Pat Martin

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, No. 2, October 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I was glad to hear some of the tone and the content in the speech from my colleague from West Nova. He seems to have come to the realization that a country does not cut its way to prosperity. We do not build a great nation by cutting, hacking and slashing everything that we fought to build up in the post-war era, in that period when we were building this great country.

His own party went on a 13 year rampage, cutting and hacking and slashing everything we hold dear in terms of the institutions by which we define ourselves as Canadians. He seems to have had an awakening because he is being critical now of the current government for cutting too much.

Will he agree with me on one fundamental principle? Has his political thinking matured enough in this way? Does he agree that it was fundamentally wrong for his party to allow offshore tax havens to flourish and prosper all through these years, and for Canadian businesses to avoid paying their fair share of taxes by setting up dummy paper companies in Barbados and losing all that tax revenue? Has he come to our same conclusion that it was fundamentally wrong of his government and that this 2006 budget should have plugged those outrageous tax loopholes, brought those tax fugitives back within our revenue regime, and then we would have those resources to build a great nation with?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, No. 2, October 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Hamilton for pointing out these things. In his introduction the member said that people who study these things will recognize the fact that the previous Liberal government was the most right-wing government in Canadian history. The most notable thing about the Liberals was their cutting, hacking and slashing, even during periods of record budgetary surpluses, to the point where it was not just irresponsible, it was cruel. The Liberals caused a sum total of misery around this country the likes of which should go down in the history books and never be forgotten. We must remind ourselves to be vigilant because people like that will come along from time to time and do such damage to our social safety nets that it will take years to even get back to where we started.

My colleague from West Nova is too good an MP to really believe the speaking notes he was handed when he walked in here today which told him to attack the NDP because an election is coming.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, No. 2, October 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, could my colleague speak a little more about something I learned from his speech? That is the government seems hell-bent and determined to get oil and gas resources out of the ground as fast as humanly possible and give it away to foreign ownership for which we will only reap a minor benefit while we are giving away a legacy, our children's natural resources. Their birthright is flying out of our country at record speed and we are barely getting any royalties or revenues from it. Is that good business?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, No. 2, October 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I will not take the bait. I will not even bother correcting my colleague. It was the people of Canada who threw out the Liberal government, not the New Democratic Party. I will simply go to a question of some substance.

Would the member agree that it is morally and ethically reprehensible to allow Canadian companies to set up offshore tax havens to avoid, through wholesale tax avoidance, paying their fair share of taxes in this country?

In the context of this budget, why did his party and his government put up with this year after year, where tax fugitives can set up dummy companies in Barbados to avoid paying their fair share of taxes in Canada? By what pretzel logic did his party think that was good for ordinary Canadians or low income Canadians who may have been able to redistribute that $7 billion into meaningful programs? Could it be that it was his own prime minister that was one of the main beneficiaries of this outrageous, sleazy tax loophole of offshore tax havens? Why did his government tolerate that? Why did it not fix it when it had the chance?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, No. 2, October 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I represent the riding of Winnipeg Centre, which was formerly represented by Stanley Knowles, a man who many concede to be the architect and the father of our old age security system and guaranteed income system.

I can only say that, given what my colleague has told us today and what my own research shows, Stanley Knowles must be doing flip-flops in his grave to take note that after nine years of budgetary surpluses and now, after a huge budgetary surplus by the present government, old age pensioners, especially low income old age pensioners, will actually get a cut in pay.

Has my colleague come across the same research that I have found? I will read from Revenue Canada's basic personal exemption page. It says that the basic personal amount deduction will be reduced on July 1, 2006, from $9,039 to $8,639. That is not a reduction in taxes or a tax cut. That is reducing the basic personal exemption, which means that those seniors will be paying taxes on more of their meagre incomes at a rate of 15.25%, which is also a tax increase. It used to be 15% flat and now it is 15.25%. That tells me that seniors will be paying $61 a year more in taxes than they were before.

Does my colleague concur with this? Could he also explain how, in all good conscience, low income pensioners should actually get a cut in pay in an era of record surpluses?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, No. 2, October 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the point I would like to make is that minority Parliaments usually offer good opportunities for opposition parties in that we actually have the balance of power. In fact, we could have effected meaningful change to the 2006 budget if the Bloc Québécois had not walked outside. The leader of the Bloc Québécois walked out of the chamber five minutes after the budget was tabled and said, “I like it, we will take it, it sounds good”. At that very moment all negotiations ceased. There was no longer any opportunity for the three opposition parties to collaborate and make this budget better because the ruling party had its partner. All it needed was one dance partner and it had it within five minutes.

My colleague is a trade unionist. He comes from a trade union background, as do I. Both of us have probably negotiated dozens of collective agreements in the trade union sector. Will he not accept that it is a bad negotiating strategy to give up in the first five minutes of a negotiation and say, “Whatever you offer, I will take it”, even though it is completely deficient in this area, that area and the other area, all for a pig in a poke, all for a promise that fiscal equalization will in fact be addressed? My mind reels at the lost opportunities.

I will ask the member about one specific example. He knows full well, as he and I have harped on this in the past, that the government loses $7 billion a year to tax havens, tax motivated expatriation, sleazy, tax cheating loopholes. Tax fugitives from Canada hide their assets offshore so they can avoid paying taxes in Canada. It is an atrocious thing.

In this budget the finance minister could have terminated or torn up the remaining tax treaty in this country and put $7 billion of revenue back in the coffers of Canada that he could have perhaps used to deal with the fiscal imbalance, but, no. We lost the opportunity to even raise that as an amendment. We could have amended this budget to make it a damn good budget written by the opposition parties and the Bloc decided to sell us out by walking out the door and accepting it at the very first opportunity.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, No. 2, October 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I want to focus on one thing my colleague raised. That is the low income seniors' pensions. My mathematics show that the pension cheques for low income seniors for this six month period are lower. They actually got a cut in pay due to the basic personal exemption being lowered.

The government actually lowered the basic personal exemption for seniors, from $9,200 to $8,600, I think, which means that those seniors are paying taxes on more of their earnings. Therefore, I have people walking into my office with their pension cheques from August to September and those cheques are $10 a month lower.

Has the member noticed similar trends in that the first thing the Conservative government did with its first budget was to give low income seniors a cut in pay?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, No. 2, October 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, maybe my colleague from the Tories can help me to understand part of the thought process that went into the making of the budget. A lot of us were shocked at the $1 billion worth of cutbacks that were announced recently. Yet when the Conservative Party introduced the budget, there was no mention of the lost revenue associated with offshore tax havens.

How can the Conservatives justify the cutting, hacking and slashing of $1 billion out of relatively small increments from many important little programs and turn a blind eye or have wilful blindness to the fact that tax fugitives are denying the federal government up to $7 billion per year of lost tax revenue in offshore tax havens, such as Barbados?

I know the previous government tore up 11 tax treaties for different countries in which people could hide their money. They call it tax motivated expatriation. We call it sleazy, tax cheating loopholes. It left only one, the very tax haven where the former prime minister has his dummy companies and enjoys this tax haven status.

Why would the Conservative Party not close the door on this outrageous and egregious violation of principles and ethics called offshore tax havens?

[Canadian Wheat Board Act, October 24th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for that generous permission, I appreciate it.

The NDP opposes Bill C-300, although I appreciate the right of my colleague from Battlefords—Lloydminster to bring this idea forward. We oppose this with every thread of our being and I am critical that the Conservative Party seems to be obsessed with dismantling the Canadian Wheat Board. It is not even a healthy thing because there is no business case to make as to why we should dismantle the Canadian Wheat Board.

I have said before that I believe it is pure ideological madness to dismantle the Canadian Wheat Board and I cannot say how critical I am of it.

Those of us who grew up on the Prairies remember the bad old days of the robber barons who would exploit farmers. Most of the mansions in Winnipeg were built by these very grain robber barons. We should also remember, if we read our history, the voluntary wheat board that was introduced in 1935 failed in a catastrophic bankruptcy, one of the largest bankruptcies in Canadian history, because it is simple.

If the initial offering price is higher than the market, the entity would get all the deliveries but the grain would have to be sold at a loss. If the initial offering is lower than the market, there will be no deliveries. It simply cannot work and Bill C-300 stripped down to its most fundamental basics means an end to the single desk marketing mandate of the Canadian Wheat Board and without the prerequisite vote. The legislation guarantees a plebiscite of Canadian farmers before any such fundamental changes are made. This bill seeks to undermine and usurp that democratic right.

The Conservative government is trying to do an end run on democratic process by first denying farmers the right to vote, as is their statutory right, and second, by this gag order prohibiting the Wheat Board from even defending itself.

I would like to read parts of a press release from the National Citizens' Coalition of 1998 on this very issue because at that time the Liberal government tried to impose a gag order on the National Citizens' Coalition over the Canadian Wheat Board.

After stating it was going to run the ads anyway, here is what the current Prime Minister, then the chair of the National Citizens' Coalition, had to say:

The NCC position is that such gag laws are unconstitutional and unenforceable. We intend to freely express our political opinions using our own resources--

In other words, he was advocating civil disobedience. He also said:

--our ads will point out that the agriculture minister--

--the current member for Wascana--

--seems to get his definition of democracy from Suharto and Castro.

I would argue that the current Prime Minister gets his ideas from Mussolini and Franco because it is absolutely fascist to deny the democratic right of farmers to vote and it is Fascist to use statutory strength and ability to silence opponents, and not even allow them to represent their own point of view.

The minister of agriculture from Manitoba will be coming before the agriculture committee tomorrow to announce that if the Government of Canada denies farmers the right to vote, Manitoba will conduct its own vote of prairie farmers on the future of the Canadian Wheat Board. That is democracy in action.

We will not take this lying down. We will not accept these draconian measures that would deny prairie farmers the right to their own self-determination as to how they market their grain, whether it is by a private member's bill or by the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and his heavy-handed jackboot approach to this issue.

We say without any fear of contradiction whatsoever that we will defend the Canadian Wheat Board, this great prairie institution, because all the empirical evidence shows that prairie farmers are better off by marketing their products through the Canadian Wheat Board and its strength is in its universality.

In unity there is strength. It is a popular saying where I come from and that is why prairie farmers banded together as a grassroots movement to build the Canadian Wheat Board to market their grain internationally, effectively, and at a higher rate of return than they could individually.

I am opposed to Bill C-300. It will not get our vote. I can speak for the NDP caucus. We will vote against Bill C-300 and we will stand up for the Canadian Wheat Board.

[Canadian Wheat Board Act, October 24th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask at the outset if it would be the will of the House to allow me to split my time with the member for Sault Ste. Marie?