Murray Rankin

[Natural Resources, June 12th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, Conservatives keep promising they will not approve an unsafe pipeline like the northern gateway, but yesterday the minister was in New York, promising a room full of oil executives that he would push through an oil pipeline to the west coast.

Canadians are used to B.C. Conservatives talking out of both sides of their mouths, delays in New York, and full steam ahead when they are in Ottawa. However, the government has to make a real choice, and make a choice soon, between the narrow interests of oil lobbyists and the interests of British Columbians and the safety of our coastal communities. That choice is clear.

Will the government just reject the northern gateway pipeline proposal?

[Request for Emergency Debate, June 12th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, last night I gave you notice under Standing Order 52 (2) that I would be seeking leave today to propose an emergency debate on the implementation in Canada of FATCA, the U.S. foreign account tax compliance act. As you know, the Canada-U.S. enhanced tax information exchange agreement implementation act is contained in Bill C-31 and is currently before the House.

We read in The Globe and Mail this week that the United States Internal Revenue Service has announced that it is working on creating an amnesty program aimed specifically at U.S. residents who have resided abroad for many years. The new commissioner, John Koskinen, has stated: “We are well aware that there are many U.S. citizens who have resided abroad for many years, perhaps even the vast majority of their lives”, and promised more details of the amnesty program “the very near future”.

The IRS is now working on creating a path specifically for otherwise honest people who want to comply with their U.S. tax obligations without using the hammer of steep penalties designed primarily to punish U.S. residents trying to duck their taxes.

As you know, Mr. Speaker, the latest omnibus budget implementation bill is presently at third reading stage and will soon be submitted to a final vote. There will be no opportunity to debate this issue as an opposition day motion later this month. Mr. Speaker, I am urging you to give this your urgent attention.

[Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1, June 11th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to thank my hon. colleague from Skeena—Bulkley Valley for his excellent and passionate presentation today, exposing Bill C-31, the budget implementation act, for what it is.

In particular, I was here when the member asked a question of the parliamentary secretary concerning FATCA and the compliance cost of it. He pointed out that it was $100 million that one bank would have to spend in order to come into compliance with it. He mused about what the cost would be for the government to bring this into line, but he got absolutely no answer.

I wonder if the member could comment on what this lack of understanding says about the fiscal management style and relevance of the Conservatives.

[The Environment, June 11th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, there is no way to make the northern gateway pipeline project safe. Shipping raw bitumen through the pristine waters off B.C.'s coast means a spill would be catastrophic. We all know, and even Enbridge admits, that spills happen.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources claims projects will only proceed if they are safe. Well, this project is not safe. First nations know it, experts know it, British Columbians know it, so will the minister abide by her promise and just reject this grotesque proposal?

[Business of Supply, June 10th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Kings—Hants had it right, that this ought not to be simply a partisan exercise.

Nevertheless, we do need to acknowledge where we came from. Governments in this place were never NDP governments. They were Liberal and Conservative governments over succeeding decades and they pushed the debt down to the provinces. The NDP has never formed government, to my knowledge, in the House of Commons, so I do not know why provinces would be included in a motion trying to direct our federal government to take responsibility for income inequality.

[Business of Supply, June 10th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I can categorically say that I will not contribute to class warfare, and I really do not believe that citing articles from The Globe and Mail, Professor Robin Boadway of Queen's University, and other notable experts in this matter would suggest there is any kind of class warfare in making common sense observations about things that most of us see every day in our constituencies, the phenomenon of living from paycheque to paycheque.

Has Canada made progress with seniors' poverty? Absolutely, and I am proud of that, but we have so much more to do. I have not read the particular report from The New York Times that was referred to by my hon. friend the minister, but I have read the report on income inequality, which expressed great concern about income equality as recently as this year. The majority of the members who prepared that report were Conservatives. Obviously as Canadians, we know there is much to be done.

On pension splitting, what NDP members would do when we form government is a matter we can talk about after we have the opportunity to review the books and see the secret reports the government is withholding.

[Business of Supply, June 10th, 2014]

I feel as though I have a second wind, thanks to you, Mr. Speaker. I did think that I did not need to be speaking quite so quickly. Thank you for the reprieve, if I can call it that.

It really is quite shocking. If I may go on, today's National Post, that left-wing propaganda machine, had another study about this income splitting or—what is it to be called now?—family tax fairness initiative. It says:

It turns out that among the target group [for this policy]—families with minor-aged children—the biggest winners by far reside in Alberta, where the average annual tax saving would be $1,359....

Second is Saskatchewan, with $1,070.The article says:

These two provinces, which have a combined 42 federal ridings, sent 40 Conservative MPs to Ottawa in the 2011 election.

Whereas, at the other extreme:

Families in Prince Edward Island will get an average benefit at $488, followed by Quebec families with children, which would average $510 in benefits. Those two provinces were among the least productive for the Conservatives....

One wonders, and the National Post appears to be wondering, whether there might be politics behind this initiative.

I am sure that is not true. I am sure it is good public policy. However, it does raise some rather interesting questions.

If people do not have kids under 18, it is no good for them. If people are single parents, it does not matter to them. If people are divorced, it is irrelevant to them. If people happen to earn what their spouses earn, it does not matter to them.

We understand the finance department had a report that was done, which appears to have been the basis of the late Mr. Flaherty's antipathy and growing concern about this policy: the need for greater analysis, as he pointed out. We cannot get that report. We would love to see what the finance department says about it.

However, in the words of that Canadian Press article that I cited, “This policy is an inequality generating machine.”

Inequality is what we are here, in part, to talk about today, because it has been spiralling out of control. The top 1% of incomes are surging. The typical Canadian family has seen its income fall for the last 35 years. The gap is getting bigger and bigger. We all know that. We all feel that.

Billions of dollars have been cut to social transfers by successive Liberal and Conservative governments, which has made things worse by reducing access to social programs for low income families.

When we cut transfer payments to the provinces, they get deficits. They get debt, but the federal government gets to brag about a balanced budget. The province passes it on to aboriginal governments and to municipal governments. To some degree, they can have that kind of debt, that kind of imbalance. They cannot run deficits.

So, this trickle-down theory is of great concern, certainly in British Columbia, where I hear about it all the time.

Robin Boadway is the David Chadwick Smith Chair in Economics at Queen's University. He was an excellent witness at the finance committee, where we studied income inequality. That report has been alluded to earlier today. He talked of the significant changes in the tax system, such as changes in the tax treatment of capital income, changes in the structure of labour markets and unemployment, and the effect of changes, as I just said, in federal-provincial transfers on provincial social protection programs. He says:

All of these have reduced the automatic responsiveness of the tax transfer system to income shocks, and this has been particularly noticeable at the top and bottom of the income distribution.

His analysis concludes that government is fundamentally responsible for the surge in income inequality.

To wrap up, I strongly speak in support of a motion that would get the government to do the right thing and take that sober second look that W.A.C. Bennett talked about, about a policy for income splitting promised in the heat of an election campaign. It does little good for so many of us and only makes it worse for so many. We must take more specific and directed measures at income inequality. I urge the government to please get on board.

[Business of Supply, June 10th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today and speak, in the strongest possible terms, in support of the motion by my colleague, the hon. member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley. It is a twofold motion; it would do two things. It would first signal the drastic increase in inequality in our country, and second, more specifically, it would address the Conservatives' proposed policy of income splitting. I would like to address both of those in the short time available to me.

I am pleased to learn today that the Liberal Party is going to be in support of this initiative. The Conservatives are obviously deeply divided on this. Today we got an Orwellian rebranding of the income splitting proposal. I understand we are now to term it the “family tax fairness initiative”, which has a very nice ring to it.

Let me be personal for just a moment. When I was running for election a year and a half ago to represent the people of Victoria, I ran into a retired schoolteacher on a doorstep in Oak Bay. She asked, “Do you feel it?” I asked what. She asked if I felt how Canada is changing; if I felt how we are no longer glued together as a community as we were; if I felt the increasing gap between the rich and poor. She asked if that is the kind of community we want our children to grow up in. I said no. That is one of the reasons I am so proudly speaking in support of my colleague.

This retired schoolteacher got it right. We can literally feel the change, and I do not want my kids to grow up in that kind of country. I want the kind of country I benefited from when I grew up in a lower-middle-class family where all opportunities were available, rather than creating a permanent underclass of the poor and a few very rich people. That is the kind of economy I fear we are going to experience in the future.

I am not just saying that from a fearmongering perspective. On April 3, a Globe and Mail headline was “Canada’s 86 wealthiest have as much as the 11.4 million poorest”. That is shocking. It is shocking that 0.002% of the total population is getting richer and now has as much wealth accumulated as 11.4 million Canadians. The top 20% have half the income, but what is more telling is that the top 20% now have 70% of the wealth of our country. Most Canadians understand that the current government has abandoned the middle class and the poor, with little job security and high debt, and so many of our fellow citizens are living paycheque to paycheque.

Statistics Canada also showed wealth gravitating to the top. While median income rose almost 80% since 1999 to $243,800 per family unit, the top 40% possessed 88.9% of total net worth, leaving the bottom 60% with a mere 11.1% of the pie. The poorest 20% of family units had more debts than assets.

The author of a report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives concludes, “If one Canadian makes $100,000 a year selling a company (or shares) while another makes $100,000 a year working at a job, the worker will pay twice the tax of the business seller.” We are in desperate need of Carter 2 in this country for a review of our tax system, which is only contributing to this increasing inequity, which that schoolteacher told me she felt so tangibly and which we all know is going on around us.

However, what about the new income splitting proposal, which has so divided the Conservatives, which is now to be called the “family tax fairness project”. It amounts to a tax break for the most wealthy. It would cost the federal government $3 billion a year without providing benefits to a staggering 86% of our families. My colleague from Skeena—Bulkley Valley got it right when he said that the Conservatives are clinging to a bad idea due to “hubris and pride”, as he termed it. I just wish they would do what the famous former premier of British Columbia, W.A.C. Bennett, said: take a sober second look.

[Business of Supply, June 10th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. friend for leading off this very important, indeed historic, debate, putting the issue of income splitting in the broader context of the growing inequality in our country.

I would like to ask my colleague for his comments on a quote from the late finance minister, our friend, Mr. Flaherty. On February 12, he was quoted in The Globe and Mail. He said:

You know, it’s an interesting idea. I’m just one voice. It benefits some parts of the Canadian population a lot and other parts of the Canadian population virtually not at all. And I’d like to think I’m analytical as finance minister, so when we discuss it eventually in cabinet and caucus I will present my analysis to my colleagues.

Why does my colleague expect the former finance minister would have indicated that this policy would not assist some part of the population at all and, as an analysis, was not well founded?

[The Environment, June 9th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, hundreds of scientists are calling on the Conservative government to reject the joint review panel report on gateway. First nation groups across the province are saying that more consultations are required. Most British Columbians, two-thirds, and most municipalities oppose this project. Now we learn the Conservatives do not even have a response plan for an oil spill.

Obviously, this project must be rejected. What more will it take for the Conservatives to finally do the right thing?