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

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

Madam Speaker, I want to congratulate the member on his appointment. Hopefully, he will resort to fewer personal attacks than his predecessor did. I encourage him and wish him the best in his new role. Congratulations on being an opa 11 times over. My father is one three times over, and to think of the immense joy the member must get out of having 11 grandchildren is truly incredible.

I find it interesting that he talked about this government not being interested in oversight, given that the previous government he was a minister in was involved in muzzling scientists and slashing funding to oversight boards. Relating specifically to the supports for Canadians, which he has been criticizing, he voted in favour of these supports. All members of his party voted in favour of these supports and these supports have made meaningful changes for Canadians.

Would he not agree that because of the supports he voted in favour of, many more Canadians were taken care of than otherwise would have been?

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Madam Speaker, on the issue of oversight, the Minister of Finance, in the last couple of days, issued a letter complaining that the opposition was delaying benefits to Canadians, which is patently false. We are dealing with hundreds of billions of dollars in spending. Oversight is critical.

I want to say that if the member had listened to my speech he would have noticed that I confirmed that we, as Conservatives, have actually supported all of these benefits and support programs. We will continue to support them. In fact, we are going to come up with our own programs that will serve Canadians well right now, in their time of need, while looking at the future as well where we will face an immense challenge fiscally.

[James Cumming, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Madam Speaker, my colleague talked about the future and talked about economic growth for this country. I would like you to elaborate a bit on the lack of understanding it appears the government has around competitiveness, continuing to burden individuals and businesses with additional taxes and impeding their ability to compete. If Canada is going to grow out of this economy, we have to be competitive.

Do you have any thoughts on that?

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

I just want to remind the member he is to address the questions and comments through the Chair.

The hon. member for Abbotsford.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Madam Speaker, one of the biggest economic challenges facing our country is a lack of competitiveness, especially vis-à-vis the United States. The member will recall that when the previous American administration was elected, it dramatically reduced taxes on businesses across the United States. In Canada, we kept our taxes high. Over the last five years, we have witnessed a historic flight of capital from Canada. We have never seen it this bad before and we need to do much better.

In my speech, I mentioned a number of things that we have to work on, such as commercialization and improving how we deal with innovation in our country to make sure that we grow these businesses right here at home, rather than sending them abroad.

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Madam Speaker, in response to the member's comments, a recent poll showed that three-quarters of Canadians support a tax on the super wealthy. This is an issue that could stimulate the economy, but also make sure that the people at the very top pay their fair share.

What is the member's opinion on that?

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Madam Speaker, one of the things that we, as an opposition, proposed in our dissenting opinion on the pre-budget consultations at the finance committee was to undertake taxation reform in Canada. We want a comprehensive review of taxation in Canada to ensure that taxation is fair, to ensure that everybody pays their fair share and to ensure that the tax burden on businesses, the job creators and wealth creators in Canada that generate prosperity, is at a point where we can actually compete and use that to leverage economic prosperity for our country.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Madam Speaker, today I am going to ask Canadians whom they trust. Do they trust the current government and its handling of the pandemic, or do they trust the Conservative Party? I hope we will earn their trust in the future and form a government.

I have gone through the Parliamentary Budget Officer's review of the fall economic statement, including the contents of the fall economic statement the government has proposed, so I think whom they trust is the best question to ask.

I love Yiddish proverbs, and there is a Yiddish proverb that states, “Trust one eye more than two ears.” I have heard the debate so far, from various members, on the statement's contents and on what is going to happen over the next few months regarding this update and what the government expects to do.

Let us admit a few things. The government does not have guardrails. We used to call these “fiscal anchors”, which were the fiscal measures the government was going to test itself against to make sure it was not going to get Canada's public finances off the rails. Then it started calling them “guardrails”. That is the language that appears in the fall economic statement. It also appears in the Parliamentary Budget Officer's review. In that review, the PBO said that between $70 billion and $100 billion of spending had nothing to do with the COVID-19 pandemic, but rather with pet projects of the Liberals. That spending really had nothing to do with addressing a national health emergency.

In that same fall economic statement, when we look at the different figures the government is proposing, $86.8 billion is being proposed in new spending measures including add-ons to programs, new programs entirely and other changes. The biggest difference the PBO found between its analysis of the numbers, its projections and its modelling was that the economic assumptions on how fast the economy will rebound varied greatly. The biggest difference we find, when we look at the numbers, is that the government has very rosy projections on job growth, economic growth and the opportunities Canadians and residents of my riding will have to find a job post-pandemic, once everything returns to normal. That normal keeps being put off because the government has botched the vaccine distribution and has not made it possible for the provinces to get vaccines to the people who want them. A supporter in Lethbridge sent me a picture of a completely empty vaccination facility. It was waiting for vaccines to come from the federal government so it could get them to the people who want them. That is what we are facing in Alberta. We are facing a federal government that either does not care, is not competent enough or cannot be trusted to get it right.

We can look at the PBO's figures for jobs. In July 2020, the CBC reported that we were about two million jobs behind, based on Statistics Canada information that was probably the labour force survey. Two million Canadians had lost their jobs during the pandemic. It started to go down again in the summer months. More people were being employed or returning to the work they had before, but many of those jobs were lost again.

Looking at the employment numbers predicted in the fall economic statement, it will take five years to recover the jobs we lost to get to the same level of employment we had pre-pandemic. That ignores things like population growth. It completely ignores the fact we had a high unemployment rate before, especially in Alberta and among young people. We have an unemployment rate of 9.4% officially, but that hides the fact that a lot of young people and students are underemployed and a lot of people are furloughed. Constituents in my riding are facing this. They have employment but are not being paid or they are only working one day a week. One cannot raise a family on one day a week of work. That is the reality. This is not captured in these employment numbers.

Looking at the employment numbers in the fall economic statement, it will take five years to get back to pre-COVID numbers. That does not account for population growth: the people who will immigrate to Canada to pick up jobs, grow our economy and start small businesses. That is a huge indictment and failure of the government to plan and put forward something people can actually trust. At the end of the day, small businesses, entrepreneurs and larger businesses will make investments based on their confidence in the economy, and in earning a return on the people they hire to manufacture new goods and provide new services to Canadians.

To me, that is an indictment. That is saying they do not trust the government. They do not trust the fall economic statement. They do not trust the numbers. They do not trust the plans. They have no trust in the future, so they are not going to invest large sums.

I am going to mention something the member for Abbotsford mentioned before, because I think he was exactly on point. On February 16, 2021, our leader received a letter from the finance minister, claiming that we were somehow delaying the passage of Bill C-14. I have looked at the Business of the House during this week, and the bill was up for debate once this week. Once.

The government sets the agenda. The government can decide which bills are being debated. If Bill C-14 is a priority, then the members of the Chamber should be given the chance to debate the merits of the bill, present the facts, look at the numbers and provide input from our constituents, instead of claiming that we are delaying something.

We have already seen this during the pandemic. We were pretty reasonable. Our leader has said that we were aggressively reasonable. When it was required, we made sure that the government got emergency legislation passed so that programs could be set up to help Canadians, every single time. We even met on Easter Saturday to pass a bill. We let Bill C-20 pass, despite the fact that we had a lot of questions about how the different reporting periods were going to work. We passed it in July 2020. Then, after the fact, we had to go back and fix the mistakes, or the government would have had to find regulatory means to fix various mistakes in the legislation.

Now we are being told, again, to rush things. Perhaps a member of the government caucus will stand and say that we voted for all the programs, and because we voted for them then we should keep voting for them now. We agreed to set up programs. If the government takes away Canadians' ability to earn a living, the government owes them compensation. It is a regulatory taking. It is a national health emergency, so we should take it seriously. I agree with those ideas and those concepts.

It is important to pass meaningful legislation that would help people who need it. However, the government is claiming that we are somehow delaying it because we simply want to do the role of the opposition, which is to review the bill correctly and provide the voice of our constituents. People are frustrated at home. They have been stuck at home now for almost a year, in many cases. Depending on which province people live in, the restrictions have been deeper and more broad than in other provinces. People are frustrated because they want to see an out. They want to know what the plan is, and what normal will look like once the pandemic is over. It is a legitimate question.

Many members on my side have also pointed out that the unemployment numbers today are higher than at any point, going all the way back to the fiscal fourth quarter of 2015. That is how bad things have become. We are behind G7 countries. We are behind many of the G20 countries, our main competitors for new markets and our main competitors for manufacturing, factory building and services. We are behind.

When it comes down to the issue of trust, a lot of people in my constituency who are energy workers, oil and gas workers, have skill sets that could be used by the marketplace, but they just cannot find employment. I have been going around to businesses in my riding, big and small, to find out what the federal government could do to support them and come alongside them. The business owners do not want subsidies. They just want to be able to earn a living again by providing a service or product that other people want.

Last, on the claim that we are somehow delaying this unnecessarily, we are simply doing due diligence. This is an incredibly important fall economic statement that updates the numbers ahead of the budget that will come down. It is incredibly important, because how we get out of this pandemic will determine whether millions of Canadians will have opportunities to find jobs or not.

The question is, do Canadians trust the Liberal government? I do not.

[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, people cannot trust the Conservative Party. We will spend more time this week on Conservative-chosen debates and their agenda than we actually will on government bills.

The Conservatives prevented us from being able to debate Bill C-14 earlier this week. They often play a destructive role inside the House of Commons, choosing to filibuster and prevent legislation from passing. That is something they have consistently done. That is the reality.

The member is focusing on trust and confidence. Would the member not agree that the facts are there? Under 10 years of Harper, about a million jobs were created, and under fewer than five years of this administration, we have created over a million jobs. Once again, the reality is that Canadians can have more confidence in the Liberal Party of Canada than in the Conservative Party of Canada. Those are the facts and the reality.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Madam Speaker, the member obviously has not read his own fall economic statement. It will take five years before we recover the jobs we lost during this pandemic.

There should be some type of award given to the member. The member probably has the most words spoken in the last Parliament and this Parliament too, so if we are going to talk about a member filibustering his own bill, that member deserves an award for it.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Madam Speaker, I heard my hon. colleague mention Canada's present unemployment rate and I have heard the Minister of Finance claim that our jobs are returning at a faster percentage rate than in our neighbour to the south. I wonder if my hon. colleague could comment, given that we still have such relatively high unemployment. This is simply mathematics based on the past unemployment rate, is it not?

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Madam Speaker, my colleague's constituents are lucky to have him as a representative of Chatham-Kent—Leamington.

He is absolutely right. Again, going back to the job numbers in the fall economic statement and the assumptions that are made between the PBO's analysis and the labour force survey, we are far, far behind and we are going to stay behind, because there is nothing in the statement itself and nothing in the updated numbers to show more Canadians going back to work to offset and increase it beyond that, with our population growth, or a new opportunity to close the gap that existed before the pandemic for people who were underemployed or furloughed or who could not find job opportunities.

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

Madam Speaker, to answer the member's question about who Canadians trust, according to Abacus Data on February 6, 71% of Canadians said they approved of the job that the government is doing in supporting the economic needs of Canadians. It is clear that Canadians trust this government to help them out.

As to the specific question, he talked about the amount of deliberation and reflection on the bill that the opposition members need before they can vote on it. Fair enough; that is legitimate. They need it to do their job. Could the member give us an indication as to how much time they need? Will the end of today be good? Do they need another week, or perhaps two weeks? If we could at least get a timeline, that certainly would be helpful.

I really wish Canadians understood the dynamics of the delay tactics that happen in here. Inevitably a member from the other side is going to stand and put forward an amendment, which resets the roster on everybody speaking again.

Could the member give us an indication of how much time is required?

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Madam Speaker, I have the benefit of giving a short answer. I have the benefit of having been elected as caucus chair for the members on my side, and I look to them. They are the ones who will decide how long we should present ideas from our constituents to the House so that the government can listen to them, because it has not been listening to them.

We heard of one poll on one day. Ruling by polling is not the way to do things. We want things to work out for the best interests of Canadians over the long term. That is what Canadians want. Our constituents expect us to come here and represent them and their views as they call us and email us to complain about the various government programs that have botched the government's vaccine rollout.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Speaking of trust, Madam Speaker, I just want to start by telling my colleagues that the Bloc Québécois is who Quebeckers trust. Fortunately, we are here to talk about the content of the bill, so that is what I am going to do, because the Bloc Québécois works for everyone.

Of course, the Bloc Québécois will vote in favour of Bill C-14 because it contains some positive measures. Among other things, it amends the Children’s Special Allowances Act to allow for a one-time increase, which seems like a good thing to us. The bill also makes adjustments to the Canada emergency rent subsidy to make an expense payable a qualifying rent expense, which is also a good thing.

However, there are still pieces missing. The Liberal Party should have paid more attention to the opposition's constructive suggestions. We have been proposing for a long time that assistance be provided to property owners, something that is still missing from the bill.

We also think that interest relief for students is a good idea. It makes sense to help students. However, Quebec has its own program, so we expect to receive equivalent compensation.

The bill amends the Food and Drugs Act to essentially facilitate the importation, development and approval of vaccines during research phases. We think that is good.

Something important is missing, however. There is no amendment to the Patent Act and nothing to facilitate domestic vaccine development. We all know that, unfortunately, it is too late to develop a vaccine domestically this time around, but we can look to the future and learn from the appalling mistakes that are still being made. Look at what happened with Dr. Gary Kobinger of Université Laval, who developed a vaccine very quickly with the first $1 million the government gave him. His request for an additional $2 million was turned down. In response, the Prime Minister had the nerve to say that he did get help with that first $1 million.

At some point, we have to see these projects through and we have to trust our people. Does the government not want to see any initiatives or a sense of pride in Quebec? Would it rather that we remain dependent on foreign countries? Would things not be better if we could stand on our own two feet in this area? The answer is pretty obvious. The Premier of Quebec thinks the project makes sense and decided to fund it, even though it is not up to him to do so. The federal government should be taking care of its affairs and properly funding projects under its jurisdiction, instead of interfering in the jurisdictions of the provinces and Quebec.

Extending the regional relief and recovery fund is another positive step. However, less than 25% of the funding will be awarded to tourism businesses. I will talk about that in a minute.

As far as health is concerned, there are plans for additional payments, including for long-term care. We know what Quebec needs and it is not a one-time additional payment. Quebec needs ongoing payments, health transfers.

The amounts borrowed and the financial forecasts are starting to be worrisome. The Parliamentary Budget Officer shared his concerns about the Minister of Finance having a massive capacity to borrow even more money. We have questions about the $100 billion for the recovery. We still do not know who will get this money and how they will get it. We have no information about that.

The Bloc Québécois has some ideas about the recovery. I invite people in the Liberal Party to look at our little blue document, drafted in the fall, that outlines our party's COVID-19 recovery plan. During the summer, we spoke with real people on the ground, taking all necessary precautions, of course. It is important to mention that the needs are real. The recovery will be a promising opportunity to solve some long-standing problems.

One specific example is the pyrrhotite crisis in the Mauricie region. Just before Christmas, the Government of Quebec announced two new measures to help pyrrhotite victims, in response to the findings of a working group made up of representatives from the Government of Quebec and from the federal minister's office. The federal government was not part of that announcement. I hope that the recovery plan will allocate funding for programs like this one to address the long-standing issues from which people are suffering.

More than two months ago the government announced a highly affected sectors credit availability program. Once again, we cannot get any details. It is unbelievable. People in the tourism, hospitality, arts, culture and events sectors need assistance and are asking us questions. We do not have any answers for them, since we cannot get answers from the government. We are prepared to work together. I am reaching out, I am open to working together, but the government needs to help us if it wants our help. Let us work quickly.

We raise case-by-case needs in the House, such as the local outfitter that could not access the wage subsidy because its facilities were flooded in 2019. I talked about that case in the House and worked with the Minister of Finance's office, but all the nice things that were said in the House and the positive reception did not amount to much in the end. Campground and sugar shack owners still do not have access to the subsidy either, and their industry is going through very tough times.

Nothing has been done for the aerospace industry yet. Is the government bent on destroying this industry? Does it realize that Montreal is one of the only places in the world where an aircraft can be built from start to finish? Is the government trying to dismantle this sector as it did with the pharmaceutical industry, making us even more dependent on other countries?

I have talked about independence in my speech. If Quebec were free to manage its own affairs, it would do so more efficiently. At the moment, by doing nothing, the federal government is hurting everyone in the aviation sector. The feds still have not forced airlines to refund plane tickets for trips that people had paid for in good faith. Now those people's savings are being used to finance multinational companies in the form of interest-free loans. The federal government is also not providing any assistance to the aerospace industry, even though it really needs helps. There is something wrong with this picture.

I want to come back to health transfers. The federal government was originally funding 50% of health care costs, but now it funds only 22%. It is absolutely ridiculous. In the 2020 fall economic statement, the government announced nearly $1 billion for long-term care homes, on condition that those facilities provide detailed spending plans. That is out of the question. Health is a provincial jurisdiction. The federal government needs to sign the cheque and send it off to Quebec City, and it is up to Quebec and the provinces to manage it, whether the centralist New Democrats and Liberals like it or not. I urge my colleagues to read the constitutional contract that was signed without Quebec.

On the topic of long-term care homes, I want to come back to the Canadian Armed Forces report, which was very clear. Everything should have gone well, but the problem was that the institutions could not comply with the standards in effect because of a lack of staff, resources and money. The solution in this case would be to increase health transfers. I do not know how many times we will have to repeat this. People in the hardest-hit sectors need help quickly. As I mentioned, the federal government does not have the right to impose conditions, and the military's report on long-term care homes is clear.

I will now speak about the tourism industry. I would like the government to understand the importance of this industry. It employs 400,000 workers and contributes $15 billion to Quebec's economy. This industry needs help, and the government must get going. Changes need to be made. Earlier I spoke about commercial rent relief, but there is also the Canada emergency business account. We have already raised the case of farmers who incurred expenses in the fall of 2019 but are not eligible for this emergency account. We have been telling the government for months that it makes no sense, but nothing has been done yet. In my view, that is not right.

Speaking of agriculture, I want to talk about a number of issues, including the compensation arising from the signing of new trade agreements. In a time of pandemic and crisis, businesses need cash flow. It would really help them. Why have dairy farmers had to resort to taking out newspaper ads to beg for the money they were promised? I just saw one earlier in The Record, a Sherbrooke newspaper, saying that dairy farmers are essential and that the government made them promises.

Horticultural producers are calling for bankruptcy protection. This would not cost the government anything, but it is turning a deaf ear. Farm businesses need cash, and the quick and easy solution would be to inject 5% into the AgriInvest program without requiring matching contributions and without needing to create a new program, but the government is turning a deaf ear. The emergency processing fund for the agri-food industry was too small and had very specific criteria. As a result, some businesses made investments but ended up not qualifying for reimbursement.

The government is failing those businesses, and it needs to get moving on these files. In closing, I would like to remind members that the Bloc Québécois is still calling for the creation of a committee that would examine COVID-19-related spending. We all remember the WE Charity scandal. We all want to help people, but we just want to make sure that the money is helping ordinary people, not friends of the government.