Bill C-2

An Act to provide further support in response to COVID-19

Part 1 amends the Income Tax Act and the Income Tax Regulations to extend subsidies under the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS), the Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy (CERS), and the Canada Recovery Hiring Program until May 7, 2022, as part of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Support under the CEWS and the CERS would be available to the tourism and hospitality sector and to the hardest-hit organizations that face significant revenue declines. Eligible entities under these rules would need to demonstrate a revenue decline over the course of 12 months of the pandemic, as well as a current-month revenue decline. In addition, organizations subject to a qualifying public health restriction would be eligible for support, if they have one or more locations subject to a public health restriction lasting for at least seven days that requires them to cease some or all of their activities. Part 1 also allows the government to extend the subsidies by regulation but no later than July 2, 2022.
Part 2 enacts the Canada Worker Lockdown Benefit Act to authorize the payment of the Canada worker lockdown benefit in regions where a lockdown is imposed for reasons related to COVID-19. It also makes consequential amendments to the Income Tax Act and the Income Tax Regulations .
Part 3 amends the Canada Recovery Benefits Act to, among other things,
(a) extend the period within which a person may be eligible for a Canada recovery sickness benefit or a Canada recovery caregiving benefit;
(b) increase the maximum number of weeks in respect of which a Canada recovery sickness benefit is payable to a person from four to six; and
(c) increase the maximum number of weeks in respect of which a Canada recovery caregiving benefit is payable to a person from 42 to 44.
It also makes a related amendment to the Canada Recovery Benefits Regulations .
Part 3.1 provides for the completion of a performance audit and tabling of a report by the Auditor General of Canada in respect of certain benefits.
Part 4 amends the Canada Labour Code to, among other things, create a regime that provides for a leave of absence related to COVID-19 under which an employee may take
(a) up to six weeks if they are unable to work because, among other things, they have contracted COVID-19, have underlying conditions that in the opinion of certain persons or entities would make them more susceptible to COVID-19 or have isolated themselves on the advice of certain persons or entities for reasons related to COVID-19; and
(b) up to 44 weeks if they are unable to work because, for certain reasons related to COVID-19, they must care for a child who is under the age of 12 or a family member who requires supervised care.
It also makes a related amendment to the Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1 .

The Economy

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Minister of Tourism and Associate Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, I would love to have known where that rhetoric was in support of Canadians when we were in the House trying to pass Bill C-2, Bill C-8 and the budget implementation act, which include billions of dollars to go into the hands of Canadians. Instead, we took the reins to make sure we could get legislation passed, so we could get $8.9 billion into the hands of Canadians.

For child care, which the people on the other side just want to shred, in Toronto alone, a family will save $19,790 a year. That will help families afford groceries and gas. We are doing this across the country because this government puts Canada first.

Budget Implementation Act, 2022, No. 1

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak during third reading of Bill C-19, which of course is the budget implementation act. I thought I might treat it as a bit of a case study, because in the debate about our electoral system we often hear that Canada needs strong majority governments in order to have decisive decision-making and action and to not end up with a hung Parliament. This is one of the main motivations for some to oppose electoral reform, and particularly forms of proportional representation, which tend to lead to more instances of minority Parliaments and minority governments.

My view is that the process around this budget bill, without being a perfect process and without the bill being a perfect bill, was actually a decent process, so I want to talk a bit about some of the improvements that were made to the bill during the course of it and some of the ways that it suggests we can make progress on other issues in this Parliament through members of various parties working together, and not only members of the same party working together. I think this process, in fact, showed that members can be nimble in terms of whom they are working with on particular issues and still get outcomes that make sense for Canadians and that benefit a lot of Canadians. We do not need one party having 100% of the power here in Parliament in order to make substantial progress for Canadians.

The first example I would point to is related to changes to the disability tax credit. We heard a fair bit of testimony at committee on this point. A Conservative colleague of mine on the committee brought forward an amendment, and the way this happens, as I am sure members will know but folks listening at home may not, is that parties will typically submit their amendments independently. Sometimes there are pleasant surprises when we receive the package. In this case, it was an identical amendment.

I was happy to work with Conservative colleagues and my Bloc colleague on the committee to pass an amendment that would change the disability tax credit requirements. A person has to show that they spend 14 hours a week tending to their condition, as somebody with type 1 diabetes does, whether that is injecting themselves with insulin, going to the pharmacy to get insulin, monitoring their blood sugar or doing other things that folks living with type 1 diabetes have to do. Then they often have to prove this every year, despite the fact that type 1 diabetes is not a condition that simply goes away and despite the fact that the requirements of the condition do not simply go away. Nevertheless, people have had to constantly show they have it, again and again.

This is reminiscent of some of the stories we have heard over the years out of Veterans Affairs Canada about veteran amputees who have to demonstrate every so often that, in fact, their leg is still missing and they are still an amputee and continue to require the same help. Folks with type 1 diabetes were having to continually show this.

We were able to bring forward an amendment, pass it at committee and even overcome some procedural wrangling, after the amendment was initially ruled out of order. We were happy to overrule the chair at committee on that point and very pleased that the Speaker saw fit to uphold the will of the committee in respect of that amendment when it came back to the House.

What that means concretely for people who are living with type 1 diabetes is that they will no longer have to do all of the paperwork, with the bother and expense that comes with it, in order to qualify for the disability tax credit. Once they have qualified as having type 1 diabetes, that will be sufficient to qualify them in the future.

I think that was a really hopeful exercise, and not just hopeful for Parliament in general, but also hopeful because we know that when it comes to Canadians living with disabilities, there has not been enough meaningful action on the part of the current government to serve that community. We saw that last June, when the government presented a bill for a Canada disability benefit that had absolutely no details about what the benefit would be, how much it would be, what the eligibility criteria would be and how it might impact other benefits that people living with a disability already receive. There was a lot more work to do, and since the new Parliament was elected in the fall, an ongoing priority of the NDP has been to call on the government to present new legislation and better legislation that would actually tell Canadians living with disabilities what the government has in mind and would provide far better ongoing income support for people living with disabilities.

Why is that important? It is because under the current federal programs and under provincial programs across the country, people living with disabilities have been consistently legislated into poverty to the extent that someone with a disability has to rely on existing disability pensions of various kinds across the country, none of which provide an income that brings them to the poverty line. This means that as soon as they have to rely on those things, people know they are going to be living a life of poverty with all of the challenges that come with that. Those are challenges of poverty over and above the challenges people living with disabilities already face.

With the great work from my colleague, the NDP disability critic in this Parliament, to press the government to bring legislation forward, we finally got wind on the Notice Paper that legislation was coming. It was an exciting moment. We had hoped to get more detail, just as we had hoped that certain changes to the disability tax credit in this legislation might have meant that finally the government would act on the long-standing call by people living with type 1 diabetes to make their lives easier and make their access to the disability tax credit available.

That was a disappointment, initially. However, by working together across party lines, we were able to remedy that, similar to the tabling of the Canada disability legislation. I almost said the “new” legislation, but I think I would have misspoken because it is pretty much the same legislation and has the same problems, therefore. It does not spell out what the program is supposed to look like. It does not let Canadians living with disabilities know what kind of financial help there is and the extent of financial support they could hope to receive from the federal government.

I would go further and say that part of the problem with legislation like this, and there are a couple, is it essentially just empowers cabinet to design a program and fund that program by statute, without having to return to Parliament. There is a procedural question, which I think may be less interesting to a lot of Canadians, but that procedural question is important to the extent that Parliament is a place that is meant to provide oversight on government spending. This bill would empower the government to create a program without having any idea what the price tag is, when it should be quite clear with Parliament on how the program is going to be designed. Parliamentarians should be able to authorize a new program like that knowing those things. That is a problem.

The other problem with setting up that program in legislation without actually legislating it is that a future government and a future cabinet that does not agree with the program or that wants to change it would not have to come back to this place. There would be no legislative process. This would also mean that the time it normally takes for a bill to go through the House of Commons and through the Senate would not be there. That is the time civil society often uses to mobilize in order to influence the content of legislation and government policy. It is an opportunity lost. It would make it very easy for a future government to undo whatever the current government does. If it finally gets around to creating a program for the Canada disability benefit, it would be far too easy for it to be undone.

Our experience at committee with the initial disappointment around the disability tax credit shows that a minority Parliament can come together and can have a positive influence on government policy and legislation. It can get things done for people that a majority government clearly would not have done because it was not in the Liberals' proposal.

I would also point to the example of employment insurance reform, something the government promised in its election campaign in 2015. We have had two elections since. The government has been in power now for coming on seven years, yet we have not seen any meaningful EI reform. We have to bracket a lot of what happened in the pandemic, because there were substantial changes to the EI program during the pandemic, but the speed with which those reforms occurred shows that it is possible to make meaningful reform quickly. Also, the nature of many of those reforms shows that what workers have been asking for in their EI program is in fact possible. This is not pie-in-the-sky stuff. Most of what they have been asking for are things the government did through the EI program during the pandemic.

As the pandemic recedes somewhat, at least for the moment, certainly the Liberals are of that view when they are talking about their financial support programs, less so when they are talking about public health restrictions. As the pandemic recedes somewhat, the government is going back to its regular inaction on the employment insurance file.

The Liberals finally did try to do something important but relatively minor in the grand scheme of systemic employment insurance reform: They presented a proposal to change the EI appeal board and undo some of the damage that was done by the Harper government to the EI appeal board. They fell flat on their face. It was not well received, even by the very people the Liberals sought to please with those reforms. They were lambasted for it, and they themselves sought to remove that part of the budget bill.

New Democrats were pleased to support that removal, for two reasons. One was that we agreed that those reforms were misguided and did not represent what I would dare to call a consensus among EI stakeholders about how the system, and particularly the appeal board, has to change. However, we were glad to support the reforms on a condition, which was satisfied, which was that the minister declare publicly that they would bring legislation back in the fall in order to make better changes to the EI appeal board system that people would actually welcome. Having secured that commitment, we were happy to support the removal of those appeal board changes that were quite ill-conceived.

However, it does raise a question of trust in the government. After being in government for well over six and a half years and having not really made any major reforms to EI except those that were forced by pandemic circumstances, when they finally came out of the gate to do something, how could they get it so terribly wrong? I take some solace in the fact that we have a minority Parliament, that Canadians did not entrust the Liberals with a majority of seats here in the House of Commons, that they do not have 100% of the power in this place and that negotiation is possible, because I think it is leading to better outcomes.

There is another example that is a little outside the scope of this bill, but it is an important one when we are talking about the pandemic. Early on in this Parliament, one of the first things that the finance committee did was to deal with Bill C-2, which established the new pandemic benefit regime that has now expired. It was instituted in December and was effectively the pandemic support regime that saw us through the omicron wave, with some notable changes by order in council right after the legislation passed, because as New Democrats said at the time, the reason we voted against that legislation was that we thought it would be inadequate to the task. I want to zero in on an important change that was made to those programs, particularly the wage subsidy program that was conceived in that bill.

Working with members of the Bloc and the Conservative Party, we were able to pass an amendment that said that companies that were receiving wage subsidy money under the authority of Bill C-2 would not be allowed to pay dividends to shareholders while accepting money from the government that presumably they needed because they did not have enough revenue to stay afloat. Clearly, if they were making big dividend payments to their shareholders, they did have the money, so that was an appropriate reform. It was the kind of thing that New Democrats had called for at the inception of the wage subsidy program that the government would not agree to initially, but we finally found a way, again working across party lines. That is not always an easy thing to do, but it is always a worthwhile thing to try to do. This was again an example of Parliament being able to correct course for a government that had got off on the wrong foot.

It really matters and it serves Canadians well that we are in a Parliament that does not have a majority government. I do hope that is something Canadians will consider in the next election. I also hope that they will consider electoral reform when organizations like Fair Vote approach them to talk about it. I will remind some of my Conservative colleagues—and we have gone into it a little over the budget debate—that reform is the want of folks around here, and it is not a bad thing. Conservatives will know that they had more share of the popular vote than the Liberals, who are in power, but they got far fewer seats.

We just saw, in the Ontario election, the New Democrats get about 30 seats to the Liberals' eight, approximately, despite having roughly an equal share of the popular vote. We saw the Ford government form a majority with a very small amount of support when we consider how low turnout was and how the way we vote under the first-past-the-post system can generate very distorted electoral outcomes.

I raise all these things to contribute to the debate on this bill, but I also hope to contribute to a larger debate about how we elect Parliaments that select governments here in Canada and show that we have been doing good work in this Parliament. We have been correcting course for the government when it got it wrong on the first go, and that has been made possible by virtue of having a minority Parliament. It is exactly because we do not have a majority government that these corrections and some of the good things that came out of the committee process have been possible.

One of the things I hope we may yet make progress on, which I will be looking to colleagues in other parties for support on, is the call for a low-income CERB repayment amnesty. This is something that has come up at the finance committee. It heard compelling testimony, and there is an important moral dimension to this issue. We are talking about people whose incomes are already below the poverty line. CTV did a piece on this last week, but it is not new. It has been a running story and has had various permutations through the pandemic, with the CRA sending letters to Canadians already in very difficult financial straits even before the current round of inflation hit us. It is all the more so now that people are struggling with the cost of groceries. The cost of housing has been an issue—let us not kid ourselves—for a long time. The rate of acceleration of the problem got worse during the pandemic, but the problem was getting worse even before the pandemic.

People who applied in good faith for help and were told to apply, in some cases, by their very own Liberal MP are now getting letters saying that they have to pay the money back, that they did not qualify and were not eligible. In some cases, they are people who applied for employment insurance and would have preferred just to get EI, but were told no, they could only get CERB. Then they got the CERB cheque and figured that was what they were entitled to. They applied for EI, were told no, and got the CERB. CERB sent them the cheque; they did not ask for it, so they thought it must be okay. They spent the money because they had lost their jobs and were trying to get through a global pandemic, which I think we can all agree was not an easy thing to do no matter what people's incomes were, let alone if they had just lost their jobs, and now the government is asking them for that money back. They do not have the money, and the efforts to collect that money, particularly from people who are already below the poverty line, are not going to bear fruit.

There is the moral dimension in terms of the anxiety and the financial harm that it is causing, but there is also a very real financial dimension. We heard a bit about that at committee. The government is planning to spend around $260 million chasing after a CERB debt that is a function of how it publicized its own program and encouraged people, and in some cases forced people, into the CERB system as opposed to the employment insurance system. For the $260 million that the government is going to spend over the next three or four years chasing that debt, how much is it actually going to get back? I think it is unlikely that it is going to get back $260 million.

I would love to know. I would love to have the government tell us how much it thinks it is actually going to get back. I have asked the question. I asked it at committee and I asked in a number of different fora and I cannot get an answer. It is shocking to me that the government would decide to invest $260 million to collect a debt that it does not know the value of, let alone the likelihood of succeeding. When we talk about investing over a quarter of a billion dollars in collecting a debt, we would want to be darn sure we are actually going to get that money back. Even if it makes its money back and calls it a wash—spend $260 million and get $260 million, which I think is very unlikely—it would not be worth it. It would not be worth it because the time and expense that it is spending chasing after low-income Canadians who are already in dire straits, particularly in this context of inflation, is time and expense that it could spend chasing tax evaders who are hiding their money out of the country and using other means to not pay their fair share. It would get a better return.

There is a good financial argument for a low-income CERB repayment amnesty, and I hope that in the context of this Parliament that I have been talking about, we will find support among enough other parties to convince the government to do the right thing, which is to not chase that debt and try to wring it out of low-income Canadians but instead divert the CRA's resources to chasing the people who are really getting away with something, people who are not paying their fair share and who have the resources to pay it back.

Opposition Motion—Measures for Immediate Financial Relief

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I was speaking on behalf of the finance team, but I am always happy to talk about our fabulous tourism sector.

Just this morning, I was with the Frontier Duty Free Association. I understand it will be meeting with the member shortly. This afternoon, I have a fabulous round table with British Columbian stakeholders in the tourism industry.

What is unfortunate is that the Conservative Party voted against Bill C-2, which provided support directly to the tourism industry. Last week, I made a number of announcements to tourism operators for funding. In some cases, non-refundable funding is going straight into the pockets of our small businesses in the tourism sector and supporting them through this difficult time.

Opposition Motion—Rules and Service Levels for Travel

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

Madam Speaker, it is always a great privilege to rise and speak in the House of Commons, and in particular today on the opposition day motion from the member for Thornhill. I consider the member for Thornhill a friend. She is someone I have had the opportunity to get to know in the last few months, and I thank her for her work.

Before I begin my formal remarks, I would like to put into context the role of government in our society, noting Adam Smith's work about what governments should and should not do. The first thing a government should do is protect the health and safety of its citizens. In fact, the most important role of government is to protect the health and safety of its citizens, whether it is through delivering the services of health care, ensuring that all people have health care and access to health care or ensuring that we have a proper defence system in place and are protected. Those are the fundamental duties of government, as is ensuring public safety. Those are the duties I look to in what a government's role is in society.

During the pandemic, our government has done a lot and continues to do a lot. As we say, our government has has the backs of Canadians. It has had the backs of Canadian workers, families and businesses as we have gone through the pandemic and as we are exiting it. I am proud of our government's record on many facets of the pandemic. I offer my prayers and condolences to the many Canadians who have unfortunately had loved ones pass away due to COVID-19. We must always remember what happened during that two-year period and what continues to happen, though maybe at a more gradual pace.

I am happy to participate in the debate today on the Conservative motion and to have the opportunity to discuss the government’s commitment and efforts to ensure the recovery of Canada’s tourism industry, including wait times at Canadian airports. Tourism is important to every region and every province. It is an inclusive industry, providing jobs and opportunities to newcomers, women, youth and indigenous people. These are specific groups that have experienced some of the worst impacts of this global pandemic.

The tourism industry is the engine of family-owned and family-operated businesses in communities from coast to coast to coast. Virtually all tourism businesses, some 99% of them, are small businesses. They are the backbones of communities across all 338 ridings in this beautiful country we are blessed to call home.

The Government of Canada understands the important role that these businesses play in our communities. They are the lifeline of Canada’s economy and employ nearly two million people across the country. That is approximately 9% of our workforce.

We recognize that pandemic restrictions have placed an economic burden on businesses. Since day one of the pandemic, entrepreneurs have adapted and taken on the challenge of remaining viable. That is why the government introduced financial support for employees’ wages, subsidies for rent and loans to provide liquidity relief to ensure business survival through to the recovery period. As a result of the programs we put in place, tourism businesses across Canada are in a better position to recover.

COVID-19 has impacted the tourism industry, its businesses and entrepreneurs in particular, as demand has been affected by the required public health restrictions. The government understands the impact on the tourism industry, and for that reason, it has put a number of targeted measures in place to help these businesses outlast the pandemic.

For the tourism, arts and culture sectors, businesses and non-profit organizations have received over $23 billion through federal emergency support programs. Budget 2021 introduced a three-year, $1-billion commitment for the sector. This included a $500-million tourism relief fund, which was created to help Canada’s tourism businesses not only survive but come back better. Of that, we earmarked a minimum of $50 million specifically to support indigenous tourism. It also included $100 million for Destination Canada marketing campaigns to help Canadians and other visitors discover and explore the country, $48 million of which is expected to be spent this fiscal year.

Last October, when the overall economy bounced back and general relief measures expired, the government introduced targeted wage and rent subsidy programs in Bill C-2, another bill the opposition party voted against, even though it was for supporting tourism businesses and their workers across the country. We have also invested $4 billion in the Canada digital adoption program, announced this month, which will help upwards of 160,000 small and medium-sized businesses to expand digital capabilities and adopt digital solutions. This is especially important in the tourism industry, where success hinges in part on the capacity to motivate visitors from around the globe.

This year, budget 2022 proposes to provide $20 million over two years in support of a new indigenous tourism fund to help indigenous tourism recover from the pandemic and to position itself for long-term, sustainable growth. It also announced a commitment to develop a new federal tourism growth strategy focused on recovery, stability and long-term growth.

The federal government will work with tourism businesses, provincial and territorial counterparts and indigenous tourism partners to plot such a course. On May 18, the Government of Canada launched the formal engagement period to develop this new strategy, and the government wants to hear from Canadian tourism stakeholders from coast to coast to coast as it charts the path forward for the sector.

Furthermore, to help restore Canadians' confidence in the safety of air travel and to support the recovery of Canada’s air and tourism sectors, the government invested in COVID-19 sanitization and testing infrastructure at airports and in the development of advanced technologies to facilitate touchless and secure air travel. This April our government also lifted testing and quarantine requirements at international borders for fully vaccinated travellers, including for unvaccinated children under 12.

The health and well-being of all Canadians have always been the Government of Canada’s priority during the COVID-19 crisis. Canada’s continuing requirements are based on the latest and evolving scientific evidence. The government is committed to seeing the tourism industry thrive once again, and this funding has played a role in keeping businesses open during the past two years.

Prior to the pandemic, tourism was a growing, high-potential sector that supported almost two million jobs across Canada. Last month, tourism gained almost 40,000 jobs. We are seeing the beginning of the recovery. We are moving in the right direction. With our high vaccination rates and the ebb of the omicron variant, we are confident that the summer 2022 tourism season will outpace that of summer 2021.

While there is no denying that the tourism sector has been deeply affected throughout the pandemic, I believe there is much built-up demand and we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to come back stronger. As international travel reopens, tourists' pent-up desire to visit friends and family is being realized. I believe that in one week, two or three weeks ago, over one million arrivals and departures came through Canada's international airports, which is great to see.

Canada has much to offer: wide open spaces, beautiful vistas, bucket-list adventures, welcoming people and authentic indigenous tourism experiences. These are the kinds of meaningful and sustainable experiences that today’s travellers, from both Canada and abroad, are craving. Canada also holds a strong appeal for those seeking to learn more about first nations, the Inuit and the Métis, and for those seeking an inclusive experience or a francophone language and cultural experience.

Canada is also of great interest to people who want to learn more about first nations, Inuit and Métis peoples, and to those looking for an inclusive experience or a francophone linguistic and cultural experience.

We know that Canadians are currently experiencing long lines at airports, and we are working closely with our partners and CATSA to address the wait times and make sure the travel industry continues to bounce back.

Canada has a huge advantage due to its high vaccination rates, and I encourage all Canadians to get their vaccines if they have not or to get their boosters. We are focused on health and safety, and with all governments in Canada working together collaboratively, we will make sure the rest of the world appreciates this advantage, sees Canada as a destination of choice, particularly in the coming summer months, and visits all parts of Canada from east to west, from B.C. to P.E.I. to Newfoundland and Labrador, and all the beautiful places in between that all 338 members of Parliament get to call home.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Hopefully, we keep a relatively full room here this afternoon.

Mr. Chair, I did say last time that I am always short but I will be brief. Today I'll be at least one of those, and hopefully maybe two.

The political climate we're in isn't really lending itself well to some collaboration. I don't think that's a surprise to anybody. There are obviously things happening outside of this committee room that are affecting our ability to get some work done. I do find that regrettable, because I think we've actually done some really nice work together as a committee. If you think back to Bill C-2, we did have an amendment that was passed. Although it was on recorded division, it was an amendment that was agreed to in principle by all members of this committee. Frankly, I thought it was a success that we were able to collaborate to get that done.

On Bill C-8 we talked about a potential amendment on banning non-resident purchasers of real estate. Again, there was a recorded division and it was unsuccessful, but I believe it was that discussion that led to its being included in the budget. As I understand it, it was a late amendment to the budget. That was work that this committee did.

It does look like we're on a bit of a collision course now, which makes it a bit of an unfortunate situation where we may look to a House instruction to have this committee report the bill back to the House. I'd like to avoid that.

This is also some of my favourite work in Ottawa. Of course, I enjoy very much being in my constituency speaking to my constituents, but as work in Ottawa goes, this is my favourite part of the job—and seeing you, Mr. Chair, all the time. You might say, “Gee, Adam, life is short. You'd better get one,” but I do truly enjoy being here.

On the amendment and the subamendment, I think Mr. Ste-Marie was on the right path with respect to engaging other committees. They should be bearing some of the brunt of review of the legislation, because it does touch on a lot of other committee work, potentially, or other committee legislation. I'd like to thank him for his suggestion. Perhaps it was inspired by, or maybe it inspired, the Senate committee, because they are also doing a similar proposal with respect to separating out the bill and sending it to other committees.

On May 4 the Senate committee adopted a resolution. I won't read it word for word, but I will go through some of the highlights. The Senate committee adopted to engage the committee on aboriginal peoples to look at divisions 2 and 3 in part 5; the banking trade and commerce committee to look at divisions 5, 10, 11, 15, 16, 17 and 30 of part 5; foreign affairs and international trade to look at divisions 9, 18 and 31; legal and constitutional affairs to look at divisions 1, 21 and 22 of part 5; national security and defence to look at divisions 19 and 20; and the standing committee on social affairs, science and technology to look at divisions 23, 24, 26, 27, 29 and 32.

This is clearly a fairly substantive bill. We all know that. It's one of the larger bills we've seen. It's not the largest ever, but it is very large. I do think it would be worthy for us to continue to consider that.

The point I would make on the Senate committee motion is that the reports from the other committees need to respond by “no later than June 10”. June 10 is far later than the date that is proposed in the subamendment of, I think, May 20, which is substantially less time than June 10.

I'm not obviously permitted to move an amendment to the subamendment but June 10 sounds like a great day to me, Mr. Chair, for perhaps consideration by my government colleagues. That's where we are with respect to some of the dates. I do think June 10 would give us plenty of time to have the House review the legislation. By the way, the government still holds, in its power, some additional options with respect to House instruction and closure, etc.

I just think I have some challenges in accepting May 20 as the date, in addition to the date of May 30 in the main motion. The issue is that I just feel uncomfortable about agreeing to a set timetable before we've had the benefit of listening to some witnesses. Yes, I know we are delaying getting to some witnesses now, but I don't think we can agree to set a timeline before we hear some of the concerns.

Just in case we don't hear from witnesses, I heard from a few already, stakeholders who are concerned about the bill.

Today representatives from the charity sector visited me. I know we have MP Lawrence here, who is instrumental in a private member's bill, and I'm sure he will speak to that later, so I won't steal much of his thunder other than to say the budget indicated that the budget implementation bill would include the spirit and substance of the private member's bill that had been considered in the House. The view of the charitable sector is that it does not, and in fact it creates some additional concerns that they have. I hope these stakeholders have the ear of our government colleagues and can make some representations to them about how the budget bill would need to be changed. We have some proposed amendments, which, of course, we would be happy to bring forward, but I don't believe the timeline that we've set for ourselves would enable some of these changes to be fully considered, and even put on the floor to amend the budget bill. I think we all know what happens when we get into a situation where we pass legislation very quickly.

I'll let MP Lawrence speak to maybe some other issues in the charitable sector later.

There are proposed amendments with the Competition Act and I did speak about this last meeting, but we're paraphrasing or just summing up that there's a wide view within the competition bar and those impacted by the Competition Act that they were not consulted. In fact, the Senate committee heard from some of them yesterday. Professor Quaid from the University of Ottawa, I believe, said, “It is important to modernize the act. But if we do it poorly and without consideration of the bigger picture as well as the technical issues, we risk simply changing the law without making competition policy any better”.

Benjamin Dachis from the C.D. Howe Institute, a very reputable organization and a reputable fellow, says, “I would say that the government skipped a couple of key steps when the consultation the senator conducted went right to legislation.” That's the consultation that Senator Wetston completed.

There's a lot in between in terms of talking to potentially affected stakeholders, stakeholders who knew they would be affected, but also others who are only going to find out when they start getting class action lawsuits sent their way. There are a lot of implications across the overall economy in areas we know and in areas that we don't have a clue about in the future, and I think many of us agree that the Competition Act, at its base level, needs to be changed.

Oligopolies affect our daily life in many key industries. I think it's welcome to consider how we can change our competition policy to make it better, but those proposed amendments, I think, ought to be consulted on. The benefit is that we have a budget implementation bill coming in the fall. We should consider consulting on those in the summer—not this committee, of course, because we have much other great work to do—but industry, led by Minister Champagne, should be leading a consultation on those proposed amendments before they become law.

Because I'm an equal opportunity offender, it is not the first time that the Competition Act was changed in omnibus legislation without consultation. It happened in 2009 under the previous government. However, there were some slight differences in the context. At the time, that was the largest budget deficit ever brought forward, but that was in the midst of the global economic recession. It was also in the midst of the coalition crisis in 2009. Some may not call it a crisis, but at the time it felt that way. The budget bill was the only opportunity to pass legislation because it was clear that almost no legislation was going to pass the House.

Now we have a little bit of additional time and some certainty. We have a supply and confidence agreement between two parties in the House, which almost guarantees the passing of certain pieces of legislation. It would also guarantee a House instruction.

With respect to the luxury tax, we've already heard witnesses both publicly and privately express some concerns about no economic impact study. The government's admitted it hasn't done as much. It will affect jobs and have some lost revenues. I think we need to figure out how that balances off against what the projected revenue savings are or increase in revenues for the government.

As it goes back to the subamendment of this date of May 20 and also the amendment of the date of May 30, we went back and checked the report stages from previous budget bills. Last year, the budget bill was reported back to the House on June 21. That didn't leave very many days to pass the budget bill, but it did get passed before the House rose. In 2019, the budget bill was reported back on June 5. In 2018, it was reported back on June 4. In 2017, it was reported back on June 6. That's not much longer, but a little bit longer than what we're proposing here.

We're agreeing to a programming motion that's just going to set us on autopilot, regardless of being able to uncover some challenges. It also raises for me that what we are proposing to do is probably not the most efficient way. I think we're probably failing stakeholders and Canadians to some degree.

I don't think it's a surprise to most people, but the pre-budget process that we do has little influence on the actual budget. I mean, we got the pre-budget submission to the Minister of Finance maybe a few weeks before the budget. Most budgets are kind of done and in the can well into January, so I'm not sure much changes then.

Perhaps over the summer, a team-building event would be to figure out how the calendar could work next year, where we perhaps shorten our pre-budget consultation period and figure out how we can devote a significant amount of time to the study of the budget bill, if we're not going to be able to get away from omnibus budget bills. I don't think we are. That's just not the climate we're in now.

I think it was the good suggestion of, I believe, the NDP to support a pre-budget study. I think maybe that should become the norm. We know that these bills are not getting any smaller despite the fact that it was a direct promise of this government not to do omnibus legislation. Maybe we should consider making that commonplace and devote a set amount of time to studying the budget bill, which could be extended on the consent of the committee or by passing an amendment.

There's probably some meeting organization and hygiene we could do to make this place run a little bit better. I'd be in favour of that. I'm not necessarily in favour of fettering all kinds of discretion, but I do think we could come together to do that, perhaps on a consensus basis.

I would point out a quote on omnibus bills: “I'd like to say that I wouldn't use [omnibus bills], period. There will always be big bills, but they need to be thematically and substantively linked in all their different pieces so that they form a piece of legislation. The kitchen-sink approach here is a real worry to me.” For those of you following at home, that was then-member of Parliament for Papineau, Mr. Trudeau, who said he would not use omnibus bills.

In another quote, we have, “This is yet another massive omnibus budget bill, which is 414 pages in length with 516 separate clauses”. Well, this budget bill is 500 pages in length. I don't know how many different clauses there are, but it's significantly larger. It continues, “It is simply too big for Parliament to consider properly in just a short period of time. The [government's] counting on us rushing this through at record speed and they are trying to avoid real scrutiny in this Parliament.” That, my friends, was Scott Brison, excellent member of Parliament Scott Brison. He was responsible for—I see I'm losing some people already, but I think they will return because it's going so well—the SNC scandal, as I understand, but he was right on the money with respect to omnibus legislation.

You know, if we can't get away from omnibus budget bills—and it doesn't look like we can—then maybe we should have more of a rigorous process, or a set agreed-upon process, that would allow committee members to fully scrutinize the bill, to bring forward reasonable amendments and to work with technical stakeholders, especially with respect to some of the tax laws, competition laws—those who live this stuff every day—to help educate us in making sure there are no mistakes.

In fact, this current budget bill we're looking at is fixing some mistakes from previous budget bills, especially with respect to some of the issues around CERB. That's a significant challenge for us. We're being asked to rush something through. At the same time, we know what happens when we don't give ourselves enough time; we end up with some mistakes.

It wasn't until July, from the good work of the NDP in the summer, that we realized we made a mistake with respect to GIS clawbacks. However, it was too late. I submit that had we had a longer time to review that budget legislation last year, the NDP probably would have been able to bring forward their concern sooner. The result and the consequence of that rushed legislation meant we had to spend time, in this committee and in the House of Commons, debating a separate piece of legislation to fix that inequity.

Those are my primary concerns with the dates in the motion. I know there will be some objections to my intervention that will come, obviously, that we are delaying hearing from witnesses. However, we moved last meeting, and I would offer to do so again if it is appropriate, to adjourn this debate to a later time. We can have this discussion later. The government, which has a lot more tools at its disposal, can bring forward other motions at any time or an instruction from the House, if they feel we're not moving it along.

We would welcome moving into witness testimony. I believe it's restrictive on rights of parliamentarians to have such an aggressive timeline without seeing any witnesses and hearing some testimony first.

I know that some will say that a delay will result in a harm to taxpayers because the carbon tax or climate-incentive payments will be delayed. I would caution my government members before they make that assertion, as they did, along with CRA, on the delaying of Bill C-8 as it related to teachers receiving rebates on their taxes. There was a significant amount of misinformation, and dare I say disinformation, because it was knowingly false for government members, and even the CRA, to tell Canadians that they could not administer their taxes because they were waiting for the bill to pass Parliament.

As evidence of that, I would like to point out a couple of points from the CRA directly in recent years.

In 2017, the government made some changes to GST treatment of supplies of naloxone. The CRA responded, “suppliers [could] stop charging GST/HST on supplies of naloxone in accordance with the proposed amendment as of March 22, 2017”, and that the proposed measure was subject to parliamentary approval.

It further advised that “consistent with its standard practice,” it would administer “this measure on the basis of the proposed amendment.” That is, they would administer the tax code on the basis that it was proposed and not passed by Parliament.

Even further, just last year, CRA, I believe in a response to a question in the Senate, responded that, for their part, taxpayers usually chose to self-assess tax and claim benefits on proposed legislation because it might offer more favourable treatment, avoid negative consequences such as liability for interest, ease their compliance burden or any number of other reasons.

In any other words, even though there is no legal requirement to do so, there are good reasons why both taxpayers and the CRA choose to act on the assumption that proposed legislation will eventually be enacted. Any assertion that any delay of either this bill or even C-8 delays the ability for taxpayers to get their money isn't just false. It's intentionally misleading, and there is significant precedent for CRA to administer tax changes before they receive royal assent.

Mr. Chair, as I come to nearing a close, some items I hope the government considers or some things that I would find persuasive would be to align the dates with the Senate study of June 10. Since we have significant changes to the CBCA and the Competition Act, we should invite Minister Champagne to appear before this committee just for an hour. I know he's a busy man, but these are significant changes. I think we should test with him, either at this committee or perhaps at the industry committee, as to why consultation wasn't done, why they feel comfortable this is the right approach, so that he may be held accountable for any of these changes if there are challenges with them in the future.

Finally, I hope that the Deputy Prime Minister would return to this committee and fulfill the inflation study requirement for her to come for three hours to talk about inflation. It is one of the most important issues facing Canadians today. Certainly as a domestic issue it is the most important.

I respect the minister very much. I think we all benefit from having her here at committee. Her presence is always welcome, as well as that of ministers from other departments. I think it helps us do our jobs appropriately. It says lots of great things about ministerial accountability. I will not move a motion, but as inflation is well outside the control range, it might be appropriate to have the minister and the governor return to committee on a very regular basis until we get inflation back under control.

These are some of the concerns I have with the subamendment. If we're open to moving the May 20 date, which is less than two weeks away, to June 10, I could be persuaded to feel comfortable, or more comfortable. The clause-by-clause ending by May 30 is just too aggressive in my view.

Mr. Chair, I am an eternal optimist. Hope springs eternal. I'm hoping for a miracle. I think we can do some great work here. Just in case, I was prepared. My socks have flying pigs on them, so it can happen.

I think we can get to a collaborative approach. I think we could punt this discussion on the timing to a future date. We can hear some witnesses now, and then we can all decide with a little bit more information whether we feel the timeline is too aggressive. I think the government has within its power a lot more flexibility and optionality, especially with the supply and confidence agreement. If it felt that we were not doing proper work or that we were intentionally delaying a bill leaving committee, it could figure out a way to get the bill out of committee. The kind of collision course we're on now is that we're not going to hear from any witnesses despite our liking, at least on this side, to move to that now.

I welcome some of the comments from the government members. I've had a wonderful experience so far in collaboration with them, and we have done some great work.

Even on the Emergencies Act, where other committees got significantly more heated and tense, I thought we kept to the facts very well. I think we could do some great work with stakeholders here.

Mr. Chair, I've gone on almost as long as it seems. Perhaps if the folks outside of this committee could work and collaborate, like we have done in the past, this place might be a bit better for everybody. I have full faith that we can make some progress, and I'm waiting for that to happen. We're here to move on, and hopefully, hear from some witnesses.

I understand these games sometimes get played from time to time. Hearing from some witnesses, doing this right and maybe punting this more difficult discussion for a week for two, might be the best thing for everybody.

Mr. Chair, I'll yield my time to the next speaker on the list. I see a couple of hands up there. I appreciate your allowing me to start again here. That was very kind of you.

If you want to adjourn the debate, we'd be open to that, of course. If not, I'll yield to the next speaker.

Thank you.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It seems to me that there are at least two issues entangled here in our discussion about the study on the budget bill. On the one hand, there's the question of the timeline and how much time we're going to take to study the bill. Then there's the question of how we're going to proceed with the study, whether we're going to endeavour to study everything at this table or whether we're going to break it up and send some aspects to other committees, presumably where—and I take Mr. Ste-Marie's point—members have been immersed in a subset of issues that have to do with some of the things in the bill and may very well be able to conduct a more efficient study. I believe Mr. Albas made some comments to that effect as well, in terms of subject matter expertise. I think sometimes certain members' objections to the timeline of this study are maybe getting entangled with the question of how we study things.

I think Monsieur Ste-Marie does have.... If we understand ourselves to be working on an expedited timeline, and I think we are, then realistically, if the budget bill is going to pass by the end of June, it does need to make its way out of the House in order to have enough time to be studied in the other place.

Mr. Chambers earlier raised the example of Bill C-2, which did manage to pass relatively swiftly once it had come out of committee, but I would raise the example of the bill on the fall economic statement that just passed last week. We saw an incredible appetite on the part of the Conservative caucus to speak to that bill. It was part of the reason New Democrats worked to try to provide a mechanism for extended sittings in May. It was in order to have members of the opposition parties who wanted to say more on that bill and others to have the time to be able to do that, but I wouldn't say that the culture around here is one of expeditious passing of legislation once it comes out of committee. Bill C-8 certainly proved that, I think, beyond any shadow of a doubt.

Beyond any significant and demonstrable change in the culture, I think there is a legitimate concern that if this bill were to come out of committee late in the game, so to speak—and there's not that much left to go before summer, regardless of what we do at this table—then I think it does make sense to try to hasten the study of the bill while also providing for a lot of time to study it. If we look at the main motion, we see that the goal here is to have about 20 hours of study, which is on par with the last budget implementation bill and the study, frankly, of many budget implementation bills going back some time.

I see an attempt here to try to make sure that there's enough time to do the study of the bill well by having extra meetings, similar to processes that have unfolded for similar budget implementation bills in the past. I see this effort at trying to enable other committees to take a look at it, understanding that we're on a tight timeline, as an act of good faith to try to accommodate concerns that have been brought forward.

I think, if memory serves, that the subamendment even provides for other committees to let us know that they don't intend to study these provisions, which gives us enough time to try to arrange for some witnesses at this table so that there is still study of those provisions.

I'm also mindful of the fact that we're talking about.... Well, maybe I'll just leave it at that, Mr. Chair.

All that is to say that I think we have a proposal here to try to accommodate a concern by an opposition member that has been brought forward in order to try to access the expertise of other committees in order to try to help us do a better study in an expedited time frame. We do have an expedited time frame. It's hard to talk about that without making reference to the culture that has been unfolding in the House of Commons around the obstruction of legislation or members not feeling any need to let legislation pass or to allow us to come to a vote with debate collapsing, so I think the subamendment is reasonable.

I thank Monsieur Ste-Marie for the amendment itself as a way to try to have some back and forth and negotiation about how we can do a better study in the time we have, and I'm supportive of the main motion, which I think is trying to recognize that for the budget bill to pass, it has to get out of committee with enough time for the House and then the Senate to deal with it. We're really talking about three weeks. A week and a half in each place before the end of June is what I would call a relatively tight timeline around here, unless people are of the view that the budget bill doesn't have to pass before summer and that we can drag it out the way the fall economic statement was dragged out.

I'm not of that view. I noticed what happened to teachers, for instance, when debate on BillC-8 was prolonged. They were told by the CRA that they wouldn't get their tax filing back because there was still legislation pending, and a number of items will bear on a number of different industries in this bill. We're hearing from stakeholders that they want to know, one way or the other, how those things are going to land, whether it's the luxury tax or other items, so it does behoove us to try to deal with the bill swiftly.

That's why I'm supportive of the main motion and also supportive of the amendment and subamendment that have been proposed. That's what it looks like when parliamentarians try to take the concerns of all parties at the table seriously and find the best path forward in the difficult circumstances in which we often find ourselves working.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Karen Hogan]

My brief answer would be that you can measure the value of money invested in our organization in many ways, and it's not just in the number of audit reports. One audit report could be very large, for example, the efforts on Bill C-2 that we will do. If we do that, it would probably be seven or eight individual audits, but it will come out as one.

I caution just calculating the number and not necessarily looking at the impact of the value in other ways.

Economic and Fiscal Update Implementation Act, 2021

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Madam Speaker, Bill C-8 and Bill C-2 before it were meant to provide help for businesses struggling to get through the pandemic. They were both drawn up before the omicron variant hit and extended the pandemic by months and months.

We have had calls from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and the Tourism Industry Association of Canada to extend the benefits that were there before to help businesses that have struggled to stay alive until now. Even a few months would help some of them get through this pandemic alive, yet we are seeing the government abandon those programs. The Conservatives, as we just heard, are not trying to support businesses and workers.

Why did we not help those businesses get through the summer at least?

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time today with the member for Hochelaga.

I appreciate the opportunity to take part in today's debate on Bill C-8, an act to implement certain provisions of the economic and fiscal update tabled in Parliament on December 14, 2021 and other measures. This bill is about making sure we have the tools we need to protect Canadians.

For two years, Canadians have been grappling with COVID-19. Two years ago, this pandemic triggered the steepest economic contraction in Canada since the Great Depression. At its worst, it cost three million Canadians their jobs as our GDP shrank by 17%.

Today, even in spite of ongoing challenges presented by the pandemic, we are on a strong footing. Canadians have put saving lives first. This has meant one of the lowest mortality rates in the G7. As of March 25, over 85% of Canadians five years and older are fully vaccinated.

The Canadian economy has seen the benefits of prioritizing our health. The Canadian labour market rebounded strongly from the omicron wave in February. We have already more than recovered lost jobs, a healing that took eight months longer than after the much milder 2008 recession. In fact, as of February, we have recovered 112% of the jobs lost during the pandemic period, compared to just 90% in the U.S., and faster than after any other recession. Encouragingly, growth was broad-based, supported by solid underlying fundamentals and an ongoing rebound in sectors hit hardest by the pandemic.

However, even with these encouraging signs, we know that businesses, especially small businesses, continue to need support. That is what Bill C-8 delivers, support where it is needed. Many small businesses continue to feel the impacts of the pandemic. They are playing a critical role by making sure their workers and clients are safe. They understand that proper ventilation makes indoor air healthier and safer, helping reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission.

Many continue to make further improvements to their indoor air quality, to protect their workers and customers. However, they are finding that investing in equipment to improve ventilation can be costly. That is why Bill C-8 is proposing a refundable small business air quality improvement tax credit of 25% on eligible air quality improvement expenses incurred by small businesses. This measure would make it more affordable for them to invest in safer and healthier ventilation and air filtration.

Businesses would receive the credit on eligible expenses incurred between September 1, 2021 and December 31, 2022 relating to the purchase or upgrade of mechanical heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, and the purchase of stand-alone devices designed to filter air using high-efficiency particulate air filters, up to a maximum of $10,000 per location and $50,000 in total. That is not just a good deal for businesses; it is a good investment in the health and safety of Canadians.

Our government has delivered significant fiscal policy support to Canadians during this pandemic, with $8 out of every $10 spent to fight COVID having been spent by the federal government. This has contributed to a rapid and resilient recovery so far.

The vast majority of the government's recovery plan is targeted towards growth-enhancing and job-creating initiatives such as the Canada emergency business account, which has been one of the key government supports for small businesses throughout the pandemic.

The CEBA program has provided interest-free, partially forgivable loans of up to $60,000 to small businesses to help recover their operating costs during times when their revenues have been reduced. In total, the CEBA has provided over $49 billion in support to nearly 900,000 small businesses affected by the pandemic.

In January, our government announced that the repayment deadline for the CEBA loans to qualify for partial loan forgiveness is being extended from December 31, 2022 to December 31, 2023 for all eligible borrowers in good standing. This extension would support short-term economic recovery and offer greater repayment flexibility to small businesses and not-for-profit organizations, many of which are facing continued challenges due to the pandemic.

Repayment on or before the new deadline of December 31, 2023 will result in loan forgiveness of up to one-third of the value of the loans, which means up to $20,000 in loan forgiveness. Bill C-8 would set a limitation period of six years for debts under the CEBA program to ensure that CEBA loan holders are provided consistent treatment no matter where they live.

The new measures in Bill C-8 would also build on the significant support for businesses that became law with the passage of Bill C-2 in December. Bill C-2 was built on the understanding that with the spread of the omicron variant, public health restrictions had to remain in effect in certain regions across the country to contain its spread, and that many of these restrictions would have an impact on businesses. With Bill C-2, our government made sure that economic support was available to them if and when they needed it.

While lockdowns have now eased across the country, the application period for the local lockdown program remains open to provide wage and rent subsidy support of up to 75% to employers who have had to reduce the capacity of their main business by 50% or more.

To expand access to the program at the height of the recent restrictions, we temporarily lowered the revenue decline threshold for eligibility from 40% to 25%. Expanded eligibility for these wage and rent supports ran from December 19, 2021 through to March 12, 2022.

For businesses facing other pandemic-related losses, support is also available through the tourism and hospitality recovery program and the hardest-hit business recovery program. Many tourism-related businesses in Bonavista—Burin—Trinity were able to take advantage of that support, and I am told many tourism businesses across the entire country were able to take advantage of that support.

By supporting businesses through these challenges, these programs are protecting people's jobs and allowing people to stay connected to their employers. As the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance said, this keeps people strong; it keeps families strong and it keeps businesses strong. That is what we need to keep our economy strong.

In conclusion, like all Canadians, we hope that lockdowns and capacity restrictions will continue to become a thing of the past. We know that Canadians are tired of COVID-19, but the unfortunate reality is that COVID-19 is not quite tired of us. We put supports in place so that public health authorities could make the right, albeit difficult, decisions, knowing that the federal government would be there to support workers, small businesses and other employers in their communities when needed.

That is why Bill C-8 is so important. It would continue to do what is necessary to sustain the recovery and provide help where it is needed, to create jobs and set the stage for strong growth for years to come.

Extension of Sitting Hours and Conduct of Extended Proceedings

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I remember back in December when the Bloc Québécois decided to support Bill C-2 and fast-track it to committee. It negotiated with the government. We could have said that the Bloc had sold its soul, but we understood that even if we did not agree with its position on Bill C‑2, the Bloc had negotiated for something it felt was important.

We did the same. We negotiated for our priorities. We were unable to have all of our priorities adopted by the government because it is a negotiation, not something that we could do unilaterally. I therefore do not see how the expression “sell one's soul” applies in our case, given that the Bloc is prepared to do the same thing when the opportunity presents itself.

Financial Statement of Minister of Finance

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we are facing multiple crises, both current and looming, so we expected this budget to put forward concrete solutions to address the risks associated with these crises.

First is the public health crisis. After living with the pandemic for over two years, we are now entering yet another wave.

Next is the inflation crisis. For months now, inflation has been higher than expected. That seems unlikely to change for quite some time and will probably even go up. People are very worried.

Of course, there is the war in Ukraine, which is directly victimizing the Ukrainian people, who are being subjected to bombings and unspeakable atrocities. This conflict is impacting the whole planet, and we are feeling the repercussions here too.

Finally, there is the environmental crisis, which is causing all the climate catastrophes we have been witnessing.

As the crises multiply, so do the risks. These are uncertain times, and the budget was the best opportunity to protect us from all those risks. This budget, however, despite listing virtually all the problems in detail, addresses virtually none of them. What irony.

What we see in this budget, as we did in the previous budgets and in everything the government does, is a federal government that is more centralizing than ever. The government is once again using the budget as an opportunity to further centralize the federation's power. This is a real pattern. The bulldozer is moving forward slowly but very surely.

Here is one example. The government wants to tackle the housing issue, but it is making threats. It is telling the municipalities that it will cut infrastructure funding if they do not build enough housing. The federal government is once again infringing on other jurisdictions. It is once again centralizing. Once again, paternalistic Ottawa wants to be the be-all and end-all. They want to make all the decisions and tell everyone what to do. That is unacceptable. It is unacceptable for Quebec.

The irony is that, although the House recognizes my nation with its words, the government is trying to force the Quebec nation into the Canadian mould it has created. We can no longer live in our own way. This budget is a reminder of that. It is becoming increasingly difficult to do things our own way.

The best example of that is clearly health care funding. Ottawa has failed to include in the budget any commitments to review its funding for the next five years. We are in the midst of a health crisis. Our system is under maximum pressure. Health care workers are at the end of their rope, and we have had it. Rather than funding the health care system within its means, know-it-all Ottawa is telling us that we are not doing enough, even though it is not providing adequate funding.

While Quebec and the provinces are asking for increased funding with no strings attached, the feds are telling us that they only want to talk about the strings, not the funding. For instance, on page 155, the English version of the budget document reads, “Any conversation between the federal government and the provinces and territories will focus on delivering better health care outcomes for Canadians”.

This means more standards, without funding, even though the Parliamentary Budget Officer points out each and every year that transfers need to be set at 35% to restore the fiscal balance between Ottawa and the provinces. The Conference Board and the Council of the Federation both agree. This is what Quebec wants, what the provinces want and what the Bloc wants, but know-it-all Ottawa says no. Ottawa says we will get nothing except strings.

Transfers are currently set at 22%, and the Minister of Finance justified her inaction by citing a tax point transfer from the 1960s. She has dismissed decades of cuts and ignored all the serious studies on the subject. This is called being arrogant, in a big way.

Now let us talk about seniors. The cost of everything is going up. The cost of food is going to skyrocket because of the war in Ukraine. Seniors are always the first to suffer as a result of inflation. Seniors often live on fixed incomes that are not indexed to inflation. The budget should have done more to help them out, but the feds decided not to do that.

The Minister of Finance then adds insult to injury. In her budget she presents a graph showing that seniors are much wealthier than the rest of the population and that the feds have already done enough.

Groups representing seniors feel betrayed: We now have two classes of seniors and the government is not responding to the needs. The minister presented her little graph saying that seniors have nothing to complain about, they already have plenty of money. That is what we see.

As for inflation, with all the crises that are unfolding, high inflation is especially worrisome. The government should be lending a helping hand to seniors and the least fortunate, but it is doing little to nothing to help.

It should be lending a hand to SMEs, which are the hardest hit by high inflation, including family farms, taxi drivers and bus drivers. There is nothing for them. The feds describe the problem of inflation in the budget, but do not offer any help.

I want to give you a real example showing that Ottawa identifies the problems but does nothing about them. In the budget, there is one paragraph on the problem of the semiconductor shortage. There are specialized businesses in Quebec that we can be proud of and that have existed for several generations. These businesses repurpose trucks into ambulances and armoured trucks, for example, or add custom cargo boxes. That is a Quebec specialty.

As a result of the semiconductor shortage, major truck manufacturers are not getting product out and our specialized businesses are having trouble procuring trucks. We have been telling the minister about this for months.

In December, we even supported Bill C‑2 because she told us that the shortage would be resolved imminently, and she would even send us the figures to prove it. We believed her and we acted in good faith. Nothing was done and we never saw the figures. It was completely false. The problem has only worsened since then.

Businesses now run the risk of going bankrupt. We might lose for good specialized industries that have been operating for generations. The government's role is to support businesses and get them through the crisis.

Businesses joined forces and reached out to the government. They asked to meet with the minister. The Bloc has been waiting for a meeting about this for months, but we have not heard a peep.

The minister mentioned the problem with the semiconductors, but did not offer any solutions. She is not doing anything to save this sector, which is so important to Quebec's economy. All she said was that the government will look into photonics to see whether Canada could manufacture its own semiconductors. There was no indication of when, however.

That is actually not the problem. The government needs to help the companies that are going to shut down, because Ford and GM are manufacturing very few trucks as a result of the semiconductor shortage. These companies just need a little help until the American giants resume production. Has Ottawa abandoned these specialized industries because they are in Quebec? If they were in Ontario would the feds have stepped in? That worries me.

There has been one crisis after another, but the most important one right now is the environmental crisis. The climate is undergoing disruptive changes and we must now take drastic measures if we want to avoid disaster.

Even as the IPCC is saying that we need to drop any new oil projects if we are to stand a chance of avoiding disaster, know-it-all Ottawa goes and does the opposite. It sends its Minister of Environment and Climate Change to announce a one-billion barrel project. This minister is the same person who founded Équiterre with Laure Waridel and climbed the CN Tower for the environment when he was at Greenpeace.

With one gesture, one decision, he has dealt a terrible blow to the planet. Very few humans will have done this much damage to the climate. With this gesture, he undid all of his past work and turned his back on his values and commitments. He threw all that away to serve the federal government, which is a petro-state and an environmental embarrassment.

Elsewhere in the world, environment ministers have resigned for far less than that. From now on, this is how this minister is going to be remembered. I would like to remind the House that Marshall Pétain is not exactly remembered for winning the battle of Verdun.

The Minister of Environment and Climate Change, or the pollution minister, chose to make his announcement the day before the budget, just before the House rises for two weeks. That was intentional.

I thought that the government would include some extraordinary environmental measures in the budget to try to compensate for this terrible compromise, but it did not. Instead, the budget mainly contains measures that are vague and weak, such as a future public-private fund like the Canada Infrastructure Bank, which is a flop.

All the concrete measures in the budget support the fossil fuel industry. The budget allocates billions of dollars for carbon capture projects for the oil sands, a technology that is underdeveloped and that will cost a fortune, if it is ever actually implemented. According to the International Energy Agency, if the private sector were to cover the cost of such projects, it would quadruple the price at the pump.

Furthermore, the feds have announced that they will support the development of small mobile nuclear reactors to allow the industry to extract more oil and sell the gas they save. This is the government's plan for the environment, despite all the risks and health concerns.

To wit, on Wednesday, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change announced a project that will extract a billion barrels and, the next day, the Minister of Finance announced more support for the oil and gas sector. That is Ottawa's plan for the environment.

Illustrating just how far Ottawa is going in the opposite direction of the IPCC report, journalist Philippe Mercure, from La Presse wrote the following:

This report contains lengthy passages about the risks of “lock-ins”, meaning building new infrastructure that will pollute for decades and undermine our efforts.

One would have thought that UN Secretary-General António Guterres was speaking directly to the Minister of the Environment when he presented the document on Monday.

“Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals. But the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels. Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness,” he said.

Now more than ever, being part of Canada means choosing to be an environmental imbecile in the world's eyes.

The Bloc Québécois had five demands, five unconditional expectations, and called for a suite of more targeted measures. The first four of our five unconditional expectations are not in the budget: health, seniors, green finance and an acceptable transition, and concrete measures to address inflation.

At least the budget addresses first nations housing. That was one of our five demands. It is in the budget, so now all we have to do is hope that, for once, that earmarked money will actually flow and improve the lives of indigenous people. What we have seen to date is that the Liberals vote to put up cash but do not spend it. That causes all kinds of problems, such as lack of access to drinking water, that never go away.

The budget contains housing measures, but the Bloc Québécois obviously does not think there is enough money in the budget for social housing. Housing is a major problem, and the solution is increasing supply. The budget talks about 6,000 affordable housing units, which apparently means a two-bedroom apartment for $1,200 a month. That does not fit with the Bloc Québécois's definition of social housing. The money is there, but much more needs to be done.

As I said at the start of my speech, we are grappling with numerous crises. The government is aware of them and names them in the budget, but does not actually do anything about most of them. Any solutions it does put forward are poorly conceived. That is a problem.

In addition, what we are seeing is an increasingly centralist state that interferes and wants to impose its own model and make everything fit a certain mould. The feds are taking a father-knows-best approach and telling the provinces and Quebec, “All right kids, here is what you need to do and how you need to be.” That is unacceptable.

The Economy

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Minister of Tourism and Associate Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, the opposition is raising the issue of affordability, so let us go to the facts.

Our government lowered taxes on the middle class and raised them on the wealthiest 1%. Conservatives voted against that. We created the Canada child benefit and indexed it to inflation. The Conservatives voted against that too. We provided seniors 75 years of age and over a $500 payment last summer. The Conservatives voted against that. They voted against Bill C-2, and they are on track to vote against Bill C-8. Why do they not just double down on affordability and vote with us on Bill C-8?

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Minister of Tourism and Associate Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his question on the need to build a more just and more inclusive economy for all Canadians. That has been the focus of our work ever since we formed government.

We only have to look at all the measures we have taken to make life more affordable for Canadians: We provided support to Canadians during the pandemic with Bill C‑2; we raised taxes on the wealthiest 1% and we cut them for the middle class; we increased the Canada child benefit. That is making life more affordable.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Minister of Tourism and Associate Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, building a fairer, more inclusive economy that works for all Canadians has been a central focus of our government from the beginning, and while we appreciate the intent behind the previous NDP motion and the hon. member's question, let us remember all the things we have done for the middle class. We provided more pandemic supports for Canadians and businesses in Bill C-2, and the NDP voted against it. We raised taxes on the wealthiest 1% and lowered them for the middle class. We stopped the Canada child benefit from going to millionaires and it benefited nine out of 10 Canadians.

There is much that we have done for Canadians on affordability. We will keep doing more.

COVID-19 Economic Measures

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, there are a few things to correct. New Democrats actually opposed Bill C-2, and we did it because we did not feel that the financial support was going to be adequate. We felt we should heed the advice of many public health officials that new waves of COVID were going to come, and that turned out to be true. In fact, the government had to modify the conditions of the program just days after Bill C-2 passed because it was already clearly inadequate to the task of addressing the omicron wave.

What is also going to be inadequate is having no meaningful increase in the OAS for seniors aged 65 to 74, which is why I will ask again if the government will change its tune and apply the OAS increase to all seniors, rather than only those aged 75 and above.