Bill C-52 (Historical)

Budget Implementation Act, 2007

An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 19, 2007

Part 1 implements income tax measures proposed or referenced in Budget 2007 to
(a) introduce a tax on distributions from certain publicly traded income trusts and limited partnerships, effective beginning with the 2007 taxation year;
(b) reduce the general corporate income tax rate by one half of a percentage point, effective January 1, 2011;
(c) increase the age credit amount by $1,000 from $4,066 to $5,066, effective January 1, 2006;
(d) permit income splitting for pensioners, effective beginning in 2007;
(e) introduce a new child tax credit of $2,000 multiplied by the appropriate percentage for a taxation year, effective beginning in 2007;
(f) increase the spousal and other amounts to equal the basic personal amount, effective beginning in 2007;
(g) increase the age limit for maturing registered retirement savings plans, registered pension plans and deferred profit sharing plans to 71 years of age, effective beginning in 2007;
(h) expand the types of investments eligible for registered retirement savings plans and other deferred income plans, effective March 19, 2007; and
(i) increase the contribution limits for registered education savings plans and expand eligible payments for part-time studies, effective beginning in 2007.
Part 1 also amends the Canada Education Savings Act to increase the maximum annual grant payable on contributions made to a registered education savings plan after 2006.
Part 2 amends the Excise Tax Act to clarify the legislative authority that allows the Canada Revenue Agency to pay refunds of excise tax directly to end-users, where fuel subject to excise has been used in tax-exempt circumstances. It also amends that Act to repeal the excise tax on heavy vehicles and to implement the Green Levy on vehicles with fuel consumption of 13 litres or more per 100 kilometres. It also provides an authority for the Canada Revenue Agency to pay a refund of the Green Levy for vans equipped for wheelchair access.
Part 3 implements goods and services tax/harmonized sales tax (GST/HST) measures proposed or referenced in Budget 2007. It amends the Excise Tax Act to exempt midwifery services from the GST/HST and to zero-rate certain supplies of intangible personal property made to non-GST/HST registered non-residents. It also amends that Act to repeal the GST/HST Visitor Rebate Program and to implement a new Foreign Convention and Tour Incentive Program, which provides rebates of tax in respect of certain property and services used in the course of conventions held in Canada and the accommodation portion of tour packages for non-residents, and establishes new information requirements in the case where rebates are credited by the vendor.
Part 4 implements other measures relating to taxation. It amends the Customs Tariff to increase the duty-free exemption for returning Canadian residents, from $200 to $400, for absences from Canada of not less than 48 hours. It amends the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act to clarify that when a federal corporation listed in Schedule I to that Act pays provincial taxes or fees, wholly-owned subsidiaries of that corporation also pay provincial taxes or fees. It also authorizes the Minister of Finance to make payments totaling $400 million out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund to the Province of Ontario to assist the province in the transition to a single corporate tax administration. This last measure is consequential to the October 6, 2006 Canada-Ontario Memorandum of Agreement Concerning a Single Administration of Ontario Corporate Tax.
Part 5 enacts the Tax-back Guarantee Act, which legislates the Government’s commitment to dedicate all effective interest savings from federal debt reduction each year to ongoing personal income tax reductions. That Part also commits the Minister of Finance to report publicly at least once a year on personal income tax relief provided under the Guarantee to Canadians.
Part 6 amends the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act to set out the amounts of the fiscal equalization payments to the provinces and the territorial formula financing payments to the territories for the fiscal year beginning on April 1, 2007 and to provide for the method by which those amounts will be calculated for subsequent fiscal years. It also authorizes certain deductions from those amounts that would otherwise be payable under that Act. In addition, it makes consequential amendments to other Acts.
Part 6 also amends that Act to provide increased funding for the Canada Social Transfer beginning on April 1, 2007, and to provide for the method by which the Canada Social Transfer and the Canada Health Transfer amounts will be calculated for subsequent fiscal years, including per capita cash allocations. It also provides for transition protection.
Part 7 amends the Financial Administration Act to modernize Crown borrowing authorities.
Part 8 amends the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Act to permit the Minister of Finance to lend money to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
Part 9 amends the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation Act, the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act, the Payment Clearing and Settlement Act and the Winding-up and Restructuring Act to allow the Governor in Council to prescribe the meaning of “eligible financial contract”. Those Acts are also amended to provide that, after an insolvency event occurs, a party to an eligible financial contract can deal with supporting collateral in accordance with the terms of the contract despite any stay of proceedings or court order to the contrary. This Part also includes amendments to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and the Winding-up and Restructuring Act to provide that collateral transactions executed in accordance with the terms of an eligible financial contract are not void only because they occurred in the prescribed pre-insolvency or winding-up period.
Part 10 authorizes payments to provinces and territories.
Part 11 authorizes payments to certain entities.
Part 12 extends the sunset provisions of financial institutions statutes by six months from April 24, 2007 to October 24, 2007.
Part 13 amends the Department of Public Works and Government Services Act to provide the Minister of Public Works and Government Services with the power to authorize another minister, to whom he or she has delegated powers under that Act, to subdelegate those powers to the chief executive of the relevant department. That Act is also amended with respect to the application of section 9 to certain departments.
Part 14 amends the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada Act to allow the Minister of Finance to provide funding to the Agency for activities related to financial education.

Motions in Amendment

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member outlined the fact that this budget does have a significant amount of new spending and the government has not been shy in pointing that out to people. I would like to point out to the member a bit about the spending.

First of all, the overwhelming amount of new spending addresses the fiscal imbalance that was created under the former government. This government promised to address the fiscal imbalance in order to provide the provinces with a lot more capacity to provide the social services we all rely on.

If the member looked at the monitor of federal government spending, he would find that the three areas where the government has increased spending in a very significant way outside the fiscal imbalance is agriculture, defence and child care, in that order.

I would like to know if the member would like the government to take any money out of those three portfolios. Perhaps he would like us to spend less money on assisting farmers, or perhaps less on defence. We know that was the Liberal way. Perhaps he would like us to take away money that is assisting hard-working families in Canada. Which of the three would he like us to take away?

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question.

My colleague said that the biggest expenditure was on equalization. Then I do not why there is chaos in Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia and the other maritime provinces. People are saying that the Conservatives broke their promise. If what they did on equalization is the greatest thing the Conservatives have done, then they are really in trouble.

I am glad he raised defence. Several years ago the Liberal government's biggest priority was to replace the search and rescue planes. For the first time in history we would have put four of them north of 60 so Canadians could be protected. I do not know what the Conservative government has done with its defence expenditures, but this has been ignored. There is no tender out to replace those aging planes. The defence department did not purchase the planes that were planned for years ago. When one of those old planes crashes or cannot get to a rescue situation people are certainly going to hold the Conservative government to account.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, it is my duty and pleasure to speak again on the budget and try to reveal to Canadians the truth in regard to some of these allegations that have been thrown around over the course of this debate taking place this morning and throughout the rest of the day.

Certainly we have heard ad nauseam from the Liberals about the role of the New Democratic Party in the income trust fiasco. I want to go back through it for members and give a little history lesson. Income trusts have been in place for a while. The previous finance minister, in September 2005, gave indications of his sense that they were not going quite right. That caused a great disruption in finance fields in this country and eventually led the Liberals, over the course of the next few months, to come up with a different position, such that they kept income trust legislation intact through the federal election of 2006.

I think it is pretty clear that when the Conservatives got in they had supported the income trust legislation as well. The Prime Minister, in his comments during the election, certainly indicated that he was fully supportive of income trusts and the people who were engaged in them. He made some very valiant and self-serving statements during the election campaign about how he was going to continue to do this.

However, once the Conservatives assumed power, had full access to the finance department and understood the nature of what was going on with income trusts, their mood began to change. This change in mood took a while to build as a political entity, because of course we could not have this happening overnight. However, over the course of time and over the last year, the Conservatives came to the realization they had to move on income trusts, so they did, and in this budget they made those moves.

We in the NDP, who of course have been opposed to the concept of income trusts from the very beginning, were fine with what was happening here. We recognized its importance for fairness in the tax system and for the real need to ensure that we were going to collect full revenue from the variety of sources investing in our country, including people within the country.

Today we have the Liberals trying to make time on this issue. They are trying to work harder on this issue to make it appear as though there is a groundswell of bitterness and discontent over this issue across the country. We have all received emails that are very similar in nature and scope. They come to us over and over again in our email boxes from purported hordes of people who are concerned about the income trusts, and quite rightly, because many Canadians took a hit over the income trusts.

Really, these Canadians trusted those two other parties to fully represent the issues to them in a clear and precise manner. They thought the truth was there for them and they invested, but really it was not there and the nature of the income trusts was such that they could not proceed forever.

That is the historical nature of the income trust debate here in Canada. I certainly would like all in this House, and whoever may be listening, to understand that the only party that has had a consistent position on this is the New Democratic Party. We take some pride in that.

It is important that there is consistency in what we do. If we make a mistake, we have to acknowledge it. That is certainly something that the party to my left here needs to do. It is probably a little more to my right, but it sits on my left, and it certainly needs to do a little soul-searching in terms of its apologies to the people of this country for some of the obvious mistakes it made during the election campaign. That does not take away from the importance of what had to be done and now has been done.

As a new MP I have been quite interested in listening to the argument and debate over tax loopholes that has gone on in this Parliament. It is certainly encouraging to see that the budget contains elements that may actually address some of these issues. What the Conservatives were talking about was not very well outlined in the budget, but we certainly got the sense that they would like to pursue reducing the tax loopholes that are available in this country. That is something with which the Liberals had a great degree of difficulty for many, many years, even though, as we have seen, many, many reports told them to do exactly that, to reduce those loopholes, and they did not do it.

Once again, perhaps out of this will come a sense of more fairness in the tax system. We will wait and see what the Conservatives do with what they said in the budget they would do.

After I listened to the debate this morning, those are the tax issues that I thought needed some clarification.

The issue on which I tend to focus as energy critic is the need for an energy strategy in Canada. This budget clearly demonstrates that. We are spending money in areas such as renewable fuels, with $2.2 billion over seven years. It is not really about renewable energy, because by and large the program is about providing some further future methods of subsidy for farmers and for that approach. That is fine, but in terms of greenhouse gas reduction it really represents a very small amount of greenhouse gas reduction for a very large expenditure of government funds. As well, as we have seen lately in some of the reports and in the scientific information that has come out, even in terms of air emissions the move toward renewable fuels does very little to reduce smog.

We have seen a large expenditure of government funds for a purpose that I think we all sort of support, but really it is not tied to what arguably in the first effort of any energy strategy is energy efficiency and conservation.

Leading that back to our auto industry, an investment of some of that money, some of those large capital sums, in retooling our auto industry would mean that it could start to compete for the small scale automotive highly efficient vehicle market that will develop over the next number of years, and that would probably achieve much more return for the economy and for greenhouse gas reductions and the reduction of smog and air pollution.

In the absence of this energy strategy, which looks at all the issues and puts them together in a fashion such that we can see the logical progression forward of our economy and society, the budget, in its dealings with energy issues and climate related issues linked to energy, has not really accomplished what I think all of us are looking for in the expenditure of public funds. I will not go into a lot of other examples of that.

I will wrap up by saying that the NDP clearly did not support this budget. It was supported by the Bloc and has moved forward. It has a more regional aspect, while I think that most of us in the NDP would have liked to see more directed programs. That did not happen. We will continue not to support the budget, but in the spirit of working together in Parliament we will try to find solutions that can be put forward in the future.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Western Arctic spoke about the energy component. I realize that he is the critic for energy, but he speaks in defence of the Conservatives' position on income trusts. He would know that the governor of the Bank of Canada indicated at committee that income trusts were a completely reasonable and preferable vehicle for managing mature oil fields and depleting access, and in the absence of having these income trusts in that field, the beneficiaries would be offshore owners, American owners, and, mostly, multinational big oil companies that now have no competition in buying and operating those fields.

In light of the words of the governor of the Bank of Canada, how can the member, in the spirit of energy independence for our country, maintain the position that all income trusts are inherently bad?

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, quite clearly there is concern about the mature nature of our oil and gas fields in the western Canada sedimentary basin. We should all be very concerned about them, because as those resources move to depletion, we are going to be taking on much more difficult energy solutions, much more carbon intensive energy solutions, and solutions that are not always going to work to Canada's benefit.

The ability to develop those mature fields certainly has some interest for me, but once again, in terms of an energy strategy for Canada, one where we bring the industry to the table so that we can understand what it sees as the proper vehicle for ensuring that the mature fields are completely run out, which is what I suppose most of us would like to see, I would wait until we have that kind of debate where all the options are put on the table.

To say that the vehicle that was designed for this is working pretty well on this road does not suggest there are not other things that would be more appropriate to do and to put on the road to carry forward.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by pointing out that of course the governor of the Bank of Canada said no such thing. In fact, he said that the significant tax advantage that existed in the income trust model would lead to less investment, lower productivity and less economic growth for all Canadians. Perhaps the Liberal Party wants to see that for Canadians. The Conservative government does not. We appreciate the NDP's support in that regard.

I would like to ask the member specifically about the budget. There are a couple of quotes that I thought I would run by him to see whether he is supportive of them.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business said that budget 2007 is “a big budget for small business”. The Conservative government, it said, “met and exceeded our expectations”.

On forestry products, to which an NDP member spoke briefly, it was stated that the Conservative government “has sent a strong signal that it understands the need to encourage investment and innovation to keep jobs in Canada”.

The Canadian Home Builders' Association said that budget 2007 “will benefit a large number of businesses across the country”.

They have been very clear that this is a good budget. It is a good budget for industry, for manufacturing, for families, for health care and for post-secondary education. What is the NDP looking for? What would it support? I would love to know that. If not this budget, what? This budget is good for a lot of people.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, perhaps I will touch on the forestry issue, because the NDP was not in favour of the softwood lumber deal. We saw that as a job losing proposition, which is exactly what it was. The investments that forest companies are making now are in sawmills across the border in the United States. Raw log exports are on the way up. The Canadian worker is going to suffer as a result.

We did not see anything in the budget that could change that rather alarming state of affairs in the forest industry in terms of employment. There was nothing in the budget that could possibly curtail that, other than perhaps a quota on raw log exports or offering up incentives such as making these raw log exports tariff free and putting them under the same tariff as lumber. That might have changed the nature of the softwood lumber deal. It might have made it one that was more in favour of keeping production in Canada.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would just like to ask the member if we could move on to S. O. 31s so that we get the timing good and we do not get too far behind today because there is a lot of important stuff happening this afternoon.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

I thank the hon. member for that point of order. It was indeed a very useful intervention from the point of view of the Chair.

Statements by members, the hon. member for Sarnia--Lambton.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-52, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 19, 2007, as reported (with amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

Budget Implementation Act, 2007

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak to the report stage of the budget bill.

We are looking at the question of the treatment of the tourism industry and our competitiveness in the tourism industry. That is one element.

A very good program was brought in forward by the Liberal government, the GST rebate for tourists from other nations. This program encouraged them to visit Canada. It also helped us compete with other jurisdictions around the world, particularly important for the convention and tour business. However, it was also important to purveyors, to people who would come here to hunt and fish and to people who would come with their families.

We were able to get the Conservatives to move on some elements of that, but they could go forward and reinstate the full program. It was not very expensive, nationally, when we look at the total value of the tourism industry. It was very important to the operators and to our country. I will go back to that later.

If I look at the context of the budget generally, I see two things. One is we evaluate the intention of a government and its competence through a budget. The other thing is we see what opportunity we have and how a government wants to grasp it.

Now we have the most buoyant economy in the history of our country. When the government came into power, it inherited surpluses, the lowest unemployment rate ever, very stable and low interest rates, an economy growing faster than almost every other nation in the world and a very stable one. It has a surplus of $13.2 billion this year from last year's operation.

Let us see what the Conservatives did in their budget.

First, because the economy is so buoyant, this is the highest spending budget in the history of the country. However, when we look at where these investments are made, it leaves a lot to be desired. Rather than building a country, looking at the nation and asking where are its weak elements, where should we be making investments to bring the potential up so we can achieve the national dream and individual can achieve their dreams, the government does not do that.

This is a purely political budget, looking at a very quick election. I think when the budget was drafted, the intention was to go to an election before we would get to this stage, before we would talk about budget implementation.

We see promises to Ontario, Quebec and Alberta of huge transfers of funds. We talk about fiscal imbalance, but we see that these funds were promised before we even voted on them in the House.There were tax cuts within Quebec for political advantage, something we learned had been negotiated, which is distressing when we look at everything else that was left out and not done and everything that was cut.

The same day a $13.5 billion surplus announced, a million dollars was cut in social programs. I have spoken to those at large. We talked about the CAP sites across our nation. We talked about summer employment. For summer employment this year, $11 million have been cut, and we saw the ramifications of that across the nation. We saw students all across the nation, volunteer groups, not for profit sector losing their ability to carry out their work and the students getting revenue and that experience.

Now the Conservatives are backing down part way, another one of those famous flip-flops that we have seen from the finance minister, but again not enough. Imagine if the government had been in a majority situation.

We saw it in the income trust sector, and we raise this often. I think it is symbolic of the problems with the government. It makes a promise and then flat out breaks that promise. By making the promise not to tax income trusts, the Prime Minister encouraged people to put more of their investments in that sector. Then he broke that promise and taxed them heavily.

We had very good committee hearings on this, and we invited him to have a look at it. Admittedly there were problems in the sector. If we can only look at the testimony of one individual, I encourage people to look at the testimony of the Governor of the Bank of Canada, which was quite well balanced. He indicated there were problems within the sector and that action was warranted. He pointed out that there were problems in governance in certain elements within the sector. He also said that it was an excellent vehicle for the capital markets in certain parts of the sector.

The Minister of Finance has a lot of people investing in real estate in his riding and in his communities. He agreed with that. His friends all in real estate trusts, REITs, were not touched. He left it in that sector, but he did not look at other sectors, such as energy where it was an excellent vehicle. Rather than having a surgical strike, repairing the problems within the sector, there was a nuclear blast that destroyed the whole sector. We know the results: $25 billion in capital losses to the people in that sector.

We have the Atlantic accord. If members remember, I was on the government side of the House. The Conservatives were so in favour of the Atlantic accord. When we went through the budget at the end of the last Liberal government, they asked that we divide it. They wanted to vote on the Atlantic accord separate from the budget, because they wanted to vote in favour it only. What did they do in their budget? They reneged on the Atlantic accord.

Now the Conservatives have negotiations on the background. We know Premier MacDonald in Nova Scotia is in trouble. We watched Nova Scotia lose $1 billion, and not a word from this guy in the last little while. He did not come to finance committee last week. I thought that was regrettable. While Nova Scotia's economy is at risk and burning, he fiddles.

Danny Williams is being a little bit more vocal. I am pleased to hear that somebody from the Atlantic is speaking.

However, the promise made through the Atlantic accord was that independent of any other program of government, if there were changes in equalization, changes in transfers, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador would not be affected. The Atlantic accord was above and beyond all the programs.

Then what does the Prime Ministerdo? He said that either they kept the accord or they took the new equalization formula. He has said that it is not capped. We heard that in the House today, but it is capped. On equalization, Nova Scotia is capped as soon as the economy reaches the amount of the least of the non-receiving provinces. We know it is capped. That is the ultimate level at which it can receive money. If it chooses to go to the new equalization, which is better on the short term, it gives us $1 billion in the long term through the Canada-Nova Scotia agreement, which I think is not at all reasonable.

We saw the CAP sites being closed down. Giving Internet access to rural communities, small communities, disadvantaged people in urban areas, we saw that being closed down. The Conservatives refused to make the announcement. We kept the pressure on and now they are talking about making it, another flip-flop that I am very happy to see.

We saw an increase in taxes to the most vulnerable Canadians. The lowest paid Canadians who are paying taxes are seeing their taxes go up from 15% at the start to 15.25% and 15.5% next year.

Reducing consumption taxes by reducing 1¢ on the GST, which the Conservatives did last year, helps those who are at the upper end of a lot of discretionary spending. At the lower end, most people's spending goes on items that do not attract GST, so those people do not benefit.

We heard promises by the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans when he was on the fisheries committees. He supported the report on the fisheries committee that we needed more investments in wharves. Not a cent was invested. There was a reduction when we should have been investing more.

We know the problems of the harbour in Digby. One of the members in opposition was always speaking about that harbour. When the Conservatives came into power, they got the report of the arbitrator, the perfect thing they needed to make that investment and take over the wharf. There was complete and utter inaction.

We get signals every now and then that they will be doing it, but they are not doing it. They are probably waiting for an election. It is the responsibility of the government to give service to the people of Canada between elections, not only during elections.

We saw the problems within the lobster industry. To be a hero, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans announced a huge change in the licensing procedures and the way that licences were held. He reduced the value of these licences by half. About $600 million of capital value in these licences, retirement funds of these families, was lost overnight with one announcement.

Again, the Conservatives say that are willing to reconsider. I wrote the minister about six weeks ago, but I have had no answer yet. I have brought it up in the House, but I get no answer. Then they give us the same promises on the bill. The bill has many of those same elements. If the ministerial order can be modified, how can we be confident that they will act accordingly and responsibility if we pass a bill that gives the minister and his appointed tribunal so much power?

There are many things that we would like to see. There were huge announcements made by the government in the area of defence spending. They were huge. Where have we seen them? Where are the contracts? Very few--

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

It is with regret that I must interrupt the member, but he will know that I gave him the two minute and then the one minute notice.

On questions and comments, the hon. member for Peterborough.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address the member's speech. He certainly has been very crafty in talking about issues that he wants to talk about but not talking about the benefits of the budget, certainly the benefits for the people of Nova Scotia and in fact for people in all parts of Canada. These benefits are significant. I know that ultimately the member supports them, but for partisan reasons he cannot.

I want to address one issue with the member. He talked about equalization. I want to ask him whether equalization inherently means equal, or whether equalization inherently means that some regions should be better off than others and supported in such a manner by the federal government.

Ultimately, here is what the Liberal Party is missing. When the Liberal Party was in government it always spoke about less being more. In fact, it would give less to the provinces but talk about how much more it was doing, which was impossible. In this budget this government is providing more money. It is providing more money to Nova Scotia and to every single province and territory, which means more capacity for all provinces and more money for health care and infrastructure. More is more.

Why is the member not supporting this? It is more money for Nova Scotia and Nova Scotians. It is more money for every Canadian, distributed in a fair fashion. The member should support it. Fair is fair.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the question here is about the Atlantic accord. The Atlantic accord was of great advantage to Nova Scotia. It said that the revenues from Nova Scotia's non-renewable resources will not be calculated against its money in equalization. Therefore, it would get that money to invest in the future of the province, because those are non-renewable resources.

Maybe that was better than fair. Maybe it was a disproportionate fair share. Maybe it was not completely equal with other provinces, but when the Conservatives were in opposition they supported it. As well, during the election campaign, the Prime Minister made the promise that he would not go back on the Atlantic accord.

That is what the question is here. It is a question of integrity. It is a question of how much people can trust the Prime Minister, and to that I say zero, zero on the Atlantic accord, zero on income trusts, and zero on ethics when we look at the way he dealt with Senator Fortier, to whom he gave the department with the biggest spending. Senator Fortier is not here to answer questions in question period, but the Prime Minister said during the election that he would not appoint cabinet ministers who were not elected.

These are the fundamental questions. Can we believe this person? Can Canadians believe the Conservative Prime Minister?

The Conservatives like to call themselves the new government, Mr. Speaker, but I show you the next opposition.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member talked about the need for investment in tourism. One of the ways that cities can benefit is through investment in the arts.

We know that a lot of artists earn very little. Their earnings are below minimum wage and they live in poverty, yet they produce amazing and creative work that enlivens our cities and communities. It brings in tourists from all over the world. Yet there is very little investment in this budget for the Canada Arts Council, or to help filmmakers and documentary makers, or to help people involved in the arts, the playwrights and actors. They have to leave the country in order to find jobs. It is a very desperate situation.

Does the member think there should be more investment in the Canada Arts Council, in our film industry and in our artists so they can continue to create their very dynamic and vibrant materials for our country?