Madam Speaker, it is my turn to speak to Bill C-62, An Act to amend the Excise Tax Act. This bill is the culmination of an operation that the Conservatives began four years ago that has brought about the largest shift in Canadian history of taxes from the corporate sector on to the backs of ordinary hard-working Canadians. That is what the Liberals are supporting. That is what this bill is about.
To understand the scam, it has often been said that for a swindle to work, it requires two dishonest people, the person who is putting the scam together and a dishonest person on the other side who thinks he or she will actually gain from it. That is what we have here. The swindle put together by the Conservatives is the ideological continuation of what they have been doing for the past four years. The dupes in the Liberal Party are supporting them of course, and the numbskull premiers of British Columbia and Ontario think that somehow they are going to be putting money in their pockets, whereas in fact they are just further damaging the economies that have already been undermined by the Conservatives' actions.
Let us look at the genesis of this problem and how it began with the arrival of the Conservatives, shall we? Their ideology is that governments should play no role in the economy, that there is a pristine marketplace that makes all of the right choices, that anyone who thinks that governments or the state has a role in this is trying to pick winners. Let us look at it for what it is.
The Conservatives have decided there is one winner in the Canadian economy and it is the oil sector in Alberta. That is what has been destabilizing an erstwhile balanced economy that was built up in this country since the second world war. Successive governments always understood that to give value to the second largest country in the world with a minor population, today just in the order of 30 million, we required vision. We required the government to play a role in ensuring that we could develop our primary sector, forestry in particular and mining, that we could have a strong manufacturing sector as well, and that we could develop as modern times have allowed us to do, a tertiary sector, the service sector.
A lot of people look at the unemployment created since the fall of 2008 when the current recession began, but what we saw was that as a direct result of the Conservatives' choices, because governing is a reflection of one's choices and one's priorities, as a result of the Conservatives' choices backed every step of the way by their henchmen in the Liberal Party, they have reduced corporate taxes by $60 billion. The effect of that has been to provide that fiscal space of $60 billion to the most profitable corporations. I say the most profitable corporations because it should be obvious, but for some people it is not, that by definition if a company had not made a profit, if it was breaking even or losing money, it did not get any of the money from those tax reductions. Who did? Mostly the very profitable oil sector. Companies like EnCana saw windfall profits of hundreds of millions of dollars, which was totally unexpected and certainly unnecessary for it in terms of its operations, as did Canada's major chartered banks.
Who suffered? The manufacturing sector and the forestry sector centred in Ontario and Quebec for the manufacturing and the forestry sector which included a lot of lost jobs in British Columbia and in New Brunswick on top of those mostly in Ontario and in Quebec. That was a choice. Before the current recession hit, we had already bled off hundreds of thousands of jobs in the manufacturing and forestry sectors in Ontario and Quebec.
One of the primary reasons for that was the high Canadian dollar which was being stoked by the petrodollars coming into Alberta that does not even internalize the environmental and social costs of the exploitation of the tar sands. There are three basic principles of sustainable development that have to apply to any exploitation of that nature. They are internalization of costs, polluter pay and user pay. Of course the Conservatives apply none of it. The Liberals are ill-placed to even discuss the subject. They signed Kyoto, and as Eddie Goldenberg, the former chief of staff for Jean Chrétien correctly pointed out, the only reason they signed it is for public relations purposes. That is why under the Liberals for 13 years Canada had the worst record in the world in terms of greenhouse gas reduction and that has simply become worse under the Conservatives.
The Liberals did nothing, the Conservatives do not want to do anything and the Bloc cannot do anything. It is a good thing that our leader, the leader of the NDP, is heading to Copenhagen. That at least offers some hope. I am told that this very morning, Bill C-311, which scandalously the Liberals have been holding up in committee, was finally allowed to go through, so there is a ray of hope on the horizon being provided by the New Democratic Party.
The $60 billion of tax reductions was only possible by creating a similar fiscal space. How was that fiscal space created? It was created by pillaging $57 billion in the employment insurance account and turning it into general revenues of the government. Again, it was with the culpable complicity of the spineless Liberals who have no principles and no beliefs. They backed the Conservatives every step of the way.
It should be remembered, as one of my colleagues said earlier, that the Bloc Québécois also voted for the first two Conservative budgets. That is something the New Democratic Party of Canada has never done. We have always stood up against the Conservative vision for the economy. We have always resolutely voted against the Conservative budgets and we are very proud of that record.
Some people have said that they may be taking $57 billion from the EI account, but it is a notional amount. They are turning it into general revenue, so who really cares, because it does not change anything; it is all still government money. There is a huge mistake in that analysis. Every single company in Canada, whether it was making money, breaking even or losing money, had to pay into that employment insurance account for every single one of its employees.
That money was paid in by employers and employees for a dedicated purpose, to take care of the cyclical nature of our economy for a day like today in the middle of a recession when there are dramatic job losses. The fund would be there. That is what it was put in for. To add insult to injury, $19 billion is calculated to be missing from the account now, because they have frozen contributions as part of the recession.
That means that the very same companies that were losing money in forestry or manufacturing and had made their compulsory contributions for every single employee into that fund saw that fund turned into a fiscal space that was given in the form of tax reductions for the most profitable corporations in Canada, stimulating even more rapidly the Canadian economy, with regard to the oil sector, at least, and pushing the Canadian dollar higher as those petrodollars came in.
The result, in the clearest possible terms, is that companies that were already losing money in the forestry and manufacturing sectors were directly subsidizing the very petroleum sector that was causing the high dollar and making their exports even more difficult because of the very high Canadian dollar. It is similar to one being asked to pay one's executioner. That is exactly what happened here with regard to the Canadian economy.
That is the Conservatives' way of doing business. That is what they wanted to do. That is what they set out to do. They set out to destroy the manufacturing and forestry sectors at the altar of the expediency of the rapid exploitation of the tar sands. As if that were not enough, projects like Keystone, one of the many pipeline projects that the Conservatives have put in place in the west since they arrived in government, are exporting the rawest form of the production of the tar sands straight to the United States.
We are exporting jobs. Keystone alone represents 18,000 lost jobs for Canada. We are not only stupid enough to send all of this south without any added value here, but we are sending it so fast that we are not even holding on to anything. We are not even internalizing the costs to the environment today and the costs for future generations.
The internalization of costs is a principle that Canadians all understand. When we buy tires for our car, the province adds a $3 fee to take care of the recycling of the tires. That is the environmental cost of the tires being paid by the person who is buying the tires. That is only fair. If people take the metro or the bus to work, or they take their bike or walk and they do not own a car, why should they pay for that recycling out of their general tax obligations? Why should they be paying to recycle their neighbour's tires? Everybody gets that.
It should be the same thing with the tar sands. It is an important resource, but it is not immune from the application of general principles of sustainable development. What one does is internalize the cost on a barrel of petroleum produced out of the tar sands. That would be the equivalent of approximately $3 to $4 a barrel. The internalization of the cost of sequestration of the greenhouse gases or their reduction and the treatment of all the pollution that is now being held back is going to be a problem that we are shovelling forward for future generations.
It is wonderful to watch the Conservatives, those great moralizers, wagging their index fingers under our collective noses, always telling us how to be and allowing the worst pollution on the planet to take place here in Canada in the Athabasca tar sands. Right now, the dykes at the tar ponds are the longest dams in the world. They are holding back what is not seeping right into the underground water. This is the greatest source of pollution right now in Canada.
We are destroying ecosystems. We are destroying groundwater. We are causing cancers that are exceptional, that can only be traced back to the chemical products being produced in the tar sands. At the very least, we should be internalizing the cost of that, instead of sending the bill to future generations.
Contrary to their theoretical position on all these matters, what we are doing with the Conservatives is enjoying ourselves today, taking everything we can for ourselves and letting the future generations of tomorrow fend for themselves. At the very least, a fund could be put aside out of those important revenues.
Both the internalization of costs and the setting aside of that fund would reduce the pressure on the Canadian dollar. This would make it possible to go back to a more balanced economy like the one we had built up since the second world war. It would be easier to export than it is right now with the high Canadian dollar. We could at the same time put in place an infrastructure of green renewables, hydrogen, wind, hydro and others that can be developed in this great country of ours.
However, there is a singular lack of vision among the government benches on this issue. The Conservatives do not care about future generations. They love to pose with future generations. There is nothing easier than to get a Conservative to pose at a hockey rink on a Saturday with a bunch of kids. What about the day when we will no longer be able to play hockey outdoors in Canada because of global warming and because of their incompetence and their negligence? That is the issue that has to be discussed.
We in Canada are in a unique position in the world. We have extraordinary resources that we can and should be developing, but we should be doing it cleanly.
The Conservatives are so much at the beck and call of our American neighbours. They are in such a hurry to get everything through the National Energy Board. They are in such a hurry to get all their approvals for these pipelines straight south, the raw agreement, to export not only our wealth but also jobs. That is the scandal of the Conservative approach. There is $60 billion in tax decreases for the richest corporations. Some $57 billion has been pillaged from the employment insurance account. Businesses that have already subsidized the oil patch are going to be asked to re-contribute in the order of $19 billion.
Right now, the government is saying, “We have a plan. We are going to look at the premiers of Ontario and British Columbia, the provinces which were the hardest hit by our previous plan to destroy the manufacturing and forestry sectors. Now, we are going to bring them to the table. It has been part of the plan since day one”.
The current finance minister said four years ago in his first budget:
The Government invites all provinces that have not yet done so to engage in discussions on the harmonization of their provincial retail sales taxes with the federal GST.
Do not try to convince anyone who has looked at the file that this is not the responsibility of the Conservative government. It is the Conservatives' plan. This has been laid out for the past four years. Without the Liberals, it would not be possible. That is the real problem.
In Ontario and British Columbia, the pusillanimous Liberals, because they have allowed the Conservatives every step of the way to destroy their manufacturing base, to destroy their primary resources, mostly in forestry, are now saying, “We are too broke. We have to give in to their plan”.
A regressive tax is one that hits the poorest hardest. By definition, this HST is a regressive tax. People have no choice. A retired couple living on a modest fixed income in northern Ontario or B.C. who have to buy home heating oil is going to be spending 8% more for that heating oil. That is what the Conservatives are doing.
It has nothing to do with one's revenue. It is not like an income tax, which is progressive: the more one earns, the higher the percentage; that has been accepted and understood in our country for a long time. This is a direct hit on the people who can least afford it.
What is interesting is it is not just those of us who work every day with people and with communities and groups who are saying this. I have a letter that was sent to me by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. It is really worth noting that it is as opposed as we are to this new HST. This used to be the bailiwick of the Conservatives.
The CFIB says this, and it is worth reading:
While governments did not consult with small firms in either Ontario or British Columbia, I should note that our members continue to have a mixed reaction to sales tax harmonization. Certainly, the expansion of input tax credits to the provincial portion of sales tax administration is a considerable improvement over the current tax-on-tax system we now have...[however, we have] a lack of trust that tax reforms will, in fact, lower the overall tax burden. We have heard many comments from members in Ontario and British Columbia that suggest concern that sales tax harmonization will not end up as revenue neutral or a tax reduction, but lead to an overall increase in the tax burden on Canadians.
What is interesting is it is bringing up one of the points that everyone has raised, and that is what is happening here today. The government has the temerity to use closure without ever holding any consultation or debate on this tax. It is our irresponsible Minister of Finance who said, “It's not me, it's the Liberals in B.C. and Ontario”.
Let us look at what the Canadian Federation of Independent Business says, which is that we have to do five things that are not being done now. It has to be a win for consumers through a lower combined rate.
The CFIB explains, in an interesting manner, how it was able to back the harmonization in the Maritimes and be against this one in B.C. and Ontario. It explains that what was done in the Maritimes actually produced a lower combined rate. What we have here is a tax grab on the backs of those who can least afford it. That is what the Conservatives have concocted this time, with the culpable complicity of the Liberals in both B.C. and Ontario and, of course, their squid in the House.
The validity of the tax and associated revenue stream has to also be one of the important principles, ongoing vendor compensation and introduction of a fairness code. This was said by Dan Kelly, senior vice-president, legislative affairs of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
This is the result of choices. The bleeding off of hundreds of thousands of jobs in the manufacturing and forestry sectors is a direct result of what the Conservative government chose to do. We are leaving a debt to future generations in terms of the current deficit structure that we are putting in place, which will be one that we will not be able to get away from for decades. At the very least, we should be leaving something that future generations can use. We should be bequeathing them something in terms of clean renewables. We should be moving to an economy less based on carbon.
As George Monbiot pointed out last week in the Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom, and has been pointed out in a lot of other countries since then, the once diversified economy of Canada is being destroyed actively by the Conservative government. It is the same mistake that people have already seen.
There have been lots of treatises and papers written about this around the world. What Holland went through after the second world war in a similar petroleum bubble, which killed its manufacturing sector, Canada has not had the wisdom to avoid.
We have always understood in our country that it took a balanced approach to building the economy across our huge country. The Conservatives simply do not believe in Canada. They simply do not believe in the importance of maintaining jobs in diverse sectors like manufacturing and forestry. They think by pumping in petrol dollars from the United States that somehow we will be able to maintain the economy that we have had in the past.
In the time I have left, I would like to express my surprise at the Bloc Québécois' support for Bill C-62.
The bill is available on line for anyone who wants to double-check what I am saying. It includes a schedule that lists the participating provinces, and Quebec is not even mentioned. The whole bill is silent on the subject of reimbursing Quebec for harmonizing its tax. Quebec has been owed $2.6 billion for over 15 years now. Monique Jérôme-Forget deserves to be congratulated for having once again raised the issue in debate. Quebec's decision to harmonize its taxes was historic. The minister was twice mistaken when he referred in the House to Quebec's harmonization.
Those of us on this side are against an unfair tax that will hurt the poor. We strongly condemn the Bloc's decision to support this bill.
