Peter Stoffer

[Income Tax Act, June 22nd, 2011]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-250, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act (herbal remedies).

Mr. Speaker, when the Liberals were in power, they imposed a tax on herbal remedies that a lot of Canadians use.

My wife, for example, is allergic to sulfa-based drugs and cannot use 90% of prescriptions that are on the market. She uses herbal remedies, subscribed by a naturopath in some cases, and yet those particular herbal remedies are not available for tax exemption. If people without a medical plan have a prescription, they can claim it on their income tax return. However, if people use remedies like St. John's Wort, et cetera, they are not entitled to claim that as a medical expense.

I believe, as do many Canadians who use natural products to heal themselves, that they should be able to claim that as a tax deduction.

Again I am hoping that the Conservatives, who like tax cuts, will support this initiative in order to support the millions of Canadians who do not use sulfa-based drugs but use alternatives for their remedies.

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

[Excise Tax Act, June 22nd, 2011]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-249, An Act to amend the Excise Tax Act (no GST on the sale of home heating fuels).

Mr. Speaker, when Mr. Mulroney was the Conservative prime minister, he introduced a draconian tax that taxed people's home heating essentials, from wood to oil to gas to everything else.

As members know all too well, the cost of fuel is very expensive. Adding a tax on top of that is a tremendous burden on citizens in this country.

In Nova Scotia, the government removed the PST portion of the HST on home heating fuels. There is absolutely no reason why the government cannot give Canadians a break and remove the federal tax off home heating essentials in this country.

That is what this bill purports to do. We would like to give families and businesses across this country a break. We would hope that the Conservatives would understand the importance of this legislation and help us pass it as soon as possible.

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

[Income Tax Act, June 21st, 2011]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-245, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act (expenses incurred by caregivers).

Mr. Speaker, I could not help but notice that the Conservatives have adopted some aspects of this bill in their budget. However, in typical fashion, they never go far enough.

This bill would expand the expenses provided for caregivers to allow them to assist and give of their time when they care for someone who is under palliative care or rehabilitation services. It would also allow those individuals time off work to provide that care.

Imagine a child diagnosed with cancer and only six months to live. What are those parents prepared to do? They would take time off work and care for their child during the last six months. If they could not afford to take time off work, they may lose their job, so not only would they suffer the loss of a child but they would suffer financially as well.

We simply do not think people should go through that alone. This bill would provide assistance with some of the costs in caring for an individual in their final stages of life or in severe rehabilitation services.

We hope that this bill and all the others, which are some of the finest pieces of legislation ever to grace the floor of the House of Commons, get passed all bundled together very quickly.

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

[Assistance to Students Visiting Military Memorial Sites Abroad Act, June 21st, 2011]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-244, An Act to propose and examine a program giving financial assistance to high-school students visiting military memorial sites abroad.

Mr. Speaker, anybody who has had the opportunity to travel overseas and see the great sites of our heroes in France, Belgium, Hong Kong, and Italy knows what a moving experience that really is. Unfortunately, an awful lot of Canadians do not get that opportunity.

This bill would encourage the federal government to work with the provinces, territories, schools, municipalities, aboriginal groups, et cetera, so that in the lifetime of a student, he or she would get at least one opportunity to travel overseas to walk the grounds of those cemeteries where our war dead are buried.

We have 118,000 Canadians who have passed on fighting for our country, buried in over 70 countries around the world. What a great thing it would be for Canadians to have at least an opportunity during their school life to visit these gravesites.

I believe this could be encouraged by working co-operatively to find the resources. By working with other sectors, as well as the private sector, we could allow for every student, at least once in their student life, an opportunity to visit our heroes who had fallen in other countries.

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

[Survivor's Annual Allowance Act, June 21st, 2011]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-243, An Act to amend the Canadian Forces Superannuation Act, the Judges Act, the Members of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act, the Public Service Superannuation Act and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Superannuation Act.

Mr. Speaker, as a married man, you know this all too well. What happens, and pray it never happens, if a wife passes away when the husband is 54 years old? If the husband remarries at age 58, for example, lives for 20 years and then dies, the second spouse gets the pension.

However, if that husband had the audacity to remarry at age 60, live for 20 years and then pass away, his second spouse gets zero. That is called the gold digger clause. Some people call it the Anna Nicole clause. It has been around since the Boar War. The British government was worried about young women marrying older veterans for their pensions.

I have a lot of Camp Hill veterans that say that if young girls want to marry them, they have time, so those young girls should come on over and marry them.

The reality is that it should not be up to the government to tell people whom they remarry and when. The last surviving spouse should be entitled to the pension. We should not put it at age 60. It is discriminatory. It needs to change. This is something that affects all federal public servants, including ourselves, throughout the entire country.

We would hope that all members of Parliament, even if it is for self-respect, will get this done. When we lose a loved one, it is a terrible day, but if we have the good fortune to love again and remarry and live out our final years before we pass away, our second spouse should not be abandoned.

We are hoping the bill will pass very quickly to get rid of the marriage after 60 act, which is what the bill hopes to do.

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

[Canadian Forces Superannuation Act, June 21st, 2011]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-242, An Act to amend the Canadian Forces Superannuation Act and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Superannuation Act (increase of allowance for survivors and children).

Mr. Speaker, this comes right out of the Royal Canadian Legion playbook, to be completely frank, and all the veterans organizations.

When a veteran or RCMP member dies, his or her spouse gets 50% of his or her pension. I wonder if everybody in this room or average Canadians could live on 50% of their salary tomorrow.

My bill asks for an increase to survivor benefits according to the Royal Canadian Legion mandate and other veterans organizations. We would hope to get very speedy passage on this one because the survivors who looked after our heroes are the ones who now need looking after. They require a little bit more income near the retirement stage of their lives or that of their children.

We are hoping the bill will be passed very quickly.

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

[Canadian Bill of Rights, June 21st, 2011]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-241, An Act to amend the Canadian Bill of Rights (right to housing).

Mr. Speaker, all of us know what it is like to have a home, to have shelter where we feel safe and secure and where our families and our neighbours are safe and secure. Can anyone imagine not having a home?

We were just in Vancouver where we were told that on any given day there are 50,000 people on the streets. In Canada, right across the country, there could be well over 100,000 people without shelter. Shelter in this country should be a constitutional right. Every Canadian citizen should have access to shelter, be it an apartment, a condo, a house or whatever, but they should have a right to safe, affordable and secure housing.

We would like to amend the Constitution by ensuring that this definitely becomes a constitutional right of all Canadian citizens.

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

[Income Tax Act, June 21st, 2011]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-240, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act (services to a charity or public authority)

Mr. Speaker, when people make a donation of some kind to a charity, they get a taxable receipt. However, if they provide services to that charity it is not necessarily tax deductible.

What I am trying to do in this bill is to say that if people provide various services in kind for a charitable organization then the services that they render should be tax deductible. For example, people may lend their car to a Lion's Club so that its members can drive a person to a medical appointment. That vehicle saves them a lot of time, money and effort and the owners should be able to deduct some of those services that they have rendered in kind for tax deductible purposes. That would encourage more people in the future to give not only their cash but also their time.

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

[Criminal Code, June 21st, 2011]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-239, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (peace officers)

Mr. Speaker, I hope the justice minister is aware of this particular one because one of the things that offends me greatly is the lack of respect for our police officers and men and women in uniform.

What this particular bill would do is that when someone commits a crime of murder against one of our peace officers, he or she should be held to the maximum extent that the law requires, which is 25 years without a chance of parole. We may even want to think about making it longer because when one takes the life of a peace officer whose duty is to protect us and our families, that is something that I, personally, and I know that many members of Parliament from all sides, simply cannot accept.

I am hoping that the justice minister will actually take this bill and maybe make it a government bill in order to move it forward to ensure that our peace officers get the respect that they deserve.

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

[Income Tax Act, June 21st, 2011]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-238, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act (in-home care of relatives)

Mr. Speaker, this bill is one I have been introducing now since 1997 when one of my constituents actually had to purchase an awful lot of equipment for his dying wife. He was told to institutionalize her but he said, "No. If she is going to die she is going to stay in her own home”. The doctor told him the various things that he would require, which were an additional tub, oxygen measures, different types of food, et cetera. When he tried to claim those on his taxes, many of those items were not tax deductible.

If he had put her as a ward of the state, the cost to the government would have been a tremendous amount of money. He could not understand why he could not claim some of these things to provide care for his wife.

This bill would remedy that. If people have a dying relative in their home, they should be able to claim what is required as a tax deduction to prevent the person from becoming institutionalized.

This would allow people who are in the dying phases of their lives to at least die in their own homes with a sense of dignity. It would also allow caregivers to deduct the equipment and purchases that they require in order to make a dying person's life more comfortable at the end.

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