Bill C-26 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Canada Pension Plan, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board Act and the Income Tax Act

Part 1 of this enactment amends the Canada Pension Plan to, among other things,
(a) increase the amount of the retirement pension, as well as the survivor’s and disability pensions and the post-retirement benefit, subject to the amount of additional contributions made and the number of years over which those contributions are made;
(b) increase the maximum level of pensionable earnings by 14% as of 2025;
(c) provide for the making of additional contributions, beginning in 2019;
(d) provide for the creation of the Additional Canada Pension Plan Account and the accounting of funds in relation to it; and
(e) include the additional contributions and increased benefits in the financial review provisions of the Act and authorize the Governor in Council to make regulations in relation to those provisions.
This Part also amends the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board Act to provide for the transfer of funds between the Investment Board and the Additional Canada Pension Plan Account and to provide for the preparation of financial statements in relation to amounts managed by the Investment Board in relation to the additional contributions and increased benefits.
Part 2 makes related amendments to the Income Tax Act to increase the Working Income Tax Benefit and to provide a deduction for additional employee contributions.

[Joy Thorkelson, President, United Fishermen and Allied Workers' Union – Unifor]

Thank you.

I'm the president of the United Fishermen and Allied Workers' Union, which is also known as UFAW-Unifor. Our union represents some, although not all, fishermen in all the wild fisheries in British Columbia.

Our membership is made up of active fishermen only. Those of you who are from Newfoundland and Labrador will know of the FFAW, the fishing union in that province. We are both Unifor and therefore the FFAW is our sister union. We both represent fishermen and plant workers at opposite ends of the country. That is where the similarities end.

Our fishermen's earnings are trending down while the FFAW fishermen's incomes are increasing. Part of that difference is the added costs our fishermen bear. Some 80% of the landed value in ITQ fisheries is taken out of B.C. fishermen's pockets; that income remains in the pockets of our brother and sister fish harvesters on the east coast. A community difference is also evident: B.C. rural coastal communities' processing capacity is diminishing, while in Atlantic Canada, significant processing capacity resides in rural areas.

I have worked for the union for 40 years and I've seen many changes in my career. I'm old. In fact, the majority of people in the B.C. fishing industry are old. The industry was very good to participants and we were able to make a great living, so that's why we all stayed. Now it's too late to leave with economic dignity.

We have a crisis. Old people want out but cannot afford to quit and young people want in but cannot afford to buy in. When I was young, most skippers owned their own licences and vessels. ln 1985, 20,000 fishermen took out personal fishing licences. By 2015, we had lost 15,000 fishermen and only 5,700 were left in British Columbia. The 2015 figure is the latest one published by DFO.

ln 1969, corporate ownership of the fleet was at 13.2%. Fifteen years later, processor and investor ownership of the seine licences, for example, had increased to 40%, and 20 years later, it was 55%. ln 1993, 39% of herring roe licences were owned by processors and investors. By 2012, processor and investor ownership increased to 51%.

ln 1993, one processor owned 27% of the processor-held herring roe seine licences. Now, due to corporate consolidation, this processor, 20 years later, holds 95% of the processor-owned landings. The influence of processors on individual active fishermen can't only be assessed by these ownership numbers. lt also has to be viewed through the lens of processor control.

The major salmon processor owns 37 licences that are attached to 20 non-fishing vessels—vessels that don't really exist, in many cases. They are called “stick boats” because they could be floating sticks. The company can and does lease these licences off their vessels to salmon vessels that need a licence to fish in an additional area.

ln a salmon ITQ fishery, this company can transfer the quota attached to these non-fishing licences to another vessel that is fishing, thereby stacking quota onto this boat. It can catch its own fish and the quota from the stick boat. This binds fishermen to the company. If they want future increased quota opportunities, thereby increasing their income, they will have to continue to fish for this processor. This not only happens on salmon, but it is worse on roe herring, with DFO rules requiring stacking of a minimum number of gillnet licences in order to fish. I can remember a couple of years when active fishermen, forced by DFO to lease licences, lost money because the lease price exceeded the value of the roe herring.

The union did a survey in 2016 of the salmon fleet. Out of 234 respondents, 84% did not think they would benefit from ITQs; 89% thought their costs would go up under an ITQ system and 86% didn't want ITQs in their fishing areas.

ln 2018, two years later, we conducted another study. We expanded it to include all fishermen and all fisheries, and we asked similar questions: “Do you think west coast licensing policy should benefit active fishermen?” Of course 94% polled yes; 91% supported owner-operator policy created to meet the needs of B.C. fishermen; 88% supported a fleet separation policy in British Columbia, and 66% thought the consequence of no change to licensing policy would be that rural coastal communities would continue to decline.

I have heard the RDG list the Pacific region's priorities: conservation, compliance, sustainability and economic viability, equitable distribution of benefits, and data collection. I heard Ken Hardie later on list the DFO's target, but he must have been mistaken, because he included sustainable livelihoods, regional economic benefits and sustainable communities. Those may be Atlantic coast targets, but they're not Pacific region targets, I can assure you.

In the Pacific region DFO separates licence-holders from fishermen. They want fishermen to self-adjust to changing times and to pay for the management of their fishery. There are no social objectives to have sustainable livelihoods for fishermen or regional economic benefits or sustainable communities. These are not in the Pacific region's lexicon.

The real truth is that DFO Pacific is consulting with fewer and fewer active fishermen. They consult with quota owners and licence-holders, who increasingly do not fish. Last spring I and our staff did a six-week coast-wide tour. We visited 21 communities. We walked onto over 800 boats asking fishermen what they wanted changed, if anything, in their fishery. Only a few were satisfied with how things are now. Everyone else wanted changes that would benefit working fishermen.

Not all agreed on the solution, but most agreed on the problem. Money is being siphoned out of working fishermen's catch and into the pockets of those who don't fish. Processors are gaining control of almost every fisherman through their control of quota movement.

Fishermen on the Pacific coast believe it is time for a change. We recommend that the minister hold an external licensing review in the Pacific region with the goal of creating viable commercial fleets and coastal communities, including first nations communities, that include as the foundation the basic principle that the fishery is a public resource and belongs to all Canadians. Licences provide privileged access to the common property resource. There should be fleet separation and owner-operator principles. The benefits of the fishery should go to fish harvesters and their communities, not to those whose involvement is in owning or controlling licences and/or quota. Licensing policies should encourage intergenerational succession, and adjacency principles should govern processing so that the value flowing from our fisheries, including processing, remains in local communities.

We support the social and economic goals in Bill C-26 for active fishermen, fish harvesters and their communities.

That is my presentation.

[Mark Janson, Research, Canadian Union of Public Employees]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the committee for having the Canadian Union of Public Employees here today. We're the largest trade union in Canada, with 650,000 members across the country in virtually all sectors of public work.

Obviously, Bill C-74 is a very large bill. We're not going to comment on every section of this bill, but focus on a few gendered aspects of the bill that we find particularly concerning.

The first one would be the lack of pay equity legislation. I know you talked about this in the earlier session today. This is something that we've been advocating for a long time. This government has been making very public commitments to a goal of gender wage equality. This is the simplest way for the government to take a step in the right direction. Your budget committed to doing this. It's been now two years since the Liberal-led committee studied this and recommended moving forward. The report was called “It's Time to Act”. They said we'd go forward within 18 months. We're now 24 months past that point. Your budget said this was going to be in the budget implementation legislation. It's not there. We hope that it will be there very soon.

I'd like to focus the rest of my time on the Canada pension plan drop-out issue. I know this was also mentioned at an earlier session. I was before this committee about a year and a half ago talking about Bill C-26, the legislation that implemented the federal-provincial deal reached in the summer of 2016 for a modest expansion of the Canada pension plan.

When we looked at this legislation, we were shocked to find that there were no drop-out provisions in the new CPP benefits for periods of child-rearing or disability. These have long existed in the CPP that we all know. Essentially, these CPP benefits are a function of how much you've earned through your working career, so if you have a period of zero or low earnings, that's going to pull your CPP benefits down.

Governments over the decades have recognized that it's appropriate to put in place what they call “drop-out provisions” for periods of child-rearing or disability in order to exclude those periods from the calculation of CPP benefits, so that you don't see a pension penalty for raising a child or for being disabled and unable to work. That's worked well for the 50 years of the CPP's existence, so we were shocked to find that it wasn't going to be part of the new tier of CPP benefits.

CUPE and the labour movement brought this to the attention of the government. The bill was passed as written, which we were quite opposed to. We thought the government should have done something at that point. We were happy to see in December of this past year, 2017, that the finance ministers of the federal and provincial governments said they were going to do something about this. They said they were going to add what's called a “drop-in provision” to the new level of CPP to deal with this child-rearing and disability issue.

The problem with the drop-in provisions is that they're clearly structured to deliver a significantly lower benefit than the traditional drop-out replacement would have done. When the government brought in these drop-in provisions, it said they were an improvement that would strengthen benefits. In our view, however, a large inappropriate cut was instituted that, to a certain degree, walks the benefits back. We don't see that as an improvement. We still see that as an unjustified cut.

We've asked the government for numbers on this. We wanted to find out what this was going to mean for individuals down the line, and what it would mean for the plan. We haven't seen any of those numbers, but these drop-in provisions are included in Bill C-74.

To me, to CUPE, this is an issue of major importance. Our position is that workers taking time out of the workforce to raise a child at home or because of a disability should not face any CPP penalty. I know that at earlier meetings finance officials were asked to get those data to you, and I certainly hope that you see those numbers and reflect upon them before passing this legislation.

Thank you, and I'll be here for questions afterwards.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

If you don't mind, I'll move to another subject, which is around the CPP.

Mr. McGowan, in Bill C-26, as you're aware, we had no provision for dropout provisions in the expanded CPP. I'm wondering if there were Department of Finance estimates or models around what the cost would have been for dropout provisions had they been included in Bill C-26.

Act Respecting the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Criminal Acts

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today in support of the hon. member for Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d'Orléans—Charlevoix and her private member's Bill C-343, an act to establish the office of the federal ombudsman for victims of criminal acts and to amend certain acts.

I am confident and hopeful all parties represented in the chamber will join me in resounding support for this bill, because it would ensure the protection, information assistance, and liaison services would remain in place for victims, much as they currently are for criminals from the office of the ombudsman for federal offenders. Having an arm's-length regulator in place for the victims of crime is the right thing to do, and I will speak specifically about the services offered by the victims ombudsman in addition to laying out the case to ensure that equivalent supports and services are accessible to victims of crime, as they currently are to offenders.

The mandate of the victims ombudsman would be to ensure that victims are informed, considered, protected, and supported. The service would offer victims of crime the opportunity to learn about their individual rights under our federal laws, learn what services are available to them, and if necessary, lodge a complaint about any federal agency in its dealings with victims of crime. In addition to this, the federal ombudsman for victims of crime would ensure that policies are made to reflect victims' needs and concerns. By being in communication with victims, the ombudsman would be able to identify the areas that may be of concern to victims or that may negatively impact victims, and when appropriate to do so, the office of the ombudsman for victims of criminal acts may make recommendations to the government.

The mandate relates exclusively to matters of federal jurisdiction and enables the ombudsman to specifically promote access by victims to existing federal programs and services for victims; address complaints of victims about compliance with the provisions of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act that apply to victims of crimes committed by offenders under federal jurisdiction; promote awareness of the needs and concerns of victims and the applicable laws that benefit victims of crime, including to promote the principles as set out in the Canadian Statement of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime with respect to matters of federal jurisdiction; and to identify and review emerging and systemic issues, including those related to the services by the Department of Justice or the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness that could negatively impact victims of crime.

I am proud of the Harper government's initiative to create the Office of the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime as an independent resource for victims of crime. I was there in 2007 when the government launched this. I was very pleased with the support of people like Senator Boisvenu, who was not a senator at the time but was very interested and involved with victims of crime. I am sure that, regardless of what side of the aisle one sits on, all members would agree that this office has served an important role for all victims of crime.

At the present time, the ombudsman operates, as we heard, within the Department of Justice and therefore does not function as a completely autonomous body. This could prevent the ombudsman from conducting a formal investigation within the Department of Justice itself. Another example of this would be in a federal prosecution where a victim of crime felt that his or her voice was not afforded the adequate opportunity to be heard. This could ultimately undermine the confidence of victims towards the minister of justice and the Department of Justice. Other examples could be when a victim has not been invited by the Parole Board or the prison system to a hearing on the offender's release, when the federal crown and defence make a plea bargain without consulting the victim, or when a victim is refused the opportunity to make a statement before a sentence is given in court.

This illustrates the importance of the ombudsman to become a parliamentary officer answerable to the Parliament of Canada, because an ombudsman is a person with authority to conduct thorough, impartial, independent investigations and make recommendations to government organizations with respect to the difficulties and problems experienced in the case of victims.

Normally, an ombudsman will investigate in response to citizen complaints, but he or she can also investigate on his or her own initiative. In most cases, an ombudsman is appointed by Parliament and can issue reports and recommendations to government officials and ultimately to Parliament itself.

The same protections are offered to criminals through the correctional investigator as the ombudsman for federal offenders. If criminals are protected by their own autonomous ombudsman, it is only fitting and reasonable that victims of crime should be afforded the same rights. By the same token, it is only equitable to ensure that the ombudsman for victims of crime is equivalent to that of the position of the correctional investigator for offenders. This is in line with the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights mandate: information, protection, participation, and restitution for victims. Victims must be strongly and independently represented. This is a fundamental right that criminals have had since 1971.

At present, the federal ombudsman for victims of crime must table its annual report to the Department of Justice, meaning that if a recommendation and/or criticism is mentioned in the report that is not favourable to the Department of Justice, the minister could remove it. Such a possibility is not acceptable. It could have the effect of challenging the faith that victims of crime should have in our overall justice system. The ability to monitor, to make recommendations or necessary criticism is imperative.

I would like to highlight some of the more high profile submissions and the importance of this work.

The ombudsman submitted to the pre-inquiry design process in order to facilitate a national design process for the current national inquiry on missing and murdered indigenous women. The ombudsman also made recommendations for Bill C-26, which sought to make a number of changes to the Criminal Code and other legislation to address some issues related to sexual offences against children, including creating a new national public database containing information on high risk child sex offenders. The ombudsman has also made valuable contributions to the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights. I remember how important this was to my colleague, Peter MacKay, and the leadership he showed on this. These are just to name a number of them.

Ultimately, the mandate of the federal ombudsman for victims of crime is to inform, consider, protect, and support victims. It is the the obligation of parliamentarians to ensure that Canadians who are victims of crime can continue rely on their elected members of Parliament to ensure that they are adequately informed, that their needs are taken into consideration, that they are fully protected as citizens of Canada, and that they are fully supported by the federal government by the respective departments they represent. The only way to ensure that Canadians are fully and impartially represented is to put the ombudsman for victims of crime at arm's length from the Department of Justice.

I respectfully ask my colleagues in the House do the right thing by all Canadians and support the hon member from Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d'Orléans—Charlevoix's bill to ensure victims are effectively and independently represented. Together, we will ensure that victims of crime in Canada will continue to be informed, considered, protected, and supported.

[Mark Janson, Senior Pensions Officer, National Office, Canadian Union of Public Employees]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the committee for having me today.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees is the largest trade union in the country. We represent 650,000 workers across the country, mostly in the public sector. Pensions and retirement security are issues we take very seriously. I'm a pension specialist with CUPE, so I'll be focusing on the income question before you today.

We see the same things everyone sees. We see that most Canadian workers don't have a pension at work and that the few who do are seeing the quality of those pensions under pressure from employers. We see that individualized savings systems such as the RSP and the TFSA predominantly benefit workers at the higher-income, higher-wealth end of the spectrum, and that as Richard Shillington told you yesterday, Canadians who don't have a pension at work—most Canadians—have wholly insufficient retirement savings.

This is why one in three seniors in Canada receives the guaranteed income supplement that keeps most, but not all, Canadian seniors out of poverty. We've actually seen Canadian senior poverty levels ticking up slowly, steadily, since the mid-1990s. The major attacks we've seen on pension plans have been relatively recent, in the last couple of decades. It takes a long time for that to work itself through the system and to be seen on the ground in future seniors, but the indications we're getting from research by academics and statisticians is that significant portions of the boomer generation have not saved enough for retirement. They are looking at a big drop in living standards when they retire, and the problem is projected to get worse for future generations.

This is why CUPE and the labour movement in Canada were so supportive of the government's successful expansion of the Canada Pension Plan in the deal that you reached last year. We recognize that this was not an easy thing to do, so we applaud you for doing it. We know it could have gone much further. We were essentially pushing for a doubling of CPP benefits; we got an increase of about one-third in CPP benefits. Much more could have been done there, but we applaud the work that was done. We should continue this critical campaign to improve the Canada Pension Plan and improve public pension plans in Canada.

A major shortcoming of the CPP expansion deal in the legislation that implemented that deal, Bill C-26, was the lack of child rearing and disability dropout provisions. Basically, a CPP benefit is a function of your lifetime earnings over your career, so if you have a period of zero or low earnings while you're working, that's going to pull your CPP benefits down someday. Governments realize this, and they realize there are some inequities in what we call the dropout provisions in the CPP. There's been a long-standing dropout for disabilities, meaning that if you were disabled and away from the workforce, those years were dropped from your CPP calculation and you were not penalized because you were unable to work. The same provision existed for decades for child rearing if you were at home raising a small child.

These provisions had long been part of the CPP, so we were quite frankly shocked to see that they weren't included in the CPP expansion legislation. They're going to continue to exist in the CPP we've always known, but they're not going to exist in the new benefits that are going to sit on top.

We don't think there's a rationale for this situation. We flagged it for government when Bill C-26 was tabled, but the government passed the legislation unamended and essentially punted this issue to the triennial review of CPP, 2016 to 2018. We urge the government to work with the provinces to fix this issue before these changes start to take effect.

The child-rearing dropout predominantly impacts female seniors. It's mostly women who take up that provision, and disabled seniors, obviously, people who have had a disability in their working career. These are among the most vulnerable future seniors in Canada, and they don't need more challenges in retirement. This is an easy fix. It's not a costly item, and we urge you to fix it.

I was going to make a point about how the old age security program increases over time, but I know Richard Shillington made it very eloquently on Tuesday. It's indexed to prices, not to wages. The chief actuary predicts that wages are going to go up faster than prices. He thinks prices are going to go up by 2% a year and wages are going to up by about 3%, so the old age security system will essentially be falling behind the standard of living by a per cent in every year that this situation is not remedied.

Other OECD countries peg their social security system to wages as well. There are different ways of doing this. This is a long-term problem for old age security. It's been around for a long time. If it's not fixed, we're going to see that program continue to shrink, compared to living standards as a whole.

I'd like to turn briefly to Bill C-27. This is federal legislation tabled by Minister Morneau about a year ago. It's still only at first reading. This is a bill we are strongly opposed to and that the labour movement is strongly opposed to. It would give federally regulated employers—banks, telecoms, airlines, crown corporations—a legal avenue to basically walk back on pension promises they've made to workers and retirees. They currently can't do that under pension law. This bill would give them the legal ability to do that.

I'm sure you've all heard the public outcry about Sears retirees not getting what they were promised. This is not something Canadians support. It's not something the labour movement supports. We're shocked that the Liberal government has tabled this bill. We call for it to be withdrawn.

Finally, I have just a few quick remarks. We can't have decent and secure retirements if we don't have decent and secure working lives. This government and all Canadian governments should be doing everything they can to improve the work prospects of working Canadians, particularly young Canadians, who are faced with increasingly precarious employment, low-wage employment, and part-time work when they want to be working full time. There are all kinds of things the government can be doing on minimum wages, employment standards, and universal social programs that could make working life better for Canadians, and that, in turn, could make retiring a whole lot easier.

Thank you.

Resuming debate

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the debate concerning motion No. 14 is not about having a problem with working until midnight each evening—except, obviously, on topics raised by the opposition. I agree with what the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons said in the House yesterday, that most of us are already working every day on a similar schedule.

In my previous career, I was already used to long hours. When I ran a global business, my European colleagues began calling me at 4 a.m., and my days would often stretch until midnight. This was necessary so I could meet with my employees and people in the plants and businesses in the Pacific region I was responsible for.

As the head of a North American refining and petrochemical company, I realized that maintaining customer relations and meeting deadlines to submit applications made for very long days.

The Liberal government said it wanted to make Parliament more family friendly in order to encourage women to get into politics. I support encouraging more women to get into politics, but I do not believe that many women would choose to work until midnight each evening, away from their kids.

Now, why did this government introduce such a motion, when theoretically it should oppose it?

As I have said, I am not opposed to working long hours. I said earlier today, and will say it again, Einstein was quoted as saying that the definition of insanity was repeating the same action hoping for a different result. The government has not accomplished a lot in the way of legislation. If we think about the 19 bills that have passed versus 52 in the same time frame when the Conservatives were in power, really not much has been accomplished. There is no prioritization of what is coming forward.

I want to take a moment to talk about what has already passed because it shows something important.

So far in Parliament the transparency for first nations has been removed with Bill C-1. Bill C-2 gave back to the middle class $932 a year in taxes and then Bill C-26 increased their CPP payments by $1,100 a year, with no benefit. Bill C-10 gave Air Canada a deal to get maintenance jobs out of Canada and escape a lawsuit. Bill C-14, medically assisted dying, was passed without protecting the rights of conscience. Bill C-17 addressed environmental items for Yukon. Bill C-18 was environmental change for Rouge Park in Toronto. Bill C-30 was a CETA deal that now has to be renegotiated with Brexit happening. Bill C-31 was the trade deal with Ukraine. The rest were all maintenance budget items that needed to be done. That is all we have accomplished in 18 months of the Liberal government's agenda. Everything else is lost in process, being amended in the Senate, and not coming forward.

What is the government going to achieve by making us sit every night until midnight, which, as I said, I am fully willing to do? I really do not think it is getting anywhere. Why is it not getting anywhere? Because it does not listen to the opposition's points of view.

The job of the opposition is to bring reasoned and intelligent arguments on why a government proposal is not good for Canada and to make helpful suggestions about what would make it better.

When bills are sent to committee, the committee's job is to make helpful suggestions and amendments that would make them something all Canadians could embrace. That is really what is happening. The government is not accepting amendments, not listening when the opposition talks, and again and again, when things go to the Senate, the Senate comes up with the same amendments and spends more time studying them, doing exactly the same thing that committees of the House are supposed to do. That is one problem.

Another problem is that there has to be trust when parties work together.

I am going to compare the antics that I see happening here with what I see in the business world. In the business world, people work together. People have to be able to trust one another when they make deals. They have to be able to follow up on things as they said they would.

From what I have seen, the opposition House leaders are trying to work with the government House leader but she is not keeping up her end of what she has agreed to. Every day I watch her stand in the House and misrepresent to Canadians that she just has a discussion paper, when really a motion has been rammed through PROC. I have seen her avoid answering questions that she is accountable to answer.

I would suggest that there has been a huge erosion of trust in the government House leader and sometimes that cannot be fixed in order to restore the ability to work together. The government should really consider changing up that position and coming back to a place where we can work together and trust that agreements that are made, amendments that are suggested, and motions that are brought forward are as agreed. That is really important.

There is another point that I would like to make that has not been discussed much here. I have listened to the debate on Motion No. 14 and I have heard a lot about the blame game. I hear from the Liberals that when Stephen Harper's government was in place, it did this bad thing or that bad thing, or whatever. Honestly, two-thirds of the Parliament are new. Some of us were not here in the previous Parliament. We have an opportunity to do things differently now. If we think something was previously done wrong, we have the opportunity to do it differently in the future.

When items come up in the business climate, not everything needs the same amount of time to be talked about. I have sat in the House and heard Liberal members stand up and say they support such and such a bill and I have heard Conservative members and NDP members stand up and say they do too, and then we talk about it for days.

This is not the way we should be spending our time. If the government had not squandered all of the time in that way, we would have more time and we would not have to sit late. In the same way, there are things that need to be discussed longer that cannot be rammed through, things such as the budget bill that has been combined with the infrastructure bank. When comments come forward, the government needs to lead. It needs to separate those things out so that the things that can be quickly passed get passed on. When I say passed on, I am saying that if we all agree on a bill at first reading and we do not need to change anything, then the legislation should be sent right away to the Senate. Why are we spending time doing second and third reading and committee and everything else? We need to be able to update some of the processes here.

I am not about just criticizing without providing recommendations for how I think we could make this better. Here are my recommendations, which I think the government could use to change some of the things that it is doing and which would result in getting legislation passed through in a better way.

When it comes to the rules of the House, I see an opportunity to modernize those rules but a change would need to honour the tradition of Parliament and have all-party consensus or at least the consensus of a majority of members to change things, because those things influence our democracy and they are important. Doing some of those things would, as the suggestions I have made about passing things we all agree on and everything else, clear the legislative agenda in a way that would move things forward more positively.

I also would reiterate that you have to have someone working with the opposition leaders who can be trusted, and I think that trust is broken.

The other point I would make is about amendments that are brought forward and are agreed to by the opposition members. It is not often that the NDP and the Conservatives play on the same team and sing from the same song sheet. That does not usually happen but lately it has happened a lot. When that happens, it should be a signal to government that this is an amendment that Canadians want to see.

The government needs to say what it is going to do and then it needs to own up to it. Some of the credibility loss that has happened has happened because the government said it was going to do something and then it did not. The government maintained it was going to be open and transparent and then facts have been hidden or things have not been well represented. The government said it was going to be accountable but then every day when we stand up and ask questions we get the shell game. It does not answer our questions, and this would not be acceptable in the business world.

These are some of the things that would help to get the legislative agenda flowing through. As a member of the opposition, I want to see the right things happen for Canada and I am willing to work with the government to see that happen.

[Sally Guy, Director of Policy and Strategy, Canadian Association of Social Workers]

Thank you.

Good morning, everyone. On behalf of the board of the Canadian Association of Social Workers and our president, Jan Christianson-Wood, I thank you for inviting the social work voice to this important consultation.

When we considered the study's guidelines, we noticed that the words “new” and “innovative” emerged over and over again. Not to be cheeky in any way, CASW would propose that the first step to innovation is actually in better measuring and assessing existing systems and strategies so that we can build upon and lift up best practices and evidence.

To elaborate on that, CASW is often asked which provinces and territories are leading in poverty reduction. It is also asked where dollars allocated for social services through the Canada social transfer are being spent, or in an ideal world, where they are being most effectively spent.

We simply don't know. No one does. At present, there is no requirement that the provinces ensure recognition of the federal payments or provide information to the federal government about how the CST is spent. The dollars flow into general revenue.

With the introduction of the Canada Health Act, the government acknowledged that certain principles should be upheld across Canada in the delivery of health care services. Far from hard laws or regulations, the Canada Health Act serves as a set of guiding principles that are really just meant to ensure that Canadians have access to equitable, quality care wherever they reside.

This is why CASW is proposing a social care act as a piece of a national poverty reduction strategy.

I can see many of you looking at me. I know I probably have pitched this to you, individually, before.

As with the Canada Health Act, the proposed social care act would establish common principles to help comprehensively address poverty. These aren't new—public administration, universality, portability—and this would help set the stage for a framework for reporting on how the CST and other federal social investments are spent.

Enabling such a framework for reporting would not only provide the government with a record of return on investment. It would also serve as a catalyst for the sharing of best practices and evidence between the provinces and territories.

That being said, I'll move on to the study's specific questions, of which there are a number.

With regard to education, training, and employment, I'll go briefly back to the CST and accountability. We think the portion of federal dollars intended for post-secondary education should be separated in some way from the rest of the CST, which is really intended to address Canadians' dignity and basic needs. This doesn't necessarily mean separating it altogether, but rather delineating the funds' intended purposes, which would be, again, facilitated by something like a social care act.

We also would ask that the profession of social work be included under the Canada student loan forgiveness program, which currently includes nurses, for instance. Not only are social workers' skills greatly required in many rural and remote regions in Canada, but we also are trained mental health professionals whose expertise most often comes at a more cost-effective price point than that of psychologists or psychiatrists.

With regard to housing and homelessness, CASW wholeheartedly supports the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association's request to continue and increase direct supportive housing investments, noting that the 2016 federal budget introduced targeted funding to increase affordable housing for seniors and for victims of violence.

CASW recommends that these programs be continued beyond their two-year mandate. It also recommends that this program be extended to include other forms of supportive housing targeted to seniors, LGBTQ individuals, veterans, and also previously incarcerated individuals. Funding for these types of targeted programs would ideally be set a minimum of $150 million per year. It would also ideally flow through something like a social care act as a social policy framework.

With regard to government administrative savings and entitlement programs, we have a lot to be happy about, a lot to reward the Liberal government for. In tying the Canada child benefit to income, the Government of Canada took a bold step towards developing a comprehensive basic income for families with children.

Budget 2016 also enhanced the guaranteed income supplement, which combined with OAS—old age security—moves forward basic support for seniors. We commend this, and we encourage the government to continue progressively with the concept of a basic income for all, potentially.

We were also really pleased by the CPP expansion in bill C-26. We do remain concerned that it lacks those so-called dropout provisions for child rearing and disability, and we do hope the government commits to amending those as it has publicly promised to do.

On social investments, which is my last piece—I promise—we recently released a paper entitled “The True Cost of Capital”, which was on the potential of social finance in Canada.

Keeping in mind this government's mandate to develop a social innovation and social finance strategy, CASW urges that any approach be guided by social principles as well as economic ones, and that it implement strategies based on evidence and not only the assumption of efficiency and innovation, as ubiquitous as these assumptions seem to be.

Since social finance tools have the potential to impact the most vulnerable in our society, it's imperative that they are not further economically exploited by private investors.

On social finance, we would just advise that any initiatives meant to address poverty or vulnerable populations be guided by a social conscience, and use as a framework the principles proposed by a social care act, which are the same as in the Canada Health Act, namely, public administration, accessibility, fairness, effectiveness, accountability, and transparency, to name a few.

We also hope that the federal government will heed the view provided in the supplementary opinion on this committee's study of social impact bonds, which went on to say that it is important above all else to ensure that the government prioritize the needs and successes of vulnerable Canadians, meaning their needs and successes, not those of private enterprise.

Finally, I think it just needs to be said one more time, because it is so important, that private profit has no place in the provision of services to vulnerable Canadians.

I think I kept that short.

Thank you for your time. I look forward to any questions you may have.

Message from the Senate

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

I have the honour to inform the House that when the House did attend His Excellency the Governor General in the Senate chamber, His Excellency was pleased to give, in Her Majesty's name, the royal assent to the following bills:

C-2, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act—Chapter 11, 2016.

C-26, An Act to amend the Canada Pension Plan, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board Act and the Income Tax Act—Chapter 14, 2016.

C-29, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 22, 2016 and other measures—Chapter 12, 2016.

C-35, An Act for granting to Her Majesty certain sums of money for the federal public administration for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2017—Chapter 10, 2016.

S-4, An Act to implement a Convention and an Arrangement for the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of fiscal evasion with respect to taxes on income and to amend an Act in respect of a similar Agreement—Chapter 13, 2016.

It being 4:53 p.m., the House stands adjourned until Monday, January 30, 2017 at 11 a.m., pursuant to Standing Orders 28(2) and 24(1).

(The House adjourned at 4:57 p.m.)

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

I have the honour to inform the House that a message has been received from the Senate informing this House that the Senate has passed the following bill: Bill C-26, An Act to amend the Canada Pension Plan, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board Act and the Income Tax Act, without amendment.

Income Tax Act

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleagues who support the bill and who have spoken so well to the merits of it.

This legislation would help all seniors today by removing a punishing withdrawal structure that would harm the retirement savings of Canadians. Before I reiterate the specific benefits of the bill, I want to thank the member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, who spoke in favour of the bill during the first hour of debate. He said that he strongly encouraged support of the bill at second reading so we could at least bring it to committee, further study it, and hear from expert witnesses.

I also want to address comments made by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, who both spoke in opposition to the bill in the first hour. Neither of them pointed out specific potential harms of this bill, but rather launched into lengthy platitudes about how great the government was for forcing the CPP expansion. Their argument is meaningless because supporting Bill C-26 and supporting Bill C-301 are not not mutually exclusive. The government members can support both bills without one impacting the other. I look at the member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford for this example. He doing both, and he has not exactly burst into flames because of it.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance elaborated on the benefits of the previous Conservative government's sensible lowering of the RRIF withdrawal rates in 2015. I congratulate him on this non-partisan behaviour and encourage him to continue to do this by supporting Bill C-301, which is the logical extension of the 2015 reduction.

In supporting the 2015 reduction, the member acknowledges that RRIF rates are out of touch with the changing realities of life expectancy and savings investments. Because government will never react enough to minimize the harms to seniors caught in the middle, the logical next step is to eliminate these rules entirely and stop punishing seniors for daring to have savings. I hope the member realizes his inconsistent logic in supporting the 2015 reduction but opposing this extension, and reconsiders his position.

He next made misleading arguments on tax deferral by implying that this legislation would allow Canadians to avoid taxes entirely. This is false and he is wrong. The government would get what it is owed. The only difference is that with Bill C-301, seniors would decide when it was best to withdraw their savings and be taxed. Government is not going anywhere and neither, by extension, is the tax man. Government can wait, especially if it means our seniors are better off.

The member then doubled down on his flawed tax-exemption argument, but it was also an irrelevant point. He said that the bill could motivate seniors to press for tax exemptions, which would be contrary to the basic principles of our fiscal policy. I am not certain what the member was trying to get at. I wonder if he is seriously basing his opposition around the idea that just maybe in the future some people might push for better tax treatment. I wonder what is next? Maybe the government needs to take money from seniors because some might spend it on beer and popcorn.

His last argument is just as nonsensical. He said that this bill would create major intergenerational disparity, and we heard that earlier today as well, because older seniors had been forced to withdraw their savings already. I am very much unclear on what the member is thinking. I think he may misunderstand the parliamentary system entirely. I just want to clarify for him that every law that we change affects Canadians unevenly.

The Liberals' own prized CPP tax hike would not benefit anyone for about 40 years, yet would raise taxes on several generations that would see zero benefit. Adding over $100 billion in debt for later generations to pay would do the same. His government is going to create the largest intergenerational disparity in Canadian history, but the Liberals argue against Bill C-301. I wish I could peek into the member's mind for a brief moment so I could witness the logic backflips he does to reconcile the support for the CPP tax hike and off-loading debt for future generations, but then opposes this sensible legislation because of intergenerational concerns.

Last, the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader said that he could not recall anyone from his constituency contacting him regarding RRIF withdrawals, that it was not a substantive point. It is probably because the member never asked. However, I asked, and CARP asked. We heard overwhelmingly that the bill was needed and wanted.

The bill would address real harms. Canadians are living longer, their investments are earning less, and the RRIF withdrawal structure is depleting the savings of our seniors at an unsustainable rate. These forced withdrawals negatively affect seniors in many ways, and disproportionately hurt low-income seniors. Forced withdrawals count as income, which needlessly triggers clawbacks of OAS, GIS, and needed provincial benefits. This matters for low-income seniors who rely on OAS and GIS for their daily expenses, but need to continue saving their RRIF for expected later-in-life expenses such as long-term care or care for their disabled children.

This bill is broadly supported. The Canadian Association of Retired Persons supports the bill because it would return financial control over savings back to seniors. It would not cost taxpayers a dime. According to the C.D. Howe Institute, it would probably benefit the treasury, not cost the half a billion dollars as made up by the other side.

This bill is badly needed. There is only one solution, and that is to eliminate the mandatory withdrawal and stop punishing seniors for saving. Let us allow Canadians to manage their retirement as they see fit. Enact this broadly supported and sound legislation. Let us send it to committee so Canadians can have their say.

[Scott Duvall, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Edmonton West for bringing this private member's bill forward. Many times the member and I do not see eye to eye, but I certainly have a lot of respect for him, and I enjoy listening to him.

It is my pleasure to rise today to speak to the private member's bill, Bill C-301, an act to amend the Income Tax Act and to make a related amendment to another act, which will affect registered retirement income funds, otherwise known as RRIFs.

The NDP is supporting the bill at second reading because we feel it deserves to be sent to committee for further study. The issue of mandatory minimum withdrawal requirements is an important issue for retirees trying to maintain an adequate income in their retirement.

It is our view that a detailed examination of the rules regarding RRIFs is necessary to help ensure that seniors are not outliving their savings. Retirement insecurity is reaching a crisis level in Canada, as many Canadians do not have adequate savings to maintain their lifestyle upon retirement. Any measures that will make it easier for seniors to maintain an adequate income must be looked at.

Much more needs to be done to help our seniors live with the dignity they deserve. The high cost of housing and drugs, the clawback of the GIS, and the indexing of pensions are just a few immediate issues. The government also needs to keep its promise to introduce a new seniors price index to make sure that old age security and the guaranteed income supplement keep up with rising costs.

Of more immediate concern is that the government must immediately fix the flaw in its new plan for enhanced CPP benefits. I am sure that members have heard the discussion about the mistake that the government made in Bill C-26 and how the exclusion of dropout provisions in the bill would have a negative impact on those who take time to raise children, especially women, and on those living with a disability. The government will have its chance next week at the finance ministers meeting to fix its mistake. We will all be watching.

This private member's bill will remove the mandatory minimum withdrawal requirements from registered retirement income funds and will change the retirement income fund definition. Registered retirement income funds, known as RRIFs, can be thought of as an extension of a person's registered retirements savings plan, or RRSP. An RRSP is used to help people save for retirement, while a RRIF is used to withdraw income during retirement. RRIFs are similar to RRSPs in several respects. Each allows for tax-deferred growth, offers several investment options, and is government regulated.

A major difference between an RRSP and a RRIF is that with an RRSP, a person can make annual contributions as long as they have earned income and have contribution room available. Withdrawals are optional and will be taxed. With a RRIF, contributions are not allowed, and a person must make minimum minimum mandatory withdrawals each year. RRIF rules and withdrawal rates were introduced in 1978, and then increased in 1992.

In 2015, the Conservative finance minister lowered the mandatory registered retirement income fund withdrawal amount to 5.27% from the previous 7.38%. Also, previous to 2007, the age limit for converting an RRSP was 69. The 2007 budget changed the age to 71, in order to strengthen incentives for older Canadians to work and save. When RRIF rules came into effect, lifespans and time spent in retirement were much shorter than they are today. RRIF holders now face the considerable likelihood of running out of money in late stages of retirement.

The NDP has long been in support of lowering these rates. In 2015, the NDP pension critic John Rafferty introduced Motion No. 595. It read:

That, in the opinion of the House, the government should review the Registered Retirement Income Fund mandatory minimum withdrawal thresholds and amend them to ensure they do not unduly force seniors to exhaust their savings too quickly.

The problem with the RRIF withdrawal schedule is that people are living longer, and if the schedule is followed then it is very likely that an account holder will run out of savings by age 92. At that point, the person who had saved diligently throughout their life will see their quality of life decline at a delicate time, through no fault of their own.

There are also concerns that RRIF rules can cause clawbacks on people's benefits from OAS and/or GIS. We know that people are living longer, and this fact will have an impact on seniors and on their ability to have enough money to see them through their retirement. In this context, it is interesting to look at some facts about today's seniors.

The probability today of a 71-year-old female reaching age 94 has almost doubled compared to 1992, from 13% to 24%. The probability of a 71-year-old male reaching that age has more than tripled, from 4% to 14%. There are 265,000 Canadians who are 90-plus years of age today. With the baby boom generation reaching these ages, the number of people living beyond 90 is expected to rise dramatically. By 2021, there are projected to be 355,000 Canadians aged 90-plus, including 80,000 people over the age of 95.

Most Canadians do not have alternatives to private savings for retirements besides CPP, OAS, and GIS. When RRIF rules were first put into place in the 1970s, Canadian households saved about 15% of income. By 2011, the household savings rate plummeted by a factor of five, to just above 3% of income. Canadians between the ages of 65 and 69 today hold only an average of $40,000 in RRSPs, which is a very modest amount. In 2011, workers aged 55 years and over accounted for 18% of total employment, compared to 15% in the 2006 census. This was the result of an aging baby boomer generation and increased participation of older workers in the labour force. Mandatory minimum RRIF withdrawals are becoming irrelevant as women and men are living at least twice as long, and staying in the labour force longer.

As I said earlier, the NDP intends to support this bill at second reading, as we feel it should be sent to a committee where the issues of RRIF withdrawal and income security for seniors can be properly studied. I am disappointed to hear that our Liberal colleagues will not be supporting the bill and are not in favour of this issue getting further study. However, then again, maybe I should not be surprised. The Liberals have made some progress on the issue of retirement insecurity with their modest increases in the GIS and their modest increases in benefits in the enhanced CPP proposal. That being said, the government has also launched a tax on some Canadian pensioners. Its failure to include dropout provisions in the enhanced CPP is certainly an attack on women and those living with disabilities.

We also have Bill C-27, which is clearly an attack on every worker and retiree who has invested in a defined benefit pension plan. It is a policy on which the former Conservative government did consultations and eventually decided not to move forward with it. Now it looks like the Liberal government is going to finish the work that the Conservatives started. The current government's plans are inconsistent and confusing. The strategy for dealing with the retirement income crisis is uneven, inadequate, and at the end of the day will be ineffective. Canadian seniors will be hurt as a result.

I urge all members to support this bill, so we can refer it to a committee where we can study how to better help Canadian seniors live with the security and dignity they deserve.

Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 2

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I once again have the great pleasure of rising to talk about how successful the Liberal 2016 budget has been, along with Bill C-29 to implement it. It is a budget that plans for the future, invests where investments are needed, helps our seniors, returns science and innovation to its rightful place, lays the groundwork for our youth, and addresses the priorities of our regions.

At 19,694 square kilometres, my riding, Laurentides—Labelle, is the 46th largest riding in Canada. Our smallest municipality has 41 permanent residents; our largest has about 13,000. My home town of Sainte-Lucie-des-Laurentides, where I still live, is the median of our 43 municipalities with 1,024 residents.

Our communities are aging. In 2011, the average age was 49.5. This year's census data will be released shortly, and I can only imagine that the average age will be over 50, so this budget and the initiatives that will affect our region are important.

In this bill, we are making it easy for senior couples no longer able to live together to receive greater old age security benefits. We are helping seniors in the short term, and we are planning for future issues involving seniors through the changes we have already rolled out for a significant 10% increase to the guaranteed income supplement for single seniors; through lowering the eligibility age for old age security from 67 to 65; and also through Bill C-26 on the future of the CPP.

We have been here for only a year and we did all that. The three budgets remaining in this mandate can only be even better.

Speaking of the future, I want to take this opportunity to talk about our innovation agenda. Our budget puts billions of dollars into social, transport, and green infrastructure. Our investments in scientific research are finally back on, after years of having a creationist minister of science. We understand the importance of research, of science, and of being truly progressive. Progressive comes from progress. Progress is a forward or onward movement. Moving forward is what we do.

While the official opposition objects to even the most basic progress, when even the notion of switching to digital clocks in this chamber was pooh-poohed by the Conservatives when we had a debate on Standing Order 51, the rest of society moves ever forward.

Mr. Speaker, 2016 marks the 25th anniversary of Linux, the open source operating system started by Linus Torvalds and developed into a world powerhouse by tens if not hundreds of thousands of contributors from all walks of life and all corners of the globe.

I have been involved in the Linux and open source community for most of that time, mainly through the open and free technology community SourceForge and its predecessor organizations, Software in the Public Interest and the Debian community. It symbolizes to me what a community can do when it works together. Indeed, DebConf17 will take place next year in Montreal, and it is an excellent and concrete example of what that looks like.

We in rural Canada are still trying to figure out how to reduce packet loss on our TCP-over-smoke signal Internet connectivity and our UDP-over-carrier pigeon cell phone service. The rest of the world is not waiting.

Amazon, Google, and Facebook built their empires on Linux. Linux now runs 498 of the world's 500 fastest supercomputers, only one of which is in Canada. Even Microsoft recently finally joined the Linux Foundation this fall.

I believe it is very important to understand the lessons of the open source community.

In 25 years, Linux went from a university student's hobby to the software backbone of the Internet. Many people became very wealthy because of it, with it, and through it, yet all the while, the software, the product, was free for anyone and everyone to use, to modify, to take apart, and to understand.

While some people refuse to use a web browser other than Internet Explorer because its proprietary nature is seen as the only possible avenue to being secure, I see it as the other way around. Open source software, with its peer-reviewed scientific approach to development, tends to be the most secure option available. Getting open source logic into government can only see innovation improve.

With our innovation agenda, the options are there, but to get there, we need communications infrastructure. That we only have one of the world's top 500 supercomputers, and that it is 196 on the list, speaks to the need for infrastructure and investment in innovation. After a decade of the previous government dismissing science as an inconvenience, unhelpful facts in the way of an ideological agenda, the government we have today clearly believes in researching and preparing our way into the future.

In rural Canada, as I mentioned, Internet is our big file. Of the 43 municipalities I mentioned earlier, all 43 see the lack of proper, competitive, high speed Internet as among the top priorities. Without it, our average age will continue heading north. When our average age reaches retirement age, the social structure of our region will necessarily change.

To address this, we need to address the issues that are keeping youth away.

When I asked high school seniors who among them will stay in the region after they graduate, it was rare to hear one of them say yes.

When I ask them why they leave, the answers are always the same. They say that there is no post-secondary education, that there is not a lot of public transit, that the regional service covers 35 municipalities with a couple of retired school buses, and that there is substandard internet and cellular service. Without these, not much is going on. When newcomers see that their cellphones do not work, they do not think about buying a house in our region, moving there or making their lives there.

Internet access is only through slow and unreliable satellite service or by telephone. Surely members can remember that noise old modems used to make. Unfortunately, it is still the case for many of our residents. For the luckiest, it is a blurry image at the end of a Skype call with their grandchildren.

Our budget is beginning to tackle these problems. We are investing $500 million in digital infrastructure to help bridge this technical gap. The lack of internet means fewer young people, less immigration and fewer opportunities for those who stay.

In investing a half a billion dollars in digital infrastructure to begin with, we are creating opportunities for those who stay and some appeal for newcomers. We are also helping to keep young people in the region.

The bill also aims to improve the lives of our seniors and to even out the average age of our regions over the long term. It is a budget that plans for the future, that invests where investment is needed, that helps our seniors, that reinstates science and innovation to their rightful place, that paves the way for our young people, and that examines the priorities of our regions. I am proud to support it.

What I am most proud of in this budget is the Canada child benefit. It helps thousands of people in the country. Over 300,000 people will find more money in their pockets.

When I tour my riding, people will often stop me and say they have never been interested in politics, but they really appreciate what we have done for families.

Last Friday evening, someone told me that she became a single parent just before the change in policy, and that it has helped her directly. It also provides concrete assistance to the region’s youth and families. I am proud of everything we have done. We have be proud of this budget. I am proud to support it.

Report Stage

[David Lametti, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to speak in the House this afternoon on something that really is a centrepiece of our government's policy moving forward: the budget. The budget is important to Canadians in so many ways, but, in particular, because it represents a strong and courageous change in direction from policies that the previous government undertook that would have the impact of making my children and grandchildren and everybody else's children and grandchildren across the country a whole lot weaker for many years.

We plan to invest over $180 billion in infrastructure over the next 11 years. So many of these expenses will directly touch upon my riding, such as social housing. The previous government, over the past 10 years, completely abandoned its responsibility in the area of social housing. I am privileged to sit in the House next to the member for Spadina—Fort York, who greatly inspired our platform and, therefore, greatly inspired the budget as it now stands. I really would like to pay homage to him.

He has an urban riding in Toronto, which is much like my urban riding in Montreal, and the housing needs are glaring, in particular, because of the federal government's abandonment of its responsibility 10 years ago. We need better social housing, we need to renew co-op agreements, which are very important in my riding. We need to have the money available for those co-op agreements to be renewed, and for those co-operative housing arrangements to reinvest in their own infrastructure, such that the buildings do not become dilapidated and continue to be vibrant communities moving forward.

My riding straddles the end of the city and the beginning of the suburbs, and there is the question of affordable housing as well. We need to be flexible to allow homeowners to repair their own homes and for landlords to repair their rental properties, particularly at the lower end of the rental scale, such that tenants will have a good stock of affordable housing. The fact that we have had the courage to say we will run deficits in order to improve our stock of social housing and infrastructure generally, I think, is an important change of direction.

There is also money in infrastructure for social innovation and technological innovation, two things that are very dear to my heart. I taught intellectual property for many years and have had to follow, for professional reasons, quite happily, I might add, the whole digital revolution. The world has changed immensely since I started teaching intellectual property in 1998. It has been unbelievable and the possibilities created for both economic advancement and the reshaping of society through the digital revolution are breathtaking.

I have, and I hope to have, social innovation projects accepted for my riding, as well as trying to bring some of the fruits of the digital revolution into my riding to create good middle-class jobs, but also to allow people to live closer to where they work and allow the community to thrive in that manner. It is a new generation where people do not necessarily want to commute for a long time in order to get to work. I hope I have the ideal riding for that possibility. By investing in infrastructure, particularly in these kinds of digital areas, we might be able to create those possibilities.

My riding is also blessed with two jewels, the St. Lawrence River and the Lachine Canal, both of which could profit greatly from investment in green infrastructure. The Lachine Canal is, for many reasons, so historically important in the history of Canada, in the development that occurred along that canal. Now we need to re-deploy the Lachine Canal as a recreational space. That requires infrastructure spending not just on the canal itself, such as the walls of the canal, and its development into a 12-month-a-year recreational facility, but also for decontamination.

All the lands in the southwest of Montreal are effectively contaminated because of their industrial history. Moving forward on any kind of project, whether around the Lachine Canal or whether a social housing project in Verdun or in Ville-Émard, we need to be thinking about funds for decontamination in order to make our infrastructure projects work.

Let me open with the following, because we are talking about the environment, and it is something that I feel needs to be said in the House as regards the price on carbon. People who speak out against a price on carbon seem to think they have a right to pollute. It used to be treated in the economics literature as an externality, something a property owner or business owner did not have to think about. It was external to his or her thinking. However, that kind of analysis is completely wrong. No one has the right to pollute. No one has the right not to consider these externalities of their own business activities. It is their responsibility precisely to consider the environmental impact of everything they do. It is part of the responsibility of being a property owner. It is part of the responsibility of being a business owner. I spent the better part of 20 years as a property theorist arguing just that. Therefore, it is not unjust to price carbon. In fact, it is equitable and just, and it is righting a historic wrong, whether in terms of analytical thinking or in terms of justice itself.

One of the most courageous things we are doing in this budget is the idea of an infrastructure bank. This is precisely in recognition of the fact that some of our infrastructure needs are so great that we need to turn to pools of investment capital in Canada and throughout the world to realize these kinds of projects.

There is a project currently being conceived in Montreal for a high-speed rail. Funding for that would come from Quebec's massive investment from the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec. This is the kind of project that the investment bank would target. They are projects that have some income stream that an investment fund or pension fund might want to invest in over the long term, with a stable and steady rate of return for its investors.

Why not tap into this? It makes possible all sorts of projects that will help my children and grandchildren move around the city of Montreal, should they choose to stay there, or anyone else. It really takes courage. We envisaged this in our platform, it was in our campaign booklet, and we are bringing this to reality. It is going to be fantastic.

Finally, I need to speak about the families in my riding, both the young and the old.

The Canada child benefit will help many families who live in my riding who are struggling to make ends meet. This non-taxable benefit, which is much more generous than the previous benefit, will certainly be an advantage over what we previously had, a miscellaneous mumbo-jumbo of tax credits and whatnot that was far less generous than our single, clear program.

When the future Prime Minister announced this in Montreal at the Olympic stadium, it was pointed out that the 70,000 seats in that stadium matched how many kids in Quebec would be raised out of poverty by this measure. I am proud to be part of that.

Finally, for the seniors in my riding, reducing the age for eligibility for benefits to 65, increasing the old age supplement, in addition to what we are doing in Bill C-26 on the CPP, means that our benefits for seniors are going to give them a dignified retirement. It will help, in particular, those who are really struggling, and believe me, I met many of them at the door.

There are measures in here to help veterans. There are measures in here as far as employment insurance goes. It would take another two or three days to recite these, but I am happy to conclude at this point by saying that this is a courageous budget. “Courage” is the word that characterizes it. We have had the courage to come forward to take these measures, put them in place for our kids and our grandkids, and I am proud to be part of it.

Business of the House

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Mr. Speaker, we certainly do hope there will be a withdrawal of that comment.

Before I ask the usual question, I would like to ask the House leader if she would consider an idea, and that would be to be more generous with allocating debate for Bill C-29, the budget implementation bill, than she was with Bill C-26, which she well knows was allocated the minimum amount of time possible. Worth noting is the House leader's predecessor committed five sitting days to the same stages of the budget implementation bill on this watch. Since she was appointed—

Poverty Reduction Act

[Sheri Benson, NDP, Saskatoon West, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise today in support of Bill C-245, sponsored by my colleague, the member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, which would establish a national poverty reduction strategy.

Poverty is, sadly, still very much a growing problem in Canada. Since the unanimous motion by Ed Broadbent in 1989 to eradicate poverty in Canada by the year 2000, very little has been done by successive Liberal and Conservative governments to actually reach this goal.

In the intervening years since 1989, Canada has been proud of its position as the ”best” and “second best” country in the world in which to live, according to various United Nations measurements. However, Canadians living in poverty, including an alarming number of children, are no better off than they were in 1989.

How can this be in a country as blessed as Canada, with natural resources, a skilled and educated workforce? How can we tolerate a situation where our neighbours are struggling to find shelter, put food on the table, and take care of their families?

In my office is a poster that say, “All it takes is political will”. That poster was created to commemorate Ed Broadbent's motion in 1989, which every member of Parliament voted to support. Yet here we are in 2016 and very little has changed. We obviously did not have the political will. Our governments have failed to make poverty reduction a priority.

Poverty reduction is a complex and challenging issue, but we must not let that paralyze us. Too much time has already been wasted by hand-wringing and repetitive consultations that do not produce any discernible improvements for people living in poverty.

Bill C-245 offers a turnkey proposal that the federal government can readily adopt and implement. It calls for the creation of an officer for the commissioner for poverty reduction, as well as a national council for the elimination of poverty and social exclusion.

These are concrete steps that would focus efforts in poverty reduction in a way that is measurable, accountable, and cumulative. Governments have often said that we cannot afford to do any number of things that would reduce poverty. On the contrary, we cannot afford to not do anything.

I would like to give credit where credit is due. The government has put in place the Canada child benefit and increased the guaranteed income supplement by 10%. Unfortunately, these measures, by themselves, are not sufficient to eradicate poverty in Canada in any meaningful way. The Liberals' Bill C-26, which is supposed to increase retirement security for all Canadians by improving the Canada pension plan, actually omits some of the most vulnerable from the enhancement: women who take time out to have kids and people living with disabilities. Whether this omission was an oversight or deliberate, the Liberals have refused to fix the bill, thereby doing absolutely nothing for two of the most vulnerable groups in society.

I come from the great riding of Saskatoon West, a diverse riding that, unfortunately, is no stranger to poverty, and there is a very high cost to poverty. In Saskatchewan, Poverty Costs, a coalition of community-based organizations, calculated that the economic cost of poverty in Saskatchewan was $3.8 billion a year.

Of course, the costs of poverty go beyond the dollars and cents spent on maintaining Canada's social safety net. The lost opportunity costs and the consequences of growing inequality among our residents impact all of us. In addition, poverty costs Saskatchewan $420 million a year in heightened health care service usage. Poverty also causes us to spend between $50 million and $120 million a year more than we would otherwise spend on our criminal justice system.

The same report also found that one in 10 of our population lacked the income needed to afford basic necessities. For a parent working full-time, minimum wage pays just over $20,000 per year. That is almost $15,000 below the poverty line for a family of four. Poverty affects us unequally and the numbers are shocking: 17% of Canadian children live in poverty, 33% of immigrant children, and 64% of first nations children.

Some of Saskatchewan's population, including women, children, newcomers, indigenous peoples, people living with disabilities, and those in rural areas are at greater risk of living in poverty and face systemic barriers that impede their efforts to rise above the poverty line.

Health disparities due to poverty are a direct result of substandard living conditions, inadequate access to nutritional food, and increased stress associated with making ends meet. The stresses of living in poverty can also be deadly.

In Saskatoon, low-income adults were 4.5 times more likely to experience suicidal thoughts and 15 times more likely to attempt suicide.

In Saskatchewan, and across the country, costs of living are rising, but wages and salaries are not necessarily keeping pace.

In 2012, Saskatchewan had the second highest inflation rate in the country, and yet, still had the second lowest minimum wage.

The good news is that, overall, there is an increased public understanding about the social determinants of health, and growing support for addressing the underlying causes of poor health. Some 94% of Saskatchewan residents support reducing poverty, with 89% supporting a provincial approach to poverty reduction in Saskatchewan.

Therefore, we had high hopes in Saskatchewan when the provincial government adopted a poverty reduction strategy in 2014. Unfortunately, the Saskatchewan Party has now backed away from this priority, at a time when it is needed most.

The evidence shows that working to reduce poverty in the first place costs less than paying to respond to the effects of poverty later. If we needed proof that poverty is growing instead of decreasing, we just have to look at last week's headlines.

According to HungerCount 2016, a comprehensive report on hunger and food bank use in Canada, Saskatchewan has seen one of the largest increases in the number of people accessing a food bank since last year. The percentage of children using food banks is highest in Saskatchewan. It represents 45% of everyone served.

Steve Compton, the CEO of the Regina Food Bank, added that a job is no guarantee against food bank use. Nearly one in six households helped in Canada are working, yet still need a food bank to make ends meet. A lot of this has to do with the fact that low-wage and precarious jobs with no benefits are the only job growth our economy is seeing. It is no wonder that Canadians continue to rely on food banks, and yet, the finance minister has said that we should all just get used to job churn.

The Liberal government needs to acknowledge that poverty is growing, and use the levers it has to encourage stable, long-term jobs, instead of shrugging its shoulders. A $15 federal minimum wage would be a good start.

I am very proud to say that in my riding, four progressive employers have already committed to paying their employees a living wage. A living wage makes a huge difference for families and individuals and their communities. A truly progressive government would understand this and act accordingly.

Last week, Campaign 2000 released its annual report card on child and family poverty. It is heartbreakingly sad that an organization whose goal it was to eradicate child poverty by the year 2000 is not only still in existence today but that they are farther than ever from their stated goaI. After decades of advocacy for children and families in poverty, Campaign 2000 is still calling on the federal government to create a national anti-poverty plan.

Its 2016 national report card, “A Road Map to Eradicate Child and Family Poverty”, provides the latest statistics on child and family poverty in Canada, and clear recommendations for federal government action and leadership to end child and family poverty.

Bill C-245 can be the first step. It has already been studied at committee, and the Minister of Families, Children, and Social Development has acknowledged it is an excellent bill.

The Liberals have stated many times in the House, and at various committees, that the federal government has a role to play in reducing poverty in Canada, and that Canada needs a long-term, collaborative strategy to combat poverty.

Safe and affordable housing, affordable child care, accessible health services, a living wage, and a basic income for everyone are all important factors that contribute to the well-being of all Canadians.

It is my hope this excellent bill will be passed without delay, and it will be part of a truly comprehensive and collaborative strategy that will finally tackle all the different factors that contribute to poverty in this country.