Massimo Pacetti

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, May 18th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am one of the last people who would agree with the NDP, but unfortunately, I have to agree with the member here. There was no plan and I do not see a plan in the budget. Giving somebody a tax credit for public transit is not an environmental plan.

Like I said in my speech, a credit on a monthly pass comes out to about $150 a year. That money is probably going to be clawed back by the transit companies. The normal transit user is probably going to end up paying more money for a transit pass at the end of the year because transit companies are probably going to increase fares by the gross amount and not the net amount. There will be no tax benefit to the normal transit user.

I was not in Bonn, so I am not sure what really happened there. I have to take the member's word as to what happened. We did at least have an environmental plan and a long term vision where we were investing in renewable energy sources.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, May 18th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the member and I do sit on the finance committee together. Finance officials did appear before the finance committee a couple of weeks ago.

It is a technicality. The budget does in fact state that the tax rate will be going down from 16% to 15.5%. The reason for that is because of a ways and means motion that was filed. Tax rates are actually going up. When the finance officials appeared before committee, they told us that the tax rate was going up from 15% to 15.5%.

From what I understand in reading the budget, the employment tax credit will become effective on July 1. From July 1 to December 31 it will be $500, and 17.5% of that is $80. Is the member going to tell me that is a great benefit for working class and middle income earners compared to the 1% decrease in the tax rate that the Liberal government proposed?

I have been going through some old newspaper articles and letters from middle income families who say that the changes overall are minor, but lowering income tax would have helped a lot more.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, May 18th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, today we are debating Bill C-13, the budget implementation bill. I had an opportunity to speak for about five minutes last week on the budget. I tried to give my perspective as former chairman of the finance committee and I would like to continue in the same vein as in the last budgetary debate.

Usually the debate is the highlight of the government's agenda, whether it is a new government or not. The budget outlines where a government's priorities lie. How? By providing funds for the programs it holds most dear, while at the same time setting out the government's long term vision of where it wants the country to be in five or 10 years. This sounds like an easy concept, but it is much more complex.

This brings me to one of the reasons why most of us come to Ottawa. We come to serve our constituents and all Canadians by trying to influence the government's policy, so that our concerns are reflected in their vision for the country.

We also come to Ottawa to have the government listen, so that it can build a Canada that we stand for, a Canada that our constituents and all Canadians stand for. That is precisely what the finance committee did during our pre-budget consultations last year. We listened to the concerns of Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

We heard testimony from experts from different financial and scientific fields. We heard from artists and environmentalists. They spoke to us about the Canada that they wanted, about what concerned them for our future. Sadly, their concerns are not reflected in the government's budget.

During the budget debate many members of the House have spoken at length about Kyoto, child care, infrastructure and post-secondary education. These are all complex issues that require a proper and well thought out strategy, not just a tax credit here and a taxable payment there. How we handle these issues today will affect the way our country will grow and continue to prosper, a vision. A vision for the future, a vision for tomorrow and the next day.

Canadians have had to make sacrifices and decisions in the past to be where we are today. Do we need to throw that all away? How can we attain the vision we want for this country for tomorrow with such a shortsighted budget?

Sadly, the budget lacks depth as it introduces tax credits that will be costly and inefficient. I will point to some of the tax credits the government is offering, so that we can see how difficult and costly it will be to implement these measures and how these measures lack any long term vision for Canada.

The first is transit passes. How will the government's plan be implemented? Are commuters supposed to save their monthly transit passes and then send them to Revenue Canada at tax time? How much will it cost Revenue Canada to process all these transit passes? Have the Conservatives seriously thought about how this credit will be implemented and what it will cost?

Although Canadians may appreciate a transit credit, most of the transit companies across the country are more than likely to increase their fares in order to clawback these tax benefits. Canadians certainly will not appreciate that this quick fix is replacing time tested environmental programs such as EnerGuide.

Canadians will not be pleased when they discover that the government's idea of saving the environment amounts to nothing more than a few dollars off their bus pass. The Conservative transit tax credit will cost between 10 and 100 times more than the proposed Liberal plan. Is this the kind of shortsighted vision the Conservatives have brought to the table after waiting in the wings for 12 years?

Second, there is the government's infamous cut to the GST. We already know that virtually every economist in the country is against cutting the GST and instead they are in favour of the Liberal plan to reduce personal income taxes. We already know that this cut to the GST will only help Canada's most wealthy, leaving low and middle income Canadians out in the cold.

Most Canadians spend their income on rent or mortgage payments, food and medical expenses, things that are not subject to the GST. Let us leave that aside for now and look at how this GST cut will be implemented.

How much has the government thought about the implementation of the plan? Retail owners, for example, already have their cash registers programmed to calculate GST at 7%. Will retailers have to overhaul their cash systems? How much will that cost? Did the Conservative government bother listening to business owners? No. It preferred to grab votes with flashy announcements instead of consulting with Canadians.

To implement the reduction of the GST by 1% it will cost the Government of Canada at least $10 million in administration costs per $1 billion reduction in GST revenues of which $4 billion to $5 billion of GST revenues are expected to be lost. This is without even bothering to see how much it would cost businesses.

The Liberal plan of reducing personal income taxes would have been much more effective and less costly, since it would only affect a change on the income tax form. Is this short sighted GST cut the kind of long term planning that will allow Canada to prosper into the future? I do not think so. Where is the vision?

The 2006 budget is indicative of the Conservatives' mentality. This budget raises the tax rate on the lowest income bracket to 15.5%, which is 0.5% higher than the rate the Liberals set in 2005, and reduces the basic personal amount by $400 effective July 1, 2006.

The tax increases, which hit Canadians with the lowest annual incomes, largely cancel out any benefits from the other measures the Conservatives announced, including the reduction in the GST, which puts only a few cents a year into low-income earners' pockets.

All the noted economists in the country have said that eliminating the Liberals' tax cuts and replacing them with a one-point decrease in the GST will benefit affluent Canadians at the expense of the most disadvantaged.

What are we to think of the Canada employment credit, which is almost completely cancelled out by this same increase?

Next I will examine the Conservative plan to help students, the textbook credit. Giving an $80 credit to fix the debt load of Canadian students is almost absurd. A book credit sounds attractive but does not make for good policy.

Furthermore, there are details to this provision that need to be cleared up by the Minister of Finance. Will all textbooks be covered for this credit? If not, then which ones? Will students have to save their book receipts and send them in at tax time? How will Revenue Canada prove that the books were required for school? Will books only sold at university libraries count? What if a student is required to buy a textbook at an off campus bookstore? Maybe the government will ask students to save the course outlines they receive at the beginning of the semester and ask them to send those in when they file their taxes in order to prove what books they had to buy. Will this credit be available for all students: part time students, full time students or even adult education students?

Will this textbook credit secure post-secondary education in this country and ensure that our students are among the best in the world? I do not think so. Will it ensure that they do not graduate under a mountain of debt? I doubt it. I doubt that the Conservative government was thinking that far ahead when it drafted its budget. Again, it comes down to the kind of vision Canadians want from the government and how this Conservative government is failing them.

With regard to the child care plan, this is what the Liberal Party proposed. It was a vision that was about providing early learning opportunities to all children and giving them an equal and fair start in life. The Conservative answer is simply to give parents a taxable $100 a month allowance and let tax authorities collect the taxes on these amounts at the end of the year when families have already spent the money they received all year long.

This is not a plan. What about the tax credit for physical fitness? Do I need to explain the bureaucratic nightmare to first implement the legislation, which has not even been provided yet, and then to administer the program? To look at it another way, in order to implement its plans, the government is going to have to increase the amount of bureaucracy in Ottawa. I thought Conservative governments advocated less government bureaucracy, not more, but I suppose if that makes for good politics, the Conservatives can sacrifice some of their core beliefs.

For a government that prides itself on efficiency, the implementation of this budget will be everything but. This budget offers no long term vision for the future of Canada. It offers no indication of what the government wants for our country. Where is the leadership Canadians deserve to lead our country into the 21st century? It is not in the party sitting across from me today.

[The Budget, May 10th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, in case you find it in your heart to find some extra time, I will be splitting my time with the member for Brant.

When in opposition, most members of the House start their speeches by criticizing the government and in turn, members of the government will always begin their speeches by endlessly praising whatever piece of legislation is passing through the House at that given time.

As former chair of the finance committee, I will try to highlight and speak about what I heard from Canadians during last year's pre-budget consultation process and about how well the government's budget responds to the needs raised during that process.

As you perhaps are aware, each year the Standing Committee on Finance usually presents to the House of Commons a report on the prebudget consultation. Occasionally, this is not possible and this was the case for 2005. Given the political circumstances, the committee was unable to present a report on the prebudget consultation.

To put the pre-budget consultation process in perspective, the committee held over 100 hours of hearings and heard from almost 650 witnesses representing 420 groups, individuals or organizations. Name it and we heard it. I heard every single word spoken except for one session in Winnipeg which I did follow up on and read the minutes of the meeting afterwords.

The purpose of the hearings held by the finance committee is to provide Canadians with an opportunity to tell the government what they would like to see in the next budget. While it can be exhausting for members of the committee, the pre-budget consultation is a vital exercise because it represents what is best about our democracy. Canadians from coast to coast to coast consult with elected members of Parliament who sit on the finance committee which in turn helps shape a great vision of Canada, a Canada that addresses the different needs of all its people.

This is a vision that is not a simple one but a necessary one for Canada to reach its potential. I am sad to say that the big plans for Canada spoken about during the pre-budget consultations have been turned into small potatoes by the Conservative government.

During the pre-budget consultation sessions, Canadians asked for national, comprehensive and long term strategies to reduce income taxes and to make Canada more competitive. They did not ask for an election budget filled with superficial tax cuts at the expense of solid programs, but unfortunately, that is what they received.

We started the pre-budget consultation process by hearing from economic think tanks of all stripes, economists who sit on both sides of the political spectrum and who represent Canadians from all walks of life. Not one economist advocated a reduction in consumption taxes or the GST.

The GST is not levied on mortgage payments, rent, savings, food purchased at grocery stores, medical expenses, or many other essential items. For low-income families, a very small percentage of expenditures are subject to GST. Thus, Canadians with low incomes will benefit very little from the 1% reduction in GST.

These economists spoke about reducing income tax and instead the Conservatives raised the lowest income tax bracket from 15% to 15.5%. Did anyone suggest a reduction in income taxes, corporate or individual? Everyone did, even some of the more social groups who are realizing who is paying the bills in this country, the middle class.

We heard from cultural groups who stated over and over that in order to truly flourish, the Canada Council for the Arts should have its funding doubled from $5 per capita to $10 at a total cost of $300 million. Instead, the government has chosen to only add $50 million to the council, a sum that will not nearly be enough for Canada's arts sector. Increasing the council's budget to $300 million seems simple enough, but I suppose we must remember that the government's priorities lie elsewhere.

Culture is not about negotiating. It is about the council needing $300 million to preserve the Canadian arts and provide the opportunity for culture to grow and be part of the Canadian vision. It is not about simply throwing $50 million at the cultural world and hoping it will go away.

The committee also heard from student groups who asked that the federal government lighten their debt loads, so that they could graduate without being thousands of dollars in debt. There are students in this country who begin careers as much as $30,000 in debt, with post-graduate students easily having double the debt.

What our party proposed during the last election campaign was a visionary solution to offer a 50% rebate on tuition fees during the first year and then only in the last year of a student's university education would another 50% rebate kick in on tuition fees. This again is about a vision, a vision that speaks volumes.

How does the government help? It helps by offering a paltry $80 credit on books. While this $80 credit may be useful to students for a week, it will not nearly be enough to solve student debt troubles that we heard about during the pre-budget consultations.

Universities also appeared before the finance committee and asked for more research funding. The Liberals heard their calls and set aside $2.5 billion for university research. This is consistent with a vision for Canada to continue to be a world leader in research and innovative initiatives. The answer from the Conservative government is to provide a mere $200 million.

In an era when 70% of all new jobs being created will require more than a high school diploma, the Conservatives are once again demonstrating that they are oblivious to the need to invest in new innovative and productivity-enhancing technologies. How will their simple plan help them once they realize that Canada has lost its place in the world? Their simple plan will be what? I ask: Why is the government's vision for Canada so short-sighted?

During the pre-budget consultations, the finance committee heard from environmental groups who highlighted the imminent dangers of climate change. Climate change is a reality and the government has a responsibility to its people to safeguard their health and the health of future generations. Why then has the Conservatives gutted the $5 billion Liberal investment in environmental strategies in climate change in favour of $400 million of local programs that are, according to the budget document, still being developed by the minister?

Climate change is one of the biggest challenges faced by humanity and the Conservative government has responded to that challenge by ignoring it, and using that money to pay for its small potato tax credits. What is the government's plan for climate change? It is not even a plan.

The Conservatives say they want to increase public transit use, but their simple solution to increasing public transit use is to give public transit users a credit on their monthly bus passes that the transit companies will likely clawback through increased fares. How does this help people in rural Canada that the Conservatives claim to know so much about when in fact many small communities do not even offer public transit. I am not sure, but it does not sound like much of a climate change plan to me. It sounds like attractive politics over sound policies.

[Conservative Government, May 4th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am just trying to understand the logic of the Prime Minister and the leader of the Bloc. Since the budget was tabled, the separatists have been at each others' throats. In Quebec, André Boisclair said that the budget contained nothing new and that the agreement on the fiscal imbalance will be put off until kingdom come. But here, the leader of the Bloc said that the budget is very positive.

Can the Prime Minister tell us what he promised the Bloc leader to make him turn his back on René Lévesque's party?

[Conservative Government, May 4th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, under the previous government, the current Prime Minister stated that some of the legislation passed in this House was not relevant to most Canadians because it was passed with the support of the Bloc caucus.

Can the Prime Minister tell us whether, according to his own logic, his government is not relevant to most Canadians when he must rely on the support of the Bloc caucus to hold on to power during the vote of confidence on the budget?

[Broadcasting Act, April 27th, 2006]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-234, An Act to amend the Broadcasting Act (decisions and orders).

Mr. Speaker, this is the same private member's bill that I tabled in the last two Parliaments. The bill is quite simple.

This private member's bill would amend the Broadcasting Act to require that the decisions and orders of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission be made within six months after a public hearing.

Just last month the telecommunication policy review panel requested, under an executive summary on page 12, that the CRTC expedite any decision making policy.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Income Tax Act, November 28th, 2005]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-462, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act (travel expenses).

Mr. Speaker, how many times have we dreamed about travelling abroad? Instead of getting away to a foreign destination, why not spend time relaxing in Canada?

Today, I am pleased to introduce an act to amend the Income Tax Act to provide a maximum deduction of $1,000 from a taxpayer's income in respect of the expenses of purchasing tickets for the taxpayer or members of the taxpayer's family for travel by airplane, train or bus if the travel involves crossing at least three different provincial boundaries.

It seems that Canadians from British Columbia to Prince Edward Island can agree that we live in a beautiful country filled with natural and cosmopolitan wonders alike. However, why do so many Canadians think about travelling abroad instead of discovering their country first?

As chair of the finance committee, I had the opportunity to travel across Canada this fall during prebudget consultations. I wondered how many Canadians got to visit all corners of our vast country. The bill would promote national unity by allowing Canadians to learn more about their fellow citizens and could only have a positive effect on local economies with the additional money spent during these trips.

This private member's bill would be revenue neutral to the finance department.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Gabriel Filippi, November 25th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to draw hon. members' attention to an amazing exploit.

As the saying goes, where there is a will, there is a way.

This past spring, a Montrealer named Gabriel Filippi mounted an expedition to conquer the world's highest mountain peak, Mount Everest, a climb of over 8,850 metres.

Not only did he achieve this remarkable feat, but he earned the title of Angel Gabriel by coming to the assistance of a Scottish climber who was suffering from pulmonary edema.

You will understand that this is a very rare accomplishment and one that is noteworthy regardless of the circumstances. That is why we must mention it here in the House today and congratulate Mr. Filippi for his bravery and persistence.

Mr. Filippi is an example of what a Canadian can accomplish with great determination.

[Supply, November 22nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, maybe the hon. member was speaking to somebody from his riding, I am not sure. I understand he is from an urban riding. I am from an urban riding. We consulted with Canadians from coast to coast to coast, as we say. They have told us we are doing a good job, but let us open up the export markets so that we remain competitive against European countries and the Americans. That is it and that is all.