Madam Speaker, it was only 13 months ago when I attended an orientation session for new members of Parliament here in Ottawa. There was a cameo appearance by the Prime Minister, which was very much appreciated by all of us. During that cameo appearance, he said that the role of opposition is to make government better. I fail to see how bringing time limitations on debate works toward that objective of making government better. However, I will do my best in the time I have to make some suggestions on how we can make this a better bill.
I want to start with the tax break for the middle class. In my riding of Kootenay—Columbia, when I tell people about the tax break for the middle class, which goes from $45,000 up to potentially $190,000, frankly, my constituents shake their heads. We put forward an amendment to try to bring it down to from $20,000 to $45,000, which was defeated in this House. I can assure members that the middle-class salary in my riding of Kootenay—Columbia is not $45,000 to $190,000.
With respect to small businesses, I am holding a series of sessions around the riding, meetings with small businesses, and bringing together a representative of the provincial and municipal governments, along with myself representing the federal government, to talk to small businesses about how we can help them get ahead. Interestingly, members will not find too much congruity between what small businesses at a meeting in Fernie had on their list and what is in the current bill from our friends across the floor.
I will read from their list of how to help small businesses.
With respect to payroll taxes, businesses want a clearer understanding of how they are being used. With respect to the temporary foreign worker program, the program is cumbersome and needs fixing. The $1,000 fee is too high, and there is no clear path to citizenship, so the turnover is high. They think there should be an increase in minimum wage. There is a need for subsidized affordable housing units. This is from small businesses.
Programs should be redesigned to be suitable for small businesses rather than just targeting medium-sized businesses and manufacturing. There is a real lack of support for small business programs. Youth employment programs should be expanded. A scientific development tax credit for sole proprietorships should be introduced, something which is not currently available. The digital technology adoption program should be redeveloped to include use by small businesses.
We need to recognize and rectify the reality of the digital divide in rural areas and small communities, which is a barrier to cloud-based systems, and redefine broadband to bring it to the level of modern requirements. Right now, the definition of “broadband” is too low in terms of speed.
Canada Post needs to reinstate more affordable shipping options, particularly for books. We have a book publisher in my riding. It can cost more to ship a book via Canada Post than the profit he makes on that book. Credit card fees are too high for small local businesses.
These are things coming right from small businesses, and, had they been included in this budget, it would have made it a much better budget for small businesses.
I want to turn now to helping people in real need. There are 15% of Canadian children who live in poverty. For aboriginal children, that number is 27%. In my home province of B.C., the rate of child poverty is even worse than the Canadian average, at 19.8%. The majority of these children have parents in paid work. If we think about that for a moment, one in every five children in British Columbia is living in poverty.
My colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot had a recommendation for Bill C-245 that would help fix some of that, by bringing in the office of the commissioner for poverty reduction and proposing a national council for the promotion of social inclusion and elimination of poverty.
Approximately 35,000 Canadians are homeless on any given night in the year, and one in five household is is at risk of homelessness because they spend over 50% of their income to secure shelter. However, over the past 25 years, while the population of Canada has increased by 30%, national housing investment has decreased by 46%. We need a national housing strategy. I know the government has one on the books, but we need to see the details to know whether that will really help the groups that need it.
This morning I met with a group called Inclusion BC, and number one on their list is also affordable housing for people who are living with challenges. They want housing to be integrated so that people with challenges are part of a regular community and not set aside in special housing. Affordable housing for all Canadians is really important moving forward. We need to hear a little more about what is in the budget around that particular initiative.
As a former mayor, I can say how important having access to dollars for infrastructure is, particularly for smaller communities. I was mayor of a community of about 20,000 people. When we look at the current formula that was in place for many years, it was a one-third formula. The municipality had to come up with the first one-third, the provincial government the second one-third, and the federal government the third one-third. For small communities, coming up with that first one-third is a real challenge. I will give a quick example. In Cranbrook, if we wanted to raise $1 million through property taxes, every 1% increase in property tax equalled $200,000. To raise $1 million to meet our one-third was a 5% increase in property taxes. One is not very popular as a mayor with a 5% increase in property taxes to cover one project.
As the infrastructure project funding rolls out, we need to make sure that the federal government provides at least 50% of the infrastructure dollars and that the provinces continue to provide their 33 1/3%, reducing municipalities' input to a little over 16%.
Infrastructure funding needs to be long term, so that municipalities can plan. It should not just be one year at a time. We need to change the definition of infrastructure. Those of us who have worked for municipalities know that infrastructure is generally considered to be sewer, water, roads, and storm drains. We need to have dark fiber and high-speed Internet as a basic fundamental piece of infrastructure in all communities moving forward.
It is great to see some money in infrastructure, but how that money rolls out is important. In 2014, the Conservatives announced a multi-billion infrastructure program, and none of it made it to us in the municipalities that year, at least in rural areas. In the end, my Conservative colleague at the time, who was our member of Parliament, blamed the province for not getting on board and getting the money out. However, we need to make sure that the infrastructure dollars actually make it into communities.
I want to talk a bit about private sector involvement in infrastructure. We had one project in Cranbrook prior to when I became mayor, which was our recreational complex. It was a private-public partnership. That partnership went bad, and the city had to buy out the private partner. We ended up with about 15-year's worth of loans, locked in at 8% and higher, that we could not get out of, even though as a municipality we could borrow money at about 2% from a special fund in British Columbia. From Cranbrook's perspective, privatization of infrastructure does not work.
The thought of selling airports or bridges to reduce this $30 billion to $40-billion deficit is absolutely the wrong way to try to get a deficit under control. We do not sell assets in order to pay down debt.
Those are a few of the ways that the budget could be improved. There are some good things in the budget, but there are many ways to make it better. I hope that we can see a better future for poverty, for small businesses, and the way that infrastructure is handled in Canada, and, of course, in Kootenay—Columbia.
