Ben Lobb

[Business of Supply, May 19th, 2022]

Mr. Chair, I am going to share my time with the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent.

I thank the minister for her work tonight. It is quite a feat to put in all the time and to answer all the questions, and I thank her for that.

Andrew Kendrick, a naval architect with 40 years' experience, appeared before committee. His statement was that it costs three to five times the world price and two to four times longer to deliver ships in Canada versus the rest of the world. Does the minister have any comment on that? Has she investigated and verified this to be true, or does she feel we are in line with world price and world delivery?

[Petitions, May 13th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to present this petition in support of Bill S-223 and my good friend and colleague from Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan.

Bill S-223 seeks to combat forced organ harvesting and trafficking. It would make it a criminal offence for a person to go abroad and receive an organ taken without the consent of the person giving the organ.

Bill S-223 has passed the Senate unanimously three times and it passed the House unanimously in 2019 in exactly the same form as the current bill. We will be debating Bill S-223 this afternoon, and I hope this Parliament will be the one to finally bring this bill into law.

I would like to thank the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan for his advocacy.

[Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, May 11th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank all the speakers who have presented this evening. I would especially like to thank my colleagues from Chatham-Kent—Leamington and Beauce. They are both farmers and are very familiar with the costs of operating a farm and making a living at it.

The member for Chatham-Kent—Leamington highlighted pretty much everything I wanted to talk about, but the key point I would like to highlight, in addition to that, is that we still have an outstanding issue with the fertilizer tariff in this country. That is going to add another $100 per acre to the corn crop and other crops, in addition to all the other issues we have. In addition to the carbon tax that farmers are paying to dry their grains and heat their barns, this is another tariff that has not been dealt with by the government. It is our belief that on March 2 there should be tariff relief for farmers on that. It is millions of dollars and they need the help now.

The member made another good point when he talked about how the fall economic update from the Liberal Party highlights the carbon tax rebate. It is $1.47 per $1,000, and as I said in my first speech, I thought it was $1.47 per $100. If we calculate it at $1.47 per $1,000 and $1.73 per $1,000 of eligible farm expenses, it is a slap in the face to farmers.

I welcome the Liberal member who spoke earlier today to come to my riding, the ridings of the members of Chatham-Kent—Leamington and Beauce or any rural riding. She should talk to some farmers, get in the cab of a tractor or combine, stand around while the grain is being dried in the fall and see what it is like. She would have a whole new appreciation for the programs she is trying to create.

Farmers get no credit for the carbon they sequester on farms through their crops, the fall crops they plant for cover crops, the grasslands, the hay and the hay lands. They also do not get any carbon credit for the sequestration that takes place on their ethically managed woodlots. There are thousands of acres in my riding and hundreds of thousands of acres of ethically managed woodlots across the province of Ontario and beyond. They get no credit for that.

The idea is that a farmer is somehow a huge emitter, contributor or whatever, but we should be embracing these individuals. We should be looking to them to learn some of the best practices that have been in place in this country for over 100 years. That is where we need to begin the discussion. We need to cut this unnecessary tax on farmers' natural gas and propane to dry their grains and heat their livestock barns.

We do not want farmers to walk away from their livestock barns because they can no longer afford to heat them. We want them to be able to keep those barns warm to keep the chicks warm when they are first moved into the barn, or keep the hog barns warm when the weaners are at a very young age and very small. That is what we want to do, so I would ask all members of Parliament, particularly the Liberals, to reconsider this and take a long look at what we are talking about. They can maybe replay the tapes and see.

I would like to thank all the farmers across this country for what they do day in and day out. Right now, they are in the cabs of their tractors in my area planting corn, thinking about soybeans and trying to get things right, but they are facing huge costs for fuel and fertilizer. What is it for? It is to feed the country and the rest of the world. That is what we have to keep in the backs of our minds when we are looking at all this stuff.

I would like to thank farm groups, farm families and the complete supply chain that works 24 hours a day this time of year to keep crops growing. Let us look at agriculture, the environmental good it does and the economic good it does. It is the number one economic driver in the province of Ontario, so let us support it. Farmers are a line of credit, as the member for Chatham-Kent—Leamington said, for our GST and HST rebates. They are the government's line of credit in AgriStability, and now with this new program, they will once again be the government's line of credit.

I humbly ask for support. Let us get the bill to committee. Let us have some farm groups come. Let us have some farmers come and explain the pain they are feeling right now and the relief Parliament can provide them.

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, April 25th, 2022]

With regard to the government's response to the Log4J software vulnerability made public in December of 2021, and broken down by department, agency and Crown corporation: (a) which departments, agencies, and Crown corporations took their web services off-line in response to the vulnerability and which specific web services were taken off-line; (b) for how many days were each of the web services off-line; (c) which web services still remain off-line and what is the expected date when each service will be restored online; (d) what specific measures have been taken to date to neutralize the threat of Log4J; and (e) for each service that was off-line, where were users redirected to in order to access the services?

[Encouraging Growth of the Cryptoasset Sector Act, April 5th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for Calgary Nose Hill for the bill that she brought forward to attempt to make Canada a leader in the crypto space, which we kind of already are.

I heard a couple of comments today from speakers about growth. We have to have certainty before we can continue to grow. This is trying to provide certainty to the industry so that people know the rules as they go forward. A couple of years ago, there was a framework specifically around cryptoasset trading platforms. The Canadian securities administrators, with all of their provincial trading commissions, put this together and it set a framework. It is a very public document worked on in collaboration. It established, for exchanges that wanted to be exchanges in this country, a path to that goal. In Ontario, my home province, we have had a number of spot exchange-traded funds in this province, which is significant. The United States does not even have that yet. It only has future exchange-traded funds.

In addition to that, Bitbuy, just in the last quarter of 2021, worked with the OSC IIROC to be a market maker: to be an exchange and a marketplace for cryptoassets to be traded, because this framework was done three years ago. Just as the member for Calgary Nose Hill provides, let us get the experts and the industry to come together so we can get this moving forward. In the United States, people only wish that they had a spot ETF. Let us not get mixed up on the growth. What the member for Calgary Nose Hill is trying to say is let us not get in the way of growth. Let us make sure that industry has certainty so companies will want to come here and invest their billions of dollars.

The market cap of the cryptoassets is $2 trillion. That is in 13 years. The market cap of gold is $10 trillion. Therefore, it is $2 trillion for crypto and it is $10 trillion for gold. How long has gold been around? It has been around since the earth was established. There is $100 trillion in real estate, so there are huge opportunities here. We have to continue to push forward. That is what they want.

I will give an example. Let us look at all the different entities that businesses have to deal with. I made a list. They have to deal with the securities administrations and their provincial administrations, including the OSC and all the ones in all the provinces. IIROC is one they have to deal with. CRA is on the list, for how they are going to be taxed. The entities include the Department of Finance, potentially, the Bank of Canada, potentially, and on and on. When we say that it is the wild west and it is not regulated, that really is not the case, in my opinion. Obviously, people are transferring money into investment accounts, and it is monitored in many different ways including how it is backed, how it is secured and where the assets are held. It is not really the wild west, I would say, and I am sure the chair of the OSC, the executive director and the president would all love to have a comment on that. There is regulation, but we need more certainty because of the investment.

One example is Bitcoin mining, or miners in general, and how they are taxed by the CRA. Where is GST applied? Where is HST applied? When is the actual tax triggered? There is a dispute right now with the CRA as to where and when that occurs. This is what the member for Calgary Nose Hill is talking about. Let us have the framework of industry experts get around the table and say, “Hey, what the heck, are we charging HST every time we mine a Bitcoin?” That does not make any sense. This is not a service business. This is a mining company, just like Kinross Gold or somebody else. That is what we are talking about.

In regard to illicit activity, I am going to say right now that this is the last $20 bill I have. There is more crime done with twenties than will ever be done with cryptocurrency. What I will say is that the amount of crypto crime is decreasing. From 2020 to 2021, it decreased by almost 60%. Why is that? Only a stupid criminal would do a crime with crypto, because it is a public ledger and that wallet has an address.

There was a case where a couple defrauded billions. It was thousands of Bitcoin, and they held onto it for five years. The minute they tried to transfer that money in the fall of 2021, the FBI picked them both up and charged them. Only an idiot criminal, and there are some out there, would do it with this. They are going to go with cash or something else. They are not going to do it with that.

My colleague from Quebec made a comment. We are always getting to know each other, which is great. In Quebec, for example, there are a number of Shakepays. There are Shakepays in Montreal. I am sure some of my colleagues have heard of Shakepay before. Also, there is a Bitcoin mining company. There is about five or six. It is called Bitfarms. There is more than just Bitfarms, but Bitfarms is a $1-billion company traded on a public stock exchange. It went through all the regulatory burden to become publicly traded in la belle province.

I think it would be great if Bitfarms, Shakepay and a number of these Quebec-based companies reached out, did a little government relations, and explained to the government, not in an embarrassing way, but in an informative way, that this is a new industry of 13, 14 years, and explained that CRA income tax issue. That would be great.

To my good colleague from the NDP, who I had the honour of serving with on the industry committee, Bitfarms is 100% renewable energy from Hydro-Québec. It is green. By the way, there is a North American mining council whose mandate is to be a leader in renewable energy. There are great initiatives coming out of this. There are solar initiatives in the southern states, and wind initiatives. Some of the greatest innovation in green energy is actually going to come out of crypto. It is hard to believe, but it is true.

The best and brightest minds. When I was going to university, and that was quite a long time ago, people were learning how to chisel rocks. Now, the best and brightest minds are going into the crypto space. We want the best and brightest to graduate from these great universities and work in Canada. We do not want them to go to Silicon Valley.

In fact, the crypto space is not even in Silicon Valley, it is in Miami and Toronto. That is where we want people to be. The U.S., the UK and the European Union are all working through this process we are proposing here because they see the value in this one-time opportunity to be the world leader in this space. That is what we are trying to do here with this bill.

There is much to talk about. We are having executives from Bitbuy and WonderFi come to speak to us in a couple of weeks. They are going to explain the process they went through to be market-makers in Ontario. They would love to talk to all members of Parliament to explain how the process works and how the regulation works. We are not trying to slow things down.

Business wants certainty. This is how we are going to do it. As well, there is FINTRAC and know your client rules. These are money services businesses. They know what they are doing. They have to go through all these things to do it.

The last thing I will talk about quickly is remittances, as well as Bitcoin, the lightning network and Strike. Twenty-four percent of the GDP in El Salvador is in remittances. That is where somebody in Canada or the U.S. transfers money to a relative. Honduras, Haiti, Jamaica, there are all sorts of them, and they are all over 20%. They go to a money market and they get hosed. I am not against money markets, but I am just saying they get hosed. They can do this with Bitcoin, lightning and on the Strike network. It is that quick, and it costs nothing. That is making a difference.

Two million people in this country are unbanked. This industry is giving people a leg up. We have to make sure that all the technology is in Canada and the innovation is in Canada, so we not only make the lives of Canadians better, but subsequently, give opportunities and livelihoods to people who have never even had a bank account. It has been a real thrill to speak on this.

[Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, March 25th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, there are all sorts of examples. There is an anaerobic digester in Brockton in my riding. It takes the methane from manure from a large livestock operation, a beef farm operation, and uses the methane to power two modified Cat diesel engines with turbines on them that create electricity. They also use food waste mixed in there to create the methane. Those are the types of things.

There is an operation that could be taking place right in my riding. It collects bale wrap all over the province of Ontario and it has a method to be able to shred it, heat it and actually create fuel we can put in our gas tanks. These are things we could be doing right on farm in addition to many, many other things we could do.

The sky is the limit. That is why I say I think we are in the same mindset. Let us not look at agriculture negatively. Let us put farmers up on a pedestal and thank them not only for the food they produce and the work they do but also for the environmental benefit they have given to our country since the beginning of time.

[Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, March 25th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I do not know that we need to help them. I think we need to learn from them. If one looks in my area, there is no-till drilling. Huron County was one of the forefathers of no-till drilling. A lot of industries would be well advised to learn from agriculture. I would think it would be great for the Liberal government to recognize all the sequestration that takes place.

I know the U.S. did a study, and I think it is billions of tonnes of carbon that gets sequestered each and every year on farms. In Canada, it would likely be larger. I think that in Canada it is high time that we do not beat up on farmers and that we recognize them and put them up on a pedestal and say thanks for what they are doing.

[Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, March 25th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, these are obviously the backstop provinces of my home province of Ontario, his province of Manitoba and all the way to Alberta. I respect the provincial jurisdictions. They should be thought of at the highest level and given the highest regard for what they would like to do.

Let us look at what we are doing. Let us respect the environmental benefits that agriculture produces. Let us not create a bureaucracy. Let us not create red tape. Let us do it at the source and recognize the impact and the efforts for the environment that agriculture presents.

[Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, March 25th, 2022]

moved that Bill C-234, An Act to amend the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise today on this bill. Through the years I have had the honour and privilege of presenting private member's bills and motions. I had one pass many years ago, and I had one or two that did not pass.

First of all, I would like to thank the member of Parliament for Foothills and the member of Parliament for Northumberland—Peterborough South who presented Bill C-206 in the last Parliament. I would also thank the member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound and all of the other members of Parliament in my party and caucus who have a deep love and admiration for agriculture and the farm families that do the work each and every day.

The issue that I am trying to fix with this private member's bill is the application of the carbon tax on natural gas and propane. It is for on-farm agriculture uses to dry grain and heat livestock barns where there may be a variety of livestock, but mainly poultry and pork in these cases. The problem is with the current carbon tax on these areas. I will give one example of a pork farmer in my riding who sent me his December usage of natural gas. The natural gas bill for his hog barn was $11,391 in total. The carbon tax was $2,918, which is 25% of the base bill. When we throw the HST on, which is almost $1,500, 34% of the bill is in carbon tax and HST. That is really the problem.

There are tight margins in agriculture and, when we get into the drying of grains in the fall, these are foods that we eat. Farmers are price-takers; they are not price-makers. They do not set the price; they take the price. Anybody in the House or those listening today well understand the issue with that. On the flip side, when it is time to pay for inputs, machinery, etc., we obviously know the price. There are a lot of improvements we could make.

One of my other issues with the carbon tax specifically on farmers, which I have said in the House of Commons before, is that farm producers and farmers do not get credit for any of the environmental good that they do on their farms up and down the country roads. If we look at what farmers are able to do on their farms, first of all, they get no credit for any of the carbon sequestration of their crops. They get no credit for their grasslands or woodlots. There is no credit for that.

We are trying to right an environmental wrong and a taxation wrong to make it fair for farmers. It is very difficult to recognize all of the different ways in which farmers do good. Putting a carbon tax on their efforts does not really recognize the environmental benefit they have. Many members of Parliament in the House today have had the opportunity to tour many farms, conservation areas and livestock barns, and they see the good work that they do.

Another issue that is recognized in this bill is that farmers are always asked to be the government's line of credit. People may ask what that means. What I mean by this is that, if we look at the business risk management programs available to farmers, AgriStability being one of them, if they were able to trigger a payment with AgriStability, their expenses are incurred so much earlier. Farmers carry the cost and at the end they receive. It is the same with HST. There have been issues through the years with certain producers where their HST was hung up, so that they are the line of credit in some cases. It was three months, four months, six months, maybe even a year before they would get their HST rebate.

Now we have another program that is going to create a level of bureaucracy. We have a program that is once again going to ask the farmer to be the line of credit. To give an example, farmers could pay a propane or natural gas bill on their poultry or hog barn in January and February of 2022 and that almost $3,000 in carbon tax they paid on their bill could be carried all the way through the year. They could dry their grains in September, October or November, depending on how the harvest went, and then carry all of those costs all through the entire year and file their taxes, depending on when their fiscal year end is, in June of 2023. When do members think those farmers would receive their rebate?

That is a long time to be once again asking farm producers or farm families to carry these expenses. Then we also calculate the increasing costs of all the inputs, whether feed for livestock or fertilizer. We have seen the crazy prices. Their lines of credit are continually edging up and now they are faced with doing this.

According to Bill C-8, in the fall update on page 83, the rebate is $1.73. When I read that I thought it was per hundred dollars of eligible expenses, but it is actually per thousand dollars of eligible expenses. Therefore, if farmers have a million dollars in eligible expenses on their farms, they would not even receive a $1,800 rebate.

For the farm I spoke about a second ago, one bill was almost $3,000, so it is not neutral. It will not be neutral. If there are statistics to show otherwise, I would like to see them, but based on page 83 of this statement, it does not look like it. A month or two ago, the member for Foothills showed me a bill for a farmer in his province, and it might have been in his riding, I cannot remember, that was twice that amount. Can members imagine $5,500 being paid in carbon tax for one month? Therefore, $1,700 is not going to cut it.

We have talked about carbon sequestration through their crops, grasslands and woodlots. Farmers plant trees on their farms. They have windrows. In Ontario, and I am sure in many other provinces, we have nutrient management plans for how and when manure is spread across their fields. With technology we have precision spraying of herbicides and pesticides, and even precision fertilizing. This is not our great-grandfather's farms. These are very progressive farms across this country today with a high degree of professionalism and a love for agriculture and the environment.

If we take a woodlot in Huron County or Bruce County, we will see some of the best-managed woodlots in all the land. That is over the last 10 years when we have been dealing with the emerald ash borer on our ash trees. Most of those have been cleared out of woodlots and maple and other trees have come up in their place, but these are well-maintained woodlots that sequester carbon.

The other thing I would like to mention is crop rotation. I know the member for Foothills brought it up in question period today and the agriculture minister made a comment the other day in question period about it, as if it was some sort of new idea. I am sure she misspoke in question period, but we can go back to textbooks from probably the twenties and thirties talking about crop rotation and crop cover. Most of the farmers in my area plant late summer and early fall crops as well for cover crops. There is quite a bit that goes on.

The other thing I would like to recognize is all the conservation authorities and environmental groups in our communities. One that is not too far from where I live is the Pine River Watershed Initiative Network, which plants trees and manages water on farms. There are also crop and soil groups in Huron County, Bruce County and Grey County, all the way through the area, doing some amazing research on drainage and being able to hold some of those spring rains and thaws, hold some of that water, back in the drain itself. It is a very exciting technology.

Another thing I would like to talk about is our food sovereignty. We have seen a lot of this in the last number of years, maybe perhaps most recently in the past little while. In Ontario, we ship hogs, for example, to Burlington and other places like Conestoga. We also ship hogs to Quebec. We actually ship hogs to Manitoba as well, to Brandon. Although it is good for them to have those hogs in the production line, it makes no sense at all for farmers in southwestern Ontario to ship hogs in transport trucks across the provinces to their destination. We should be able to process them in our own regions. For that, I would say that I do think the government needs to take a real long look at food sovereignty in each province and, of course, in our country, as well as identifying strategic mines or opportunities.

Phosphates are a great example, with the latest embargo and tariffs from Russia, of where there are opportunities in our own country to speed up environmental assessments. Do it right but make sure they are streamlined so that we can mine our own goods and raw materials in our own country to support the entire cycle of agriculture in our country. Today we do not have that and I do think that should be a priority.

How much money does it take to make one dollar on a farm? It takes millions, and the margins are tight. People may drive up and down the road if they are going to their cottage or wherever else they are going on a weekend and the might look at how nice the farm looks from the truck they are driving. The reality is that it took multiple generations working seven days a week, 365 days a year, for margins that would put fear into most people. If they knew how much capital investment, debt and line of credit was at risk each and every day to earn a few dollars on $100, they would be so impressed.

The reason I am saying this is that the carbon tax is punitive even for the existence of a farm operation. I have numerous calls in a week from different farmers commenting on the cost of doing business in 2022. Yes, if one were to look at the spot prices or futures prices for soybeans, corn, wheat or any of those, it does look pretty amazing. Unfortunately, for farmers, costs have gone in lockstep. In some cases, they have actually increased at a higher rate.

Where can we help them? We can help them with the carbon tax. We can help them by cutting the carbon tax and eliminating the carbon tax on farms. It does not get recycled. The carbon tax that they collect on farmers does not all go back to farmers. It does not go back into some environmental farm plan. It does not. They may say that it goes in dollar for dollar, but it does not.

The quickest and most efficient way to help agriculture and to recognize the environmental benefit the industry provides the country, without creating a bureaucracy and without hiring consultants to walk the farm, go through the woodlot and come up with an idea of how much was actually sequestered, is to cut it off right at the source. Do not make the farmer be the line of credit for the government on one more program. Do not tell them it is going to be neutral when we know it is $1.73 per thousand dollars. Let us not do that.

There are certain industries, I am sure, in Canada that do not provide a whole lot of environmental benefit to the country. Farming is not one of them. It is an organization with the most grassroots, environmental preservation organizations someone will ever see. If one were to go to a Ducks Unlimited auction or a conservation authority fundraiser, who would be there? It is the townspeople, for sure, but it is also the farmers. The farmers come out. In some cases, it is the conservation authority that gives them a hard time, but they are still out there to support the cause because they understand the relationship between productive land and the environment.

I really enjoyed the debate today. It is an honour to do this. I look forward to having discussions, hearing what the other parties have to say and what their thoughts are, and hopefully, with their good will, seeing it in committee.

I am thankful for the opportunity today and I look forward to the questions.

[Economic and Fiscal Update Implementation Act, 2021, March 25th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I am going to be careful with what I say here, because I am counting on that member's support for my private member's bill this afternoon, so I am not going to burn any bridges here this morning.

However, let us look at the price of West Texas and at the price of Brent Crude. I mean, pretty much the same amount of oil was produced in December as is being produced today. This is speculation in a lot of cases, and I think that is an issue.

We are just a small bit at 2%, but look at the rest of the world. We can be leaders, but we need the rest of the world to come along with us.