Bill C-14 (Historical)

Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2020

An Act to implement certain provisions of the economic statement tabled in Parliament on November 30, 2020 and other measures

Part 1 amends the Income Tax Act to provide additional support to families with young children as the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic progresses. It also amends the Children’s Special Allowances Act to provide a similar benefit in respect of young children under that Act. As part of the Government’s response to COVID-19, it amends the Income Tax Act to provide that an expense can qualify as a qualifying rent expense for the purposes of the Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy (CERS) when it becomes due rather than when it is paid, provided certain conditions are met.
Part 2 amends the Canada Student Loans Act to provide that, during the period that begins on April 1, 2021 and ends on March 31, 2022, no interest is payable by a borrower on a guaranteed student loan and no amount on account of interest is required to be paid by the borrower.
Part 3 amends the Canada Student Financial Assistance Act to provide that, during the period that begins on April 1, 2021 and ends on March 31, 2022, no interest is payable by a borrower on a student loan and no amount on account of interest is required to be paid by the borrower.
Part 4 amends the Apprentice Loans Act to provide that, during the period that begins on April 1, 2021 and ends on March 31, 2022, no interest is payable by a borrower on an apprentice loan and no amount on account of interest is required to be paid by a borrower.
Part 5 amends the Food and Drugs Act to authorize the Governor in Council to make regulations
(a) requiring persons to provide information to the Minister of Health; and
(b) preventing shortages of therapeutic products in Canada or alleviating those shortages or their effects, in order to protect human health.
It also amends that Act to provide that any prescribed provisions of regulations made under that Act apply to food, drugs, cosmetics and devices intended for export that would otherwise be exempt from the application of that Act.
Part 6 authorizes payments to be made out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund
(a) to the Government of Canada’s regional development agencies for the Regional Relief and Recovery Fund;
(b) in respect of specified initiatives related to health; and
(c) for the purpose of making income support payments under section 4 of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit Act.
Part 7 amends the Borrowing Authority Act to, among other things, increase the maximum amount of certain borrowings and include certain borrowings that were previously excluded in the calculation of that amount. It also makes a related amendment to the Financial Administration Act.

Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2020

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I sat on the veterans affairs committee with the member, and I genuinely miss working with her on that committee.

We are nine years out to meet our Paris climate commitment, and the government has done very little to support farmers and encourage them to reduce emissions, move toward alternative energy and improve nitrogen management. I wrote a letter in support of Farmers for Climate Solutions, which has been calling for supports for farmers.

The government came up with $90 million, when farmers need $300 million. Largely, they have not been engaged and encouraged to get involved to do their part, which they are already doing, to really modernize their practices and get the support they need.

Could my colleague speak about how important it is for the government to support Farmers for Climate Solutions and all farmers to ensure they are able to participate even more than they do now in lowering emissions and—

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

We are out of time.

The hon. member for Yorkton—Melville.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate, because my farmers tend to get the “minimal time” a lot.

There are significant things that our farmers do in my riding in Saskatchewan that have been making a difference to the environment to an unbelievable extent. It is to the point where, at the APAS summit in 2017, researchers at our University of Saskatchewan said that if we continued what we are doing to improve the way we farm, we will offset all of the emissions from the oil sands within the next decade.

I am very proud of what our farmers are doing, but when our farmers needed real help, they did not get it from this government.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance and to the Minister of Middle Class Prosperity and Associate Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, the COVID-19 pandemic is a public health and economic emergency the likes of which we have not seen in a century, certainly not in my lifetime, and if I get my way, we never will again.

Through the first wave, we saw a virus the world had never seen or heard of before. It absolutely punished communities across Canada and around the world. Although we have been spared the worst of the pandemic in my home province of Nova Scotia due to a combination of smart policy and, more importantly, community buy-in, I see my neighbours across Canada in different provinces who suffer greatly at the hands of the second wave. We have Canadians who are suffering severe lockdowns. We have Canadians who have lost loved ones. We have people who have been impacted severely in terms of their economic or personal health and well-being. The circumstances cannot be overstated and they require our attention.

Despite these challenges, Canadians have responded admirably since the very beginning of this pandemic. We saw Canadians follow public health advice, which seemed strange in those early days when people were uncomfortable wearing a mask. We learned to wash our hands in a new and appropriate way, which may have been different from what we had learned over the course of our lifetime. We saw people willing to sacrifice some of their own comforts to protect the health and well-being of their neighbours. If there is a sentiment that is more Canadian than that, I would love to hear what it is. In Canada, we stand up for our neighbours and are willing to fight as hard for them as we are for ourselves.

I am also proud of the way that our government and, frankly, this Parliament have responded to the pandemic. I remember in the early days being part of the team that was tasked with developing some of the economic measures in response to COVID-19 and taking calls not only from MPs within the government caucus but also from MPs from all parties from every region. I think of members of Parliament who represent agricultural sectors in Ontario calling about the impact on grape growers in their region; western Canadian MPs who were calling me about support for workers in the energy sector who were going to be impacted, or about the exodus in downtown office towers when more Canadians were working from home; and, of course, here on the east coast, the MPs defending not only the public health measures but the economic supports for families who were having a hard time keeping food on the table. That said, I found it extraordinary to see the commonalities between the issues that were coming from western, northern, central and eastern Canada. Regardless of who we are or where we are from, when we lose our jobs or our health is put at risk, we need the support of our neighbours. I would like to think that we came through with the help of MPs from every party to deliver the exact kind of support that was most needed during a time of unprecedented challenge.

I think of the measures we adopted, like the Canada emergency response benefit, CERB. At the time, nobody had heard of it. In a matter of weeks, we threw together a program that has now reached almost nine million Canadians to help keep a roof over their heads. To support businesses, there is the emergency business account, the wage subsidy and other measures to help them keep their doors open and workers on their payroll. These are the kinds of programs that were designed to meet very specific needs that, frankly, arose by virtue of the pandemic. These are not just things we wanted people to have because they might have been nice. We realized that the pandemic had very serious and acute impacts on our neighbours, friends and co-workers, and we wanted to step up as a government and as a Parliament to make sure that those needs were met. We knew that the cost of failing to meet the needs of Canadians in a time of emergency was far greater than the cost of extending the kinds of supports that would see them through difficult times.

The legislation on the floor of the House today largely follows the trend of our emergency response and continues the pattern of meeting the needs of Canadians that have arisen as a result of this pandemic. Over the course of my remarks, I will touch briefly on the benefits of Bill C-14 that will be extended to Canadian families and businesses and, most importantly, that will continue to protect the health and well-being of Canadians as we struggle to fight the second wave of COVID-19 from coast to coast.

With respect to the support for families, I want to draw members' attention to the enhanced Canada child benefit for parents of young children who are dealing with shutdowns of child care, who perhaps do not feel safe sending their kids to child care, or who may have given up their space early in the pandemic because they did not know if they would need it during a period of an extended shutdown. However, there is an increased cost to taking care of kids at home.

I have a four-year-old at home and it is a challenge to try to work from home and deal with parental responsibilities. We want to make that easier, particularly for families that may not be in the highest income brackets. That is why we are enhancing the Canada child benefit to provide up to $1,200 this year for parents who have children under six years old. For families that are financially better off, the benefit might not be quite as generous, but it will still make a difference. If households earn over $120,000 a year, they will still see an increase of $600 to deal with the fallout of taking care of kids at home during this pandemic.

Continuing with the theme of supporting families, we are extending certain features of CERB that will allow Canadians who were eligible but who maybe did not receive all of their payments to continue to receive those payments now that we have entered a new calendar year. That would not have been possible without this legislation.

I had my start in politics as the president of the StFX Students' Union in the town where I was born, Antigonish, Nova Scotia. I wear the X-Ring every day. Back then we were advocating to have the interest on federal and provincial student loans eliminated. I am so pleased to see that this legislation is going to implement that step, and also remove the interest on Canada apprentice loans to make sure that this does not just benefit those who hold loans from universities, but also those who have taken skills training courses at community colleges who are working in the skilled trades today.

To support businesses this legislation does a couple of things. It makes a technical change to the rent subsidy program to ensure that businesses continue to receive the rent subsidy support they need to keep their doors open before their rent is due, rather than having a reimbursement on the back end. We have made changes to the regional relief and recovery fund, which has done wonders for small businesses that did not qualify for other supports in Atlantic Canada, by making it more like its equivalent, the Canada emergency business account for businesses that had an easier time qualifying.

In particular, I want draw attention to the health and safety measures included in the bill. There is $1 billion committed in the fall economic statement to improve long-term care and, in this piece of legislation, $505 million to prevent the spread of COVID-19 within our long-term care facilities. In Nova Scotia, the bulk of the cases that we have seen come from one facility, and if we can limit the outbreaks within these facilities where people are kept close to each another and are at higher risk of the spread of COVID-19, we can protect the health and well-being of all of our neighbours and ensure that we do not put our economy at risk at the same time.

We are making significant investments, including the $133 million in the bill toward continuing support for virtual care during the time of the pandemic. We have learned some lessons, which I hope stick around on the back end of this pandemic, that will reduce the burden on our health care system and allow Canadians and communities that may have difficulty accessing a family doctor to receive the care they need virtually.

Along a similar vein, this investment is going to help continue to allow the Wellness Together Canada portal to help Canadians who are struggling with mental health or addictions in this pandemic get the support they need and, importantly, provide support for those Canadians who are living with addictions and need support to help deal with substance abuse difficulties they may be living with, in particular, those who are struggling and living with an addiction to opioids. Opioids are taking lives from every community in our country and we need to pay attention to this crisis.

The bill includes over $260 million to continue pursuing vaccine development, to implement travel measures and to invest in testing and research that will help prevent the spread of COVID-19 in our communities. We know that the best economic policy we can adopt in this pandemic is to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and defeat it as swiftly as possible.

Before I conclude, I want to raise that I have seen notice of a Conservative motion on the Order Paper that would seek to divide portions of the bill and accelerate the Canada child benefit piece and delay other portions of the bill. Though I do not doubt that the intentions are good, I would implore all members not to fall into the trap of thinking that we can accelerate one piece without delaying the other important measures, specifically those targeted to protect the health and well-being of Canadians by preventing the spread of COVID-19 in our communities.

To conclude, this pandemic and the government's response has been the single most important project I have worked on in my career to date. In some ways I hope it remains that way for the rest of my life, because it is interesting and engaging, but for all the wrong reasons. Our fellow countrymen are hurting, are sick and are struggling financially. By continuing to advance emergency supports that will help families take care of their kids, get our communities back to normal, put food on the table, put a roof over the heads of families and help businesses keep their doors open and workers on the payroll, I know that we will remain on the right track.

l look forward to seeing the support of members of all parties in the House when it comes time to vote on this important bill.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my colleague. Earlier, we were talking about the request from our constituents, who are asking us when the provinces and Quebec will get their fair share so they can provide health care that is up to par with what it should be.

In a few seconds, I would like to remind those listening that “[t]he provinces exercise very broad health powers under several provisions of the Constitution Act, 1867, including subsection 92(7), which gives the provinces exclusive jurisdiction over establishing, maintaining and managing hospitals”.

It is an exclusive responsibility, with direct delivery.

Can my colleague tell me when the provinces will have the money to provide the care that falls under their jurisdiction?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member would like to discuss increased investments to ensure that provincial health care systems can provide family doctors' improved mental health and improve the quality of long-term care, that is a very valuable discussion to have, but we cannot abdicate the responsibility to deal with this pandemic.

Frankly, the jurisdictional division of powers outlined in the Constitution, which I am intimately familiar with, broke down the moment I saw the military go into long-term facilities. When I saw the federal government being asked to fund field hospitals to deal with the consequences of provincial governments being overwhelmed despite their best of intentions, I knew that we could not sit back and send a blank cheque with no accountability.

We do need to treat the pandemic from a holistic point of view and understand that the money we put toward the emergency response will actually be delivered to improve the quality of health and protect the well-being of Canadians who are trying to fight this COVID-19 pandemic. This is the single most important thing and we cannot take our eye off the ball.

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

Mr. Speaker, I wish a happy new year to my colleague. He talked about blank cheques with no accountability, but his government and federal government institutions have provided $750 billion in liquidity supports to Canada's big banks with no conditions. Billions of dollars in support have gone to Canada's biggest corporations, who often have used that money for share buybacks and executive bonuses. Again, there is no accountability.

When we talk about Bill C-14, I share, of course, my colleague's objectives, but the amount of resources invested fall far short of what is needed. We talk about the $2 billion that is needed to put in place a foundation for national child care. This bill provides only a fraction of that. Canada's nurses, as the member well knows, testified that we need at least $3 billion a year to have national standards for long-term care that would make sure every single Canadian senior lives with an adequate level of care, and, yet again, there is only a fraction of that contained within the bill—

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

We have to try to get more questions in here.

The hon. parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Finance.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I wish the hon. member well and a happy new year. I look forward to seeing him at the finance committee as well.

There are two buckets of issues that he has raised in his question.

One is the nature of supports extended to business and through the banks. I think the key words that he used were “liquidity supports” when it comes to the banks. We have to think about what would have happened if we did not advance those supports. If we had not allowed for increased liquidity support, the banks would not have been able to offer forbearance on foreclosures to home owners. There would have been more people out of their homes. If we actually look to the supports for big corporations, when we move fast, sometimes we will break things. There are examples to be found. I am not going to sit here and say that the response has been perfect, but it was pretty good. I have to say that I am proud of the work we have done, because we were able to keep millions of Canadians on the payroll with these supports.

With respect to the issues around child care and support for long-term care standards, I agree with the member on this. I think we need to be aggressive in the pursuit of improving these policies. This bill before Parliament does not seek to boil the ocean, but it is going to make a difference with the water in the pot.

The issues that we have tackled in the legislation are going to be advanced in a way that makes a meaningful difference and protects the economic and financial health and well-being of Canadians who live in my community as well as his.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-14, An Act to implement certain provisions of the economic statement tabled in Parliament on November 30, 2020 and other measures, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise virtually today to join the debate on Bill C-14, an act to implement certain provisions of the economic statement.

The bill has seven parts, mostly containing items to which I do not object and aims that I support under the circumstances that Canada currently finds itself. Having said that, I have three main criticisms of the bill. First, it does not contain a plan or indeed any reason for hope for the millions of Canadians who own, work for or otherwise depend on small businesses, especially new businesses that have been ignored in aid measures that have been either adopted or proposed by the government. Second, the bill contains nothing to address the significant problems that were facing the Canadian economy before COVID. Third, the government should not be granted the unnecessary increase to the borrowing authority contained in the bill.

To my first two issues, some would say that it is not fair to criticize a bill for something it does not say. Ordinarily I would agree, but this is not an ordinary bill, nor is this an ordinary time.

The government is closing in on two years without a budget. The fall economic statement is as close as the government has come to tabling a budget, and that statement followed a period of chaos and crisis management. Here I am not referring to the COVID crisis, but to the tumultuous months during which we saw a government that should have been procuring vaccines, approving and distributing rapid at-home test kits and figuring out ways to allow the economy to function, if and when the second wave would hit. Instead, it was consumed by the scandal that saw the resignation of the former finance minister, prorogation of this Parliament and the appointment of a new finance minister. The bill is the government's missed opportunity to help small businesses that have fallen through the cracks in its aid measures and to fix its series of failures that left Canada on the brink of a recession before COVID.

As the shadow minister for small business and the member for Calgary Rocky Ridge, I have spoken to many small business owners who had been left behind by the government. These small business owners are the pillars of our communities.

There are millions of owners, workers and customers who depend on small businesses and who are paying the price for the government's failures, like the owners of the Bitter Sisters Brewing Company in Calgary, whose owners live in my riding. They do not qualify for the wage subsidy or the rent subsidy, because they reopened their business in March 2020 after spending most of 2019 refurbishing it. The owners of this business exhausted their capital. They went through a lengthy period when reinventing their business, and they opened literally within days of the declaration of a global pandemic. They do not have access to government aid measures. I spoke to another constituent last week who had expanded his successful tattoo studio in early 2020. As a result, he does not qualify for either the rent subsidy or the wage subsidy. His rent is $30,000 a month and his revenue is zero.

I know that every member of the House has heard similar stories from their constituents and from other members during debate on the bill. The fall economic statement and the bill do not help these constituents.

It is easy to forget the extent to which the government's fiscal and economic mismanagement was coming to a head before COVID. This is a government that was elected in 2015 on a promise, which it immediately broke, to run modest deficits to fund infrastructure for three years, returning to surplus in the fourth. Its maximum deficit of $10 billion was to be its fiscal anchor.

That anchor was cut immediately after the Liberals took office, and the 2015 election promise was seemingly obliterated into an Orwellian memory hole never again to be acknowledged by the government. It was replaced by a new anchor: that Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio was low and would always shrink.

The finance minister clung to that anchor until it was clear, before COVID, that the deficit was going to rise as a percentage of GDP, and replaced that anchor with the last one, which was maintaining Canada's AAA credit rating. That anchor was cut loose as well, and there have been no fiscal anchors articulated by the government since then.

We saw all of this backsliding into a serious structural deficit before COVID. The Liberal government piled on nearly $100 billion in new debt at a time when it should have been running surpluses, like the one it inherited, in order to prepare for a financial disaster like COVID, but it did not. Furthermore, the government piled on job-killing laws, like Bill C-69 and Bill C-48 that devastated the western economy and will harm Canada's ability to recover from COVID.

This bill does not contain elements that would undo the damage the government did to our economy that prevent and reduce our ability to recover from COVID. It brought in a carbon tax in the last Parliament and has announced that it will almost immediately break its promise not to raise it in this Parliament.

There is nothing in this bill that will address the hostility of the government to the energy industry, which is an essential part of the federal government's tax base. It is historically Canada's largest and most valuable export. It is the creator of great high-paying jobs in every province across Canada, not just in Alberta.

The fall economic statement that this bill is to implement does not address the past economic mistakes the government made and that had Canada teetering on the brink of recession before COVID. It does not repeal the red tape that killed projects, like Teck Frontier, and scared off the private sector investors that would have built Trans Mountain without taxpayer support.

There is nothing in this bill for the thousands of Canadian workers who will lose their jobs due to the devastating Keystone decision or those already without jobs, whose hopes for returning to work are now reduced in the wake of the Keystone decision.

There is nothing in this bill to rein in the culture of wasteful corporate welfare that the government has and the ease with which it ran up significant debt, again, before COVID.

This brings me to my third criticism of this bill and that is the unprecedented increase to Canada's borrowing limit. Make no mistake, and I will say this again, that at a time when governments force businesses to close and lay off workers, governments need to support them. Governments do need to support Canadians who are being compelled not to work and to support businesses that are being compelled to close their doors.

This crisis has created a temporary necessity for extraordinary spending measures to support Canadians, but the government's proposal in this bill to increase its borrowing limit to $1.8 trillion is simply not justified. It is not justified by the government's present needs, not by its short-term needs, not by its medium- or long-term needs, and certainly not by its past enthusiasm for non-crisis deficit financing.

Parliament at its most basic function exists to authorize taxation, expenditure and borrowing by the government on behalf of the governed. As legislators, we have a responsibility to vote whether or not to grant the government these powers, and there is simply no reason to grant such an extraordinary sum for the government to borrow when its own fall statement and the estimates that have already been voted on do not require the authority for the level of borrowing that is contained in this bill.

If the Liberal government, or indeed a future government, needs to increase the national debt to $1.8 trillion, then that should be left for a future debate in this Parliament or a future Parliament. In the meantime, I urge the government to focus on establishing a coherent COVID policy, one that would result in a vaccinated population, a reopened economy and a full-employment workforce fuelled by private investment into Canada's economy, unshackled by job-killing regulations.

We must return to an employment-based economy as soon as possible. While there are items in this bill that would help some Canadians cope with the difficult circumstances of the present, I urge the government to get serious about giving Canadians more hope for the future, especially for those small businesses that have consistently fallen through the cracks of the government's aid measures.

With that, I look forward to questions from the floor.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, let me take this opportunity to wish you all the best for 2021, and here is hoping that it will be better than last year.

My question for my colleague is very simple. What does he think of the government's performance when it comes to supporting businesses? Are we doing enough for our SMEs and entrepreneurs? What does he think of the government's loan- and debt-based strategy for businesses?

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

Mr. Speaker, the answer is there are many measures the government has undertaken that were necessary and indeed are supporting small businesses, but there are also many small businesses that are falling through the cracks, that have not been able to access the aid measures they need for a variety of reasons. The most recent ones that I referred to in my speech are those for new businesses that opened their doors, that maybe spent all of 2019 gearing up for a reopening at the end of last March. Those businesses are just devastated. They are not qualifying and the government knows it, but it has not taken action to support those businesses in particular.

The debt load that businesses are taking on is extremely concerning. These businesses are just desperate. They are desperate to see the end of COVID and to reopen. The government needs to get serious about answering questions on its vaccination rollout so we can get a vaccinated population and an employment-based economy back on track.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I agree with the member when we talk about small businesses and how important it is for government to come to the table. That is something that I believe we have done. We can talk about the Canada emergency wage subsidy, the Canada emergency rent subsidy, the emergency business account, making sure there is better business credit availability and regional relief in recovery funds. There are a number of things out there that the government has done to ensure that small and medium-sized businesses and others, the backbone of the Canadian economy, are able to better manage as a direct result of the negativity from the pandemic.

Would the member not agree that as an opposition member, or any member of Parliament, one of the most creative things to do is to come up with specific suggestions and ideas for a plan, something that we can do as government? Being very specific would be helpful at this time.

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

Madam Speaker, the opposition spent much of the last year doing exactly that. We proposed all the fixes the Liberals needed to make on their rent subsidy program, which was a disaster for months. The opposition was instrumental in fixing that program. The opposition was instrumental in fixing all of the shortcomings of the CEBA program that he also mentioned. The opposition has been very active in constructively offering fixes to the government.

Right now, in the few seconds I have left, I would suggest that the government get busy very quickly on some kind of modification to the rent subsidy and wage subsidy programs that would provide some relief to businesses that literally drained their bank accounts just to open their doors at the dawn of the pandemic.