The House resumed consideration of the motion that this House approve in general the budgetary policy of the government, and of the amendment.
:
Mr. Speaker, it is, as always, a privilege to rise in the House to share the concerns of the people of Perth—Wellington and bring those concerns to this place.
This year's budget was the third opportunity the Liberals had to address the real concerns of Canadians. Since the election, they could have addressed the concerns of Canadians in the fall economic statement, in the implementation act for the fall economic statement or in this budget. Sadly, the issues I am hearing about every day in phone calls, emails and conversations at community events were not addressed by the Liberals in this year's budget.
Canadians are feeling the impact of inflation. I hear from families who have lost hope on ever owning their own home, and I hear from others who are struggling to find rental housing that is not only affordable but also large enough for their families. I hear from seniors who have worked hard their entire lives and who are now struggling to pay the bills. They are on fixed incomes that are stagnating while the costs of groceries, utilities and housing keep going up. Their costs keep rising, but their incomes remain that same. That is the cruelty of inflation.
No one saw any humour in the government’s April Fools' Day joke to once again raise the carbon tax, which is a tax that impacts the people in the lowest income spectrum the most. These are the people who can least afford to pay it.
The government had options that could help Canadians. It could have taken the advice of our Conservative motion to temporarily remove the GST portion of the HST to give all Canadians a temporary 5% reduction on the cost of gas. Any Canadian who has filled up their tank recently knows the impact of $1.84 per litre and the impact it has on families commuting to work or taking their kids to soccer practice or baseball practice. The government did not take our advice and our modest, common sense proposal was voted down by the Liberal government and the other opposition parties.
I am very proud to represent a strong rural and agriculture-based community. Here in Canada, one in eight jobs is linked to the agriculture and agri-food sector. This generates 140 billion dollars' worth of economic activity each and every year. In Perth—Wellington alone, agriculture is a billion-dollar industry, with grain farmers cultivating some of the most fertile farmland in the world. Dairy, beef, pork, egg, chicken and other farmers provide high-quality food to feed our communities, our country and the world.
Anyone who tuned in to hear the Liberal government's budget speech would be sorely disappointed to know that this economic powerhouse of agriculture was not even mentioned in the 's budget speech. In her 3,000-word speech, she did not once mention agriculture or agri-food, farmers and farm families, or food processing and rural communities. Not once was this economic powerhouse of agriculture and agri-food mentioned in the 's speech.
When a speech is used to highlight the priorities of a government, what is left unsaid is awfully telling. Farmers and farm families quite literally feed the world. They work hard, and they innovate each and every day. Thousands of farmers are up early every morning, while most of the country is still sleeping, making sure the food supply chain remains intact.
Agriculture has always been a challenging field. There are unknowns no one can predict. What farmers do not need is the uncertainty caused by their own government. Even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, fertilizer costs and supply issues were a problem. This included the ongoing efforts of the Liberal government to limit the fertilizer farmers use on their crops.
On March 2, when the government announced sanctions that were supposed to target Vladimir Putin and his thugs, it was Canadian farmers who were left feeling the greatest impact. As we approach the spring planting season, farmers and agribusinesses still do not have certainty from the government on whether the 35% tariff will apply on fertilizer purchased pre-March 2, but delivered after that date. In a case like this, the farmer and only the farmer is feeling the impact, not Vladimir Putin and his thugs.
No one is disagreeing with the need for sanctions against Putin, but those sanctions should not penalize those who prepurchased fertilizer last fall and now are being left with the bill. The budget was an opportunity to provide clarity on this issue and, once again, the and the failed to do so.
The cost of fertilizer is not the only challenge facing Canadian farmers. There is also the cost of the carbon tax, as I mentioned earlier. For farmers there are very few, if any, alternatives to the use of carbon-based fuels to dry their grain or to transport grain to elevators for export around the globe. However, the Liberals continue to unfairly and punitively charge the carbon tax in situations where there are simply no alternatives, and the cost simply accrues to those who feed our country. Canadian farmers have long used the most sustainable measures to protect and preserve our land and national resources, but while they are doing the work necessary, they do not get the credit, and they are actually penalized for their work.
Once again, there is an easy solution. My friend and colleague, the member for , wisely introduced a private member's bill that would exempt farmers for the responsible use of fuel on their farms. Bill would achieve this. In fact, a year ago, a bill similar to this one, Bill , passed through this House and was well on its way to passing through the other place when the Liberals dissolved Parliament for the unnecessary summer election.
In a perfect world, we could have passed Bill C-206 a year ago, but the next best option would be to pass Bill C-234. The budget could have done this. Sadly, it failed to do so. Farmers and farm families deserve better than what they are receiving from the Liberal government. For the sake of our food sovereignty and food security, they must do better.
In the six and a half years I have been in this place, at almost every opportunity in almost every budget, I have raised the concerns about rural broadband in my riding and in rural communities across the country, but these past two years especially have shown the necessity of reliable Internet service. The Liberal government has been slower than dial-up. Every day I hear from constituents who cannot complete their education, grow their businesses, communicate with loved ones or even access mental health services because the high-speed Internet infrastructure is not there. Let me highlight that point. They cannot access mental health services because they do not have high-speed Internet.
I have heard from constituents who have had to drive to a Tim Hortons parking lot to use its Wi-Fi to access services. In 2022, this is not acceptable. In fact, yesterday in the House, we heard the highlight their plans to get Canadians connected by 2030. Eight years from now is not good enough. It is not good enough for the families in Perth—Wellington, and it is not good enough for the rural communities across this country who need reliable high-speed Internet for their families, their communities and their country.
I know my time is running thin, but I must highlight the issue of housing. In my community and in communities across Perth—Wellington, housing has simply become unaffordable. In some places we have seen an increase of 30%, 40%, 50% or more in the cost of housing, year over year. In a single year this has driven up the cost to where families are just priced out of the marketplace. There are things we could do. We could use the advice of the Ontario Home Builders’ Association and its efforts. It has stated that one million new homes need to be built in the next 10 years. We need to work toward that outcome. We need to remove the red tape blocking communities and home builders so families and communities can grow.
Sadly, this budget has left out rural communities. It has left out rural communities in Perth—Wellington and across the country. That is why I will be voting against this budget.
:
Madam Speaker, I would like to dedicate my speech today to Tania Woroby, now retired from teaching, but who taught me my first economics class ever when I was in CEGEP in Montreal. Ms. Woroby had a gift for explaining economics with crystalline clarity.
[Translation]
A good economics professor can play a crucial role, as I am sure the members for and would agree.
[English]
How would Ms. Woroby have graded the official opposition's response to the budget? She would have probably awarded them low marks for their partial analysis of the state of the economy. However, like a kind and patient teacher, she would perhaps have allowed them to rewrite the mid-term.
There is a real economy and a money economy, as I learned in Ms. Woroby's class, and yes, they are connected, but the Conservatives insist on ignoring what is going on in the real economy. They focus solely on monetary policy, which seems misplaced since the government does not control monetary policy, something the has tried over and over again to explain in the simplest terms.
The Great Depression highlighted the potential impacts of catastrophic events in the real economy. In the Great Depression, we saw the collapse of agriculture, the hangover from industrial overproduction, the rise of trade protectionism and a general crisis of confidence, something Keynes incorporated in his analysis under the rubric “animal spirits”. All these factors combined calamitously to sink the economy against the backdrop of a shrinking money supply tied to widespread bank failures. The money supply is always the backdrop, but contrary to what the Conservatives believe, the money supply is not the main driving force behind economic activity.
As Andrew Coyne put it in a recent column, inflation is not “too much money chasing too few goods”. Rather, the price of a good or service rises when demand outstrips supply. For example, if the price of oranges goes up because of a frost in Florida that killed the crop, that is not inflation. It is a price signal that oranges are in short supply relative to demand, a gap the free market will move to fill by offering more economical substitutes.
Quantitative easing, or “unconventional monetary measures” as it has been called, did not unleash inflation in the United States between 2009 and 2015 when the Federal Reserve used it in response to the 2008 financial crisis, because the state of demand in the real economy was weak, deflationary even. What quantitative easing did was save the international financial order. Quantitative easing has been front and centre during this pandemic, but this is not what has fuelled inflation. As Ian Lee, a professor of economics at Carleton University, says, “Over the last two years people realized there's some things they don’t need as badly or as much as they thought they needed.”
What is more, those who received COVID benefits did not spend more. They essentially borrowed less and saved more. Canadian household savings rates rose during the pandemic, and much of the savings are still in personal bank accounts. Bank deposits have grown by an average of around $12,000 per household compared with prepandemic trends. Also worth mentioning is that consumers are expected to use their credit cards less in 2022 in favour of instead using cash. According to Nicole McKnight of finder.com, “Three times as many people said they would either stop using their credit card or use it less often, than those who said they would use it more.” None of this suggests a credit-driven spending spree linked to inflation.
Quantitative easing is not the same thing as creating cash. It is not printing money, as the member for likes to tell us. Quantitative easing creates chartered bank reserves that are held at the Bank of Canada. These can be turned into loans, but this does not happen automatically. It happens only if there are profitable lending opportunities, including to businesses that want to expand capacity, something that actually mitigates inflationary pressure.
As global chief economist for Manulife Investment Management Frances Donald has said, “For the past 40 or 50 years, we've tended to view the economy through a demand-side lens. What is so unique about this [period today] is that it's the greatest supply side shock since the 1970s.” In other words, to quote economist Armine Yalnizyan, “This is pandemic economics. The regular rules may not apply.”
We have been living in a trade globalized world for the past two decades, with global supply chains built around just-in-time delivery and thin inventories that, if they had been more robust, could have better absorbed COVID supply shocks. When confronted by lockdowns at major ports and factories, the global just-in-time delivery system simply snapped.
Pandemic economics is mostly about capacity constraints, and demand shifting from services like travel and restaurant meals to goods, mostly ordered online, and not about too much money chasing too few goods. We are talking about fewer semiconductors for cars and washing machines, the halt in housing construction for weeks, if not months, at a time during the lockdowns and even capacity limits in the oil and gas sector following a downsizing of its workforce in response to a precipitous drop in economic activity caused by the pandemic. Of course, there is a war in Ukraine that has created uncertainty in energy markets causing prices to rise, which has in turn raised the cost of food production, among other things.
Energy prices may be about to stabilize. According to an article in the New York Times on April 12 referring to the impact of world oil prices on U.S. inflation:
...it now appears that the world oil market overshot in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.... President Biden's million-barrel-a-day release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve makes up for much of the shortfall [in Russian oil supplies]. As of this morning, [on April 12], crude oil prices were barely above their pre-Ukraine level, and the wholesale price of gasoline was down about 60 cents a gallon from its peak last month.
Then there are the impacts of climate change on agriculture. To quote from a CTV article from this past January:
A recent NASA study noted that global agriculture is facing a new climate reality and with the interconnectedness of the global food system, impacts in even one region's breadbasket will be felt worldwide.
According to Canada's Food Price Report, in 2021, Canada experienced climate change-related adverse weather effects, such as severe wildfires in British Columbia and drought conditions in the Prairies, that affected the prices of meat and bakery products.
Finally, there are the all-too-familiar labour supply constraints, including shortages of port workers and drivers, who are so vital to a functioning supply chain. Here in Canada, the pandemic depressed immigration levels in 2020 and forced hundreds of thousands of women out of the workforce. That is why we are investing in immigration and child care.
To see the impact of supply-side inflation, one needs only to dissect the components of the consumer price index. The main components of a rising CPI, in February 2022 relative to February 2021, were transportation, at 8.4%; food, at 6.5%; and shelter, at 6.6%. That is not to be confused with the cost of housing, but includes mortgage interest, property taxes, fuel and electricity. If we take energy and food out of the equation, the inflation rate in February was only 3.9%. When we looked at the inflation figures for March, we saw that the price of gasoline, year to year, went up about 40%. While mortgage interest, household operating costs, rent and furnishings are included in the basket of goods that make up the CPI, home prices are not. This is because homes are capital assets.
Bidding wars have driven home prices to unprecedented levels, due in part to people moving away from core areas, shortages of new supply and cheap mortgages, clearly. However, house-asset inflation does not squeeze disposable income the same way that a rising CPI does, though it creates intergenerational inequality and this is a problem. That is why the budget is addressing housing supply and housing affordability. Independently, of course, the Bank of Canada is addressing interest rates and the cost of mortgages.
Monetary policy, however, can dramatically suppress economic activity. It can cause great misery for a great many. We can think of the Federal Reserve's actions during the first Reagan administration, when former Fed chairman Paul Volcker wrung inflation out of the U.S. economy through an aggressive, tight money policy that created a deep recession.
The question for the official opposition is this: What should the Bank of Canada have done at the start of COVID-19? Should it have suffocated the economy during a global pandemic and created deflation worthy of the Great Depression, in the process destroying production capacity in a way that would have comprised economic growth across future generations? Also, what should the Bank of Canada do now that it is not already doing? Should the bank go even harder on raising interest rates, to the point of provoking house price deflation and a deep recession? Would that bring down the international price of oil and food, or would these remain a problem, especially for the larger number of Canadians suddenly thrown out of work? Would a more aggressive interest rate policy resolve supply chain issues? No, and that is why our budget is taking aim at the supply chain problem.
These are some of the questions that the official opposition needs to answer. They are answers that Canadians would like to hear.
:
Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for .
The Canadian dream is dying, and the Liberals are digging its grave. They put us on an economic suicide mission, and the world that millennials are inheriting will be far different, after six years of the Liberals' rule in this country, from that of the baby boomers who preceded us and that of our parents. I am very concerned about it, and very much looking forward to discussing the budget that they brought forward and the lack of vision and a positive plan to create a future that millennials can really believe in.
Let us take housing, for example. Housing has effectively doubled in price since the Liberal government took power six years ago. It is over $868,000 to buy a house today. My generation is the most educated generation in history: We have dual-income households, with both people working full-time, yet half of us will never be able to afford our own homes. That is what the data is telling us.
In our parents' generation, let us take the 1970s, the average income was about $25,000. A person could not have a formal, post-secondary education and earn $25,000 a year, and the average house price was about $50,000. A person could reasonably buy that house and pay it off within 10 years. Now, for my generation, the most educated in history with dual-income households, half of us will never own a home. Something is seriously wrong with this picture. People depend on houses for their retirement, so what is half of my generation going to do about their retirement plan?
We have not heard a coherent plan from this government, but since they took office and with their new promises in their budget, the Liberals are spending about $74 billion on housing. One could argue that perhaps their plan is making housing more expensive, from the looks of it. We know that the Parliamentary Budget Officer himself has said that the Liberal plan for housing will only have a limited impact, so there is not a lot to look forward to for millennials.
We hear every day that interest rates are going up. What does that really mean for the average homeowner? If a person recently bought a house at the average home price of $800,000, and was lucky to get in with a lower interest rate of about 2%, and paid 5% down, they would probably be paying about $3,400 a month for their mortgage.
Let us say that it goes up even 3%, which does not sound like a lot. Let us say that the mortgage goes up 3% when it is time to renew it in a couple of years. That would mean that they would be paying about $5,200 a month. That is $22,000 more, for the year, that a family with the average home price would pay in interest. At $22,000 a year for a mortgage, it is catastrophic. That is families walking into the bank with their home keys, dropping them on the desk and saying “Sorry, take them. We cannot afford it any more. We are going to lose our equity. We cannot afford this.” It is very concerning to hear of these interest rate increases and the impact they will have on home ownership in this country.
We know that the cost of living is going up as well. Of course, it is driven in large part by inflation. It hit 6.7% for the cost of goods in March, which is a 30-year high. Inflation has not been this bad since before I was born, to put it into context. That is what we receive as millennials and as Canadians, now after six years of Liberal rule.
If we look at food and gas, a recent survey showed that a third of Manitobans said they do not make enough to cover their bills. That is one in three, and half of Manitobans are only $200 away from not being able to afford their bills. They are going to go bankrupt. They are $200 away from the doors closing and being unable to pay their bills. It is pretty astounding that half of Manitobans are only $200 away from that.
Every time my colleagues work hard to bring up legitimate grievances on behalf of their constituents who are struggling to afford food, or struggling to afford gas that was about a dollar a litre when the Liberals came in and now is almost two dollars, we get a bit of an eye-roll and hear: “Oh, we're here for the people. We take care of them. We have Canada's back.” I do not think so. It does not seem that way when people cannot afford groceries.
If we go to the grocery store to pick up four modest bags of groceries, we are looking at a $300 bill. Imagine families of four or five. How are they affording this? Interest rates are going up on car loans, credit loans, credit cards and mortgages. All of it is increasing. More money is going to just interest payments.
Prices are going up, but what is the Liberals' plan to grow the economy and to bring prosperity to the millennial generation and to all Canadians? I am really not clear after reading the budget, and that has been a common criticism across the political spectrum. What is the vision?
We know growth and investment have been way down since they took office. They have created an environment in Canada such that people look at Canada and say they are not investing there because the regulatory burden is too high. I was listening to a podcast of Paul Wells, formerly of Maclean's, who was saying that in the Liberal budget itself growth over the next several years is projected to be lower than in the rest of the G7. Total spending on research and development has been declining in Canada, which is the only G7 country where that has been happening. That is what Mr. Wells brought my attention to in this podcast.
That is the Liberals' record of seven years of governance.
The Financial Post said, “Manufacturing capital stock is the lowest it has been in 35 years.” The Fraser Institute said that “business investment dropped in seven of 15 sectors”, critical sectors. Economic engines of our country have dropped since the Liberals have been in government. Jack Mintz from the Financial Post put it quite well: “Ottawa needs to recognize that Canada's economic potential depends on private investment, not government spending”. If only they would recognize that.
If we look at the country's main economic engine, what brings in the most revenue, more than any other industry, it is oil and gas. We have heard a lot about this. There were the “no more pipelines” bill and the tanker ban. Liberals repeatedly brought in major regulatory burdens so that Canada cannot develop its natural resources and get them to market. It has been moving at a glacial pace, yet we know that oil and gas brought in $700 billion in cumulative fiscal revenue to federal, provincial and municipal governments. That is $700 billion made from oil and gas and given to government. That pays for health care. That pays for education. That pays for roads. That pays for our generous social safety net.
We talk about green investment. I am all for moving forward and greening our economy. I think most people are, but how are we going to get there? It is very expensive and the technology is not there yet. We need research and development dollars, which I just mentioned are declining. We need something to make the money so that we can invest in these programs, invest in making our economy greener, and that is oil and gas. That is LNG. If we would export our LNG and offset the world's dependence on coal, we could massively lower emissions, but we need a government with the will to make that happen.
We see countries like Norway leading the way, making their economy greener and also aggressively pursuing oil and gas development, working with their oil and gas for carbon capture technology. It is incredible what Norway is doing: green and oil and gas.
For six years, we have heard the government talk about green jobs. I looked on Google for quite some time to try to figure out exactly what “green jobs” means. We also heard this from the Kathleen Wynne government in Ontario, green jobs. Of course, the energy prices for households doubled during her time in the Ontario Liberal provincial government, much like what is happening with the federal Liberal government now with energy prices and household costs. I cannot seem to find any evidence of these green jobs. Maybe someone can correct me and quote some data, because I have not been able to find these green jobs that the Liberals have been talking about for six or seven years. Where are they? I would like to know, and I would like to see the data that says they are going to be as lucrative for Canada today as oil and gas has been for our social services and for our infrastructure. There is no evidence of this. Not to say it cannot happen, but they are not doing a great job.
What does this create? I think people forget, but Canada is a very difficult country to govern. We are the second-largest land mass in the world. We have two official languages. We have over 300 first nation communities. We have the east coast, the west coast, the Prairies, Ontario, Quebec and the north. It is a difficult country to govern, historically and today, but especially when the and his father have been in power we have seen western alienation. We have seen Quebec separatism.
This is what we are seeing, and the Liberals know it. They know that if they can focus the votes in the Toronto area, they do not have to pay attention to the rest of the country. We can see it in their policies. They do not consider what the west needs. Gerald Butts, former number one right-hand person to our , said, “What you see here is a long term optimization trend.” He also said, “Campaigns are a ruthless optimization exercise: where will your incremental investment drive the maximum return in real time.” He said, “We count seats, not votes, so smart campaigns focus on delivering them.” They are winning elections on division.
I will end with this: If governments can't demonstrate that their efforts work for regular people, then people will start to look around for other, extreme alternatives. Who said that? It was the , at a Liberal convention in 2014. Maybe he should listen to his own words.
:
Madam Speaker, I rise in the House today to discuss the first NDP-Liberal budget in Canada.
What a year it has been. As COVID‑19 continues to devastate the Canadian economy and our supply chains, many people in this country will struggle for many years to recover from the losses suffered over the past two tough years.
People are wondering what this budget does for Canadians. Well, it proposes higher interest rates, higher taxes, and more and more spending. At a time when Canadians could use a break, the bad news keeps piling up.
Liberal MPs will likely use the same talking points as usual when debating this subject, but they will probably not ask any questions about the following topics that I was very much hoping would be included in budget 2022.
First, I would like to discuss the rural-urban divide that seems to be growing in this country. My riding of Beauce is located in rural Quebec. It is an entrepreneurial and agricultural hub. Unfortunately, the latest budgets from the current government only make us feel further and further away from seeing any meaningful change in our region.
Why does the government continue to ignore rural Canada?
I was hoping to see some funding for public transit or additional funding for community infrastructure in this budget, but once again, we have been forgotten. Municipalities in my riding are trying to implement public transit, but they need financial support. This is something that needs to be addressed, but until the federal government is prepared to put money on the table this will remain a distant dream.
Cell connectivity in rural Canada is another issue that matters to rural Canadians and that was not mentioned once in the budget. How hard is it for the government to recognize that this is not only a matter of fairness but also of public safety?
Many municipalities in my riding do not have reliable cell coverage. This not only increases the probability of public safety disasters but also causes lost productivity for our businesses.
The government needs to sit down with the CRTC and the large telecom companies and find a way to finally provide affordable service to rural Canadians. There has to be a way to set a baseline for minimum coverage and a fair and equitable scale of payment for these services.
In my riding, cell phone bills are among the highest in the country even though we get some of the spottiest service. We must tackle this problem and improve high-speed Internet service at the same time, because they are both equally important in our regions.
Another issue I would like to tackle, which is probably the biggest problem in my riding, is the labour shortage. Beauce has one of the lowest unemployment rates in Canada and is constantly struggling to attract workers. In our case, the only option for many years has been to use the temporary foreign worker program. Unfortunately for us and for many other Canadian business owners, this system is broken. In recent months, the government has made some promises and some supposed changes to the program, but nothing has changed on the ground.
Let us be frank. Our country has a lot of red tape. There is paperwork upon paperwork to be done. Departments that should work together blame one another for the delays. They also blame the provinces.
The immigration department really needs to wake up. These files should be processed much more quickly. It is simple. Many businesses wait months and months to get workers. They spend thousands of dollars in government and administrative fees only to be told that the workers may never arrive or that their arrival will be considerably delayed because of problems that the government itself has created.
Many proposals with respect to agricultural and seasonal workers were brought forward at the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, of which I am a member, and elsewhere, but the situation has improved only slightly since we tabled our report.
We are also seeing numerous issues with non-agricultural workers, yet there does not seem to be any urgency on the part of this government to bring them in when they are needed.
I believe that one of the most effective ways to speed up this process would be to get rid of the labour market assessment for areas of the country where the unemployment rate is below 5%. As I have said many times, both here and in committee, this is a solution that would be fairly easy to implement. I will continue to hammer this point home until the government understands that this is a serious problem that needs to be addressed as quickly as possible.
A total of 60% of the businesses in my riding are looking for workers. At the same time, they are accelerating automation and robotics because they also need to stay competitive in the marketplace. The problem is that their margins are already very thin, and it is very difficult to invest in new technology right now.
I believe the government needs to implement better programs and incentives to help these companies modernize their production. However, until the government keeps its promises on high-speed Internet and steps up its fight to improve cell coverage, advancing robotics will remain difficult in rural ridings like mine.
The last thing I want to talk about is how this government has tragically failed our agriculture and agri-food sector. There is no money in the budget to improve and secure our country's food supply. I have always said that the agricultural sector is an economic driver just waiting to be optimized. Instead of helping Canadian farmers, the government continues to create programs that plunge them further into debt. Canadians are struggling to put food on the table, yet we are importing more and more of our food products.
The government also decided to impose a 35% tariff on fertilizer from Russia without a clear understanding of whether orders placed before the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine will be exempt from the tariff or not. Spring seeding is upon us, and farmers cannot bear the burden of these tariffs alone. Obviously consumers will have to pay the additional cost.
What is more, this government continues to refuse to bring into force Bill , which was passed in the previous Parliament. This bill provides for the fair transfer of a family farm or small business to a family member, rather than charging the seller unreasonable taxes that they would not have to pay if they sold the business to a third party.
This government will do everything it can to collect as much tax as possible, even at the expense of losing our family farms and SMEs, which are so important to the development of our regions. The creation of a round table for discussing this bill, which has already passed and received royal assent, will still not force the hand of these greedy Liberals.
How can a government unilaterally decide not to bring legislation into force, when the majority of parliamentarians voted in favour of it? That is not how democracy works.
In closing, this is another budget and another complete failure by this government.
I am here once again debating with my colleagues, but I cannot help but wonder when this will descend from his throne and finally listen to the opposition's proposals. I can only imagine that his MPs from rural ridings feel the same way.
We are all here to do a job, to represent our constituents. The government has to focus on the divide between rural and urban regions. The time where there were two classes of citizens is over.
We must unite and make Canada the economic superpower it should be. I will continue to provide a glimmer of hope for the Beauce community. I simply hope that this government will listen to me for once.
:
Madam Speaker, I am going to start by acknowledging that we are here on the traditional territory of the Algonquin peoples.
Meegwetch for tolerance and patience in the path of reconciliation.
[Translation]
I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for .
[English]
I am addressing the budget late this afternoon. There are things in the budget I like quite a lot, so I am going to start with the things I like quite a lot and then explain why I cannot possibly, in good conscience, vote for this budget.
Among the things we like quite a lot, yes, is that we have the New Democratic Party's confidence and supply agreement. It has been a Green Party policy since 2015 that dental care is health care and should be part of our health care system, so we are pleased to see it in this budget.
We also are pleased there is a repetition of some sort of aspirational goal to deliver pharmacare to Canadians. There is not enough in this budget for me to believe it yet. We want to see the actual path to pharmacare clearly laid out, and fast.
I am very pleased to see a number of other items here, such as the follow through on child care. I suppose “I am old enough to remember” will be a theme in this speech. I start sentences with “I am old enough to remember”. I am old enough to remember 2005, when then minister Ken Dryden achieved what the now new government, which is not that new anymore, has done.
Ken Dryden had gotten signed agreements with every province and territory to deliver affordable child care to every Canadian. Many years later it was derailed by the decision the NDP made in those days to defeat the Liberals and put Stephen Harper in place for a very long time. We lost Kyoto, we lost Kelowna, and we lost the child care plan in 2005 and the election in January 2006.
I am really pleased child care is back. Affordable child care is going to make a difference to every Canadian family that has children and desperately needs to have child care. When I was a single mom, I earned $24,000 a year as executive director of the Sierra Club. I spent half of it on child care. The woman who was hired to do the child care in a program in the neighbourhood is a wonderful woman who became a good friend. My salary was split in half and I paid her through a child care program. Because she earned only $12,000, her child care for her children was free. I was making $24,000, and half of it was going to child care. These things are sort of unbelievable to people with good incomes, like those of us in this place, all of whom are paid so handsomely as members of Parliament. I do not take it for granted.
I am pleased with much that is in this budget, and I am pleased to see the government keep its promises in a couple of areas. On housing, the thing that made me most pleased was to see co-op housing back on the agenda. It is not enough money; we need to do more, but there is $1.5 billion to bring back one of the most affordable, socially supportive ways that we can house ourselves, which is through co-ops. That is good.
I know there are a lot of good intentions behind things like the tax measures against flipping. There are many good measures, including one of the promises, which was to bring in for the first time a searchable public registry for beneficial ownerships. Let us hope that helps deal with the problem of snow washing and of overseas interests buying up our housing.
We still really need to deal with things like Airbnbs and the ability of people to buy homes, residential properties, and take them out of the marketplace. At the same time as they are making it harder to find affordable housing for Canadian families, they are undermining the tourism business, in which hotels and real B & Bs have to pay staff, buy insurance and be regulated. We need to protect our housing market from Airbnbs, but I also think we need to protect tourism industry employees and owners from the competition of Airbnbs.
Let me move on to areas that were token and inadequate, and where we need to do so much more. It really was a broken promise on the mental health strategies and the need for mental health and addictions. The hon. member for has done so much good work on this. Why do we not have the suicide prevention line? Why do we not have supports for mental health in this budget? We should have seen them.
Another key gap is the commitment that was made in the Liberal platform to put $1 billion toward fresh water. This budget is such a bitter disappointment. This title comes from The Hill Times and was signed by some of Canada's leading advocates for fresh water. Ralph Pentland, who used to run Environment Canada's freshwater programs, signed this article, as well as Oliver Brandes and Bob Sandford, who are eminent people in the field. The headline says it all: “Federal budget a failure when it comes to addressing the water crisis”.
This is one of those sentences that starts with, “I am old enough to remember”. I am old enough to remember that, when I worked in Environment Canada in the 1980s, the Inland Waters Directorate in Burlington, Ontario had a staff of 1,250 people who did nothing but work on freshwater science and regulatory policy work. They had an annual budget of $60 million, so when this budget says the Liberals are going to provide $43 million over five years on fresh water and $8.7 million to the new Canada water agency, I would laugh if it was not so sad. It does not even begin to start adjusting dollars for inflation.
This is an abject failure, and I do not know how this has happened when there is such urgency and when the government had already pledged to do this. The promise of a Canada freshwater agency is now more than two years old, and here we are with flooding and drought and fires. Water policy is also climate policy, and I want to just take a moment to say to the people of southern Manitoba, who are right now being walloped by climate crisis events, that a Canada water agency could help anticipate, prevent and adapt. I just want to give a shout-out to those people right now, because I know that in Manitoba things are very tough for many families.
Also, in this budget there are things that are completely missing. There is nothing for ground transportation. Many people will say that is provincial jurisdiction, but so is municipal public transit. It was really great that the Harper government made the gas tax a permanent predictable fund for municipal transportation, but where are we as a federal Parliament in responding to Canadians from coast to coast who have lost their bus service, and whose service on VIA Rail is down to an occasional antique train that rumbles through? I am talking about between Vancouver and Toronto and Montreal to Halifax. We have not seen any significant investment in that ground transportation in at least a decade. All the money that has gone to VIA Rail in all these years has gone to the Windsor-Quebec corridor. That is great. We need decent train service in the Windsor-Quebec corridor, but we also need decent train service with spokes that run off this hub.
We need bus service across Canada. Again, this is more than transportation and this is more than climate policy. This is justice. One of the key recommendations of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls was that people need to be able to get access to safe and affordable public transit so they are not hitchhiking. The most marginalized people in our society are forced into hitchhiking because we act like there is not a problem. If people want to get from Kamloops to Prince George, if they want to get from Kamloops to Vancouver or any of these routes, or if they want to get from Moncton to Campbellton, they have almost no way to travel if they do not own a car. Also, for seniors and for a lot of us, being forced to drive on unsafe roads, particularly during hazardous winter blizzards, to get to doctors' appointments does not suggest we are a wealthy industrialized society. In fact, our public ground transportation system is worse than in any developing country I have ever visited.
Moving on to what else we need, there is nothing in here for the tourism sector, which I would submit has been the hardest-hit sector in the pandemic. What we hear is that there is going to be a tourism strategy developed, but there is no money in this budget for it. We really need to do something to make sure that since, and I will say it out loud, the pandemic is not over, small businesses in the tourism sector can survive.
Why can I not vote for this budget? It is a complete failure in responding to what, three days earlier, was laid out by the IPCC. On April 4, the lead author said it was now or never. The panel never gave the option of later. It is now or never for a habitable planet, and this budget fails in that fundamental threat to our survival.
:
Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague and friend from for sharing her valuable time with me.
If I had to describe the thin little budget that was tabled three weeks ago, the phrase that would come to mind would be “missed opportunity”. I am not just talking about one missed opportunity, I am talking about a slew of missed opportunities.
First, the pandemic should have alerted the government to the plight of seniors, to the fact that they are on fixed incomes and their purchasing power has been greatly eroded. I was hoping that the Liberals would understand, given that before the election, they had said it was urgent to send a $500 cheque to seniors aged 75 and over, to win their vote. Indeed, the plight of seniors was appalling back then, when it was time to win votes.
All of a sudden, we are presented with a budget that not only contains nothing for seniors, but includes a small graph that basically tells them to stop complaining and whining, that their lives are fine, that they need to stop asking for money, and that the government is tired of them, literally.
The budget should have been an opportunity for the Liberal government to show that it understands that there are major funding problems in the health care system. We are not making this up. For weeks now, the has been going around bragging about how, during the pandemic, he was forced to rush tens of billions of dollars to the provinces. The provinces—underfunded since the 1990s, thanks to the Liberals—started offloading, rescheduled surgeries and ran out of space, almost to the point of leaving people to die in the streets.
Instead of increasing health transfers and recognizing that reality, the minister says we should consider ourselves lucky that he bailed us out during the pandemic and would be wise to settle for what he has to offer, which is nothing.
We have a who should have realized that, if he continues to allow increased oil production, it will have a negative impact on the future of the energy transition. This same minister boasted on social media last week about how Canada had lowered its emissions in 2020, in the middle of a pandemic, when cars were off the roads and planes were grounded.
The government is congratulating itself instead of acknowledging the sacrifices that will have to be made in the future to make this transition. The Minister of Environment is happy about the pandemic, the Minister of Health is happy about the pandemic and the is happy about the pandemic.
This budget is jam-packed with oil subsidies. When I checked the news and turned on my computer to see reactions the day after the budget was presented, I figured I could judge how good the budget was based on who liked it. The first reaction I saw was from the oil and gas industry, which was very happy with the budget. It obviously did not get everything it wanted, since the Liberals had to leave a little for Jean Charest and the member for , but oil companies still did well.
Legal and environmental associations, as well as the mayor of Montreal, whom the environment minister likes to quote, came to say that this is a bad budget. The organization West Coast Environmental Law told us that carbon capture is an experimental technology that could increase water and energy use, as well as our GHG emissions.
The budget includes subsidies for exactly this purpose, even though we have been calling on the federal government for years to abolish subsidies to oil companies. We are not talking about small amounts here, but about huge subsidies. For the next five years, $2.5 billion will go directly into the pockets of the oil companies each and every year. That means $12.5 billion in total over that period, but we have to remember that the government has no money for health care. For the next four years, $1.5 billion per year will go directly into the pockets of oil companies, for a total of $18.5 billion over nine years.
The government says that it is also making an effort and that it has done away with “inefficient” subsidies to oil companies. We have been waiting for many years for a definition of what an inefficient subsidy is. It is important to note here that the subsidy that the government has abolished is worth $9 million out of a total of $18.5 billion. Rounding up the figures, the difference between the two is therefore $18.5 billion more to the oil companies, no more and no less.
To get us to buy into that, they trot out their classic excuse, which is that, in western Canada and Newfoundland, people work hard to earn a decent living in the oil and gas sector. They call it the energy sector, which sounds better. They talk about these people who earn a decent living, families with mortgages.
That is true. There are people who are stuck in this situation, who work in that industry and did not ask to be stuck in it. The problem is that, as we produce more and more oil, we get more and more families in trouble because they depend on that industry. The more trouble they are in, the more complicated it will be to scale back the industry in the future.
From 1990 to 2010, Canadian oil production rose by 69%. From 2010 to 2015, it rose by another 31%. From 2015 to 2019—and this was under a Liberal government, our eco-friends across the way, Conservatives garbed in green—there was another 22% increase. Their recent announcement of an extra 300,000 barrels per day to save the world is another 13%. That is a 209% increase since 1990, the Kyoto protocol base year. The reason the Liberals use 2005 as their base year is to hide that.
Let us get back to the fact that the government is getting families in trouble and making the transition harder as a result. We have the numbers. From 1995 to 2012, as a barrel of oil went from $33 to almost $130, the number of people working in Canada's oil and gas industry and depending on it grew from 99,000 to 218,000.
We prefer a constructive approach. We believe there has to be a transition. It has to be done fast, but it has to be done right. We have not asked to shut everything down. We think production needs to be capped and there should be a gradual transition. We also think there should be green finance initiatives.
This plan has nothing but generic sentences such as, “the Sustainable Finance Action Council will develop and report on strategies for aligning private sector capital”. It is all hot air. The federal government's plan is nothing but hot air. It has no transition plan. That makes it hard to vote in favour of this budget.
There are solid proposals, like the train, the high-speed train that we have been wanting in the Quebec-Windsor corridor for years. The has been bragging for years in interviews about not having a car and about how he likes the train. What we want is a high-speed train, a turtle that comes by twice as often.
In the budget, there is $400 million over two years. A person might think there may be a train. However, when we ask officials what the $400 million is for, they tell us it is to find partners. Partnership is expensive.
However, when it comes to the issue of western oil, then there is enough cash. That works.
When it comes to infrastructure, it is even worse. The government wants to again start using the Canada Infrastructure Bank to save the world. This bank was created by the Prime Minister in 2015 during the economic downturn. The bank took so long to get off the ground that when it did start operating the economy was in full flight. Today, the government wants to drag its feet a second time with the transition.
That is why this budget is against seniors, against our health care systems and against the transition. However, it is not too late to change it.
We have a Prime Minister who travels across Canada, from coast to coast to coast, who lectures us, who tells us that we need to purify our hearts. He tells us that we must change, and that we are to be better.
However, this budget contains irrefutable evidence that we have a tired government and a Prime Minister who does not intend to be better.
:
Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for .
I am pleased to weigh in on the budget. It will become clear quite quickly that I am going to talk about agriculture. I have a certain bent in that direction.
Many people are disappointed because there is not much in the budget for the farming community. We are hearing announcements about the obvious things, among others, as well as things that are already under way. Specifically, we are being told that negotiations will continue for the Canadian agricultural partnership. Those negotiations are under way but have stalled because some western provinces refuse to improve the AgriStability program.
The Bloc Québécois has long suggested—and this is the position of the Union des producteurs agricoles in Quebec, by the way—that the federal government proceed with the improvement it had proposed, that is, a compensation rate of 80% of the reference margin, with the provinces that are ready to move forward.
I am reiterating that proposal today. I think it is important that we improve the performance of our insurance programs, because our farmers are the ones who feed us. These programs are supposed to make our supply chain more stable. There is a lot of talk these days about the supply chain not doing well, and so on. However, we can take steps that are going to be permanent and effective time and again.
Of course, it is not as fun for the party in power, because it cannot simply come along and suddenly announce that it is going to give such a gift or create such a program, as it is doing at the moment in the health care sector. My colleague from Mirabel just demonstrated this very eloquently. Many have spoken about the $28 billion that we need in health care, but the government announces $2 billion and expects us to be satisfied with that. This is similar to what the government is doing with the agricultural programs. We need to act quickly on this.
The next really disappointing aspect is that we are also told that an announcement is coming about compensation for supply-managed producers in the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, or CUSMA.
I am trying to stay calm. Enough is enough. Does the government believe in our supply management system? Does it believe in our producers and does it have any respect for them? The answer is no.
In the budget, the government boasts that, thanks to international agreements, Canada has access to all the other G7 countries, but this has come at a cost. It has cost our producers a share of the market. Our producers are efficiently organized, they protect the environment on a daily basis, they control the quantity produced and the price, they give us extremely high quality products, and yet they are constantly scorned. I am fed up. That is what I wanted to say today.
Our producers should not have to beg for four or five years to get compensation for CUSMA. They have scrapes on their knees from dragging themselves through the muck. It looks like the government is trying to keep them civil, by saying that it will give them something soon and that they should behave. Enough is enough. Can we resolve this, please? It is extremely disappointing. We know that the negotiations are over and that the amounts have been established. The money needs to be paid so that we can move on to something else.
Over time, the government is neglecting producers in supply-managed industries. This is not the first time I am saying this in the House, but I will say it again today. I feel like this government is being sneaky by chipping away at our supply-managed industry markets, letting time go by, allowing unfair competition from outside that undermines our system, and delaying compensation to harm that system so that it disappears through no fault of the government. My message to the government is that if its intention is to get rid of supply management, it needs to say so and own that politically. The Bloc Québécois has the solution. We are going to introduce another law to protect it. We are going to ask the government to pay compensation right away.
As usual, I can see that I will not have enough time to say even one-tenth of the things I wanted to say.
Let us talk about the next generation of farmers. In the previous Parliament, my esteemed colleague from introduced a bill that he asked me to co-sponsor, which I was happy to do. We had an excellent working relationship with the NDP folks at the time, and we succeeded in passing a bill that made it no less financially attractive to transfer the family business to one's own child as to a stranger.
At present, the situation is the same as it was before the bill was passed. It is utter nonsense for a government that claims to understand the importance of business succession, agriculture and the need to feed people. It is appalling and disgusting. I am about to say something unparliamentary, so I will stop here.
What is even more surprising is that this legislation was passed. If the government wanted to make changes to it and question it, then it could have done so in the last Parliament, which it actually did in committee and in the House. The bill was then debated in the Senate and the matter was settled. When legislation is passed in the Senate, it has to come into force.
Well, to my great surprise, last year, the held a press conference the next day to announce that her government would wait six months before enacting this legislation, claiming that she was not happy with it. What does that mean? Where is the democracy? Parliament passed the bill by a majority vote because the majority of its elected members respect farmers and want to ensure their future. Can the government take action? Obviously we put pressure on the government and the government people backed off. They agreed to enforce this legislation, but very shortly afterward, they announced that they would make changes.
I am talking about it here because there are still no numbers or anything in the budget. However, it is noted that a change will be made to this legislation because “the exception [in the legislation] may unintentionally permit surplus stripping without requiring that a genuine intergenerational business transfer takes place.” Putting it in my own words, that means “we will delay the enforcement of this legislation because we suspect our small farmers of being a bunch of fraudsters”.
At the same time, the government is doing nothing about tax havens, as has been the case for many years. It is estimated that we lose at least $7 billion a year to tax havens in dozens of countries. Everyone is aware of this. It is perfectly legal and completely ironic, and I do not understand why people are not more outraged.
However, when farmers want to sell their farms to a son or a daughter, they are told that they may well be fraudsters and the process is delayed by getting tough and closing any loopholes. This is going to have consequences. According to the government's official line, the law is in force and transactions can go ahead. However, in reality, according to what I have been told, financial advisors, accountants and notaries are all telling our farmers that they do not know what the government is going to do with the legislation and that they are taking a very big risk if they go ahead with their transactions at this time.
They are therefore suggesting to farmers that they delay selling, which will again result in sales to strangers. However, selling to a stranger has the same effect as killing supply management. This is about land use. If a farmer sells the land to a neighbour instead of selling it to a son, there will be only two farms left in a zone that used to have 20, and the residents will complain that the town school is empty, which is obvious. This is all part of a whole. When production is stable, it keeps our economy going.
To conclude, I will say that the Bloc Québécois has done what it usually does, which is to work constructively. Last night, the House voted on our amendment to the amendment. If something is not to our liking, we do not say that everything is bad and that we should vote against it; we propose changes.
However, the House voted against our amendment to the amendment. The NDP-Liberal coalition refused to increase old age security starting at age 65. I want people to remember that when they flock to hear the brilliant speeches about how they claim to be working for everyone.