Yasmin Ratansi

[Committees of the House, March 21st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 14th report of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, entitled “Elimination of Discrimination against Women in the Employment Insurance Program”.

[The Budget, March 21st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, shame on the minister. He could have had the courtesy to answer the question.

Marie is 56 years old and an active member of her community in Cranbrook, B.C. Her late husband, Kevin, passed away three years ago and left her a pension of $40,000. She continues to live in a house where they raised their grown children. Right now she is busy volunteering her time to ensure that this year's summer festival is the best one ever.

Could the Minister of Finance explain why his budget does nothing for Marie?

[The Budget, March 21st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, Judy lives in my province of Ontario. She is a busy single mother who raises her seven year old son. Life has not been easy on her and she works as many hours as she can. It is difficult without the benefit of an affordable national child care system. She will earn about $22,000 this year working at various jobs, too much for the working income tax credit, too little for the child tax credit.

Could the Minister of Finance explain why his budget does nothing for Judy?

[Cabinet Ministers, March 19th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians are starting to learn what Ontario already knows which is that they just cannot trust the three Harris triplets sitting on the front benches of the Harper government.

The Minister of the Environment has a particularly disturbing record from his Ontario government days. He was part of the Harris government that increased Ontario's energy dependence on coal-fired plants by 127%. The minister was also a member of the Harris cabinet whose decisions on municipal downloading lead to the Walkerton tainted water tragedy. He had the honour of serving as energy minister during the blackout of 2003. Ontarians were treated to the joke that he was doing a rain dance to keep the province cool and power usage low during that summer before the blackout.

Ontario already knows the damage that has been done by those former Harris ministers. Canada should not have to pay the same price.

[Finance, February 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the facts are that the Minister of Finance keeps on misleading the House. He increased income tax rather than reducing it.

The government may be laughing all the way to the bank, but it refuses to use any of this cash to invest in communities across Canada. This is a shortsighted approach and will have long term consequences. The government is awash in cash, but women, youth and minorities have been excluded from the government's right-wing ideological agenda.

Will the finance minister promise there will be no more neo-con ideological cuts to the program?

[Finance, February 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the behaviour of the minister of gimmicks grows even more bizarre. Why do he and the Prime Minister claim that they cut income tax when every Canadian who is filling out his or her income tax form this year knows that the tax rate went up, not down? Does he think that Canadians are stupid?

The government axed programs that supported the most vulnerable, literacy and youth programs, as well as those that helped minorities, such as the court challenges program. Will the finance minister promise to reinstate funding to these programs?

[Bank Act, February 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I share some of the concerns. There are guidelines. There has been no amendments to the consumer protection area. There is the ombudsman aspect of it, where they can go. In my riding if the bank tries to close, it merges its two branches together and there is consultation. That is the answer I can give in half a minute.

[Bank Act, February 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, something which I find quite unethical is the behaviour of NDP members in this, especially in the area of income trusts. They have made spurring allegations, they have spoiled reputations and yet they do not have the courtesy to apologize. They have to apologize for the leakage, for getting the RCMP to do things, when they knew full well. They spoiled the reputation of the former finance minister. Even more galling is the NDP went to bed with the Conservatives and destroyed everything that was so important to Canadians such as the Kelowna accord, the child care agreement, Kyoto, the Status of Women. They then claim to be advocates for small people. They claim advocacy and transparency. I do not believe it. They are duplicitous.

[Bank Act, February 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am an accountant by trade and economics is my forte. If what the hon. member is saying represents his party's position, then we are in a real bad turn. We are going to go into a deficit because they do not know economics at all.

In good economic times, if we cannot balance the budget, if we keep on giving eight consecutive deficits, how can we do anything in bad economic times? The economy that the Liberals inherited was devastated. We were called a third world country, a basket case. If the Conservatives were such good economic managers, why could they not turn the ship around?

We inherited $42 billion in deficit, $500 billion in debt and we were able to manage. We also gave the Conservatives $13 billion in surplus. They cannot beat that record and we do not want the country to go into deficit again.

[Bank Act, February 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of my constituents of Don Valley East, I am pleased to address Bill C-37, An Act to amend the law governing financial institutions and to provide for related and consequential matters.

Canada is somewhat unique in the sense that all federal legislation relating to financial institutions is subject to a sunset clause and must, therefore, be reviewed every five years by law. This has the effect of making Canadian financial institutions more efficient by keeping up with rapid changes in technology and the variety of services which arise from new technologies.

As the hon. member for Markham—Unionville has indicated in the House, the main content of Bill C-37 is largely based on the white paper commissioned by the former Liberal government in preparation for the statutory review of the Bank Act.

One of the aspects of this bill that I approve is the provision for an increased disclosure regime that would provide Canadian consumers and businesses alike with the information they need in order to make the most informed investment decisions possible. Bill C-37 would ensure that the savings products disclosure regime is just as effective for the millions of online bankers as it is for branch customers.

Strong competition and information disclosure are two of the best tools available to ensure that Canadian consumers' needs are being served well by our financial institutions. On the disclosure front, however, I am disappointed that the Conservatives have ignored one strong suggestion from the white paper regarding the complaint process for financial institutions.

I imagine that many Canadians are not very familiar with what the complaint process is at their local banks. Legislating that information with respect to the complaints process be readily available would have been a good idea.

I am willing to bet that there are a good number of Canadians who do not even know that there is an ombudsman for banking services should they exhaust all venues available to them. However, the ombudsman for banking services and his office do fine work and I would like to have seen a requirement for information about his service be made readily available.

Canada's mortgage loan insurance threshold would also be changed by this bill. Currently, any homebuyer who provides less than a 25% deposit is required by law to ensure that a mortgage through the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation or similar private sector providers will be able to attend to this.

Bill C-37 would reduce this minimum requirement of 25% to 20%, allowing more Canadians to secure a home mortgage without having to pay the additional costs of mortgage insurance. Obviously it is sensible to have some sort of legal threshold under which Canadians must purchase their mortgage insurance. During the Mulroney years of uncontrollable inflation, it was far more than sensible. It was both prudent and necessary.

After decades of strong Liberal leadership, however, this country is enjoying both low inflation and record low unemployment rates. As a result, it is more important than reasonable to reduce the minimum deposit that Canadians must have in order to secure a mortgage without insurance.

I would also like to say that from the outset Canadians must place their trust in government to provide adequate consumer protection. Last year, however, the Conservative government shocked the nation with a devastating announcement that brought a key election promise.

On October 31, the Conservative government dropped a bombshell on Canadians by imposing a new tax regime on publicly traded income trusts. The effect on Canadian markets was devastating, resulting in the permanent loss of well over $20 billion in wealth, most of it at the expense of Canadian seniors who were relying on income trusts for day to day living expenses.

Worst of all, Canadian investors were lured by a Conservative election promise made by the current Prime Minister. In the middle of the last election campaign the Prime Minister said, on December 9, 2005, “A Conservative government will never raid seniors' nest eggs by taxing income trusts”.

Canadian investors took the Conservatives at their word and put more and more of their life savings into income trusts, making this the fastest growing sector on the market, all until the Prime Minister broke his word to Canadians. Sadly, Canadians are learning the hard way. The Conservatives are more than willing to betray election promises without any regard for the damage done to thousands of seniors who worked hard for their life savings only to have it wiped out with the stroke of a pen.

This is a sample of one of many letters and emails that I received from my constituents of Don Valley East. It states:

The damage done to the value of my investments in income trusts is devastating. I have incurred a 20% decline in value. It is my sincerest wish that an election will be held in the very near future and that the majority of Canadians will not re-elect your party. This is a very sad commentary and one I wish was not necessary to write. However, I have definitely lost my confidence in your party's approach to fair treatment of its citizens, particularly seniors of which I am one.

The current Prime Minister knew how much seniors were depending on income trusts and yet he was determined to break his word. With one hand the government has swiped billions from seniors through their income trust savings and with the other offered very little in the form of income splitting. In fact, some have construed this pension splitting to be income splitting. It is not.

Pension splitting will do little to curb poverty among seniors and even less to alleviate the huge losses they have suffered as a result of the Conservatives' broken election promises. Hundreds of thousands of single seniors, the majority of them women, will not see a penny from this policy.

I am pleased to support Bill C-37 at this stage. I am glad to see that the Conservatives are continuing to implement the Liberal agenda on so many fronts. It is, after all, the same Liberal agenda that saw Canada make a complete economic U-turn after years of Conservative fiscal mismanagement. It was not long ago when the Wall Street Journal referred to Canada as a third world economic basket case because of the damage done by the previous Conservative government.

Thank goodness the Liberal Party was able to come to power to eliminate Mulroney's $42 billion deficit, balance the books for eight straight years, while offering Canadians the biggest tax break in Canadian history.

I sincerely hope that Canada's alleged new government will continue to use our ideas to their fullest and can refrain from returning to the dangerous incompetencies of the previous Conservative government, which was so damaging to Canada's economic well-being.