Mike Wallace

[Prebudget Consultations, February 7th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member spoke about students quite a bit. He highlighted that there are two recommendations in the report we all agreed on, that we provide need and merit based support for students at post-secondary institutions and that the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation look for continued support.

However, I looked in the Liberal supplementary report and in its four pages there is absolutely no discussion of students or young people. There is no discussion about the four or five items that he did not like and which he highlighted at the end of his speech.

The member must be awfully disappointed in the finance people in the Liberal caucus who did not mention in this report any of the areas that he talked about in his speech today.

Why did the member's own caucus not deal with the issues that he brought up today?

[Prebudget Consultations, February 7th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I want to get to the issue of the GST because my colleague just talked about the reductions that we have made to the GST.

There is one thing I am not sure made it on the list. Right now when people buy a new home, the first section of it does not attract GST but after $350,000 the GST starts to be attracted and then after a certain level it is full GST. Since that has not changed due to inflation in 12 or 13 years, I recommended that we move that amount up. The cost of housing for young families and families moving into their second homes has increased considerably and the thresholds to help people get into their homes need to change. Let us face it. Those GST costs get passed directly to the consumer. The builders do not pay them in the end.

My question for my colleague is this. Do you think that moving the thresholds, when the GST is attracted to new housing, would be of assistance to the residents in your riding?

[Prebudget Consultations, February 7th, 2008]

It does.

[Prebudget Consultations, February 7th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, while I thank the hon. member for her intervention today in the discussion on the prebudget consultations that the finance committee has put together, obviously the member and I disagree on a number of areas. I have two questions for my colleague.

First, that member and the previous NDP speaker claimed that some of these corporate entities are getting these major tax cuts, but the corporate tax cuts are across the board for all corporations, for all job creating companies. Why is the member so opposed to companies that create jobs for ordinary people?

Second, is there ever a program not meeting its objectives that the New Democrats would allow to end? Or is every program meeting its objectives? Do those members have any sense of program evaluation? What would they like to do in that area? If the budget comes forward with some concepts on where we should reallocate money, would those members be in favour of that? Is there any program, under any sun, that they disagree with?

[Prebudget Consultations, February 7th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the discussion from the colleague from the New Democratic Party who was actively involved in the consultation we had.

I was reading the supplementary piece that the New Democrats added to the consultation document that we are dealing with today. In it the NDP talks about bridging the infrastructure gap, which I do not disagree with. It talks about dealing with housing, health care, education and public transit. This government has put $33 billion into the infrastructure program over the next seven years.

As I said to his colleague earlier today, we do not provide housing. We provide funds to the provinces to actually implement housing. It is well over a billion dollars in a trust fund with the provinces.

In the report the NDP does not mention how much more money the NDP was going to give and where it was going to get that money from. Could the member from the New Democratic Party highlight for us in the House and for Canadians where that money is coming from and how much more money is it putting into that program?

[Prebudget Consultations, February 7th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his presentation today and his work on the finance committee. I think he is very clear and accurate today that a lot of the issues that the Bloc brought forward during the committee are in the report. We did not agree with all of them, but I think they added quite a bit of value to the discussion.

I want to clarify one thing before I ask my question. In budget 2006 we talked about housing. Our party provided $1.4 billion and invested in an affordable housing trust, and $270 million in the homelessness partnering strategy. The government put a billion dollars in a partnership agreement with the provinces and the municipalities. So there is money being spent on the homelessness and housing issue. It is up to the provinces and the municipalities to actually implement it and to spend that cash. The federal government has made it available.

The government has done other things that we agreed on in terms of the workers income tax benefit. We are looking at trying to improve on that. There have been improvements for seniors and the capital cost allowance.

The member talked about the surplus. He said that we should spend all of it and too heck with the debt in a sense. Really, is there a surplus if you have a debt? The surplus is a cash surplus in a year. I do not know what the number is off the top of my head, but we have a $450 billion debt. This is a mortgage that my children and your children, my grandchildren and their grandchildren will be paying. There is no such true thing as a surplus, when you have a huge debt.

What is the Bloc's position on debt? Why are you so opposed to us paying down--

[Prebudget Consultations, February 7th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I want to remind the member for Markham—Unionville that on January 23, 2006, the Canadian public demonstrated that the previous government was completely incompetent and replaced it. That is where the real incompetence lies.

The member talked about tax cuts and that he sort of likes them but does not like them. They were his but we did them and now he does not like them. He did not make much sense.

We promised to reduce the GST by two points. That is something we committed to in the election and we actually did it. I know the previous government had promised back in the early 1990s that it was going to get rid of the GST completely and of course it failed at doing that, as it failed at most things that it had committed to do but never ever accomplished.

My question is twofold. First, he talked about what he calls the boutique tax cuts. Would he remove them all or keep them all if he had the opportunity to do so?

Second, he talked about spending. I am not going to get into the numbers. I have numbers which show that under the Liberals spending rose 8.2% annually and in 2004-05 spending growth was increasing by 14.4%. We have implemented an expenditure management system which will report in this budget on 17 different departments. Programs that do not meet our objectives we are going to ask to be removed. Will the Liberal Party be supporting the programs that do not meet their objectives?

If we bring them forward as needing to be replaced in terms of the cash flow they absorb, will his party be supporting the expenditure management system that we have implemented to make sure that the programs are value for taxpayers' dollars and meet the objectives that were set out? Our very first opportunity to do that will be during the budget of 2008. Will he be supporting it and will he be getting rid of those boutique taxes?

[Prebudget Consultations, February 7th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, it is a very timely question about the housing issue. Housing advocates did come to see us. We have put money into public housing. We are not the providers of public housing as a federal government. That is clear. The money goes to the provinces and they, through their agencies, work on public housing.

Let us get the facts laid out today. Our government will invest more in affordable housing this year than any federal government in history. In Ontario alone, we have committed more than $1 billion to build and renovate affordable housing. We recognize the issue. We are investing in the issue. We are making a difference in the issue.

If the hon. member wants to ensure that his British Columbia government spends the money it gets from the federal coffers for housing, I challenge him to take up that responsibility.

[Prebudget Consultations, February 7th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question from my colleague from the Bloc, who was an active member of the committee last year. We sort of miss the member from the Bloc getting his picture taken and being very excited about his travels with the finance committee across this country. He was a very proud Canadian at the time.

The issue the Bloc member brought up was whether the money basically should only go to Quebec, or that at the end of the day, that is what the Bloc would like. Of the $1 billion community reinvestment fund that we just put forward through the House and which now is getting through the Senate, hopefully, that money is being spent across the country. We make no apologies for that.

The issues in terms of manufacturing and some communities that are suffering due to the economic issues they are facing is not an issue just in certain parts of this country. It is happening across the country. To be fair to all parts of the country, to all Canadians and to all communities, we believe that the $1 billion community trust fund that we have set out should be shared equally by all Canadians because all Canadians are paying for that fund.

That money will be disbursed to the provinces that have those issues. They will gear the money to the locations that are suffering most, whether it is in manufacturing or forestry, but it is not just a Quebec issue. It is a Canadian issue and that is why our $1 billion dollar trust fund is designed to help all Canadians.

[Prebudget Consultations, February 7th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure this morning to address the House on the prebudget consultations that have taken place.

I want to spend a few minutes giving a bit of an overview for the Canadian public on the actual process. I will talk a little about the report, some of its recommendations and what that means to Burlington. I will wrap up with where I think we are making progress as a government from a financial point of view and where we can continue to bring value for money to Canadian taxpayers.

First, for those who do not know, the budget process has a number of facets to it. As members of the finance committee, we have the opportunity to meet Canadians from across the country to talk about what they would like to see in future budgets. This process started back in the summertime with a plan to have a more focused approach to how we deal with prebudget consultation.

We had a theme, which was what people would do to the tax system in this country to ensure our prosperity in the future. That is the theme which we asked people to present on to us. Not everybody followed that theme. Others decided to come and see us, as they have done in the past, to talk about spending they wanted for their own particular needs. However, the vast majority of presenters came to see us with that theme in mind and did an excellent job in presenting their views of how the country's tax system could be improved to help improve both our prosperity as a people and our position in the world.

We did engage the public. Hundreds of people came to see us across the country and hundreds of people came to Ottawa to talk to us about their goals and their desires for the 2008 budget.

As members of the committee, we were able to ask questions of those individuals. We saw submissions from every single group that came to see us. For those whom we were not able to satisfy by giving them their few minutes in front of us so that we could get answers to questions, we asked them to make a written submission to us. We all received copies so that all were able to read those submissions.

As members of the finance committee, we worked together with colleagues from other parties in discussing the issues and coming up with what we think is the right direction to follow.

In addition, and everybody in this House has this opportunity, individual groups and organizations came to see me as a regular member of Parliament to talk about what is important to them and what could be incorporated into a budget to help their causes and this country. As an individual member of Parliament, I had numerous people come to see me, numerous delegations, to talk about their views on how we should proceed.

The theme in terms of the tax system was overtaken a bit by the issue of the rising dollar. As the dollar was rising in the fall, we had a specific set of meetings about that, its effect on our economy and what the Government of Canada could do in that arena. I think they were very effective meetings. We had some excellent presentations on what we as a government can and cannot do in terms of interference. We heard from a variety of presenters, including representatives from the Bank of Canada.

The areas that we talked about were very wide-ranging. We talked about personal taxes, the tax rates that individuals pay. We talked about what we could do for the unemployed. We talked about what we could do for seniors.

Education was a theme that people came to see us about, both those who provide education from the university side of things and those who are recipients of education in the post-secondary area, including a number of student groups.

We talked about corporate taxes and what we could for corporate taxes. We talked about what we could do in terms of research and assistance for organizations that are trying to be the best they can be, to be leading edge in terms of their development and their research and product development.

We also talked about the capital cost allowance and where it should go, and about the role of manufacturing, as in the report that was supported by this House and by all parties in this House at committee.

We talked about housing and infrastructure and the federal government's involvement in infrastructure and where we should be going with that.

We also had a fairly extensive discussion on the role of charities and volunteering and giving in this country. It was very interesting. Just so members know, we had numerous presenters tell us that the change made by the finance minister to allow for stocks and bonds to be used for charity donations made a significant impact on the work that those charities are able to do. They were able to gather more money, a tremendous amount, and particularly in the case of the health care sector for our hospitals.

Our report is broken down into three areas. There is an introduction on the overall economics of what is happening in this country. There is a very good review of the testimony we heard in a summary of the individuals and organizations appearing before the committee to talk about what their issues were, how they would address those issues, what their goals and expectations were or what suggestions they had for the committee.

There is a section on recommendations. To be fair, there was to be section on what we in the committee believe should happen, but I thought it would be more appropriate to deal with what we heard and as a committee deal with the recommendations directly.

To be frank, I believe there were about 52 recommendations that came brought forward from the different parties and the organizations we heard from. They were condensed into this report and discussed by committee. In actual fact, there was quite a bit of unanimity and support from at least the majority of the parties on a number of issues. I would say that on probably 30 of the 52 issues, committee members agreed, and that went into the report. That is a significant amount.

Then it was my suggestion that in addition to the main body of the report every party have a report of the supplementary issues they would like dealt with. They are not minority reports. We often hear from opposition members that we are here to make this place work, and in this particular case I think having supplementary reports instead of minority reports is more appropriate when it comes to our prebudget consultation. We all have different approaches to the same problem. All members were able to put them forward in this report.

The report contains a number of recommendations. To be frank with members and the public, not every member in every caucus agreed. The Conservative members did not always agree. The Liberal members did not always agree. The discussion was very good and we have put a number of items forward.

At this time, I would like to highlight a couple of items that I was very keen on putting forward and that made it into the report. There are two things that I will talk about up front.

There is a discussion of the LEED program, the leadership in energy and environmental design program, for green federal buildings. I know that it does not sound like much, but I think it is important. We heard from some delegations about this program. They said that it is the role of the federal government to make sure that we do what we can for the environment in our own federal buildings. We heard that there has to be a program which will help to make sure that when new buildings are developed or redeveloped there is the ability to make them as environmentally sensitive as possible. This is a start. I look forward to seeing if the finance minister heeds our advice.

The other area I put forward was a children's health initiative. I think there is some opportunity in this country to focus on research on children's health. I put forward as one of my recommendations, which also made the report, the possibility of a fund designated for children's health. Canada is a world leader in the field of research in juvenile diabetes and it is an area that I think Canada should be pursuing.

The report contains a number of recommendations that are important to Burlington, such as improved charity donation review, post-secondary education funding for those furthering their education, and an improvement in the GIS system, where we are recommending that people should be able to earn more money before the clawback starts. There also are other recommendations.

In the 30 seconds I have left, I want to comment on one other item. The other side of spending is expenditure control. I want to be clear for the House and the people of Canada that in 2006 with Advantage Canada we started to implement the expenditure management system. Finally we are looking at programs in a four year cycle. If they are meeting their objectives, great, but if they are not, we need to review whether we are going to continue to fund them.

We are using taxpayers' money. We have to make sure that we are getting value for the dollars being spent. If we are not, we must have the ability to move those moneys to a different, more productive program or to a different program altogether. We need to have the courage to make--