Finance Committee on March 19th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting 132 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance.

Pursuant to the order of reference on Monday, March 18, 2024, and the motion adopted on Monday, December 11, 2023, the committee is meeting to discuss only part 5 of Bill C-59, an act to implement certain provisions of the fall economic statement tabled in Parliament on November 21, 2023 and certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, 2023

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to Standing Order 15.1. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

I would like to make a few comments for members.

Although this room is equipped with a powerful audio system, feedback events can occur. These can be extremely harmful to interpreters and cause serious injuries. The most common cause of sound feedback is an earpiece worn too close to the microphone. Therefore, we ask all participants to exercise a high degree of caution when handling the earpieces, especially when the microphone or your neighbour's microphone is turned on. In order to prevent incidents and safeguard the hearing health of the interpreters, I invite participants to ensure that they speak into the microphone into which their headset is plugged and to avoid manipulating the earbuds by placing them on the table away from the microphone when they are not in use.

As a reminder, all comments should be addressed through the chair. For members in the room, if you wish to speak, please raise your hand. For members on Zoom, please use the “raise hand” function. The clerk and I will manage the speaking order as best we can. We appreciate your patience and understanding in this regard.

Members, before we get to our witnesses today, there are a couple items.

One is that you would have received a couple of budgets. I'm looking around for approval for those budgets.

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

They're approved. Thank you for that.

For Thursday, I know we had sent out an invitation letter to the DPM to appear. The DPM has accepted and will be appearing before our committee this upcoming Thursday.

I do see your hand, MP Dzerowicz. I'll just go through a few opening remarks quickly first, so that we can get all our officials set up.

Today, to discuss part 5 of Bill C-59, we welcome 36 departmental officials. I know many of them were outside the room, going through security. I hope everyone has made it in. They are from the departments of finance, employment and social development, environment, health, industry, justice, Canada Border Services Agency, Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat, and the Office of Infrastructure of Canada and Service Canada.

Please note that all these individuals cannot sit at the table. A number of them are at the table. The rest are here in this room.

For the officials, as the members ask their questions, if the question pertains to your department within part 5, we would ask that you come to the table to answer those questions. We need you before a mic to be able to do that, so we may have some rotating chairs in the room as we go through today's questions from the members.

We do not have any opening remarks today from our officials, so we will go right into questions from the members.

If someone is not in the room yet and you have a question for that particular department, we'll have to get that in another round as it comes up, and then maybe one of those officials can come up to the mic.

Now I will go to MP Dzerowicz.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thanks so much, Mr. Chair.

You had mentioned the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance coming before this committee on this bill this Thursday.

Colleagues, given the fact that the main estimates have been referred to this committee—I believe that's right—should we hear from the Deputy Prime Minister on the main estimates as well?

I know I have some questions on them. I want to see if there would be any appetite for that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

MP Chambers.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

I'm sure we have lots of latitude to ask the Deputy Prime Minister questions, but if she would like to stay for another hour, we would be happy to have her.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

I'm not sure how that works, Mr. Chair.

Is it that we can ask the Deputy Prime Minister if she has some additional time? I'm not sure if it's an hour; I'm not sure if it's a half an hour. I'm not sure what the time is. That's not for me to decide.

Can we ask her whether she has some extra time to also address the main estimates?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Yes, we can reach out.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

We can see if that's possible.

Is there anybody else on that?

MP Lawrence.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

My apologies for breaking protocol here.

I'm going to take just 30 seconds or a minute, with sadness in my heart. As I'm sure many members have already heard, Kim Rudd, former member of Parliament for our riding of Northumberland—Peterborough South, has passed away.

I want to pass on condolences to her family and to reiterate what I'm sure everyone in Northumberland—Peterborough South knows, which is that she was dedicated to her community, an entrepreneur and hard-working.

Also, of course, she spent a year here on the finance committee, so I thought it fitting to take 30 seconds and pass on my condolences and my gratitude for all her work as the member of Parliament for Northumberland—Peterborough South.

Thanks, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Lawrence.

On behalf of the finance committee, our condolences go out to her family and her friends. We were all friends. She had quite an entrepreneurial spirit. I'm sure she is watching us right now.

Thank you for that.

With that, we are going to get right into the members' questions.

For the officials, how it works is that in the first round each party will have up to six minutes to ask questions. In the subsequent rounds, the timing changes a bit.

In the first round, we're starting with MP Morantz.

MP Morantz will be up for six minutes.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to all of you for being here.

I wanted to start by saying that at the last meeting, the members of this committee had many questions, but unfortunately we had votes come up during that meeting, which seriously abridged our ability to ask questions.

One of my questions—I'm sorry, but it might not be directly related to part 5—has to do with the carbon tax.

Given the fact that there are 36 departmental officials here, I'm hoping that there might be one person in the group we have here today who has some knowledge of the carbon tax. Is that the case?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Do we have an official best suited to be at the table?

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Is there anyone?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

No? I guess....

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

You could say no instead of not saying anything—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I'll say for MP Morantz that the people at the table, the officials at the table.... As I said, we have a lot of officials here in the room. They are not necessarily the officials who would answer that. It doesn't look like we have an official who would be able to take that up.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

How many officials are there—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

There are 36 officials.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

—in the department?

[A voice]

There are 1,200.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Are there 1,200 officials in the Department of Finance?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

And there are 36 officials with us here today.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Okay. There's no one here who could answer a question about the carbon tax. Is that correct?

Does someone want to say yes? Could you say “yes” so that it's on the record? Just say yes.

You don't want to say yes. You don't want to speak.