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 .

Government Business No. 4—An Act to Provide Further Support in Response to COVID-19

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Madam Speaker, I congratulate my hon. colleague on her speech. I know it was her first, and it is not easy to stand up in the House. I really liked her speech, and Cassy's story was very touching.

Mental health is obviously a huge issue. Mental health is health. However, according to its fiscal update, the government will not invest in health transfers until 2027, even though this is a serious problem. All of Canada's premiers are calling on Ottawa to increase health transfers from 22% to 35%. Does my colleague agree with that request?

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Madam Speaker, right now what we need to focus on is how we help get better treatment facilities. We have a lot of harm reduction. We are talking about a lot of these things, and we need to get the cost of living down as well.

When we look at this, a lot of opioid addiction starts out of hunger as well. We need to look at how we are helping people survive the cost of living. People who have jobs are using food banks. That is where we should be focusing our attention.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to add my congratulations to the hon. member on her first speech in Parliament. She quite rightly raised the other pandemic in this country, which is the opioid overdose crisis. She also talked very sensibly about abandoning what does not work. I postulate that the war on drugs has not worked. The attempt to criminalize those who use drugs clearly has not had any effect. We are seeing record deaths in this country.

Does the member agree with the NDP that it is time to address the root of the problem, which is a toxic street drug supply, and move to a regulated, low-barrier, safe supply of drugs, so that at least those in our communities who are suffering the scourge of addiction, buying drugs from organized crime on the street and dying in record numbers, can get access to drugs in known titrations?

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Madam Speaker, when we look at how we treat addiction and mental health, we have to change how we talk about it. We have to see it as the disease that it is. Consumption treatment sites absolutely are important when we look at harm reduction, but the bigger, long-term sustainable solution is treatment and intervention. We need to focus on that.

Right now we have a situation in our community of Peterborough—Kawartha where the criminals who are dealing these drugs that are killing people are being put back out on the streets. Things like Bill C-5 are not helping with that. We need legislation that actually deals with this issue, to make sure the people who are dealing these drugs are held accountable.

[Jake Stewart, Conservative, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure today to speak to Bill C-2. In the last couple of weeks as a member of the finance committee and of the House of Commons, I learned something really interesting. One of the first questions that was asked in committee was, “Where is the money coming from?”

The Liberal government is going to spend $7.4 billion on programs similar to CERB and the other programs in the original suite of benefits it put out during the pandemic. However, we have since learned that some of that money actually bled into criminal organizations. People were able to scam the public's money for criminal intent, and the Liberals are okay with that because just recently they lessened offences for using firearms and other violations.

We know that the Liberal government is weak on crime and soft on criminals. Canadians know this. However, if we look at what the Liberals are doing right now, they are going to take $7.4 billion and dole it out, but they have no oversight of that. The Canada Revenue Agency has no oversight of it. The FINTRAC report showed us that millions and millions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars were scammed by criminals. Other monies went to prisoners. If there were even the potential that those hard-earned Canadian tax dollars bled into terrorist organizations, could members believe the Government of Canada would allow this to happen, but more so, could they believe it would do nothing about it?

The people of Miramichi—Grand Lake do not want to fund terrorist organizations. They do not want to fund prisoners. They do not want to fund organized crime. They do not want to fund criminals in whatever behaviours they are up to, and they certainly do not want to see firearms charges lessened.

The Liberal government right now is sending Canada backward in so many avenues. Let us talk about this first question, which my colleague from Carleton asked at committee: “Where is the money coming from?” The Government of Canada has no concept of where that $7.4 billion is coming from. Eventually it said it is coming from the contingency fund. That is nice, but where did that money come from?

I would like to focus on how that money would be coming from energy revenues. This country is a leader in the energy sector. Whether it is oil and gas, minerals or mining, we are actually a world leader in the development of those industries, and that is where a serious bulk of revenue flows in for our country and its taxpayers. The Liberals are actually funding the CERB and other programs with no oversight using the very tax dollars from the very industries they are trying to kill in front of the rest of the world.

Right now, they cannot solve the softwood timber tariffs. Because the United States needs more oil, they have to go to OPEC and other countries to get help with oil and pipelines. We have to wonder if the Canadian government could say, “We will help you with some oil. Let us build a pipeline together, and by the way, can you take that tariff off our softwood?”

It seems like a general argument. It seems very basic, but I bet the Liberals have not even tried it. They have not tried it because they have no plan for our country. They have no plan for Miramichi—Grand Lake. The only thing they want to do is talk about the climate crisis and having everyone's back. They had the back of the first nations in this country so vastly that they did not even attend the first Truth and Reconciliation Day. They held the flag at half-mast for six months of the year.

We are talking about a government that has no regard for the Canadian public, no regard for the hard-earned taxpayer dollars that are coming from Miramichi—Grand Lake and New Brunswick and the rest of the provinces and territories. We are talking about a government of this country, where the rise in inflation is second in the world.

I am 43 years old. I was fortunate to buy a house built in 1919. I got it in rural New Brunswick. It was very cheap, and I have done a lot of work to it over the years. There are people my age and a little younger than me who are never going to own a house in this country.

I bought a house for $40,000 back in 2006. I could sell that house today for $160,000 or $170,000. I live in a very small town in the middle of rural New Brunswick, where the Internet is terrible and the only industry we ever had was forestry, and I have watched the demise of that over the course of time. If my house went up that much, imagine what a $300,000 house bought in 2005 is worth today. It is probably worth millions of dollars.

People are not going to be able to afford a house in this country. They are not going to have kids. We need to grow our population. I have four children. I can say that having four children in today's Canada is a very expensive endeavour. I would do it all again. I love the fact that I have four children.

However, imagine being 28 or 29 years old today. That person wants to own a home, which should be worth $250,000, but now costs $800,000. They have a partner who wants to have children, and they cannot even afford to have one of them. This is the country that the government is leaving to our children and to the grandchildren we have not met yet. That is wrong.

As a member of the Conservative team, we have to go to committee to make sure that the Canada Revenue Agency is brought in to have oversight of those hard-earned Canadian tax dollars, and to make sure that the Auditor General is coming in to ask those serious questions. It is also so we can ask why they are choosing not to audit the people who scammed Canadians' hard-earned tax dollars.

Why is it happening? How could the Prime Minister of Canada support this endeavour? How could he continue to talk about having the backs of Canadians, when people in their 20s and 30s are never going to be able to own a house in this country? How can he say he has their backs? He is causing this inflation on the cost of housing. The cost of bacon has gone up 30% to 35% just in the past year or two. People cannot even afford bacon anymore.

I think what we have is an abuse of power. We have a Prime Minister, who is out of touch with all Canadians. He is certainly out of touch with rural Canada. He is out of touch with people in Miramichi—Grand Lake.

I have the FINTRAC report right here. I could not believe that it says CEBA-related fraud was carried out in a similar fashion with the loan being transferred from the applicant's business account to their personal account, then withdrawn for cash. We have people in this country who are taking tax dollars for their own benefit. We had a million jobs unfilled, houses that nobody can pay for and food that nobody can pay for.

That is the beauty of being in the House today. I have a good friend here beside me from Nova Scotia. My dad is from Nova Scotia. I have another buddy over here from Newfoundland, and they are here working for the Canadian people who put them here. They are in this House, and they are working for the hard-earned taxpayer dollars to make sure that there is oversight on that money.

The Conservative Party of Canada is the only party that ever had oversight of hard-earned Canadian tax dollars. We have to hold the government accountable because the Prime Minister is out of touch, not just with rural Canada, not just with Miramichi—Grand Lake, but with all Canadians.

We have to ensure that Canadian taxpayer dollars are not funding terrorist organizations, criminal organizations, scam artists and petty criminals. We cannot afford to have the hard-earned dollars of Canadians bleeding into those organizations.

We put forth a motion at committee. The Conservative Party, members of that committee and all members on this side of the House want oversight of the Prime Minister because Canadians are worth it, their tax dollars are worth it, and we have to make sure that we put the Canadian people first.

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

Madam Speaker, the member had some interesting comments. I do not necessarily agree with a lot of them. If I were to agree with them, it would likely imply that we would not have had programs such as CERB, the wage subsidy program and so forth because of fear or delay. What this is all about is Bill C-2, and Bill C-2 is all about supporting small businesses and supporting Canadians in real, tangible ways.

Why would the member not recognize that Canadians have an expectation of the government to be there during difficult times, i.e., the pandemic, to provide the necessary supports? That is where the money is going, to support real people and real businesses. Why not support that?

[Jake Stewart, Conservative, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

Madam Speaker, supporting businesses and supporting people in need are principles of the Conservative Party of Canada. The issue here is that the Liberals could not tell us where the money was coming from, and they could not tell us how much it would cost to administer. Eventually we got a number close to $200 million, and the Liberals could not tell us if that was within the $7.4 billion, or over and above it.

The Liberal Government of Canada has no concept of what it is doing to the Canadian taxpayers. Do we support businesses? We absolutely do. Do we support people in need? We absolutely do, but we will have oversight over Liberal money.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to say that my riding is the most beautiful in the world; it is paradise.

My colleague's speech was very interesting. As usual, the Conservatives talk a lot about the economic aspect.

We in the Bloc Québécois believe that seniors aged 65 and over are in a precarious economic situation at the moment. We have outlined the different variables in recent days and months. For several years now, the Bloc Québécois has been advocating for a better quality of life for seniors, particularly with regard to their purchasing power.

I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on the idea that keeping seniors in poverty does not benefit anyone economically. It results in more health care costs, and the loss of seniors' purchasing power means fewer economic spinoffs.

What does he think of our request to increase seniors' purchasing power by giving them $110—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Alexandra Mendes]

Order. I must give the hon. member for Miramichi—Grand Lake a chance to respond.

The hon. member for Miramichi—Grand Lake.

[Jake Stewart, Conservative, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

Madam Speaker, obviously, the Conservative Party of Canada will always put seniors first. We know that the Liberal Government of Canada puts nobody first but its friends, with examples such as the WE scandal, the procurement scandals and SNC-Lavalin. There is not enough time. Members can look at what the Liberals have done to seniors. Do I agree with the member? In principle I do.

My colleague opposite and I have in common that we will put seniors first, and we know the Liberal government will put its friends first, along with criminals, prisoners and terrorists.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am not sure that the Harper Conservatives were putting seniors first when they were trying to raise the retirement age in this country from 65 to 67. All those 65- and 66-year-olds who would have been deprived of benefits were not very happy.

This bill would essentially end what we would call CERB benefits by putting in a condition that there has to be a complete lockdown in a province before workers would qualify for benefits. With omicron here, the NDP continues to maintain, as we have been suggesting for a while, that workers should get support until the COVID pandemic is over.

Does my hon. colleague agree with the NDP that the condition of requiring a complete lockdown is too onerous? If so, what would he suggest as being an appropriate condition for workers affected by the pandemic to receive benefits?

[Jake Stewart, Conservative, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

Madam Speaker, first and foremost, my colleague is misinformed. Second, the one thing we can get from the NDP in the House is that, when push comes to shove, they will vote for the Canadian government and the Prime Minister every single time. They are the reason the Liberals continue to have a minority government.

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

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Calgary Shepard.

The ask in Bill C-2 is $7.4 billion, and the bill is being rushed through the House, with little time at committee to deal with another $7.4 billion expenditure. A lot of these types of situations have happened over the last couple of years, since the pandemic started. I recall that back in early 2021, there was a $52-billion spending bill, and the government wanted Parliament's approval in literally four hours, with little opportunity for oversight and little opportunity to provide any sort of transparency or accountability on that spending. Now, here with Bill C-2, we are being asked to approve $7.4 billion.

I want to focus on a couple of points today. Number one is who is left out in Bill C-2. I think it is very important that we recognize who is being left out in the bill. Second, I want to focus on the issue of accountability, transparency and oversight, which are severely lacking in the bill. The member for Carleton asked finance department officials where this money was coming from, and all we heard were crickets. He suggested that maybe there is a money tree in this country that the government is picking money from, but there was no answer. These are the types of questions we could deal with if we had more time.

I am really fortunate to come from the riding of Barrie—Innisfil, which is also known as “Terminal 4”. There are a lot of Pearson airport employees and airline, travel and tourism employees who live in my riding. Many of them have felt anxiety not just over the past 18 months in trying to pick up the pieces of their lives as the travel and tourism industry has been decimated, but also over the fact that in the last couple of days, we have seen advisories from the Government of Canada on travel. They are really curbing back some of the decisions that Canadians have made to travel over the holidays, to travel internationally to warm destinations, which typically Canadians do, or to travel to simply visit family in the United States. A lot of that is not happening, and it is having a serious impact on our travel and tourism industry, particularly the airline sector, which we know has been hard hit over the course of the last 21 months, and those in the travel adviser business, such as travel agents, many of whom have been left out over the course of the last 21 months from many of the benefits the government has provided for relief. Now they are being left behind again.

I heard the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Tourism say that they will have to apply just like everybody else, but from the discussions I have had with the Association of Canadian Independent Travel Advisors, applying simply does not work. These people did not qualify because many of them are independent travel advisers. They do not have brick-and-mortar properties and do not have storefronts. They work out of their homes. However, they provide $2.4 billion in revenue, at least they did in 2019 before the pandemic hit.

Many of the 12,000 independent travel advisers in this country, like Heather Kearns and Charlene Caldwell from my riding, did not qualify for any of the pandemic benefits. As a result, they have seen a drop, like a drop off a cliff, in their businesses. Oftentimes, they are paid for bookings when those trips happen, so members can imagine what it would be like if we booked travel and that travel got cancelled and clawed back, or if we did not get paid for anything we thought we would be booking.

It has been an awfully difficult 20 months for travel advisers, and it is going to continue that way. What Bill C-2 does not address directly is the demand from the Association of Canadian Independent Travel Advisors, which is for some sort of bridge financing to make it much easier for them to access government programs. I think that is a failure of Bill C-2.

The other thing, which we have heard about from seniors, is the GIS clawback. Many seniors are suffering right now. There is an affordability crisis going on this country, and the cost of home heating, gas, groceries and hydro is disproportionately affecting seniors not just in my riding but right across this country. Many seniors thought to apply for the CERB, and as a result of receiving it, they are now finding out there are GIS clawbacks. The government does address this, but not until May 2022, so many of those seniors will continue to suffer as a result of the affordability and “just inflation” crisis that is going on right now.

Those are a couple of what I think are serious faults in this piece of legislation.

Over the last couple of days, I have heard, as I expect many colleagues in the House have, from travel advisers and other people in the travel and tourism industry about how worried they are over the latest travel advisories, particularly at a time when Canada will be seeing its busiest period of travel. Many of those travel advisers will simply lose more income, so we should have broader supports available in Bill C-2 for the travel and tourism industry. They are not addressed in this piece of legislation, and those independent travel advisers will be severely impacted by this.

The other thing we want to see in Bill C-2, and this to me is extremely troubling, is the level of accountability and transparency that was requested by members of the Conservative Party at the finance committee, in particular for oversight. A FINTRAC report was done, and I will remind Canadians that FINTRAC stands for the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada. Its job is to monitor literally every financial transaction that happens in this country. It issued a report, and it was not until an ATIP request made by Mr. Ken Rubin, who is an Ottawa researcher, was received that the extent, scope and scale of the CERB fraud occurring in this country was known. What the Conservatives were looking for, as part of the amendments to Bill C-2 that were not included in the latest iteration of the bill, was an audit, based on the FINTRAC report, by the Auditor General, a review of some of the CRA actions that have gone on to investigate this simply to pursue the fraudsters.

I will provide some examples of what was in the FINTRAC report, and why this is so disturbing and should be disturbing to Canadians, given the scale, scope and amount of fraud. Who was involved in the fraud is also important.

This report was first published in 2020 by FINTRAC. Do members know how many investigations have been done by the Canada Revenue Agency since? It is zero in 21 months. That in and of itself is disturbing. What the Conservatives were trying to do was bring amendments to the bill so we could investigate that on behalf of Canadians, or at least allow the agencies responsible for investigations to look into the issue of fraud.

The FINTRAC report is an interesting read, and I encourage everybody to read it. I will certainly post it on some of my social media sites. There is a great summary in it, but a lot of the information is redacted. I know my time is short, so I will quickly summarize some of the challenges that went on with FINTRAC and why it was important that they be investigated. It states:

Reporting Entities indicated that criminal organizations, using stolen IDs and individuals recruited via social media, are operating "CERB scams" in certain cities....

This was in 2020, so it is in the present tense. It continues:

...prepaid cards are loaded with CERB benefits and other laundered funds.

Reporting Entities indicated that clients who do not meet the CERB eligibility requirements, or who are fully employed, still apply for, and receive CERB benefits....

A Reporting Entity noted that scammers are using stolen personal identifying information to apply online for CERB/GST refunds and arranging for funds to be deposited onto prepaid/reloadable cards.

We also heard about the gangs and criminal organizations that were using the CERB to fund the purchase of guns.

This is critically important to Canadians. The government shovelled billions of dollars out the door with no oversight, accountability or transparency. We as Conservatives think it is important to investigate this.

There is one other thing I will say. The other day at the ethics committee I asked for members to consider a motion to look into the over $600 billion in pandemic spending that has not been accounted for by the government. That motion was rejected at committee by the Liberal members.

We need to get to the bottom of this so that Canadians have confidence and trust in the government and to make sure we understand where the money is going. It is disappointing to see that amendments on accountability and transparency were not part of the amendments accepted for Bill C-2, and it is difficult to understand why.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Madam Speaker, the member talked a bit about accountability and transparency, and I want to tell him about a business in my riding that accessed the wage subsidy to lock out its boilermaker workers. It is Cessco steel. It locked out its workers, received the wage subsidy and used the wage subsidy to pay for scab labour.

We have asked the government to fix this loophole in the program time and time again. We have asked the government to review the process so this cannot happen again. However, to date, the government has ignored us.

I am wondering whether the member thinks we could have done so much better in implementing these programs. If the government had listened to the opposition when we told it about holes in some of the programs, Canadians would have been kept safer and we would have had a much better program rollout.

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

Madam Speaker, that is an interesting point, although I am not fully aware of the details of that particular case. More broadly, the government, in its haste to get this money out the door, should have been considering oversight. It should have been considering accountability and transparency as well. It should have been putting in place measures allowing investigative bodies and jurisdictions that have authority, such as the CRA and others, to investigate more quickly where this money had gone.

As I said in my speech, the CRA has not yet investigated this, despite the fact that FINTRAC has identified thousands of cases of fraud with the CERB. No charges have been laid at this point. This speaks to the will of the government to really investigate this. Is it just going to turn a bind eye to it?

We need to get to the bottom of this, and the amendments we proposed for Bill C-2 would have certainly helped in that regard.