canadian economy.

In 1993, when the Liberal Party came to power, it realized that the Conservatives, under Brian Mulroney, had spent the cupboard bare. It took years of sound economic management and difficult decisions on the part of the Liberal government to get the Canadian economy back on track and finally balance the budget.

In fact, the Liberal Party did such a good job with the economy that it started to accumulate surpluses, and it used those surpluses to lower taxes and fund social programs, such as health care, education, research and innovation, as well as to pay down the national debt.

That was important, because it provided the Liberal government with the resources it needed to do good things for Canadians. For instance, just before Paul Martin's government was defeated, the Liberal Party had reached an agreement with the provinces to give them child care services similar to the Quebec system.

The Liberals also negotiated the Kelowna accord with the first nations of Canada. This accord would have resolved a number of disputes.

We were also instrumental in reaching an international agreement at the climate change conference to extend the implementation of the Kyoto protocol beyond 2012 and we convinced the UN to adopt the Canadian concept of “responsibility to protect” during international crises.

As a result of the Conservatives' petty political vision, Canadians can no longer dream about a better country that offers equality and justice for all.

Immediately after the 2006 election, the first thing the Conservatives did was to throw out the Kelowna accord and the agreement on a national day care system and to ignore our international commitment on the environment.

The Conservatives are trying to tell us that because of the recession, we cannot afford to be leaders in the emerging fields of green technologies, we cannot invest in our labour force, we cannot invest in our companies, we cannot be world leaders in peace initiatives and we cannot expect to ever afford things such as pharmacare or daycare.

That is the difference between the Liberal Party and the Conservatives: we, the Liberals, strongly believe that the government can be a positive force that helps Canadians and makes Canada stronger. The Conservatives think that the government is not in the business of helping Canadians thrive.

It is not surprising that over time, with a Conservative government in power, we have watched surpluses melt like snow in the sun and Canada become saddled with a huge deficit once again.

The Conservatives like to claim they are financially responsible and that they are determined to balance the budget, but I have a hard time buying that, since it took them only one year to spend the largest surplus ever accumulated in the history of Canada.

In fact, since 2006, the Conservative government has the dubious distinction of the being the biggest spending government in the history of Canada year after year.

If they spent all that money, then the question is: what did they spend it on?

There is no national day care system. There is no agreement with the first nations. There is less money for research. There is less money for innovation. There is less money for the environment. There is less money for education.

Hospital wait times have never been so long. Pensions have not increased. Universities have received nothing.

Given the Conservatives' track record that I have just outlined, a track record of waste and incompetence, it comes as no surprise to me that this budget fails even in the most basic of tests. This is partly because the minister's numbers just cannot be trusted.

The Conservative government does not get it. Once again it has released projections that contradict the projections of the independent Parliamentary Budget Officer who works with a small staff. The minister uses calculations that envision an unrealistic best case scenario while the Parliamentary Budget Officer uses more realistic calculations. The minister claims the budget deficit will fall to $1.8 billion by 2014-15, while the Parliamentary Budget Officer projects a $12.3 billion deficit in 2014-15.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer has proven that he is far more accurate than the finance minister at predicting Canada's financial future over the past several years, and as I said, with the limited resources that he has at his disposal. When I heard that the finance minister released projections that were far out of line with those of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, I thought it was groundhog day. How many times will the Conservatives make the same mistake and how long before they learn from it?

Another reason the budget fails is that the Conservatives do not invest. The Conservatives spend. To get out of a deficit and a recession, governments must invest wisely. There are serious problems facing Canadians as a result of the government's lack of vision. The government has spent more money than any other government in Canadian history. The government has turned record surpluses into record deficits. In spite of spending money at record levels, the government has not delivered sustainable results for Canadians.

Can Canadians say that they are better off today than they were four years ago? Conservative inaction today will cost us even more in the future when the problem becomes less manageable. For example, we cannot send military personnel to a field of combat or on a peacekeeping mission and not take care of the soldiers once they get back. There is nothing in the budget for veterans. Veterans are not being helped with post-traumatic stress disorder. Immigrants are not being helped in order to succeed in their new lives. In a riding such as mine where there is a large number of immigrants, people are knocking on the door asking for help. The majority of them are immigrants and there is just no help for them. There is no help for them to integrate.

There is no plan in the budget to deal with the strains on our health care system. Forget about reading the newspaper, people only need to look at the paper to see pictures of people waiting for an OR. There is no plan to deal with the challenges of an aging population. Pensions are not being protected. Imagine, the hottest topic in Canada right now is pensions and what is in the budget? Nothing.

With regard to pensions, since December 2009 our party has proposed three reforms that the Prime Minister should consider immediately. These reforms include recommendations that could be implemented immediately to address the important issue of pensions.

Here are the three recommendations or proposals. First, establish a supplementary Canada pension plan to help Canadians save more. Second, give employees with stranded pensions following corporate bankruptcies the option of growing their pensions through the assets of the Canada pension plan. Third, protect vulnerable Canadians on long-term disability by giving them status as preferred creditors in cases of bankruptcy.

Too few Canadians save for their retirement and for that reason we need a less complicated savings system that is secure and reliable and will encourage savings.

For various reasons, Canadians do not save enough for their retirement. The government must do more to encourage Canadians to save more. This budget does not do that.

One third of Canadians do not have retirement savings other than what is offered through the Canada or Quebec pension plan, old age security and the guaranteed income supplement. Another third do not have sufficient retirement savings to maintain their current standard of living.

Mr. Speaker, more than half of Canadian families do not have an employer sponsored pension plan. The Canada and Quebec pension plans cover 93% of workers. However, by themselves they are insufficient.

According to Statistics Canada, the $32.4 billion paid into RRSPs in 2006 represents just 7% of the maximum eligible contribution. Almost $500 billion in RRSP contribution room remained unused. The government must take immediate action.

To grow and prosper, the government must take advantage of opportunities to become leaders in emerging industries. This budget fails because while the Obama administration and even the Chinese government are investing heavily to make their countries more competitive, the Conservatives are slashing investments that could make Canada a leaner and greener competitor on the world stage. The eco-energy program for renewable power production was cancelled. The budgets of Canada's research councils were slashed by $148 million last year and only $32 million was reinvested this year, and they are supposed to say thank you.

Even where money is made available for green projects, the Conservatives do not know how to spend it. For example, 93% of the green infrastructure fund was not spent last year because the government does not believe in investing, and $160 million of approved funding for the Canadian Space Agency has not been invested over the past two years.

At a time when Canadians need good jobs in order to put food on the table and fight this recession, the Conservative government is picking the pockets of small business owners who are our key to job creation. The government has spent Canadians' money irresponsibly and run up massive debts. It is now trying to make small businesses pay for its mistakes. This budget introduces $13 billion in payroll taxes. This outrageous tax hike will probably kill about 220,000 small business jobs. Small business owners cannot afford a tax hike and Canadians cannot afford the Conservative government.

The underlying reason this budget is so bad is that the Conservatives lack vision. This has been the case ever since their first budget. This is not a novelty. The Conservatives do not have a plan for Canada going forward. They do not propose any long-term solutions, only campaign-friendly treats in this budget.

This budget fails to address several key areas, such as early childhood education. There is no commitment to early childhood education for families. Parents need affordable daycare spaces for their kids while they are at work. Instead of creating daycare spaces, the Conservatives cut cheques to Canadian parents that barely begin to cover the cost of daycare and then they have to pay tax on that little cheque that they receive. It is not a solution. It is a wasteful bribe that is designed to get votes, not results. No new child care spaces have been created under the Conservative government.

Higher education is another area of concern. Canada is suffering from a productivity gap compared to the U.S. and other countries. In a changing world where what one knows is going to be the difference between success and failure, the government is doing nothing to ensure that young Canadians get the help they need to pursue a higher education.

The only way for our economy to prosper enough to eliminate the Conservative deficit that we are in for is for Canada to have a dynamic workforce that outproduces our competitors. They have to be educated, efficient and engaged citizens who will make our country more prosperous.

The jobs we need are not low-skill part-time jobs that can be outsourced. We need to attract high-skill jobs that pay well. The only way to do that is not with another tax cut for the Prime Minister's corporate masters. It is by making sure that businesses around the world know that if they need a job done well, the Canadian worker is the one who is going to get it done better, faster and cheaper than anyone else.

We need innovators, artists, executives and craftspeople who have the tools to outcompete the rest of the world, but this can only be accomplished if we invest in our population. A country of minimum wage earners without job security will not be able to pay for increased pensions and medicare costs that we know are coming, but countries that can equip their young people now with the tools to succeed in the future will have a huge competitive advantage.

The environment has been ignored once again by the Conservatives in this budget. Copenhagen was an embarrassment, so there is nothing in the budget for it. Throughout the world, countries and companies with foresight are rushing to develop new technologies, new strategies and new incentives to turn their economies into lean, green money-making machines, but the government refuses to get in on the ground floor of an economic centre that is about to boom.

Not only is the Prime Minister not leading the green revolution, he is actively obstructing it. Canadian delegations used to walk into international conferences and command the attention of the room because everyone admired what Canada stood for and how we carried ourselves. The Prime Minister's shameful handling of the environment has all but eroded the esteem that the international community once had for Canada.

The budget bill is inherently flawed because the bill is massive in all the wrong ways. The price tag is massive, the waste is massive and the scope is massive. The government has included several items that have no business being in a budget bill. We do not understand why it decided to include so many unusual items in the bill. It does not want to have an honest debate on these separate issues on their own merits, so I feel the government is probably trying to hide something.

The bill is overpriced, overstuffed and overbudgeted, but still manages to be inflexible and ineffective, much like the government that tabled it.

[Jobs and Economic Growth Act, April 1st, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the member is from Montreal and our ridings are close to one another. I would like to know why she is not supporting the budget even though it is good for Montreal.

[Italian-Canadian Recognition and Restitution Act, March 30th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I did not think he would have a second go-around but typical again where I have answered his question. Since I have been a member, I have tabled this bill on repeated occasions. The member chooses to ignore it and the government may choose to ignore it. The bill is very similar and almost a complete copy of other apologies that were given in the House of Commons. Therefore, if the bill is flawed, the Conservative apologies to the Chinese community and the Japanese community were also flawed.

[Italian-Canadian Recognition and Restitution Act, March 30th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Eglinton—Lawrence has been a great defender of this bill, so I do not know if I can put it any better, but the bill is not about Italians. The bill is about Canadians apologizing to Canadians. Two wrongs do not make a right and in this case we have an opportunity to make a right a right. Let us do it and let us move on.

[Italian-Canadian Recognition and Restitution Act, March 30th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I did not address that before because I knew the member would ask that question. It is only about the 100th time that he has asked me the question on and off the record.

Basically, the Liberals have never apologized, and I am not so sure I agree with that philosophy that previous Liberal governments never decided to apologize. With consistency, the Conservatives have decided to just pick and choose who they will apologize to. They have chosen to apologize to the Japanese and the Chinese community but not the Italians. Therefore, if anybody is going to be divisive, it will be the Conservative government.

With the help of the hon. member across the aisle, we can make this bill bigger and better. We can do it with or without his help. I understand that he may not want to participate and that he had a lot to say during committee, but he was one of the few who did not present any amendments to make this bill better.

[Italian-Canadian Recognition and Restitution Act, March 30th, 2010]

moved that the bill be read the third time and passed.

Mr. Speaker, as you said, this bill seeks to recognize the injustice that was done to persons of Italian origin through their enemy alien designation and internment during the second world war, and to provide for restitution and promote education on Italian-Canadian history.

It is a pleasure for me to rise on this bill. This is the first hour of the third reading.

It is a parliamentary tradition that debates in the House tend to be repetitive, but today I will try not to repeat what I said during my speech to Parliament at second reading. That will be difficult.

The summary does a good job of explaining the bill:

The purpose of this enactment is to recognize and apologize for the treatment that persons of Italian origin received in Canada during the Second World War in spite of the contribution that they have made and continue to make to the building of Canada.

The enactment also provides for restitution to be made in respect of this treatment. The restitution payment is to be applied to the development and production of educational materials relating to Italian-Canadian history and promoting ethnic and racial harmony, and to other projects agreed to by the Minister of Canadian Heritage and an educational foundation established for this purpose.

I want to begin by saying that this apology is long overdue.

Here it is a question of the injustice that was done to Canadians of Italian origin through their enemy alien designation during the second world war.

There is no question about the internment actually happening. There are some questions as to the actual number of Italians who were interned. If we do some research and a bit of reading, not all the documents are in order. So there are different numbers that have been thrown out there. There are numbers of up to 6,000 people who were arrested after the internment happened.

No one was ever charged.

Not one person was ever charged. Some people were arrested and were simply held overnight, and some were held up to three or even four years in prison camps. So there are extremes from one end of the spectrum to the other. Some people were fingerprinted and then had to report to the police station on a weekly basis. Some of these registers were lost. That is why we cannot have an accurate account of how many were actually affected. The only count that we actually have is of the ones who were held in Petawawa. They were taken as young as 16 years of age and as old as 70.

Most of the people arrested were men, but there were also some women.

In some cases, some were picked up in the middle of the night and taken 3,000 miles away. Imagine that. Of course, not all were Italians. Some were arrested simply because they had a name ending in a vowel.

The exact number of people held in internment camps is unknown, but we know that roughly 700 were held in Petawawa alone. Others were detained in three other camps. There was one on Saint Helen's Island near the island of Montreal, and there were two other camps in Atlantic Canada. My understanding is there was one in Fredericton and one in Nova Scotia.

Just to put the whole item in context, Canada versus the States, the war happened and Canada reacted in the fashion it did, but in the U.S., only 228 were interned out of a possible 300,000 U.S. citizens of Italian origin. In Canada, those of Italian origin were estimated to number about 112,000, roughly 40,000 of whom were born in Canada, and as many as 30,000 were on an undesirable list.

We are talking about 40-odd years ago. We can imagine the impact the internment would have had on people's lives. We have to understand Italian culture and how they would have taken something like this.

I have something to read, right out of a magazine or newspaper article in Il Postino, in English, from May 2007. I will read an excerpt, which says:

But my grandmother didn't speak with her daughter about the internment until the 1950s, and then only briefly. “There was no reason to discuss it,” my grandmother, [a]...citizen of English descent, says unquestioningly. “We put it out of our minds and behind us. I didn't tell any of the children until they were grown. We were so ashamed.”

Imagine. There are families out there who do not even know that this happened to them. It is probably explained best as the article goes on to say:

When my grandfather died in 1957, the story of precisely what he was thinking [at the prison camps] died with him, as he wanted. My grandmother will say only that he was terribly depressed during his weeks there, that he feared the ruin of his career, that his health declined.

It goes on and on, talking about how this single family just kept it secret from the rest of the family. Many who were interned were just sons of Italian parents. Of course, the Italians who came to this country were not the most educated. Many were illiterate, and they were accused of being spies. Imagine a spy not being able to read.

Families were receiving mail that was marked “POW”. Imagine people going down the street to pick up their mail and receiving a big envelope marked “POW”. They could just imagine what their next door neighbours thought of them.

Think again: 40 or 50 years ago, the people who were arrested were primarily males, which meant they were the breadwinners. In those times, people did not necessarily have money put aside but were just living day to day, if not week to week. If they did not have a paycheque, the family could not pay the rent or for groceries. The families had to go and live with another family. Families were directly impacted.

Some were fairly well off. The males were arrested and their family businesses were lost. There are tons of stories about that. If people go on the Internet, there is actually a film by the National Film Board on the internment that shows well-to-do Italian families that lost their businesses.

Even if they were just arrested for a week or a month, rumours and stories continued after they were released. This destroyed families. It destroyed people's character. More importantly what it destroyed was the community, a community of people, some of whom, because of their embarrassment, came home and decided to change their name, to get rid of that vowel at the end of their name, and they decided not to be associated with anybody in the Italian community.

This was 50 years ago, and we can imagine how many of these individuals would have been professionals today, whether it be accountants, my favourite type of profession, or lawyers, doctors, dentists, and so forth. There may have been even a few politicians along the way.

Simply put, their liberty was taken away.

This is a private member's bill. It is very simply drafted with the limited amount of resources we have. I am hoping that we can work together to get this bill passed, as it is supported by members of every party in this House.

What we are doing, very simply, is requesting an apology in the House of Commons. Some people thought this would be a problem. It would be on the record. The bill is asking the Parliament of Canada to hereby acknowledge the unjust treatment received by persons of Italian origin. Obviously that apology would be given by the Prime Minister.

In fact, I do have to be up front here and say that there had been an apology to the Italian community about what happened 45 years earlier, by the then prime minister, Brian Mulroney. It was at an Italian dinner. He did call the event legally wrong and immoral, but the problem was that he never officially apologized in the House of Commons. It is on the record that he was going to apologize in the House of Commons.

Nonetheless, he never did.

The purpose of this bill is to recognize the injustice that was done to Canadians of Italian origin. It is not complicated. This is not a precedent setting measure. This has already been done in the House. This was done during the Brian Mulroney years for the Japanese community. And a few years ago, the current Prime Minister made an apology to the Chinese community.

I also have some of the bills and they are on the record, so this is not something that is made up. The Library of Parliament prepared a report, a research paper. So there were official apologies. We could even include the official apology that was made to the residential schoolchildren.

The other thing that the bill is asking for is compensation. The compensation is not the important part. The compensation is mainly to educate Canadians, and I am not just talking about Canadians of Italian origin, as to what happened in the past, because it is a way to correct the mistakes of the past. We need to keep those, I will not say memories, alive, but we need to find a way to educate our young people. That is what I am getting these days in my office, Italians of third and fourth generation asking me about the internment. They understand that I have a private member's bill. A couple of students have actually won awards across Canada for doing a project on the internment, and they are astounded that most people my age are not even aware of what happened with the internment. Older Italians just want to forget about it. Here we are, as I said before, having lost a couple of generations and not being able to understand what happened to us before.

In terms of the compensation, basically I will just read from the bill what we are asking for:

Restitution

The Minister of Canadian Heritage, in cooperation with the Minister of Finance, shall negotiate with the National Congress of Italian Canadians an agreement for a suitable payment to be made in restitution for the unjust treatment described in section 3, which agreement shall be proposed to Parliament for approval.

The proposed agreement is more or less the same as the one that was reached with the Italian community in another parliament.

I do not think there is any controversy here. We have people from all parties supporting it. I want to put on the record that I thank the Liberals. Pretty well everybody from the Liberal Party supported it, although I think there were a few missing. The NDP, of course, and the Bloc Québécois were very supportive of the bill, not only through their voting but also in committee and through issuing press releases trying to force the government to get its act together and get this bill through so that we can send it to the Senate and move on with history.

I did attend a couple of meetings when this particular bill was studied in committee. We heard from different Italian associations or organizations. There was the Canadian Italian Business and Professional Association, the national chapter and some local chapters. We had la Fondation communautaire canadienne-italienne du Québec. We had the Orders Sons of Italy of Canada. We had the National Congress of Italian Canadians, the national and the Quebec chapters. Those were the four organizations that actually signed an agreement with the Government of Canada three or four years ago for some type of restitution in the ballpark of around $12.5 million, but the Minister of Canadian Heritage can negotiate that part of the deal.

Not only do we have full support from these four national organizations, we added another one, Casa d'Italia, which was the first community centre in Montreal where the Italians congregated and they were probably the most affected during the time of the internment.

Oddly enough, we also had a partisan organization, the Italian Canadian advisory committee on this new program that the Conservatives decided they would have. There were three Conservatives on that advisory committee and they were all for the bill.

There is no question that the bill should be put forward. We also had the immigration minister come forward. I am not sure why he came forward. I asked for the heritage minister . I think the immigration minister , no disrespect to him, does not understand the file, and I do not think he should be in charge of the bill. I would like to see the heritage minister pick up the file and push it along so we can get this bill through the Senate.

Again I would like to thank all the MPs who spoke in favour of the bill during the second reading. I look forward to questions and comments from the members.

[Italian-Canadian Recognition and Restitution Act, March 30th, 2010]

moved that Bill C-302, An Act to recognize the injustice that was done to persons of Italian origin through their “enemy alien” designation and internment during the Second World War, and to provide for restitution and promote education on Italian-Canadian history, be concurred in.

(Motion agreed to)

[Income Tax Act, March 25th, 2010]

—a downturn in the Fort McMurray area, the MP for Fort McMurray would be more than happy that we went ahead and passed this bill into law.

The Liberal Party believes that the federal government can significantly impact regional economic development. That is why in 2005 the Liberal government at the time invested over $800 million over five years in regional development agencies across the country.

What is interesting is that the Bloc Québécois was the only party that voted against Bill C-9 in 2005, which aimed to create the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer, Mr. Kevin Page, has testified before the finance committee and assured us that the Canada Revenue Agency has the capability to implement these changes and administer them quite easily. The bill does not actually do much to promote significant job growth in the regions, but it is a beginning. So we should not lose sight of the fact that it could help to stop the bleeding in regions where jobs are available but are not being filled because of the regional geographic disadvantage.

Given that this government has no real strategy to promote the economic growth of the regions, this bill is a good option.

I believe that all members of this House should support it. Personally, I will support it.

[Income Tax Act, March 25th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House today to debate Bill C-288, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act (tax credit for new graduates working in designated regions).

As the vice-chair of the Standing Committee on Finance for several years now, I want to point out that our committee has studied this bill many times. The committee has been through numerous consultations and amendments other than those mentioned by the parliamentary secretary, and I believe we have achieved a state of near-perfection.

Though this bill is somewhat imperfect, that is the case with most private members' bills in this place. It is no fault of anyone's, but with the private members' bills that are brought forward, there will be some imperfections because of the limited resources we have as individual members of Parliament. We are not the government. We do not have the bureaucracy behind us, so some of the bills are limited in terms of detail. We have to try to work those details out. That is the reason we send these bills to committee.

However I feel the bill does address a crucial area of the Canadian economy that the Conservative government has chosen to ignore.

The parliamentary secretary spoke about what happened in committee. The government could have taken steps to propose better legislation. It could have tabled legislation using all the resources of the government to address this issue. It could have tabled a more complete bill, a bill that would have considered the needs of regions, that would have tied regional development, along with job creation, innovation, which we have been talking about, and green technologies, to consider the needs of students and their employment futures.

Instead the government decided to shut down Parliament and go on vacation for a couple of months and came back with nothing more than a vision to change the national anthem.

Given the failure of the Conservatives to work for all Canadians, I think at this point Bill C-288 is the best option we have on the table.

To ensure a prosperous national economy, wealth must come not only from big cities. We need a broad range of skills and professions in all regions of our great country. As the member for a Montreal Island riding, I am acutely aware of the challenges facing people who live in the regions. I want to talk about the labour shortage, the high cost of transportation, the lack of public transit and other huge challenges for those who live in the regions.

Those are just some of the reasons I support this bill.

The failure of the government to propose long-term solutions to strengthen the economies of our smaller regions has led to entire communities being left behind. The costs associated with regional economic failure are too great to completely catalogue in the short time permitted for me today.

Of course these include the stagnation of economic development and growth in smaller communities, the breakup of communities as the most capable of the young people migrate elsewhere, the departure of industries as the local talent pool dries up, and increased burdens on the EI system as unemployment in the region increases.

These students sometimes not only move away from the regions into the cities but they also move away from the cities to other places and to other countries.

Bill C-288 introduces a tax credit for young graduates who settle in one of the geographic regions listed in the Regional Development Incentives Act to take up work in their field.

The tax credit can be anywhere from $200 to $750, which is a substantial amount to students who have recently completed their studies and earned their degrees and are ready to work. I do not think this measure will bankrupt the government. That kind of money will not hinder economic growth. In fact, these graduates can work in the regions and create still more jobs.

Even if they want to return to their hometowns, many new graduates cannot because they have student loans and simply cannot work for the typically lower salaries offered in the regions.

This bill would encourage many Canadians to return to their home regions after completing their studies. It would enable new graduates to benefit from a tax credit equal to 40% of their salary, up to $8,000. That is one of the things we asked for when the bill was referred to the committee.

The Bloc proposed an $8,000 tax credit. I proposed that that amount be spread over three years, in order to prevent students from returning for just one year to take advantage of the tax credit and then moving somewhere else.

The committee decided to introduce an initial amendment to spread the $8,000 over three years: for example, $3,000 the first year, $3,000 the second year and $2,000 the third year. That way, young people will stay for 12, 24 or 36 months or longer after they get their first job.

This would provide young graduates who want to ply their trades back home an adequate financial reason to do so, and at minimal cost. The provincial government in Quebec has already instituted a measure similar to the one proposed in Bill C-288 and it has been quite successful so far.

While the bill has much potential, we also talked about costs. We have had all kinds of costs and that is why the Liberals introduced an amendment that would be applicable to communities of 200,000 and less. We had a cost of $600 million and I think the Bloc came up with $160 million. We are comfortable with $160 million, so we in the Liberal Party are ready to support that.

Liberal members of the Standing Committee on Finance proposed an amendment that was approved by the member who had originally introduced the bill. That amendment ensures that the bill targets rural regions in particular, by excluding students who move to cities with a population of more than 200,000. Thus, the bill will achieve its goal, while ensuring that the cost of implementing it will be relatively low.

This amendment would ensure that the tax credit is extended only to those students who choose to settle in truly small communities, not as the member opposite, the parliamentary secretary, just suggested. Thus it helps the bill better achieve its stated goal while minimizing the costs associated with implementing the bill.

In committee we try to improve some of these bills, but the Conservatives did not help or make any suggestions when in fact we did try to work out regions or areas where this bill would be applicable. Hopefully, places like Fort McMurray would not be one of those areas, but if there was all of a sudden—