Tom Lukiwski

[Income Tax Act, March 11th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, if anyone wondered whether my colleague for Regina—Lewvan had socialist leanings, it has been cleared up right now.

When did it become a bad thing to allow Canadians to reduce their tax burden? When did it become a bad thing to allow Canadians to invest in a vehicle that lets them keep more of their hard-earned money? When did it become a bad thing to allow Canadians to keep their money in a tax-free vehicle? They should not be penalized. Socialists would like to do that, but we do not.

[Income Tax Act, March 11th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to respond to a question from a colleague and a good friend as well.

I do not have to remind my colleague of our previous government's record on reducing taxes. Over 140 taxes were reduced in our 9 years in government. We brought the tax regime for every Canadian down to the lowest level in 50 years.

However, the problem with Bill C-2, as I explained in my address, is that it does not just cut taxes for some Canadians. It would penalize every Canadian by not allowing them to max out their TFSAs to the levels that our government introduced. Everyone's contribution limits for TFSAs would be cut by $5,000. That is unacceptable and I certainly will not be supporting Bill C-2.

[Committees, March 11th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the first report of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, entitled “Supplementary Estimates (C) 2015-2016”.

I congratulate and applaud all the members of the committee for their hard and diligent work in compiling this first report.

[Income Tax Act, March 11th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, not only will I not agree with that, but I think the people of New Brunswick would agree they made the wrong choice on October 19.

We have a member who finally stood up in the House to make comment on a government bill. Was it to support energy east? No, it was not. I would ask the member to go back and take a poll of the constituents in his riding to see how many constituents who voted for him on October 19 now wish they had never done so, because they have a member of Parliament who does not stand up for the interests of his province. He does not stand up for energy east.

One thing is clear. On October 19, Canadians made a choice, but increasingly they have discovered in the first 120 days that they made the wrong choice.

[Income Tax Act, March 11th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure and an honour to participate in the debate on the government's Bill C-2, also known as the Liberal giveth and the Liberal taketh away bill, because that is exactly what the bill would do.

Bill C-2 would give some modest tax relief to some Canadians, but it would also take away from all Canadians the ability to contribute $5,000 more to their tax-free savings accounts. That is real money we are talking about here. For a young person perhaps just starting out, aged 25, that could be 45 years or more that he could be contributing an additional $5,000 to his tax-free savings account, but which would now be denied to him because of Bill C-2.

I will explain in greater detail what Bill C-2 would do.

For a Canadian earning between $45,000 and $100,000 a year, he or she would receive some modest tax relief. If a Canadian is earning less than $45,000, there is no tax relief. If a Canadian is earning more than $200,000, he or she will be paying more taxes rather than less. However, every single Canadian eligible to open up a TFSA, that is to say every Canadian of the age of 18 or over who has a valid social insurance number, has the opportunity to open a tax-free savings account.

A tax-free savings account is a relatively new savings vehicle introduced by our previous Conservative government several years ago. It has proved to be incredibly popular. To date, over 11 million Canadians have TFSAs, and that number is growing steadily and quickly day after day.

When we first introduced the TFSA, we set a contribution limit of $5,000. Again, that is to say that all Canadians who opened a TFSA could contribute $5,000 as a maximum each and every year. The money in that account, as it grew over the years, could be withdrawn at any time tax-free. It was so popular, in fact, that most Canadians felt it was a far better savings vehicle than the RRSPs themselves, because, as everyone knows, with RRSPs one gets a tax break when putting money in, but has to pay taxes when taking the money out. TFSAs are just the opposite. One can put after-tax money into an account, and in that account, whether one had stocks, bonds, mutual funds or any other investment, that money could grow tax-free during the life span it was in the TFSA, and when a Canadian took that money out, it could be taken out tax-free.

What a wonderful vehicle for Canadians who wanted to save for the future. When someone is approaching retirement age, they are quite rightly concerned about their retirement years, their so-called golden years. Will they have enough money to sustain themselves comfortably in their retirement? The TFSA went a long way to ensuring that all Canadians could do exactly that. However, Bill C-2 would deny Canadians the ability to put an additional $5,000 into their account.

As I mentioned earlier, when we first opened the TFSAs, the contribution limit was $5,000. We increased that a few years later to $5,500, and then a few years after that we put the limit up to $10,500 a year. Out of the 11 million current TFSA holders, over two-thirds of those contribute the maximum, and of those maximum contributors, about 60% have modest to low incomes. Therefore, this was a great tax savings vehicle for all Canadians, particularly those of modest and middle incomes.

The argument presented by the government as to why it reduced the level from $10,500 to $5,500 is that this was a vehicle simply for the rich. However, the statistics prove that simply is not the case. I suspect that the real reason the Liberals have chosen to reduce the ability of Canadians to put an additional $5,000 into a tax-free savings account is simply that the current Liberal government needs more tax revenue.

Why does the government need more tax revenue? It is because the Liberals are going to be spending like drunken sailors, and we have already seen evidence of that. We know now that the first year's budget, which we will be seeing on March 22, is anticipated to come in at about a $30 billion deficit. Most bank economists and people who have been analyzing the promises made by this Liberal government are anticipating that this figure of a $30 billion deficit will grow over the years.

I know that the government's Keynesian theories about putting money into the economy to stimulate it and create jobs simply do not work. Keynesian theory has never worked and will not work today, but the reality is that because of the government's wild intent to go into deficit, all Canadians ultimately will have to pay the price. Why? It is because deficits in real terms are borrowed money. Borrowed money means that someone has to pay that money back. If it is not me, it will be my children and my grandchildren.

This is not new. This is something that the Liberals have done throughout the history of their years in government. This is in their political DNA. In fact, the majority of Canada's debt as we know it today was incurred by the current Prime Minister's father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Figures will show that in the last year of the former Trudeau's government, the Government of Canada was spending $1.03 for every $1 that it took in in revenue. It does not take an economist or a rocket scientist to figure out that a few years of that means that the tax load and tax burden on Canadians will have to increase, because there is no way any government can sustain that type of spending.

It seems that the apple has not fallen far from the tree, because this Prime Minister seems to be taking the same approach as his father, going into massive deficits when the government does not have to do so.

Keynesian theory is for when we are in a recession, and then, perhaps short-term stimulus spending or short-term deficits could create jobs and help the economy recover. That is only a theory, and as I mentioned earlier, I believe it has not been well thought out. It certainly has not been proven to be accurate in all of those jurisdictions worldwide that have attempted this type of economics, but one thing is certain, in a jurisdiction that is not in recession, the government should not put money into the economy as stimulus because it has no need to do so.

There is one way the government could get additional tax revenue without raising taxes, and that is to look for private sector investment, private sector projects that might be able to create jobs and create tax revenue for the government. There is such a project in front of the government today. It is called the energy east pipeline, a shovel-ready project that would create literally thousands of jobs and bring in billions of dollars of tax revenue to the government, and yet, what has the government done? Has it embraced the energy east pipeline project? No, it has not.

In fact, there are several members of the Liberal government, mainly sitting on the backbench, who have won seats in ridings from provinces that would most benefit from the energy east pipeline, including Alberta, Saskatchewan, and New Brunswick, yet not one member has stood up in this place and defended the pipeline. Not one of those members has stood in this place and said, “I endorse energy east”. Quite frankly, that is shameful, because their home provinces know the benefits that the pipeline could bring to Alberta, Saskatchewan, and New Brunswick.

Quite frankly, that does not matter to the government. The government is anti-oil and anti-pipeline, as we have seen time and time again. Instead, it has penalized average working Canadians. It has penalized Canadians by not allowing them to put more money into a tax-free vehicle, and when I ask, when did it become a bad thing to allow Canadians to save more of their money tax-free, I have an answer. It occurred on October 19 of last year, when the government decided to penalize hard-working Canadians and prevent them from saving their money tax-free.

Bill C-2 is a bad bill, and I will vehemently oppose it, as everyone on this side of the House will as well.

[Income Tax Act, March 7th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments made by my friend and colleague.

The one thing I would like him to comment on is the inconsistency that we have consistently heard, if putting it that way makes sense, from the Liberals opposite in government. They have stated on many occasions that the TFSAs only benefit the wealthy and the affluent.

We have heard that before. We heard it when we made cuts to the GST from 7% to 6% to 5%. They said that it would only help the really wealthy because only they could afford these big ticket item purchases, when in fact it was just the opposite. The GST reduction primarily helped lower-income people, because almost their entire income is used to purchase goods and services. If we can cut the tax on the goods and services that the lower-income people have to purchase by 20%, that is a huge savings.

Could my colleague please comment, then, if there is any correlation between lower-income people and middle-income people benefiting from a TFSA, or is it, as the Liberals suggest, only for the wealthy?

[Income Tax Act, March 7th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Regina for thanking me for not running in his riding.

If we took a poll of all Canadians, regardless of income level, and asked them this simple question: “Do you agree that you should be allowed to contribute more money to a tax-free savings account, rather than less?”, the answer would come back with a clear “Yes, we want to have the ability to invest more money in a tax-free environment if we can.”

This does not allow only the wealthy to put money into an account. I have many people in my riding, most of whom are not wealthy or affluent, as the government would suggest. When I talk to them about the TFSA, many of them say that if they were to sell their house or come into an inheritance or somehow come into additional dollars, they would like to have the ability to put the money into an account where it would be tax-free. They do not want to be denied that ability. Whether or not they max out or contribute to it in totality over the years is incidental, but at least knowing it is there is something they agree with.

I fall back on words I said in my initial presentation. When in Canada did it become a bad thing to allow Canadians to contribute more money tax-free? Apparently it was when the Liberal government got elected.

[Income Tax Act, March 7th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, once again, as is common with most Liberals and with most newly elected Liberals, they have this sense of revisionist history. Let us talk about what actually happened.

Back in 2008 when the global recession hit, every G20 country agreed that the best way to get out of the recession was to stimulate the economy by investing money in infrastructure. I was part of that debate in this place. What happened during that debate? The Liberals, who were then in third place, and the NDP, which was the official opposition, criticized our government for not putting enough money into stimulus. In other words, had the Liberals or the NDP had their way, we would have had a larger debt than we do today. Our deficit would have been larger if they had had their way. For anyone on the Liberal benches to say that we created a deficit that they would not have created is absolutely factually incorrect, and the records show that.

Second, we entered into a deficit situation because of the global recession, but we got out of it. In our last years in office, we balanced the budget. That is something the Liberal government will probably never do in its short mandate, which I expect to be only four years.

[Income Tax Act, March 7th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to speak today on what I think should be more appropriately titled the Liberal government's legislation on misplaced priorities, because that is exactly what Bill C-2 is.

The government of the day claims that this is a tax cut for middle-class Canadians and will help stimulate the economy. In fact, all it is is a bit of a shell game.

Liberals are attempting on the one hand to suggest to Canadians that this is a good thing, that it is reducing taxes, which is certainly something that our government believes in, since when we were in government for nine years, we reduced taxes over 140 times. The reason it is a shell game is that while there may be some modest gains in tax relief for some Canadians, on the other hand the Liberals have started to reduce the amount of contributions allowed in TFSAs.

The tax-free savings account was an initiative that our government brought in several years ago, the most important savings vehicle that Canadians have seen since the advent of the RRSP. It has been incredibly popular, and it was well received by Canadians from all income brackets.

My colleagues previously have talked about the fact that 60% of Canadians who maxed out their TFSAs have modest incomes. I always say that any time we give Canadians an opportunity to save money in a tax-free vehicle, that has to be a good thing, so when did it become wrong for Canadians to have the ability to save more of their hard-earned money tax-free? When did it become wrong to do that? However, that is exactly what the government apparently is saying, because it is planning to reduce the TFSA contribution limit from $10,500 to $5,500. Liberals are denying Canadians the opportunity to put $5,000 more per year into a tax-free savings account.

I recognize that perhaps not all Canadians would be able to contribute the full amount each and every year, but the TFSAs have been structured so that there is a carry-over element. If people cannot max out their contributions in one year, they do not lose it the next year. No, that unused amount can be carried over, and carried over almost into perpetuity, so that several years down the road if a retired couple wants to sell their house in which they have built up a great deal of equity to travel in their golden years, they could take the money from the sale of their house and put it into a TFSA to the maximum amount.

However, the Liberals feel that this is not the right route to take. Rather than allowing Canadians more opportunities to save more money, they want to reduce that amount. Their argument is that only the wealthy can afford to contribute $10,500 a year, but that is not what they really are saying. They may say that publicly, but what they mean and what they intend is that if a majority of Canadians maxed out their contributions at $10,500, it would cost the government money in lost tax revenue. That is really the crux behind this move, because the government is in trouble.

Although the Liberals promised what they considered to be modest $10-billion-a-year deficits in the first three years of their term, now are going to be incurring at least $30-billion deficits for the first several years of their mandate. They said they would be able to balance the books by 2019, by the time of the next election. It is now admitted by the government's own officials that doing so will be an impossible task.

The government needs more revenue. Allowing Canadians to save more in a tax-free environment would deny the government the much-needed revenue it so desires. What do the Liberals do? Their approach is to spend more money. They say that spending more money will ultimately create a healthier and larger economy. This Keynesian approach has never worked in the past and it will not work this time, but that is the approach that the government has.

I suspect that some of that comes from a long history of Liberal mismanagement in the economy. If one only takes a look at the current Prime Minister's father and his regime, when former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau left office, his Liberal government was spending $1.03 for every $1 that it took in in revenue.

No wonder we have such a huge debt in this country, a debt that we are still trying to pay off, thanks to a previous Liberal government. Apparently the apple did not fall far from the tree, because the current Prime Minister seems to be taking the same approach as his father, an approach that has left this country in massive debt.

This is unacceptable, but obviously there are options. Any government has choices. How can it increase its revenue? How can it take in the amount of money it needs to produce programs and balance the budget, as it apparently desires to do?

The obvious choice is to raise taxes, but that is never a popular choice for any government. The other option is to find projects that might increase employment and consequently increase tax revenue, both personal and corporate. The government would argue that this is exactly what it is doing with its stimulus spending: by putting money into the economy, it would create those jobs, create those projects, and in return receive additional revenue.

Unfortunately, most economists worth their salt would tell us that stimulus really only works if a government or a country is in a recession, which Canada is not. Our economy is growing. Perhaps it is growing more slowly than we would like, but we are most certainly not in a recession, so there is no need for stimulus spending. What is needed is for the private sector to initiate projects that would bring in that much-needed tax revenue, projects that would create employment.

What have we got out there? Is there anything on the horizon that we could point to that might actually fit the bill? There is something, and it is called the energy east pipeline. Here is a project that is shovel ready, would not cost the Liberal government or taxpayers a dime, and would create literally thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in tax revenue between personal and corporate income tax, yet the government sees fit to put so many impositions and prohibitions on the start of this project that the chances of energy east ever seeing the light of day are slim. Hopefully, chances are not zero, but that is what is probably going to happen.

This is why I say that this piece of legislation is misguided in its priorities. There are alternatives. There are options the government could employ to increase its revenue base without costing the Canadian taxpayer a dime, but the Liberal government does not want to do that. Instead, it is going to punish and penalize average hard-working Canadians by reducing the amount of money that those same Canadians can contribute to their tax-free savings accounts.

The Liberal government is making the wrong choices. It has misguided priorities. At the end of the day, we will find that Bill C-2, the first piece of legislation the government has introduced, will end up costing Canadians far more than they will save.

[Canada's Contribution to the Effort to Combat ISIL, February 19th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I concur with my colleagues in congratulating my friend and colleague for an excellent presentation. I commend him for the 22 years he served our country, and served it with distinction.

The one thing I fail to understand about the Liberal position is simply this. The Liberals seem to think it is appropriate for other countries to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to protecting our troops. We were asked by a coalition to join the fight against ISIL, one of the most barbaric and murderous regimes this world has ever seen. We were asked to do so, and our government agreed, willingly. My colleague just asked in the previous question what message that sends to our allies when we refute their request to continue on with the CF18s. The answer is obvious. Our allies are not only disappointed, but they will be very hesitant in future of trying to count on Canada's support.

My question for my colleague is this. Does he think that this move by the current Liberal government, by pulling out our CF18s, will do long-term, irreparable harm to our reputation and our relationship with our allies?