Massimo Pacetti

[Afghanistan, March 13th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my good friend, the member for York South—Weston.

I am pleased to rise on this very important issue on the Afghanistan mission. I realize I am one of the last speakers on the motion. That being the case, most of what I have to say has probably already been stated and expressed in the debates we have heard up to now. Like the saying goes, they “save the best for last”, and that is the reason I am here.

The motion is filled with so many terms, variables and conditions that restating even just a few of them would have taken up most of the time allocated to me. Therefore, at this point I would like to discuss some of the reasons why I will be supporting the motion.

I have been a member of Parliament since 2002 and in that time I have seen crisis after crisis. It seems almost like clockwork that every few months or so some new issue comes out of the woodwork and we all act like it is the end of the world as we know it.

During my time, serving under a Liberal majority government, I remember debates surrounding the ratification of the Kyoto protocol, the Iraqi war, election financing, so on and so forth. Every time one of these issues came up, we heard blistering exaggeration from both sides of the chamber.

However, there we were, the Liberal Party taking the centrist position, the responsible position and the right position on all these issues. We were able to do this because we did not govern for ideology sake; we governed for Canadians.

Under a Liberal minority government, we continued our good work by reaching out to our political adversaries and getting things done to make the lives better for Canadians. In a minority situation, we were able to sign health care agreements with all 10 provinces that would strengthen the Canadian health care system and deliver an early childhood development and lifelong learning program for the entire country.

We made the 4Es, equalization, economy, education and environment, top priorities and we delivered for Canadians in all four categories. As for foreign policy, we were the Liberal Party that came up with the 3Ds, development, diplomacy and defence, which the present government is using and following.

We governed to get results for Canadians. We believe that a government is only as good as its actions, not its rhetoric.

We are now the official opposition, but our leadership philosophy has not changed. We show up for work every day and we do our best for this great country and its people.

However, this Parliament is run rather strangely by this minority Conservative government. In fact, it is dysfunctional, because this minority government is often threatening and is not very cooperative. I think Canadians deserve more.

The media have reported on this dysfunction and have been playing it up in recent months. Every three hours, or even every few minutes, they claim that an election could be called.

I raise this because the debate on renewing our mission in Afghanistan has been going on for three years. I think that the Liberal Party is the only major party that participated in the debate in a realistic fashion and without locking ourselves in an ideological bubble. I would tell the other parties that our troops deserve more from them.

Our party has extensively debated this issue, privately and publicly. During our recent leadership campaign, which ended in December 2006, a number of candidates took different positions on the mission in Afghanistan. Some held the same position, but took different angles.

The fact that some of our leadership candidates had the same positions but framed it differently caused confusion. The media, under pressure to meet deadlines, did not explain the subtle differences. In the end our members, the public and the opposition parties benefited from the hard work the Liberal Party put in on this policy and debates in which we engaged on this issue.

It is because we put in the work and had a tough debate that immediately after the Liberal Party leadership race, our leader was able to outline a clear and concise position on the Afghan mission.

Do not, however, mistake clarity for simplicity. Yes, our position is very clear, yet it is one fraught with complexities since the issue at hand is so complex. We have tweaked our position, of that there is no doubt, but that is because we constantly study the issue and listen to Canadians. We have listened to Canadians and they know our position has been consistent, thoughtful and realistic.

I met people in my riding, in Ottawa and across Canada during the finance committee's prebudget consultation tour. People told me that when they listened to the Liberal leader, he was the one who made the most sense out of all the others. That is what has set us apart from the other parties. We listen, we debate and we outline our policies clearly. We know at the end of the day, we have done right by the Canadian public.

With all the debate and study in which we have engaged, the Afghan motion has become extremely detailed. We hope we have provided the government with enough direction that it will have no choice but to listen to us. I hope the Conservatives are willing and able to abide by the spirit and intention of the motion.

I will be the first to admit that some of the issues will never be brought to a unanimous consensus, but the other parties in the chamber have treated the debate in an unacceptable manner. They have played politics, advanced extreme positions and oversimplified this issue, all in the hopes of stumbling upon that ever elusive sound bite that will get them more votes.

They are aware of the fact that two sides exist on this issue, but they do not understand why the two sides exist. The Liberal Party, however, gets it. We get it because we are known for sincere debate in the spirit of openness that leads to understanding, if not consensus. When we debate, we listen and respect, because debate is equal parts, teaching and learning. Whereas the other parties wait for their leader to tell them what to think. I look across the aisle and I have never seen so many whipped MPs in one room.

In the interest of full disclosure, I want to point out that I have never been to Afghanistan, but of the people who have been there and to whom I have spoken, no two people have given me the same impression or views.

It is like when we go on vacation. As soon as we arrive in a new town, and this is common, human error, our first impression is how we determine whether that country is appealing or not. If we arrive by plane, we look at the cleanliness of the airport, and that is our first impression. If we drive into a new town and head directly downtown where there are office buildings, we get a different impression of the town than if we were to drive directly to a residential area.

Unfortunately, the extreme parties in the House, as I refer to them, have made the same mistake as so many commercial travellers have made. They made up their minds before they knew the whole story about the place about which they were talking. They have made it so easy that the question for them is simply, “Do we leave or do we stay and fight?”

It is not that easy. Nothing important ever is. The government members want to stay and fight. Do we have a choice? They have totally massacred Canada's reputation on the world scene in the last two years by refusing to live up to our international commitments or to stand up for Canadian interests. Truthfully, we do not have much of a choice but to stay, in part, because of this.

The Conservatives pulled us out of Kyoto. They have given in to the U.S. on softwood lumber. They have made Canada look more and more like a country where one man speaks for everyone. What is worse is that one man has no vision and does not share the moderate nature of the people of our country.

The other parties want to pull out of Afghanistan without as much as a goodbye. Theirs is a simple game of arithmetic. When the polls show decreased support for the war, they clamour for a pullout: really original.

Both positions are the easy way out and require no deep analysis. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, when he spoke to Parliament last year, made perhaps the best argument for Canada to stay in Afghanistan. He simply said “Canada is making a difference”.

Whether the PMO vetted this part of his speech is another matter, but I believe in what he said. Afghanistan is better off today than it was before Canada decided to lend a helping hand. We must stay for the moment. We must stay because there is still work to be done. We must stay because we made a commitment to do so. We must stay because the government has made no serious effort to persuade our NATO allies to do their fair share and rotate into Kandahar.

Mostly, we must stay because if we do not all we have done will be destroyed. It is so difficult to build something good and so easy to destroy that very same thing. We have built something good in Afghanistan and we owe it to our troops, to the people of Afghanistan and to ourselves to ensure that what we have built does not fall.

[Committees of the House, March 5th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to be recorded as being opposed to this motion.

[Points of Order, February 29th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on the same point of order. Very briefly, I have to put in my two cents on this.

I sit on this side of the House and the member for Charlottetown is my seatmate.

I do not want you to come to any conclusions based on just what happened yesterday, because this has been ongoing since there haven been members of the Conservative Party sitting on this side of the House. Therefore, if you are going to review tapes, I think you are going to have to review the tapes since there have been Conservative members sitting on this side.

Let us just be fair on all sides, Mr. Speaker.

[The Budget, February 28th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, it is always interesting when the member decides to partake in this debate. Both of his questions are related in the sense that I understand from one point of view where the government does not want to invest and make a long term plan for trying to address the poverty challenge, but the fact is that the present government has over $13 billion to do something with right now before March 31. If it had taken action, it could have done something to help relieve the poverty in Canada.

Our leader, on more than one occasion, has made some speeches relating to poverty and I think he had a plan for it. The finance minister could have taken an example and utilized that to address some of the issues regarding poverty.

Regarding the deficit, it is a scary situation. As I said in French, if anyone were to read page 214, although I know many members would probably fall asleep after the first five pages, the Minister of Finance's own document states:

Estimated Impact of a One-Year, 1-Percentage-Point Decrease in Real GDP Growth on Federal Revenues, Expenses and Budgetary Balance.

A 1% reduction would cost $3.3 billion. Next year, if the GDP goes down 1% as forecasted, we will be in a deficit.

[The Budget, February 28th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I purposely did not speak about this program because there has already been a lot of time attributed to it. However, the short answer to his question would be, what about it. This program will probably make the banks and the brokers richer because a separate account will need to be set up. We will also need to track separate investments or a separate fund but we are not sure how it will be created.

When CCRA officials were before the finance committee yesterday I asked them how much this would cost. They had no idea about the cost but I think somebody said that it would probably save taxpayers $10 or $15 a year. I am not sure what the cost involved is.

If the government were genuine in trying to have Canadians save, first, it never would have cut the GST two months ago, and second, all it needs to do is provide Canadians with their first $500 of investment income tax free. It would just be an extra line on the income tax return. We would not need to set up accounts, fill out forms or monitor them separately.

This is just another way of Conservative bureaucracy which the Conservatives say they do not like but actually decide to implement even more bureaucracy.

[The Budget, February 28th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today and speak on the government's recently tabled budget. I would like to inform you, Mr. Speaker, that I will be splitting my time with the member for Brant.

From my perspective, as vice-chair and the former chair of the Standing Committee on Finance, the budget process has given me a unique insight into the importance of the federal budget and its effect not only on the daily lives of Canadians but on the long term prospects for Canadians as well.

As a member of the finance committee, I have been privileged to have the opportunity to hear from Canadians from all walks of life and all regions of the country in an unfiltered manner, be they non-profit, business groups, organizations or individuals.

The reason I bring up the finance committee is due to the fact that under the House of Commons Standing Orders the finance committee is obligated to prepare a report to Parliament on what it heard during its pre-budget consultations.

Therefore, since we do most of the leg work for the Minister of Finance before he tables his budget, the minister should be paying closer attention to what Canadians are saying.

Once again this year the finance committee held its pre-budget consultations and as witnesses spoke to us, actually to me, since I was the only member to be present at all the pre-budget consultation meetings. In fact, I even had to chair half the meetings while our committee travelled since the government was here in Ottawa trying to figure out how to get last year's budget bill passed in the House and moved to the Senate.

I listened to Canadians. They voiced their opinions and concerns for the Canada of today and shared with us aspirations for the Canada of tomorrow.

Canadians are passionate about the future of Canada. Like our Liberal leader says, “Canadians want the Canada of the future to be more just, to be fair, to be greener and to be economically sustainable”. That is vision.

This budget has no vision. It is nothing more than a hodgepodge of credits and spending of public money with no real vision or plan. Even the government's highly touted one year old “Advantage Canada” and money back guarantee plan has now been officially shelved based on its own 2008-09 estimates.

Therefore, how can I in good conscience support a budget that has no vision? The answer is simple. Being the optimist that I am, I am able to find a few elements that I genuinely like, but upon further analysis, I now realize the reason I say this is due to the fact that many of the Conservative proposals that have been adopted in the budget are actually Liberal initiatives.

For example, it is the Liberal Party that advocated that the gas tax transfer ought to be made permanent. It took a while but the Conservative Party has finally come around and done just that in the budget.

Even Quebec's finance minister applauded the decision to make the gas tax transfer permanent. She also liked another idea that came from the Liberal Party: investing an additional $500 million in public transit. Quebec would receive $116 million of that amount.

Another initiative that originated with the Liberal Party is the decision to extend the accelerated capital cost allowance for manufacturing companies for three years. This should promote investment in machinery and manufacturing equipment, and the extension makes it easier for companies to plan large purchases over the long term.

For my colleagues in Ontario, one positive budget proposal is the direct support to Canada's automotive sector. We in the Liberal Party for months have been highlighting not only the downturn in the automotive sector but the entire manufacturing sector in central Canada where it has suffered job losses.

That is why we immediately proposed that the Government of Canada should provide support to the manufacturing sector and not just the automobile sector in this difficult time.

It would appear that the learning curve for the government has shrunk considerably in recent days. The Conservatives seem to finally be grasping, ever so slightly, what the Canadian people have been telling them for two years, that a minority government is a mandate to work with its political opponents, not to try to run roughshod over them.

I do not know what they have started putting in the water at the Conservative Party's headquarters, but the next step is to increase the dosage and the frequency of consumption.

It comes down to vision. It is quite easy.

It comes down to vision. Some have it; others do not. The Liberal Party had a solid majority in the 1990s because Canadians saw that we had a vision to lead the country. The sound fiscal policies of successive Liberal governments turned record deficits into record surpluses. Liberal policies enabled Canada to begin paying down the national debt.

In short, it was the Liberal Party that did what had to be done and put Canada's fiscal house in order. When it came to power in 1993, the Liberal Party saw that Canada was being crippled by debt, and it set about addressing the debt problem. We can say proudly that, thanks to the efforts of the Liberals, the level of our national debt is the envy of the other G-8 countries. The Liberal Party understood that maintaining a budget surplus is a responsible way to govern.

We believe that any budget must contain a reserve fund of at least $3 billion to protect Canadians from unexpected economic shifts during a fiscal year.

That is one of the weaknesses of this budget. When the economy is healthy, this reserve is not used but is applied to the debt. It is a very simple concept.

As I said, we think it is necessary to have a reserve of at least $3 billion in the budget each year. Obviously the Conservatives do not agree, because in these times of economic uncertainty, they have left out the reserve and are predicting a surplus of only $2.3 billion for 2008-09, and $1.3 billion for the following year. This shows a clear lack of vision.

On page 214 of the budget—I know some people have not managed to read to page 213, because they fall asleep after the first few pages—the Conservatives themselves talk about the “Estimated impact of a one-year, 1-per-cent decrease in real GDP growth on federal revenues, expenses and budgetary balance”.

This means that if there is a 1% change in the GDP, it will cost our government $3.3 billion and show up on the bottom line. This means that if there is a 1% decrease in GDP growth, the government will have a deficit the following year. No reserve has been set aside. So we can comment on whether the government will be in a positive position next year.

Today, at this very moment, this Parliament needs to address a new issue, which is that Canada is now being crippled by crumbling and outdated infrastructure. The Liberal Party proposed using $7 billion out of this year's surplus to make a badly needed investment in Canada's infrastructure, but the Conservative government did not see fit to take this path, simply because it wants to appear to be the champion of debt reduction.

The Liberals wrote the book on debt reduction and we do not need a lecture on the subject. We simply recognize that the national debt is under control and Canada's next major challenge is addressing the infrastructure deficit that is sorely in need of an upgrade.

The Conservatives are not prioritizing properly and are throwing away a golden opportunity to invest in Canada, just so they can gain political advantage. Again that is a lack of vision.

The Conservative government introduced the Canada graduate scholarship program in this budget, which quite admirably attempts to attract top students from around the world. The problem is that there is no strategy laid out by the Conservative government to try to keep these students in Canada once their studies are completed. As it stands, these students will only be allowed to remain in Canada for a maximum of two years after they graduate. What is the logic behind investing in bright young students and then not providing them with opportunities and incentives to stay?

When it comes to education, the Conservatives have remained in the dark regarding the millennium scholarship fund. They have just decided to let it die, when it actually has an excellent track record of providing services, and according to the Treasury Board, its operating costs are only four per cent.

The long and short of it is that the government has in one instance created a program to attract good foreign students to Canada, but it did not have the foresight to provide avenues to keep these students in Canada in the long term, and in another instance, it is allowing a successful program that helps hundreds of thousands of homegrown students, many of whom have demonstrated a strong dedication to Canada already, to fade gently into the night. This is not a good vision.

Finally, this budget proposed by the government is hardly visionary. It is definitely a Conservative budget, a problem that repeats itself time and time again. When the government sets extremely low goals for itself, this is what we get.

[The Budget, February 28th, 2008]

I apologize, Mr. Speaker.

Under [the finance minister], the size of the federal government has grown by an astounding 14.8 per cent. How is this fiscally conservative or even responsible...Amazingly, the Conservatives have bested Liberal spending. This is a spend-thrift government.

I would like to give the member an opportunity to correct the opening remarks in his speech.

[The Budget, February 28th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, in his speech the member started speaking about Liberal spending. I would like him to comment on the following quote. John Williamson of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, one of the big critics of the Liberal Party policy in the past, stated:

Under Mr. Flaherty, the size of the federal government has grown by an astounding--

[Certified General Accountants Association of Canada, February 12th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to pay tribute to the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada, of which I have been a proud member since 1990, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.

CGA-Canada has come a long way in 100 years. Today, it is the fastest growing professional accounting association in Canada. CGA-Canada has 68,000 members and students as well as affiliated associations in Bermuda, the Caribbean and Asia. CGAs work in more than 80 countries and look after the interests of businesses, governments and non-profits.

CGA-Canada has also advised the Parliament of Canada by providing input to important committees such as the Standing Committee on Finance, of which I am a member. These contributions have greatly helped to shape Canadian public policy.

Congratulations to CGA-Canada.

[Canada-United States Tax Convention Act, 1984, December 13th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for his question. We are both members of the Standing Committee on Finance.

I would like to point out something to follow up on what I was saying earlier. Some hon. members still do not understand the tax treaty concept. The purpose of these treaties is not to create tax havens, but to enhance and facilitate international trade with full respect for these agreements.

I would like to remind the hon. member that the motion presented by the Bloc Québécois in the last session, calling for an examination of the tax treaty with Barbados, did in fact receive support from the Liberal Party. When it came time for a report on the matter, there was not a word from the Bloc members. I think they still do not understand what a tax treaty is.