Madam Speaker, I have taken the time to listen to the debate, to hear what members were saying that were substantive to the motion before us. Ostensibly, the motion basically calls for a delay in rolling back the 2011 rate to the 2010 rate.
When the government introduced its five year program for tax cuts for large corporations, the circumstances in Canada were very good. The government inherited a large surplus from the previous Liberal government, $13 billion plus, something to work with. It did not take very long until we entered into a recession before the global crisis. The Conservatives squandered the $13 billion and put us in deficit. Where are we today? Today, we are looking at a deficit of $56 billion.
Canadians understand that. It started with a bit of money in the bank on an annual basis and, all of a sudden, we are in a situation where not only are we looking at a $56 billion debt but we have accumulated another $200 billion of national debt.
The circumstances have changed. The new government squandered the surplus and undertook a bunch of activities which tended to indicate to most observers that it was part of the problem and not the solution. Think of the litany of things that happened, whether it be squandering money on the G8-G20 photo ops or $1 million for screens. When members give speeches, they have to have expensive screens. I could go through the list.
The reality is that the world and Canada changed when the global crisis occurred. The government was in a hole before it occurred and since then it says it is going to move forward with everything it decided to do notwithstanding the significant changes in the economic climate in Canada. Is that fiscally responsible? Is it the right thing to do?
Earlier in a question I cited a quote I like very much, which is that the measure of success is not an economic measure but, rather, a measure of the health and well-being of the people. To calculate the success of a country, one has to look at what is happening with the people.
There is no disagreement in this place. A lot of people lost their jobs. We have an aging society and know the demographic. Think of how many people are over 55 years of age, and who will find it very difficult to get back into full-time employment at the same level of income they once enjoyed. It is going to be very difficult for many people. We have all seen them in our offices and received the letters asking us to please help them as people do not want to hire older folks. The level of personal debt is $1.50 for every $1 of income earned. It is a terrible burden and families are hurting.
We have a situation where the government can say the circumstances have now changed and it needs to assess what is in the best interests of the people. If it is going to assess the best interests of the people, it has to ask them what the government can do to help.
My mom is in a seniors home with pre-Alzheimer's. She is never going back to her own home and I know how long it is going to take to deal with this. It could be tomorrow or many years from now.
I forgot to mention that I will be splitting my time with the member for Westmount—Ville-Marie.
I could spend a lot of time talking about that, but the idea is for a reassessment. The government put the rates down from 28% to 21% and over the next couple of years it is going to go down to 15%. We know about economic lags and that there has been enough stimulus with a broad range of programs, not just tax cuts so far but other stimuli, to create jobs, promote economic growth, and all the things that people argue tax cuts do.
We have done that but anything that happens today will not affect 2011 or maybe even 2012. We will not see the payback. The one thing we do know is that we can include the tax revenue in there but we will need to include all the other expenses. We are losing right off the bat in this catch-up. We are hoping, so it is a matter of hope.
Governments have the responsibility to make those decisions and we respect their authority to make those decisions. However, the one thing we should not respect is a government that refuses to provide the information necessary to Canadians, to parliamentarians and to the facts underlining the decisions it makes to take certain actions, such as the income tax cuts.
The finance committee, of which I am a member, asked for the five years of corporate profits leading up to 2015. That is the period over which we can make that assessment. We need to have that information before we have the tax cut plan in place. We already had the information up to the history, so if we get the rest of the story, we can see the information based upon which the government made the decision to cut corporate tax rates for the full five years.
The world changed, though, and those numbers may have changed. The projections change. Even the finance minister has often said that if we go past two years we are really guessing. However, governments still need to make decisions.
What happened when the finance committee asked for the five year projections. The government came back and said that it could not given them because it was a cabinet confidence. Yesterday we told the House that we could not get the information and that we needed to have it. This is actually a breech of the privileges of the House, that being our powers to call for persons, papers or records.
The government has not responded yet. I think it will spend a lot of time thinking about how to respond because it is not the first time it has ignored persons, papers or records and our rights. It happened in the ethics committee with regard to the access to information abuses of the government that were admitted to. In fact, people have been fired and are under investigation. The then House leader wrote that the power to call for persons, papers or records had never been exercised to give a parliamentary majority access to such records and the internal communication of a parliamentary minority, which basically says that the three opposition parties are abusing their privileges by asking the government or ordering the government to produce papers.
I asked for an opinion from the law clerk and I will read it into the record because it is important in terms of the integrity and accountability of the government. When I asked for the law clerk's position on this, he said, “Whenever a House committee adopts a resolution to require the production of documents, the resolution is always adopted by a vote of the majority of the members present. Thus, it has always been the case that the parliamentary majority can, by resolution, demand access to records of the government or a minister. Secondly, resolution of the production of documents by a government or a minister is not made against the minority present at the vote on the resolution, but rather is directed at the government or the minister, as the case may be”.
He basically said that he could see no evidence of the assertion of the House leader that this in fact was a matter of cabinet confidence. It is nonsense.
If the government is not prepared to provide parliamentarians or the Parliamentary Budget Officer with all the information he needs to advise Parliament on these things, how can we make informed decisions? The government has, by its silence and its refusal to provide the data backing up the corporate tax cuts, basically said that it will not do it, that opposition parties cannot be trusted, so tough on them. That is obscene.