Tracey Ramsey

[Business of Supply, October 3rd, 2017]

Madam Speaker, my colleague talked about farmers. I have been contacted by many farmers in my riding. This is the middle of harvest, which is an incredibly busy time for them. One farmer in my constituency, John Mailloux, said that he was talking to his accountant yesterday, He had a direct example of his farm that could cost him thousands of dollars a year in tax implications, which he would have no choice but to pay. He had signed a succession deal with his parents and he had 16 years left to finish it. He said that he would love to get together. He wants to talk about why the government is pushing this through during this critical time and why it is not allowing for a broad expanse of scope.

Does the member not agree with me that extending the consultation would allow farmers to be heard and to properly engage in the process, considering they are so busy right now during harvest? Does the member not agree that we should extend it?

[Business of Supply, October 3rd, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I find it galling, to be honest, that the member talks about how amazing it is that they lowered the small business tax by 0.5% when they promised 2% to Canadians. This very narrow scope and very short time period are not serving small businesses. I support tax fairness, the NDP supports tax fairness, and we need to ensure that taxes are being fairly distributed across our country. It is important.

My question is about the CEO stock option loopholes that the Liberals have still not eliminated. If they are serious about repatriating some of that money, why do the 1% get a pass from the Liberals and they put this narrow scope on their proposed measures so that only our communities, farmers, and small businesses are impacted? If the Liberals are serious about tax fairness, they cannot put a microscope on a tiny piece, and cannot ignore very real solutions that have come before the House. That is exactly what has happened in this Parliament.

We have Liberals who are talking out of both sides of their mouths on tax fairness. Tax fairness requires a comprehensive approach. It cannot be this limited scope. An extension of the time and scope of the consultations so that we are talking about true tax fairness is incredibly important to all Canadians.

[Business of Supply, October 3rd, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I do think it is incredibly important that we talk about this consultation process that has happened, because we see the Liberals opening consultation processes in a lot of different ways. The problem is that they are all over the map. None of them actually creates a space in which people can have that complete conversation. We see multiple hearings, a whole summer spent on electoral reform, and then we have these changes coming in the dead of summer, with folks trying to scramble to be able to deal with them. The government is really inconsistent when it uses the term “consultation”.

In this particular case, an extension to the time period is more than warranted. In fact, it is necessary for people to be able to bring their issues forward so they can be responsibly heard by the government. In these consultations, the government must not just say that it is listening, but actually listen and actually allow people to participate, including the farmers in the fields right now who are not able to participate in this process right now.

Something that small businesses do across our country quite well is that they affiliate with larger groups and join together in their efforts. However, again, this very short time period did not allow them to be able to go to their membership in a way that would benefit all small businesses and bring that forward. Therefore, the extension is important.

[Business of Supply, October 3rd, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to talk about tax fairness for the farmers and small business owners in my riding.

My riding of Essex is a rural riding with five municipalities, where towns are filled with small businesses, and the space between them is filled with gorgeous farm fields. We have some of the richest soil in Canada and the largest amount of acreage under glass in our greenhouse sector.

The hard-working people in Essex are very angry and confused by this consultation by the Liberal government, which is now officially closed. These are hard-working people who have now been told that they did something wrong, that they are tax cheats, or that they were intentionally not paying their fair share.

Paying our fair share is something that is deeply important to New Democrats. Fighting for fairness is the foundation of all of our work. Fair share is a phrase that we use with pride about our contribution to our communities. We pay taxes to our government so that we can collectively take care of each other.

Canadians place trust in the government to fairly distribute the wealth of our society so that we all benefit from services that keep our communities healthy and thriving. This is a basic tenet here in Canada. It is one of the things that I love about Canada. I ran to become an MP to protect and fight for our social services and for their equal delivery.

This is why so many people in my riding are also very proud to pay their taxes, to pay their fair share. They work hard for their families, their communities, their family traditions, and their family businesses and farms. They pay their fair share and they work to pay for the health of their community as well.

This summer when the consultations started, there was a lot of rhetoric being thrown around by the Liberal government about tax fairness. People in my riding were being told that they were cheating the system, that they were taking away from the community they love and helped to build, where they were raised and where they raised their children, instead of adding to it. Not only did they feel targeted by this language, but they were using a system that was in fact perfectly legal and one that they had been encouraged to use to grow.

They understand and support tax fairness, but the main question I get is why the Liberals brought in only these proposals in which they they are only looking at small businesses. Where was the consultation on CEO stock option loopholes, or the consultations on how we end offshoring and snow washing? The Panama papers came up quite a bit.

I understand why farmers and small business owners are angry. What I cannot understand is the Liberal government limiting the scope and the time of this debate in Canada. The government has many opportunities to bring forward real and tangible tax fairness.

I believe in tax fairness, but real tax fairness, not this limited version being proposed by the government.

Real tax fairness could have come when New Democrats stood in the House in March and introduced a motion to eliminate tax havens and the CEO stock option loophole. Why should CEOs be able to hide their salaries and stock options to keep from paying their fair share? The NDP proposed the elimination of the tax break on stock options used by rich CEOs, a loophole that costs the government and communities $800 million per year.

The government voted in favour of our motion but has done nothing to address the issue. I heard Liberals talking about the provisions in the budget that they brought forward, but they do not eliminate the loophole, and these are very different things.

Real tax fairness could have been accomplished by the Liberals if they had passed my colleague's private member's bill, Bill C-274. This legislation would have helped small business owners, like farm and fishing businesses, transfer between family members. We have a system in Canada where farmers pay less tax if they sell their family farm to a stranger than if they sell it to a family member. How on earth is that fair? Again, the government, which says on a constant basis how much it cares about farmers, voted against the bill, which would have made it fairer to succession plan, something that Canadian farm families are struggling with across the country.

I recently spoke with a farmer in my riding who told me that he and his wife had taken on payments to be able to buy the farm from his parents. They have a 16-year commitment to do this, and now they are very worried that they have made the wrong decision and will pay the price for the government's complete lack of understanding about farm management. This is not a multi-million dollar farmer. This is a family that is teaching its children how to farm and keeping our community in fresh local food.

Now, instead of using viable options to make our tax system fairer to tackle the real and serious problem of inequality, the government has put forward consultations, which are now over.

Income inequality in Canada is a real and serious issue for all. Recently, the census revealed that Canada's level of income inequality has worsened over the past 12 years. Due to past government inaction, the richest one per cent of our population has seen a 14% rise in median income. According to the census data, the richest one per cent now earns 6.8 times more than a worker earning Canada's median wage of $34,204 in 2015. The changes that the government is consulting on would do nothing to alleviate this gap. In the Windsor Essex area, the United Way says that about one-quarter of our youth live in poverty, which means that in 2013, 19,900 children under the age of 17 lived in families where the income was less than $17,000 per year.

We need to address this gap and work hard to close it with a serious effort. That is why this consultation must include all avenues to do that, not just the narrow scope of the measures the government is proposing. In fact, the Liberals promised to address these inequalities in their platform, but these measures are so limited in scope that people are learning once again that the Liberals say one thing during an election and never follow through.

If the Liberals are serious about helping small businesses, then where is the small business tax reduction, something that all parties in this House committed to during the campaign? We are two years into the government's mandate and have still not seen that proposal come forward, despite the fact it would be so incredibly important to the 98% of businesses in this country that are small- and medium-sized businesses. If the Liberals are serious about helping small business, then when is this helpful proposal coming forward? Where is the legislation to ensure that business owners can see the tax reduction they were promised and, quite honestly, they were moving forward on and basing their future on? Therefore, it is another broken promise to our most important job creators. No one in Canada thinks that the Liberals are standing up for small businesses.

I want to talk about the consultations for a minute. These consultations released a tidal wave of misinformation that has only scared and worried people across the country. The government caught Canadians off-guard, leaving many small business owners in Essex wondering about the vague language and implications of the proposals, and many others are confused by the complexities of the reforms. I heard some Liberals today in the House talking about whether the NDP would vote on this. To my knowledge, there is nothing to vote on at this point. We do not know what will be proposed. We have a vague understanding, but again small business owners and farmers are confused by these proposals.

The Liberals launched the consultations in mid-July and, as of yesterday, the consultations are over. How could the Liberals not have realized that this time of year would be problematic for farmers? This is harvest season, and many farmers will not be able to get to their accountants or tax planners in time to get detailed advice on how the potential changes to the tax system could affect them. When I travel in my riding, I see all the tractors running at full speed. It has been very tough for those farmers to connect because they simply have had to be on their farms during this critical time.

I also do not understand why the government has decided to rush the consultation process. Surely, it makes sense for the Liberals to post their proposals and wait for honest, well-thought-out feedback. Why do they not give everyone the time to study the changes? If the Liberals are serious about tax fairness, then they will expand the scope, extend the deadline, and have a true comprehensive review.

That is why I move, seconded by the member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, that the motion be amended, (a) by deleting the words, “will have a drastic negative impact on small and medium sized local businesses,” and replacing them with the following, unfairly target small businesses while ignoring the largest abuses of Canada's tax system; and (b) by adding after the word “measures” the following, and to expand the consultations to include measures targeting large corporations, loopholes for CEOs, and tax havens.

[Business of Supply, October 3rd, 2017]

Madam Speaker, my question is about the Liberals breaking their promise, on which they voted with the NDP in March, to end CEO stock option tax loopholes, the elimination of offshoring, and the inequalities that are about $800 million a year. I wonder if the member shares the frustration with me about this narrow scope that is being brought forward by the government today. I would ask him to speak on that.

[Business of Supply, October 3rd, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I listened closely to what my colleague was saying, and what I did not hear was anything about reducing the small business tax, which was promised by all three parties in this House. What I did not hear was any talk about real tax fairness, or talk about the NDP motion brought forward this year, which the Liberals supported. That would have eliminated tax havens and closed the stock option CEO loophole.

The question I have is the question I am getting in my riding, and it is being asked by a lot of progressive people as well. Why is the scope of this so limited?

[International Trade, October 2nd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, last Friday I walked the picket line with 2,800 CAMI workers who are on strike and fighting to keep their jobs because of bad trade policy by past governments. The minister keeps saying how wonderful NAFTA has been for our country. I am sure that is true for her corporate friends, but I certainly did not see her standing out on the picket line with us last Friday. This is the reality of NAFTA for working people fighting to keep good-paying jobs from moving south to Mexico.

What about the rest of us? How can Canadians trust the current government to protect their jobs when the Liberals will not even stand up for workers now?

[Export and Import Permits Act, September 28th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, last year, the NDP tried to create a new standing committee in the House to oversee arms exports, so that arms would not go to countries that have massive human rights violations. The proposal for this committee was put forward and, of course, the Liberals and Conservatives voted against such an oversight committee, which would be critical because there is no parliamentary oversight of Canadian arms exports, and this is despite the fact that Canada is now the second-largest arms dealer in the Middle East.

I would ask my colleague from Abitibi—Témiscamingue if she could speak about the importance of the oversight of arms exports.

[Steel Industry, September 27th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the issue is not that the government is not talking about the problem or does not understand the problem. The issue is that the government is not acting on the problem, and this is costing jobs. This is costing potentially our footprint in Canada with respect to steel. We have seen incredible jobs leave our country. We have seen communities like mine in Windsor-Essex, certainly in Hamilton and, when we look to the north to, the Sault devastated by the losses they have felt from the impact of this Chinese steel dumping.

It has been two years since the government came to office and it is beyond time for it to act to ensure that good-paying jobs that sustain communities are protected. Many voices are joining in this and, to be honest, they are quite unanimous in what they propose: do not grant market economy status to China.

I would like to hear from the parliamentary secretary some dates on when we can expect this very unfair steel dumping to end, as well as whether the government is considering to grant that market economy status to China.

[Steel Industry, September 27th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight seeking answers to a question I originally asked last April regarding China's dumping of steel. In my riding of Essex, good-paying, high-skilled jobs at Atlas Tube rely on the Canadian government standing up to these unfair practices.

China is unfairly dumping steel at prices that undercut and hurt Canadian producers. Our steel industry, including its partners like the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, local chambers like the one in my community of Windsor/Essex, and the United Steelworkers, is urging the government to strengthen Canada's trade remedy rules. Sadly, we have only heard empty rhetoric from the Liberal government.

The government has started to discuss a potential free trade agreement with China, and this raises many concerns about how Canada plans to address China's shortfall on human rights, environmental rights, and labour rights, as well as its record on currency manipulation and, ultimately, the unfair trade practices of the kind I mentioned, such as steel dumping and over-production.

In other trade agreements China has insisted that its partners grant it market economy status, which will make it even harder for our steel producers to compete, and extradition treaties, which will force us to turn a blind eye to the numerous outstanding human rights violations.

When I originally asked my question, the Prime Minister responded by stating that he had already addressed the issue with the Chinese leadership. However, in the five months since I raised this issue in the House, nothing has changed.

As a member of the Standing Committee on International Trade, I asked that we study the Canadian steel industry's ability to compete internationally. Our report was tabled in the House of Commons last June, and we put forward many recommendations. While the NDP supports the report's conclusion and recommendations, we believe the report should have gone further in emphasizing the need to work in close partnership with the United States and the need for urgent action by the government to defend and grow Canada's steel industry. The majority of our recommendations asked the government to defend our domestic steel industry against the unfair steel dumping practices of countries like China.

In addition, as a member of the all-party parliamentary steel caucus, I travelled to Washington last June to discuss the significant risks to Canada's steel sector if Canada and the U.S.'s trade remedy systems diverge. If the U.S. government, through buy American policies or otherwise, imposes restrictions on steel imports or applies tariffs to Canadian steel as a result of the section 232 investigation, the federal government should urgently seek an exemption from these restrictions or tariffs on Canadian steel.

Furthermore, the government must actively work in close partnership with the U.S. to address global steel dumping and must demonstrate to the U.S. the importance of working together, not against one another, on this very critical issue.

President Trump's repeated rhetorical attacks on key Canadian sectors such as auto, dairy, steel and, most recently, aerospace are deeply worrisome for the hundreds of thousands of Canadians whose jobs depend on the strong, integrated Canada-U.S. relationship. Aside from these attacks, the U.S. has, of course, gone ahead with countervailing duties on Canadian softwood lumber exports and the 220% duty now levied on Bombardier. These duties will devastate communities, mills, and workers across Canada.

The federal government's response to this point has been extremely weak. Requests for assistance and support have been met with silence. The Liberals talk about progressive trade that benefits Canadians. Now it is time to walk the walk.

Canadians want fair trade that benefits all Canadians, not just a few at the top. They want a government that has a plan for protecting Canadian jobs. They cannot afford another government that believes that bending to the will of a larger, richer nation is the way to go.

I would really like to hear from the parliamentary secretary on these issues. Canadian Steel producers and workers in the industry deserve an assurance that the government will get a commitment from China that it will stop unfair steel dumping in our country.