Bill C-86 (Historical)

Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 2

A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 27, 2018 and other measures

Part 1 implements certain income tax and related measures by
(a) introducing rules intended to provide greater certainty with respect to various tax consequences arising from certain foreign divisive reorganizations;
(b) ensuring that the existing cross-border anti-surplus stripping rule cannot be circumvented through transactions involving the use of partnerships or trusts;
(c) introducing rules to prevent misuse of the foreign accrual property income regime through the use of tracking interests involving foreign affiliates;
(d) ensuring consistency between the trading or dealing in indebtedness rules and the investment business rules within the foreign accrual property income regime;
(e) ensuring that the at-risk rules apply appropriately at each level of a tiered partnership structure;
(f) providing that the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness can determine international operational missions for the purpose of the deduction available for income earned by members of the Canadian Forces or police officers on such missions;
(g) amending the synthetic equity arrangement rules and securities lending arrangement rules to prevent the artificial generation of losses through the use of equity-based financial instruments;
(h) ensuring that social assistance payments under certain programs do not preclude individuals from receiving the Canada Child Benefit;
(i) ensuring that an individual who is eligible to receive the Canada Workers Benefit can receive the benefit without having to claim it;
(j) introducing a refundable tax credit for the purposes of the climate action incentive;
(k) providing allocation rules for losses applied against Part IV taxes;
(l) preventing the creation of artificial losses on shares held as mark-to-market property by financial institutions;
(m) revising the rules relating to the non-partisan political activities of charities;
(n) ensuring that a taxpayer is subject to a three-year extended reassessment period in respect of any income, loss or other amount arising in connection with a foreign affiliate of the taxpayer;
(o) providing the Canada Revenue Agency with an extended reassessment period of an additional three years, to the extent that the reassessment relates to the adjustment of a loss carryback for transactions involving a taxpayer and non-resident non-arm’s length persons;
(p) extending the reassessment period of a taxpayer by the period of time during which a requirement for information or compliance order is contested;
(q) requiring that information returns in respect of a taxpayer’s foreign affiliates be filed within 10 months after the end of the taxpayer’s taxation year;
(r) enabling the disclosure of taxpayer and other confidential tax information to Canada’s bilateral mutual legal assistance treaty partners for the purposes of non-tax criminal investigations and prosecutions of certain serious crimes; and
(s) providing a deduction for employee contributions to the enhanced portion of the Quebec Pension Plan.
Part 1 also amends the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act to, among other things, define the term “agreement” as applying, among other things, to tax information exchange agreements and tax treaties to which Canada is a party, and provide for orders to produce financial information for the purposes of investigation and prosecution of certain offences set out in subsection 462.‍48(1.‍1) of the Criminal Code. The enactment also amends paragraph 462.‍48(2)‍(c) of the Criminal Code to provide that information may also be gathered under Part IX of the Excise Tax Act and under the Excise Act, 2001.
Part 2 implements certain Goods and Services Tax/Harmonized Sales Tax (GST/HST) measures by
(a) replacing the requirement that GST/HST be collected on a sale of carbon emission allowances with a requirement that the purchaser self-assess that GST/HST;
(b) extending the assessment period for group registered education savings plan trusts that make a special relieving election in respect of their past HST liability;
(c)  introducing GST/HST rules in respect of investment limited partnerships;
(d) clarifying the intended tax policy of excluding books that are sold by a public service body from the GST/HST rebate for printed books;
(e) introducing amendments similar to those to the Income Tax Act to extend the assessment period of a person by the period of time during which a requirement for information or compliance order is contested; and
(f)  introducing amendments similar to those to the Income Tax Act to enable the disclosure of confidential information to Canada’s bilateral mutual legal assistance treaty partners, or to Canadian police officers, for the purposes of non-tax criminal investigations and prosecution of certain serious crimes.
Part 3 implements certain excise measures by
(a) broadening the refund regime in respect of excise tax on diesel fuel to allow a vendor to apply for a refund where a purchaser will use excise tax-paid diesel fuel to generate electricity, if certain conditions are met;
(b) introducing an anti-avoidance excise measure relating to the taxation of cannabis in respect of the rules establishing the value of a cannabis product on which an ad valorem duty is calculated;
(c)  introducing amendments to the Air Travellers Security Charge Act and the Excise Act, 2001 that are similar to those to the Income Tax Act to extend the assessment period of a person by the period of time during which a requirement for information or compliance order is contested;
(d) introducing amendments to the Excise Act, 2001 that are similar to those to the Income Tax Act to enable the disclosure of confidential information to Canada’s bilateral mutual legal assistance treaty partners, or to Canadian police officers, for the purposes of non-tax criminal investigations and prosecution of certain serious crimes; and
(e) making housekeeping amendments to the Excise Act, 2001 in order to ensure consistency between the English and French version of the legislation.
Part 4 enacts and amends several Acts in order to implement various measures.
Division 1 of Part 4 amends the Customs Tariff in order to simplify it and reduce the administrative burden for Canadian businesses and the Government of Canada by consolidating similar tariff items that have the same tariff rates and removing end-use provisions where appropriate. The amendments also clarify existing tariff provisions and make other technical amendments.
Division 2 of Part 4 amends the Canada Pension Plan to modify the calculation of the amount to be attributed for a year in which a contributor is a family allowance recipient and their first or second additional contributory period begins or ends.
Subdivision A of Division 3 of Part 4 amends the Trust and Loan Companies Act, the Bank Act and the Insurance Companies Act to, among other things,
(a) establish thresholds below which the acquisition of control of certain entities, or the acquisition or increase of a substantial investment in them, does not require the approval of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions;
(b) allow financial institutions to invest in the Canadian business growth fund; and
(c) ensure that customers can provide consent electronically to receive electronic documents.
It also corrects a reference to the Insurance Companies Act in the Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 1.
Subdivision B of Division 3 of Part 4 amends the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation Act to, among other things,
(a) make technical amendments to clarify the method of calculating insured deposits, to remove outdated references, to repeal certain provisions not yet in force and to clarify that withdrawals made following the amalgamation of two or more member institutions or the continuance as a federal credit union will be considered to be made from pre-existing deposits and that the separation of accounts following the amalgamation is limited to a period of two years;
(b) exclude amounts borrowed by the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation under paragraph 60.‍2(2)‍(c) of the Financial Administration Act from the calculation of the Corporation’s total principal indebtedness; and
(c) clarify that the liquidator of a member institution of the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation must not apply the law of set-off or compensation to a claim related to insured deposits.
It also repeals two sections of the Financial System Review Act.
Subdivision C of Division 3 of Part 4 amends the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions Act, the Trust and Loan Companies Act, the Bank Act and the Insurance Companies Act to, among other things, clarify that providing legally privileged information to the Superintendent of Financial Institutions does not constitute a waiver of the privilege.
Division 4 of Part 4 amends the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act to remove the right of persons to decide not to proceed further with importing or exporting currency or monetary instruments that are required to be reported.
Division 5 of Part 4 amends the Canada–Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation Act to, among other things, allow for the application, within the offshore area, of the provincial greenhouse gas pricing regime and to confer powers and impose duties and functions on the Canada–Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board for the application of that regime. It also amends the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act to provide that the provincial regime does not apply if the offshore area is mentioned in Part 2 of Schedule 1 to that Act. Finally, it amends the Offshore Health and Safety Act to postpone the repeal of certain regulations.
Division 6 of Part 4 amends the Canada Business Corporations Act to set out criteria for identifying individuals with significant control over a corporation. The Division also sets out a requirement for a corporation that meets certain criteria to keep a register of individuals with significant control and requirements respecting the information to be recorded in it. Finally, the Division includes applicable offences and punishments.
Subdivision A of Division 7 of Part 4 amends the Patent Act in order to
(a) provide a regulation-making authority for the establishment of requirements for written demands relating to patents;
(b) specify that an act committed for the purpose of experimentation relating to the subject matter of a patent is not an infringement of the patent and that licencing commitments that bind the owner of a standard-essential patent or the holder of a certificate of supplementary protection that sets out such a patent bind any subsequent owners or holders;
(c) expand the rights of a person in respect of a claim in a patent who meets the requirements to be considered a prior user;
(d) ensure that patent prosecution histories may be admissible into evidence for certain purposes;
(e) clarify when a late fee must be paid in respect of divisional applications as well as when the confidentiality period begins in the case where a request for priority is deemed never to have been made.
Subdivision B of Division 7 of Part 4 amends the Trade-marks Act to, among other things,
(a) add bad faith as a ground of opposition to the registration of a trade-mark and for the invalidation of a trade-mark registration;
(b) prevent the owner of a registered trade-mark from obtaining relief for acts done contrary to section 19, 20 or 22 of that Act during the first three years after the trade-mark is registered unless the trade-mark was in use in Canada during that period or special circumstances exist that excuse the absence of use;
(c) clarify that the prohibitions in subparagraph 9(1)‍(n)‍(iii) and section 11 of that Act do not apply with respect to a badge, crest, emblem or mark that was the subject of a public notice of adoption and use as an official mark if the entity that made the request for the public notice is not a public authority or no longer exists; and
(d) modernize the conduct of various proceedings before the Registrar of Trade-marks, including by providing the Registrar with additional powers in such proceedings.
It also makes certain housekeeping amendments to provisions of the Trade-marks Act that are enacted by the Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1 and the Combating Counterfeit Products Act.
Subdivision C of Division 7 of Part 4 amends the Copyright Act in order to specify that certain information is not permitted to be included within a notice under the notice and notice regime and to provide for a regulation-making power to prohibit further types of information from being included within such a notice.
Subdivision D of Division 7 of Part 4 enacts the College of Patent Agents and Trade-mark Agents Act. That Act establishes the College of Patent Agents and Trade-mark Agents, which is to be responsible for the regulation of patent agents and trade-mark agents in the public interest. That Act, among other things,
(a) requires that individuals obtain a licence in order to act as patent agents or trade-mark agents and that licensees comply with a code of professional conduct;
(b) authorizes the College’s Investigations Committee to receive complaints and conduct investigations into whether a licensee has committed professional misconduct or was incompetent;
(c) authorizes the College’s Discipline Committee to impose disciplinary measures if it decides that a licensee has committed professional misconduct or was incompetent; and
(d) creates new offences of claiming to be a patent agent or trade-mark agent and unauthorized representation before the Patent Office or the Office of the Registrar of Trade-marks.
That Subdivision also makes consequential amendments to certain Acts.
Subdivision E of Division 7 of Part 4 amends the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act to provide that intellectual property users may preserve their usage rights when intellectual property rights are sold or disposed of in an insolvency proceeding or when the agreement relating to such property rights is disclaimed or resiliated in such a proceeding. It also amends the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act to provide that intellectual property users may preserve their usage rights when intellectual property rights are sold or disposed of.
Subdivision F of Division 7 of Part 4 amends the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act to provide that the head of a government institution may refuse to disclose, under either of those Acts, information that is subject to the privilege set out in section 16.‍1 of the Patent Act or section 51.‍13 of the Trade-marks Act. It makes a related amendment to the Pest Control Products Act.
Subdivision G of Division 7 of Part 4 amends the National Research Council Act to clarify that the National Research Council of Canada has the authority to dispose of all forms of intellectual property that it develops, including future rights to such property and to provide the Council with the authority to dispose of real, personal, movable and immovable property, complementing the current provision in the Act that allows it to acquire such property.
Subdivision H of Division 7 of Part 4 amends the Copyright Act in order to modernize the legislative framework relating to the Copyright Board so as to improve the timeliness and clarity of its proceedings and decision-making processes. More specifically, it repeals spent provisions and
(a) codifies the Board’s mandate and establishes decision-making criteria;
(b) establishes new timelines in respect of Board matters, including earlier filing dates for proposed tariffs and longer effective periods for approved tariffs, and empowers the Governor in Council to make additional timelines by regulation;
(c) formalizes case management of Board proceedings;
(d) reduces the number of matters that must be considered by the Board;
(e) streamlines procedural steps across different tariff contexts, maintaining differences between them only where necessary;
(f) amends relevant enforcement provisions, including the availability of statutory damages for certain parties in respect of Board-set royalty rates and enforcement of Board-set terms and conditions; and
(g) modernizes existing language and structure for greater clarity and consistency.
Division 8 of Part 4 amends the Employment Insurance Act to, among other things, increase the maximum number of weeks for which parental benefits may be paid if these benefits are divided between claimants. It also amends the Canada Labour Code to, among other things, increase the aggregate amount of leave that may be taken by employees under sections 206.‍1 and 206.‍2 if that leave is divided between employees.
Division 9 of Part 4 enacts the Canadian Gender Budgeting Act in order to state the Government’s policy of promoting gender equality and inclusiveness by taking gender and diversity into consideration in the budget process. It also establishes related reporting requirements.
Division 10 of Part 4 amends the Bank Act to strengthen provisions that apply to a bank or an authorized foreign bank in relation to the protection of customers and the public. It implements enhancements in the areas of corporate governance, responsible business conduct, disclosure and transparency, and redress. It also amends the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada Act to strengthen the mandate of the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada and grant additional powers to that Agency.
Division 11 of Part 4 amends the First Nations Land Management Act to give effect to amendments to the Framework Agreement on First Nation Land Management respecting, among other things, procedures for obtaining community approval of a land code, the lands to which a land code may apply, the addition of lands to First Nation land by order of the Minister and the transfer of capital moneys.
Division 12 of Part 4 amends the First Nations Fiscal Management Act to, among other things,
(a) enable more Aboriginal organizations and First Nations to benefit from the provisions of the Act in order to strengthen their financial management systems and give them access to long-term financing;
(b) address certain administrative issues identified by the bodies established under the Act; and
(c) provide another option for First Nations to access moneys held by Her Majesty for their use and benefit.
Division 13 of Part 4 amends the Export and Import Permits Act to give the Minister of Foreign Affairs the authority to issue an import allocation for goods that are included on the Import Control List under subsection 5(6) of that Act.
Division 14 of Part 4 enacts the Pay Equity Act to establish a proactive process for the achievement of pay equity by the redressing of the systemic gender-based discrimination experienced by employees who occupy positions in predominantly female job classes. The new Act requires federal public and private sector employers that have 10 or more employees to establish and maintain a pay equity plan within set time frames so as to identify and correct differences in compensation between predominantly female and predominantly male job classes for which the work performed is of equal value. The new Act provides for the powers, duties and functions of a Pay Equity Commissioner, which include facilitating the resolution of disputes, conducting compliance audits and investigating disputes, objections and complaints, as well as making orders and imposing administrative monetary penalties for violations of that Act. The new Act also requires the Pay Equity Commissioner to report annually to Parliament on the administration and enforcement of the new Act.
Division 14 also amends the Parliamentary Employment and Staff Relations Act to provide for the application of the Pay Equity Act to parliamentary employers with certain adaptations and without limiting the powers, privileges and immunities of the Senate, the House of Commons and the members of those Houses.
It also makes the Minister of Labour responsible for the administration of the Federal Contractors Program for Pay Equity.
Finally, it makes related and consequential amendments to certain Acts and repeals the section of the Budget Implementation Act, 2009 that enacts the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act.
Subdivision A of Division 15 of Part 4 amends the Canada Labour Code to, among other things,
(a) provide five days of paid leave for victims of family violence, a personal leave of five days with three paid days, an unpaid leave for court or jury duty and a fourth week of annual vacation with pay for employees who have completed at least 10 consecutive years of employment;
(b) eliminate minimum length of service requirements for leaves and general holiday pay and reduce the length of service requirement for three weeks of vacation with pay;
(c) prohibit differences in rate of wages based on the employment status of employees;
(d) address continuity of employment issues when a work, undertaking or business becomes federally regulated or in cases of contract retendering; and
(e) update group and individual termination provisions by increasing the minimum notice of termination.
Subdivision B of Division 15 of Part 4 amends the Canada Labour Code to allow the Minister of Labour to designate a Head of Compliance and Enforcement who will exercise most of the powers and perform most of the duties and functions that are related to the administration and enforcement of Parts II, III and IV of the Code.
Division 16 of Part 4 amends the Wage Earner Protection Program Act to, among other things, increase the maximum amount that may be paid to an individual under the Act, expand the definition of eligible wages, expand the conditions under which a payment may be made under the Act and create additional requirements related to Her Majesty in right of Canada’s right of subrogation in respect of payments made under the Act.
Division 17 of Part 4 amends the Bretton Woods and Related Agreements Act, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Agreement Act and the Official Development Assistance Accountability Act to harmonize the periods within which the reports under those Acts must be laid before Parliament in order to better communicate Canada’s international development efforts. It also repeals the definition of “official development assistance” in the Official Development Assistance Accountability Act and confers the power to define this expression by regulation.
Division 17 also enacts the International Financial Assistance Act, which provides the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister for International Development with powers, duties and functions to support the delivery of a sovereign loans program, an international assistance innovation program and a federal international assistance program that promotes the mitigation of or adaptation to climate change through repayable contributions.
Division 18 of Part 4 enacts the Department for Women and Gender Equality Act which, among other things, establishes the Department for Women and Gender Equality to assist the Minister responsible for that department in exercising or performing the Minister’s powers, duties and functions that extend to and include all matters relating to women and gender equality, including the advancement of equality in respect of sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression and the promotion of a greater understanding of the intersection of sex and gender with other identity factors. It also contains transitional provisions. Finally, Division 18 makes consequential amendments to other Acts.
Division 19 of Part 4 enacts the Addition of Lands to Reserves and Reserve Creation Act which authorizes a Minister, designated by the Governor in Council, to set apart lands as reserves for the use and benefit of First Nations. The Division also repeals Part 2 of the Manitoba Claim Settlements Implementation Act and the Claim Settlements (Alberta and Saskatchewan) Implementation Act.
Division 20 of Part 4 amends section 715.‍42 of the Criminal Code to require the publication of any decision not to publish a remediation agreement or order related to that agreement and of any decision related to the review of such a decision, to specify that the court may make the first decision subject to a condition, including one related to the duration of non-publication, and to allow anyone to request a review of that decision.
Division 21 of Part 4 enacts the Poverty Reduction Act, which sets out two targets for poverty reduction in Canada.
Division 22 of Part 4 amends the Canada Shipping Act, 2001 to, among other things,
(a) authorize the Governor in Council to make regulations respecting the protection of the marine environment from the impacts of navigation and shipping activities;
(b) authorize the Minister of Transport to
(i) make an interim order to mitigate risks to marine safety or to the marine environment, and
(ii) exempt any person or vessel from the application of any provision of that Act or the regulations if doing so would allow the undertaking of research and development that may enhance marine safety or environmental protection;
(c) increase the maximum amount of an administrative penalty that the Governor in Council may fix by regulation;
(d) authorize the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, pollution response officers and accompanying persons to enter private property in the case of a discharge of oil from a vessel or oil handling facility; and
(e) double the administration monetary penalties for certain violations.
Division 23 of Part 4 amends the Marine Liability Act to modernize the Ship-source Oil Pollution Fund, including, among other things,
(a) removing the Fund’s per-occurrence limit of liability;
(b) in the event that the Fund is depleted, authorizing the temporary transfer to the Fund of funds from the Consolidated Revenue Fund;
(c) modernizing the Fund’s levy so that the Fund is replenished by receivers and exporters of oil;
(d) ensuring that the Fund’s liability for claims for economic losses caused by oil pollution aligns with international conventions;
(e) providing that the Fund is liable for the costs and expenses incurred by the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans or any other person in respect of preventive measures when the occurrence for which those costs and expenses were incurred has not yet created a grave and imminent threat of causing oil pollution damage;
(f) authorizing the provision of up-front emergency funding out of the Fund to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans for significant oil pollution incidents;
(g) creating an expedited, simplified process for small claims to the Fund; and
(h) providing for administrative monetary penalties for contraventions of specified or designated provisions under that Act.

Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 2

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

moved that Bill C-86, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 27, 2018 and other measures, be read the third time and passed.

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to have this opportunity to talk about Bill C-86.

Over the past three years, our government has been guided by the fundamental principle that real economic progress comes from carefully crafted, targeted investments in people and in communities, and not from austerity and cuts, as we saw in the previous government.

Bill C-86, also known as the budget implementation act, 2018, No. 2, or BIA, 2, is legislation that delivers the next phase of our government's commitment to invest in Canadians and build a vibrant and equitable economy that is fair to all.

Since 2015, we have already taken bold steps, and the impressive returns we are seeing on our investments in Canadians are clear evidence that our economic policies are working well and for the good of the many.

First, we started by asking the wealthiest to pay a little more, so we could lower taxes for the middle class. Today, this tax cut means that some nine million Canadians have more money in their pockets and good reasons to feel more confident about their financial situations.

We are also making significant investments in Canadian children through the new Canada child benefit, which helps Canadian families meet the high costs of raising their kids. This new benefit, or CCB, is tax free. Compared to the previous system of child benefits, the CCB is also simpler, more generous and better targeted to those who need it most. It has left nine out of 10 Canadian families better off.

In keeping with our commitment to reduce inequalities and to offer all Canadians equal opportunities to succeed, the Canada child benefit, or CCB, provides even more financial assistance to the low- and middle-income families who need it most. Roughly 65% of families receiving the maximum CCB amount are headed by single parents, of whom over 90% are single mothers.

Since July 2018, the Canada child benefit has been indexed to keep up with the cost of living. We implemented that measure two years ahead of schedule. Thanks to the middle-class tax cut and the Canada child benefit, by this time next year, a typical middle-class family of four will receive on average about $2,000 more each year. That is $2,000 more than they could expect to receive under the previous Conservative government of Stephen Harper.

For single-parent, average-income households with two children, or for families with two children where only one parent is earning an average income, the benefits are even more significant. When the tax-free Canada child benefit and other benefits are added to family income, those families pay effective personal tax rates of less than 2%, which means they keep more than 98% of what they earn.

Through these measures, more families will be able to buy things such as healthy food, warm clothes or winter boots for their growing children. On average, families who receive the Canada child benefit get $6,800 every year. The CCB has helped lift more than 520,000 people out of poverty, including nearly 300,000 children.

That is not all. Salary increases for average Canadians are currently outpacing inflation. If the current trends hold, 2018 is on track to see some of the highest salary increases since the 2008-09 recession. Generally speaking, as we look at the legislative provisions to implement the measures in budget 2018, our economy is strong, healthy, and growing.

Since 2015, we have also been looking beyond our borders in order to reach new, modern trade agreements that will create jobs and help us be more competitive around the world. The fact that Canada is the only G7 country to have trade agreements with each of the other members of the G7 is a testament to the work we have done internationally. The recently negotiated USMCA will give the international business community the confidence it needs to continue investing in Canada.

The many innovative domestic and international economic measures we have put in place mean Canada's economy is strong and growing. Our economic growth rate of 3% in 2017 was the highest in the G7, and we expect to stay among the fastest-growing economies this year and next year.

Thanks to the hard work of Canadians, the past three years have seen the creation of more than half a million new full-time jobs. These new jobs have pushed the unemployment rate to a 40-year low. For the average Canadian worker, wage growth is outpacing inflation. If current trends hold, 2018 could mark one of the strongest years of wage growth in almost a decade.

Confidence is nearing historic highs, both among consumers and business owners, and leading to business expansion and the hiring of new employees.

All hon. members know that small businesses are a key driver of Canada's economy and account for 70% of all private sector jobs. When small businesses succeed, Canada succeeds. That is why we cut the small business tax rate to 10% last January and will lower it to 9% effective January 1, 2019.

In 2019, the combined federal-provincial-territorial average income tax rate for small business will be 12.2%, by far the lowest in the G7. Several federal departments and agencies, including the Business Development Bank of Canada and Export Development Canada, are working hard to help these important job creators succeed and thrive.

This overall positive outlooks reflects Canada's many competitive strengths, including a highly-skilled labour force, preferential access to global markets and a strong research and start-up capacity in emerging fields. We know that nurturing and expanding these competitive strengths demands policies that keep the focus on people and gives every Canadian the means to contribute fully to our society and our economy.

Wage growth is outpacing inflation for the average Canadian worker, as I mentioned, and we could see that growth mark one of the strongest years of wage growth in a decade.

Overall, as we consider this legislation that would implement measures from budget 2018, it is important to note that our economy is strong, healthy and growing.

I would like to briefly describe the essential pillars of Bill C-86.

The legislation includes an important measure to further stimulate economic growth, namely the new Canada workers benefit. The Canada workers benefit is an improved version of the current working income tax benefit. It is designed to encourage people to enter and stay in the workforce.

Under the Canada workers benefit, a low-income worker earning $15,000 annually could get almost $500 more in benefits in 2019 than he or she would get this year. In addition, the Canada workers benefit's expanded eligible income range would ensure that more workers would be entitled to it.

The new CWB would also be more accessible than the benefit it replaces. The legislation includes amendments that would allow the Canada Revenue Agency to calculate the benefit amount for all eligible tax filers, even if they do not claim it. These improvements to ensure access to the new benefit could be particularly useful for people with limited mobility, those who live far from points of service and those without Internet access.

The government estimates that, as a result of these changes, an additional 300,000 low-income workers in Canada will receive the Canada workers benefit for the 2019 tax year.

This is a major step forward in reducing inequality in Canada. What is more, it is estimated that the investments in the new Canada workers benefit will help lift roughly 70,000 Canadians out of poverty.

Another important aspect is addressing gender inequality, which is a vital component of the bill. Canadian women are among the most educated in the world, but they are less likely to participate in the labour force than men and are more likely to work part-time. Canadian women are too often working in unpaid jobs, which prevents them pursuing the opportunities that would help them reach their full potential.

There is an under-representation of women in leadership positions and the vast majority of Canadian businesses are still run by men. No economy can claim to be operating at full capacity if women are not being offered the same opportunities, including at leadership levels. Gender equality benefits everyone and benefits the whole economy.

We know that the participation of women in the labour market has been one of the key drivers of our economic growth in recent decades. During the past four years, the increased number of women in the labour market accounted for about one-third of real per capita GDP growth in the country. Indeed, RBC Economics estimates that adding more women to the workforce could boost Canada's GDP by as much as 4%.

The increased presence of women on the labour market is increasing household income and making a big difference to hard-working families across the country.

We need to establish an economic climate that will give all Canadians, particularly women, the opportunity to succeed and be leaders.

That being said, the gender budgeting act, which is part of budget implementation act, 2018, no. 2, will make gender budgeting an integral and permanent part of the federal budget-making process.

The bill will also convert Status of Women Canada into a new department, the department of women and gender equality, which will be responsible for the advancement of equality in respect of sex, sexual orientation and gender identity or expression. The gender gap remains too large and the evidence shows that taking steps to reduce that gap is not just the right thing to do, but also the smart thing to do.

Finally, I would like to talk about the measures that we are taking to protect the environment, which are an essential component of Bill C-86. We believe that putting a price on pollution is the best way to reduce emissions because it will encourage businesses and households to make more environmentally friendly choices and find more innovative solutions.

It is clear to us that pollution should not be free. Canadians are aware that that is the reality and that this is the right thing to do. We can see the costs of polluting everywhere. All one has to do is watch the evening news or take a look at the paper to see that droughts, floods and forest fires are becoming regular occurrences. That is not to mention the effects of pollution on our physical and mental health.

By implementing these measures to protect our precious environment, which is under increasing threat, Canada joins 67 other jurisdictions that have already taken this important step toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Together, these jurisdictions represent about half of the global economy and more than a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Despite efforts in some quarters to persuade Canadians otherwise, this is not an attempt to add to federal coffers. Provincial systems will apply in the several jurisdictions that are either already implementing their own carbon pollution pricing systems that meet the federal benchmark or are on track to do so.

The federal fuel charge will apply, starting in April 2019, in Saskatchewan, Ontario, Manitoba and New Brunswick. Those governments have not developed a system to price carbon pollution that meets the federal benchmark.

In those four provinces, the federal government proposes to return the majority of direct proceeds from the fuel charge directly to individuals and families through climate action incentive payments, starting in early 2019. Every dollar will remain in the province of origin. For most households, these payments will help offset their increased costs related to pollution pricing and help them to make more energy efficient, greener choices. The remaining proceeds that are not returned directly to households will go toward providing support to sectors within these provinces that will be particularly affected.

We estimate that climate change will cost our economy $5 billion a year by 2020. If we want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are responsible for climate change, we have to accept the fact that polluting our environment costs us dearly and that it is very logical that polluters pay for the damage they cause.

Canadians can rest assured that they do not have to convince this government to protect the environment because we truly believe that doing nothing would be a failure to live up to our responsibility as federal legislators and would also betray current and future generations of Canadians, who have the right to a healthy, peaceful and prosperous life in a healthy environment.

Our shared quality of life and our economic prosperity are closely linked to the environment we live in. That is why it makes sense to build an economy that benefits all Canadians while protecting our environment and seeking to repair the damage we have already caused.

We want Canadians to feel confident about the future, to be better prepared for what awaits them and not to be concerned about those elements that sustain life, namely, the air we breathe and the water we drink.

The essence of this bill is that we are investing in Canadians, we are sharing the fruits of our strong economy with all Canadians, and we refuse to renege on our environmental commitments. Budget 2018 will help make a better Canada for all Canadians.

For these reasons, I am very proud to rise in the House to speak to Bill C-86, the budget implementation bill, at third reading. I think it gives Canadians measures that will grow our economy, which has always been our goal, and also protect the environment. We believe that these two things go together.

We also think that a greener economy, a green shift towards renewable energy sources and more effective environmental decisions offer some worthwhile business prospects. As has been proven many times, this is also a major market.

Furthermore, we think that putting a price on pollution is the right thing to do. As I explained in my speech, more than half of world economies have put a price on pollution. Quebec has done so since 2013, and British Columbia has for many years. These two economies within Canada are seeing impressive growth records and have had economic success. This shows that the environment and the economy can and must go together.

Furthermore, a measure like the Canada workers benefit reflects another essential pillar of our goal, as a government, to reduce inequality. For too long, under the former government, our government lacked leadership on reducing inequalities. In fact, the previous government created more inequalities than it reduced.

The measures we have implemented since taking office prove that we are different. We raised taxes on the wealthiest 1% so we could reduce taxes for nine million middle-class Canadians. The previous government sent cheques to millionaires' families, but we put a stop to that with our Canada child benefit. We decided to make that system much more progressive so we could help those who needed it most, and that move is clearly having an impact.

That is one way our government's approach differs significantly from the approach taken by the previous government. We are absolutely committed to reducing inequality and poverty in this country by means of a very ambitious strategy spearheaded by the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development.

Another way we are different is our national housing strategy. Under the former government and some of its predecessors, the federal government stepped away from playing a role in social housing, but our government launched an ambitious $40-billion strategy. That is the kind of measure Canadians wanted to see, because they want a fairer country where economic growth and prosperity benefit everyone, a country where prosperity is inclusive. I think Bill C-86, the budget implementation bill before the House today, reflects that.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, before the last election, the Prime Minister made a promise that he was going to balance the budgets, and he said he would do so in 2019. However, not once during the hon. member's speech did he even speak about balancing budgets. In fact, as we know through Finance Canada, we are going to see a prolonged period of deficits in this country. In fact, my 14-year-old will be roughly 43 by the time we return to balanced budgets.

My question is simple: When will the budget balance itself?

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we cannot forget that in 2015, the country was facing some questions. I remember it very well, since I, like all members here in the House, was in the thick of that election campaign. Canadians were debating whether the country was in a recession or heading for into a recession. The previous government's austerity measures and cuts were taking us in that direction.

We took a different approach, the one that Canadians voted for. Our approach was to make necessary, useful investments, either in infrastructure or in Canadians, that would reduce inequality and stimulate growth, such as the Canada child benefit, or in research, which was largely forgotten for a decade. Today, Canada is experiencing strong growth. Last year, we had the strongest growth in the G7.

As for the deficit, I want to point out that our debt-to-GDP ratio is on a downward track precisely because our economy is growing. This is good for the country and places Canada in the best economic position in the G7. This is something to be proud of.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, here we are under time allocation, debating the budget implementation bill, Bill C-86.

We have been waiting three years in this Parliament for pay equity legislation to be tabled. Canadian women have been waiting 42 years since the first Trudeau prime minister promised to implement pay equity legislation.

Having spent three years ostensibly consulting with employers, the labour movement and the lawyers who have been litigating pay equity in the absence of federal legislation, the government finally jams it into this 800-page bill.

We thought it would really reflect the advice the consultations had gathered. Instead, under extremely tight timelines, the NGOs, the labour movement, teamsters, the Canadian Labour Congress and the Ontario Equal Pay Coalition all proposed extremely detailed amendments. They said the pay equity parts of this legislation would not work, and that women would not get equal pay.

I proposed dozens of amendments at finance committee that were written by the lawyers who have been litigating this all this time. Liberal members voted every single one of them down.

Why did the government not take the advice of the people closest to pay equity and get this right after waiting 42 years?

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is important to remember that we debated Bill C-86 in the House for 15 hours. Four committees also studied the bill for more than 20 hours and heard from 45 witnesses.

Indeed, it has taken far too long, 42 years, to bring in proactive pay equity legislation in this country. After a decade of inaction on this file by Stephen Harper's Conservative government, I am very proud that the current government has decided to take action and inspiration from what is being done elsewhere. Quebec, for example, has proactive pay equity legislation that is working very well and served as a model for our government's bill.

I am proud that federally regulated businesses and Crown corporations will henceforth be governed by proactive pay equity legislation that reflects our government's goal of having a society that respects gender equality and allows everyone to reach their full potential.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague talked about a number of different themes, two of which were the questions of social and income equality, and the other of which was that of climate change and the government's carbon tax proposal. I do not believe these two objectives need to be at odds. We can fight climate change in a way that also advances social equality.

However, the Liberal government has put forward a plan where the brunt of the pain will be felt by those who can least afford it. They are proposing a carbon tax, but they are giving a break to large industrial emitters.

People realize that, very often, the kinds of transitions that allow people to significantly reduce their carbon footprint involve significant capital expenditures, such as buying an electric car or doing an energy retrofit to a home. Whereas one might consider programs like a home renovation tax credit, which allow people to make those kind of investments, the government's punitive approach does not leave any wiggle room for those who cannot afford to make those kinds of capital investments but will still have to pay the tax.

Why does the member not advance an approach to climate change that advances social equality at the same time, instead of giving a break to the wealthy and big industrial emitters while ensuring the pain—

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance.

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot help but wonder where my honourable colleague has been all these months. Our plan clearly states that in provinces and territories that do not put a price on pollution, an incentive that is greater than the cost of pollution pricing will be paid directly to citizens. The average family in Ontario, for example, will have more money in their pockets.

I do not understand why my colleagues opposite are so intent on impoverishing their constituents, who will receive more money with this incentive to fight climate change, and on making pollution free in this country when we know the impact that carbon pollution and climate change are having on our environment. It is absolutely ridiculous. I am having a really hard time understanding it.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Louis-Hébert for his intervention and speech.

Through Bill C-86, we are making ongoing investments in the economy, in middle-class Canadians and in those working hard to join them. As well, the investments in our recent 2018 fall economic statement will help businesses and individuals in his wonderful riding of Louis-Hébert. Perhaps he could he expand on that.

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Vaughan—Woodbridge for making an effort to speak French. His French has improved markedly since he first arrived here in Parliament. I also thank him for the important work he does at the Standing Committee on Finance. It is greatly appreciated by all members of the committee.

One thing becomes quite clear when we look at the economic situation across the country, and nowhere is it more apparent than in my region, where the unemployment rate is 3.8%. I am talking about full employment. The corollary is a labour shortage. Employers are looking for skilled workers. In a way, that is a good problem to have, but it is a major challenge that we must address.

I look at how families are doing. Even the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, which provides help to those less fortunate in my riding, is seeing what a positive impact the Canada child benefit is having on local families. They have more money at the end of the month, especially those who need it most. That is why I got involved in politics, and I am very proud to see that our policies are having a very real, very direct impact on the lives of those who need it most.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, given that the parliamentary secretary will not answer the question about the timing for a balanced budget and the finance minister has repeatedly refused to even acknowledge the question as being asked, I wonder if we could go about this another way.

Does the member actually deny having made a clear and explicit promise to balance the budget by 2019?

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, our commitment was clear. We were not going to offer Canadians the same outcomes, the same abysmal failures as the previous government did with respect to growth and vital infrastructure investments.

The previous government made cuts at the expense of veterans, at the expense of our security agencies and at the expense of pay specialists, which is what caused the problems with the Phoenix pay system. That was the Conservative government's approach. They had the worst record in the area of export growth since the Second World War and the worst record on job creation. The Conservative record is really nothing for them to be proud of.

Our approach, unlike theirs, is working and is producing tangible results. We have created 550,000 jobs, most of them full time. We have seen wage growth in 2018 that is on track to become the strongest wage growth in a decade. We have the strongest growth in the G7, and we have achieved all that while reducing inequality and protecting the environment.

I think they need to take a closer look at their record and see what did not work. I cannot find the right word in either French or English to describe the enormity of the mess they left to Canadians after 10 years in power.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be joining the debate on this bill at third reading.

In the next 20 minutes what I hope to do is to lay out a case as to why the government has failed to look after the interests of the middle class, has failed to look after the interests of upper energy workers, upper energy families, and then draw attention to a clause found in the BIA, this omnibus piece of legislation, that I think is deserving of an amendment. Mr. Speaker, I am going to request that two minutes before my time is up, I be given notice so that I can move an amendment. Before that I would like to provide commentary as to why I am moving it.

This BIA is the second bill to implement provisions in the budget. The government has added more deficits and more accumulated debt in the last three non-recession years than I think at any time in modern history by any government. The prior government had a great recession to deal with. Governments before that in the 1990s had to deal with the debt wall they had hit and simply could not borrow more money. Difficult choices were made then. The government is basically laying the groundwork for those difficult choices to come in the future. Future governments will be constrained by difficult choices they will have to make.

We all know that the debts accumulated today are the taxes of tomorrow. If we value social programs, if we value retirement pension plans, if we value the services provided by the government, we have to ensure the proper management of government finances and that is not what we are seeing from the government side of the House. It is not what we see in this piece of omnibus legislation.

At the Standing Committee on Finance which I sit on, multiple members, even the members of the New Democratic Party, brought up the fact that the government repeatedly broke promises to not introduce more omnibus legislation. I note that twice already the Speaker has ruled and has divided up the budget bill, and taken out parts that violate the rule that measures found in the budget must be connected to measures found in the budget implementation act. The two cannot be separated.

The budget is three times the size of what was promised in 2015. Canadians made a choice in 2015. We can agree to disagree on the wisdom of that but they made a choice. They were promised multiple series of measures. The budget was supposed to be balanced by 2019, and it will not be. In fact, there are deficits and new debt as far as the eye can see. The government cannot give us in this chamber, at committee, or in public a fixed date of when the budget will be balanced.

We know that the Department of Finance has produced numbers showing that 2045 is likely the date when the budget will balance itself. Hopefully, it will not come to that and we will find some way to balance it before then.

An often-stated goal of the government is to ensure that we have the best GDP growth in the G7, the best GDP growth in the OECD. Different metrics are used to look at it. I am actually looking at OECD data right now. When looking at the data, we see that we have the weakest growth in North America. In 2019, we will be behind Mexico and the United States. In 2018, we are behind Mexico and the United States. The farther back we go, the more often we see that is the case. Actually, there is only one year in the last few years where we had stronger growth than they did. As well, when we project it into the future, that weakness in growth continues.

Our closest competitors, the places to which we are losing manufacturing jobs, the places to which we are losing energy jobs, the places to which we are losing auto jobs, are having stronger growth. That relates to the policies of the government: high carbon taxes, higher taxes in general, uncertainty in the investment climate, $78 billion lost in LNG development. That all adds to an epic failure of leadership on behalf of the government.

This second budget implementation act continues that failure. It continues a record of failure.

In my home province of Alberta we have lived it for three years now, dealing with a government that has as its sole intent the phase-out of the oil sands. Initially, when the Prime Minister said it, he said it was a gaffe, a mistake. He repeated the same thing in Paris at France's legislative assembly. He repeated it in French of course, hoping that we would not know what he had said, but we do. It is twice now he has said it.

There is a tanker ban on the west coast. It is a false tanker ban because it does not apply to the south coast of British Columbia.

Bill C-69 is regulatory legislation that would ensure that no major energy infrastructure project ever gets built again in this country. I am sure a government caucus member will stand and say I am wrong, that I have made a mistake, that a $40-billion LNG project is going ahead. What Liberals will not tell us is that LNG project was approved in 2012 and the recent decision was a business decision to proceed, but wait: The contract says it is exempt from the carbon tax. It is exempt from many of the measures introduced both by the federal government and the B.C. provincial government, so it makes business sense to proceed.

That is telling. It is telling that the decisions being made by governments over the past three years are costing jobs and investment and only when they are removed does private business proceed with construction and provide the much-needed, much-wanted middle-class energy jobs.

That is also telling of the business climate we live in. We had an emergency debate yesterday on the plight of energy workers across Canada. Energy jobs are fleeing this country. Alberta is often called Texas north. I prefer to think of Texas as Alberta south as so many families from Alberta are there. They are just trying to make ends meet. They are trying to pay their mortgages, send their kids to good schools and save for their retirement. They will go where they need to go.

They have skill sets that it took Alberta a generation to attract and develop. It was not easy to convince people to come to Alberta. Typically, when people fly from eastern Canada to western Canada, they fly over Alberta and head to the beautiful west coast. To convince people that it is worth staying in our province, they have to be provided great benefits, great pay and a great place to live to raise their families. We have done so, but it took us 25 years to get there. In the span of three years, the Liberal government is robbing an entire generation's worth of work that was done to make Alberta the most productive and best place to raise a family.

That is one of the reasons I moved to Alberta. It was for work. I know that is the same reason everybody living in my area, the suburbs of Calgary, came to Alberta. We all became Albertans because of the work ethic that we bring, the can-do attitude. That is why there is a very common slogan in Alberta now, which the Prime Minister heard last Thursday, “build that pipe”. We should probably replace the provincial slogan with “build that pipe”. Whatever it takes we should build that pipe.

The government's solution has been to expropriate Kinder Morgan and take it into its administration for $4.5 billion of taxpayer money that is now being used by Kinder Morgan to finance pipeline construction in Texas. I do not know in what world that is good policy-making, but it is not. Why are we financing our competitors? It simply does not make any sense.

The government uses numbers to crow about its GDP growth. We should be looking toward the future. The government and government caucus members, especially in the past year, have been really interested in litigating the past. It is something they like to often engage in. Liberals are in government. Government caucus members defend three years of policy decisions that have led to a point where the oil price differential on Western Canadian Select and synthetic crude oil is at a record high.

I worked for the Chamber of Commerce years ago, almost 10 years ago now, and there was an oil price differential back then as well. It was about $15 or $20. It kind of fluctuated. Back then, people talked about how big an issue it was, how we needed to fix it and make good decisions for the future to ensure that pipeline capacity matches expected production growth. That is what many companies in the private sector were trying to do. They were trying to figure out where capital could be expended in the most profitable way possible to maximize their equity return in the most responsible way possible.

Many people in my riding who are now unemployed or underemployed used to work in quality assurance ensuring that pipelines were built safely and in a way that ensured the absolute minimum amount of risk to the population around them. Most Albertans have pipelines in their backyards. They know where they are. There are utility corridors all over the province because this is what Alberta has a competitive advantage in.

I will now move to the clause I mentioned before and the substance of the amendment I will be moving at the end of my speaking time. During debate on budget implementation act, no. 2, clause 470 was brought up. The clause deals with the Canada Labour Code and provides for leave. The member for Foothills proposed an amendment at committee to provide 12 weeks of bereavement leave for parents dealing with the death of a child or the perinatal death of a child. That amendment was voted down by the government.

To head off possible arguments against the amendment I will be moving at the end of my speech, there are three main arguments I heard that I want to elaborate on and explain why they are not good arguments to vote against providing 12 weeks of bereavement leave.

First, an argument was made that there are other types of leave being amended within the BIA. A good argument could be made as to why we are doing it in this way, in the BIA, in a budgetary implementation bill when we are amending the Canada Labour Code. I believe there are over 850 pages in this bill, and we may sometimes wonder why it is being done in this way.

One of the arguments was that there is another type of leave which people could be eligible for. Mothers are allowed 17 weeks of maternity leave now. Within that 17 weeks, if their child passes away they can take the full length of the leave as bereavement leave. When I asked officials whether this applied to fathers, they said it did not. Fathers do not get this bereavement leave.

Fathers only get five days, which is consistent with the Canada Labour Code. They get five days, three of which are paid and two of which are unpaid. I thought this was patently unfair. In fact, I asked officials what happens in the case of 17 weeks plus one day. These are very difficult cases, where parents have lost a child, for example, from SIDS, a pre-existing condition or a rare condition. Many members will know that I lost my youngest daughter in August, so this issue really speaks to me. I thought this was a much rarer issue in Canadian society than it actually is. Fathers get three paid days and two unpaid days. This argument that there are other mechanisms to use is not a good one in this particular case.

As I mentioned, we moved an amendment at committee. We had the debate. There was some willingness at least to hear the argument. There is a great Yiddish proverb which speaks to the situation we find ourselves in, “From success to failure is one step; from failure to success is a long road.” My amendment will be proposing a long road to get to success.

Another argument advanced at committee was that there was a motion under consideration at a different committee which considered the situation that parents, mothers and fathers who have lost a child, find themselves in. Motion No. 110 is at the HUMA committee. It does not deal specifically with bereavement leave in the Canada Labour Code, which was perhaps an error in the argument being used at committee to provide a reason for why we should vote down an amendment to provide equality to both parents, mothers and fathers, with 12 weeks of leave.

It is a good argument that work being done by a committee of the House, with a report that will come some day, hopefully before the election, should not stop us from doing the right thing right now when presented with an opportunity to do so in the BIA. The BIA is going to deal with different pieces of legislation, from the Canada Labour Code to budgetary measures, to spending announcements, to changes to the accelerated capital cost allowance, to changes to export and import permits. Therefore, why not deal with this too? We are already making modifications to it. We are making small amendments to it.

It is not a good argument to say that another committee is taken with the issue when it is not actually this specific issue it is reviewing. It is reviewing it in a broader sense. It is looking specifically at employment insurance. Although important, that committee's work should not preclude us from making a decision in this chamber that parents are deserving of equality. That is a very important concept here.

Another argument advanced at committee was that we did not have all the facts of the impact that introducing up to 12 weeks of bereavement leave would have compared to 17 weeks in maternity benefits being offered, which specifically applies to mothers, as I mentioned. Again, I found this argument unconvincing.

I offered at the time a subamendment. We could have delayed clause-by-clause consideration of the BIA before it came back to this chamber to give ourselves an extra day so that the Department of Justice lawyers could provide us with an opinion. I think it is not a good argument until we have all the facts before us.

As opposition members, and I am sure many New Democrats will agree, we are saddled with these omnibus pieces of legislation, and they have gotten longer and more complex. I see some nodding heads. Not only are we now sitting down, and our staff is sitting down, to compare what is in the budget implementation act and what is in the budget to make the connection between the two so that we can then rise in this chamber and explain why certain parts do not belong in this particular budget implementation act and could be separated out so we could go into the details, the specifics, clause by clause, section by section, but on top of all that, the government used cloture, a guillotine motion, to send the bill to the finance committee as quickly as possible, limiting debate in the House of Commons on the generalities at second reading.

The government then produced a programming motion, a guillotine or closure motion, at committee to force us to consider it expeditiously within just a few weeks, which included a constituency week. There was very little time for the finance committee to actually give the bill a fulsome, in-depth review.

Of course, we pick and choose the portions that are most interesting to us. The most interesting to the Conservatives is the case of bereavement leave and the Canada Labour Code provisions, because there is an issue of unfairness that is embedded right now. That will continue if we do not propose an amendment, which I mentioned I will be proposing, to fix this issue so that fathers would be provided with the same equitable benefits mothers are provided. More broadly, I think it will give us an opportunity to get at all the facts and have an opportunity to have officials return to committee and explain to us in a more fulsome way how it would work.

As I mentioned, we had officials at committee, and they provided some information, but not all of it. An argument advanced by the government caucus members was that, in fact, we did not have all the facts and therefore we should not proceed but should let another committee of the House do some other work on a related issue not specific to this particular one. However, if it is found in the BIA, my argument is that we should deal with it. It should not be that whatever the government proposes in a budgetary bill simply passes and we should just accept the fact that it will be carried forward.

This has happened before in the last few years. The Senate actually had serious misgivings about a specific portion that dealt with and affected Desjardins Caisse populaire, so that measure was eventually dropped by the government. Therefore, it is not unheard of for the government to accept amendments to slow down and have reconsiderations.

I think it would be a wise decision in this situation to offer mothers and fathers, especially fathers, in this case, an opportunity to take advantage of bereavement leave of up to 12 weeks. This would be for federally regulated employees, of course. We know that in the private sector, employers offer varying types of leave.

Having presented the case, I believe the amendment I am proposing is reasonable. It will give us time to reconsider the matter. I think the House, in its infinite wisdom, can provide the committee with this type of direction. Therefore, I move, seconded by the member for Elgin—Middlesex—London:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word "That" and substituting the following: Bill C-86, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 27, 2018 and other measures, be not now read a third time, but be referred back to the Standing Committee on Finance for the purpose of reconsidering Clause 470 with the view to ensuring that every employee, regardless of gender, be entitled to and shall be granted a leave of absence from employment of up to 12 weeks if the employee is the parent of a child who has died, including in cases of perinatal death.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague and friend from Alberta, who I have the pleasure of sitting on the finance committee with and who I have also worked with extensively over the last few months in the Kurdish friendship group.

I wish to speak to the amendment as well as provide some thoughts on this bereavement leave. I have spoken to the member several times about this recommendation. It is an issue that is very important to many Canadians. However, I want to ask him for clarification. Currently, if a situation arises where a perinatal child passes away, the mother is permitted to take up to 17 weeks of leave. My understanding is that the amendment would reduce that to 12 weeks and would also apply to fathers. It would be unfortunate if the unintended consequence of this sort of policy, and we spoke about this at committee, was that mothers could potentially see the time they were given to recover and get support from family and friends reduced from the current 17 weeks to 12 weeks.

I do not believe that is the intended purpose of the amendment and what was debated at the finance committee. Therefore, I would ask my friend to provide clarity.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the purpose of the amendment I proposed in the House of Commons is to take this matter at third reading stage and return it to committee for a full consideration of this issue of bereavement leave.

I do not believe the member is correct. With respect to the 17 weeks that are provided, when we talked to officials at committee, they said it included time for recuperation after giving birth, for which 17 weeks is very reasonable. If within that time a mother lost her child, she would only get up to 17 weeks. She would not get anything in addition. If at 17 weeks plus a day her child were to pass away, the mother would get nothing. She would get the three paid days and two unpaid days. I also think that is patently unfair to a mother who loses a child.

The second part is that 12 weeks be provided to fathers. There has to be some type of equality provided to fathers and consideration of their feelings and what they are going through. That is not currently the case in the Canada Labour Code.

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

Mr. Speaker, my colleague would be surprised to know that I do not agree with all of his speech, although I very much agree with some of what he said. However, I agree with the amendment he has brought forward.

This was discussed at committee, and like every other amendment brought forward by the opposition designed to fix some of the glaring holes, problems and mistakes in Bill C-86, it was rejected by the committee. It defies understanding why when opposition members bring forward, in good faith, amendments designed to improve legislation, the government simply, with the back of the hand, slaps all of that back. The amendment the member tabled today is very much in keeping with that. It was not supported in any way by government members.

I would like to hear the member's perspective on why government members rejected something that is clearly needed and fits with the principles and values of the vast majority of Canadians.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member for New Westminster—Burnaby is absolutely correct. It happens all too often. I can live with motions or amendments being voted down, as long as there is a fulsome debate so we can hear both sides of the argument in full and at least consider some amendments and work in a more collegial manner. In some committees, that is possible, and in others less so. To the credit of the government, there are government caucus members who have accepted amendments at other committees. However, I would say it is an infinitesimally small number of amendments. In a case like this, I do not think there are any political points members are trying to score either way.

It is during the questioning of officials that we sometimes discover an inequity in the system. It is not an intentional inequity. It is simply an accumulation of policy decisions and legislative changes made over time that lead us into situations where we may realize that we have accumulated legislative measures and regulatory ideas that have now built inequity into the system. In this particular case, there is a good case to be made that we have inequitable bereavement leave that discriminates against fathers who have lost a child as well as mothers after the 17th week.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to go to the bill itself. The member made reference to the province of Alberta and the price of oil. Obviously, that is of great concern to the government. I would like to think it is of concern to all members of Parliament. Where I take exception is that the Conservatives have consistently tried to pin blame on the government because of policy decisions. I would ask the member to recognize that the core of the problem, as I see it, is that 99% of our commodity is going through the United States. That has been the case since Stephen Harper actually became the prime minister of Canada, and it never changed.

The opportunity to expand our markets was there during Stephen Harper's time. Now, for the first time, we have a commitment that engages Ottawa in taking ownership of a pipeline in order for us to expand the market. That is far more than what Stephen Harper ever did.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the approach the member has suggested and the measure he is speaking of, the expropriation and purchase of Trans Mountain, is, to quote Ronald Reagan, “I'm from the government and I'm here to help”. It is patently untrue. The vast majority of Albertans would say that if the government got out of our way, we could get the job done.

It is also not factually correct to say that there were no pipelines or infrastructure built to tidewater, because in fact, the pipelines that were approved under the previous government led to Cushing and from there to Freeport, Texas. It is kind of like believing that if a road is built towards a highway, but because the highway is not on the direct road and the overpasses are not directly connected, the off-ramps do not count or do not exist. That is a patently untrue argument to make.

Pipelines are connected throughout North America. What the parliamentary secretary is suggesting is that somehow these pipelines that were approved by the previous government, and built by the private sector, lead to nowhere. It is an admission of failure for the government to spend $4.5 billion, and another $8 billion in construction in the future, to build something the private sector wanted to build.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, by his own admission, the member for Carleton has asked a simple question well over 400 times, either through committee or the House of Commons in question period, asking the government when the budget will be balanced.

The government members deflect, defer and do not answer the question. I want to ask the hon. member why that question is so important, not just to the Canadian economy but to our competitiveness and to future generations as well.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member draws our attention to the fact that the date for balancing the budget is now difficult to even predict, because many finance department documents and budgetary documents do not quite match up. It does not make a lot of sense.

To me, it is very simple. The stewardship of the financial resources of the public treasury should be, if not mission number one, mission number two of the Government of Canada. Today's debt is tomorrow's taxes. It is leaving it to future generations to clean up the financial mess the government is leaving behind.

Let us return to the Yiddish proverb for a moment just so the member can hear it again: “From success to failure is one step; from failure to success is a long road.”

The government is failing to account for the true cost of the carbon tax and the cost of not balancing the budget today, and that long road ahead of fixing the messes and the failures of leadership will probably take two or three generations to ensure that our great-grandkids are not stuck with the bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am very disappointed to rise in the House to speak to Bill C-86. I think the disappointment I feel about the promise of the government in 2015 versus what it has delivered recently is felt acutely by many Canadians. Hopes were high in 2015 that things would change.

Certainly the Prime Minister, in his admittedly very effective campaign, talked about how things would change in Ottawa, how parliamentarians and Parliament would be respected and get back to doing the work we are paid to do on behalf of Canadians from coast to coast to coast after the Harper years.

In the Harper years we saw a systematic denial of the ability of parliamentarians to get amendments and legislation through and systematic dumping of two or three hundred page omnibus bills in the House of Commons. Then there was fairly systematic recourse to the “guillotine”, as we say in parliamentary procedure, meaning that parliamentarians were not able to speak to and address their constituents' concerns on the floor of the House of Commons.

Those days seem almost quaint now. The offence we took at the Harper government's use of 200 page budget omnibus bills, the dumping of a whole range of unrelated factors into omnibus legislation and forcing it through the House of Commons in a week or two, seem almost quaint now as we come into 2018, almost 2019. I say this because of what the Liberal government has done instead of keeping its commitments to make parliamentarians get back to the work we are paid and asked to do on behalf of Canadians, to scrutinize and improve legislation, to work through and hear witnesses and make sure that everything that we pass through the House is the best possible legislation and does what it is purported to do.

Instead of putting back in place a Parliament that would function well, one where there was consultation with opposition parties, what we have seen saw from the Prime Minister has been a doubling down. I will come back to that later in my speech, because what we have seen over the last few months in particular really goes to the character of the government and the Prime Minister and finance minister.

Bill C-86 is the living embodiment of everything that has gone wrong with the government over the last three years. Despite the high promise and firm commitment by the Liberals before they came to Parliament, three years later we now see in Bill C-86 another example of how the government is no different from the government before it, but even worse in many respects. Instead of 200 or 300 page omnibus budget implementation bills that throw everything but the kitchen sink into one piece of legislation, we now have almost 900 pages, and with Bill C-86, some seven stand-alone pieces of legislation being included.

Instead of having the week or two of parliamentary scrutiny that we had under the Harper regime, which in itself was inadequate, we now have one or two days of consideration before the bulldozer is brought in and parliamentary rights and privileges are simply pushed aside. Instead of the government's being willing to accept the expert testimony of witnesses and to work with opposition parties to improve legislation, we see a government that is purporting to push legislation through that it knows is inadequate and will lead to court challenges.

That is the sad case with Bill C-86. Under the Harper regime it happened half a dozen times. The Conservative government rammed legislation through the House after a week or two of consideration, knowing that ultimately it would be decided in the courts. Half a dozen times the courts rejected the legislation because it was so shoddily made, because the government refused to hear from witnesses.

Bill C-86 has not been adopted yet, but the government is indicating, with all of its strength, that it will refuse to heed any advice or counsel that would improve this legislation in any way. The Liberals say they are just going to force it through, and we know now that women will be forced to return to the courts on the pay equity issue. It is a sad commentary that a government that knows that what it is doing is bad is relying on spin over substance. The Liberals have been saying in the House that they have brought forward pay equity legislation. The fact that it is full of flaws, the fact that witnesses identified the flaws, and the fact that the NDP systematically brought forward amendments that would fix the flaws so that we would have solid pay equity legislation are all tossed aside.

The government feels that spinning the point that it has put forward pay equity legislation will override the sad substance of what is in Bill C-86 as currently constituted. This will force women back to the courts again so that they can get the right of equal pay for work of equal value. It is incredible that a government would do that. It really beggars belief that a government that knows that what it is doing is wrong still intends to do it anyway, because its members think they can spin their way out of it.

That is why I say that C-86 is the living embodiment of the dashed illusions and dashed hopes of Canadians, who back in 2015 were quite enthusiastic about the government. They felt that the government would make a difference and that it would be a change from the Harper regime. Three years later, so many Canadians, including people in my riding who voted Liberal back in 2015 and were so enthusiastic, now only say that they might perhaps vote Liberal. The Liberals will say that in the opinion polls they are still doing well, but what they do not understand is that there is a difference in the strength of intensity of belief. The reality is that in the next few months there will be a debate on a whole range of government decisions, and the traditional Liberal sense of entitlement and arrogance that seems to have re-established itself after three brief years in power is going to encounter that reaction from Canadians.

Indeed, the living embodiment of Liberal broken promises contained within this massive budget, Bill C-86, has planted the seeds of what could well be, in the coming 11 months, a strong reaction from Canadians that the government does not deserve another mandate. We do not want to go backwards to the Harper regime years, but Canadians, and certainly my constituents, feel tired of a government that makes promises and then promptly breaks them.

The biggest flaw with Bill C-86 is what is not in it and what could have been in it. I will include within that the mini budget that we heard last week, which was so out of touch with Canadian realities. It was so out of touch with Canadians struggling with profoundly deep debt loads, the the highest debt loads in our history and the highest debt loads of families in any industrialized country on this planet. Those debt loads were prompted by government policies over the last 30 or 40 years, the refusal to provide supports for affordable housing or pharmacare, the refusal to provide supports for families.

What we saw, both in Bill C-86 and the mini budget, was a cascade of money for corporate CEOs. The government seems unable and unwilling to address any of the concerns of regular folks right across the length and breadth of this land. To do a quick accounting, in just the last few months, the cascade of money includes $4.5 billion for an old leaky pipeline, twice its asset value. Despite that, the government did not flinch at throwing $4.5 billion into that purchase. Now we are seeing the construction costs of that pipeline again going up, being anywhere between $11 billion to $15 billion, but the government is not flinching. The finance minister does not even have a firm estimate of the costs. He is going with Kinder Morgan's estimate. That is most probably another $15 billion on top of the $4.5 billion.

In the mini budget last week, we saw $14 billion being given to corporate CEOs. The Liberal members will say that it is going to revitalize the economy, but when we look at the budget documents—because that is what we do in the NDP; we read through the documents—we see what the mini budget actually aimed to do was to accelerate tax writeoffs, so it included tax gifts for CEOs for very plush private jets and stretch limousines. I questioned Finance officials about this, because I wanted to be sure I understood it. I asked if a stretch limousine was covered by this accelerated writeoff, this big tax gift given by the Liberal government. They said it was. I asked if private jets were covered. They said yes. That is another $14 billion, and I am not even talking about the over $20 billion a year that goes to overseas tax havens.

Mr. Speaker, as you will recall, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who is a hero, along with everyone else who works in that office, struggled for three years under the Harper regime, and another three years under the Liberal regime, before he was able to get the tax data that will allow us, for the very first time next spring, to have a conclusive and comprehensive evaluation of the amount of money that the wealthiest Canadians and Canada's most profitable corporations are squirrelling away offshore.

Small business owners, trades people and single mothers are paying their taxes, and Canadians are proud to do that because it is part of the character of our country that we provide for funds in common that are then to be invested to support all of us. However, that is not the way some of Canada's wealthiest and most profitable corporations have acted. The estimates go up to $20 billion, but the PBO could well find much more than that.

Let us do a quick accounting. We have $4.5 billion, another $15 billion, and another $14 billion on top of that. That is over $20 billion, and we are well over $50 billion without even pausing to take a breath or a sip of water.

What is not in Bill C-86 and not in the mini budget? Universal single-payer pharmacare was not in it. I have mentioned this before and I will mention it again. Every day, Parliamentarians pass Jim, begging on the bridge between the Chateau Laurier and the East Block. He is begging because there is no single-payer universal pharmacare system in our country. He has to beg for $500 a month. He lives on scant savings and a little money, but he has to beg so he can get the medication that keeps him alive.

Business owners pay $6 billion a year for drug plans, and yet we know that with our universal medicare program, that is a competitive advantage. That is $3,000 per employee per year, as a result of Canadian businesses not having to pay into the medical plans that American businesses have to pay into.

Pharmacare is a win-win for everyone, and the PBO indicated that it would be. It would represent $4 billion in savings overall for Canadians. However, there is nothing in Bill C-86 and nothing in the mini budget that addresses the crucial difficulties that people like Jim are facing. If any member of Parliament from the government side in any way is skeptical, they can just go to talk to Jim. He is out there now, begging for money so he can get the medication he needs to stay alive. It is incredible that in a wealthy country like this, a country where the Liberal government has been willing to fritter away $50 billion over the last few months with no hesitation, the government is unwilling to provide support for pharmacare.

Nothing in Bill C-86 addresses the housing crisis we are living in. It is incredible what Canadians are forced to live through in this housing crisis. Every time I mention housing, the Liberals start heckling and reacting very badly, but we are talking about real Canadians who are suffering profound difficulties.

I have spoken in the House about John, a senior who has ended up homeless and is in a homeless shelter now because of the lack of affordable housing in the country. I have talked about Heather. I have talked about Raj and Wade. I can mention so many stories.

Here is another one, and this comes from last night.

I turned left as I exited the Wellington Building last night and there was a woman, who I will call Yolande, sleeping outside under the canopy at the building. Every MP who left last night would have seen her. It twisted my gut to see her there. I am a parliamentarian. Despite the fact that there are 40 New Democrats here, we have been unable to get the Liberal government to understand there is a problem.

Canadians are getting increasingly frustrated with the Liberal government's inability to recognize that we are in a profound crisis. Thousands of Canadians are sleeping on the streets in our towns and cities. People like Yolande in Ottawa are sleeping under canopies. People are sleeping downtown on top of steam vents, or in parks, or in entryways of stores that have closed for the day. They are desperately seeking shelter for the night. That should not happen in a country as wealthy as Canada, full stop. Nothing in Bill C-86 addresses the profound crisis we are living through.

Nothing in Bill C-86 addresses the profound crisis in our education system for indigenous children who are underfunded and are living in appalling conditions. They go to schools that belie belief. The average is $6,500 to $10,000 less per student per year for students in an indigenous school as opposed to kids in other schools. Nothing in Bill C-86 addresses that at all.

It is not just the Liberals approach in Bill C-86. It is not just the glaring misplaced sense of priorities. It is the fact that witnesses have said, as they did with pay equity, that the bill needs to be improved otherwise women will have to go back to court. It is a sense from the Liberal government that it will not change it, that it does not care.

That is the biggest part of my profound disappointment, after three years of the Liberal government. I have a profound of sense of disappointment in the lack of an understanding of priorities, the sense of entitlement that somehow being able to spin words and say that pay equity is in the bill is the most important thing, not whether it is done right, not whether women have to return to court. It is the Liberals overall overall sense that it is fine, because they can spin it and tell everybody that they put equity legislation through, regardless of whether women have to go back to court or not.

It is like the excise tax that was imposed on medical cannabis users. The Liberals were stunned when I started to ask questions about it. Finance ministry officials had to look into it and realized that the excise tax had been imposed on medical cannabis users, 250,000 Canadians who need medical cannabis for pain management. They are often in intense pain.

We tried to fix that last spring and the Liberals said, no. They did not care. We tried to fix it again last week in Bill C-86, and Liberal members again rejected the amendments on eliminating the excise tax on medical cannabis, as they did with every other amendment that came from the opposition. This means that medical cannabis users join other Canadians who cannot afford their medication. It is just a lack of empathy, full stop.

I understand the Prime Minister comes from a life of privilege as does the finance minister. I do not begrudge them that and I do not think any Canadian would. However, it is the lack of empathy, the lack of understanding of how their policies are making, demonstrably, the lives of so many Canadians worse that I and the rest of my party decry.

Bill C-86 could have been improved. It should have had other measures that addressed the concerns of Canadians. Because it does not, I will be voting against it.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Families]

Mr. Speaker, it is not really a question of whether the glass is half full or half empty. Regardless of how much we take out of it, it is full. I am not thirsty, so I will not take a sip of it right now.

The reality is that the national housing strategy, which is a $40-billion investment over the next 10 years, is a re-profiling of the investments we have set to make and we now have signed bilaterals with the provinces to lock it in and deliver it.

What the member opposite fails to understand and what his criticism continually highlights is that he actually has not read past budget documents. If he had, he would know that in 2016, we invested $5.73 billion in the housing system. We did that by doubling our transfers to the provinces and tripling our funding for homelessness. That $5.7 billion is not in this budget implementation plan because it was in the previous one. We are not going to do it every time just to make the member happy.

This $5.73 billion, I might add, is four times more than the party opposite promised in its last campaign, a party that thinks the housing crisis started yesterday, apparently. Its plan for a budget this year was to put zero dollars into affordable rental housing and only $10 million toward homelessness, whereas we have $100 million and $5.73 billion.

Could the member opposite please explain to me why he thinks last year's budget implementation budget should be debated today instead of the one in front of us?

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

Mr. Speaker, all members of Parliament had to battle Paul Calandra under the Harper regime, who would say things that simply were not true. It got to the point that it was an embarrassment to—

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. What I just said is true and to suggest that it is not is to suggest that I am not telling the truth, which is to say that I am lying. I would ask the member opposite to withdraw that.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Anthony Rota]

I am afraid that is more debate that it is a point of order.

The hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby.

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

Mr. Speaker, Paul Calandra did exactly that kind of thing every time it was pointed out he was simply wrong.

The member for Vancouver Kingsway showed the member for Spadina—Fort York the platform this week, so he has the figures right in front of him. He knows it was a $3-billion investment, yet he continues to say something that he knows is not true. He knows that the billions of dollars he pretends has rained down to address the housing crisis is simply not true either.

This is what I say about the character of the government and the Prime Minister, their inability to distinguish the spin or whatever they decide to manufacture as truth and actual reality.

The actual reality is that the number of homeless in the country is growing. The number of poor children in the country is growing. There are two ways the Liberal government and the parliamentary secretary could react to that. One is to say, yes, that is true, that they will withdraw the $14 billion they gave to corporate CEOs last week and invest it in housing.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Anthony Rota]

Order, please. I will remind the two members from the NDP and the Liberal Party who are talking to each other while the hon. member is trying to answer his question that it is making it very difficult for him to concentrate and for us to hear what he has to say.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. As much as I am loath to agree with my friend from Spadina—Fort York on anything, it is a matter of order, not a matter of debate, that no one can accuse a member of lying in the House. Members ought to be called—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Anthony Rota]

It is a matter for debate. No one accused anyone of lying. They were arguing the truth, which often happens in the chamber. Someone has to call someone a liar or something similar. There are different ways of getting around things, not that we definitively agree on that, but we will see where we go from there.

The hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby can finish his answer. He has very little time left.

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

Mr. Speaker, my point was that Paul Calandra was used as an enforcer on the floor of the House of Commons. The member for Spadina—Fort York is doing exactly the same thing.

The reality is that putting things forward that members know are not accurate information is not something they should do on the floor of the House of Commons. Whether the Conservatives or the Liberals are upset by that, the New Democrats will continue to do our work and put forward the truth. Our role in the House of Commons is to read through this document, as we did, and provide truthful, important and accurate amendments that would improve the bill. The fact that the Liberals refused any amendments from the opposition says a lot more about them than it does about any of us.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I disagree with the member characterizing someone disagreeing as being an enforcer, not that I agree with much said by the member for Spadina—Fort York. However, the spirit of this is supposed to be to authentically have conversations in a reasonable spirit.

Nonetheless, I want to ask my colleague about the issue of the media bailout. I genuinely do not know the NDP's position, so I would be very curious to hear what he has to say about that.

We are concerned when public money is given to the media. Frankly, I think many in the media are concerned this will raise questions about their independence. Journalists do important work. However, when the government is intervening to make evaluations about who gets money and who does not, it raises serious problems and questions.

I wonder if my colleague agrees, recognizing the important role of an independent media, that we should not be having a government appointed panel handing out government dollars in this fashion.

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

Mr. Speaker, the member will not like the answer, so he may get up on another point of order.

Over 10 years, the Harper regime did nothing about the web giants as they came into our communities, Facebook and Google, and sucked up advertising revenue. In my communities of Burnaby and New Westminster, we lost half of the weekly newspapers because of that. Companies can now advertise on Facebook and not have to pay taxes in Canada. They do not have to pay for pensions, or employees or anything. Therefore, of course they can undercut traditional advertising means such as our media.

The Harper regime did absolutely nothing to address this chronic problem, even though we asked question after question in the House and put it forward as opposition motions. The Liberal government has done nothing since it took power.

Ultimately, the media fund is an important lifesaver to the media that remains in the country. What we need is a comprehensive review of our tax system so the web giants cannot get away with undercutting Canadian businesses.

That came out of the pre-budget hearings as well. We heard many people in the business community ask how Canada could have a tax structure that would allow foreign companies to come in, not pay any taxes at all and compete for Canadian businesses. This has been a long-standing problem in the country. It started under the Harper regime, has continued under the Liberal government, and it needs to be addressed.

I think this will be part of what Canadians will be considering in 10 month's time, when they talk through our federal election in 2019. They will be concerned about members of Parliament who were not willing to apply a level playing field in the tax system so Canadian companies could compete.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his attempts to amend this bill. The government has repeatedly said that we are all in this together, yet when it comes to tabling bills, it rejects every sensible amendment.

Last night, there was an emergency debate in the House on the energy situation particularly being suffered in the province of Alberta. Almost a year ago exactly, in Bonn, Germany, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change committed that she would finally invest some dollars and have a strategy on an energy transition strategy for workers. Here we are about to go to the next COP on climate and nothing has been invested by the Liberal government.

Could the member speak to what the government could have done to invest in helping our workers, including our oil field workers like those of Iron & Earth, who are proud to be oil field workers but would also like to be trained as well so they can move into the energy efficiency and renewable energy sectors. Why has the federal government put nothing in this budget?

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

Mr. Speaker, by far, that is the best question I have received today. It is a question of substance.

The green energy, or clean energy, market in the United States is exploding. As the member knows, it is estimated by building trades to quadruple over the next decade. Yet, we have unemployed oil and gas workers in Alberta who are crying out for clean energy funding that would allow capped oil wells to take advantage of geothermal. There is immense potential for solar and wind power in Alberta as well and a tremendous ability to transition those oil and gas workers into another sector of the energy field.

Under the past Conservative government as well as under the current Liberal government we have seen complete inaction. That is absolutely tragic. We could be talking about up to a million clean energy jobs with the right investments and we are not seeing any action from the federal government.

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity today to talk about the importance of the intellectual property strategy.

From the beginning, our government has always worked to strengthen Canada's IP laws.

IP incentivizes and rewards intellectual activity in the industrial, scientific, literary and artistic fields, and it is essential to a modern and dynamic economy. In fact, I would argue that it is a fundamental asset of the knowledge economy. IP protections act as an incentive by rewarding creators and inventors for their contribution to the economy in our society. IP enables them to profit from their ideas and their creativity and provides them a mechanism to obtain a return on their investments. IP laws achieve this by granting them exclusive rights, thereby preventing others from making, selling or using the fruits of their labour without their permission.

In addition, the use of IP is correlated with positive economic outcomes. Businesses with a solid understanding of IP and a strong, strategic plan for its use and protection are important contributors to the Canadian economy. In fact, these businesses create jobs that pay, on average, 16% more than businesses with little or no IP. Also, businesses using IP in patent-intensive industries have about eight to 10 times more revenue than those not using IP.

Canada's laws cover many forms of intellectual property, including patents, trademarks, industrial designs and copyrights. Following on budget 2017's commitment, budget 2018 proposes $85.3 million over five years and $10.1 million on an ongoing basis for measures in support of a new intellectual property strategy.

In April 2018, on World IP Day, our government officially launched the IP strategy that will help solidify investments in creativity and innovation, support our efforts to create high-quality jobs and enhance the understanding of the elements necessary to succeed in the global, modern economy.

The IP strategy is an important element of the innovation and skills plan, by fostering an ecosystem that enables businesses to grow to scale. The strategy will ensure that Canadian firms have the awareness and incentive to strategically use IP to grow and compete. The elements of the IP strategy fall under three strategic pillars: the need to increase IP awareness, education and advice; the provision of strategic IP tools for growth; and legislative amendments.

A number of initiatives are under way and planned under the first pillar of IP awareness, education and advice. Most notably is that the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, CIPO, will continue to build on current learning tools and resources and also develop new educational resources to better equip innovators and businesses with the knowledge they need to succeed. Its teams of IP advisers located across Canada work directly with companies and innovators to deliver seminars and participate in innovation and business-related events.

We will be conducting an IP awareness and use survey to identify how Canadians understand and use IP, including groups that have traditionally been less likely to use IP, such as women and indigenous entrepreneurs. The results of the survey will help better meet the needs of these groups.

We will support increased engagement between indigenous people and policy-makers both domestically and internationally by providing support for this engagement, for research and for capacity-building.

We will encourage the creation of IP legal clinics by providing funding to help clinics obtain resources and tools to improve the quality of prior art searches. We see IP legal clinics as a win-win-win, enabling law students to learn more about IP, helping businesses get a sense of their IP needs and facilitating access to the profession that can provide quality IP advice.

Finally, there will be a new team of dedicated IP experts working through existing federal programs to ensure that Government of Canada program officers have the knowledge and capacity to address IP issues and guide program recipients to improve their IP knowledge and savvy. These advisers will supplement, rather than replace, existing IP professionals.

The second pillar of the IP strategy provides some tools to help Canadian businesses make the most of their new-found awareness of IP. First, one of the recurring issues that we heard during the consultation process was the lack of visibility of IP held by federal public institutions and institutions of higher learning. To this end, the IP strategy includes a new online IP marketplace designed to help surface dormant IP that was funded by public institutions.

We also heard about the time that it can take to resolve IP disputes and to get a ruling on a new copyright tariff. We all know that time is money. The IP strategy includes additional resources for the Federal Court to assist in the management of complex litigation, as well as a reform of the Copyright Board.

The additional fiscal support for the Copyright Board and accompanying legislation will make it more efficient and effective. These changes will help rights holders who now better understand the value of the IP they hold by reducing the time they spend fighting over their IP and more time monetizing it.

Canadian technology is cutting edge and should be recognized as such more often. The IP strategy will support enhanced participation of Canadian businesses in the standards-setting process, and encourage the inclusion of Canadian innovations in international standards.

The Standards Council of Canada will work with innovative Canadian companies to leverage their IP during this standards-setting process.

Finally, the last tool will be the development of a patent collective to bring together businesses to facilitate IP outcomes for its members. The patent collective is the coming together of firms to share in IP expertise and strategy, including but not limited to gaining access to a larger collection of patents and IP.

The third pillar involves proposed amendments to key IP laws, notably the Patent Act, the Copyright Act and the Trademarks Act. The proposed amendments are intended to encourage creation and innovation by either clarifying acceptable behaviours or discouraging actions that have possible negative consequences. The proposed amendments would protect consumers by clarifying that notices that include settlement offers or payment demands do not comply with Canada's copyright notice and notice regime. They would also fulfill the earlier objective of expediting IP disputes by making the Copyright Board's decision-making process more efficient.

Proposed amendments to the Trademarks Act would prevent the abusive use of the trademark regime, such as by applying for registration with the sole intention of seeking remuneration from the legitimate owner of the trademark by creating—

To continue, being the chair of the industry committee, we had lots of conversations with our witnesses. Universities were saying they had a lot of great practices. Businesses were saying that finding access to IP was very challenging.

One of the initiatives that we introduced earlier this year was the $950-million supercluster initiative. Part of that supercluster initiative is having academia and industry come together, to work together, to create jobs and economy, but also to share the intellectual property that is sometimes locked away in places that will never see the light of day.

It is important if we want to grow our economy and if we want to create jobs, to have intellectual property accessible not only to academia but to businesses as well.

When we look at how we are moving forward and the investments we are making, it is so critical that we create an environment where all of our businesses and academia can work together, so that they can thrive and build the economy and grow good, well-paying jobs.

When we look at B.C., for instance, we have the digital supercluster that was awarded to British Columbia. B.C. is already at the forefront of digital media and IP is so critical. When we look at the economic tables, we can tell that currently on digital health care products, our revenues are about half a per cent or about $7 billion. By 2020, it is estimated that the digital health care marketplace in the world will be about $322 billion.

We are trying to create an environment where we get the best minds, the best people, the best research and the best companies that can work together to put us at the forefront of that marketplace. That is where we want to be. Do we want to be behind the eight ball, or do we want to be in front, leading the charge?

We are attracting the best and brightest minds here in Canada. This is what a government should be doing, to be able to lay out the environment where we can all thrive. We heard from all of our witnesses that it is so critically important that we have a national IP strategy and what is proposed in this budget is going to help address those issues. The $85 million over a five-year term will help to grow the landscape of intellectual property and help educate people so that they have an understanding of what that means.

If they do not know what kind of intellectual property is out there, people either have to reinvent the wheel or they have to go through an expensive process. The more we can share intellectual property, the easier it becomes because then they can license it for a short period of time, which allows them to move faster and create the products necessary to grow our economy.

When it comes to intellectual property, we have to look at those three pillars and education is absolutely critical. We need to be able to help people understand the ins and outs of intellectual property.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, there was an interesting delay in the middle of the member's speech, but things like that happen every day for all of us. I appreciated the grace with which he dealt with that.

As a member who represents a rural and remote riding, one of the challenges of the communities that I represent is looking at ways to be innovative and creative with the lack of Internet access that they have. I think in particular of Campbell River, one of the communities that I am proud to represent. The city itself has built infrastructure within the downtown core to have that very high level of accessibility to fibre. The businesses that the member mentioned, which focus on things that are really IT and meeting those high needs, have actually done that themselves because they simply could not get it any other way.

Could the member explain how we are looking at rural and remote communities to make sure that they get the resources that they need, as they look at their changing economies? The people I represent are extremely innovative. They are doing a lot of amazing things with what they have, but they definitely need to see the support in order to see their communities stabilize and grow in this changing economy.

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Mr. Speaker, a rural broadband strategy is something we have looked at. We know that if we can figure out how to get broadband to rural communities, to the last mile, it will help businesses thrive. We know that absolutely. In budget 2016, we invested $500 million in the connect to innovate program, which helped quite a bit. I believe the CRTC has also invested another $750 million. However, it cannot end there.

When we did our committee report on the broadband strategy, we saw some low-hanging fruit. We saw some things that can help. For instance, can they piggyback on existing infrastructure, such as telephone wires and railway lines? Is there an opportunity for that to happen if we all work collectively together?

Also, some projects might not be viable for large companies. By contrast, smaller companies have the ability to go out into the small, rural communities and actually contribute and deliver the services that are needed. This is part of that strategy.

Earlier this year, the industry minister and the provinces all got together and signed a memorandum of understanding on how to create a national rural broadband strategy. It is absolutely critical, and we absolutely need to move forward. It is a process to get to where we need to go.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, we understand that there is a difference of perspective between the current government and our party about whether or not Canada should run large deficits, especially in the current context. Surely, though, the member would acknowledge that the platform he ran on in the last election promised balanced budgets by this fiscal year. That was a clear commitment. The Prime Minister was very specific about saying that it was set in stone.

We now see the government running away from that commitment, claiming that it promised deficits, which it did. However, it promised limited deficits, up to a point, not unlimited deficits.

Would the member agree that his party has broken its promise with respect to deficits? Would he agree with us that the finance minister should at some point tell Canadians when the Liberals' plan envisions the budget being balanced?

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Mr. Speaker, when we came into power, we looked at the lay of the land and saw what was happening. The investments we are making in this country are critically needed.

When we talk about investment in housing, we are not just making it up. People need to have a home to go to so that they can find a job. I challenge anybody who does not live in a home and does not have a roof over their head to go out and find a job. It is not an easy thing to do, because nobody will want to hire them.

Therefore, the investments we are making, whether in housing, intellectual property or digital superclusters, are designed to help grow our economy and not shrink it. Our country is like a six-cylinder engine firing on two cylinders. We are not going to go very far. We need to make investments that are going to help the other cylinders start to fire, and that is by helping people get a roof over their heads, helping them find jobs, and helping employers who want to hire them. It is creating an environment where people and businesses can thrive.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member touched on the issue of copyright. I hope he will forgive me, because I know this is not in Bill C-86. It is a question of what we do about the Copyright Modernization Act, which was brought in under the former minister of heritage, James Moore, in the 41st Parliament.

The word “education” was put in there, and it has cost the authors, publishers and creators of this country. They have lost $30 million from poor interpretation. It was not clear when the act was put forward, and I remember telling the minister at the time that it was going to cause confusion. What has happened is that holus-bolus, entire texts are being photocopied without providing copyright, without paying for the use of that material. We are going to lose Canadian content.

I wonder if the member has any thoughts on the direction this is going in. In the short term, Canadian publishers are going to need some financial support to help make up for lost revenue from poor interpretation of an act brought in by the last Parliament.

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member may know that we are in the process of doing a five-year legislative review of copyright. When we set out to do this task, we laid out a format that would ensure that we heard from all the different sectors. We heard from education, artists, writers, creators, producers, singers, songwriters, lawyers and academics.

In short, we have heard from about 180 witnesses and done a road trip, and we will be wrapping up our study by the end of this year. We have heard a lot of information from both sides, some anecdotal and some factual. The challenge for the committee will be to sort through the information and try to come up with recommendations that are well thought-out and grounded in actionable items.

[Kim Rudd, Liberal, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am on the finance committee now, and I very much enjoyed the member's remarks regarding intellectual property, because it is something we are talking a lot about. He talked about the IP collective with respect to the sharing of IP. It was certainly a struggle for small businesses to be able to afford to go through the process.

Can the member talk a bit about the opportunities for small businesses to be able to expand with respect to IP?

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the best example I can give is the supercluster initiative. It is not just made up of small or large businesses. Rather, it is a collaboration of a whole bunch of people and organizations. Therefore, a one-man company in my riding could tap into the supercluster and get access to intellectual property that would never otherwise have been accessible. When people have the ability to do that, their minds can start to go in ways that we cannot even imagine. They can take that IP, open it up, unleash that intellectual property, and see where our country will go from there.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to have the opportunity to speak to the government's budget implementation bill. It is a very long bill, unprecedented in its length in terms of Canadian parliamentary history, despite promises to the contrary from the government.

There are many different aspects and themes that one could dig into. I am going to focus my remarks on what I see as five dominant debates that have emerged around this budget. I will share some thoughts on each of those five areas.

I want to speak about the government's carbon tax and associated debates about the issue of climate change and how we should respond.

I want to address deficits. The current government's massive deficit is relatively without precedent in peacetime and in times without a global economic downturn.

I want to discuss some of the debates around poverty, equity and how we can and should be responding to those very real issues.

I will speak about the energy sector and pipelines.

Finally, I want to address the government's media bailout. It has been interesting observing the debate around the media bailout and having conversations with the people I know in the press. I will contend very strongly that our position, opposing the bailout, is the fundamentally pro-media position. We recognize the importance of strong, independent media, and there is a legitimate discussion about what can be done that establishes conditions for the financial success of the media.

However, the way in which the government has approached this, whereby the media are dependent on the evaluations of a government-appointed panel, makes the media very vulnerable in terms of perceptions of lacking independence. They will be vulnerable to the kinds of challenges that naturally arise when they have been put in a position of having to come to a government-appointed body for dollars. I will speak more to that in a few minutes.

The first issue I want to address is that of the carbon tax. We have a government that does not want to have a debate around the effectiveness of the carbon tax as a tool. The Liberals will accuse anybody who does not agree with their chosen policy mechanism of somehow being not serious about responding to the challenge of climate change.

I sincerely believe that we need to respond to the challenge of climate change, and that we need to do it in a way that is effective, which means not using the climate change issue as an excuse for imposing new taxes on Canadians. Let me make a few points about that.

The first point is a historical one. Let us look at the records of the past Conservative government and the current Liberal one, as well as at the record of the previous Liberal government, by way of a contrast.

A previous Liberal government, under Chrétien and Martin, signed the Kyoto protocol, yet greenhouse gas emissions went up significantly during that period. Our Conservative government proposed binding, sector-by-sector, intensity-based regulatory targets. In other words, they did not penalize companies for increasing their output, but sought to regulate in a way that enhanced the efficiency of our production here in Canada.

In the long term, those kinds of measures would ensure and indeed increase our competitiveness. They would also ensure that we were part of effectively responding to the challenge of climate change.

The objective record of greenhouse gas emissions under the previous government shows that emissions went down. It was the first government in Canadian history under which emissions went down. In response to that, people like my friend from Spadina—Fort York will praise the record of the Kathleen Wynne Liberals, which is not as popular in Ontario as he might wish it to be.

However, across different jurisdictions we see that in every single Canadian jurisdiction, emissions under the Conservative government either went down, or they went up by less than they had under the previous Liberal government. Although the member for Spadina—Fort York might not want it to be true, he must recognize that under the previous Conservative government, progress was achieved in terms of the issue of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions in every single jurisdiction across this country.

That was done with an approach that emphasized binding sector-by-sector regulations but also ensured that individuals had the capital they needed to make investments in these kinds of improvements.

Rather than a punitive approach, like the carbon tax which punishes people, we had things like the home renovation tax credit, which ensured that people who wanted to make energy innovation investments in their own homes had the tax advantage in the process of doing so. That empowered people to engage with an issue that I think many people want to engage with, rather than the punitive approach adopted by the Liberal government.

What have we seen from the government? Upon taking office, the Liberals decided they would take the punitive approach, that they would impose new taxes on Canadians. Make no mistake that this approach is designed to raise revenue for the federal government. The GST is consistently being charged on top of the carbon tax. The GST, as everyone knows, is a federal tax. The imposition of the carbon tax in association with the GST means that this tax is designed to and will increase revenues for the federal government.

It is a punitive approach. It is a negative approach. It is a taxation-oriented revenue approach that is imposed on all Canadians. Because it is a point-of-sale tax, it is particularly regressive. We know that consumption taxes are more likely to hit those who are struggling economically. Even the natural regressivity of a sales tax was not enough for the government, which decided on top of that to provide an additional benefit for Canada's largest emitters.

It makes one wonder how sincere the government is in its rhetoric. The Liberals will extol the virtues of a carbon tax, yet they give a break to the largest emitters. The Liberals say these large emitters will really struggle to pay the carbon tax and it might hurt us economically. However, they are completely indifferent to the suffering this imposes on small and medium-sized businesses and to the suffering this imposes on individual consumers.

It especially hurts low-income people. Without the benefit of things like the home renovation tax credit, without some of the positive, constructive policies we had in place before and without things like the transit tax credit, which was an environmental measure that benefited people who were using public transit, without those kinds of measures, we are in a situation under this government where many people may not be able to make those kinds of investments that would allow them to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

This underlines the failure of a punitive approach instead of a constructive approach. Our party believes that through constructive regulations and supporting innovation and not through punishing people we can work collaboratively for environmental improvements that do not hurt the economy. That is what we saw previously.

I would just note parenthetically that whenever we talk about the issue of how greenhouse gas emissions went down under the previous government, members on the other side will always say that was only because of the global recession. However, they never bring up the global recession in the context of deficits, which I will talk about next. When they want to complain about the fact that deficits were run under the previous government, they mysteriously forget that there was a global recession, but then when they are trying to explain away the real progress that was made under the previous government on the issue of greenhouse gas emissions, they are happy to talk about the fact that there was a global economic downturn.

The reality is that Canada was relatively less affected by the global economic downturn because of prudent policies that were pursued by the previous government in the lead-up to that. Canada was relatively less affected and our emissions still went down; whereas other parts of the world were more affected and yet global emissions went up. It is simply not logical to say that greenhouse gas emissions went down only because of the global economic downturn, because Canada was outperforming the rest of the world in terms of environmental improvements as well as the economic situation relative to the rest of the world. That very much contrasts with what we see under the Liberal government.

I want to speak now to the discussion about deficits. Let us be very clear that we are dealing with a significant dissonance between what the government promised in the last election and what it is saying today.

The government promised three deficits which would be a maximum of $10 billion and then in the final fiscal year, which is the one upcoming, the budget would be balanced. However, the government has articulated absolutely no plan to balance the budget ever.

It is great to see young people watching the debate today. I know they will have to pay for the spending of the government long into their future, as a result of the fact that the government has no plan to balance the budget and is spending money today that those young people will have to pay back tomorrow. At the very least, it is a broken promise.

How do members of the government respond to the reality that they broke a promise? The previous speaker, the member for Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, talked about when they came into office, they started to take a look at the situation. Maybe the Liberals should have started to take a look at the situation before they wrote their platform. The fiscal situation is quite clear in the reports coming out from the government, in terms of all the financial data that is publicly available. It is not as if there is any surprise in the fiscal situation.

The Prime Minister made commitments that he said were set in stone, yet he broke those commitments as soon as he came to office. The Liberals have to explain why they brought one spending plan to Canadians in the election and delivered a completely different spending plan as soon as they were elected to government. Beyond the question of broken promises, it is hard for me to understand how anyone who claims to care about their children and the next generation would impose on them the burden of paying for the benefits we enjoy today, plus interest.

Sometimes we hear members across the way raise the spectre of austerity. Let us be clear that the worst cases of austerity are those that we have seen in countries which have had no choice as a result of a debt crisis. When governments spend without a plan of ever balancing the budget, it causes a situation where the most severe form of austerity is forced on them whether they like it or not. What goes up ultimately must come down.

What we advocate then is having a plan to control spending, that is, to moderate the growth of spending in such a way as to balance the budget, not to dramatically increase spending beyond government revenue. It is a little bit absurd to suggest that any call for spending control or any call for balance will somehow be austere. It is a grievous misuse of the word “austerity”, as if to imply that we only have two choices, austerity on the one hand or out-of-control spending on the other. I actually think we can pursue a middle way, which is prudent measured spending that recognizes fiscal realities, while still investing as much as possible in the future in social programs but in a way that ensures that those social programs will be sustainable.

Members across the way know that if one spends consistently more than one has, or makes promises as the Kathleen Wynne Liberals did that are completely unbudgeted with no plan to pay for them, then yes, people are going to be disappointed when those things cannot be delivered. However, it is a result of overspending. It is a result of out-of-control debt and deficits. Then subsequent generations will have to pay not only for their own needs, but they will also have to pay down the debt and interest on the consumption of previous generations.

We propose a fiscal policy that avoids the need to pay massive interest and instead is prudent and measured. It is one in which when we make spending commitments to people, we do so in the context of a balanced budget so that they can have the certainty that those programs will be there for the future.

What we see from the Liberal government are these branded plans, these national strategies that often involve most of the spending in the latter years of those programs, but they have no realistic fiscal plan of actually delivering on. It is a grievous problem. It is one that will negatively affect the next generation and the most vulnerable. Inevitably, the government is promising things that it will not be able to deliver. I think that is a good segue into making a few comments about the government's approach to the issue of poverty.

The budget implementation act proposes to legislate goals, legislate the hopes and aspirations of policy-makers. Might I humbly submit, that is not going to provide very much confidence and reassurance to those who are living in poverty. What makes much more sense are concrete policies that would benefit the most vulnerable.

I have already spoken about how the carbon tax disproportionately impacts those who are most vulnerable in terms of being forced to pay more and not getting the same holidays that the large emitters get.

The government legislates goals. It spends half a million dollars developing a logo for an anti-poverty organization, yet it does not pursue the kinds of policies that we pursued that help the most vulnerable.

With respect to homelessness, the Conservatives invested significantly in housing first. We raised the base personal exemption and lowered the lowest marginal tax rate. We also cut the GST, which is the one tax that everybody pays.

Our approach was to recognize the need to help the most vulnerable but also to understand that helping the most vulnerable should not be an excuse to increase the size of government. Big government does not benefit those who need help the most. Constantly growing government benefits well-connected insiders, as we have seen consistently from the policies of the Liberal government.

The Liberal government could consider following the positive track record of the previous government. It could provide tax relief through raising the base personal exemption, through lowering the lowest marginal rate, through cutting the GST, through providing relief on the carbon tax to those who need that support the most.

There is nothing progressive about the government's approach to policy which gives huge amounts of money in corporate welfare, in payouts to companies like Bombardier. Bombardier even said it did not need the money, and then used some of that money to give benefits to its executives.

Nothing helps the most vulnerable when the government subsidizes CEOs through policies like the supercluster. Instead we could have a competitive tax regime. We could cut taxes for the most vulnerable. We could establish the conditions by which people could keep more of their own money and use more of their own money to meet their own needs.

Instead, the government uses climate change, uses poverty, uses whatever excuse it can come up with as part of its insatiable plan to increase the size of government and to increase government spending.

I am going to try to hit my last two points in the brief time I have left.

When it comes to our energy resources, the government spent a huge amount of public money to buy a pipeline with no plan to get that pipeline built. Under the previous government, four pipelines were built, some of which did increase our ability to move resources to tidewater.

The government has no plan to proceed with pipelines. It brings in legislation like Bill C-48 and Bill C-69 that would significantly hurt our ability to move forward in terms of pipelines, while, through the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, it is paying a Chinese-controlled bank, an instrument of Chinese foreign policy, to build pipelines overseas. Its justification is that Canadian firms might get some of that work.

I have visited the headquarters of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in Beijing. It told us that regardless of whether Canada is a member of that bank or not, Canadian firms would still have the same ability to bid for work through that bank.

This talking point for justifying sending hundreds of millions of taxpayers' dollars to China to build pipelines in Azerbaijan and other places instead of building pipelines here by getting out of the way of the private sector holds absolutely no water.

Finally, on the point of the independence of the media, $600 million of taxpayers' money is going to a bailout of the media. Leading voices in the media have talked about how problematic this would be, because in order for the media to be strong, independence of the media is required. It also requires the perception of independence.

Journalists recognize that the perception of government handing over significant amounts of money through a process that fundamentally can be controlled by government makes them so much more vulnerable to misperceptions and criticism. We need to have media that are independent of government and that can do their job well.

This is an attack on the independence of the media through the government's attempt to control the process of allocation of funds. It is a significant threat to the media's independence more so than we have seen in the recent history of this country and more so certainly than the odd verbal criticism here and there.

For these and many other reasons that I do not have time to go into because it is such a large bill, I will be opposing this legislation.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my colleague's intervention today. In reference to the Conservative Party, I heard him say that “What we advocate then is having a plant to control spending” and that the Conservatives would spend nothing beyond available revenues.

If we look at the Conservative record, 16 of the last 19 budgets introduced by Conservatives ran deficits. Of the three that did not run deficits, one came on the heels of a $13 billion surplus that Paul Martin left, and the other came in 2015 when they sold the shares of GM, cut EI, and did whatever they possibly could before an election to make it look as though they had balanced the budget. As a matter of fact, if we add up the amount of debt accumulated by this country over the last 151 years, we see that the Conservatives racked up 73% of that debt while being in power only 38% of the time.

My question for the member is very simple. In what world does he live if he actually thinks that the Conservative Party has any bearing to stand and preach on fiscal responsibility, when the facts just do not support that over the last 151 years?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member really does have to go back 151 years to try to distract attention from the particular questions of his government's fiscal policy.

He cannot point to the fiscal prudence of Liberal prime ministers 100 years ago to justify the policies that the Liberals are pursuing today, namely, a massive engorging of the public sector.

The member is shouting about Paul Martin, and let me tell the House that notwithstanding some points of disagreement, I would gladly take Paul Martin over this finance minister. I would gladly take the relative prudence of those previous governments compared with the out-of-control spending of the current government.

That member, who wants to claim the benefits of those previous governments, needs to recognize how much his party has changed and, to the extent that the Liberals ever recognized the need for fiscal prudence, how far the current policies of the government have completely and totally left them behind.

I would not propose to hold him accountable for all of the decisions of his party in the past. I would not blame him for the residential schools opened by Pierre Trudeau, or for other significant policy errors made by previous governments that share the same label.

I would ask the member to defend his policies today, which are a disaster for this country.

[Karine Trudel, NDP, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to my colleague's speech.

I would like to talk about my region of Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean. This week, we had a visit from a representative of the Front d'action populaire en réaménagement urbain, or FRAPRU, who came to tell us about our city's household income statistics.

I represent the riding of Jonquière. The government promised us huge investments, mainly in Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean. I remember the government saying in 2015 that it was going to make historic investments in infrastructure, and yet there is still an urgent need for new infrastructure. According to Statistics Canada and what FRAPRU said about my city, people are still spending a large proportion of their income on housing. The need is pretty clear.

Omnibus Bill C-86 would have been a good opportunity to allocate more resources to social housing infrastructure. The government keeps saying that it is investing in social housing. That is what the members opposite always seem to be claiming. However, it is not true. There is no money allocated for social housing until after the next election.

I would like to know what my colleague thinks about that.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague makes some very good points that the government over-promises in so many different areas ahead of an election, and then we often do not see the results.

I think the member was also alluding to the fact that in some of these heavily branded, heavily promoted social policy discussions the Liberals want to put in the window, oftentimes we see how the money is allocated towards the end of an extended period of time. They will present a lengthy 10-year spending plan, with spending that is end-loaded, when they can then re-evaluate it.

It is unfortunate to see these kinds of tactics by the government. Obviously there is limited fiscal capacity, and it cannot spend on everything all at once. A better approach is to be frank and honest with people about the realities of the fiscal limitations we face, rather than creating all kinds of false expectations, spending all of these resources on branding exercises, and then not actually delivering the goods for vulnerable people, for the middle class and for everyone else, when it comes time to do so.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Families]

Mr. Speaker, the new member is a good, young speaker in the House. I used to joke that his parents perhaps read too much Ayn Rand to him as a bedtime story, but he protested and said that he did not get that until high school. However, maybe it is Adam Smith, but he did not read the right Adam Smith and only read Wealth of Nations and not Smith's very good book on morality and the need to be socially progressive.

Then I heard him talk like Tony Blair today about finding the middle way, and I thought, “My goodness, I really have this guy wrong.” However, with the climate change numbers he cited, he claims that the Harper government reduced greenhouse gas emissions by not doing anything and simply asking industry to voluntarily cut emissions. What we know to be absolutely true is that the global recession was one of the most significant contributors. In fact, the Tories liked the global recession so much they tried to start a second one all on their own in the last year of their government. They almost did it, until we had the election, and then we changed course.

The reality is that Ontario, which accounts for about a third of Canada's economy, reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 40%. That 40% reduction was almost entirely due to the elimination of coal plants, which the party opposite protested and said that we needed more coal and could not run a country without it. When the member opposite realizes that it was the elimination of coal, a global recession, and the progressive implementation by cities across the country of greenhouse gas reductions, will he finally abandon this notion that somehow Stephen Harper did anything about greenhouse gas emissions other than complain that doing something was a headache for him?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, speaking of headaches, I have not read Ayn Rand. I want to clarify for the member the source of my philosophical education and the books he should read in order to understand it more deeply. He talked about finding the middle way. I would recommend The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle, which speaks of virtue as being a mean between the extremes. Also, I have recommended After Virtue, by Alasdair MacIntyre, to him on a number of occasions. I think that would give him a better understanding, rather than throwing out titles with very little appreciation for how they might or might not actually relate to the substance of my comments. I would be happy to sponsor the member's reading over the Christmas holidays, if he would like either one of those books sent to him.

Now, in terms of the issue of looking at changes that happen with greenhouse gas emissions, I made the point very clearly that emissions went down, or went up by less, in every jurisdiction across the country during the period of the Conservative government as compared with the period under the previous Liberal government. We saw progress in every jurisdiction. We can debate the particular policies of any provincial government, and I know that Ontario has just come out of an election, in which the policies of the Kathleen Wynne government were widely debated and that government ended up with fewer seats than my minivan.

However, if the member wants to take a similar approach to the people of Ontario in the next federal election, I would certainly welcome that debate. Our approach, which brought about progress in every jurisdiction across this country, resonated with Canadians and showed that we can achieve progress without using the environment as an excuse to impose new taxes on Canadians. That is exactly what the Liberal members are trying to do.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, all I want to do is commend my colleague on his excellent speech and his extensive literary knowledge.

Does my colleague have any other books he would like to recommend to our Liberal colleague?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have plenty of suggestions for books that my colleague should read. In fact, I have been making the same suggestions in the House for years now. However, it seems obvious to me that he has not started any of those books yet, so for the moment, I will stick with the titles I have already given him.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Winnipeg South.

Before I start, I want to say that this could very easily be a great day for indigenous people in Canada, because just after 3 p.m., if things go according to Hoyle, which sometimes does not happen in this Parliament, there will be a discussion on the use of aboriginal languages in the House. It would be a great sign of reconciliation for indigenous youth to see their indigenous languages used at the centre of our democracy and nation. Therefore, I look forward to that discussion and hope everyone else does as well.

My speech today is on a topic that has come up quite often during this debate, which is omnibus bills. I will explain the technical aspects and how they work for new members of Parliament and new senators. Therefore, if members are not interested in hearing about the Standing Orders and how an omnibus bill works, they can go for lunch.

Since 1888 in Parliament there was no description or definition of omnibus bills until the recent government came to power. There were accusations of legislation being abused to do too many things or more than one major thing in a bill. An example would be a budget bill with a lot of clauses and things related to the environment that are unrelated to the budget speech. This was seen to be an abuse of a bill, or what some people called an “omnibus bill”. This was viewed as unacceptable.

In the last campaign, our party made a suggestion to remove the potential for such abuse by making a change with respect to that. On June 20, 2017, we made that correction so that people could no longer bring forth bills, in the general course of Parliament, that aimed to do a lot of things, or at least more than one thing, or to bring forth a budget implementation bill containing things that were not at all related to the budget. The way we fulfilled that promise was by adding Standing Order 69.1 to the Standing Orders, which we in the House, here in Parliament, approved.

There are two subsections in the new standing order. The first subsection is with respect to the general course of bringing forward legislation. Subsection 69.1(1) states:

In the case where a government bill seeks to repeal, amend or enact more than one act, and where there is not a common element connecting the various provisions or where unrelated matters are linked, the Speaker shall have the power to divide the questions, for the purposes of voting, on the motion for second reading and reference to a committee and the motion for third reading and passage of the bill. The Speaker shall have the power to combine clauses of the bill thematically and to put the aforementioned questions on each of these groups of clauses separately, provided that there will be a single debate at each stage.

That is how that was dealt with. Not only was that promise kept, but subsequently, use of that section has been requested at least twice. I will cite the two examples. On June 11, 2018, it was used with regard to a bill relating to national security, which the Speaker split into three votes. On October 31, 2017, a request for use of this new provision, which protects against abusive use of omnibus bills, was proposed for a corrections bill. However, the Speaker ruled that the items were related, and the bill was not split for the purpose of a vote.

The second potential use of an omnibus bill is with respect to a budget bill.

Those who understand legislation know that we have a budget speech, but, of course, that is not the law. We need a budget implementation bill to actually bring into force what is in the speech. As I have said, the Liberals thought there was an abuse of power in using that budget implementation speech to do a bunch of major, serious things that were not limited to the budget. Therefore, they wanted to remove that potential for abuse.

Standing Order 69.1(2), entitled “Budget implementation bills” reads:

(2) The present Standing Order shall not apply if the bill has as its main purpose the implementation of a budget and contains only provisions that were announced in the budget presentation or in the documents tabled during the budget presentation.

Budgets, as members know, often deal with the spending for dozens of departments. That is what a budget does. A budget implementation bill has to implement all of those things, and so it could be very long. It could be 1,000 or 2,000 or 3,000 pages. It is whatever it takes to implement what is in the budget.

Most parliamentarians would suggest that more changes to improve things in Canada would obviously make a longer bill. Whether we reduce, increase or modify expenditures, it would have to be put into the implementation bill. Therefore, the length is not relevant, unless we go off-course from what is in the budget. It could be very long, but the key is whether there is abuse, or doing something major that is not in the budget.

Standing Order 69.1(2) makes sure that we can do a budget, but it gives authority to the Speaker to split things out that were not in the budget or in the documents tabled with the budget. Therefore, in both ways, this promise was obviously fulfilled. Provisions were made to stop the abuse that was thought to be occurring on budget bills, as well as abuse in the general course of doing legislation.

In the second case, I will give members an example. Not only has this been put in place and now legislated, but it is part of the Standing Orders approved by this Parliament, and Standing Order 69.1(2) has actually been used as well since that time. It was used at least once, on November 3, 2017. The Speaker split that budget bill into five votes, because there were items that were not in that particular budget. If I remember correctly, although the Standing Order says that an item must be in the budget, the items had been in a previous budget. The Speaker did not agree to this. He then split that vote. Therefore, this provision allows the Speaker to split the bill, and it has been used.

As I said, there were no provisions for this type of protection previously, but I think it makes our legislative system better. Even with normal legislation, we cannot put a whole bunch of things in one bill that are totally unrelated. A budget bill can be really long, but it cannot include things that are not in the budget documents or in the budget speech.

Since 1888, there had been no provision to protect against this in Parliament. There were times when bills were split, but it was done through politics and not through the Standing Orders. Members may remember the great bell-ringing exercise on March 2, 1982, which convinced parliamentarians to change and split a bill, but it was not done under the authority of any Standing Order.

I just wanted to clarify and get this on the record so that people know how these types of bills get split or not, and what is more appropriate to try and improve the legislation in this Parliament.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, one of the issues we have been dealing with throughout the budget implementation act, which I mentioned earlier but will say again, is that the member for Carleton has asked almost 500 times, either in committee or during question period in the House, when the budget will be balanced.

I will ask the hon. member: when will the budget be balanced?

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I have already mentioned in the House that the Conservatives have already lost that argument. They are right that they have asked 500 times, but it was inappropriate for them to suggest that members of Parliament should know when a budget will be balanced. They could never answer when they did not balance eight or nine out of 10 of their own budgets.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, if ever I heard filler in a speech, that was it. I congratulate the member for Yukon.

Omnibus budget bills were brought forward by the former Harper government and now this. There are a number of issues. It is not just whether the matters may relate to finance or the budget. The Liberals promised in their election campaign three years ago that they would not repeat the omnibus budget bills that Mr. Harper brought forward. Yes, a carbon tax bill may be a financial matter, but it was a massive legislative undertaking that merited review unto itself instead of being thrown into the middle of other financial matters that folks in the finance committee might have wanted to discuss. Rationalizing that this is what omnibus bills are just does not address the problem we have with the sitting government.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, my understanding of the promise made was that abusing a budget implementation bill by putting a whole bunch of things in it that were not in the budget itself was inappropriate. The Standing Order that I read in my speech precludes putting a number of things into the budget and the budget documents tabled with the budget. It is not appropriate to put brand new things into a budget implementation bill and that is what has been corrected in this legislation.

As to what is in a budget itself, that is another debate, which I did not address, and it is interesting the member brought that up.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, there are many things I could ask my colleague and friend about the budget because I believe it fulfills a great number of commitments that were made in the last federal election. The most important commitment we made was to support Canada's middle class and those aspiring to become a part of it and to look at ways to further develop social programs, and so forth. Those commitments have materialized.

For me personally, a healthy middle class means a healthier, more robust economy and they both complement each other. I wonder if my friend could provide his thoughts on the importance of supporting Canada's middle class.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, when I came to Parliament, it was to help lower-income people in need and some of the provisions we brought forward will bring some of them into the middle class. The first thing we did, as promised, was reduce taxes for the middle class. As has been mentioned many times in the House, the average family will now be about $2,000 better off.

The things I am proud of are the following: increasing the guaranteed income supplement for the poorest seniors, increasing financial assistance for the poorest students, increasing financial assistance to the poorest families and, in the most recent budget, increasing the income tax credit for working people that will help over two million lower-income Canadians. When money is provided to people who really need it, they spend it right away, which goes into small businesses and boosts the economy.

In Yukon, there is almost no unemployment at this time. It is incredible. On top of all of the benefits for people who really need it and the doubling or tripling of infrastructure that is in almost every community in the Yukon, Yukon is in a great situation.

[Terry Duguid, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary for Status of Women]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to speak to Bill C-86, the budget implementation act, 2018, no. 2, and particularly to speak to division 18, which would establish the department for women and gender equality, or WAGE for short. Creating the department for women and gender equality would modernize and formalize the important roles of the Status of Women Canada agency and of its minister and provide a secure base from which to reinforce and expand the work that Status of Women Canada has been doing for decades.

Canada has had a minister responsible for status of women since 1971, but it was only under our Prime Minister that the first minister fully dedicated to status of women was appointed. Since its early days as an agency, Status of Women Canada has grown into a centre of gender expertise. It has led the way in areas such as gender-based research and gendered policy development and analysis, as well as intergovernmental coordination and international leadership on gender issues.

Through its women's program, the agency has also led the way in providing funding support for equality-seeking organizations across the country that work at increasing women's economic security and prosperity, encouraging women's leadership and democratic participation, and ending violence against women and girls.

Our government has made gender equality one of its top priorities. Transforming Status of Women Canada into a full department reflects the central importance this government places on gender equality. Gender equality, we know, is not a women's issue; it is an issue for everyone. If we get this right, we all benefit. This is not just a philosophical or theoretical observation; it is based on our actual economic performance.

Labour force participation rates of women have grown tremendously over the past few decades from just 22% in 1950 to well over 80% today. Bringing more women into the workforce has been one of the most powerful drivers of our economic growth. In fact, increasing numbers of women in the workforce over the last 40 years has accounted for approximately one-third of the per capita growth in Canada's real gross domestic product. Having more women in the workforce has not only opened up new doors of opportunities for women; it has also driven economic growth, boosted family incomes, and helped more and more families join the middle class. Canada today is a much richer, healthier and more equitable country than it was just a few decades ago.

Despite our progress, that door of opportunity is not yet fully opened. There are still too many barriers to the full participation of women. There are still too many missed opportunities caused by gender gaps in a number of different areas, including education and career options, economic participation and leadership. For example, there is still a substantial gender wage gap in this country. In Canada in 2017, for every dollar a man earned, a woman earned only 88.5¢. This does not tell the whole story because many more women than men work only part-time, largely due to the fact that many women cannot take on full-time employment because of household and family-care responsibilities.

Key sectors in our economy that represent high-quality and well-paid jobs, like the high-tech sector where women make up only a quarter of the workforce, have major labour shortages. We have heard that in the House. We are working to remove barriers to women's participation in these fields so we can fill those jobs and, in doing so, grow our economy and our middle class.

Increasing our efforts to remove barriers and enhance gender equality in this country is not just the right thing to do; it is the smart thing to do to strengthen the middle class and grow Canada's economy. In fact, RBC Economics estimates that if men and women participated equally in the workforce, Canada's GDP could be boosted by as much as 4% more over the next few years and could partially offset the expected effects of an aging population.

How do we get there from here? For one thing, we start with the basics: budgets. Budgets are about making choices on where we allocate limited resources. Putting a gender and diversity lens on budgeting gives us the ability to understand how our economic decisions affect people differently. When we know that, we can allocate government resources more equitably and more efficiently, benefiting all Canadians.

We presented our first-ever gender statement in a budget in 2017. We are now introducing a new gender results framework, which is a whole-of-government tool to measure how we are doing and to help define what is needed to achieve gender equality as we go forward.

At the same time, we recognize that gender identities are complex. Not all women experience inequality and not all men experience privilege. Binary notions of gender do not work for all Canadians. Race, class, sexuality and ability among other factors all intersect to profoundly impact how gender is experienced in daily life.

With this legislation, promoting gender equality and the advancement of women, including women with disabilities, indigenous women and women in other vulnerable areas such as newcomer and immigrant women, will continue to be the central focus of the new department for women and gender equality. However, the new department will also have an expanded mandate for gender equality, which includes sexual orientation as well as gender identity and expression in response to the unique challenges faced by members of the LGBTQ2 community.

Our government will not shy away from taking strong action on equality, from appointing the first-ever gender balanced federal cabinet, to the first federal minister fully dedicated to gender issues, to the first gender budget launching Canada's first-ever strategy to prevent and address gender-based violence and unparalleled investments in women and girls. Our government is advancing gender equality within Canada and around the world.

Our government understands that gender equality creates economic growth and with the department of women and gender equality wage, we will strengthen our capacity to advance gender equality and grow the middle class through policy, programming and support for equality seeking organizations and community partners.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to pick up on an answer from the previous speaker and put it to the parliamentary secretary. The previous speaker thought that the question of when the budget would be balanced was not a sensible question and that is was rightly ignored 400 times by the minister.

If this is not a legitimate question, that no government can tell when a budget will be balanced or unbalanced and it should not answer a question like that, why did the Liberals promise, on page 12 of their platform document in the last election, that they would “After the next two fiscal years, the deficit will decline and our investment plan will return Canada to a balanced budget in 2019.” Why did the Liberals run on that plan and does he agree with the previous speaker that it should not matter when the budget will be balanced?

[Terry Duguid, Liberal, Winnipeg South, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member was part of the 2015 election where fortunately Canadians gave us on this side of the House a mandate. We made a choice, and Canadians had a choice: balancing the budget at all costs or investing in Canadians. We took the latter approach. We are investing in major ways, $180 billion in infrastructure that will transform our communities, and municipalities across the country are so pleased with this government; $40 billion for a national housing strategy that will, among other things, keep women safe and provide transition housing and shelters. I could go on and on with the kinds of investments we have made.

Again, we were not going to balance the budget at all costs and cut benefits to veterans. We were not going to close Status of Women offices across the country as the Conservatives did. We chose to invest in Canadians.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as the senior spokesperson for the NDP, one of the things my office deals with very frequently is elderly senior women who are in desperate poverty. They are dealing with issues such as needing to find resources to access health care and to pay for their medication. Sometimes they are trying to find somewhere to live because the cost of housing is growing every day, especially, and not forgettably, in rural and remote communities like the ones I represent. We work with those women. We do what we can for them.

At the same time, I am talking to younger women who are unable to afford day care or they work and at the end of the month, they have maybe earned $40 to $60 because the rest of that money goes to child care.

When I look at this, I see the spectrum continuing. These elderly women worked at home, did very important work, but they did not have the opportunity to pay into a pension plan, into their CPP. They are living in poverty. Now we have young women who are getting put into the same cycle, where they are unable to pay into these resources.

Could the member share with the House why this is not addressing that core issue of child care for women and providing the supports they need so they can do the jobs they want to do? When the member talks about adding to the economy and the importance of young women across the country joining that economy, it is really hard to do when all of their money is going to pay for child care.

[Terry Duguid, Liberal, Winnipeg South, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I will start with elderly senior women.

It is very interesting. Her colleague from Nanaimo—Ladysmith and I, in fact the entire Standing Committee on the Status of Women, are looking at that very issue as we speak, the situations of senior women in our country. We know there is further work to do, and we are going to work on that together.

I would remind the hon. member that we strengthened the GIS. For poor seniors, many of them women, it is an extra $1,000 to $1,700 a year. The hon. member will know that we reversed the Harper government decision to increase the age of eligibility for GIS and OAS, and it is now 65 again. We have strengthened the CPP.

On child care, $7.5 billion over 10 years is going to realize 40,000 new child care spaces in the immediate future.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to rise in this place on behalf of my constituents who sent me here to add my voice to the debate.

I would like to take us back to the election in 2015 and review the Liberals' proposition that they put to Canadians.

The Liberals campaigned on a very specific promise. They ran on a promise to run modest deficits for a maximum of three years and then return to a surplus within the fourth year of the mandate. That was a key promise. It was a point of differentiation between not only themselves and the Conservatives, but also between themselves and the New Democratic Party. Therefore, this was an important piece of the Liberal campaign and was part of the basis upon which they were elected. They have ignored the question of balanced budgets in this bill and continually in this Parliament.

I want to draw the attention of Canadians to the Liberal campaign document. It says, “Real Change: A New Plan for a Strong Middle Class”. There is a nice picture on page 11, with the Prime Minister pretending to operate a crane. On the next page, page 12, it says:

We will run modest short-term deficits of less than $10 billion in each of the next two fiscal years to fund historic investments in infrastructure and our middle class.

After the next two fiscal years, the deficit will decline and our investment plan will return Canada to a balanced budget in 2019.

The government took that message to the doors across Canada. It was part of a platform that every one of the Liberal members of Parliament signed on for and took to their constituents. We know they were successful with that message. They put it to Canadians that a small, modest, short-term deficit was necessary in order to fund infrastructure and that it would not be a structural deficit, or how they would fund ongoing program expenditure and general government bloat. They promised to build infrastructure with that deficit money and that the budget would then just balance itself.

Canadians were taken in by that Liberal promise, as well as many others that have been subsequently broken, like their promises on electoral reform, on military procurement, on access to information reform, on strengthening privacy protection, to never use time allocation, which they have done on this bill, and to never introduce omnibus legislation, which this bill is. I could go on.

However, the promise to not return Canada to the bad old days of structural deficits was a promise Canadians must have believed when they voted for the Liberals. I hope Canadians believed the Liberals. I hope Canadians have not become so cynical that they actually assumed the Liberals were lying when they promised a balanced budget. I presume Canadians took them at their word and believed they were planning to run modest deficits the first three years, with a return to balance in 2019.

Setting aside the question of credibility and cynicism in politics, why does this even matter?

The previous speaker told us at length why, suggesting that the Liberals could not balance the budget, that it was not all that important, that all these other things were much more important. However, it matters, because today's deficits will be paid for in the future by service cuts, or the expenditures they are proudly talking about undertaking in years to come will be paid by tax increases, or both. Structural deficits really are an exercise in taking away from the future in order to pay for today. It is intergenerational theft and Canadians do not support it.

Interest on the federal debt is expected to grow quickly to $37 billion per year, which is almost the amount the federal government transfers to the provinces for health care. Canadians would rather have health care than interest on debt. These deficits are extremely important to programs on which Canadians rely.

The finance minister might not be too concerned about deficits. The Prime Minister, as has been said by others before, is not concerned. He has never had to worry about money and so he does not worry about the money of Canadians.

Now that we are in the fourth year of this government, we still do not have a budget that has balanced itself, and the government has had all the good luck it possibly could have. It inherited a fiscal legacy that was the strongest in the G7, a legacy that was a product of the previous government's economic stewardship, which led Canada through the global economic crisis and its aftermath. It had that hard-won legacy that, admittedly, even previous Liberal governments had contributed to under successive finance ministers. However, it was especially Conservative finance minister Jim Flaherty who handed this finance minister a legacy that he has squandered. That is a fact. It is not a question for debate. The Liberals were left a balanced budget. The PBO confirmed that the government inherited a surplus that was quickly squandered through the immediate undertaking of additional expenses, pushing Canada into deficit.

The Liberals inherited much more than the sound fiscal management of the previous government, and to be fair, even the government before that. What they also inherited were rising commodity prices. Global commodities were at rock bottom when the government was sworn in, the price of oil, in particular, having collapsed during the last year of the previous government. Prices were at rock bottom and have been rising steadily since. They inherited a global economy that was on the brink of recession when they were elected and has been humming along strongly since. They inherited a booming American economy. They inherited low interest rates. They inherited a housing boom in Canada's two largest housing markets. None of these things were things they should have counted on, yet even with all these advantages, they have not been able to keep their own promise. Take away any one of these advantages, and their fiscal situation will deteriorate very quickly.

Rising interest rates will have a negative impact on Canadians who are already deeply in debt, and they will affect the government's budget as well. Government borrowing competes with private borrowing, driving up consumer interest rates and inflation. The government is not prepared for a shift to historically normal interest rates. Significant portions of the national debt will mature in the next few years, and the minister has not given sufficient answers as to how that would affect Canada's finances.

The end of the real estate boom may hurt economic activity in Toronto and Vancouver. That is going to be a factor in Canada's budget balance. A global recession, another collapse in commodity prices, protectionism or a future worldwide financial collapse, any of these things could happen at any time, and the government has squandered its fiscal capacity to deal with these things through its structural deficit, which it broke a promise to create.

There is nothing in the budget implementation act to address the deficit. There is also nothing in it to get the Trans Mountain expansion built. There is nothing in it to address the flight of capital from Canada. There is nothing in the bill that would give comfort to the thousands of auto workers in Oshawa who have just lost their jobs or the tens of thousands more who are likely worrying that they are next.

There is nothing in the bill to give relief to Canadians concerned about whether they would be able to afford basic necessities that would be made more expensive by the government's carbon tax, even as chosen industrial emitters would be exempted and others would merely be chased out of the country.

The budget implementation act would do nothing to help strengthen the middle class. In fact, it would do quite the opposite. It telegraphs a future of deficits, debt and capital flight, which would lead to further job losses.

The other thing is that the budget implementation act would not get any energy products to market, as others on this side have suggested. The Liberals promised that TMX would be under construction by this past summer. The summer has come and gone. The money has gone to Texas. There is no pipeline, and that will continue to exacerbate the price discount on Alberta oil, which is threatening to expand and make it more difficult for this government, or a future government, to balance the budget.

With that, I am very disappointed with the act, and I will not be supporting the bill.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I have two questions for the member.

The member said that this is an omnibus bill. That is defined as having something in the budget implementation act that would amend something that was not in the budget. Could he mention what he is referring to that is in the budget implementation act but is not in the budget that would make this an omnibus bill?

My second question relates to the discussion a few minutes ago about child care. We had a national child care program under the hon. Ken Dryden in the Right Hon. Paul Martin government. Both the Conservatives and the NDP got rid of that by defeating Paul Martin and bringing in Harper. I hear Conservative members clapping. They must be against child care.

We now have another child care program, which is great. We have an agreement with my riding of Yukon. Now there is another national child care program. Would the member be in favour of the Conservatives getting rid of that national child care program as well?

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

There is quite a bit there to address, Mr. Speaker. I will start with the first question on omnibus legislation. The Liberal government promised not to introduce omnibus legislation, and we have seen it do exactly that through a number of bills that have been introduced in this Parliament. Some have been broken up by the Speaker.

This legislation, at 800 pages long, is being debated under the guillotine of time allocation. One cannot even realistically dive into each and every piece of it. It is in contravention of the promise the Liberals ran on, one of the many promises they ran on, in the last election.

On the issue of child care, the Martin government was indeed defeated, and it was defeated on a number of issues, including the issue the member mentioned. Perhaps corruption might have been a bigger factor in that election.

The previous government introduced the child benefit, the predecessor of the current program of the Liberal government, because the Harper government knew that parents do not want a national federal program such as the one the Martin government fell on. Parents want choice. Parents want money in their pockets so they can choose how to spend it for their families.

In that election, I recall a Liberal saying that we cannot give parents cash, because they will just spend it on beer and popcorn. Such is the type of arrogance that comes from the Liberal Party and why it was defeated in that election.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, just before the hon. member spoke, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Status of Women gave a speech focused on this budget being about gender equity and gender equality. I would suggest to my hon. colleague that if the government is truly looking to create gender equality, its failed economic policies will do that by men and women being equally unemployed.

I want the hon. member to speak specifically about the competitiveness issue in this country and how the failed economic policies of the Liberal government are affecting our overall economic competitiveness.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member's question goes right to the heart of what I hear when I knock on doors and what I hear in my constituency office when I am back in Calgary Rocky Ridge. Men and women want the financial security that comes with having a well-paying, steady job.

My riding had thousands of high-paying, high-skilled, innovative jobs. Men and women in my riding have worked in the energy industry on the construction side, in engineering and geology and in the manufacturing of components. We have it all in Calgary and Alberta. All of them have been devastated by the events of the last number of years.

Bill C-69 may make it impossible for any pipeline to ever be built in this country. We see the way the government has bungled every pipeline that has come up for public debate, whether it was northern gateway, energy east or the Trans Mountain expansion, which it promised would be under construction during this past construction season but has not happened.

Men and women want to be able to provide for their families and have financial security for their families, and for that they need jobs and economic management, low taxes, a strong economy and investment in Canada.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Families]

Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to the debate for several days, and I have heard a number of different Conservative members talk in a positive way about the hyper-inflation and the cost of housing, particularly in Vancouver and Toronto, being something good and something the federal government benefits from.

I am perplexed, as a Toronto resident and as someone who has seen the impact on marginally employed people, people who are in precarious work, first-time homebuyers, and renters in particular, a group of people that doubled in number and doubled in suffering as a result of 10 years of absence of federal policy from the Conservative Party. Why is the runaway housing market, the hyper-speculation and the risk in the housing market seen as a good thing by the Conservative Party, when it has caused so much hardship for so many Canadians?

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I sincerely thank the member for this question. It is a great question. It gives me an opportunity to clarify, if he has misunderstood what Conservatives are saying when we talk about the housing boom or the hyper-inflation of real estate values.

It is not good for Canadians. It is not good for the city of Toronto or the city of Vancouver. It is not good for families who need a place to live. However, it helps the government's bottom line when we have runaway asset inflation and the activity that goes on around that, whether it is from construction or from the taxation on all the transactions that occur with these massive house prices. It helps generate revenue to balance, or in this case not balance, a budget. It certainly does not help Canadians who aspire to home ownership.

Conservatives do not cheer for real estate inflation for its own sake. I merely point out that of all the economic factors that have gone into the revenue side of the government's budgets, it has not hurt them.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, Conservative after Conservative has tried to emphasize the issue of deficits. What I would pose to my friend and colleague across the way is that the member reflect on history. Canada is 151 years old, and 38% of that time, Conservatives have been in government. In that 38% of time, they accumulated about 75% of Canada's total debt. In fact, when Stephen Harper inherited the books of the Paul Martin era, there was a multi-billion dollar surplus. Before the recession even began, he had turned it into a multi-billion dollar deficit. By the time we were finished with Stephen Harper, he had added over $150 billion to our national debt.

My question for my friend is of an obvious nature. Why should the government take advice from the Conservatives, who have failed so miserably managing Canada's debt, let alone that they have been unable to motivate our economy to result in hundreds of thousands of jobs, as we have seen created in the last couple of years?

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member does not need to take advice from us. We can work our way up to that. I will ask the member to start by taking his own advice and reading his own policy document that he ran on. He took it to the doors. He told Canadians that he would balance the budget by 2019. He was not telling them the truth.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour today to participate in this debate on the budget implementation act for another budget by this government, and another progressive opportunity to advance many of the important social initiatives we are seeking to undertake to grow this country and make Canada an even better place to live, invest and work, as we move further forward into the 21st century. Today, I am going to talk about a couple of the elements in this budget that are particularly interesting and important, namely pay equity, the Canada workers benefit and our poverty reduction strategy. I also want to take a bit of time toward the end of my remarks to talk about the price on pollution and how I see that as contributing to our overall economic objectives in this country.

First, pay equity is a great challenge that this country and indeed many parts of the western world, if not more than that, have faced and struggled with for many years. For decades now, we have been trying to wrap our heads around how we can combat this problem with the various different initiatives that have been brought forward. What we are seeing today, through this budget implementation act and this government's efforts, is a genuine and meaningful attempt to make real change.

The new act would require that federal public and private sector employers who have 10 or more employees establish and maintain a pay equity plan within the set time frames so as to identify and correct differences in compensation between predominantly female and predominantly male job classes for which work of equal value is performed.

The new act also provides for the powers, duties and functions of the pay equity commissioner, which include facilitating the resolution of disputes; conducting compliance audits and investigating disputes, objections and complaints; as well as making orders and imposing administrative monetary penalties for violations of the act. The new act would also require the pay equity commissioner to report annually to Parliament on the administration and enforcement of the new act.

Equal pay for work of equal value is the smart thing to do. As we are seeing, this is not just about doing what is right; this is about creating a policy that will also better enrich our economy. As we heard earlier from one of the parliamentary secretaries, by properly allowing for and making sure that pay equity is enforced so that women are receiving equal pay for equal work, we actually will have the potential to grow the GDP of this country by up to 4%. We think of the staggering effects that would have, especially for a country that already leads the G7 in gross domestic product growth.

Regarding the Canada workers benefit, part 1 of the act would implement certain income-tax-related measures to ensure that an individual who is eligible to receive a Canada workers benefit could receive that benefit without having to claim it. These changes would allow the Canada Revenue Agency to calculate the Canada workers benefit for any taxpayer who has not claimed that benefit. This means that Canadians who qualify for the benefit would automatically be enrolled, thereby ensuring that no worker is left behind. As we have seen, budget 2018 would also revamp the Canada workers benefit by an additional $500 million per year starting in 2019. Therefore, what we are seeing here is an opportunity to make sure that processes are in place so that each individual who qualifies for this Canada workers benefit would automatically start to receive it. People would not have to go through filing the paperwork, and the hurdles and potentially the red tape involved. Rather than spending their time dealing with those constraints and things that can slow their ability to be out there looking for new employment and new opportunities, we are suggesting that this should be, writ large, something the everyone is entitled to. After all, just because individuals might not have the resources or know how to go about accessing a benefit or, for that matter, even know that it exists, that should not preclude their being able to properly get what they rightfully deserve. That is what this part of the legislation seeks to improve.

For 2019, the Canada workers benefit would be equal to 26% of each dollar earned in income in excess of $3,000, to a maximum benefit of $1,355 for single individuals without dependants and $2,355 for families, couples and single parents.

The Canada workers benefit will put more money in the pockets of low-income workers and deliver real help to more than two million hard-working Canadians. These are people who need our help and who we come to this place to ensure they are taken care of. Therefore, I am delighted to see this new measure in the budget implementation act. it will automatically, by default, set in motion how people will access what they are rightfully entitled to through this program the government is offering.

We are also seeing in this budget implementation act a poverty reduction strategy, and in particular the setting of targets. I know there has been some criticism over the setting of targets in legislation. However, the reality is that if we are not continually setting out our objectives and then coming back to measure how we are completing and living up to those objectives, there is really no way of analyzing how effective we are. As a matter of fact, I would argue that these targets give the official opposition more ammunition to criticize a government if it is unable to meet them. Therefore, I think this is a very bold and important move not just to be able to hold future governments to account, but also to be able to assess how effective a government is at delivering various different programs and strategies, particularly as they relate to the poverty reduction strategy.

Let me talk a bit about what the strategy proposes. Division 21 of part 4 of the budget implementation act will enact the poverty reduction act, which sets out two targets for poverty reduction in Canada. This act in fact launches Canada's first-ever national poverty reduction strategy. The reason we need this is quite clear. Canada is a prosperous country, yet in 2015 roughly one out of every eight Canadians lived in poverty. Let us think about that for a second. In a country as rich as ours in terms of economic performance and resources, we should not be seeing one in every eight people in our country living in what we would consider to be poverty. The investments made since 2015 to support the social and economic well-being of all Canadians, as well as a new investment of $22 billion, will help lift 650,000 Canadians out of poverty by 2019, with more expected as the impacts of these investments are realized for years to come. This strategy sets new poverty reduction targets and establishes the federal government as a full partner in the fight against poverty.

The vision is clear. Canada's first-ever poverty reduction strategy is built on a vision that all Canadians should be able to live in dignity. All Canadians deserve to be treated fairly and have the means to meet their needs. Canada's first-ever poverty reduction strategy is built on the vision that all Canadians should have a sense of security and be hopeful that tomorrow will be a better day than today for them, their loved ones, and generations to come.

As I see that my remarks will likely run right up to question period, I want to make sure that I leave time for my colleagues to question me. However, before we get to that, I want to spend a bit of time talking about carbon pricing.

The facts are clear. Despite the fact there might be some out there who still believe that climate change is not real, it is overwhelmingly accepted that climate change is real and a problem that governments, local, provincial, territorial and federal, need to combat. Indeed, we need to work intergovernmentally throughout the world. This is not a challenge that one part of the world is facing, but one that we are all going to face together. Therefore, we all have to do our part.

In the previous reading of this budget implementation act, I read out 54 different regions throughout the world that currently have a price on carbon, and I will not bore the House by reading them again because they are already cited in Hansard if anyone wants to look at them.

For those who ask what the real impact will be on Canada of putting a price on pollution, I would ask what the real impact was on Iceland, Ireland, Kazakhstan or smaller jurisdictions—I will not list them all again—like Poland and Quebec, that is, whether provincial, territorial or national governments. Throughout the world, there is already a price on pollution and it makes perfect sense to price pollution.

If a company builds a product or an end-user uses a product, they have to pay to make that product. If a company—my background is in economics and I always reference widgets—builds widgets, it will need the various components that go into that. If one of those components harms the environment by polluting it, then it makes perfect sense that the company should have to pay for that component that goes into the widgets.

This is why I am very frustrated trying to understand the Conservative Party's argument against a price on pollution, because pricing pollution leads directly into the economic model of the free market that the Conservatives tout all the time. The Conservatives always say that they believe in a free market. Sure, just as that makes sense, everyone should also pay for the components of their products that contribute to pollution when those productes are being produced, but one would think, by the way the Conservatives are arguing, that they believe in both a free market and free pollution. Therefore, the market is not totally free, because the polluting part is not considered free in the market sense, but as something that can be done without consequence.

According to the recently released report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we know we are heading toward dire circumstances by 2030. If we have do not start to dramatically reduce the amount of carbon and pollutants we put into the atmosphere, we will not be able to go back on this. The Minister of Environment and Climate Change said very appropriately during a recent debate on this topic that we are the first generation to feel the impacts of climate change and we are the last generation to be able to do anything about it. Think about that.

It is not just the minister, me, or any one individual who is saying this. This is in a report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that many nations throughout the world contributed to. It basically says that we are the first ones to feel the effects of climate change and the last ones to be able to do anything about it.

I have two very young children. One is four months old and the other is two and a half. I also have a 14-year-old who is in high school. One of the things that keeps me up at night is wondering what kind of environment and world we are leaving our children. The reality is that if we do nothing about this now, we will be leaving them an environment and a world that will be suffering not only the environmental consequences but also the impacts of weather changes. We are already seeing the changes in weather throughout the world.

We should think about the other social impacts that will occur. Climate genocide is one thing this generation will be accused of if it does nothing. There will be climate refugees, people moving throughout the world to escape the effects of climate change. That will impact the rest of the world. It will impact world order. We know what happens when we start to affect those things: it inevitably leads to war and conflict in various parts of the world.

There are many benefits to a price on pollution. Even if people do not believe any of what I just said, even if they do not believe in climate change and do not believe in the realities of what the intergovernmental report said, they should definitely believe that incentivizing businesses to create new ways of doing things and building new products, investing in renewable energy, and investing in electric cars which are more than doubling in sales globally every year is the way to go.

I have heard my Conservative colleagues quite often tout what we versus other parts of the world are doing. Despite what they might think, I want them to know that China is actually a leader when it comes to renewable energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It is a leader when it comes to bringing new electric vehicles into the marketplace.

We can work on these problems jointly with other countries throughout the world and that is what I implore us to do. By putting a price on carbon we are providing an opportunity not just to green our environment and to create a better environment, but we are providing an opportunity for Canadians through pushing the envelope and looking for new opportunities, new efficiencies and new innovations to drive forward this new economy.

We should be on the leading edge of this. Let us not follow suit to what we are seeing happen south of the border where clearly a lot of the real opportunities are happening in other parts of the world as it relates to innovative programs and projects by the new industry we are creating for the 21st century.

Before I close, I want to talk about one more thing and that is the non-stop rhetoric we continue to hear from the other side of the House as it relates to debt and deficits. The last time that a Conservative government left a surplus was in the 1800s. I find it so ironic how there is this narrative which, to their success, they have been able to build out there and for the large part most people quite often resonate well with it, which is that the Conservatives somehow know how to protect an economy and build up an economy.

In reality, if we look at the last 151 years, 38% of the time that Conservative governments were in power, they racked up 73% of the national debt. How is it possible that we live in this world that they can tout that they are somehow the saviours of the economy? Out of the last 19 budgets introduced by Conservative governments in the House, 16 of them ran deficits. That includes Mulroney and Harper. Of the only three surpluses that they ran, two of them came on the heels of Paul Martin's $13-billion surplus and the other one came in 2015, when they had to sell off the shares of GM at bargain prices, cut EI and slash services to veterans, all to produce a phony balanced budget with which they could go into the 2015 election.

Canadians did not buy into that. They saw right through it and as a reality, the Conservatives now sit in opposition. I reject the notion that the Conservatives are somehow the saviours of our economy because the evidence does not support it.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Anthony Rota]

I realize that everyone is getting excited and during the hon. member's speech there was a little back and forth going on. I want to remind hon. members that we are going by the rules, so hopefully I will be able to hear the question and the answer without heckling.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly will try to choose my words carefully because I would like to hear some real answers from the other side and not to inflame them using heated rhetoric.

One, the Parliamentary Budget Officer stated specifically in the report that the budget was balanced. Does the member agree with the Parliamentary Budget Officer?

Two, the member mentioned the idea of free markets. Does he not recognize that Canada and the United States are an interconnected market? We can see from some of the decisions that are being made on both sides of the border and how important trade flows are that it is an integrated market. The B.C. NDP put in their budget presentation that they are worried about an elevated carbon price causing carbon leakage which would push activity and gas to the United States which would then leave us with higher taxes, more regulations, less economic activity and more greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.

Does the member understand that a free market without some conditions where there is a level playing field between our two jurisdictions does not make his so-called price on carbon a reality because it puts us into a less than competitive position? I would like to hear the member specifically refer to the dynamics between Canada and the United States on carbon leakage.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will speak directly to that linkage between the Canadian and U.S. economies.

Yes, our economies are linked together. We share an economic relationship with another country, probably unlike any other two countries do in the world, yet at the same time, we are able to advance our own objectives and our own policies that make good sense. We have linked economies with the United States, yet Canada leads the G7 in GDP growth. The U.S. does not. Although we might be linked, there are differences, and there are opportunities to create differences that clearly go to our ability to grow our economy outside the exclusivity of being linked to the Untied States.

The member started off by saying that what I was proposing was heated rhetoric. On the contrary, what I gave was pure fact. I gave facts about the budget and facts about the last 19 budgets introduced by the Conservatives.

The Conservatives would lead us to believe that they had to run deficits because the times were tough. Well, no. If we look back at the last 150 years, it had nothing to do with circumstance and everything to do with Conservative policy.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member made an interesting speech. I especially appreciated the loudness of his voice at the end that let us know how serious he was about what he was saying.

I agree with the member that pay equity is really important. We know that when we make sure that women are getting paid the same as a man for the same work that it is good the economy, it is good for the women and it is good for all Canadians.

It has been 42 years that women have been fighting for pay equity and now in the bill, they are being asked to wait another four years. I would like the member to share with us why he thinks it is acceptable for women to have to continue to wait.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, let us not forget that the NDP promised to balance the budget in 2015. The NDP wants the northern European lifestyle on the U.S. taxes, and it is just not going to happen. The reality of the situation is that programs take time to bring on and implement.

I am extremely proud of this government's direction when it comes to pay equity. The member would know, because she voted in favour of my private member's bill that there are opportunities for women to get involved in jobs that traditionally were not given to women.

We need to do more, and we should always strive to do more until we reach that goal of equity.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, in defence of the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands raising his voice, I would say it is because he understands that the climate crisis is urgent and we need to do more.

The member put out there that Bill C-86 has targets for poverty reduction built into legislation. However, unlike the U.K. and unlike New Zealand, we do not have targets for greenhouse gas reduction and we do not have our plan in legislation. Would he agree with me that it is time we ramped up our ambition and put it into the law?

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I greatly appreciate that question from the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands. Both of us spoke very passionately in the recent emergency debate on the intergovernmental report on climate change.

I always see the value in putting targets and benchmarks into policy and legislation, because it is an opportunity to be able to assess how a government has done. Quite frankly, I think it would be very bold for a government to do it, because it would create a scenario where it could be held to account later on when whoever the opposition parties may be at the time have the ability to pinpoint and say that the government did not meet what it set out to do, and they are holding the government to account. I always think it is important to put benchmarks into policy and legislation.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Anthony Rota]

The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands will have four minutes coming to him when the debate on this bill continues.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-86, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 27, 2018 and other measures, be read the third time and passed, and of the amendment.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke. I look forward to her speech.

Bill C-86, a second act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 27, 2018 and other measures, is 854 pages long. Today we are being asked to examine it despite the fact that, several years prior to the Liberals sitting on that side of the House, they repeatedly denounced omnibus bills and budget bills that were so long. It is not easy for parliamentarians to study a bill such as this.

I am the official opposition critic for agriculture and agri-food, so I want to look at what is in Bill C-86 for agriculture and agri-food.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I am reluctant to interrupt the best Conservative speech I have heard this year, but can we use the budget document itself as a prop?

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Anthony Rota]

On that point of order, I can give the hon. member my interpretation.

Hon. members, when giving a speech, have the right to consult the budget bill. As the Speaker, I cannot really determine their ability to find what they are looking for. I would have to leave it to the individual.

The hon. member does have, from what I can gather, about six minutes and 37 seconds left. I am hoping he will find what he is looking for quickly and be able to give us the information he is trying to find.

I will let the hon. member continue with his speech.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind my hon. colleague that what I am trying to find in this 854-page bill are any sections that mention agriculture or agri-food.

Since this omnibus bill will affect farmers, it seems to me that the government should have mentioned agriculture somewhere in these 854 pages. I hope you will allow me to continue looking with my colleagues.

I just skimmed through one-eighth of the bill and I still have not found anything on agriculture or agri-food. I will therefore continue looking.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Anthony Rota]

The hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby.

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

Mr. Speaker, I get what my colleague is doing; I do. This is a massive omnibus bill. I have illustrated that myself in the House.

The reality is that the government's steamroller approach will give very few MPs the chance to speak to this bill. I know that NDP members have a lot to say on its flaws.

I question the point of turning pages for six minutes when there are so many other things to talk about in this bill.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Anthony Rota]

It is a point of order and may even be a matter of debate, but I will allow the hon. member to continue his speech. I would like to hear what he has to say.

I imagine that after a while the document he is using might be considered a prop, which may pose a problem. I am sure that the hon. member is not here to win an academy award for his show.

I will allow the hon. member for Mégantic—L'Érable to continue.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for allowing me to continue. Common sense often means silence, that silence is golden and that deep pain is silent. Musicians understand the value of silence as do certain religious orders. Silence is a form of expression.

I would say that this government has been so silent on agriculture and agri-food that, 120 pages in, I have yet to find anything about agriculture and agri-food in this bill.

I would like to look a bit further to see if there is anything for farmers or ranchers. Maybe we will manage to make some sense of this 854-page budget for farmers and ranchers.

I will go a bit faster by taking more pages at a time. I will go by division, which might make things easier.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Anthony Rota]

The member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue on a point of order.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

As agriculture is also an important matter for my riding, I can tell my colleague that I have looked at the entire budget and it contains no measures for agriculture. He can stop looking and get on with his speech. That will be simpler.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague very much for doing some research for me. I, too, did some research beforehand to see if there were any. I even searched the electronic document using the French words “agriculture” and “agroalimentaire” and their corresponding English terms “agriculture” and “agri-food”, but to no avail. However, technology can sometimes let us down, and so, for the benefit of my constituents, I wanted to check to see if this important document, Bill C-86, a second act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 27, 2018 and other measures, mentioned agriculture and agri-food.

I take my NDP colleague at her word. I do not do so often, but, today, I will. I agree with her. There is absolutely nothing about agriculture and agri-food in this document. That is what I was implying with my silence. It is sometimes worth taking a moment of silence to think and reflect. I would have liked the government opposite to do just that before introducing a 854-page bill, which does not mention or have any measures for agriculture and the agri-food sector.

I will obviously be voting against this bill and I promise to do so in silence.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I resist rising but I will anyway. I want to talk about that massive void of a speech.

Nevertheless, I have been here for 14 years and have witnessed many budget implementation acts come and go, some good and some bad. I would like to take a moment to reflect on all of the positive commitments over the years that the Conservatives made in their budgets, promised and fulfilled through their budget implementation acts. I would like to reflect on those for a moment.

There was a bridge in my riding. No, it was not in the implementation act. The gazebo was somewhere else. It was very expensive.

I am good. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Silence is golden in his case, Mr. Speaker, and words do not mean much.

Since I was unable to talk about the measures pertaining to agriculture in this 854-page omnibus bill, I will talk about the deficit that we spoke about when we debated the Liberal government's most recent economic update. The Liberals were supposed to balance the budget by next year, but instead they are racking up deficits. Let us remember the promise that they made in 2015. They said they would run small deficits and balance the budget in 2019. Unfortunately, when the Liberals talk, it costs a lot of money. I would therefore be happy if they talked a little less.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know whether I should commend my colleague on his speech because he used the House's time to say nothing. Many of my colleagues on this side of the House would have liked to have had that time to talk about the bill.

I am wondering whether the people of Mégantic—L'Érable were proud to see their MP rise in the House to rifle through the bill and say nothing about such an imposing bill. Perhaps when he returns to his riding, he can ask his constituents what they thought about such a hollow speech. The people of Mégantic—L'Érable would surely be very pleased to have a voice in the House and have their opinions made known, something that my colleague unfortunately did not do today.

My question is simple. Why did the member not read the bill before coming to the House? That would have saved some time.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member had listened to my speech he would have known that I did indeed take the time to ready the bill, as I said.

I searched the electronic document. I did everything I could to try to find something about agriculture and agri-food, but I found nothing.

I am very proud of what I did because it shows that the government is doing absolutely nothing for the 300 dairy farmers, or the farmers and ranchers in my riding.

As for speaking time and the number of times I have spoken in the House to talk about the people of Mégantic—L'Érable, I would be curious to know how much speaking time I have been granted compared to the hon. member for Sherbrooke. I have talked a lot more for the people of Mégantic—L'Érable than he has for the people of Sherbrooke.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, when my colleague was going through this enormous budget document, did he find anything about the year the Liberals will balance the budget?

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, if you gave me a bit of time and allowed me to do so, we could go through this 854-page document together to try to find the date and year when the budget will balance itself. However, as I have already made my argument and since my silence was worth 1,000 words, I will not start over.

That said, I would like the Liberals to remember one thing: agriculture and agri-food are important and when the time comes to adopt measures for farmers it is too bad that the Liberals choose silence over action.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-86, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 27, 2018 and other measures be read the third time and passed, and of the amendment.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as the federal member of Parliament for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, I welcome this opportunity to inform Canadians about the deteriorating state of the nation's finances. It is clear, as evidenced by the fall economic update, just how out of touch the member for Toronto Centre as finance minister is with the concerns of ordinary, hard-working, middle-class Canadians.

A Conservative government believes in clean air, low taxes and a healthy economy. A clean environment and well-paying jobs are only possible when taxpayers are treated with respect. The out-of-control deficit policies of the Liberal Party stifle competitiveness and job-creating investment. A sustainable environment and a sustainable economy are only possible with a sustainable government.

The deficit budgets of this government are not sustainable. The government is not sustainable. We cannot spend more than we take in. This Liberal obsession with running huge budgetary deficits will only end badly. They always do.

The last time Canadians heard rhetoric about modest deficits was when the prime minister's father was on his throne. There is a reason Trudeau senior is known as the king of deficits. He started the cycle of spending more than what is collected in taxes. It was only supposed to be a temporary measure. He was the one who brought in the hated Liberal NEP, the national energy policy. Just like his father, the current Prime Minister was greeted by protesters when he visited Alberta.

The NEP was the first policy to load a carbon tax onto fossil fuels. Energy in the form of hydroelectricity was exempted from the NEP taxes that were collected to pay for Liberal bad spending. Today, the headline in the Financial Post reads “...we're facing a made-in-Canada energy crisis”. There is no doubt about it. This crisis was planned.

There is hope. At the end of senior Trudeau's reign, in the process of kicking the Liberals out of office, Canadians elected the most Conservatives to Parliament since Confederation in 1867. That led to the new Conservative government of the day starting the hard work of bringing the nation's finances back into order by balancing the current account deficit left from the previous government. That still was not enough.

Jean Chrétien, who at least understood that we could not spend more than we have forever, took the drastic measures known as the “decade of darkness”. In the process of slashing 60,000 public service jobs, programs and services were cut. Cuts in health care transfers meant hospital wait times increased. People in my riding were forced to go without a family doctor, thanks to the Liberal budget cuts. The budget was eventually balanced by the Liberals on the backs of ordinary Canadians. Deficit budgets do have consequences.

While the Conservatives took the political heat to bring in a consumption tax, the Chrétien Liberals campaigned against it before embracing it. During the Conservative government of Stephen Harper, they voted against our lowering the GST; the Liberals liked it so much as a revenue source. A carbon tax is a consumption tax.

My riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke is home to Garrison Petawawa, which is now Canada's largest army base. Before I was elected as the local member of Parliament, the future of the base was uncertain. That changed when the Conservatives were in government. Rather than balance the budget on the backs of our soldiers, Conservatives took a balanced approach, lowering taxes to increase revenues, putting more people back to work while using any surpluses to pay down the deficit and stabilize services to Canadians. The decade of darkness of the Liberal budget cuts was particularly harsh for women and men in uniform. Running continual budget deficits does have consequences.

The decision by the Liberal Party to play politics with military procurement is similar to what is happening today with the naval frigate replacement and the jet replacement programs, which would result in the unnecessary loss of lives in Afghanistan a decade later. The decision by the Liberal Party to cancel the EH101 helicopter to replace the then 40-year-plus-old Sea King helicopter meant Canadians would be forced to travel on roads in Afghanistan mined with improvised explosive devices. Those same terrorist bomb-makers, like Omar Khadr, are rewarded with multi-million dollar payoffs while our veterans, who were injured by those bombs, wait for justice.

Without strategic lifts, soldiers died on the bomb-laden roads. It was not until the Harper Conservative government purchased new Chinook helicopters that the death count dropped. I pray for the soldiers and their families that the decision to put off buying the proper equipment for our soldiers will not result in the unnecessary loss of life again.

We owe it to our soldier to provide them with the proper equipment when we ask them to go into harm's way. Budget deficits have consequences.

The bad news contained in Bill C-86 and the budget deficit increases contained in that legislation is the Liberal policy to load today's economy with future tax increases that will burden our children.

The debt burden for our children will be our burden first, as the federal carbon tax starts in a little more than a month. Every Canadian who understands anything about running a household knows that good times do not last. Our parents and our grandparents saved during the good times because they had lived through bad times.

Why does the federal government insist on huge deficits, spending dollars we do not have, by borrowing billions of dollars? The answer is “carb-a-geddon”.

Canadians may have heard of Apocalypse Now or the term Armageddon and understand what is meant by carb-a-geddon. Carb-a-geddon, the meltdown of the Canadian economy through carbon taxation, will reveal itself as the federal government begins to collect these new consumption taxes. These taxes are set to increase automatically every year.

The finance minister was forced to admit, after he delivered his economic statement, the budget would never be balanced as long as his party held power. Secret documents prepared by the finance department confirmed the truth about carbon taxes. They hurt Canadian families. The Liberals refusal to release these documents to the Canadian public confirms they have something to hide. Carb-a-geddon is real.

The worst part about carbon taxes is that taxing carbon dioxide in Canada does not help the environment whatsoever. The environment is a cloak the government wears for every bad policy. Adopting carbon taxes in Canada actually raises global carbon emissions by offshoring economic activity from relatively environmentally-friendly places like Canada to places with lax environmental laws.

Data from the World Bank reveals that China and other developing countries produce far more carbon dioxide than do western nations. China is currently building hundreds of new coal-fired plants, which will ensure its C0₂ emissions continue to rise for decades to come.

Every factory like GM, pushed out of Canada because of the Liberal carbon tax, will actually increase global emissions dramatically, and this will continue to be the case for decades to come.

The lntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has declared that for a carbon tax to be effective in saving the climate from its apocalyptic warming, the carbon tax would have to start at least at $135 a tonne and rise to $5,500 a tonne by 2030. The Liberals' carbon tax currently starts at $20 and rises to $50. Projections now show that Liberal commitments in 2016's Paris climate agreement will not be met unless the carbon tax is at least $200 a tonne to start.

Under the Liberals' carbon tax pricing scheme, additional taxes will be charged to fuel up our autos or heat our homes, with a charge on non-renewable fuels for fuel producers, distributors and importers. Large industrial emitters of pollution, big business, are exempted from the new carbon tax scheme.

A carbon price of 4.42¢ per litre will apply to gasoline as of April 2019 and will rise by 11¢ per litre by April 2022. While the Liberal Party intends to provide an election bribe in some form of rebate, the rebates represent about 30% of the carbon tax the federal government will collect, as far as we know today.

Pretending this new carbon tax grab has anything to do with "fighting climate change" is just a gimmick to raise taxes.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I give the member across the way full marks. She is probably the most consistent member in the Conservative caucus. She does not let the facts get in the way of what she believes is a good speech.

She started off by talking about the deficit. Everything is negative; every aspect of the House, every aspect of the Liberal fibre is negative in the member's opinion. Over the years, that is what I have heard from the member across the way.

Let me just shine a little sunlight. There is reason to feel good. We could talk about tax breaks for Canada's middle class. We could talk about that special tax on Canada's wealthiest. We could talk about the enhancement of the guaranteed income supplement. We could talk about the enhancement of the Canada child benefit. What about pensions, the CPP? There are so many wonderful things that have taken place in the last three years. The sky is not falling.

Let me ask the member a specific question. The member was so concerned about the deficit. Canada is 151 years old, and 38% of that time the Conservatives have been in government. During that time, almost 75% of the debt was because of Conservatives. For Stephen Harper, the member's idol, the amount was $150 billion.

Why should Liberals listen to what Conservatives have to say about deficits?

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, by definition, a deficit or a debt is a minus sign in the books, on the balance sheet.

Insofar as sunshine goes, I do not know how we are going to spread sunshine to the 160 people at Sandvik who are losing their jobs in the spring, or the 2,500 people who are losing their jobs at GM and do not know how they are going to pay their bills.

Perhaps after we are done tonight, after he has spoken volumes and asked questions, I will show my fan across the way what he can do with his sunshine.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think if Canadians needed any evidence at all of just how the government is sticking its head in the sand, there it was in the comments of the parliamentary secretary before he asked his question.

We have an economy that is dealing with strict competitiveness issues. We have aluminum tariffs, steel tariffs. We have people losing their jobs. We have this country going in a different direction than our competitors when it comes to regulatory and tax regimes. It is not all sunny in the land.

The hon. member just spoke about a company in her riding where 160 jobs are going to be lost. How is that sunny?

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal carbon tax is built on the assumption that most Canadians are sufficiently gullible or easily fooled to let a few dollars in carbon tax bribes deceive them into accepting this big government planned assault on their lives, their jobs and their prosperity.

As a result of reckless borrowing, last year alone the Liberals spent $23 billion on interest payments to wealthy bond holders. That is what this is really all about. The Liberals are creating a crisis. Interest rates are going to increase. However, their friends, the one percenters who hold all the debt, are going to be sitting very pretty. Meanwhile, everyday Canadians are going to pay more, owe more, and will never see the sunlight themselves.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Anthony Rota]

It being 5:15 p.m., pursuant to order made on Tuesday, November 27, 2018, it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the third reading stage of the bill now before the House.

The question is on the amendment. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the amendment?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Anthony Rota]

All those in favour of the amendment will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Anthony Rota]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Anthony Rota]

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And five or more members having risen:

Pursuant to the order made on Tuesday, November 27, 2018, the division stands deferred until Monday, December 3, 2018 at the ordinary hour of daily adjournment.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I suspect that if you were to canvass the House, you would find unanimous consent to see the clock at 5:30 p.m. at this time so we could begin Private Members' Business.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Anthony Rota]

Does the hon. member have unanimous consent?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Anthony Rota]

The House will now proceed to the consideration of Private Members' business as listed on today's Order Paper.

The House resumed from November 27 consideration of the motion that Bill C-86, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 27, 2018 and other measures, be read the third time and passed, and of the amendment.

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

Pursuant to order made on Tuesday, November 27, the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at third reading stage of Bill C-86.

The question is on the amendment. Shall I dispense?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

[Chair read text of amendment to the House]

(The House divided on the amendment, which was negatived on the following division:)

Vote #965

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

I declare the amendment lost.

Pursuant to Standing Order 69.1, the next question is on clauses 535 to 625 regarding the head of compliance and enforcement in the Canada Labour Code. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt these clauses?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

All those in favour of these clauses will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And five or more members having risen:

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think if you seek it, you will find agreement to apply the result of the previous vote to this vote, with Liberal members voting for.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we agree to apply the vote, with Conservative members voting no.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP agrees to apply the vote and will vote no.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Bloc Québécois agrees to apply the vote and will be voting yes.

[Maxime Bernier, Independent, Beauce, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the People's Party agrees to apply the vote and will vote no.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the Green Party agrees to apply the vote and will be voting yes.

[Erin Weir, Independent, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

The CCF agrees to apply the vote and will vote no.

(The House divided on clauses 535 to 625, which were agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #966

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

I declare these clauses carried.

The next question is on the remaining elements of the bill.

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the remaining elements of the bill?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

All those in favour of the remaining elements of the bill will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And five or members having risen:

(The House divided on the remaining elements, which were agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #967

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

I declare the remaining elements of the bill carried.

The House has agreed to the entirety of Bill C-86, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 27, 2018 and other measures at third reading stage.

(Bill read the third time and passed)