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 Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Okay, colleagues, we will do that.

As you know, now that we have finished clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C‑355, my intention is to move to finishing the study on food price stabilization when we come back from the break week, as you instructed the other day in camera. That will be on Tuesday. We will get that report done. I will happily work with my two vice-chairs and Mr. MacGregor and Mr. Drouin to identify where you might want to go next.

We are running out of time. Assuming there are not any other urgent elements, I'm happy to go to you, Yves, very quickly, and then I'm going to hit the hammer and we're getting out of here.

[Leslyn Lewis, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Kurek. You ended on the exact note that I'm going to start on.

I want to thank my colleagues for highlighting the interconnectedness between Bill C-33 and Bill C-26. My colleagues covered the importance of parliamentary supremacy, checks and balances and the need to keep the executive branch in check. Mr. Kurek ended on the note of the importance of upholding critical infrastructure and ensuring that bills are conducive to that.

I'm quite concerned at this time about this particular bill and how it impacts on infrastructure and cybersecurity. I read a very good article on infrastructure and cybersecurity. It was by Frank Lawrence and Eric Jensen, published in the Fortinet journal.

When I read the article, what was concerning to me was that it revealed that Canada is among those G7 and G20 nations without a firm regulatory framework around cybersecurity. Canada must act to protect the nation's critical infrastructure assets, and the only way to do that is what we're doing here today—

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for giving me a reference point to begin my comments again, which start with:

Furthermore, excessive secrecy surrounding existing orders or regulations would further undermine accountability, as courts or oversight bodies wouldn’t be able to assess whether collection or sharing of information was reasonably necessary and proportionate in furtherance of those secret orders or regulations. In short, it is unclear how the proposed confidentiality and secrecy provisions align with the need for accountability measures to ensure there is not an inappropriate intrusion into s. 8 Charter rights.

27. The Charter statement notes various information sharing agreements that are contained in the legislation. However, there are broad information sharing powers in Bill C-26 that are not subject to any information sharing agreements, or limitations on how the information may be used once shared. Furthermore, the majority of the Supreme Court has previously noted (in the context of other information disclosure powers accompanying supervised warrant provisions in the Criminal Code), that information sharing agreements are not “a panacea”, given that there is “always a risk that a foreign law enforcement agency may misuse the information disclosed.”

Part 3. Towards More Secure, Transparent, Accountable Governments and Telecommunications Networks in Bill C-26

28. This Part 3 summarizes recommendations identified in Cybersecurity Will Not Thrive in Darkness, as well as supplementary comments and recommendations flowing from the Charter analysis set out in Part 2. The report, including its specific textual recommendations, is enclosed as Appendix B. Where recommendations are identified in this brief for the first time, they are numbered with letters (i.e., Recommendation 1A) to maintain the original numbering of the report.

Here are some recommendations:

I. Limiting powers to order modifications to organizations’ technical or business activities

29. To include appropriate safeguards surrounding compulsion powers under Bill C-26, Cybersecurity Will Not Thrive in Darkness makes the following recommendations:

a. Recommendation 1: Orders in Council and Ministerial Orders Must be Necessary, Proportionate, and Reasonable. Currently, the legislation allows the government to issue an order when necessary to secure the Canadian telecommunications system. However, necessity is an insufficient curb on the government’s power; Bill C-26 should impose more conditions regarding the specific circumstances under which the government can exercise its power.

b. Recommendation 2: Orders Should Include a Reference to Timelines. The draft legislation should be amended to include a requirement that telecommunications providers must implement cybersecurity demands or orders within a reasonable period of time in situations where compliance with a demand or order would require significant or material changes to the recipients’ business or technical operations.

c. Recommendation 3: Government Should Undertake Impact Assessments Prior to Issuing Orders. Government assessments of its orders should identify secondary- or tertiary impacts that would have the effect of worsening an organization’s cybersecurity practices or stance. These assessments should be presented to telecommunications providers along with any demands or orders or regulations that are based upon these assessments. Such assessments should be included in any and all proportionality analyses of government demands or orders.

d. Recommendation 4: Forbearance or Cost/Cost-Minus Clauses Should Be Inserted. The government may issue a direction that could severely alter how a telecommunications provider is able to offer a service to customers. The legislation should be amended such that telecommunications providers can seek forbearance of certain orders where implementing them would have a material impact on the providers’ economic viability. Alternatively, if an order or regulation would have a deleterious effect on a telecommunications provider’s economic viability and the government demands that the order be fulfilled regardless, the provider should be compensated on either a cost or cost-minus basis.

e. Recommendation 5: The Standards That Can Be Imposed Must Be Defined. Without a clear definition of what a “standard” in the draft legislation entails, it becomes difficult to assess what kinds of standards the government is seeking to implement and whether it is adopting them safely. The legislation should be amended such that it is clear what kinds of standards are within and outside of the scope of the legislation. The evidence and analysis in Finding You underscore that urgent action is needed to establish mandatory security and privacy standards for telecommunications providers to require security postures that address the vulnerabilities in signalling protocols that enable mobile geolocation surveillance threats.It should also be made explicit that an order or regulation compelling the adoption of particular standards cannot be used to deliberately or incidentally compromise the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of a telecommunications facility, telecommunications service, or transmission facility. The intent of this recommendation is to prevent the government from ordering or demanding that telecommunications service providers deploy or enable lawful access-related capabilities or powers in the service of “securing” infrastructure by way of adopting a standard.

II. Secrecy and Absence of Transparency or Accountability Provisions

30. As noted above, Bill C-26 has “extensive and overly onerous secrecy and confidentiality requirements.” Laws that impose meaningful limits on the freedom of expression must be balanced and reasonably justified. While some confidentiality will be appropriate to ensure that unresolved security vulnerabilities are effectively brought into control, certain powers in Bill C-26 go further than what is required to accomplish cybersecurity and national security objectives. Furthermore, certain powers proposed are unaccompanied by reasonably available measures to protect the public’s interest in access to information concerning an important area of government action. In light of identified deficits concerning excessive secrecy or the absence of accountability provisions, we reiterate the following recommendations from Cybersecurity Will Not Thrive in Darkness:

a. Recommendation 6: Orders Should Appear in The Canadian Gazette. In Bill C-26, orders are required to be published in the Canadian Gazette, but the Minister has the authority to “direct otherwise in the order.” As such, “the result is that the government might issue orders that never appear in the Canadian Gazette, and there is no requirement for the order to ever be published in a complete and non-redacted format.” The potential effect could unjustifiably restrict meaningful public debate on a matter of public importance and, as a consequence, the freedom of expression. The legislation should be amended such that orders must be published within 180 days of issuing them or within 90 days of an order being implemented, based on whichever condition is met first. The legislation should also expressly define circumstances that justify secrecy.

b. Recommendation 7: The Minister Should Be Compelled To Table Reports Pertaining to Orders and Regulations. To better safeguard the public interest, privacy, and the freedom of expression, the legislation should further be amended such that the Minister of Industry is required to annually table a listing of:

the number of orders and regulations that have been issued

the kinds of orders or regulations that have been issued

the number of telecommunications providers that have received the orders

the number of telecommunications providers that have partially complied with the orders

the number of telecommunications providers that have completely complied with the orders

a narrative discussion of the necessity, proportionality, reasonableness, and utility of the order-making power

c. Recommendation 8: Non-Disclosure Orders Should Be Time Limited. Bill C-26 also proposes gag provisions with respect to Orders in Council or Ministerial Orders, which are not limited either temporally (i.e., how long is secrecy necessary?) or substantively (i.e., what circumstances justify secrecy?). As noted at paragraph 15, non-disclosure orders affect not only the recipient of the gag order, but, also, the public's right to information that informs democratic debate. The legislation should be amended to include time constraints surrounding non-disclosure orders.

d. Recommendation 8A: The Circumstances Purporting to Justify Confidentiality in a Non-Disclosure Order Should Be Defined In The Legislation.

e. Recommendation 9: The CRTC Should Indicate When Orders Override Parts of CRTC Decisions. The legislation should be amended to, at a minimum, require that the CRTC post a public notice attached to any of its decisions where there is a contradiction between its decision and an Order in Council or Ministerial Order or regulation that has prevailed over part of a CRTC decision.

f. Recommendation 10: An Annual Report Should Include the Number of Times Government Orders or Regulations Prevail Over CRTC Decisions. The legislation should be amended to require the government to annually disclose the number of times it has issued orders or regulations that prevailed in the case of an inconsistency between a given order or regulation and a CRTC decision, as well as denote which CRTC decision(s) were affected.

g. Recommendation 11: All Regulations Under the Telecommunications Act Should Be Accessible to The Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations. The legislation should be amended such that the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations is able to obtain, assess, and render a public verdict on any regulations that are promulgated under the proposed draft reforms to the Telecommunications Act, as well as on regulations pertaining to the Telecommunications Act and that are modified pursuant to s. 18 of the Statutory Instruments Act.

III. Deficient Judicial Review Process

31. Bill C-26 contemplates that telecommunication providers may initiate judicial review proceedings in respect of orders or regulations issued under the proposed legislation. In pages 22-24 of his report, Dr. Parson identified problems that would arise if Bill C-26 is passed without amending section 15.9. As drafted, section 15.9 would permit a series of mandatory limits on open court principles, which would prevent judges from exercising judicial discretion in balancing the need for secrecy or confidentiality with the public's interest in disclosure. As noted at paragraph 15 in this submission, the Charter protects open court principles that apply in the context of judicial review, including Charter protections for the freedom of expression.

32. Cybersecurity Will Not Thrive in Darkness recommends (Recommendation 12) that Bill C-26 should explicitly enable appointment of amicus curiae or a special advocate during judicial review. The legislation should be amended such that, at the Court's pleasure, amicus curiae or a special advocate can be appointed to contest and respond to information provided by the government in support of an Order in Council, Ministerial Order, or regulation under s. 15.8 in when evidence is sufficiently sensitive to bar a telecommunications provider's counsel from hearing it.

33. We also recommend:

a. Recommendation 12A: Section 15.9 Should Be Amended To Ensure The Judge Retains Authority To Balance The Public Interest In Disclosure Against The Interest In Confidentiality: In general, mandatory limits on open courts (which prevent the judge from balancing the public interests at stake), are generally viewed as excessive infringements on section 2(b) rights. For example, even in analogous provisions of the Canada Evidence Act (permitting secrecy in judicial proceedings for matters injurious to international relations, national defence or national security or endanger the safety of any person), the judge retains the authority to determine that “the public interest in disclosure outweighs in importance the public interest in non-disclosure”. The same safety valve should be incorporated into section 15.9 of Bill C-26, in order to ensure that any limits to openness minimally impair freedom of expression.

b. Recommendation 12B: Where Summaries Are Provided Of Evidence And Information Received By The Court, Pursuant To Section 15.9(1)(C), These Summaries Must Also Be Available To The “Applicant and the Public”. As noted at paragraph 15, the open court principle protects the public’s and the media’s interest in the openness of court proceedings. Practically speaking, the public’s right of access to judicial summaries of this nature is typically accomplished by marking such summaries as an exhibit to the proceedings. The public’s right of access to exhibits is a corollary of the open court principle.

c. Recommendation 12C: The Triggering Threshold Justifying Limits On The Openness Of The Proceedings Should Not Be Higher Than That Which Is Already Contained Under Analogous Provisions Of The Canada Evidence Act. In that regard, we recommend mirroring the language from the Canada Evidence Act through the following amendment:

Section 15.9(1)(a) “…if, in the judge’s opinion, the disclosure of the evidence or other information would [changed from “could”] be injurious to international relations, national defence or national security or endanger the safety of any person”.

IV. Extensive Information Sharing Within and Beyond Canadian Agencies

34. Bill C-26 proposes to create broad information sharing powers within and beyond Canadian government agencies, without accompanying those powers with necessary limits, oversight, or accountability mechanisms. As noted at paragraph 24, the absence of reasonable procedural safeguards to review government powers that infringe upon privacy interests can render legislation invalid under section 8 of the Charter. To impose more appropriate guardrails on the proposed powers to share information within and beyond Canadian agencies, Recommendations 13-20 of Cybersecurity Will Not Thrive in Darkness are the following:

a. Recommendations 13 and 14: Relief Should Be Available If Government Mishandles Confidential, Personal, or De-Identified Information. The legislation should be amended to enable individuals and telecommunications providers to seek relief should the government or a party to whom the government has disclosed confidential, personal, or de-identified information loses control of that information, where that loss of control has material consequences for the individual, or for a telecommunication provider's business or technical operations.

b. Recommendation 15: Government Should Notify Telecommunications Providers How It Will Use Collected Information, and Which Domestic Agencies Information Will Receive The Information.

c. Recommendation 16: Information Obtained from Telecommunications Providers Should Only be Used by Government Agencies for Cybersecurity and Information Assurance Activities. Information should not be used for the purposes of signal intelligence and foreign intelligence activities, cross-department assistance unrelated to cyber-security, or active or defensive cyber operations. These restrictions should apply to all agencies.

d. Recommendations 17 and 18: Data Retention Periods Should Be Attached to Telecommunications Providers’ Data and to Foreign Disclosures of Information. The legislation should be amended to highlight that confidential information will be retained only for as long as necessary to make, amend, or revoke an order under section 15.1 or 15.2 or a regulation under paragraph 15.8(1)(a), or to verify the compliance or prevent non-compliance with such an order or regulation. Similarly, an amendment should also require that the government attach data retention and deletion clauses in agreements or memoranda of understanding that are entered into with foreign agencies. Retention periods should be communicated to the affected telecommunications providers.

e. Recommendation 19: Telecommunications Providers Should Be Explicitly Informed Which Foreign Parties Receive Their Information. Given that foreign parties can use information to launch investigations and bring non-penal charges against providers, the government should provide some notice when telecommunications providers’ information is being, or has been, shared for cybersecurity purposes.

f. Recommendation 20: Legislation Should Delimit the Conditions Wherein a Private Organization’s Information Can Be Disclosed. As drafted, section 15.7(1) appears to set an excessively low threshold for disclosing information, and could enable significant sharing of private, if not confidential, information, to address unspecified threats that are not set out in the legislation. Proposed textual amendments are found on page 30 of Cybersecurity Cannot Thrive in the Darkness (Appendix A to this brief).

V. Costs Associated with Security Compliance

35. As noted above, imposing substantial costs of compliance on telecommunications providers may have the potential to impact upon the accessibility of telecommunication services, the digital divide, and Charter-protected rights or interests. To address concerns surrounding the costs associated with security compliance, Cybersecurity Will Not Thrive in Darkness makes the following recommendations:

a. Recommendation 21: Compensation Should Be Included for Smaller Organizations. There should be a mechanism whereby smaller telecommunications providers (e.g., those with fewer than 250,000 or 500,000 subscribers or customers) that have historically been conscientious in their security arrangements can seek at least some temporary relief if they are required to undertake new, modify existing, or cease ongoing business or organizational practices as a result of a government demand or order or regulation. Such relief may be for only a portion of the costs incurred and, thus, constitute a “cost-minus” expense formula.

b. Recommendation 22: Proportionality and Equity Assessments Should Be Included in Orders or Regulations. The results of these assessments should be taken into consideration by the government prior to issuing an order or regulation, should be provided to telecommunications providers alongside associated orders or regulations, and should be included in any evidentiary packages that may be used should a telecommunications provider seek a judicial review of any given order or regulation.

c. Recommendation 23: Government Should Encourage Cybersecurity Training. The government should commit to enhancing scholarships, grants, or other incentives to encourage individuals in Canada to pursue professional cybersecurity training.

VI. Vague Drafting Language

36. The last set of recommendations pertain to ambiguities in Bill C-26. Notably, Bill C-26 does not specify the kinds of security threats that might be addressed by orders or regulations; fails to define key concepts like “interference”, “manipulation”, and “disruption”; provides the Minister with unnecessarily open-ended powers; and lacks clear guidelines as to how personally identifiable information that is obtained from telecommunications providers is to be treated. As a result, Cybersecurity Will Not Thrive in Darkness makes the following recommendations:

a. Recommendation 24: Clarity Should Exist Across Legislation. The government should clarify how the envisioned threats under the draft legislation (“including against the threat of interference, manipulation or disruption”) compare to the specific acts denoted in s. 27(2) of the CSE Act (“mischief, unauthorized use or disruption”), with the goal of explaining whether the reformed Telecommunications Act would expand, contract, or address the same classes of acts as considered in the CSE Act.

b. Recommendation 25: Explicit Definitions for “Interference,” “Manipulation,” and “Disruption” Should Be Included in the Legislation or Else Publicly Promulgated.

c. Recommendations 26 and 27: Ministerial Flexibility Should Be Delimited (i.e., remove open-ended language around powers such as “among other things”). In the event that a corresponding amendment is needed for Ministerial powers constrained to emergency circumstances, those powers should be subject to judicial review in Federal Court, including assessment for necessity, reasonableness, and proportionality. Decisions emergent from review should be published by the Federal Court.

d. Recommendation 28: The Legislation Should Make Clear That Personal Information and De-identified Information is Classified as Confidential Information. As noted above, the federal government's Charter statement appears to conclude that it is not the intent of Bill C-26 to authorize the collection and sharing of personal information. If that is the case, the legislation should expressly say so. Alternatively, personal and de-identified information should be treated as confidential.

e. Recommendation 28A: Individuals Should Be Explicitly Informed If Their Information Has Been Collected Or Shared. If the federal government does not expressly state that personal and de-identified information should not be included in collection and sharing powers, it should ensure that notice obligations are extended to individuals whose information is impacted by the collection and sharing powers under Bill C-26.

f. Recommendation 29: Prior Judicial Approval Should Be Required for the Government to Obtain Personal or De-identified Information from a Telecommunications Provider. The information is further to be used exclusively for the purposes of making, amending, or revoking an order under s. 15.1 or 15.2 or a regulation under paragraph 15.8(1)(a), or of verifying compliance or preventing noncompliance with such an order or regulation.

g. Recommendation 30: The Government Cannot Disclose Personal or De-identified Information to Foreign Organizations.

Part 4. Concluding Remarks

37. We urge this Committee to take seriously the recommendations that were identified in Cybersecurity Will Not Thrive In Darkness. We note that most of these recommendations have been either reiterated or expanded upon by the Joint Submission to this committee submitted by civil society organizations and individuals. In detailing these recommendations for this Committee's study, we also urge the Committee to consider the additional Charter interests that are engaged by Bill C-26, including equality, non-discrimination, freedom of expression, and privacy, as described in Part 2 of this Brief. We echo Dr. Parsons' view that “cybersecurity efforts through Bill C-26 should seek to build trust between the government and non-government entities, including the general public,” and that independent bodies (including the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, or National Security and Intelligence Review Agency) should be integrated into the government's assessments of the necessity, proportionality, and reasonableness of Orders in Council, Ministerial Orders, or regulations.

38. Citizen Lab's recent report, Finding You (enclosed as Appendix C), documents continuing vulnerabilities at the heart of the world's mobile communications networks. The report's findings underscore that cybersecurity has not thrived in darkness. Historical and continuing deficiencies in oversight, transparency, and accountability of network security have led to serious geolocation-related threats associated with contemporary networks. The report notes that the “failure of effective regulation, accountability, and transparency has been a boon for network-based geolocation surveillance.”

39. While Canada needs to move forward in combating threats to its telecommunications and critical infrastructure, it should not do so at the expense of democratic norms and safeguards, public transparency and accountability, or respect for the Charter and human rights. Rather, a human security and human rights approach to cybersecurity requires the recognition of the importance of accessible and inclusive cybersecurity, public accountability, and public transparency when regulating telecommunications and cybersecurity.

The rest of it is just a bit of a biography of the individuals who were involved in putting that together.

I think I've given you a fairly comprehensive.... It's a lot for the committee to think about when we want to go back to clause 124, which deals specifically with Bill C-26.

I certainly recognize that there are some who didn't want to have this conversation, but I think this provision, with Bill C-26 being such a key part of this clause.... We need to consider whether or not we should support a clause that contains linkage to a bill that clearly has so many glaring errors. So many critical civil society organizations have come forward and said this is something we need to amend. We need to make changes, because there are significant concerns about the impact on privacy, data sharing and government reporting when they collect information from individuals or other entities. I believe we should give strong consideration to voting against this particular clause. The information I provided should formulate part of that discussion, but I know other members have some concerns they want to share with the committee.

Therefore, Mr. Chair, I will turn the floor over to the next speaker. However, while I still have the floor, I would indicate that I would like you to put me at the end of the speaker list, as well. I'd like to hear what my colleagues have to say, and then have the opportunity to follow up. Could you add me to the list and perhaps give us all a reminder, as I turn the floor over, what that list looks like, to make sure I have a place at the end of it?

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Rachel Heft]

The threshold found in the proposed ministerial order power is really one of imminent harm. There has to be imminent harm to the subject matters you've listed: national security, national economic security or competition. That is a relatively high threshold, all things considered. It's not just in the interest of these subject matters, but there has to be, in fact, “imminent harm” caused by the circumstances to national security, national economic security or competition. It also has to constitute a “threat to the safety and security of persons, goods, ships or port facilities or the security of supply chains”.

There is already a relatively high threshold in the proposed provision in Bill C-33 that the minister would have to believe would be established or met by the circumstances—that is, the facts and the law—before any order could be issued.

Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform

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

Madam Speaker, I want to start by saying a big thanks to the member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith. Electoral reform is an important issue in Canada and it is important we keep it an issue on Parliament Hill. By choosing to move ahead with this motion, the member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith has caused us to be talking about it on the floor of the House and brought it to the attention of all members.

That is something the Prime Minister was hoping would not happen after he crassly broke his promise after throwing out a great set of recommendations by a special committee on parliamentary reform that was set up, notwithstanding the fact it was a majority government at that time, on a proportional basis. Opposition parties at that time came together in a way the government frankly did not expect and did find a path forward for electoral reform, one the government quickly threw in the bin.

I do not want to repeat all the arguments I have made elsewhere on the record and the member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith eloquently made today about the nature of representation in Parliament, which is surely a very important argument. She presented some facts and figures about the ways that Canadians are not adequately represented, whether it is women or different racial minorities in Canada. People living with disabilities are not adequately represented in the chamber. She also talked about some of the disillusionment with politics that is occurring and a sense by people that their vote does not really count, or that they have to vote against what they do not want instead of voting for what they do want.

Those are all themes that, as people who knock on doors and talk to people about political engagement, we are very aware of. It is not a limited phenomenon in Canada. It is one of the reasons voter engagement is going down in Canada instead of up, as people feel more alienated from the system. Surely, the Prime Minister breaking what was a very clear promise in the 2015 election was an important moment for many Canadians, and unfortunately, not a positive one. It was not one that drew people to politics. It was not one that caused people to feel that when politicians make promises and rally behind them there is the promised outcome on the other end of that.

That is why it is important now to put the emphasis on a citizens' assembly, because there is a fair amount of broken trust, a trust the Prime Minister himself is responsible for having broken. It was not just once, though. It was not just after the 2015 election and the subsequent report by the special committee and the crass kind of dismissal of that report. He did it again recently after Liberal Party members passed a resolution at their own convention calling for an examination of the electoral process and a move away from the first-past-the-post system.

The Prime Minister came out the very next day to talk about this. The convention was not even over and he was already talking about how that would not proceed and there was no consensus. It is very easy to stand up and say there is no consensus when one is the person who is getting in the way of there being a consensus.

Opposition parties, in the 42nd Parliament, showed that even between parties as disparate and which disagree even on the matter of electoral reform to the extent Conservatives, the Bloc, New Democrats and Greens sometimes do disagree on these matters, and if we each were able to pick our ideal system it probably would not be the same system, we nevertheless worked together to form a majority consensus on that committee.

Opposition parties in Canada showed very clearly where there is a will there is a way. The person who has been standing in the way of that consensus, and the only reason there is not a consensus on how to move forward, is the Prime Minister. He has refused to accept the consensus other parties have shown that they are able to come to in order to move forward on this most important issue.

Why is it that the Prime Minister says there should be no consensus? Why is it he does not agree? It is because he says that proportional representation is divisive. Let us take a look at what the first-past-the-post system has created in this place. Is it a place of unity? Is it a place of respectful discourse? No, it is a place of incredible division, where we are routinely saturated with misrepresentations like, for instance, that there is an NDP-Liberal coalition.

There is a supply and confidence agreement. It is published online. Anyone who wants the details of that can go online; it is a fully transparent document. We have shown time and time again, whether it is on a public inquiry on foreign interference or just recently on the Conservatives' own carbon tax motion, we are prepared to disagree with the government and not support it on important issues of the day. Why? It is because we are not the government. We are not a part of that government.

We are willing to work with the government on issues like dental care and increasing funding for housing, and a number of other things that are in the supply and confidence agreement, which Canadians right now who are watching can google and read online. That much is true.

Do the Conservatives say in French that there is an NDP-Liberal coalition? Not any more, because it does not suit their political interests. Instead, they say that there is a Liberal-Bloc coalition.

When members are speaking English, they often call it an NDP-Liberal coalition. When they are speaking French, they call it a Bloc-Liberal coalition. Which is it? It has to be one or the other if we are talking about a government made up of two political parties.

However, the truth is that it is neither. The Bloc is not in a coalition with the government, and we are not in a coalition with the government. We just voted with the Conservatives again on an important issue of the day: expanding the pause on the carbon tax to avoid regional division within the carbon pricing system. Is that a Conservative-NDP coalition? It is not, but I suppose we could call it that.

Thus, there is a Liberal-NDP coalition and there is a Conservative-NDP coalition. There is a Bloc-Liberal coalition, and I have seen the Bloc vote with the Conservatives; surely that is a coalition, so I guess there is a Conservative-Bloc coalition. I watched, on an important matter of democracy that had to do with abuses of confidences and prorogation in the House, the Liberals and Conservatives stand up together to maintain the power of the Prime Minister to shut this place down. That was a Liberal-Conservative coalition, I guess. We just call it a coalition any time parties happen to agree on any issue. When I voted in Parliament with the Conservatives on Bill C-2 to disallow the wage subsidy to companies that were paying dividends, perhaps that was a coalition. When I worked with the member for Sarnia—Lambton on important pension reform, and the Bloc was part of that, I suppose that was a coalition. Who is running the country? It depends I guess what vote one decides to use to evaluate who is running the country.

My point in all of this is that the first-past-the-post system sure as heck has not created a more unified body politic. It has not stopped division; in fact, it has encouraged it, because of what motivates the dishonest portrayal of the confidence and supply agreement between the NDP and Liberals, or sometimes the Bloc and the Liberals, as I said, if one is speaking in French. It depends on the day. The Conservative leader, of course, is not who he says he is. He is one guy in French and another guy in English. Never mind; there are other examples but I will not go on, because I want to bring it back to the motion.

The fact of the matter is that Conservatives are misrepresenting the truth on any day of the week, because they are chasing 40% of the vote. It is because we have an electoral system in this country where one can fight tooth and nail, and not to win the hearts and minds of the majority of Canadians, but just to get 40% or even 39% of the vote of Canadians. These are Canadians who, despite being disgusted with the state of political discourse, still show up to vote. However, if one can get 39% of those votes, and if one can use dishonesty and other misrepresentation to drive well-meaning Canadians away from polling stations, then one can get 100% of the power with just 39% of the votes.

The culprit in all of this is the Prime Minister, who refuses to accept that our voting system encourages division. It is simply untrue to say that a proportional system would sow more division and discontent than we see in our current system. We could not pack more into an electoral system in terms of division and nasty politics than we are seeing in Canadian politics today. Yes, the Conservative leader is responsible for his fair share of that, but the motion before us is one of the things that we could do structurally in order to encourage better behaviour and more collaboration between parties despite the fact that they disagree. I am proud of the fact that New Democrats have been modelling collaboration with both the Liberals and the Conservatives, depending on the issue. We want a system that encourages that, rather than one that encourages the opposite.

I think we have a lot of evidence to say that preserving the current voting system is not standing up against divisive, nasty politics. In Canada today, it is precisely the opposite, which is why we should support the motion from the member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith.

Sitting Resumed

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Salaberry—Suroît, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise and speak this evening—although I must say the hour is late, almost 9 p.m.—to join the debate on Bill C‑47.

Before I start, I would like to take a few minutes to voice my heartfelt support for residents of the north shore and Abitibi who have been fighting severe forest fires for several days now. This is a disastrous situation.

I know that the member for Manicouagan and the member for Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou are on site. They are there for their constituents and represent them well. They have been visiting emergency shelters and showing their solidarity by being actively involved with their constituents and the authorities. The teamwork has been outstanding. Our hearts go out to the people of the north shore and Abitibi.

Tonight, my colleague from Abitibi-Témiscamingue will rise to speak during the emergency debate on forest fires. He will then travel back home to be with his constituents as well, so he can offer them his full support and be there for them in these difficult times.

Of course, I also offer my condolences to the family grieving the loss of loved ones who drowned during a fishing accident in Portneuf‑sur‑Mer. This is yet another tragedy for north shore residents. My heart goes out to the family, the children's parents and those who perished.

Before talking specifically about Bill C-47, I would like to say how impressive the House's work record is. A small headline in the newspapers caught my eye last week. It said that the opposition was toxic and that nothing was getting done in the House. I found that amusing, because I was thinking that we have been working very hard and many government bills have been passed. I think it is worth listing them very quickly to demonstrate that, when it comes right down to it, if parliamentarians work together and respect all the legislative stages, they succeed in getting important bills passed.

I am only going to mention the government's bills. Since the 44th Parliament began, the two Houses have passed bills C‑2, C‑3, C‑4, C‑5, C‑6, C‑8 and C‑10, as well as Bill C‑11, the online streaming bill. My colleague from Drummond's work on this bill earned the government's praise. We worked hard to pass this bill, which is so important to Quebec and to our broadcasting artists and technicians.

We also passed bills C‑12, C‑14, C‑15, C‑16, C‑19, C‑24, C‑25, C‑28, C‑30, C‑31, C‑32, C‑36 and C‑39, which is the important act on medical assistance in dying, and bills C‑43, C‑44 and C‑46.

We are currently awaiting royal assent for Bill C‑9. Bill C‑22 will soon return to the House as well. This is an important bill on the disability benefit.

We are also examining Bill C‑13, currently in the Senate and soon expected to return to the House. Bill C‑18, on which my colleague from Drummond worked exceedingly hard, is also in the Senate. Lastly, I would mention bills C‑21, C‑29 and C‑45.

I do not know whether my colleagues agree with me, but I think that Parliament has been busy and that the government has gotten many of its bills passed by the House of Commons. Before the Liberals say that the opposition is toxic, they should remember that many of those bills were passed by the majority of members in the House.

I wanted to point that out because I was rather insulted to be told that my behaviour, as a member of the opposition, was toxic and was preventing the work of the House from moving forward. In my opinion, that is completely false. We have the government's record when it comes to getting its bills passed. The government is doing quite well in that regard.

We have now come to Bill C-47. We began this huge debate on the budget implementation bill this morning and will continue to debate it until Wednesday. It is a very large, very long bill that sets out a lot of budgetary measures that will be implemented after the bill is passed.

I have no doubt that, by the end of the sitting on June 23, the House will pass Bill C‑47 in time for the summer break.

What could this bill have included that is not in there? For three years, the Bloc Québécois and several other members in the House have been saying that there is nothing for seniors. I was saying earlier to my assistant that, in my riding of Salaberry—Suroît, we speak at every meeting about the decline in seniors' purchasing power. I am constantly being approached by seniors who tell me—

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Madam Speaker, I commend my colleague, who was also a member of the Standing Committee on Finance. I remember when we were debating Bill C‑2.

I would like to have a bit of clarity on something. Clause 510 officially recognizes Charles III as King of Canada. One of the Conservative Party's motions calls for this clause to be deleted.

Has the Conservative Party been seized with a sudden fit of good faith and common sense and become anti-monarchist?

[Karen Hogan]

If you go back to, I think, Sheila Fraser's mandate, that was about the volume that the office used to issue. Not all audits are created equal. Some are smaller and some are larger, but it was around that ballpark figure in a given year.

Then there was a call to reduce budgets across the whole government, and the office voluntarily did that. Then new mandates were added that were not funded, and we saw the number of performance audits fall to about 14 in a given year. When I requested additional funding, as Michael Ferguson had started to do back in 2017, it was with the intention of bringing our volume back up to about 25 performance audits per year.

I would just caution about counting the reports. As I say, Bill C-2 was one, but it was very large. A report can be quite small. I think it's just a benchmark and a target. As long as it ebbs around that, it is probably a good volume. Then it's about what parliamentary committees can study. The capacity you have to study all of that work has to be considered as well.

[Karen Hogan]

I think we've done 23 audits, but we need to factor in the audit for Bill C‑2.

[Karen Hogan]

The audit on specific COVID‑19 benefits was included in Bill C‑2. In accordance with the bill, we had one year to complete the work. We have ensured that we have the resources to complete the work. We are filing a report today, a few weeks before the deadline in the bill.

[Karen Hogan]

I believe the audit you're referring to is the one in Bill C-2, which was to look at post-payment work for six different COVID relief programs.

We are at the tail end of that audit and expect to release it in early December, before the deadline, which was supposed to be December 19.

The Economy

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

Mr. Speaker, I invite members of the opposition and that member in particular to vote with us the next time we have a piece of legislation in the House that is designed to improve the lives of Canadians and make their lives more affordable. The Conservatives have voted against every single measure we put on the floor of the House to make life more affordable, including Bill C-2, the Canada child benefit and making sure that OAS payments are indexed.

They are all talk, no action. On this side, we are focused on affordability for Canadians.

[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.

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Employment]

Madam Speaker, I think all of us agree that, during the pandemic, so many of our most vulnerable Canadians and constituents were severely impacted and, of course, seniors are at the top of that list in terms of the challenges that they faced. However, contrary to what my colleague is suggesting, the financial support needed by more vulnerable Canadians remains available and has been there from the start of the pandemic. From the onset of the pandemic, the Government of Canada has been implementing measures to help those who need it most.

Today I am going to focus on an additional program available to provide temporary income support for the most vulnerable in Canada. This additional support came through Bill C-2, which we tabled in December 2021 and was promptly passed, thanks in large measure to the NDP. This bill enabled us to provide benefits to Canadian workers whose employment was impacted by COVID-19 in designated lockdown regions. In light of the omicron surge, Bill C-2 proved to be very forward-looking. Among other things, the bill introduced the new Canada worker lockdown benefit. It also extended the weeks available for the Canada recovery sickness benefit and the Canada recovery caregiving benefit.

I am not going to go into too much detail, but I will briefly explain what the new Canada worker lockdown benefit is. The benefit provides income support of $300 per week through to May 7, 2022, to eligible workers who are directly affected by a public health lockdown order related to COVID-19 in their respective region. Eligible workers can apply within 60 days of the lockdown in their designated region to receive the benefit retroactive to October 24, 2021. In December 2021, in response to public health restrictions brought about by the omicron variant, we temporarily expanded the Canada worker lockdown benefit definitions so that more workers would be eligible. This temporary definition ended on March 12, 2022.

My colleague's question implies that the government is using financially vulnerable people as the basis for economic recovery and that assertion is false. The truth is that some beneficiaries received overpayments because of, for example, the Canada emergency response benefit advance payment. We are in the process of identifying those overpayments, and we will proceed with recovering them. By the way, flexible repayment options are available to prevent undue hardship for recipients.

Canadians are at the very heart of every decision this government makes and, yes, financial support is there for more vulnerable Canadians.

Economic and Fiscal Update Implementation Act, 2021

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, I cannot sing, but it was still nice to hear my colleagues from the Bloc Québécois, with whom we form the opposition in the House.

We are here today to talk about Bill C-8, of course. This is not long before we are actually going to be presented with the next budget, so I think it is very important that Canadians evaluate the past performance of the NDP-Liberal coalition before deciding to even consider approving the next budget.

I want to start by saying that my colleagues and I, here in the official opposition, have been very positive in our spirit of collaboration in the last couple of years as we have gone through the difficult time of the pandemic, but we also certainly have our limits, as individuals and groups must have their limits, in terms of what they are willing to accept.

I look at the beginning of the pandemic, when we passed, in November of 2021, Bill C-2, the first COVID relief package, worth $37 billion. There was certainly a lot of funding there. We went on to pass other legislation in the House with significant price tags, including Bill C-3, which went through the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities. That was a $7-billion price tag.

In December 2021, we also had Bill C-8, which we are debating here today, with additional spending of $71.2 billion. These are not small amounts.

I will say that we certainly have done what was necessary throughout the pandemic. Everyone in the House, certainly on this side of the House, supports Canadians and wants to see Canadians get the help they need, but it has certainly become incredibly excessive and even growing, perhaps, with this new NDP coalition. We have to be wary about the items that we are seeing in the new NDP-Liberal coalition, which will cost billions upon billions of extra dollars, potentially.

At the same time that we saw the House helping Canadians, eventually leading to overspending even beyond what was necessary, we can go further back than that to something that I brought up today in question period: the destruction of the natural resources sector. This is something that did not start two years ago. This started seven years ago, when we saw the initial election of the NDP-Liberal coalition government, which continues to play out today.

To start, we saw it in November of 2016, when the northern gateway pipeline was rejected by this coalition. We look to October 2017, when TransCanada cancelled the energy east pipeline project as a result of pressure from this coalition.

This is something that this NDP-Liberal coalition likes to do. They create impossible environments for industry, whereby industry has no other choice but to abandon these projects. Then the NDP-Liberal coalition says that it is not their fault because it was abandoned by industry, when they have made conditions impossible to complete these projects.

We cannot forget January 2017, when the Prime Minister said he wanted to phase out the oil sands. He said, “You can't make a choice between what's good for the environment and what is good for the economy.... We can't shut down the oilsands tomorrow. We need to phase them out. We need to manage the transition off of our dependence on fossil fuels.”

Right there, we see the Prime Minister had committed to his continued path of destroying the natural resource sector, with the help of the NDP-Liberal coalition. This, of course, led to April 2018, when Kinder Morgan halted the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion because of “continued actions in opposition to the project”, which was not surprising.

In May of 2018, we saw the NDP-Liberal coalition buy the Trans Mountain pipeline for $4.5 billion, but it again created impossible conditions for the project to be completed, whereby Kinder Morgan eventually abandoned the project. Once again, the government created impossible conditions for this industry.

Of course, I cannot help but mention Bill C-48, the oil tanker moratorium, and of course Bill C-69, which were both passed in June 2019 and completely destroyed that sector. We often refer to C-69 as the “no more pipelines” bill.

Therefore, I find it very rich that I hold in my hand here a Canadian Press article from March 20, 2022, which indicates that Liberals may find extra spending room in the budget created by rising oil prices. It is reported that it is a position similar to the one the Liberals found themselves in last December when a rosier economic picture gave the government $38.5 billion in extra spending room. Guess what. The NDP-Liberal government quickly ate up $28.4 billion with new expenditures. This extra funding, as a result of the natural resources sector, could be up to $5 billion, but we know that the NDP-Liberal government will eat that up in a moment before spending even more than that.

In fact, the former parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page said, “It would be a policy mistake for the government to assume that higher-than-anticipated inflation will create extra fiscal room which could be used to deficit finance longer-term programs,” many of which we are seeing in the NDP-Liberal coalition. That is very interesting.

We see that the government has a habit of spending any money we give it. It will not pay down the record debt or the record deficit. Instead, it will spend it, so why should we trust it and give it more money? Why should we not look at this upcoming budget with scrupulosity and hesitancy?

More insulting than the government's spending what it does not have, and spending it on the back of the industry that it has destroyed entirely, is that it announced yesterday that now it plans to boost oil exports 5% in an effort to ease the energy supply crisis. This was an announcement that the Minister of Natural Resources made yesterday, following the second day of meetings at the International Energy Agency's annual ministerial gathering in Paris.

He said that Canadian industry has the pipeline and production capacity to incrementally increase oil and gas exports this year by 300,000 barrels per day, comprising 200,000 barrels of oil and 100,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in natural gas. The Alberta natural resources minister had a response to that. She said:

We can increase production if we can get more infrastructure built and I think that's what was missing in the conversation.... It's really not ambitious to talk about a short term potential of 200,000 barrels when we sit on top of the third largest [oil] reserves in the world.

In addition to that, we have seen a labour shortage. The NDP-Liberal government fired hundreds of thousands of workers when it set out to destroy the natural resources sector, so this sector has been struggling with a lack of workers since last year, according to a Canadian Press story, when rebounding oil prices first spurred an uptake in drilling activity in the Canadian oil patch.

In conclusion, on this side of the House, we have tried to work with the NDP-Liberal coalition. It has shown it cannot handle funds responsibly, time and time again. Now it is turning to the industry it destroyed. Now it has decided it is time to step up given that Ukrainians and Europe are suffering, while Canadians have suffered for a long time under this coalition.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Madam Speaker, as today marks the first time in the 44th Parliament that I am exercising my privilege to rise to speak on a government bill, I want to take a brief moment to acknowledge those who have helped to get me here to stand alongside my hon. colleagues and once again represent the people of Richmond Hill.

I want to thank the volunteers who put in countless hours to spread our message, as well as friends and staff who helped mentor and guide me, and helped further connect me with the community. Of course, I would be remiss if I did not thank my wife and my two children, without whom I would not have had the emotional support to continue this work. Lastly, I thank my larger family. They are the people who have trusted me to work for their best interests: my dear constituents in Richmond Hill, whose engagement and community leadership has consistently impressed me for the past six years. Indeed, my constituents will be the beneficiaries of the bill that I will be discussing today.

I feel privileged to rise in the House to speak 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. In my riding of Richmond Hill, there are over 5,000 small businesses, with labour participation of over 64%. Richmond Hill is home to many of the workers who helped establish the foundation and growth of our economy. Many of them also constitute the membership of my community-led small business council, where I meet monthly with my constituents to hear their concerns and feedback on our government's support for their businesses.

First, let me acknowledge that Richmond Hill's small businesses have shown immeasurable resilience throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. While our federal government has played a key role to the provision of critical supports so far, we know that it is vital to continue this assistance to ensure a continued strong recovery. Our efforts in providing crucial financial assistance to, and collaboration with, the provinces and territories ensure that the health and safety of Canadians are an utmost reflection of the priorities of our government on this front.

Since the onset of COVID-19, we have implemented income support, we have issued direct payments to families and seniors, we have helped businesses keep their workers and we have helped workers keep their wages. Bill C-8 is yet another manifestation of these priorities: it serves as an extra, supplementary tool in our tool box. The bill is constituted of seven parts, each of which addresses a key and prominent issue within our national and local communities, starting with the funding for the procurement of rapid tests and investment in therapeutics, moving to the protection of our children's health and safety in school, and leading to a re-emphasis on critical and targeted support for workers and businesses that will protect their financial and physical well-being. This is a well-rounded piece of legislation with a comprehensive, but targeted, approach.

With the onset of the pandemic, businesses in my riding stepped up by introducing new measures that enabled them to continue serving Richmond Hill safely and in alignment with public health measures. They fought COVID-19 head-on by enforcing vaccine mandates and reducing capacities to encourage social distancing. Many even installed protective barriers within their spaces to maintain the safety of staff and customers alike. Now, as provincial jurisdictions begin authorizing an easing of restrictions, we know that COVID-19 and its impact still persist, which is why our federal government will continue to support businesses in their safe operation.

In December, our government's Bill C-2 received royal assent. Within this bill, we acknowledged the spread of the omicron variant and its potential for further disruption to small businesses. As such, we integrated key economic support, including the extension of the Canada recovery hiring program, the establishment of the Canada worker lockdown benefit and further extensions to the Canada recovery caregiving benefit and the Canada recovery sickness benefit. These initiatives, among others in Bill C-2, have been and will be instrumental in keeping Canadian businesses strong and resilient in their recovery from COVID-19.

The new measures in Bill C-8 would add to the line of supports that become law by the passage of Bill C-2 in numerous ways. Proper ventilation and improvement to indoor air quality are key components of the continued fight against COVID-19, but this is also a costly endeavour.

Bill C-8 would alleviate this by proposing a refundable small business air quality improvement tax credit of 25% on incurred, eligible air quality improvement expenses. This tax credit would be for eligible expenses taken between September 1, 2021, and December 31, 2022. It would make safety against COVID-19 affordable for small businesses.

That is not all that Bill C-8 proposes in order to support businesses. Our government recently announced the extension of the repayment deadline for the Canada emergency business account loan. All eligible borrowers in good standing would qualify for partial loan forgiveness. The interest-free and partially forgivable loan provided by the CEBA has helped our small businesses, nearly 900,000 of them, stay afloat during one of the biggest economic challenges for our country.

This extension would facilitate short-term economic recovery for small businesses and greater repayment flexibility for those who had received support from CEBA. Nonetheless, businesses that benefited from CEBA are still burdened by the impact of the pandemic, and our government wants to help mitigate some of the financial stress.

Repayments on or before the new deadline of December 31, 2023, would result in a loan forgiveness of up to a third of the value of the loan. This can translate to about $20,000 in loan forgiveness. Bill C-8 would take this a step further, as it would invoke a limitation period of six years for debt due under the CEBA program to ensure CEBA loan holders are provided consistent treatment regardless of where they live.

Through all of the realms in which our federal government has provided pandemic-related supports, one theme consistently emerges, which is our focus on the health and safety of Canadians. That theme is extremely apparent in Bill C-8, as we build on previous initiatives to keep students, teachers, staff and families healthy by authorizing payments for the purpose of supporting ventilation improvement projects in schools.

This expands on our government's supply of over $3 billion in direct transfer payments to the provinces and territories for testing and contact tracing through the safe restart program. In fact, $4 million of this funding directly benefited my constituency of Richmond Hill, as it ensured we had the resources to safely restart the economy. We also made significant investments in empowering the provincial and territorial health care systems to strengthen their testing capacity by purchasing and shipping over 80 million rapid tests to them at a cost of over $900 million.

As the demand for rapid tests persists, Bill C-8 seeks to allocate an additional $1.72 billion to the Minister of Health for the procurement and distribution of rapid antigen tests to provinces and territories and directly to Canadians. This initiative, combined with the funding through the safe return to class fund, demonstrates how the government is helping to keep our communities healthy and safe.

Today, I have touched on just some of the components of Bill C-8 that would deliver real results and crucial supports for Canadians. Bill C-8 would mean a safer and stronger Canada, and for my community it would mean a safer and a stronger Richmond Hill.

I strongly encourage my hon. colleagues to consider these key supports that their constituents would rely on for their financial, physical and mental health and well-being. I invite members to join me in supporting its passage through the House so we can continue having Canadians' backs.

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

Mr. Speaker, as I had said in so many words, or just about, in my speech, this bill is far more disappointing in its ambition than in its substance. One of the things that is a bit better about this bill, and something that I worked on with members of other opposition parties, the Bloc and the Conservatives, is a provision for better reporting on the money that has been allocated for rapid tests. That is something that we in the NDP thought was important because the bill would authorize a rather major expense. We have heard from the Parliamentary Budget Officer that the government has been late in filing its public accounts. Therefore, we thought that additional financial reporting was warranted, given the size of the expenditure. I also worked with members of the Conservative Party and the Bloc on Bill C-2, a bill that we opposed, to get some assurances that companies who received the new wage subsidy would not be able to pay dividends to their shareholders if the companies were recipients of the wage subsidy.

This is a place where we come to work. We negotiate with various parties to try to get done the things we promised our electors we would do.

Taxation

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

Mr. Speaker, building a fairer and more inclusive economy that works for all Canadians has been a central focus for our government since we first took office, and we appreciate the NDP's intent behind this opposition day motion. However, let us remember our record on supporting the middle class: providing more pandemic supports for Canadians and businesses with Bill C-2, stopping the Canada child benefit from going to millionaires in order to send more money to nine out of 10 families and investments to combat international tax measures. We will keep focusing on affordability.

Tourism Industry

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

Mr. Speaker, as the hon. critic knows, we invested $15 billion in the tourism and hardest-hit sector. In December, we passed Bill C-2, which put $12 billion of additional money into the tourism and hardest-hit sector. That includes half a billion dollars for the tourism relief fund. Announcements are happening from coast to coast to coast in all kinds of ridings.

My number one message to all of the tourism operators and all of the businesses is thanks. They are there. With the borders open, brighter days are ahead. We supported them during COVID. We will support them now as well.

The Economy

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

Mr. Speaker, our government remains committed to this platform initiative.

As it pertains to affordability, it is disappointing that the NDP chose to vote against providing more pandemic supports for Canadians and businesses in Bill C-2.

On raising taxes on the wealthiest 1% and lowering them for the middle class, increasing investments for the Canada Revenue Agency to combat tax evasion and increasing investments to combat international tax avoidance, we invite the opposition NDP to vote with us on Bill C-8.

Taxation

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Mr. Speaker, thanks to the Liberals, all winery, cidery, brewery and distillery owners will wake up on April 1 to an increase in their excise taxes. Most owners I have talked to have struggled along due to perpetual lockdowns. Most do not fall within Bill C-2's benefits, and any potential offset does not come close to bridging their losses. One winery owner I spoke to will have a $50,000 excise tax hit.

Unlike the finance minister, I have owned my own small business and I have had to read financial statements. Will the minister cancel the April Fool's Day excise tax increase?

Online Streaming Act

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

Madam Speaker, as a number of members have chosen to do, I also want to start my comments by reflecting on what is happening in Europe today.

The constituents I represent, and their heritage and families, are one of the reasons Winnipeg North has such great diversity. From beautiful cathedrals to communities and from industrial areas to commercial developments in Winnipeg's north end, the contributions in general that the 1.3 million people of Ukrainian heritage have made to our country are immeasurable.

What is taking place in Ukraine today strikes into the hearts of over 1.3 million people of Ukrainian heritage and millions of others. As I stood in my place previously, I indicated to the people of Ukraine and the Ukrainian community worldwide that Canada is a friend that will continue to be there in every way possible.

I appreciate the patience of members in allowing me to say that at the beginning of my comments.

In regard to Bill C-11, a lot of thoughts came through my mind as I listened to the opposition members talk about the bill. I cannot help but think about what my colleague from Kingston and the Islands was saying we could anticipate. It is almost as if he was prophesying. Already, just a couple of hours into it, we are starting to see it come true. I did not think it would be as extreme as I have seen it. In fact, I actually made a couple of quick notes on some of the things we heard from the last two Conservative speakers.

We heard that the government would tell us what to watch. These are the types of lines they were saying. According to some members of the Conservative Party, there is absolutely no need for oversight. We heard that Bill C-11 would enable censorship, that the government wants to start censoring what Canadians are watching and that members need to vote against it to protect Canadians from the government. We heard that it would be Communist-type policy if the legislation were to pass.

These were the types of things I made note of as I was listening to Conservative members. In fairness, I suspect that they were getting those speaking points from the Conservative backroom. If we go behind the curtains, behind the doors there, we will find some speaking notes. That is the Conservative spin.

Really, let us think about it. At the end of the day, what we are really talking about is modernizing the Broadcasting Act. The last time it was done in any substantial way was in 1991. I was a parliamentarian back in 1991. In fact, I can recall when I first bought a computer to use in my parliamentary capacity back in 1988, it was a Compaq and it had a 5.5” floppy disk. Imagine being in the Manitoba legislature building and wanting to get access to the Internet. First the computer had to be hooked up to a phone line, and the first noise heard was the dial tone kicking in, then a number going out. If we want to talk about speed, computers back then were really slow.

The Broadcasting Act was last changed in 1991. Just imagine what we have seen evolve in technology and in the advancements in computers since then. One has to wonder what world the Conservative Party of Canada is living in. The Conservative members' minds must still be on the protests. Where did they come up with the idea that the legislation is some sort of government conspiracy that has offended the extreme right into believing that the Government of Canada is going to be watching what they are doing on the Internet so that we can feed in our government agenda? Do they really believe that?

It has been three speakers already, and these are the types of conspiracies that they are talking about. It is completely irresponsible to try to give false information to Canadians when we are debating such an important matter.

The essence of the legislation is actually fairly straightforward and fairly simple. It is recognizing the fact that 1991 was the last time we had any significant change to the Broadcasting Act, and we are modernizing it. In other words, we are taking into particular consideration everything that has been happening with respect to the Internet. There have been massive changes, and I would like to get into a few of those.

However, before I do that, I want to encourage members of the official opposition. Although they have an interim leader, they are starting to veer fairly hard to the right, and I do not say that lightly. When we listen to their comments, we have to wonder who they are trying to appeal to. I believe that the legislation being brought forward is in general fairly well supported by industry, other stakeholders and our constituents, but instead of trying to state the facts about the legislation, the Conservatives are digging deep so that they can send out these weird emails in order to give misinformation and try to raise money. I would suggest that this is a huge disservice to the House. There is no conspiracy on this side of the House. All the Government of Canada is trying to do is modernize the Broadcasting Act by recognizing that the Internet matters and that it has really changed the lives of Canadians.

What types of things would this bill actually do?

Well, if we go back to the sixties, seventies and eighties, most people understood the importance of television and watched it considerably. Given our proximity to the United States, they recognized that there was a need to ensure that Canadian content would be there and that we would be investing in Canadian content and supporting that industry. Today, if we look around Canada, we will find in all regions of our country, no matter how remote, examples of our heritage and the arts programs that are there. We can see it in our schools, and I would suggest that all schools, either directly or indirectly, provide some form of heritage and arts programming.

When we talk about who we are as a people, it is important to recognize the francophone language, indigenous people and the very multicultural fabric of our society and how it has evolved. We have some amazingly talented people, and I often make reference, for example, to the Folklorama in the city of Winnipeg. Every summer for two weeks, we get pavilions from all around the world. It is made up primarily of local talent from the city of Winnipeg, but it goes beyond that to include rural Manitoba. Although we often get guests from outside of Canada, it is primarily local talent.

Many of those local talents are dependent on cultural funding, and they ultimately hope to maybe be on a TV sitcom or become a professional singer. That is why we brought in Canada's Broadcasting Act many years ago. Back then, we saw the value of it.

Today, we still see debate from the Conservative Party regarding CBC. One of things CBC was charged with was ensuring that Canadian content was there, real and tangible, and that it was moved forward and promoted. The programs it brought go far beyond Hockey Night in Canada. At the end of the day, we still get some Conservatives who want to see the demise of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

At the end of the day, I can appreciate that we have seen the Broadcasting Act's impact on ensuring we have developed a healthy arts community in Canada. It is a significant impact. I do not know offhand the number of millions of dollars. What I do know is that we have a powerful Quebec caucus that often talks about the importance of the cultural and arts community in the province of Quebec. I know it is there, and that it is healthy and strong, because of the many comments I have heard from my colleagues.

In the province of Ontario a couple of weeks back, I was watching a show I think was called Kim's Convenience. It was nice to see, watching that TV program, that it is set in Toronto, a city that I like a great deal. Corner Gas is set in Saskatchewan, and I know there is an immense amount of pride from the people living in Saskatchewan. It is almost as much as the Rider pride for the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

Those are all a part of our arts industry. When we think about these programs, it is not just the actors and actresses who are being employed. We are talking about an industry. When I am in downtown Winnipeg and I see these huge semis and a house being lit up or a block being lit up, I know there is a production taking place. I have been inside the Manitoba legislature, and when the legislature is out, the movie cameras will come in. They are not coming in because of the politicians. They are coming in to reflect and hopefully produce a hit, so people around the world will have the opportunity to see some of the structures in the province of Manitoba.

It takes people to make those productions possible. I know the Province of British Columbia has set up a huge industry, but it does not matter which province or territory we look at. We will find an industry there and it is an industry that people want to see grow, because, as an industry, it provides a lot of jobs and helps us identify who we are as a nation. We are different than the United States.

This is not legislation about freedom. Members could listen to the speeches from the Conservative Party and think this is all about freedom of speech, but nothing could be further from the truth. There is not one Liberal member of Parliament who does not believe in the importance of freedom of speech. In fact, it was the Liberal Party that brought in the Charter of Rights, which guarantees freedom of speech and individual rights, and we are very proud of that fact.

We are the party that created the Charter of Rights. When the Conservatives talk about freedom of speech, they are really trying to justify voting no to this legislation. There is really no reason for the Conservative Party to vote no. I have listened to them. There are those who stay away from the freedom of speech argument, and there has been no real articulation as to why this is bad legislation or why, at the very least, it could not go to committee.

If we were to ask each and every one of them, I would like to think that most recognize that, yes, Canada does have an arts community and that is a good thing. I would think the majority believe that. I would think a majority of Conservatives at least believe there is a difference between the Internet today and that back in 1991. At the end of the day, when legislation passes here at second reading, it goes to the committee stage. If there are some concerns, which I too have, there would be an opportunity to go over those concerns.

With regard to commercial social media and what it means, I am very much interested in what the CRTC has to say. The Minister of Canadian Heritage made it clear that he would like the CRTC to provide a better and clearer definition from its perspective as to what commercial social media would look like. There are some legitimate concerns.

I am not saying it is absolutely perfect. If there are ways to improve the legislation, given the response from the department and the minister, the government is open to ideas and thoughts to do that. However, if the only real argument as to why members will vote no is strictly about freedom, I really think this has more to do with the Conservative far right behaviour that we have witnessed in the last three weeks.

One would think Conservatives have all taken out memberships to support the Trump re-election campaign or something. It is amazing that the Conservative Party of Canada, at the national level, feels it has to use the word “freedom” in order to justify voting against this legislation.

Then they criticize the NDP for agreeing to send this bill to committee. Go figure. They say it is a coalition. Without the support of other opposition parties, we would not have passed Bill C-2 or Bill C-8, which were supports and relief for Canadians during the pandemic with lockdowns and purchasing masks. The Conservatives voted against that too.

They vote against everything and then tie in the word “freedom”. They need to regroup. How far right are they going to go? It is a resurgence of the Reform Party. That is what we are starting to see. It is being routed from a certain area and a certain number, and all Canadians should be concerned about that.

Members should not worry about freedom. The legislation is good. They should do the right thing, support their constituents and vote for this legislation.

Emergencies Act

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

Mr. Speaker, it is nice to be here this evening. I will be sharing my time with my hon. colleague and friend from Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle.

I have been in this House now over six years, and I have spoken with pleasure many times in this House on various topics, such as BIA legislation this week, Bill C-12, Bill C-8 or Bill C-2, but this evening I am speaking on something I think merits much pause, thought and importance for our country. We have reached a stage where the government needs to act.

I fundamentally believe in the rule of law, enforcing the rule of law and making sure all Canadians follow the rule of law. Sadly, events in recent weeks have added a significant layer of hardship to the lives of many Canadians who have already endured two years of a global pandemic.

All of us here went through an election last September. I canvassed extensively in my riding, and I know the feedback I received. I was privileged enough to return here to the House of Commons to represent the wonderful resident of Vaughan—Woodbridge, and I represent all my residents, much like we all do. However, I note that at that time there was much feedback and much frustration with what we were going through. The comments I heard were sometimes really disappointing, and that frustration has carried through. We have been in a global pandemic, but we are coming out of it.

When I think about tonight's debate and what will happen over the coming days, invoking the Emergencies Act will help authorities in getting our country back on track. Disruptions and illegal blockades at Canada's border crossings have halted international trade and supply chains, at a time when Canadian businesses are striving to take part in the ongoing global economic recovery.

On that point, I think about where we are as we come out of the pandemic and where the world is going, with increased global competition; increased economic nationalism; the rise of what I would call economic and regional blocs; the United States, its competition with China, and what is happening there; a reinvigorated Europe; and a post-Brexit U.K. We know we need to stand up for Canadian businesses, and we know we need to stand up for Canada's reputation globally to ensure we always implement and follow the rule of law. Those thoughts are in my mind.

We also know that during this time, here in Ottawa and across the country, municipal and provincial resources have been strained. The City of Ottawa, the City of Windsor and the Province of Ontario have all declared states of emergency. The situation has evolved over two weeks in Ottawa and almost a week at the Ambassador Bridge. There has been a substantial impact on our economy, and there are those who are unable to work due to the blockades and the occupation here in our nation's capital.

Many businesses in our nation's capital have been forced to close due to safety concerns. I have been here these last three weeks in Ottawa, and I have seen all the businesses along Sparks Street that are run by families and are unable to open. There are individuals who work at the Rideau Centre who are at home right now, not earning a paycheque to cover their bills and expenses for their families. This, frankly, must stop. This must come to an end, and invoking the Emergencies Act is the right thing to do.

About a week and a half ago, I was able to do a panel on CTV's Power Play, and that panel has received approximately 200,000 views on my Facebook page. I went and saw the feedback I was receiving, and I realized just how nasty and unbecoming some of those comments were. They were from the United States, Canada and different parts of the world, and I thought to myself just how frustrated people were and how the right-wing in parts of this country, and in other parts of the world, were distorting the truth, putting forward mistruths and misleading Canadians.

In my comments during those interviews, I said, very frankly, that the individuals outside have a right to peacefully protest. The individuals who are outside have a right for their voices to be heard, like all Canadians do, whether it is at the ballot box or whether it is assembling to peacefully protest.

However, what they do not have a right to do, for now 21 days, is to disrupt the lives of the citizens of this wonderful city that many of us here get to visit. That is not right. That needed to come to an end and I called for it that evening. I called for it in the subsequent opportunities I had, and I call for it again tonight. I truly hope the individuals outside hear what is being said in Parliament and decide to go home and back to their families.

They have many messages: anti-vax, anti-mandates, anti-Prime Minister, overthrowing a democratically elected government. Everyone is entitled to their views and I respect that, but they are not entitled to disrupt the lives of the citizens of this city or the lives of the citizens of any city across Canada. We are all under the rule of law and the invocation of the Emergencies Act is, in my view, justifiable.

Ottawa residents have been harassed and in some cases physically assaulted by protesters for practising basic public health measures during the pandemic, such as wearing a mask. Citizens have been targeted and called disgusting insults simply for the colour of their skin. Other alleged crimes have been even more egregious. Ottawa police are investigating the attempted arson of a downtown apartment building.

The situation persists fuelled, in part, by foreign funding. Ottawa residents are rightly frustrated by the ongoing illegal activity occurring in their city. Recently, some even took to the streets to counterprotest, physically preventing more vehicles from joining the disruptions. The chief of the Ottawa Police Service, Peter Sloly, publicly announced his resignation on February 15 in the midst of this unprecedented situation. The mayor of Ottawa, Jim Watson, publicly announced he had negotiated with members of the convoy to allow for certain residential streets to be vacated of trucks.

How would we feel if we went home to our individual ridings and to our homes, and there were vehicles parked in front of our homes with people honking at any time during the day? I do not believe that any members of the 338 of us who have the privilege of sitting in this House, who were sent here by residents, would think that would be cool. I do not think anyone would accept that. That is not acceptable in our country. That is not following the rule of law.

An integrated command centre has been established to consolidate response efforts between the Ottawa Police Service, Ontario Provincial Police and the RCMP. The Government of Canada continues to support the City of Ottawa, the Province of Ontario and all the law enforcement agencies involved as needed. RCMP resources have already been deployed. Invoking the Emergencies Act will help authorities clear downtown Ottawa streets of illegally parked trucks and help restore order and peace in affected communities.

Law enforcement agencies in Coutts, Alberta, are also facing very real and worsening threats. A tractor and semi-trailer truck attempted to ram a police vehicle. As my colleagues have noted, the Alberta RCMP also identified a criminal organization operating among protesters and arrested 13 individuals, seizing firearms, tactical vests, high-capacity magazines and ammunition in the process.

Yes, that actually happened in Canada. They had stored their weapons in trailers and were reportedly prepared to use force against the police if the police attempted to disrupt the blockade. The CBSA port of entry remains open and the supply lines continue to flow at this border crossing in Alberta.

Throughout the evolution of these protests, the Government of Canada has been closely monitoring and engaging with partners as needed. This is a clear threat that is national in scope and not just impacting one or two provinces. We recognize and sympathize with the challenges that many Canadians face as result of the situation, along with the sacrifices made by all Canadians, including the residents of my riding, Vaughan—Woodbridge, through the pandemic, which is nearly two years in. Thankfully, due to vaccinations, we are, I would say, exiting and on to sunnier days.

The federal government continues to call on everyone involved not to jeopardize public peace or endanger anyone, and not to participate purposefully in illegal events such as what we are seeing outside the House of Commons.

While the right of everyone to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly is an important part of our democracy—

Old Age Security Act

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Madam Speaker, I do not want to disappoint my dear colleague from Abitibi—Témiscamingue who is sharing his time with me, but my son is putting my husband to sleep with some lullabies. He will not be joining us.

The Bloc Québécois has always supported targeted assistance programs that respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the fact that the Liberal government failed to be proactive. We voted for Bill C-2, which was hastily passed in the fall, in order to quickly help the groups most affected by this pandemic. One of our conditions for supporting that bill was that Ottawa stop penalizing working seniors who receive the guaranteed income supplement, or GIS, by treating the Canada emergency response benefit, or CERB, as employment income for the purpose of calculating the GIS.

At the parliamentary committee, the Minister of Finance even admitted that this was a significant problem, but, like senior officials of the Canada Revenue Agency, or CRA, she stated that it was a complex issue that would be difficult to resolve because of the computer system. She nonetheless made a commitment to resolve it.

Here we are today with a bill that would finally correct this injustice being inflicted on our seniors, but that is still disappointing on several counts.

First of all, this bill will ensure that GIS recipients will not be penalized as of July 2022. This may sound good at first glance, but this substantial reduction of their cheques has been going on since July 1, 2021. These seniors have been watching their finances worsen since last summer. Our party made several proposals to the government, urging it to act quickly to ensure that the recipients affected can obtain relief as quickly as possible—as of March 2022, as my colleague from Abitibi—Témiscamingue hammered home. The government said that this was not possible for technical reasons, more specifically because of computer issues at the CRA. These so-called “computer issues” are pretty surprising for a G7 country.

Furthermore, Bill C‑12 does not include the retroactive one-time payment that the government promised in the December 2021 economic statement as compensation for the reductions that have already been made. We unfortunately do not have details on how the payment will be calculated, but we hope that it will be paid automatically and that the seniors affected will not have to do anything at all. One thing is for sure, seniors have had to wait far too long for this compensation and for their full benefits to be restored. The government only made the announcement on December 17, 2021, in a news release that stated the following:

The CERB and the CRB were designed to provide financial support to employed and self-employed Canadians directly affected by COVID-19. The Government of Canada recognizes that some GIS and Allowance recipients are now facing lower benefit payments this year because of the income they received from these pandemic benefits.

It took the government several months, way too long, to admit there had been a mistake, and now it is taking way too long to act. It is deeply disrespectful to these senior workers who have been impacted by this problem since July. The problem is affecting their financial resources and their ability to buy essentials.

What is really disappointing is that the government is once again attacking a deeply vulnerable population. Everyone knew CERB was taxable income, but when people's income is low enough to qualify for GIS, they do not pay much tax. For GIS beneficiaries who collected CERB, the problem is a simple one. For every CERB dollar they got, the federal government would claw back 50 cents from their GIS. That amounts to a federal tax rate of 50%. We can all agree that is too high.

It is important to note that no one in the federal government informed GIS recipients that their CERB income would literally melt away their GIS benefits. The Bloc Québécois sees this as a major injustice that constitutes prejudicial and appalling treatment. The FADOQ network described the situation as a tragedy. Compensation is urgently needed. The government has known this for a long time, but has not acted accordingly.

Need I remind members of the huge inflationary surge that occurred in 2021? The inflation rate in December was 4.8%, the highest it has been in over 35 years. Prices went up even more for many essential goods. Grocery prices rose by 5.7% year over year, the largest increase in a decade, while housing prices rose by 9.3% relative to December 2020.

It is the most vulnerable, especially people living on fixed incomes, such as seniors, who feel the greatest impact. It is outrageous that the government is doing this to our seniors.

Another big disappointment is that Bill C-12 will not end the inequity between GIS recipients who applied for CERB through the CRA and those who applied at Service Canada. It is important to remember that CERB was administered by the Canada Revenue Agency and Service Canada.

In certain circumstances, when pension income is reduced from one year to the next, claimants may request that their benefits be recalculated on the basis of an estimate of their income for the current calendar year. This is known as the “GIS option”.

We have criticized the fact the “GIS option” is available only to claimants who received CERB through Service Canada, not those who received it through the Canada Revenue Agency.

Indeed, only CERB benefits issued by Service Canada have been legally constituted as EI and are eligible for a “GIS option” review. CERB should be treated the same for all GIS calculating purposes, whether it was issued by Service Canada or the Canada Revenue Agency.

Pandemic-related assistance programs were brought in quickly. However, by the summer of 2021, in other words 15 months after the pandemic began, there were no more excuses for the government to keep reproducing this inconsistency to the detriment of seniors. The government should have used the bill to correct this gap, but clearly it missed the boat yet again.

In conclusion, the COVID‑19 pandemic has affected a lot of people and businesses since the beginning of 2020, but that is nothing compared to the consequences it has had on the senior population with respect to both their physical and mental health, as well as their financial health.

The government is offering a solution that can be described as too little, too late. Once again, that shows that the government is MIA when it is time to help seniors. I would remind the House that this is the same government that chose to create two classes of seniors by increasing OAS only for those 75 and up.

Let us not forget that financial insecurity does not wait for a person to turn 75 to strike. To fix the problem, the Bloc Québécois has proposed that the OAS be increased by $110 a month for all seniors 65 and up. What do the Liberals propose?

They propose a one‑time, non-recurring cheque for $500 for seniors who will be 75 or older as of June 2022. Pre-election smoke and mirrors: such is the Liberal way of governing. With that decision, the Liberals are sending a very negative message to the 970,000 pensioners in Quebec aged 65 to 74, telling them that they do not matter.

In my opinion, Bill C-12, as presented and without the changes proposed by the Bloc Québécois, demonstrates that the government is ignoring the most vulnerable seniors, and that is deeply disappointing. When we watch what this Liberal government is doing, we have the impression that it is downplaying the problem and expecting it to fix itself, which seems to be the norm recently.

We have before us a bill that does seek to fix a problematic situation, but it is flawed. We expected better from the government, after it took so long to address such a serious situation. The people who spent their lives building the society in which we live today deserve more respect from the federal government. The Bloc Québécois will always be there to stand up for seniors.

Government Business No. 7--Proceedings on Bill C-12

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

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to address a few points that the member across the way has raised and, at the same time, share some thoughts that not only I have, but all members of the House have, in regard to seniors in general. This is a very important and hot topic among my Liberal colleagues as we continue to strive and improve the lifestyle of our seniors and be there for them in a very real and tangible way. I am going to highlight a number of things we have been able to do for seniors over the last six years.

First, I will address the issue of how the Conservative Party wants to twist this issue of process and why the government is where we are today with what is a very important piece of legislation.

The legislation we have before us today is here because of the pandemic. During the pandemic, the Government of Canada, with support and encouragement from different levels of government, from Canadians in general and from MPs who were advocating, came up with a series of brand new programs that virtually started from nothing. They were a direct response to the pandemic. When we brought in programs virtually from nothing, there were, no doubt, issues that would arise. This is one of those issues, and it is an issue that today the government is addressing through legislation because of the impact it has had on our seniors. Some are trying to give the impression that the government is trying to fix a problem it created and that somehow the government has been negligent. However, this is unfortunate given the consistent supports and actions of the government for seniors since 2015 when we were first elected, let alone during the pandemic.

Yes, there have been some issues to deal with, but I suspect, after hearing comments from the opposition, that they will be supporting the legislation. I am encouraged to hear that. However, on the other hand, they are critical of the manner in which this is being processed and of not only the government but also the New Democratic Party. It is interesting that when the New Democrats do something the Conservatives do not like, they say there is a coalition between the New Democrats and the government. I think Canadians would rather see a coalition between the New Democrats and the Liberals than a coalition between the Conservatives and the Bloc. At the end of the day, the Conservatives have this default position: For anything the government wants, just say no. They know full well that they need their coalition to continue to frustrate the government's agenda. They know they can often count on the Bloc, but they get all upset if the NDP does not follow their recommendations. They get upset with the NDP because the NDP will not listen to the Conservative agenda, and then they say it is a coalition.

I can tell colleagues that the government has operated with all three opposition parties, collectively together. At times we have operated with the New Democrats separately, like today, and at times we have operated with the Bloc separately. We appreciate the mandate that we have been given by Canadians, and it is a very clear message: Canadians want us to work together.

We saw a very good example of that back in December with conversion therapy. Members will recall that the entire House recognized the importance of conversion therapy and the legislation before the House. The Conservative Party members were the ones who recommended that we do not have second reading, committee stage, report stage and third reading, the whole process. They wanted to go right to royal assent, and the bill was passed unanimously. This shows that when it is convenient for the Conservatives and they feel it is important, it is okay and debate and committees are not necessary.

It is not the first time they have done that. They even attempted to get unanimous consent when there was no unanimous consent for getting what they believe is priority legislation through the House of Commons. If they disagree, it is anti-democratic, and the government is wrong because they we want to see something. There seems to be a bit of a double standard being applied. On the one hand, the Conservative Party now says this is important legislation and recognizes it is important legislation. After all, its members are going to be voting for the legislation. I understand the Bloc is going to be voting for the legislation too. However, the Conservative-Bloc coalition does not like the manner in which we are trying to get it through. The NDP supports the legislation and has been advocating for significant changes to take place regarding the compensation issue. It also recognizes that it is important to get this legislation through as quickly as possible.

The Conservatives say that the Senate is not sitting this week. As I pointed out yesterday, let us take a look at the legislative agenda. In the number of weeks we sat, we brought in legislation dealing with the coronavirus. The number one issue of Canadians for the last two years has been taking on the coronavirus. We can talk about Bill C-2, Bill C-3, Bill C-8, Bill C-10 and now Bill C-12, which are all legislative measures that deal directly with supporting Canadians and that deal specifically with the coronavirus, whether it is through programs that have been brought in, programs we are trying to extend to continue supports or the bulk-buying of things like rapid tests, which we debated yesterday. All of this stuff is important legislation.

We all know there is a finite amount of time to deal with legislation. It is not like we can debate a bill for 10 days and have it go to committee for two weeks. If it were up to the Conservatives, for anything they disagreed with, and even for things they agreed with, they would try to speak things out in order to frustrate the government. They would want to bring bills to committee for indefinite periods of time, with no commitment to get them through.

We are still in the pandemic. There is still a sense of urgency, even this week alone. Yesterday, we debated $2 billion-plus for rapid tests to ensure the provinces, territories and businesses in our communities have the necessary tests. Today is about seniors and making sure we are there to support them by putting money in their pockets. We still have other important pieces of legislation that have to be dealt with this week, if at all possible. I am thinking of the Emergencies Act. We also still have the opposition day motion from the Bloc party that has to be dealt with, and we have two short days this week.

Are the Conservatives saying that debate on our seniors, the rapid tests or the Emergencies Act should all just be postponed by 10 days or a couple of weeks because it is convenient for the Conservative opposition party? Ten days from now they can come back and ask why it has taken the government so long.

On the issue of the Standing Orders, I approach them not just as a member of government. I spent many years in opposition. I understand the importance of accountability, transparency and the process inside the House. I hope to engage with members in regard to our Standing Orders. We need to modernize them. We have plans and processes in place to accommodate debates, committees and votes. We see that. As I cited yesterday, whether it is on emergency debates in the chamber, opposition day motions, private members' bills or private members' motions, there are all sorts of limits.

What we have seen in the past 10 years, because we have to factor in the era of former prime minister Stephen Harper, is that we need tools to ensure that government bills can also get through in a timely fashion. That is why we are debating this motion today. If members believe it is important to support our seniors by getting money in their pockets, this is a piece of legislation members urgently need to support. The timing is very important.

The Minister of Seniors has met with opposition members and has been before committee. At committee, members can ask whatever questions they want of the minister. She is not shy to answer questions. We saw that earlier today, when the motion was brought forward. The department has provided information for members. Yes, we are making modifications today in order to get the money out more quickly to support our seniors. The department is working overtime to make sure we are there for our seniors in a real and tangible way.

The process we are going into today would have been preventable if, in fact, we could have had support from all opposition parties in saying that we could pass this legislation. In an ideal situation, it would be something that would be negotiated. However, the government is not in a position in which it can hold back on getting this legislation passed. With the support of one opposition party, we were able to ensure that our seniors would get the legislation they needed through the House of Commons. For that, I am grateful.

After 30 years of being a parliamentarian, there are some issues I hold near and dear to my heart, as I know many of us do. Our seniors, and the needs of our seniors, are of utmost importance. We often talk about the fact that where we are today as a society is all due to the seniors who were there before us, and we recognize there are needs that seniors have. I have made reference to the fact that I used to be a health critic in the province of Manitoba. I understand what those needs often require.

That is why it was so important for me personally, when I came to Ottawa, to be a strong advocate for our seniors. I remember one day when I was sitting in opposition. Former prime minister Stephen Harper was in Europe, and there was an announcement that the government was going to increase the age of eligibility for collecting OAS from 65 to 67. We opposed it, and we indicated we would get rid of it.

I remember advocating for the needs of the poorest seniors in Canada and for the importance of our social programs. I use those two examples because in 2015, when we were elected to government, two of the very first initiatives we took were, first, to reduce the age of eligibility for OAS back to 65 from 67. That was one of the very first initiatives taken. The second was to increase the guaranteed income supplement.

For those who understand the issue of poverty in Canada and want to help put more money in the pockets of our seniors, just as this bill does, in 2016 we talked about increasing, and then implemented a substantial increase to, the guaranteed income supplement. That one initiative lifted hundreds of seniors in Winnipeg North alone out of poverty, and tens of thousands across the country.

We will all become seniors, if we are not already. We ensured that the contributions to CPP would be enhanced with an agreement between provinces and the federal government, something that Stephen Harper was unable to do, to ensure that there would be more retirement money for our seniors.

In terms of the pandemic itself, and how the government stepped up to provide, that is why we have the legislation today. In our urgency to support people of Canada through developing programs such as CERB, there were some mistakes. It was not perfect, but it was important to get those programs out as quickly as possible. Now we are making a modification that is necessary to ensure that our seniors would in fact be getting money that they would have normally been receiving, but other benefit programs during the pandemic ultimately caused a problem. This would fix it. That is why it is good legislation for us to support.

During the pandemic, we brought in direct support for seniors, with a special focus on the GIS, again, and the OAS. We did it directly and we did it through other programs, such as the CERB, which is more of an indirect way. Another indirect way we did it was through supporting non-profit organizations that provide support for our seniors. We are talking about hundreds of millions, going into billions, of dollars.

The Government of Canada has been there to support our seniors because it is the right thing to do. From virtually day one, in 2015, until today, we continue to bring in budgetary and legislative measures to facilitate and support our seniors, whether with long-term care, direct money into pockets, mental health or so many other areas.

Act Respecting Certain Measures Related to COVID-19

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

Mr. Speaker, because Bill C-10 is about funding rapid tests and we have been talking a lot in the House today about the pandemic, the nature of public health measures and how long they should or should not last, I want to start by recognizing how tired everybody is of the pandemic. Whether people support lifting all public health measures right now or not, we are all feeling pretty fatigued and we would like to see our way out of this. However, it is not something we can just declare an end to by fiat. If we could do that, we would have done it a long time ago.

I do not really believe anyone is happy about the restricted lives we have all had to live over the last two years. It is something we did out of necessity before the vaccine in order to protect ourselves from infection, the consequences of being infected with COVID and the severity of it from a health point of view without vaccination. Since vaccination, we have continued to live a restricted lifestyle because transmission continues and we know we are up against a virus that is adapting even as it spreads. It is one of the reasons it is so important that we get vaccines distributed to the rest of the world. Vaccinating those in Canada or in one particular country will not be enough. These variants multiply, and given how small a planet we now inhabit with the technology of travel and everything else, variants eventually come here to roost. That is why we are not out of the woods yet.

As much as the political debate has intensified in light of recent events and some provincial governments have decided to change course, we may well end up getting different advice from federal public health officials in respect of federal mandates. However, all that Dr. Tam has said so far is that it might make sense to re-evaluate them. She has not called for lifting them. I am firmly in the camp of those who believe that this debate has to be led by public health officials, who have our best interests at heart. I know they are trying to keep up to date with the emerging science of the pandemic and are giving their best recommendations for how to reduce suffering and death as a result of COVID-19. It is our job to focus on how we support people through the economic challenges that we have to face, while the health challenges are addressed by public health officials and frontline health workers who treat those who have been infected.

COVID-19 tests are going to be an important part of that and, indeed, it was not that long ago that it was the preferred solution by the Conservatives, who now seem to be of the view that we can lift all public health measures and be done with them. However, governments have tried that before, and we do not have to go outside the country to see that. We just have to look at Alberta as one example. In the summer, it decided to lift all public health measures, and it very quickly found itself in distress with high rates of hospitalization. It is pretty clear that when we take that approach, it does not work out in the way that we would all hope and wish for. We have an obligation as decision-makers to be sober-minded about these things, listen to what public health officials are saying and look at the evidence. That does not mean there is no room for debate, and the country is currently having a very lively debate. However, it does mean that we still have to let public health officials lead that discussion based on the best available evidence.

One of the important tools for public health officials, to the extent that they want to collect data about what is happening with COVID, is a testing regime, and rapid tests are important in that regard. It is difficult in Canada right now to access rapid tests. Even if we do not take the macro point of view of a public health official, there are a lot of Canadians out there who maybe want to go visit their mom and dad or granny and grandpa or a vulnerable family member who is immunocompromised. They want to take a rapid test before they head over there because they know that COVID is around and is easy to catch.

Someone may have it and not be symptomatic, so folks would like to be able to have access to tests as a best practice or an added layer of protection or reassurance in order to be able to make those visits and have some confidence that, when they visit their loved ones or their friends, they are not taking COVID-19 into their home and into their life. That is another reason, beyond the public health arguments and beyond the economic arguments in terms of testing, if we are going into a workplace, why it is important to have access to rapid tests and why this money is important.

There are some real issues around accountability with money in the Liberal government. I will spare members the list, because I certainly do not have enough time to give it all, but as the member for Vancouver Kingsway, my colleague and NDP House critic, was just highlighting, that was why when we were negotiating with the government around the swift passage of this bill, which is just a two-paragraph bill that authorizes spending for rapid tests and their distribution to the provinces, we were keen to include some better financial reporting requirements in there. That is why we got a commitment from the government to table information every six months in the House on how this money is being spent, such as how many tests and where they go. That is important. It is important, because we are talking about large sums of money. It is important, because there have been legitimate questions raised about the way the government has spent some COVID-19 funds, including around sole-source contracts. I think Canadians should get information on how this money is being spent and they should get it in a timely way.

One of the most recent reports by the Parliamentary Budget Officer highlighted the fact that the government was late in tabling its public accounts. It didn't table them until December. Normally, in the countries of most of our allies and trading partners, that happens on a six-month timetable after the end of the fiscal year, so tabling them in December was very late. I think it is true, especially when the government is spending large sums of money, that accountability and transparency become that much more important. They do not become less important because we are spending more money; they become more important as we spend more money.

That is why I am proud that the NDP has been able to negotiate some reporting requirements around this. I look forward to trying to secure a similar reporting requirement for Bill C-8, which includes another $1.72 billion in spending authority for rapid tests.

That was not the only thing negotiated around the passage of this bill. We in the House all know and Canadians listening may well know that the government made a choice to claw back the CERB benefits from working seniors who were on the guaranteed income supplement.

We were talking about it as New Democrats before the last election. We talked about it during the election. We have talked about is since the election. The government finally, just as a result of public pressure, felt an obligation to say something about it in the fall economic statement. They said money would be coming, but then it seemed it would not come until May. Then we heard maybe June. Then we heard maybe July. As part of the negotiations around swift passage of this bill, earlier today we were able to secure a commitment from the government that those seniors who have had their GIS clawed back would be paid no later than April 19, and for some of those in the most desperate need, that help may flow as early as mid-March.

That is a real concrete benefit for Canadians who were hurting. I have talked to seniors who have already been evicted from their homes. We have heard reports of seniors who have taken their lives because they had no sense of hope when they heard it would be so long until the GIS clawback was rectified. We have heard stories of seniors who have had to pass up on medication or are going hungry. This demanded swift action. It was something we were hoping to see the government do around Bill C-2, and we finally got it done.

To get Canadians access to more rapid tests and to get some of our most financially vulnerable seniors the help they need in order to stay in their homes or to be rehoused after being evicted all in one go I would say is a good day's work for a parliamentarian, and I am proud of that work.

Resuming Debate on Government Business No. 8—Proceedings on Bill C‑10

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, I would just suggest that I should get a bonus two minutes because the member interrupted my speech.

At the end of the day I really believe that if members look at the legislative agenda that the Government of Canada has put on the table over the last couple of months, they will see that there is a very strong focus on the issue of the coronavirus and bringing in legislation to support Canadians in every way.

The very first piece of legislation we brought forward was Bill C-2, which dealt with issues such as the lockdown benefits, wage subsidy benefits, rent supplements and other supports for Canadians. Members will recall that the Conservatives back then attempted to divide the bill. They were already trying to slow down the legislation. Without the support that was provided from that legislation, there would have been a great deal more hardship over Christmas and going into the new year, as a direct result of Conservative negligence and not understanding what was important.

With respect to the motion we are debating today to put into process an amount of time to ensure that this bill passes, one only needs to look at the behaviour of the official opposition members to understand why it is so important that we put in a closure motion on the legislation. If we are not prepared to do that, we will see an ongoing display of the games, whether it is what was demonstrated with Bill C-2 or, as members will recall, last week's concurrence motion. There is a finite amount of time in the House of Commons. That is one of the reasons that, in order to be able to provide the support that Canadians need, we have to bring in this motion. We want to continue to have the backs of Canadians.

[Beth Potter, President and Chief Executive Officer, Tourism Industry Association of Canada]

Thank you.

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me today.

We appreciate the opportunity to share our industry's key priorities with you once again.

You've heard me say this before: The tourism industry was the first hit, the hardest hit, and will be the last to recover from the pandemic. Just before the holidays you kindly invited me to appear before you in the context of your study of Bill C-2, so I won't reiterate the key data showing how devastated the travel economy has been by the pandemic.

The tourism industry has set a goal to rebuild back to the $105-billion economic powerhouse we were before COVID, and to do so by 2025. To do so, we have identified a number of priorities regrouped under three main themes, the first being financial supports.

We are immensely grateful for the tourism and hospitality recovery program, but there are several issues we wish to bring to your attention.

Decreasing the subsidy rates by half this March was likely based on a belief that growth in tourism would increase enough by then to compensate for the decrease. However, the emergence of omicron and attempts to curtail its spread has resulted in the recovery of tourism now being delayed by at least three months. Failing to account for this, it is very likely that the loss of employment, business closures and additional contraction of the industry will ensue. As a result, we are asking the government to maintain the program's rates at their current levels and extend the program until September 2022.

The 40% current-month revenue loss requirement to access the THRP is also an issue for many tourism operators who are still struggling to meet payroll and pay fixed operating costs. To help ensure these companies can survive to when, hopefully, tourism levels begin to increase again in the spring, we ask that the government decrease the THRP's current-month revenue loss requirement from 40% to 25%. We also highlight that, because of its design, many seasonable businesses are excluded from this program, thus the program needs to be modified to allow access for these businesses.

The tourism relief fund, the Canada emergency business account, the regional relief and recovery fund and the highly affected sectors credit availability program were all put in place as temporary programs to help support businesses that are facing critical financial challenges. There are many modifications we would propose, including debt relief, and I am happy to share those during questions.

The labour shortage has long been identified as a substantial barrier to tourism industry growth. The relationship between our recovery and the availability of workers is symbiotic. Our recovery very largely hinges on our ability to attract and maintain an adequate supply of workers across the skills spectrum. Industry leaders have begun laying the groundwork for developing a comprehensive tourism labour strategy and we have already begun exploring immigration-related issues as a starting point. Given the priority the tourism industry ascribes to this issue and its critical importance to helping rebuild the travel economy, we ask that the federal budget allocate financial resources to help the industry carry out its tourism labour strategy.

Recovery of the travel economy also rests on addressing a number of issues impacting travellers' perception. These include updating the current narrative used by government around travel, eliminating barriers to travel, and correcting the current perception consumers now have about travelling to and from Canada. We ask for a clear timeline for removing travel restrictions, including removing all testing and isolation requirements and blanket travel advisories.

Specifically in Yukon, it is critical to ensure the CBSA has enough resources to effectively accommodate the COVID requirements of travellers crossing the Alaska-Yukon border. We also need to make sure travellers have access to the Internet in remote locations so that the required ArriveCAN app can be accessed. The Skagway-Fraser border is an especially important example in this regard. A significant portion of tourism revenue for Yukon is derived from Skagway cruise ship passengers who travel to the Yukon on land tours.

To rebuild consumer confidence and brand Canada as a premiere travel destination, we are asking the government to ramp up our efforts to market and promote Canada's exceptional offerings for both business and leisure travellers to the world. In connection with this point, investment to create new initiatives that support the building of destination infrastructure and the development of new products should be planned for.

Thank you very much for your time and attention today.

COVID-19 Economic Measures

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, I agree that every single lost job is a Canadian tragedy. That is why I am so pleased that, even after the jobs lost in the necessary omicron lockdowns, Canada has recovered 101% of the jobs lost in the depth of COVID compared to just 87% in the U.S. When it comes to support for workers, I would like to say, with the deepest possible respect, that workers are getting support today because of Bill C-2, which I am sorry to say the NDP voted against.

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, it is really time for the Conservatives to pick a lane and decide what side they are on when it comes to the big issues facing our country. Half of their questions are about how there is too much government spending and how our government should not be supporting Canadian businesses. In fact, these are the Conservatives who voted against Bill C-2, which provided much-needed lockdown support. I now hear from them that there should be more support. It really is the party of flip-flop.

The Economy

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, it is the Conservatives who should be apologizing for blocking, at every possible opportunity, the measures we have put in place to support Canadians during this difficult time, for example Bill C-2, of course, and the lockdown support measures.

The Canada child benefit is providing a single mother of two children with nearly $14,000. An average family in Saskatchewan will receive nearly $1,000 from the climate action incentive. Seniors received an extra $500 through the GIS this summer.

Conservatives—

[Martin Roy, Executive Director, Festivals and Major Events Canada]

Good morning, everyone.

FAME, the Festivals and Major Events Canada coalition, and the Regroupement des événements majeurs internationaux, or REMI, represent over 500 festivals and events in Canada.

We rejoiced greatly when the 2021-2022 budget was tabled; we believed that the nightmare of COVID‑19 was about to end and that the funding would repair the damage done. Yet, one year later, we are still here asking you to intervene.

The Major Festivals and Events Support Initiative, or MFESI, this new program with a budget of up to $200 million managed by the regional economic development agencies, is not delivering on all of its promises.

The main problem is that this program took more than six months to receive its first applications, and gave its first responses to festivals and events eight months after the budget, so that this two-year program has effectively become a one-year program and only covers one series of festivals, the 2022 series. We missed the 2021 edition. I therefore implore you to recommend that the end of the program be deferred from March 31, 2023, to March 31, 2024, so as to cover the summer of 2023 and a second series of festivals.

The other problem we see is that this program is too restrictive. By choosing to limit access to festivals with annual revenues of more than $10 million, the government has restricted its accessibility to 25 Canadian festivals taking place in three or four Canadian provinces.

This choice has also resulted in a huge imbalance between the help given to large events, through MFESI, and that which is set aside for other festivals, those with revenues of less than $10 million per year. There are about a thousand of them supported by Canadian Heritage and together they can count on much less than $200 million.

The fact is that this $200 million announced for local festivals is also used for community cultural organization events, such as outdoor theatre presentations, heritage celebrations, local museums and sporting events, and much more, according to the budget itself. At the end of the day, there is very little funding left for festivals and events relative to their needs, relative to the scale of the disaster in our area and relative to their numbers too.

To distribute the money in the budget, Canadian Heritage chose to establish a Recovery Fund for Arts, Culture, Heritage and Sport Sectors, and a Reopening Fund for Heritage Organizations. Ten months after the budget, the Reopening Fund for Heritage Organizations, which is part of the Canada Arts Presentation Fund, is not available. We are talking about $25 million. Festivals still have no idea what they will be able to submit, or even when, four or five months before the start of the season, almost a year after the budget. At the rate things are going, it's predictable that they'll get answers at best just before their event, if not during their event or even after, which is unacceptable.

Last year your committee advocated supporting the arts, culture, tourism and hospitality sectors with additional financial support for their revenues until the restrictions of COVID‑19 could be safely lifted. We are counting on this. Everything needs to be extended, with pro-rated envelopes and adjustments. This includes the Reopening Fund for Heritage Organizations and the Recovery Fund for Arts, Culture, Heritage and Sport Sectors at Canadian Heritage, the Major Festivals and Events Support Initiative, and of course the measures included in Bill C‑2

We believe that if the MFESI is extended, the same could be done, that is add $100 million to the $200 million, while expanding the program to smaller events, to help not 25, but several dozen in year 3 of the program.

Last July, I sent your committee recommendations that touch on the normalcy of the sector in a brief, because at that time we were seeing a return to normalcy. I will be able to clarify my thoughts on this later. In general, even without a pandemic, it has to be said, things are not getting any better. We have members who are now receiving less support than they did in 2018, and yet in 2019 the government reinvested 25% to 40% in the two programs that assist the festivals.

In closing, I also stress the need for Economic Development Canada and the economic development agencies to create a complementary program to support festivals and events, given their contribution to tourism and the economy, especially festivals and events that are not cultural and are not supported by Canadian Heritage. This program should contribute $25 million per year. There is a whole category of festivals that are not currently supported. COVID‑19 showed us how vulnerable they are. Our friends at the Canadian Association of Fairs and Exhibitions, or CAFE, also support our request.

Thank you.

Economic and Fiscal Update Implementation Act, 2021

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to stand in the House and speak on behalf of the wonderful citizens of Calgary Midnapore.

What a week this has been. First, I would like to thank the member for Durham for his leadership over the last 18 months. I am truly grateful for the leadership he provided our party and for all of the incredible opportunities he gave me. I wish him, his wife Rebecca and his beautiful children Molly and Jack, Jack who is of course the same age as my son Edward, nothing but the very best as they go forward into the future.

I would also like to welcome our incredible new leader, the fantastic individual from the riding of Portage—Lisgar. I have such incredible respect for her as a parliamentarian who has really trenched a path forward here in the House of Commons in so many roles, as a minister in the Harper administration, of course as our House leader, as our deputy leader and now as our leader. I cannot wait for her leadership to unify us as Conservatives over the coming days.

Finally, before I get to the meat of my speech, I also want to make a special recognition to a special individual in my riding. Tyler Turner, raised in the community of Sundance, who won gold for Canada, the first gold in the World Para Snow Sports Championships. I am so very proud of this individual who was born and raised in my riding of Calgary Midnapore. I also thank my constituent and supporter Dale Bradley. It is really a special moment for Calgary Midnapore.

I am now going to get into the reason I am here today, which is to respond to the fall economic statement. The story that comes to mind is a very embarrassing story for me. I was in kindergarten at Sam Livingston School in my riding, about three blocks away from where my parents, who are now my constituents, still live. I was painting, I had on my paint smock, and I was so proud of the painting I had created. When it came time for me to remove my paint smock, unfortunately, I was wearing a dress that day that had an elastic around the shoulders. Upon removing my paint smock, my very good friend Kimberlee Crocker, who lived two blocks away from me, pointed to me and said, “Stephanie, you're in your underwear.”

I had never been more embarrassed in the first five years of my life than when, in that moment, I realized I had taken off my paint smock as well as my dress. I was standing there in my underwear. If I had something to say at that moment, and this phrase had not arrived yet in the world, I would have said, “There is nothing to see here.”

We could say that same thing about the fall economic statement. There is nothing to see here. We are coming up on 24 months of the pandemic. Unfortunately, Canadians had to retreat to their homes. In many cases, they were provided funding by the government, funding we supported, in fact funding we came back to the House time and time again to support as a result of the errors of the government. Nonetheless, we were good team players. We wanted to go along with what Canadians needed at that time, so we supported the measures that were taken.

Essentially what happened was that individuals had excess funds as a result of not being able to go out. Factory workers were not in the factories producing at the time because they were following government orders. As a result, we had too few goods and too many dollars resting among citizens. The result of that was too many dollars chasing too few goods. That got us into the situation we are in with this problem of inflation.

However, there were other problems, in addition to this fundamental problem. The government did not make it any easier for us to overcome this problem. First, there was the incredible overspending that we saw from the government, the overspending that continues to this very day. Certainly, as I stated, we were good team players. We went along with what Canadians required at the time. However, the government keeps bringing up, again and again, our refusal to go along with them on Bill C-2, another $7 billion, and quite frankly, that is because we were very concerned about the amount the government had spent at that time, as well as its continued spending.

In addition, the government did not start to take immediate economic action to account for the lack of supply. I have said often that if I had been the Prime Minister, I would have begun an immediate national inventory of agriculture, minerals, energy—everything from coast to coast to coast to start to reconsider what we have and what we need.

I actually thought that the pandemic would bring us into incredible new trading patterns around the world, with less reliance on China, but nothing of that sort was done at the time. In fact, we did not even start to begin domestic production of many things, including vaccines, in a timely manner. I am sure members will remember that we shipped our personal protective equipment overseas to China. In fact, when I was in a meeting just last week, the member for Abbotsford indicated that the mask he was wearing, which had been distributed by the House of Commons, was made in China. My point is that the government did not take action to immediately address that. Again, nothing to see here.

What do we need to do now? Well, I will tell us all, and I would like to thank Mr. David Dodge and the fall economic outlook from Bennett Jones for this information.

First of all, we need to stop spending. We need to stop spending at our current rate and seriously reconsider where our dollars go and whether every dollar that is spent is necessary to spend.

In addition, only incredible productivity in our nation will save us from this rising inflation. It is one of the only things that will save us. We need to continue to incentivize production within our nation and we need to start thinking about how we are going to do that. In fact, if the government spends money at this time, it absolutely must be for some type of productivity increase in the future, not the willy-nilly spending that we have seen up to this point, and again I say that up to this point, there is nothing to see here.

I will take a moment to talk about the labour impacts. I know this aspect was brought up in question period today by my colleague from Regina—Lewvan.

There have been 200,000 jobs lost, which is nothing to sneeze at. Throughout the recent months, the government has done nothing but try to take credit for the one million jobs it says it has created. The government did not create these jobs. This has just been a natural recovery from the pandemic; it has nothing to do with the government's positive actions, not at all.

In addition to that, the government talked about 106% employment. This is also a fallacy. This number is also inflated. The workforce has been shrinking as individuals, be it through retirement or moving somewhere else, have removed themselves from the workforce. With fewer workers but the same population, there will be higher employment, so the 106% figure is also a fallacy. There is nothing to see here.

What is most shocking is that the real impacts of the Liberals' inaction are completely lost on them. We saw in the fall session that they cannot state how much a package of bacon costs. Even the non-vegetarians cannot state what they pay for a whole chicken. A year ago I paid $10 for a whole chicken; I just paid $18 at Safeway for a whole chicken.

COVID-19 Economic Measures

[Terry Beech, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, our government is focusing on making sure that Canadians and Canadian workers have the measures they need to be supported during this pandemic crisis. It is unfortunate that with the wave of omicron, the Conservative Party voted against Bill C-2, which brought in measures that are currently supporting Canadians.

We are going to be there for Canadians. We made a promise to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes and we are going to continue doing just that.

Economic and Fiscal Update Implementation Act, 2021

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in fact, I will support it a bit because I cannot support it more than that, if that makes sense. In other words, there is room for improvement. Of course, we supported Bill C‑2. We want help to be provided, but that help has to be flexible and based on needs. We have had to pass some bills hastily, even urgently, because businesses were closing. Many filed for protection under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act. That was a very difficult time.

In the meantime, this is still going. We have been studying it for two years. What we are saying now is that this could have been part of it. One does not preclude the other. We could have thought of another smaller emergency account for businesses, something the Bloc proposed last spring. This already existed and we could always enhance it. Of course, there is help, but we also have to listen to the little guy.

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

Mr. Speaker, the member referred, if not directly then indirectly, to the importance of small businesses and how it is important that the government provide financial support. We have done that in many ways, whether through loans, wage subsidies or rent supports. It is important to recognize that the Bloc party supported Bill C-2, which supported small businesses.

Now we have Bill C-8 before the House. It provides different types of support, at least in part, through rapid tests for small businesses, which many of them will require, but also for ventilation in schools.

I would like to get a sense of the Bloc party's position with respect to Bill C-8. Does the member support this legislation?

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak today to 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.

The economic and fiscal update is a transparent report of our nation's finances, but it is about making sure that we have the tools we need to protect Canadians and keep our economy growing. It is about prudence, not austerity, and intelligent investment, not a blank cheque. It would set the stage for us to build on the supports and investments that are bolstering our economy and ensuring its growth for the long term. This means making generational investments in our recovery, such as early learning and child care, so kids in Vancouver Granville and across Canada can get the best start in life. It also means making sure parents, most often women, do not have to make the difficult decision between taking care of their kids or returning to work, adding their immense talent and skill to contribute to Canada's economy.

According to RBC, closing the women's participation rate gap would add another 1.2 million people to the labour force at a time we desperately need workers to fill the almost one million jobs across Canada. It means investing in affordable housing and in a green transition. We all know full well that a green transition of our global economy is well under way. It represents a great economic opportunity to create good, sustainable jobs across Canada for generations to come. It means supporting the technology sector, the world from which I came, so that we can be a global leader in innovation and in building the economy of the future today.

This is not just about spending, but about creating conditions for future growth, fighting climate change by building a greener economy and ensuring that indigenous communities are included in every conversation about the innovation economy. Fostering diversity and inclusion are not just the right things to do for the fabric of the country, they are also the right thing to do to build a more prosperous future. By ensuring an economy that includes all of us, we access a wider range of experiences, perspectives and skills that would increase global competitiveness, support the long-term success of Canadian communities, rural and urban, and allow us to leverage best in class Canadian expertise on the world stage.

As we emerge from these moments of uncertainty, our priority must be on economic stability and long-term growth. The choices we make now will lay the foundation for the future that we will be leaving to our kids. I am proud of the work this government has done to keep us moving forward since 2015, no matter what challenges we have faced as a country.

We have also heard a lot about the pandemic's impact on our supply chains. That is why our government announced a call for proposals under the national trade corridors fund, which has allocated up to $50 million to support projects designed to eliminate supply chain congestion.

We know good transportation infrastructure and efficient trade corridors are crucial to Canadian businesses' success in the global market.

Many predicted it would take years to rebuild our economy from the wounds of the pandemic, but look at us now. We are poised for robust growth in the months to come, growth that will help us pay down the debt and reduce the deficit. We can already see the results of the work that has been done. The December labour force survey from Statistics Canada showed that our labour market gained 55,000 jobs and our unemployment rate dropped to 5.9%, its lowest since the start of the pandemic. Thanks to the resilience of Canadians, we have well surpassed our target of recovering one million jobs.

Our plan is working. As we continue to meet the challenges of COVID-19, we are staying the course, focused on climate change, advancing reconciliation with indigenous peoples and building an economy that is stronger, fairer, more prosperous and sustainable for the long term.

Let me talk about specifics. I spent a large part of my life in the tech sector building small companies into larger ones and taking intelligent managed risks knowing that I have accountability to my employees and investors. Like many business owners and entrepreneurs, I had to think about long-term growth and building resilience for rainy days, and often we have to borrow to invest in growth. That is what this government has done for Canadians during the pandemic. Now it is time to build on the remarkable return on that investment.

This pandemic, as we all know, has not been just a rainy day. This is a once-in-a-generation black swan event, a global crisis. That is why in Bill C-8 the Canada emergency business account is such an integral and important measure. The CEBA is one of the key government supports that local businesses have relied on to weather the darkest days of this pandemic. As we all know, the CEBA provides interest-free, partially forgivable loans of up to $60,000 to small businesses to help cover their operating costs during difficult times.

Let me put that into perspective. We all know that small businesses in each of our ridings are the backbone of our economy. My constituency office is in the neighbourhood of South Granville, a vibrant neighbourhood where the streets are lined with small businesses, mom-and-pop shops, restaurants, sidewalk cafes, bookstores and gift shops, all of which build and contribute to thriving communities. They employ our neighbours. They help families pay their rent and mortgages. Without government support, many of these pillars of our community would be out of business today.

Because of the Canada emergency business account, nearly 900,000 small businesses have been able to keep their doors open. Eligible businesses have accessed nearly $49 billion in federal support, and because many small businesses continue to face pandemic-related challenges, in January of this year our government extended the repayment deadline for loans, to qualify for partial loan forgiveness, to the end of 2023. This extension will support short-term economic recovery and offer greater repayment flexibility. Bill C-8 would give folks six years to pay off their CEBA loan, ensuring that loan-holders are provided consistent and fair treatment no matter where they live.

Bill C-8 would also deliver financial support to our Canadian farmers, who never stopped working to keep food on our tables, through the challenges posed by COVID-19 and beyond. Canadian farmers, like Mickey and her family, with whom I had the pleasure of meeting yesterday, have demonstrated great resilience, stepping up to deliver despite their own challenges. They have done their part in shoring up our food supply by investing in greener, more sustainable farms. With Bill C-8, we would be giving them a well-deserved hand while continuing to help meet our national climate change objectives.

The new measures in Bill C-8 would build on the significant support for businesses that became law with the passage of Bill C-2 in December. With Bill C-2, our government made sure that the economic supports needed for businesses would still be available, if and when needed. With the reality that provincial health restrictions remain in effect in certain regions across this country, we know that businesses continue to suffer and face challenges. Applications are now open for the local lockdown program, which provides wage and rent subsidy support of up to 75% for employers who have had to reduce the capacity of their main business by at least 50%. To expand access to the program, we have temporarily lowered the revenue decline threshold for eligibility from 40% to 25% through to mid-February. For businesses facing other pandemic-related losses, support is also now available through the tourism and hospitality program and the hardest-hit business recovery program.

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 has said, this keeps people strong, it keeps families strong and it keeps businesses strong. That is what we need to keep our economy strong.

As we emerge from the pandemic, our national focus must be jobs and growth. This means attracting top international talent and more immigrants and temporary foreign workers to help Canada meet long- and short-term labour market needs.

We have heard a lot about labour shortages recently, but our Canadian economy continues to grow. We have now surpassed our target of creating one million jobs. In fact, in December, as I said, we recovered 108% of the jobs lost at the peak of the pandemic. Immigration is a big part of the engine of our economy. It helps address labour shortages and strengthens our communities. Not only are immigrants essential to Canada's economy, but they also bring fresh perspectives and connect Canada to the world. In short, immigration bolsters our economic future and connects us to the world.

The good news is that the fall economic statement allocated $85 million to help unlock access to Canada. This targeted investment will reduce processing times in key areas affected by pandemic-related delays. Ensuring Canada's immigration system is well positioned to meet Canada's economic and labour force goals is essential to our future success.

As I said earlier, our long-term strategy of prudence, not austerity, and intelligent investment, not a blank cheque, is the best path forward for success. To bring this to life, we must lean into our clear vision and use public policy levers to make Canada a global leader in technology and innovation. For Canada to lead on the global stage, we must ensure that we create the conditions necessary for that to happen. That is exactly what we are doing. When we implement new approaches, Canadian innovators, businesses and non-profits respond. Building an innovation economy means thinking about where we want to go, not where we are today. It is clear that Bill C-8 is the next essential step in keeping Canadians and our economy strong, while setting the stage for long-term economic prosperity.

The record is clear. Our government delivered unprecedented support in order to keep Canadian families and businesses solvent throughout the pandemic, and investment in our economy has continued and will continue to pay off. The plan is working. Our GDP has returned to prepandemic levels, and both Moody's and S&P have reaffirmed Canada's AAA credit rating. We came into this crisis with the lowest net debt-to-GDP ratio in the G7, and we have increased our relative advantage throughout the pandemic.

The measures contained in Bill C-8 are fundamental to supporting Canadians and Canadian businesses, and the provinces and territories, as they continue to battle COVID-19. They need the support to get through the fight and come out stronger, and they are counting on it. They are counting on us. I encourage my hon. colleagues to bear this in mind in their consideration of this essential bill, and join me in supporting its expeditious passage through the House so that Canadians can get the help they need at the time they need it.

I am thankful for this opportunity to make this case.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we only have to listen to the constant sound of horns outside of Parliament to hear the siren of Canadian voices discontent with the state of our country. Meeting to have an open conversation with truckers and now farmers is not a sign of defeat or concession, as the government tries to make it appear. It may be the only way to end this protest and send our truckers home. It is a sign of leadership. It is the job we all signed up to as parliamentarians. We are the representatives of everyone in our riding, not just those who voted for us, not just those we agree with, but everyone.

Canadians need hope. They want to know that the sacrifices they have made for their businesses, their families, their friends and their fellow Canadians by stepping up to get vaccines and boosters mean that they will see the light at the end of the tunnel. Canadians see where other nations are, and they see the hope that is coming from within them. The U.K. has lifted all restrictions from COVID-19. The Americans had full stadiums as they watched some exciting football for the AFC and the NFC championships last weekend. Go, Rams.

Canadians heard the health minister muse about seeing it coming with regard to a mandatory vaccine mandate on January 7, and when Quebec announced an anti-vax tax, the Prime Minister said that it could work. Vaccines are the best tool for fighting COVID-19, but we must use hope, not fear. The over 85% of Canadians who have made the choice on their own accord to get vaccinated want to know that there is hope and not fear as we end a pandemic and enter an endemic.

Part of that is Canada's ability to develop vaccines to contribute to COVAX and provide alternatives for the vaccine-hesitant. Quebec has two vaccine facilities that could provide these options. Both Medicago and Novavax, a plant-based vaccine and a protein-based vaccine, could provide Canadian jobs and help us meet promised COVAX goals, as we have only met a quarter of those, and help vaccinate the vaccine-hesitant here at home and the vaccine-starved across the globe. However, the government has not yet been able to see approval of these vaccines, both of which submitted applications for approval in early 2021, and Canada has yet to produce a vaccine through this pandemic.

Instead of acquiring vaccines and rapid testing in a timely manner, or approving vaccines that would help get the world vaccinated to help quell COVID-19, the government response has been consistently to dither and spend money it does not have. As our debt is now reaching a jaw-dropping $1.2 trillion, the desire to spend our way out of the pandemic has led to some far-reaching results for our country: a housing crisis that is the worst in the world; an inflation level that is the highest it has been in 30 years; and the largest increase in poverty and inequality in this country in 20 years. The government's continued fantasy of spending to end the pandemic has not worked yet, and it will not work now.

We need real solutions to solve our crises. Government needs to work on listening to Canadians, reducing red tape and allowing the Canadian economy and Canadian innovators to be unleashed as this pandemic becomes an endemic, instead of its failed spend-to-oblivian policies.

Housing is a crisis, an existential crisis that requires massive ambition and innovation to solve, working with all levels of government. Working with the housing industry, we can help lead and find solutions now. We have over 200,000 skilled workers who are in limbo with Canadian immigration, which includes skilled trades that could start building homes today.

The immigration minister acknowledged this week that the shortage of skilled workers is in flux and that he does not know when it will be open again, maybe at the end of 2022. However, we need $85 million, again more money, to fix it. Meanwhile, Canadian trades are screaming for more people to build homes and are not building them because of the lack of labour. This is an issue that could have been fixed years ago. Now with the housing crisis, it is only adding more fuel to the house fire that is our housing market.

The Conservative plan to use 15% of existing vacant government buildings for housing would have meant that trades could build units of housing today, not in the 10 years that it takes Toronto to build a high-rise now. Working with provinces in declaring a crisis on housing, we could start to massively contribute to an economic boom that would create jobs and create homes.

More important, we in the Conservative Party believe that if we are going to add more debt to the Canadian public, it should be on investments that better this country, including our health care.

For Bill C-8, our opposition is that, if we are going to spend $70 billion, then why not spend it on health care to increase health care capacity in our ICUs and our hospitals? Some of our provinces were locked down and businesses were closed completely because of the lack of staffed health care capacity in this country.

Looking at hospital beds per capita in the most developed nations in the world, Canada was behind 37, including being dead last in the G7. As a matter of fact, Japan, Korea and Germany have four to six times the number of staffed beds per capita than Canada does. In the Conservative platform, we had dedicated $60 billion, if we are talking about money, to new health care transfer spending to increase health care capacity.

If we are going to spend money, whether that be for Bill C-2 or Bill C-8, would it not be better for all Canadians if, instead of money being provide to businesses that are shut down, that money were to be used to prevent the economy from being shut down?

This bill is no different. This $70 billion needs to be spent now in health care transfers to increase both health care and ICU capacity, and to increase the number of health care professionals that we are desperately missing in our regions. We need health care professionals, nurse practitioners and nurses, and we need doctors. In Bay of Quinte, we are short over 30 doctors. That means that residents who need primary health care are going to the ER. Canada is short over 70,000 nurses.

Spending $70 billion more of taxpayer dollars without that money being invested into health care first and foremost is a travesty because it will add to the growing inflation that is plaguing this country. It would also not take care of the problems causing more lockdowns in the country and more angry Canadians desperately looking for the government to listen to them.

If we are going to fix inflation and the housing crisis, if we are going to listen to angry Canadians, we must fix those issues that are plaguing them, and we need to fix them now. Spending more money we do not have would fuel our already mammoth inflation, our housing crisis and the growing inequality in Canada without fixing the problems that would help Canadians get through the dark tunnel of this pandemic into the light that would be living with an endemic and getting lives back to normal.

The Economy

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, it is a bit rich to hear the Conservatives presume to offer any kind of economic advice. After all, let us remember that just before Christmas, when the omicron wave was rising, it was the Conservatives who voted against Bill C-2 and the lockdown support that is providing such essential support for Canadian workers and small businesses across the country, supports the CFIB says are essential.

I am so glad the Conservatives failed in their economic effort.

Economic and Fiscal Update Implementation Act, 2021

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Madam Speaker, referring to Dr. Suzuki, I was merely referencing someone who was an expert on protecting wildlife and conservation, and who recognizes the tremendous, priceless value of Ojibway national urban park as the basis for why we need to do what we can to preserve it.

On the issue of child care, affordability is a priority for the government. That is why, in the previous budget and in Bill C-2, we provided over $100 billion for things such as housing affordability, child care, supporting businesses and supporting workers. These are all investments that, unfortunately, my colleague and the Conservative Party voted against.

Affordability is something we are committed to. It is a priority and we believe that $10-a-day child care will help so many families. It will lift so many families out of poverty, will help so many moms and dads return to the labour market, and will also provide children with the start they need in their lives.

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

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my great colleague, the member for Kelowna—Lake Country.

I am very proud to speak on Bill C-8 today on behalf of my constituents of Miramichi—Grand Lake. This is yet another bill that enacts tax and spending by the Liberal government.

Unlike some of the members opposite, I understand that if the Speaker delivers a ruling, as an hon. member in this House I am going to be respectful to the Speaker of the House. I am going to tell a little story about what happened just before Christmas before I speak directly to the bill, but the story goes to the spirit of the bill.

The last bill I spoke on was Bill C-2. After about 25 or 30 hours of the finance committee discussing the bill, the Minister of Finance for our country said it would cost $7.4 billion in spending. Then the House adjourned and the committee adjourned, and the minister then visited the Senate committee. It was at that moment that I and other members of the committee and members of the House ascertained that it would not cost $7.4 billion, but $11.9 billion. The members of that team and the other members from the Bloc and the NDP who sat on that committee for somewhere close to 30 hours discussing a $7.4-billion bill realized that the Christmas present left by the Liberal government to the consumers and taxpayers of our country was not a $7.4-billion bill but an $11.9-billion bill. In that, we learned a valuable lesson not only about committees but about what happens when meetings adjourn. The sitting government changed the numbers and informed us and the rest of the country that there was, oops, a little typo and that it was actually going to cost Canadians over $4 billion more.

I wanted to make that point today, because I think it is pertinent to this argument.

It is very important to me to be able to rise in these hallowed halls and bring a truly Canadian perspective, a rural perspective and a Miramichi—Grand Lake perspective.

The current state of affairs is in complete disarray. I am here to talk about more proposed spending of public funds. The traditional tax-and-spend Liberal government is whaling away on the public's money, spending it like there is no tomorrow. This is money that Canadians have no choice but to hand over. It is money they trusted us with. Elected officials are trusted to be the voice and good stewards of the public trust and public spending, but with the government members on the other side of the floor, we have seen money being spent and the bill is going down the road. I have four children and I cannot imagine them paying for the sins of today when not one of them is over the age of 15 right now.

When I read Bill C-8, I saw fuel prices rising to almost $2 a litre in Miramichi—Grand Lake. Bacon is rising more than 20%. Beef is rising more than 20% year over year in Alberta. Bread in Quebec is up 10%. Natural gas bills are up 30% in Ontario alone. We cannot keep printing money and expect different results, because that is inflation. In this House it has become known as Justinflation, but it is all inflation. Do members know who pays for it? It is the taxpayers of this country.

I am going to bring to the attention of the House something I find most interesting. I hope the people in Miramichi—Grand Lake and around the country are listening, because I think it is worth listening to.

We have the third-largest oil reserves in the country in Alberta. The government is fixated on what it used to call ozone layer problems, then global warming and then climate change. Now it is calling it a climate crisis, because if there is a crisis, it has to act now. As a result, what it is doing is destroying the very foundation of the Canadian economy.

I am also going to tell the House what it is doing for the taxpayers of this country. We are buying oil that emits more pollution, because it contains higher levels of carbons and has caused a 300% increase of shipments on the sea. We are bringing in oil from the Middle East, from warlord nations, and the Canadian people are paying three times as much for that oil, even though we have oil in our own country. People would have a cheaper oil bill if the Liberals had the common sense to see the error of their ways. There is nothing wrong with having environmental standards. We have the best standards in the world in our energy sector. We are the gold standard of the energy sector, but the Liberals' climate crisis agenda is costing people too much money.

We are here every day and talk about affordability, the cost of living, inflation and the housing balloon. We talk about this every day, but nothing is getting better for Canadians because they continue to pay for the sins of the current government. Let us think about this. We are bringing oil from halfway across the world that emits more carbon than our own. Then we put it on a ship and there are 300% increases to ship it because of the state of the world right now. We are still doing that in this country when we have our own oil. It is shameful that the Prime Minister would do that and try to continue with this global elitist agenda that does not completely apply to the Canadian people. It is dangerous.

Does this make us independent? Does it help create jobs? Do we get any additional revenue? The answer to every one of those questions is no. What do we get? We get a bill: a more expensive bill, a more unaffordable bill, a bill that the Canadian people and the people in my constituency of Miramichi—Grand Lake are having a hard time paying for.

I am going to let the House in on a little secret that those in Miramichi—Grand Lake are well aware of: Canadians are sick and tired of picking up the tab for the government. On one side of the Liberals' mouth, they say we are at a prepandemic level when it comes to jobs and the economy, but on the other side of that same mouth, they are adding $70 billion of new inflationary spending. I do not have to tell members what that is going to do to the pockets of Canadians and to young families who are priced out of the housing market. They cannot get a home. I am 43 years old. People who are 10 or 12 years younger than me who are trying desperately to get a home are having a really hard time getting into new houses because the cost is so high that it is not affordable. Since the start of the pandemic, Canadians have been misled on where the money is coming from and where the money is going.

Last week, during my time on the Standing Committee on Finance, I had the opportunity to ask key questions. Canadians wanted to know from the Parliamentary Budget Officer whether the government, which spent over half a trillion dollars in brand new spending, has misled the rest of us. That was the question. Roughly one-third of this new spending had nothing to do with COVID. It is $178 billion of new printed money for non-COVID-related expenditures.

The Conservatives are opposed to Bill C-8. The economic and fiscal update adds $70 billion of new inflationary fuel right to the fire. The delay in the government's release of its audited financial statements has undermined parliamentarians' ability to meaningfully scrutinize proposed government spending. The Parliamentary Budget Officer report shows that since the start of the pandemic, the government has spent or plans to spend $541.9 billion in new measures, almost one-third of which is not COVID-related.

We are not in support of Bill C-8 because it is another classic tax-and-spend Liberal measure that will only cripple Canadians with more debt and more inflation. The Canadian public is worth more than that, and that is why the Conservative Party of Canada is going to protect their interests regarding public money.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, how quickly time flies.

I can understand why the Conservative opposition is really concerned about the legislation. The Conservatives have this predetermined position that says, if the Liberals introduce legislation they have to vote against it. They are fairly good at filibustering and voting against government legislation. The problem is that this legislation is direct support for battling the coronavirus. Canadians need this type of legislation, just like they needed Bill C-2. There is this sense that the Conservatives should be voting for the legislation, so they are having a tough time with it.

Getting back to the legislation itself, it provides $1.7 billion with respect to rapid testing. That was enough money to provide for the demand for testing in workplaces and other places for the last months of December, going into January and possibly into February. We have more legislation that is coming up. Members could get a little advance on it in Bill C-10, where there is an additional $2 billion that would be invested so that the federal government could continue to support provinces, territories and indigenous communities, making sure they have things such as rapid testing.

As much as the Conservatives like to criticize the government, they find that when it comes to the issue of rapid testing it really is no issue for the federal government when it comes to criticism. We circulated all the rapid testing well in advance. The vast majority of the provinces had only used a small percentage before it became a much larger issue. When it became a larger issue, whether it was the Minister of Public Services and Procurement or the Minister of Health, supported by the Minister of Finance and the Liberal caucus, we ensured that the monies and resources would be there to support these ministers in acquiring the tests that were necessary.

That is what Bill C-8 does. It is there to support initiatives that are really making a difference. Yesterday we heard a great deal about seniors and, in particular, I was listening to the member for Elmwood—Transcona. The NDP have a focus on trying to give a false impression about seniors and the government's approach to seniors. I thought I would make it very clear, in terms of what it is and how it is this government has been supporting seniors, not only during the pandemic but prepandemic.

When I think of seniors and the six or seven years we have now been in government, one of the very first initiatives we did was that we rolled back the age for collecting OAS. The former prime minister set it at 67. We rolled it back to 65. That was one of the first initiatives. Another initiative was that we increased the guaranteed annual supplement. That had a really positive impact, not only in Winnipeg North where hundreds of seniors were lifted out of poverty by that one particular initiative, but thousands of seniors were lifted out of poverty because of a tangible increase back in the first couple of years of being in government through the guaranteed income supplement program.

In the 2019 campaign, we talked about giving seniors aged 75 and over a 10% increase in the OAS. Even though some inside this chamber criticized us about giving that increase, I rooted it back to the fact that we made a campaign promise. It was a part of our platform in the 2019 election, and we began the process of putting it into place before the last election took place just a number of months ago. We are a government that has materialized that substantial increase supporting seniors collecting OAS at age 75 and over.

We provided one-time payments to support our seniors during the pandemic, whether they were collecting OAS, GIS or both. We supported many organizations in our communities that focused attention on providing support services for our seniors. An example of that would be the New Horizons program. Members can canvass their own constituencies, and they will find that there were enhancements of services being provided through the non-profit organizations for our seniors in particular.

I remember a phone call I had with the United Way in Winnipeg a while back, and they were talking about the importance of the 211 line and the importance it could play for our seniors. Through a federal grant, the support of the United Way and its incredible organizing and organization, we now have what many other jurisdictions have: an active 211 phone number. Seven days a week and 24 hours a day, someone can call 211 and they will have access to a person who can assist them and a whole myriad of government resources and programs, not only from the national level but from other levels, whether they are provincial, municipal or non-profits.

This is a support program that will especially help our seniors. When I talk about the types of actions the government has taken during the pandemic, it is an excellent example when we hear of non-profit organizations, because we often hear about the direct payments, whether they are to seniors or people with disabilities through the CERB program or workers and employers. We often hear about that, but there are many other ways we indirectly supported seniors, and whether it is the New Horizons program or supporting organizations like United Way in Winnipeg, seniors were better served.

It does not mean we cannot do better. Within our caucus we continue to advocate for our seniors every day. I hope I can say this: We even have a strong active seniors caucus that is there to ensure that the interests of seniors are constantly being looked at. When the member for Elmwood—Transcona, for example, made reference to the fact that we are not there for long-term care and other issues such as those I just finished highlighting, I suggest to the member that he only take a look at the province of Manitoba. I would compare our record at the national level with the main years I was in opposition in the Manitoba legislature, where I saw the provincial NDP government reduce corporate income tax and do nothing, or very little, to support long-term care.

Today we have a very progressive and aggressive agenda for being there in a very real and tangible way for our seniors. That is why members of the Liberal caucus advocate continuously for long-term care facilities and how we can look at some sort of a standardization of care, what those expectations are and what kind of role the federal government can play.

We see many, including me, who continue to advocate for provinces and territories to take advantage of a federal government that has a very strong interest in a national pharmacare program. Close to two years ago, it was incorporated into a throne speech, looking for provinces and territories that would be interested. The point is that as a government we are very much interested and want to be there for our seniors.

In terms of other initiatives that we have been able to accomplish since the last election, some of the things did not get the type of attention they should have. I would like to draw attention to them, because they are indirectly tied to the legislation. These are things like the $15 minimum wage for federally regulated occupations. Hopefully, the provinces will see the leadership we are providing. It would be nice to see provincial jurisdictions take up that particular initiative.

The child care initiative shows the degree to which parliamentarians at the federal and provincial levels, working together, can produce tangible results. The pandemic demonstrated that, and so has the child care initiative. We are a government that has brought through a national child care program, albeit one province still needs to sign on.

Those are the types of issues that we have been able to deal with during a pandemic, while supporting Canadians in every region of the country, working with Canadians in different levels of government and dealing with issues of reconciliation, environment, housing, all the important issues for our constituents.

As I said in the past, and will say in future, my first priority is the constituents of Winnipeg North. Rest assured that the issues they raise in Winnipeg North are the issues I will be bringing to the floor of the House of Commons.

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

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise and speak to yet another positive piece of legislation that I would encourage all members of the House to support. It is going to be interesting. I am expecting that members from the New Democrats, the Bloc and the Green Party will support this piece of legislation. I hope I am not being too presumptuous in the hope that we will get that support.

The interesting dynamic at play here is going to be how the Conservative Party will vote on this legislation. One member says “against”, and that is my fear because if they wanted to listen to what their constituents had to say, I believe they would be supportive of this legislation. I will not be surprised if they vote against it. After all, the very first piece of legislation that we introduced after the election was Bill C-2, which ensured that we could continue the ongoing supports for Canadians from every region of our country. Think of small businesses and the lockdowns, and the financial support that the Government of Canada continued to provide so that we would be in a better position to get out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I was surprised that the Conservative Party of Canada voted against that legislation. I do not understand it. On one hand they talk about the importance of small businesses, but when it came down to supporting small businesses, they voted against Bill C-2. Here is a bill in which they could redeem themselves, at least in part, by getting behind this legislation and supporting it. I listened to a couple of speeches this morning and they highlight some issues—

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate)]

Madam Speaker, I note that you were in the Chair when I last spoke to this, so I am sure you are sitting on the edge of your seat waiting to hear the remaining 16 minutes of my speech on this topic. I appreciate that some of my colleagues from across the way are as well.

When we last spoke to this, I was referencing the fact that I was concerned about some of the discussion I was hearing from across the way, in terms of the government's motive for this particular piece of legislation. Last evening I mentioned that the member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon claimed the objective of helping provinces and territories with proof of vaccinations across the country was somehow just a political tool, because provinces and territories were able to handle that on their own.

My issue with that was that for some reason there always has to be a hyperpartisan and political reason that is put forward by the other side as opposed to, perhaps, just the willingness to want to help Canadians and to move forward with things. My tone yesterday evening certainly was one of skepticism based on the fact that this narrative continually comes from across the way.

The member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon specifically said that this was just a tool to help fuel the partisan fire. As a matter of fact, earlier in those comments he talked about the fact that this pandemic was now moving into an endemic stage and that we have to come to terms with it. I thought it was an interesting discussion. He was basically accusing the government of insisting on driving fear by bringing forward motions or bills such as this one in an attempt to somehow distract from the fact that this was moving into another stage of the pandemic.

I agree with the member that this pandemic, which we have been going through for two years, is reaching the endemic stage, and I agree totally with his comments that we will be dealing with COVID-19 for quite a while. There is not going to be that one defining moment when COVID-19 suddenly does not exist anymore. We are not going to wake up one morning and just have no more coronavirus. That is not going to happen.

The member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan spoke at length about the evolution of science. He would know that the evolution of science, and the scientists out there, are pretty much saying the same thing: that this coronavirus will enter an endemic state and it will be here with us for some time to come.

The member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon was saying that this bill was somehow trying to fuel the anti-freedom movement that he proclaims the government is hell-bent on. When I look through the various parts of this bill, I look at it completely differently. If members look at the actual items that are proposed in this piece of legislation, they could not help but see that this is about preparing for the future, endemic part of coronavirus.

We talk about procuring millions of rapid tests for provinces, territories and indigenous communities. Millions have already been supplied, but we are talking about ensuring that millions more can get throughout the country so that the capacity is there to continue rapid testing. We know that, because coronavirus will be with us for quite some time, this is going to be one way that we can try to control it as best we can: by finding out who has it and when, and helping to protect people and prevent the spread of it.

Another item in this is protecting children by making sure that we invest in proper ventilation in schools throughout the country. Elementary schools and high schools would primarily be in those categories. Again, going back to the science that the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan is so willing to tout, we know that the science is saying that this airborne virus moves very quickly through indoor settings that do not have proper ventilation.

As we prepare for coronavirus to be with us for a while, why would we not start investing in having the proper ventilation systems in schools? Why would we not help provinces with that? Everybody knows we do not have jurisdiction over education, but we can certainly help from a resource perspective in providing the necessary tools to make schools safer. This is not about fearmongering. This is about providing resources right now so that for years and months to come, however long this takes, schools would be in a better position to fight coronavirus.

We talk about support for workers in businesses through changes to CEBA and EI, which are taking care of people when they have to take time off work. My wife and I have a small business in Kingston. We have an employee who had to take two days off as he waited for the results of his COVID-19 test. Because the province of Ontario has three days of sick pay, businesses across the province of Ontario can help support those employees who have to be off work through the WSIB program. At least in Ontario, that is the case.

This is about continuing to extend supports to businesses and individuals throughout the country as they are faced with dealing with COVID-19 and what is being requested of them. The truth is that there are a lot of employees out there who would probably say they feel fine. They know they just had a test, but they want to go back to work and not take the time off. We know that from a societal perspective it is better to hold them back a couple of days until they get that result before reintroducing them into their workplace. Should we not, from a societal perspective, be supporting those individuals and those businesses?

There are also a host of tax credits that would benefit Canadians, including the ventilation improvement tax credit for small business, which is, again, about helping the ventilation of stores and businesses. I think of my riding of Kingston and the Islands and the downtown area. It is one of the first downtown areas in the country. It is very old, with a lot of limestone buildings that are two hundred or three hundred years old. They do not have the best ventilation systems. These are businesses that have had to close for weeks and months on end at times. Rather than forcing them through some kind of regulation to increase ventilation, why not provide support so they have a fighting chance of surviving? There has also been talk about teachers and farmers and increasing supports to them.

We know that the bill would implement a national tax on value-added, non-resident, non-Canadian owned residential real estate in Canada. I would like to talk about this one for a moment because the member for Calgary Centre's speech yesterday would lead one to believe that this tax was going to be applied to everybody.

I said that he knows this is about non-residents and non-Canadians who have vacant land or unused residential buildings. He agreed to that and concurred with me that I was right, but he then went on to say it is just another added level of taxation and that we are adding another level to the municipal taxes that exist through property taxes, as if to conflate the two issues. He was acknowledging that I was right in my claim and that he had not provided all the information, but then he tried to conflate the two issues again in the same answer to that same question.

This is one of the things that makes me the most frustrated when I have to debate with Conservatives in this place. Time and time again, I find it is as though, as long as we can slightly alter the narrative, even if it does not resemble the truth, it is okay as long as it results in political gain. Therefore, I come back to the member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon when he, in his discourse, was doing exactly what I am now indicating that I am concerned about.

The problem with this is that the member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon did not come here, look at the elements of the bill, and say that we forgot seasonal tourism and that is one thing he is concerned about. He could have said that he has a number of seasonal tourism operators who may have made a lot of money in the summer, but who are not now, and as a result, they are missing some of the benefits from Bill C-2, and he would really like this bill to dig into that in committee.

My point is that, rather than coming forward and highlighting some of the challenges in the bill and identifying the problems so we can make it better, which is the role of the opposition, he came forward and tried to suggest that this is more about antifreedom and continuing to take freedoms away from people.

The member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan started his speech yesterday by promising that he was only going to talk about freedoms and the lack thereof for a couple of minutes and then get back to the bill, which he never did. Members can go back and review Hansard. He spoke the whole 10 minutes on those two issues, and I sat here in silence.

I thought of getting up on a point of order for relevance at one point, but I know that really never results in anything, and of course, I do not want to take away from the member's ability to run a 10-minute continuous clip on Facebook later, or on his podcast—

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is a real pleasure to be speaking tonight.

I am going to be totally honest with members: Given all the great and wild events of today, I am going to be doing this speech extemporaneously and sharing my time with the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan.

When I look at the bill, Bill C-8, in the context of where we are today in Canada, I have a number of key concerns. Bill C-8 in itself is not necessarily the worst bill, but the concern is the context in which we are looking at Bill C-8 in Parliament today and all of the other things happening in our great nation. Part 1 of Bill C-8 talks about changes to the Income Tax Act, including a new refundable tax credit for improving air quality. Paragraph (b) of the summary talks about a new tax credit for travellers in the north. Paragraph (c) talks about the school supplies tax credit and increasing it from 15% to 25%. Paragraph (d) of the summary talks about a new refundable tax credit in the backstop provinces for fuel on farms. All of these measures, in and of themselves, are not bad measures.

Furthermore, the Underused Housing Tax Act taxing foreign buyers in this country is not necessarily the worst thing. The part 3 six-year limitation on the loans offered to small businesses in Canada to be in line with the student loan program in Canada is not the worst measure. Part 4 would authorize payments to be made from the consolidated revenue fund to put new ventilation systems into schools. Part 5 has more money for vaccine- and COVID-19-related initiatives. Part 6 has $1.72 billion from the consolidated revenue fund for COVID tests. We have actually been asking for those for a long time, and even despite all the money being spent, the government still has not brought them to us. Part 7 has changes to the Employment Insurance Act.

All of these measures in this omnibus bill, in and of themselves, are not bad clauses. The problem, however, relates to accountability, transparency and the state of the nation. This afternoon, right before I ran into the House, realizing I was going to be speaking soon, I had a quick call with the Parliamentary Budget Officer. He reminded me of the report he provided to Parliament and all Canadians on the state of the government's finances and what they have reported to Parliament.

Since the election, this is only the fifth sitting week we have had, and I remember very clearly that the public accounts were finally tabled on December 14. This was six to seven months later than normal. In fact, the PBO report outlined that Canada was an outlier compared to other developed nations with respect to financial transparency and accountability. What is even more egregious is that two days later, with barely enough time for us to receive a copy of the audited reports from the various government departments to look at what the consequences of that spending were and how it actually materialized on line-item reporting in government departments across the country, the government tabled Bill C-2.

In Bill C-2, the government requested billions upon billions of dollars more, which it asked Parliament to approve to address the economy and COVID-19. How can the government ask parliamentarians to indebt future generations with more and more spending when we have not even had the time to review what was already tabled? We have to be more serious about how we are treating taxpayer dollars in the House.

I can also remember that in the early days of this pandemic, this official opposition was there for Canadians. We stood with the government to approve the necessary expenditures to make sure people did not lose their homes and that they were going to be able to be paid when the lockdowns came, but we are past that time now. The country has changed a lot in two years. In fact, on January 21, when I was driving into Vancouver for some meetings and I was listening to Dr. Bonnie Henry on CKNW, I was shocked by what I heard, because just the week prior, my son's day care had been shut, and my wife and I had to juggle a two-year-old at home while we were both trying to do our jobs. The school had to shut down because they were following provincial health orders. We agreed that was a great thing and that we needed to follow those protocols to keep children safe. No one is disputing that.

However, the week afterward, when I got out of the car after listening to CKNW and Dr. Bonnie Henry, I actually walked away feeling that things were going to improve, that the omicron virus was not having such a bad impact on people as Dr. Henry had originally anticipated. She said it was time to start changing our thinking about how we treated this virus and its mutations. She actually said we need to start looking at COVID-19 and omicron in the context of other respiratory illnesses like influenza and other viruses.

More recently, Dr. Kieran Moore from Ontario said, “We have let our lives be controlled for the last two years in a significant amount of fear and now we are going to have to change some of that thinking.” He goes to say that we cannot eliminate this threat and that we have to learn to live with it.

Here in Parliament, Dr. Theresa Tam recently said, “I think many experts believe that the so-called herd immunity may not be achievable with this virus because it undergoes constant evolution, so what you're looking at is this endemic state where people will get reinfected over time as immunity wanes”.

I interpret that to say, in other words, that versions of COVID-19 are going to be with us for a while and that our public health officers are telling us to start re-evaluating both the lockdowns and the way, perhaps, that governments are spending money in conjunction with this terrible virus that has had such a negative impact on all of our lives.

How does this relate back to Bill C-8? It starts back in our ridings.

On Saturday, I went by my office to pick up some materials before flying into Ottawa on Sunday, and there was a protest at my office. There were a lot of angry people who were not pleased with me. I went and spoke with them. A lot of people were ticked off that I spoke with them. The people at the protest were also ticked off at me because I am pro-vaccine.

I said to them they have a right to be angry right now. For two years, we have been living in a state of fear. For two years, our lives have been upended. For two years, my young children have not known anything different. My two-year-old son only knows the world of COVID.

What I am encouraging the government to do today is to start looking past COVID-19 now and to stop telling Canadians we still have to live with the same type of fear that we perhaps had to live with two years ago. We can start to move on.

That is why I am so displeased that the government is not giving Parliament and the House enough time to review expenditures, to understand the consequences of how we are spending money, the consequences of what lockdowns are doing and the consequences of not changing our thinking very rapidly.

People are angry. We see that outside today. People are looking for hope, and what all Canadians are looking for is a bit more transparency and a bit more openness from the Liberal government in terms of getting our lives back.

[Martin Roy, Chief Executive Officer, Festivals and Major Events, Regroupement des événements majeurs internationaux]

Good afternoon, everyone.

Festivals and Major Events Canada (FAME) and the Regroupement des événements majeurs internationaux (RÉMI) represent over 500 festivals and events in Canada.

We were very pleased with the last budget. At that time, we thought that the COVID‑19 nightmare was about to come to an end and financial assistance would help repair the damage done. And yet, a year later, here we are again asking you to support our sector.

The major festivals and events support initiative, the new program with a budget of $200 million administered by the regional economic development agencies, is not entirely living up to what it promised to be. I can say more about that, if you wish, during our discussion.

As for Canadian Heritage, what I can say is there has been a great deal of confusion on the ground, and that remains the case to this day.

Many of our members also feel there have been injustices, or at least a lack of understanding. The government chose to support major festivals with the initiative I just mentioned. They chose to entrust Canadian Heritage with everything else, that is, all events generating under $10 million in annual revenue. That means that the initiative supports about 25 events and over 1,000 events are supported by Canadian Heritage, where together they can rely on much less than $200 million. That's pretty lopsided, to say the least. It is not that the initiative has too much money. There is quite simply not enough money at Canadian Heritage.

The fact is, the $200 million announced for local festivals also goes to funding cultural community events and organizations, such as open-air theatre, heritage celebrations, local museums, amateur sporting events and much more according to the budget itself. At the end of the day, very little is left over for festivals and events relative to their needs, relative to the scale of the disaster in our sector and relative to the number of festivals and events.

To distribute the money in the budget, Canadian Heritage chose to set up a recovery fund and a reopening fund. Ten months after the budget was tabled, the reopening fund included in the Canada arts presentation fund remains inaccessible. We're talking about $25 million. Festivals still have no idea what they will be able to submit or when, and it's four or five months from the beginning of the season, and almost a year after the budget. At best, they will not get any answers until right before their event, if not during or even after the event, given the slow pace. That's unacceptable.

No one saw omicron coming. Will we really be able to resume our events this summer and go back to our business models? In any case, FAME believes that assistance programs should be extended, with prorated budgets. That's our general philosophy and it applies to the funds I just mentioned, all those emanating from Bill C‑2 and all the rest.

This past July, I issued recommendations to the Standing Committee on Finance for getting the sector back on track, because we were hoping to start doing that. I will repeat those recommendations for you. In a nutshell, the idea would be to settle funding for festivals and events once and for all by making the 2019 investments permanent, renewing them every year for now until 2024 and, yes, once again injecting a little money.

In general, and this was true even before the COVID‑19 pandemic, I have to say things are not going that well in our sector. Although in 2019 the government reinvested 25 to 40% in the two programs benefiting festivals, some of our members are calling us these days to say they are getting less than they were in 2018.

I also feel that Economic Development Canada and the agencies need to launch a complementary program to support events and festivals based on their contribution to tourism and the economy, specifically Canadian festivals and events that are not cultural in nature and do not receive support from Canadian Heritage. That would require $25 million a year. An entire category of festivals that get no support right now are suffering. The COVID‑19 pandemic has reminded us just how vulnerable they are. Our friends at the Canadian Association of Fairs and Exhibitions (CAFE) also support our request.

In closing, I would add that festivals and events saw their own-source revenue drop 89% in the first year of the crisis. Government assistance is their lifeline to retaining their teams and mounting shows during this difficult period. If we want to have festivals and events after this pandemic, we must act now, listen to what's being said on the ground and hear from associations like FAME. People are in distress. I will end with a few words an organizer wrote to me a few days ago: “I'm discouraged, frustrated and at the end of my rope.”

Thank you.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for her devotion to the tourism sector and to this particular issue.

Let me just say, to begin, that through the pandemic we invested $15 billion in Canadians and businesses in the tourism sector. The critical importance of Bill C-2 legislation passing in December was also extremely important, with $7.2 billion and an extra $4.5 billion in reserve in case we needed it and, as we have seen, we do. These supports are critical because, the member is right, the tourism sector has been walloped. It is important that we work together.

To the member's particular issue, it is an active conversation. There is a jurisdictional issue with the federal government and provincial and territorial governments, so I am happy to get back to the hon. colleague on this particular question.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

moved that 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, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to begin debate on Bill C-8, the economic and fiscal update implementation act, 2021. This legislation builds on important measures enacted by another critical piece of legislation that received royal assent in December, Bill C-2, which provided certainty to Canadians and Canadian businesses in the face of the omicron variant. Like this legislation, Bill C-2 provided essential and targeted support for businesses still deeply affected by the pandemic, including the Canadian tourism sector, which continues to be one of the most affected by COVID-19.

As the Minister of Tourism, I want to reiterate that our government remains fully committed to supporting the tourism industry in these difficult times so that it can quickly get back on its feet and prosper.

I have said it many times and I will continue to say that Canada's economy will not fully recover until our tourism sector recovers. With the support measures that our government has put in place since the beginning of the pandemic, I am convinced that local tourism businesses will recover from the pandemic and be better positioned to take advantage of the opportunities afforded to them in the future.

I can say, as the Associate Minister of Finance and as the member of Parliament for Edmonton Centre, that first and foremost, the best way to keep our economy growing and supporting businesses like those in our vibrant tourism sector is to win the fight against COVID-19. Bill C-8 includes numerous measures to win this fight, including $1.7 billion to help the provinces and territories secure the additional rapid tests they need to keep Canadians safe and healthy, including through expanded school and workplace testing programs.

Access to rapid tests is important for breaking transmission chains, especially for new variants like omicron, and for protecting the people around us.

Our government also supports the provinces' and territories' proof of vaccination initiatives.

Developing a standard proof of vaccination would help fully vaccinated Canadians to travel within the country and internationally, and despite the claims of some it is an essential tool in protecting Canadians. Let me be very clear. Vaccine mandates and proof of vaccination credentials protect our families, our workplaces and our communities. They give us the confidence to have a meal at a restaurant, attend community events with families and friends, and even begin to travel safely in accordance with public health guidelines. This is also another way we can support Canada’s tourism sector, by making Canadians and international visitors feel safe as they explore all that our country has to offer.

As I always note, safety comes first, then travel. Bill C-8 would support these efforts by allocating the necessary funds, some $300 million, for the government to reimburse provinces’ and territories’ expenditures related to the implementation of their proof-of-vaccination programs.

Bill C-8 will also support Canadians' health and safety by investing in adequate ventilation, which can help reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission. Whether it is ventilation for a classroom, shopping centre or meeting room, the government is determined to help businesses and organizations improve the ventilation and air quality in their buildings and to ensure Canadians' safety.

Many small businesses are on the front lines in the fight against the pandemic. They want to do their part and make indoor air cleaner, but investing in equipment to improve ventilation can be very expensive.

That is why in Bill C-8 we are proposing a refundable tax credit for small businesses of 25% of qualifying expenses made to improve air quality.

Our government also wants to improve ventilation in schools and protect students, teachers, school staff and parents from outbreaks. To do this, Bill C-8 proposes to provide up to an additional $100 million to provinces and territories through the existing safe return to class fund. This funding would continue the support provided through the original $2-billion safe return to class fund by specifically targeting ventilation-related improvement projects.

As the pandemic continues to affect the lives of Canadians, our government knows that elevated inflation, a global phenomenon driven by the unprecedented challenge of reopening the world’s economy, is leading Canadians to worry about the cost of living. We understand concerns about the higher cost of living, and we are taking action.

Our government has cut taxes for the middle class while raising them on the top 1%. Building on the success of the 2015 and 2019 middle-class tax cuts that lowered taxes for millions of Canadians, our government has put more money in the pockets of Canadians. We are also working with provinces and territories to implement a Canada-wide $10-a-day community-based early learning and child care system that would make life more affordable for families and create new jobs. Because of this measure, the fee reductions in the coming year would help deliver thousands of dollars in tax savings to families with young children.

Additionally, on December 13, our government and the Bank of Canada announced that we would renew the 2% inflation target for another five-year period, which will keep the bank focused on delivering low, stable and predictable inflation in Canada.

As members can see, our government is already working hard to address the cost of living and to make life more affordable for Canadians.

For example, we are proposing to increase support for teachers, whether they are teaching from home or in the classroom. Teachers have shown, throughout the pandemic and always, that they are willing to go above and beyond to make sure their students receive a high-quality education.

To support teachers and early childhood educators in Canada, we are proposing, with Bill C-8, to expand and enrich the eligible educator school supply tax credit.

Bill C-8 also seeks to address housing affordability through the implementation of a national, annual 1% tax on the value of non-resident, non-Canadian-owned residential real estate in Canada that is considered to be vacant or underused, something our government announced as part of budget 2021 to crack down on underused housing. The bill would introduce a new act, the underused housing tax act, to ensure that non-resident, non-Canadian owners, particularly those who use Canada as a place to passively store their wealth in housing, pay their fair share of Canadian tax, beginning in the 2022 calendar year.

Be assured that this is not a new capital gains tax, as the opposition continues to misinform Canadians. It is a sound fiscal measure to address housing affordability. Bill C-8 would also support Canadians living in northern parts of the country by expanding access to the travel component of the northern residents deductions to give all northerners, including those who do not receive travel assistance from their employers, the option to claim up to $1,200 in eligible travel expenses.

Our government has put in place unprecedented relief measures throughout the pandemic to support Canadian families and businesses. As we continue to provide targeted support to those who need it the most, we will be there for Canadians.

As we emerge from COVID-19, we are focusing on jobs and growth, and we are making life more affordable so that Canadians can prosper. Bill C-8 would continue to support our government's work on this important issue.

Colleagues, we are all tired. We are all eager for this pandemic and the challenges it has created to become things of the past. Our message to Canadians from coast to coast to coast is clear. It is that our government is taking action to win this fight, to support Canadians and businesses, and to keep them and their families safe.

That is why I call on my colleagues here today to join me in supporting the passage of this important bill.

COVID-19 Economic Measures

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for her question and for her hard work for her constituents. Thanks to Bill C-2, we now have the Canada worker lockdown benefit. This ensures that workers affected by new public health restrictions are receiving immediate financial support.

We also have the local lockdown program, which provides businesses faced with omicron lockdowns imposed by local jurisdictions with wage and rent subsidy support. Unfortunately, both the Conservatives and the NDP voted against these essential support measures, but I am glad we were able to put them in place to support Canadians.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, over the holidays, omicron had a serious impact on constituents and businesses in my riding of Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel. Thankfully, the House had passed Bill C-2 before we rose, ensuring that we had support for businesses and individuals still facing restrictions and lockdowns put in place by provinces in response to the new wave.

Can the Deputy Prime Minister remind the House of some of the measures in the bill and how they have been supporting Canadians?

The Economy

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, how can they honestly rise in the House? That is a question that the Conservatives should be asking themselves.

Before Christmas, the Conservatives voted against Bill C-2. It is only thanks to Bill C-2 and the fact that our government looked ahead to the future that we can support small and medium-sized businesses and Canadians today.

COVID‑19 Protests

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the leader of the Bloc Québécois for his question and I also want to wish him a happy new year.

I was initially talking about Bill C‑2. I also want to thank the Bloc MPs for supporting this bill, which has become so important for small and medium-sized businesses and individuals.

I totally agree with the leader of the Bloc that it is important for all of us to be able to do our work as members of the House. We must and will support the authorities—

The Economy

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, if there is anyone in the House who needs to apologize to Canadians, it is the Conservatives who voted against Bill C-2 and those provisions that are supporting so many businesses and people.

When it comes to jobs, our government has understood from the very beginning that having a job is the foundation of the economic well-being of the vast majority of Canadians. That is why we focused on getting the jobs back, and that is why I am so pleased we have recovered 108% of the jobs lost to the COVID recession.

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, the people who should be apologizing to Canadians are the Conservatives, because before Christmas, just as the omicron wave was rising, it was the Conservatives who voted against Bill C-2.

It is thanks to Bill C-2 and the lockdown provisions in Bill C-2 that we are, today, able to pay small businesses, grocery stores and restaurants that are suffering under lockdown restrictions and are able to support them. Thank goodness the Conservatives failed before Christmas.

Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, I hope this will not be taken from my time and we will reset the clock. It does not surprise me that my Conservative friends do not necessarily want to hear what I have to say, but I will tell members that they should listen closely, because if they listen closely, they might get a better sense of the type of direction they want to consider taking.

The member for Sarnia—Lambton asked where we go next in a question she put earlier today. That is a very important question. From the beginning, through the throne speeches, remarks from the Prime Minister and budgetary and legislative initiatives, we have been very clear about what the Government of Canada's priority has been as of 19 or 20 months ago: dealing with the pandemic. We are at a point in time where we are hoping to see strong leadership from all sides of the House to get us through the pandemic. To indirectly answer the question the member from the Conservative Party asked, one of the best things we can do is encourage the public and our constituents to get fully vaccinated.

Sitting on the government benches, I am observing how the Conservative members have been approaching this issue. There is an interesting story, and I would like to quote from it. It is significant because it is from the former leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, former prime minister Brian Mulroney, when he was interviewed on CTV. Former prime minister Brian Mulroney told CTV's Question Period a few Sundays back that the leader of the Conservative Party, at least for now, should go further and show any unvaccinated MPs the door, removing them from his caucus. He said, “That's leadership.” That is a direct quote from the former Progressive Conservative prime minister.

He goes on to say, “Who am I to argue with tens of thousands of brilliant scientists and doctors who urge the population desperately to get vaccinated?” He also said, “Look, you're not the leader to follow, you are the leader to lead, and if you think this is in the national interest, Canada's interest, you get your members of Parliament in line, and they have to support what you're doing.”

If we listen to what the former prime minister said and we understand and appreciate, as he indicated, the science and the health experts, we have an appreciation of just how important it is for people to be fully vaccinated. A vast majority, 86% or more, are fully vaccinated, not to mention those over the age of 12 who have received one shot. However, we still have Conservatives within the official opposition questioning this and adding fuel to those who believe they do not have to get vaccinated, sending mixed messages to the public. I think that is at a great cost. On the one hand the Conservatives say that it is time we move on, yet if we follow them, whether their behaviour inside the House or the statements they make on Twitter, they send very confusing messages.

From the beginning, we have been very consistent. Our number one issue 19 or 20 months ago was the pandemic and working with willing partners, including provincial governments, indigenous leaders, non-profit organizations, private companies and people in general from all regions of the country, to take a team approach and build a national consensus on the types of things that we needed to do as a government in order to take on the pandemic. Through that consultation and those efforts that engaged so many Canadians, we are where we are today.

A great deal of thanks and appreciation can be expressed to all Canadians who understood their responsibilities through this very trying time. Whether they were health care workers, taxi drivers, people who work in manufacturing plants or long-haul truck drivers, people stepped up and did what was necessary, whether providing services or staying at home in isolation, but at all times listening to what public health officials were saying and understanding the science of what was taking place in our communities. As a direct result, Canada is in an excellent position.

Looking at the third quarter reports, we see that our GDP grew by 5.4%. That is better than the United States, Japan, the U.K. and Australia. That is, in good part, because Canadians did what they needed to do in order to position Canada well when we had the opportunity to get out of the pandemic.

We have now seen 108% of the jobs that were lost due to the pandemic return. I compare that to the United States, our dearest friend to the south, where it is approximately 84%. For years, when I was in opposition, I used to be critical of the then Harper government talking about trade deficits. We would get trade deficit after trade deficit, year on year. In fact, when Stephen Harper assumed office, there was a trade surplus. When he left office there was a trade deficit. I understand that today we have a trade surplus that is at a 13-year high. These things are happening because governments of all levels and Canadians understood what we needed to do by coming together to make a difference. Those jobs matter. They are very important.

Just the other day, I had the opportunity to get a better overall understanding of the pork industry once again in the province of Manitoba. Maple Leaf Foods is an excellent example of doing what is necessary to ensure there is a high element of food security in our country. It contributed by continuing to operate, even during the pandemic, by taking the necessary measures to protect the industry.

Maple Leaf today is actually growing in the province of Manitoba. The best bacon in the world can be found right in Manitoba, and we are selling it throughout the world, not only because of an outstanding company that has demonstrated its ability to meet and get to market, but also because of the workforce that it employs and their responsible attitude in ensuring that those jobs would continue and ultimately grow because of the quality of work that they provide.

This year we are going to see an additional 350 jobs at that one company. That will bring up the total employment just in Winnipeg to 1,900 jobs. That is not to mention the around 1,500-plus jobs in the community of Brandon, Maple Leaf jobs. The hog industry is doing quite well in the province of Manitoba. If we go to Neepawa, HyLife is another shining example of a successful company that is exporting Manitoba world-class product.

Those are direct jobs in those industries. It does not speak to the indirect jobs that are created by these companies. In the parking lots there are hundreds of vehicles and those vehicles have to be purchased from someplace. The employees live in houses, condos and apartments in communities that require furniture. They require food and restaurants, and that feeds the economy, not to mention our farming communities.

Our agricultural community continues to grow and in many ways prosper. In good part, that is one of the reasons we are able to continue to grow our economy. Relatively speaking to the countries that I have already referenced, we are doing quite well, but there are areas that do need to get special attention, for example, the issue of health care. The greatest challenge in health care today, and yesterday when I used to be the health care critic, is not just money. It is how we manage the changes that are necessary to provide the quality health care services that Canadians expect, and they want the federal government to play a role in that.

We in the Liberal Party understand, for example, long-term health care facilities. The opposition members say it is all provincial jurisdiction. They can make that statement, but there are Liberal members of Parliament who are responding to what Canadians want. They want to see some form of national health care standards for long-term care for our seniors. That is something we believe in. On this side of the House, Liberals also believe in the need to invest in mental health. Apparently, the Conservatives do not. There is an expectation that governments will work together. We saw that through the pandemic. When governments work together, we can accomplish so much more.

This is a Prime Minister who has been committed to doing that, even though what one sees constantly coming from opposition benches on the floor of the House of Commons is character assassination, a focus from opposition to try to tear down the personalities of members who make up the caucus, as opposed to contributing to the overall positive debate. Constructive criticism, too, I must suggest, is a valid thing. I was in opposition. I like to think we contributed to that too.

However, no matter how cynical and negative the Conservative Party has been, we have remained focused on ensuring we are developing and bringing forward the programs that are going to make a difference in the lives of Canadians through a very difficult time.

As a result, we experienced some programs that have ultimately led to the survival of some of our industries. There are actually more businesses today than there were prepandemic. I like to think that has a lot to do with what the government came up with in terms of programs. During this difficult time, people needed a lifeline, and most often we will find that the lifeline came from the federal government, a government that believed in supporting businesses both small and big.

We did that through programs such as the wage subsidy, the rent subsidy and the loan support programs, all catered to support our small businesses and workers in Canada. We brought that out early in the game when the pandemic hit, because we recognized how important it was, in many ways, to keep these businesses viable and to prevent them from going bankrupt.

In the throne speech and back in October, the Prime Minister and the minister made reference to the need to carry on some of these programs, to have a lockdown program. That is why, shortly after the election, not only did we talk about it but we brought in legislation. In fact, that was the first piece of legislation we brought in, Bill C-2. That was to ensure the benefits for small businesses. On the one hand, we have those in the opposition who talk about the importance of small businesses, but when it came time to support small businesses, at least back in December, what did they do? They voted against Bill C-2.

Not only did they vote against that legislation, but during part of the debate they brought in motions to try to filibuster the legislation to prevent it from passing, yet they like to say they are friends of small business. Think of the millions of dollars, hundreds of millions, that the Government of Canada has provided to small businesses over the last 19 months or a year and a half. That is one of the reasons we are in the position we are in today. Relatively speaking, compared to other countries, we are doing exceptionally well.

That is because of the resilience of our small businesses, entrepreneurs and Canadians in general who have responded so well to the need to address the pandemic and to play the role we all needed to play, so that, at the end of the day, we were in a position to continue to grow the economy, support our middle class and allow things to get better quicker.

Taxation

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to supporting small businesses, it is a bit rich of the Conservatives to presume to offer our government any advice at all. After all, before Christmas, when the omicron wave was rising, it was the Conservatives who opposed Bill C-2, a bill that included a lockdown insurance policy for small businesses and Canadians.

The Conservatives voted against it. Thank goodness they failed. Otherwise, our small businesses would have no support today.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

As we are engaged in pre-budget consultations, I'm still going to spend the majority of my time on this, because we have such limited time and I want to make sure that we get the best recommendations on the table.

I know that a number of my colleagues on the opposite bench have suggested that perhaps we want to have our Parliamentary Budget Officer back before us for full sessions. I personally support that very much. As soon as these pre-budget consultations are done, it's very important that we have Mr. Giroux back to answer more fully many of the things he has highlighted in his report that has come out today.

There are a couple of things, though, that I do think are important to mention, because there's a bit of a focus on the change around the fiscal guardrails and whether we continue to need stimulus spending.

It's important to note that, as of last summer, we as a federal government have started to drastically reduce and pull back a lot of our supports and emergency supports. It's also important to note that even after we announced the additional targeted stimulus funding in the fall, international credit agencies still confirmed our AAA credit rating.

It's further important to note that Bill C-2 showed that we continued to have targeted, specific support—and as we could see through this recent lockdown across our country, we have needed it.

The last thing is that there's a very fine line between when to pull back drastically on the stimulus and the supports and when to continue to help ease the Canadian economy as we're still trying to get through this COVID pandemic. Much of the money currently being spent is for the child care commitments, it's for the aggressive climate change actions, it's for reconciliation and it's for continuing to support our businesses and economic growth moving forward.

On that, I'm going to turn my attention to the Green Budget Coalition and ask anybody who is willing to respond to this question.

There was a really wonderful report that came out about sustainable finance from our current Governor of the Bank of Canada, and before that, he had worked on a big sustainable finance report. He has made a number of recommendations about the importance of how to bring in private investment to help ensure that Canada achieves its aggressive climate action targets.

From your perspective, what is the role of private investment in our transition to net zero, and how can we as a federal government better support private investment as we're trying to aggressively move on achieving net zero by 2050 and our 2030 targets?

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to start off with a couple of statements. There was an earlier comment about why we don't just deal with the demand side and slow down immigration. I want to make three comments on that.

Immigration, as we know, is key to Canada's economic growth. It always has been. It's key because we have huge demographic challenges, with a huge number of people retiring and a very low birth rate. Especially right now, we have a huge labour shortage issue across this country. We really do need to keep the demand side up. I want to make sure I address that.

There was a comment that was made about more targeted versus widespread support during this pandemic. Starting last summer—it wasn't at Bill C-2—we started targeting the support more specifically. We did it very deliberately. We have continued to target our support as we move along.

I want to point out that even after we introduced our fall economic statement, we continued to have our AAA credit rating internationally confirmed. To me, that shows some confidence in terms of how we're going about spending and how we're proposing to continue to support our economy coming out of this pandemic.

Mr. Perrault, I'm going to address my first question to you. The narrative here is that over the last two and a half years, the actions of the Trudeau government in trying to urgently address and support the Canadian economy have led to the housing problem, the housing crisis and the housing inflation that we have today.

Would you say that the housing inflation that we have now, and maybe the housing crisis that we have right now, has been a 30- to 40-year problem in the making? It's been a number of things, whether it's tax changes, lack of coordination or efforts along all three levels of government, or the different levels of government not supporting some sort of national housing strategy. Would you say that statement is true?

[Heath MacDonald, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Thank you, Chair.

Chair, it's interesting to hear this discussion, talking about housing and then bouncing back and forth to the economy. It's good to remind ourselves every once in a while that the pandemic came on within a very short time. Decisions were being made. There was a sense of urgency. There were a lot of people who required food on their tables. A lot of people were out of work. There were barriers after barriers after barriers for families out there who needed staples. I think the government had a short time to react to this, and it reacted immensely and in the right direction. As we've seen with Bill C-2, we have now scaled back the investments and started to target where those priorities are now for government.

As a reminder, in the years leading up to the pandemic, Canadian inflation was relatively stable and close to its formal target of 2%. As suggested by Trevor Tombe, a professor at the department of economics at the University of Calgary:

The pandemic was not only a public-health crisis but also the...sharpest economic contraction in Canadian history. The pace of recovery since those dark early months, however, has been nothing short of remarkable.

I want to ask Mr. Perrault if he can elaborate a bit on what sort of impact minimal action would have had on the economy, including housing, if we hadn't made those investments.

An Act to Provide Further Support in Response to COVID-19

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance]

moved that Bill C-2, An Act to provide further support in response to COVID-19, be read the third time and passed.

Business of the House

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. opposition colleague for his comments. I absolutely join him in thanking everyone who works here.

It is an extraordinarily difficult thing, particularly during a pandemic, to provide the support we have seen. I want to take this opportunity to thank the Clerk of the House, Mr. Charles Robert, his wonderful team of clerks, every branch of service in the administration of the House of Commons, including the Parliamentary Protective Service, and the pages, who help us so much in our work, particularly during these challenging times.

Mr. Speaker, I also want to wish you and your family, and indeed all members, a very merry Christmas, happy holiday and happy new year. I hope that all members are able to spend time with their families and are both safe and healthy in these very challenging times.

I think we have demonstrated over the last four weeks, with my hon. counterparts from the Conservatives, the Bloc Québécois and the New Democrats, a wonderful spirit of co-operation. We have been able to get a lot done on behalf of Canadians. I want to thank them, and through them I thank their caucuses for a very productive last four weeks.

This afternoon, we will continue our work on Bill C-2, an act to provide further support in response to COVID-19, and Bill C-3, which would provide workers in federally regulated sectors with 10 days of paid sick leave and make it an offence to intimidate or prevent patients from seeking care.

I will advise that in February, the government will propose a take-note debate on Saskatchewan's proposed constitutional amendment. I would also like to table, in both official languages, an amendment to Bill C-3, an act to amend the Criminal Code and the Canada Labour Code.

Finally, there have been discussions among the parties, and I believe if you seek it, you will find unanimous consent to adopt the following motion. I move:

That, notwithstanding any Standing Order, special order or usual practice of the House, Bill C-2, An Act to provide further support in response to COVID-19, as amended, be deemed concurred in at the report stage, that the motion for third reading of the bill be deemed moved and seconded and that the House proceed immediately to a recorded division on the motion for third reading.

The Economy

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, we all agree that the cost of living is a challenge, but I do not hear many concrete solutions coming from the Conservatives.

I would therefore like to propose one. Let us support all Canadians who work in tourism, restaurants and other hard-hit businesses across the country by supporting Bill C-2.

COVID-19 Economic Measures

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, I think that COVID is the greatest challenge facing Canada today. That is why I focused on it in the economic and fiscal update. I agree with him that we need to have support measures in place for people in businesses in the event of additional lockdowns. That is why I urge all members of the House to support Bill C-2. It would create precisely those tools. We need them. I really hope all members will support the bill.

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, I really want to thank my colleague for his question because I truly believe that COVID-19 is the greatest challenge today.

That is why I hope that all members will support Bill C-2. This bill will create support measures for individuals and businesses in the event of another lockdown, precisely because we agree with the NDP members that these support measures are necessary.

I hope that all members will vote in favour of Bill C‑2.

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

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

Madam Speaker, originally when COVID-19 and the pandemic arose, the Conservatives said we would support a response from the government that was responsive to needs, temporary and would bridge back to a regular economy. Liberal arrogance, as has been said many times, is the greatest kryptonite. It seems the Liberals have not learned anything from their previous experience with the Canada emergency response benefit.

A FINTRAC intelligence brief says, “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, often while also engaging in suspicious financial activity.” There are so many things in in the FINTRAC report that raise the hair on the back of one's neck.

Does the member view this as being a targeted benefit and has the government shown that it has learned from the experience of the CERB with Bill C-2, that it is targeted to the people who need it the most and that there are protections to ensure those who should not receive this benefit do not get it?

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to be following the hon. member for Barrie—Innisfil, who spoke so eloquently about the struggles that independent travel advisers are having. I have met with many of them as well. Absolutely, they do feel left out of what the government is doing.

The government is essentially proposing in Bill C-2 that we give it all the money it needs right now and it will worry about accountability and transparency later on. I think the member went through some of the FINTRAC issues that were reported and the fraud issues that have been mounting. I will return to FINTRAC in a moment to read off some of its other concerns.

We, on this side of the House, supported Canadians who were banned from returning to work because of various health restrictions. We opposed the Liberals giving COVID cheques to prisoners, organized criminals, suspected fraudsters, and corporations paying out bonuses and dividends to executives. We did not support paying people not to work while the economy was open and there were a half-million vacant jobs. I remember my province of Alberta did reopen briefly.

I was just speaking with a hotelier who said that they can only reopen their kitchen three days a week because they cannot find staff. They are cleaning rooms all day long and until all hours because they just cannot find enough people to work during those key morning hours when they are trying to turn over a room for their next guest. Having a major hotel kitchen being open three days a week is not a way to run a business. It is going to lose business. People simply will not travel. The hotels are also losing out on the income needed to keep paying people for their work. It is a struggle on both sides, for employees and employers but we, on the Conservative side, are there for them.

I think the principle we should remind ourselves of is that, if a provincial government or a federal government takes away someone's ability to earn a living, it owes them compensation. I would call that a regulatory taking. It took something away from a person through no fault of their own so it should compensate that person, but that compensation should not extend to periods where the person chose not to work; made a choice. As well, if a person is engaging in criminal activity, of course that person should not be getting government benefits to facilitate their criminal enterprise.

We want help for tourism and hospitality companies hit by travel restrictions, but we oppose legislation like this that opens the floodgates to do whatever the government thinks necessary. This is $7.4 billion of new spending on top of all the other spending it has been doing.

The House has already heard from two of my colleagues already who said that they tried to fix this at committee. We offered ideas to improve things. We set out four conditions that we thought would drastically improve this bill.

I was here during the last Parliament and we saw the government go out of its way to rush bills through the House and only come back later on to fix the errors that were made. Typically, those errors resulted in billions of dollars of taxpayers' money either being spent unwisely or being impossible to spend because the program just did not work for the people for whom it was designed. All of those things typically get fixed at a House committee. That is where witnesses testify whether the programs will work the way they are identified and where federal officials come to actually explain the programs.

We saw at the Standing Committee on Finance that there was a complete inability of officials to explain where the money was going to come from. I thought it was a very simple question, needing only a referral to the estimates. I have a Yiddish proverb, which I know many members expect. It is that, “Sins hide not in your sleep but in your dreams.” I remember the debate on a different bill in this House just a few days ago. I mentioned that usually with government legislation there is a difference between what the bill says and the intentions that the government has behind the bill. The two are usually completely separated from each other. The sins in this bill are that there is not enough accountability and transparency for the taxpayers who are being asked to shoulder a huge bill to get our country back on track.

The member who spoke previously talked about FINTRAC, so let me just continue reading off some of its summary concerns. “Reporting entities indicated that clients have applied for and received CERB despite not living in Canada and they appear to be residing in a 'jurisdiction of concern'.” We are paying for people outside Canada to get taxpayers' money that we really have no way of verifying whether they should be getting any of these funds and they are outside Canada. It is difficult for me to explain at the doors, through emails and on phone calls to taxpayers as to why they are subsidizing people outside of the country. “Reporting Entities noted that clients received multiple CERB deposits over a one-week period/made multiple applications for CERB benefits using one or multiple identities/conducted transactions to cash CERB cheques at multiple locations.”

In any normal situation, this would be considered fraud. It would be something that we would be very concerned about and we would be looking for opportunities to restrain, constrain and stop it at the earliest of opportunities.

“Reporting Entities indicated that clients who appeared to be engaged in illegal or suspicious financial activity are also in receipt of CERB payments and employment income.” Last, “Reporting Entities indicated that clients appeared to receive CERB payments while also receiving income from their business and/or are receiving CEBA while also engaged in suspicious or fraudulent activity.” This is an indictment. The member who spoke previous to me started down this path. We rely on FINTRAC. I used to be a member of the Standing Committee on Finance, and I have had in-camera briefings where FINTRAC explains this. It is an amazing service that it provides to the Government of Canada to ensure that we do due diligence when we hand out benefits. Benefits must go to the people who are most in need of them, and it saps trust in government when it simply says it is going to open the floodgates and everyone will figure it out after the fact.

There is an Auditor General's report that has come out regarding border controls with the testing of individuals at the border and then following up with them as to whether they have actually quarantined. It is a damning report. I know you, Madam Speaker, have served on that committee before and you enjoy Auditor General reports, likely as much as I do. It is a damning report that in a situation where the government set up a program such as for cash payments that go out to people who need them, there is always a small group of people who will engage in fraud. The system should be designed to ensure that does not happen, so that taxpayers and citizens trust the system and trust that the government has a handle on this situation and that it will pursue those who abuse the system. It is reasonable for taxpayers and citizens to expect that we do this.

We have spent a prodigious amount of money and we are being asked to approve even more spending in this bill. We have proposed amendments that would drastically improve this bill to ensure we have that accountability and transparency mechanism. We just saw a fall economic statement that called for even more spending. There is more revenue and more spending going down, and in my riding residents are asking who is going to pay for all of these bills.

At the end of the day, this pandemic will end. I always tell people that this will end. I do not know when; I am not a doctor or a scientist. It will end and, at some point, these bills will come due. We are going to have to be rolling over some of this debt. Who is going to pay for all of this spending? We are well over a trillion dollars in debt.

I am reminded of John Diefenbaker. I was talking to my caucus and it reminded me of a quote from the 1960s when the great Diefenbaker was in this House debating with a Liberal, Pickersgill, on the other side and describing at the time some of their financial measures. The fall economic statement reminds me of this. He said that it is like homeopathic soup made from the shadow of a pigeon that died of starvation. I cannot imagine a better description of what I see there. Diefenbaker said it 50 or 60 years ago and nothing has really changed with the Liberal government. It is the same thing all over again. There are vast amounts of spending and very little in constraints and controls.

I can bring up another example. A PBO report came out just today on the icebreaker program. Two icebreakers were supposed to cost $1.3 billion back in 2013. That cost now has ballooned to $7.25 billion. They are not getting more icebreakers; they are just getting the two. It is cost controls and project management. The current government has been in power for six years, and this is entirely on it. The Liberals cannot blame anybody else.

In 2015, they were handed excellent books with balanced budgets. We repeatedly told the Liberals to get ready for a disastrous situation or a downturn. We could never have predicted that there would be a pandemic like this, that would be a drastic downturn in the nation's finances, where people would be told to stay at home. They would be prohibited from working so they would lose their livelihoods. In that situation it is absolutely legitimate for the government to step in and support people. Some would take advantage of it unfairly and we would have to follow up and make sure that fraudulent benefits were repaid to the taxpayer. In situations like that, I understand that we should support people.

However, taxpayers are asking themselves, “When is it enough?” They are asking when government will actually provide the transparency and the accountability that is expected when it borrows on the nation's credit card that all taxpayers are responsible for.

Like I said in my proverb, “Sins hide not in your sleep but in your dreams.” The government is dreaming that either the fall economic statement or a bill like this will restore trust in government.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Madam Speaker, I listened to my friend very closely as he spoke today about a particular section of our economy: the independent travel advisers. I know that a number of people on this side of the House, and I expect on the other side, have heard from those people. Primarily it is women who work from home. They have been lost in government assistance. These people do not get paid until a trip is taken, which might be months down the road, but there is nothing in Bill C-2 to help them. From listening to them, I know they feel they were almost deliberately cut out of it. I wonder if my friend has any comments about that.

[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.

[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.

[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, 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, a 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 did not specifically answer the question of why the NDP would not support Bill C-2.

Bill C-2 would provide ongoing support to businesses and people in a very real and tangible way. I understand that it does not cover everything that the NDP would like it to cover, but it would support Canadians.

Could the member explain to the people who might be following the debate, or his constituents, specifically why the New Democrats would be voting against legislation that supports people going through the ongoing pandemic?

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

Madam Speaker, I certainly appreciate the member's contributions to the debate today.

In June of last year, when it came to Bill C-208, a bill that would allow someone to sell their family farm or fishing enterprise to their children and be treated the same as if selling to someone at arm's length, the government and the minister said that the coming into force date was not specified in that piece of legislation and therefore they would reinterpret it as coming into force this year.

In this bill, at least Finance Canada seems to have learned its lesson, and there is no coming into force date for the amendments here. Would the member agree that it is important for the government, and in this case particularly Finance Canada, to honour the will of Parliament and if a piece of legislation has no coming into force date when the government amends a current act, that act be deemed, once it has gone through both Houses and received royal assent, the law of the land?

Does the member believe that Finance Canada and the government have learned their lesson, and are doing that in Bill C-2?

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

Madam Speaker, in fact, the government and ministers have been very open to working with all members of the House in an apolitical fashion to try to improve legislation, period.

There seems to be a difference when the NDP is in opposition, where it will promise and say absolutely anything, such as $100,000 for every breathing Canadian coast to coast every year coming from the government as a direct payment. Whatever it takes, the NDP will say that.

In government, on the other hand, I will use the example the member just made reference to. In the legislation we talk about 10 paid sick days. In B.C., with an NDP premier, there are more workers and the province has passed five paid sick days. The NDP will praise the NDP government in B.C.

The member and the party have chosen not to support this legislation. This legislation is solid, good legislation for businesses and people. It would provide additional disposable income and support businesses.

How does the member justify explaining to his constituents that the NDP does not support Bill C-2?

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

Madam Speaker, today, we are talking about a motion to see Bill C-2 move swiftly through the House. On behalf of the New Democrats, we recognize the urgent need for many people, in the face of the pandemic, to receive help. It is true that some of those people will receive some help through Bill C-2. That is why the New Democrats have not tried to filibuster or obstruct the passage of the bill, but we have not tried to hasten it. We have laid out very clearly a path through the NDP to try to expedite the passage of the bill.

We talked about the problem of benefit clawbacks, not just with respect to the guaranteed income supplement but the Canada child benefit and Canada worker benefit. We talked about the need for a CERB low-income repayment amnesty. We talked about some of the people who were seriously affected by the government pursuing them for debts they had incurred, sometimes without much choice, such as foster kids in Manitoba. They were told by the provincial government they had to apply for CERB or they would not be eligible to apply for social assistance in the province of Manitoba.

Other people took the government at its word when it said to apply if they really needed help in the struggle of the pandemic, not only because of employment loss but also because of sudden increased costs, such as hiring a laundry service because family members or their support network could not go into their place of residence to assist with those things or having groceries delivered. There were a number of other costs.

When we raised the problems with the CERB and folks not being able to access any financial assistance because they had not necessarily lost employment, members on the Liberal benches exhorted people to apply for the CERB, highlighting that it was a no-fail application process. Unanimous consent motions were passed in this place, which meant not one member in the House objected to them, saying that if people really needed help and applied in good faith, they should not be punished or persecuted. That was why we felt it was very important to have a CERB low-income repayment amnesty.

We also talked about the fact that if the government was willing to clawback benefits from the most vulnerable in Canadian society because they were not entitled to them, we wanted to see it take action on clawing back benefits from the largest corporations, which were obviously in a good financial position because they were able to pay dividends to their shareholders. We know that while many businesses have struggled, some businesses have done exceptionally well, much better financially than in the years preceding the pandemic. Therefore, we have been calling for some action on that.

The government chose not to negotiate with us on the passage of this bill. That is its choice. This is not a case of sour grapes. It chose to negotiate with the Bloc. We are here to stand up for the people who were left out with respect to Bill C-2. The government had a choice. It could have worked with the NDP, in the name of the people for whom we are here to fight. It could have worked with the Bloc on the concerns its members chose to raise, or it could have worked with both of us. These were not mutually exclusive options. The government chose not to work with us or negotiate with us, so it is hard for us to expedite the passage of a bill that leaves too many people out, and the government has not worked with us to try to address those legitimate concerns.

I think there was a perception by the government in the last Parliament that somehow, because we are a responsible party and we knew Canadians did not want an election during the pandemic, it could take our support on things for granted. That was never true; it was not something to be taken for granted. It was true that we wanted to avoid an election. The leader of the Conservative Party did not think we should have an election during a pandemic and was not prepared to trigger one. The Bloc Québécois members did not want an election during a pandemic, that it would be irresponsible and they would not trigger one. The New Democrats voted accordingly and the Prime Minister broke faith with all of us in the House who had said we should not have an election.

The Prime Minister got past June 2021 without having this place vote non-confidence in him. We wanted to get through the summer without having an election, so Parliament could come back in a timely way in September and deal with some of the very real issues with which Bill C-2 purports to deal. It does deal with some of them but not enough.

Instead of honouring the real effort that parties in this place made, despite many of the shortcomings of the government, to preserve that Parliament, in August, the Prime Minister took it upon himself to call an election anyway, an election that nobody wanted, an election for which the House of Commons had not called. He did it under a pretense that was not a product of the summer months.

If the Prime Minister thought there were big decisions his government needed to make, that was not news at the beginning of August. He would have known that by June and he could have been honest about it in this place. Instead, he denied that he wanted an election. People on all sides of the House were glad to hear it. We behaved accordingly and he broke faith with this place and with Canadians by calling that unnecessary and unwanted election.

I said “pretense” earlier. Why do I call it a pretense for an election? Because the Prime Minister said big questions had to be decided and the government may need to implement some major new initiatives. He took his sweet time and we came back late after the election. Then when we got back here, we had a Speech from the Throne that had nothing new to offer in terms of a change in pattern or major new policy direction by the government in the face of the pandemic.

Bill C-2 is not a big, bold move except to the extent of abandoning hundreds of thousands of Canadians in the midst of a continuing pandemic and difficult economic times. However, he did not ask for a mandate for that. In the election, he said he would have the backs of Canadians. He never did go to Canadians in the election and he never was honest with them about the real turn he was going to take.

It turns out that the reason for the election was a pretense. While the Prime Minister tried to contrast himself with the Conservatives on the pandemic recovery during the election, on October 21, just a month after the election, he would take their advice and cancel the Canada recovery benefit with just two days' notice for people who were on the program, almost 900,000 of them.

There was nothing really new in the Speech from the Throne. The big job, agreeing with the Conservatives on how to handle the pandemic recovery, had already happened in October before the Prime Minister even had the decency to reconvene this place. The Speech from the Throne was not where he was going to make good on his commitment to Canadians to announce the new direction for which he needed a new mandate.

Maybe it would come in the fall economic statement, which happened this week. I am sorry to report that I do not see anything particularly new, bold or exciting. In fact, we did not even see a commitment to urgently implement some of the campaign promises the Liberals made.

What we did see the day before was the Prime Minister, who had an election to get a mandate to distinguish himself from the Conservatives, taking their advice to renew the mandate of the Bank of Canada, without any larger discussion as is happening in some other countries.

We know the United States has a dual mandate, employment and inflation. We know that New Zealand recently introduced its concern for the cost of housing in the mandate of its central bank. We know that the U.K. has recently asked its central bank to consider the impact of monetary policy on the battle against climate change.

Our allies, who are themselves competent financial managers, are talking about different ways to rebuild their economies coming out of the pandemic. However, the Liberals decided to take the advice of the official opposition after causing an election, because they said there was a huge difference about how they were going to handle things.

We stand in this place with a Prime Minister who broke faith on not having an election during a pandemic. We stand here with a Prime Minister who went to Canadians, saying he needed a mandate for something very different between he and his Conservative opposition. Then he proceeded to largely take their advice on the basic core elements of the pandemic recovery, something that is represented in this bill.

We stand before a government that has decided not to work closely with the NDP to address some of those things. However, we know the bill will pass quickly and the people who can get help through this little bill will get it, because the government chose to work with somebody else, as its right, However, if the government wants our support on things like this, then its members need to sit down and talk to us. They need to talk to us about the people who we are here to represent and fight for, and that means seniors.

We have talked a lot about the guaranteed income supplement. The government made an announcement on Tuesday. We had been asking for a long time what it planned to do. The Liberals have told us, along with everybody else, in the fall economic statement, and there are a lot of questions about the adequacy of that solution. We would have been very happy on this side of the House to provide some feedback in advance of the announcement to ensure it would work for more people.

We will not get everything we want until we are in government, but I will give an example: the payment for people living with disabilities. This is a one-time payment, but it should be an increase in a regular benefit, something the Liberals went on to promise, but we have not heard anything about how they plan to deliver that. The Liberals initially announced that it would apply to people who received the disability tax credit. We had an opportunity to negotiate that, because we knew that was not good enough.

Not all people living with disabilities receive the disability tax credit. There are a bunch of reasons for that. First is that it is expensive and difficult to get certified for the disability tax credit. A lot of people living with disabilities live in poverty. They do not have the $20 to $40 for the administrative fees at the doctor's office to get a successful application for the disability tax credit.

Beyond that, a lot of them do not have an income that would allow them to benefit from a tax credit. They need to have enough income to pay taxes to benefit from a tax credit. Unfortunately too many people living with disabilities do not have enough income. Therefore, it was a bad way to deliver help to the people who needed it most.

The second problem was the one-time payment disproportionately would go to the people living with disabilities who had the highest incomes. That did not make sense from a policy point of view, because the money would not get where it was really needed and it would not get there quickly. Then there were long delays in that payment. My point is that we were able to expand the number of people who received that payment and help get it to more of the people who really needed it.

Now we have a situation where the government has announced another one-time payment to fix the GIS problem. It sounds like there is going to be another long delay in getting that help to people, people who are already homeless and do not have months to wait. We could have talked about a solution to that and have more assurances it would work well and work quickly. That did not happen

I am glad the government responded to public pressure. I am proud of the role the NDP has played in putting that pressure on the government. While I am also glad the government felt the need to respond, responding to public pressure and pressure of a political party in the House are not the same as negotiating a solution in the context of a bill.

We are not just here for seniors; we are here for workers. Many workers are being let down right now by the employment insurance system. The Liberals have said they will fix it, but we do not know when. There has been no clear signalling about when a fix for EI is going to come. Our constituency offices are hearing from people who are applying to EI and it is not there for them. The system cannot keep up with what is going on in the economy. That is why we needed exceptional pandemic benefits, the benefits the government just cancelled without having done the work of reforming employment insurance.

I was just talking to my colleague from Edmonton Strathcona about constituents who she was hearing from in her home province of Alberta. They cannot get financial assistance through employment insurance, despite having worked hard and paid their dues to the employment insurance system. They have been unable to access it when they need it.

We are here for people living with disabilities who are getting short shrift from the government. The Liberals say a lot of words, but they do not have a lot of action that will really help people in a timely way.

We have been here to advocate for students. The Canada emergency student benefit was not something the government was even contemplating, except for the pressure and the negotiation of the NDP.

Folks in this place might remember that the Canada emergency student benefit paid less than the CERB. Our position was to make students eligible for the CERB like everybody else. Students needed to pay their tuition in the fall of 2020, and they were not going to be able to get jobs in the summer. The government thought that students were naturally lazy: it could not just have them sitting around at home. It was not going to pay them to sit around and do nothing, so the government was going to pay them less than the CERB, but would create a phenomenal jobs program that would hire them in the summer.

Does anyone remember, in the lead-up to the summer of 2020, the jobs program that the Liberals were contemplating? That program came to be known as the WE Charity scandal. The money never got out the door, which was a good thing in hindsight, because we had no idea how they were contemplating rolling out that program. The point is that the program for students never happened. The jobs never came and they continued to have a reduced benefit on the false pretense that there were going to be jobs coming to them that would help them make up the difference and pay their tuition in the fall. That never happened.

There have been moments of co-operation in this Parliament, and we are willing to co-operate in expediting legislation when it reflects the priorities of the people we are here to represent. For folks in the LGBTQ2S community, we worked with the government to expedite passage of the bill banning conversion therapy. This is something that Sheri Benson, who was elected from Saskatoon alongside me in 2015, first brought to the House. My colleague for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke has done a lot of excellent work in advancing it. Where there was something for the people that we are here to represent, and the government was doing it in a good way without leaving out a whole bunch of other people, we were happy to co-operate, just as we have been happy to co-operate on a bill that would finally bring 10 paid sick days to workers across the country.

Again, it is not a perfect bill. We think that there should be 10 paid sick days for workers across the country, but the bill says that a person would collect one sick day a month, so a person would have to wait 10 months to get those paid sick days. We are in a pandemic. The idea behind giving sick days was that if people were not feeling well, they would not have to go to work. The idea was not to have them work sick for 10 months while they accumulated the time they needed to protect themselves and everybody in their workplace from COVID-19. The idea was to give them that time so they could do the right thing and protect everybody in their workplaces and in their communities.

Nevertheless, we have been working with the government to quickly pass that legislation, because we recognize that, while it is not how we would do it, it is the best on offer and we have been fighting hard to make it better. We presented amendments in committee that would have found a compromise position on this long, 10-month wait. It would have made sure that workers had at least four days up front so that they could do the right thing. However, it was voted down by the Liberals, so we know that this is as good as we are going to get for now and we recognize that it has to be in place quickly. At least there was some discussion and negotiation around that.

This is all to say that New Democrats are here to fight for the people we represent. We are here to fight for seniors. We are here to fight for students. We are here to be a voice in this place for people living with disabilities across the country. We have been fighting for women, such as the women in the travel industry who were left out of Bill C-2. We are here for independent travel agents who work for themselves and have been doing work for their clients: First, at the beginning of the pandemic, they helped them to figure out cancelled trips, vouchers and rebates, and now they are doing bookings as people, in a sense of optimism, are starting to book travel. However, they are only going to get paid when people take those trips, and of course omicron is calling that into question. We are here to speak for them.

When the government is willing to work with us to make sure that those people are not left behind in the bills that it presents, we will be there to try and make sure that the legislation advances quickly. When the government chooses other partners, that is its business, but it is leaving a lot of people behind in Bill C-2. I wish there was more time to fix it and leave fewer people behind, which is why we are not voting to expedite the bill, knowing full well that it will be expedited according to the program that the government has chosen by choosing its partners. We invite government members to work with us in the future to create better legislation and leave fewer people behind, but it just does not seem to be the approach that they are taking so far in this new Parliament.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my excellent colleague from Joliette, who is also the finance critic. He is doing a fabulous job of handling this file, and I would like to congratulate him for his work.

I rise to speak during this second reading of Bill C-2 in a collaborative spirit. Like my colleague, I will begin by saying that the Bloc Québécois supports Bill C‑2, which introduces new targeted assistance programs in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As we know, the pandemic is far from over.

Having been elected in 2019, just before the pandemic started, I have seen collaboration happen. Since the beginning of the crisis, my Bloc Québécois colleagues and I have proposed dozens of improvements to the federal aid programs, particularly regarding business loans and the emergency wage subsidy. The emergency wage subsidy was very helpful for businesses in Shefford, allowing them to get through the crisis. For example, 70% of businesses in the Granby industrial park used the subsidy.

We have always made sure that the measures being taken increasingly meet the diverse needs of individuals and economic sectors and that they get adapted as the pandemic evolves. We will continue that work.

We have always insisted that we need to provide assistance for sectors that will take continue to feel the effects of the pandemic for longer, until business goes back to normal for them. The tourism, cultural, restaurant and event sectors are but a few examples. It so happens that these sectors are very important economic drivers that put Shefford on the map.

We made this request several times, including during the recent election campaign. It is now more urgent than ever given the current spread of the virus, which has resulted in many cancelled bookings. Since yesterday, restaurants, hotels and the tourism sector have been seeing numerous cancellations.

We believe that Bill C‑2 must be passed as soon as possible, since it ensures the continuity of the emergency wage subsidy and the Canada emergency rent subsidy. Some businesses are still fragile, but they will be able to get through the crisis thanks to the tourism and hospitality recovery program, the hardest-hit business recovery program and the lockdown support measure. The problem is that these programs are a bit harder to access and less generous than the previous iterations. However, these three new programs will provide a baseline level of support for SMEs that are still hurting from the pandemic.

I would like to remind the House that many SMEs are still having a hard time even though the economy is taking off again in every region. We will need to monitor the spread of the omicron variant. According to a recent survey conducted by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, 58% of SME owners reported lower-than-normal sales. Like my colleague from Joliette, I can only lament the fact that a useless election delayed the implementation of these new programs.

Let us be very clear: The government had no valid reason to call an election. Its claim that Parliament was not running smoothly was just a pretext. It was not true at all. As I said before, the Bloc Québécois was collaborating with the government. The Liberals called an election for the purely egotistical reason that they wanted a majority. They failed miserably, because we still have a minority government. The rapid passage of the bills implementing the pandemic assistance programs shows just how well parliamentarians collaborated during the last Parliament, the 43rd Parliament.

The number one priority of every member should have been to be there this fall to respond to the pandemic. The Liberals chose to call an election. The result was a delay in discussions and work leading to the new iterations of these programs. These programs should already have been adopted by now. The delays are the fault of no one but the Liberals.

I would like to reiterate the three conditions set out by the Bloc Québécois for Bill C‑2.

First, the government must immediately commit to contributing to the Artists' Foundation to support self-employed workers in the arts and culture sector. This is a call that the government appears to have heard. We will monitor the situation closely. In my riding, artists are asking for help. As I said before, this is a very important sector in my riding of Shefford. We also need to continue monitoring certain definitions regarding the tourism sector in order to make sure no one is forgotten. Even suppliers of goods and services related to the tourism industry should have access to support.

Second, before the election campaign, we asked that the government stop penalizing working seniors who receive the guaranteed income supplement, the GIS, by considering the CERB as employment income in calculating the GIS. In my opinion, this is a key condition. One of the solutions we thought of was to allow for a recalculation of the GIS regardless of whether the request was made by Service Canada or the Canada Revenue Agency, in addition to allowing debts to be repaid over three years rather than one. We proposed solutions.

As the seniors critic, I have often risen in the House and asked for these solutions. I can point out that the minister announced this week in her economic update that she would fix this next May. That is all well and good, but with Christmas around the corner, seniors are poorer than ever. They were already in dire straits financially before the pandemic, and since July, things have gotten even worse. They will not get any gifts for new year, Valentine's Day or Easter either. May is way too far away.

In response to the economic update, my colleague from Joliette has already said that we will continue to work to get this problem solved faster. Obviously, we cannot help but notice that the months of pressure from our party have had some impact and that there would not have been any compensation if we had not been there. We must not forget that working seniors are bearing the brunt of these cuts to the GIS, even though they were legitimately entitled to claim the CERB during the first wave.

We also need to remember that those receiving the GIS are the most disadvantaged seniors, and that the federal government has been depriving them of hundreds of dollars every month since July. They no longer have the financial wiggle room to get through the next five months without having to make some tough choices, such as stopping certain medications or selling their possessions, given that inflation has pushed grocery prices up by 7%.

That is why the government needs to speed up the process. We will continue to demand that it reverse its ridiculous decision to create two classes of seniors, since the current financial situation of seniors proves that poverty does not start at age 75, that health problems do not start at age 75, and that the OAS must be raised by $110 a month starting at age 65, because the government is completely overlooking seniors between the ages of 65 and 74.

Last week, I replaced a member of the Standing Committee on Finance. As we were questioning officials from the Canada Revenue Agency, I was astonished to discover that, in 2021, a country like Canada is unable to find technological solutions more quickly. The CRA knew since the summer of 2020 that problems would crop up. Its officials told us that there were still too many technological challenges to address the issues of either seniors or workers in the cultural sector.

Our third condition is that the minister confirm that she intends to use the power to adapt the assistance measures in Bill C-2 by regulation in order to meet the needs of other industries that are currently excluded from federal support, including the aerospace industry, if a need is demonstrated. As the crisis continues to evolve, there may be still more upheaval ahead.

In conclusion, we definitely need to monitor the situation, and the programs will have to be flexible. Bill C‑2 makes it possible to help some sectors during this crisis by extending the Canada emergency wage subsidy and the Canada emergency rent subsidy. However, as my colleague from Joliette mentioned, nothing is being done about other serious problems affecting our businesses because of supply chain disruptions. Consider the microprocessor shortage, for example. This supply chain disruption is causing stoppages in several production chains in Quebec.

There is one final aspect that I would like to address. The government cannot claim urgency as an excuse when it is the one that delayed the work associated with the adoption of the new programs by calling the most expensive election in history just as the fourth wave began. We should already have addressed these issues affecting SMEs and businesses.

We need to adopt Bill C-2 because one thing is certain: The current situation being what it is, we cannot feel at ease rising for the holidays without passing this important bill. Let us work together for business owners and workers. Let us take action.

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

Mr. Speaker, first, I would recognize that the Bloc is supporting the passage of Bill C-2. It is important to recognize that because the bill would provide ongoing support. In particular, I always appreciate the focus that the Bloc puts on the arts and cultural communities, something I personally believe in very strongly.

As has been pointed out, the bill would not resolve all the problems out there, but it is important that it ultimately pass because it supports many people and businesses today. Supporting Canadians in a broad sense means not only doing it through legislation, but through budgetary measures as well. To focus on this bill, it is a positive bill supporting certain aspects of our economy. Would the member agree with that?

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

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague and friend, the member for Shefford.

Bill C-2 came back to the House after being examined and even improved in committee. I want to explain to the House why the Bloc Québécois supported the principle of the bill and voted in favour of it. As the omicron variant has unfortunately reminded us, we are still in the midst of a pandemic and many sectors are still struggling. From the outset, we collectively decided to support those sectors, knowing that we would need those workers and businesses when the pandemic was over.

Bill C-2 extends the Canada emergency wage subsidy and the Canada emergency rent subsidy, but in a more targeted way, in order to help sectors that are struggling, such as the tourism and hospitality industry. I am thinking here about the challenges facing large hotel groups, since international conferences and other such events have been put on pause. The bill also targets another sector that is very important to us, the arts and culture industry, and it contains measures for businesses in other struggling industries. The bill also proposes support for individuals who have to care for a sick person quarantined at home because of COVID-19, as well as support measures for provinces or regions if they have to go back into lockdown. We are in favour of all of that.

When we read the first version of the bill, we and many of our colleagues in the House noticed that self-employed workers had been overlooked, since the bill did not set anything aside for them after CERB ended. We wanted to ensure that self-employed workers in these struggling sectors would be supported.

The first question I asked the Minister of Finance was about the absence of support measures for these individuals in the targeted sectors. She replied and repeated publicly that the program, the government and the department were not in a position to provide targeted support in those sectors, and officials appeared before the Standing Committee on Finance to confirm this. My colleague from Elmwood—Transcona also raised that issue at committee, as did my colleague from Shefford.

This is all very disappointing. After nearly two years of the pandemic, the government and its departments have not been able to evolve, move in new directions, be more flexible and better adapt the existing tools, especially by targeting certain sectors. This was done for the wage subsidy, but not for self-employed workers in the same sectors. It makes no sense.

Nevertheless, we negotiated and were guaranteed that there would be a support program for self-employed workers in the arts and culture sector. The Minister of Finance came to committee to tell us that, and the Minister of Canadian Heritage went into great detail explaining what it would look like, referring to the Quebec model in particular. In Quebec, the government supports foundations, which in turn support the self-employed workers in the sector. Since we found it unacceptable to leave out self-employed arts and culture workers, the guarantees we got suit us fine, and we are okay with things on that front.

The Bloc Québécois asked the government and the Minister of Finance for something else. The original version of the bill gave the minister and the Governor in Council sweeping power, in legal jargon, to change all of the terms of the bill and meet any new needs that might arise. According to the criteria, a businesses had to have lost 50% of its sales, or 40% for businesses in a targeted sector, during the qualifying periods in order to be eligible. Are those good percentages? Unfortunately, we did not have time to explore these issues in depth due to the short timeframe we were given.

The Minister of Finance and government officials confirmed that Bill C‑2, as written, gave the minister the power to make changes by way of regulation and to adjust support levels for targeted sectors.

That is a crucial element for the Bloc Québécois. During a pandemic, the situation and the circumstances can change fast. Some sectors that we feel need support because they play a crucial and strategic role in our economy may find themselves struggling. We need to do something about that. We actually got confirmation on that from the Minister of Finance.

The Bloc Québécois will be there to remind her. Quebec's manufacturing sector has approached us about this. Because of the pandemic, there is a huge shortage of semiconductors, and major Quebec companies that use semiconductors have seen very uneven or slowed production. The Minister of Finance told us that the numbers show the situation is not as bad as we feared, and she promised to give us those numbers. I would like to remind her that we are still waiting for those numbers. It has been a week, and we have not received anything. She could certainly do better on that front.

What the Bloc Québécois likes about Bill C‑2 is that, if the Minister of Finance needed to better support this sector, she would have the power to do so through regulations. This could be done quickly. The same goes for the aerospace industry. We are committed to talking about this at length when we come back to the House to see where things stand and how the needs have evolved. Again, the Bloc Québécois will be there to remind the Minister of Finance of the power she has and to remind her to use it for the good of the economy.

I will address another issue that is missing from Bill C‑2. It is an incredible injustice that has to do with a serious crisis. I am talking about the situation with seniors who had to rely on various forms of emergency benefits during the pandemic and who are now getting part of their guaranteed income supplement taken away, because the Canada emergency response benefit is not considered working income; their file was processed by Service Canada, which prevented them from proceeding with a new calculation for the current year; or they were required to make a repayment in the same year instead of in installments over a few years.

I am sure that my colleague from Shefford will speak to this in detail in her speech. The Bloc Québécois considers this a serious problem. We contacted the Minister of Finance and the respective ministers in Quebec about this both during and after the election campaign, urging them to act because this was important. We asked again in relation to Bill C‑2. The Minister of Finance promised to deal with the situation in the days to follow. We were led to believe that it would be in the economic update. We finally got $742 million. That is not what we were looking for, but it seems promising. We are waiting for the details before we make up our minds.

The big problem, however, is that the money would not be available until May 2022. Seniors have been living with reduced incomes for months now. The poorest seniors, the ones who receive the guaranteed income supplement, already have limited purchasing power. We are now struggling with inflation, but the fix would not come until next May. That is unacceptable. The Bloc Québécois will keep reminding the government that it needs to speed up the process.

We needed more time in committee. We were rushed, and it took the government two months to recall the House after an unnecessary election. Thus, we were unable to improve the bill as much as we could have.

However, I would like to remind members that we adopted an amendment proposed by my colleague from Elmwood—Transcona. That amendment does improve Bill C-2. I imagine that my colleague will speak more about it during his speech. An amendment moved by the member for Carleton was also adopted. However, the study of a bill requires more time.

In closing, I want to thank my colleagues who supported me at the Standing Committee on Finance. I am thinking of the member for Drummond concerning arts and culture, the member for Terrebonne, who is interested in pandemic-related assistance programs, my colleague from Shefford, who is interested in seniors, and my colleague from Abitibi—Témiscamingue, who also supported me.

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we came forward with Bill C-2 in response to what we heard on the ground. I have been speaking to businesses and workers. The tourism industry needs the support that is found in Bill C-2. I have been speaking to caregivers, as I am sure others in the House have, and they need the supports that are also found in Bill C-2. We are also extending sick leave benefits through this bill. I do not need to remind the House how incredibly important that is with this new wave of omicron.

Before the House adjourns for the holiday season, we must pass Bill C-2 so we can be prepared to support Canadians in their time of need.

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

Mr. Speaker, back on October 21, the Prime Minister and the government announced that, as a priority, they would be coming out with ongoing support programs. That is the essence of this bill.

Could my colleague provide her thoughts on why Bill C-2 is so important, as we want to continue to support people and businesses?

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his concern and his dedication to the tourism sector and to independent travel agents and advisers.

As I mentioned in my speech, Bill C-2 will be open and they will be eligible to apply for supports. I also note that we did extraordinary work to support Canadians when they had to cancel their travel plans last year at the height of the pandemic.

We will be there to support Canadians, as I know this is a volatile period. Of course, many plans are being changed right before the holidays. However, this is the right thing to do. We must keep Canadians safe. We do not know what other countries around the world may do. They may close their airspace, and we certainly do not want Canadians to be stranded abroad. That is why we have issued the travel advisory. We will continue to do everything necessary to continue to keep Canadians safe.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member, in her capacity as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Tourism, about the 12,000 independent travel advisers across the country who are suffering because of a lack of supports within Bill C-2. As the member may be aware in her capacity as the parliamentary secretary, many of these travel advisers had their commissions clawed back. They were not earning zero income; they were earning less than zero income and had to pay money back to the airlines. With the latest travel advisory, there will be more cancellations, and my understanding is that they are not eligible under Bill C-2 at this point.

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Tourism and Associate Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, with the rising threat of the omicron variant, it is absolutely crucial that Bill C-2 pass in order to bring in the supports that Canadian businesses and workers need.

What we have learned over the past 12 months is that the most important and effective economic policy is one that protects the health of Canadians.

I would like to remind the Conservatives and the NDP, who voted against the bill, that we are still in a pandemic, and our entrepreneurs and workers continue to face significant challenges. This is certainly not the time to let them down.

In these troubling times of rapidly increasing cases of the omicron variant, the federal government is ready to act, and we have the resources to do so.

In the economic and fiscal update presented earlier this week, our government announced the following investments: $2 billion to procure COVID-19 therapeutics and treatments that will save lives and help prevent hospitalizations, $1.7 billion to procure rapid testing supplies in order to identify infections earlier and break the chain of transmission, and $7.3 billion to procure vaccine boosters.

We are facing a serious threat, but we are prepared. Responding to this threat is obviously going to be the federal government's top priority.

Let us take a step back for a moment. When the pandemic hit us, our government rapidly rolled out a full range of effective, broad-based programs to support Canadians through our country’s greatest economic shock since the Great Depression. These actions were necessary and unprecedented in our lifetime.

A mere weeks after the start of the COVID-19 health crisis in Canada, we moved to introduce the emergency recovery benefit to ensure the Canadians who lost their jobs could keep food on the table and a roof over their head. We also introduced the emergency wage subsidy to help our businesses, particularly our small businesses, but also to help our workers and those working for our small businesses.

These supports have been absolutely critical, both for our economy and for our health. As the IMF recently said, “Government budget support measures during the COVID-19 pandemic have saved lives and jobs.”

It is therefore not a coincidence that we, here in Canada, have the second lowest COVID death rate out the G7. It is also no coincidence that we have the second strongest job recovery in the G7. This is a direct result of the resilience of Canadians, but it is also a demonstration of the impact a federal government can have when it puts people first.

Conservative members in this House seem to take a different view, choosing instead to demonize those Canadians that needed support during the depth of the pandemic. For example, the Conservative finance critic said yesterday that CERB recipients were fraudsters stuffing their pockets.

We are talking about a program that helped nearly nine million Canadians and was a literal lifeline for so many. We are talking about vulnerable seniors. We are talking about workers who lost their jobs and needed to put food on the kitchen table. These are our neighbours, our fellow Canadians. They should not be vilified.

I stand behind the supports we put in place. I also stand behind the decision to end the CERB once the economy reopened and jobs were again available. We can, and we have, made the right decisions at the right time in order to support those in need and support economic growth.

From coast to coast to coast, our programs have been a lifeline for workers and businesses. They have helped protect millions of jobs and helped hundreds of thousands of Canadian businesses get through the worst days of the pandemic.

However, let us be clear. These emergency measures were always meant to be temporary and to help us get through the crisis. Fortunately, we are in a new phase and it is very different from the darkest chapters of our fight against COVID‑19. Not only have we recovered 106% of the jobs lost during COVID‑19, but our economy is bouncing back exceptionally well. In the last quarter, the growth rate was 5.4%, which is twice as high as expected.

We also have the most effective and successful vaccination campaign in the world. Indeed, 64 million doses have already been administered and more than 80% of Canadians aged five and up have received two doses of the vaccine.

We have concluded agreements to receive millions of additional doses to ensure that all Canadians have access to the third dose of the vaccine.

Thanks to one of the most successful vaccination campaigns in the world, most businesses here in Canada have safely reopened and our country's employment is now back to well above pre-pandemic levels. However, we know there are still workers and businesses whose livelihoods are being affected as a result of public health measures. That is why it is important to pivot our supports to more targeted measures that will provide help where it is needed most, and continue to create jobs and growth while prudently managing government spending.

Some may wonder how we can tell that we have reached this turning point in Canada's economic recovery from the COVID recession. Allow me to highlight several markers of our government's successful economic response plan that has brought us to where we are today.

Last year, in the Speech from the Throne, our government promised to create one million jobs, a goal we achieved in September of this year when Canada recovered all of the jobs lost at the worst point of the recession. There have been three million jobs recovered since the spring of 2020, a very impressive number. Our plan is working. We have now surpassed our target and have, in fact, recovered 106% of the jobs lost at the peak of the pandemic, significantly outpacing the United States, where just 83% of lost jobs have been recovered thus far.

By delivering significant fiscal policy support to the economy and avoiding the harmful austerity policies proposed by the Conservatives after the 2008 recession, our Liberal government has supported a much more rapid and resilient recovery. In fact, our economy is now back to pre-pandemic outputs many months earlier than in the 2008 recession, even though the COVID recession was four times deeper and more significant.

However, as welcome as these economic markers and signs of recovery are, our government recognizes that not all sectors of the economy are there yet. Some of the necessary health and safety measures that continue to save lives continue to be restrictive for our businesses and for certain sectors of the economy, and with the threat of omicron looming, we need to continue to provide support where and when it is needed. What this means for our government is that we are entering what I truly hope and believe will be the final pivot in delivering the support needed to ensure a robust, inclusive and strong recovery for our country.

The service industry continues to stimulate the recovery, but the progress made in the retail sector has been erased in part by the losses in other sectors, including the accommodation and food services sector.

As the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance indicated earlier, many of the business support programs ended in October with the reopening of our economy. However, we know that the work is not over. The federal government must continue to be there to support Canadians. That is exactly what we are doing with Bill C‑2, which is before us today. We are moving on from broad, sweeping support, which was appropriate at the height of the crisis, to more targeted measures that will provide help where it is still needed.

This includes extending the Canada recovery hiring program until May 2022, which would help us finish the fight against COVID and continue to ensure that lost jobs are recovered as quickly as possible. For eligible employers with current revenue losses above 10%, our government would provide a subsidy rate of 50% to enable employers to hire the staff they need to grow. In addition, our government is proposing to deliver targeted support to businesses that are still facing significant pandemic-related challenges.

As Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Tourism and Associate Minister of Finance, I am particularly concerned with the struggles still faced by the tourism industry and those who depend on it. Let us not sugar-coat it: The industry has gone through an absolutely devastating 21 months. Tourism revenues decreased by almost 50% between 2019 and 2020, going from $104 billion to just $53 billion, while jobs directly attributable to tourism decreased by 41%. Those numbers are shocking. We must acknowledge that hundreds of thousands of workers in the tourism industry have lost their jobs, and that although many industries have seen strong and sustained recovery, the tourism sector is still struggling to recover its losses.

We must recognize the very difficult situation they face, and that is why we are moving forward in Bill C-2 with a new targeted tourism and hospitality recovery program. This new support program would provide wage and rent subsidies to tourism and hospitality businesses still facing serious pandemic-related challenges. Eligible applicants include hotels, travel agents, airports and other businesses directly related to tourism. However, we recognize that many more businesses rely indirectly on tourism. After all, about 10% of all jobs in Canada are dependent directly or indirectly on tourism. That is why we have expanded the list of eligible recipients to include restaurants, parks, sports facilities, theatres, festivals and more.

I know that this help is absolutely critical. I have spoken to hundreds of independent restaurant and tourism operators, and I have heard first-hand the distress and angst they have at the prospect of closing their businesses, often their life's work. Local businesses, like a favourite neighbourhood restaurant, are what make our communities and main streets home. We cannot leave them behind. That is why we have brought forward Bill C-2 and why it is so urgent that it pass.

To help these businesses that are still facing significant difficulties, our government is proposing to provide support through three new programs for businesses still grappling with major pandemic-related challenges.

The first is the tourism and hospitality recovery program, which would provide support to, for example, hotels, tour operators, travel agencies and restaurants with wage and rent subsidies of up to 75%.

The second is the hardest-hit business recovery program, which would provide support to other businesses that have faced deep losses, with wage and rent subsidies of up to 50%.

The third is the local lockdown program, which would provide businesses that face temporary new local lockdowns up to the maximum amount available through the wage and rent subsidy programs.

Finally, to ensure that workers who must isolate due to illness or must stay home to take care of a family member can continue to receive financial support, we are extending the recovery sickness benefit and the recovery caregiving benefit.

These measures are essential for our economy and to protect Canadians' health. They should be supported by all parties in the House.

As my time draws to a close in this debate on Bill C-2, let me take this opportunity to address Canadians before we leave for the holidays. I would ask them to book their appointments for a third dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. The booster shot is incredibly important. As a mother to a young child, I will also take this opportunity to address Canadian parents from right across the country and encourage them to get their children vaccinated as well.

Let us do everything we can to help the provinces and territories avoid putting in place further lockdown measures. Let us do everything possible to avoid overwhelming our health care system and our hospitals. Let us do everything possible to keep each other safe and healthy.

As this may be my last opportunity to speak before the holidays, I wish you, Mr. Speaker, my colleagues and all Canadians a very happy holiday period, a safe holiday season and a healthy 2022.

Economic and Fiscal Update 2021

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

Madam Speaker, the member referenced the fact that the government needs to have some sort of retrofit housing program, one that has energy efficiency, and he was disappointed we did not have that.

Let me alleviate his disappointment. We have a program. There are 700,000 applicants expected for grants. It is all about making homes more energy efficient. It is good for the economy; it is good for the environment and it is good for our housing stock. It is helping many people who would not have the finances to buy a home.

I wonder if the member would at the very least acknowledge that his dream of having something of this nature is actually a reality, that it is a good thing and that he will support it, much like he should be supporting Bill C-2, but that is another issue.

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

Madam Speaker, I would talk about the folks in my riding who also work in the tourism industry, an industry that is 85% women, who are independent travel agents who work out of their basement or home office. There is nothing in there for them. The government should not pretend. It should not pretend, because we have heard this again and again.

The fact is we support getting help in the way the government says it wants to help certain businesses. It is not that we do not want the help to be there for them, but this divide and conquer strategy of the Liberals hives off certain groups and delivers help to them while abandoning other groups like independent travel agents and like a lot of people who are working in the arts and culture sector. They are still waiting on some kind of program, but all the government had to do was include them in the Canada worker lockdown benefit without the requirement for a lockdown.

There are ways the government could be delivering help to a lot more people who really need it. Bill C-2 is about the basic structure of Canada's recovery, and it is a complete failure from that point of view. The government should stop pretending that we are somehow against helping the few people it wants to help, when we are clearly making a statement about the nature of the recovery and all the other people who need help but for whom the government is not there.

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

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Elmwood—Transcona, with whom I have the pleasure of working on the Standing Committee on Finance. I have seen how hard-working and brilliant this member is, as we have sat intensively over the past week. He is motivated to serve the public, he does it for the right reasons and he is very talented. I salute him.

My colleague raises some good points. A solution with respect to the GIS and the problem with CERB is being proposed here. Based on the answers we got from officials in the briefing, it seems to address the problem, although it is different from the solutions we had considered. However, the time frame is still a major concern. Officials told us that the payment would be sent in May, but we see that as an unacceptable delay. We will obviously keep an eye on this.

There is nothing in the update about self-employed workers in the cultural sector. What was announced is another measure in response to what we asked for more than a year ago. The Bloc Québécois is reassured by what the Minister of Canadian Heritage said at committee. We obviously look forward to seeing this targeted program, which will be presented by the government and the Minister of Canadian Heritage. It was a core condition for our support of Bill C-2, which deals with the extension of wage subsidies.

Even though the minister made links to Bill C‑2 in her speech, the update is not Bill C‑2. The two should not be confused.

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

Madam Speaker, I know the issue of self-employed workers in the arts and culture sector is one that the Bloc Québécois talked about at length during the debate on Bill C-2. We in the NDP talked a lot about seniors and the guaranteed income supplement.

We heard a little bit about those two issues in the economic update, but it was very vague. We did not get much in the way of details.

I am a little concerned that what the government has in mind may not be an adequate solution for seniors who have already had their guaranteed income supplement taken away.

I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on the vague program announced for arts and culture workers. Is he confident that the Liberal government will do a good job of implementing such a program?

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

Mr. Speaker, when the world-wide pandemic hit Canada, the Prime Minister and this government stepped up and made it very clear that we were going to be there for Canadians. Over the days, weeks and months that followed, programs flowed to support Canadians in a very real and tangible way. Whether through wage subsidy programs, the CERB program, direct payments to seniors or direct payments to people with disabilities, we were there. The Conservatives, depending on which member is speaking, will talk about the deficit trying to imply that we spent too much. We were there to support Canadians.

We now have Bill C-2 before us. It is a continuation of supporting Canadians. Will the leader of the Conservative Party and the Conservatives ensure that the ongoing support for Canadian workers, businesses and Canadians in general, will be there by supporting Bill C-2 and ensuring it passes before Christmas?

Finance

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the first report of the Standing Committee on Finance regarding Bill C-2, An Act to provide further support in response to COVID-19.

I want to say a big thanks to the extraordinary and tireless clerks and staff who made this all happen: Alexandre Roger, Philippe Méla, Isabelle D'Souza and Émilie Thiverge. I thank them so much on behalf of the committee.

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

At least this version is more in line with the existing language in Bill C-2 and the Income Tax Act that Bill C-2 amends.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Mr. Blaikie, I will now give you my ruling that this amendment is inadmissible, and here is my reason for this.

Bill C-2 provides for further support in response to COVID-19. The amendment attempts to create a mechanism allowing people who have received certain benefits they are not entitled to to reimburse 50% of the amount instead of the full amount, as provided in the respective acts. If adopted, the amendment would force the government to reimburse people who have already paid back any amount above the 50% threshold from the consolidated revenue fund.

House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, states the following on page 772:

Since an amendment may not infringe upon the financial initiative of the Crown, it is inadmissible if it imposes a charge on the public treasury, or if it extends the objects or purposes or relaxes the conditions and qualifications specified in the royal recommendation.

In the opinion of the chair, the amendment proposes a new scheme for the reimbursement of payments of benefits unduly received, which would impose an increased charge on the public treasury not envisioned in the bill. Therefore, I rule the amendment inadmissible.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

There was one thing you said in the beginning about legislation. Is it this revised legislation we're looking at today, Bill C-2, that allows three more years?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Mr. Blaikie.

I will give you my ruling that this amendment is inadmissible. Again, here's my reason for it. Bill C-2 provides for further support in response to COVID-19 with the lockdown benefit available to people meeting the criteria established in the bill. The amendment attempts to allow the lockdown benefit to be accessed under specific circumstances even if a lockdown has not been called.

House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, states the following on page 772:

Since an amendment may not infringe upon the financial initiative of the Crown, it is inadmissible if it imposes a charge on the public treasury, or if it extends the objects or purposes or relaxes the conditions and qualifications specified in the royal recommendation.

In the opinion of the chair, the amendment proposes a new scheme for the lockdown benefit that would make it available to people not presently eligible under the bill, which would impose a higher charge on the public treasury than the one contemplated in the bill. Therefore, I rule the amendment inadmissible.

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

All right. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't jumping the gun.

We've had this conversation around the table. The government has said that one of the purposes of this bill is to narrow the scope of existing pandemic supports, at least as they were until October, and to focus on particularly hard-hit industries. Of course, one of the big conversations around this table has been about the fact that within those hard-hit industries.... I'm speaking particularly of tourism and hospitality and arts and culture. We know the industries I'm talking about, because they're very clearly laid out in part 1 of the bill. These are the industries for which the government has said the wage subsidy should continue to apply. But workers who don't work for a company that's eligible for the wage subsidy or that sees fit to apply for the wage subsidy, or who work for themselves, don't have access to any kind of financial benefit.

This amendment would simply say that the Canada worker lockdown benefit.... Incidentally, I didn't propose an amendment with a better name than that, one that rolls off the tongue. If anyone has any suggestions, I would be open to such an amendment.

This simply says that people who work in any of those industries that the government already identifies in this bill as requiring exceptional support should be able to qualify for the Canada worker lockdown benefit whether there is a lockdown order in their region or not. It would mean that self-employed workers like independent travel agents, for instance, or some of the folks we've been talking about in the arts and cultural sector, or those who don't work for an employer that would get the wage subsidy under the terms of Bill C-2 would be able to apply directly for $300 a week of support under the Canada worker lockdown benefit program.

That's what this amendment would accomplish.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Mr. Blaikie.

Is there any discussion on this?

I will give you my ruling. This amendment is inadmissible, and here is my reason for it.

Bill C-2 provides for further support in response to COVID-19 in the amount of $300 weekly as part of the lockdown benefit. The amendment attempts to increase this amount to $500 weekly.

House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, states the following on page 772:

Since an amendment may not infringe upon the financial initiative of the Crown, it is inadmissible if it imposes a charge on the public treasury, or if it extends the objects or purposes or relaxes the conditions and qualifications specified in the royal recommendation.

In the opinion of the chair, the amendment proposes a new, superior amount for the lockdown benefit, which imposes a charge on the public treasury higher than the one contemplated in the bill. Therefore, I rule the amendment inadmissible.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

There is no further discussion.

Mr. Blaikie, I will now give my ruling. This amendment is inadmissible, and here's my reason for it.

Bill C-2 provides for further support in response to COVID-19. The amendment seeks to remove several amounts or benefits from the calculation of taxpayers' income for the purpose of determining their eligibility for a benefit that is based on their income when these amounts or benefits are presently taken into account. House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, states, on page 770, “An amendment to a bill that was referred to a committee after second reading is out of order if it is beyond the scope and principle of the bill.”

In the opinion of the chair, the amendment is a new concept that is beyond the scope of the bill and that would also require royal recommendation. Therefore, I rule the amendment inadmissible.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thanks, Chair.

I very much respect the intention of my colleagues who are trying to solve a major problem. I don't think there's much disagreement about the problem we are trying to solve. The disagreement is more about the solution to the problem.

While Mr. McLean's intentions are good, I am concerned about the potential implications of this subamendment. We don't know what those implications are, and we won't be able to figure them out this evening before we vote on this subamendment. By trying to solve a big problem, we could create a much bigger problem for the companies we want to help.

I remind my colleagues that we are talking here about companies whose revenues have dropped by 40% or 50%. Companies that qualify for these programs are already suffering and are already doing everything they can to retain their employees. Despite our good intentions, this change could create additional problems for those companies. If we unwittingly create a problem tonight, companies may no longer be eligible for these programs under Bill C‑2. Unfortunately, if we make such a mistake, we will only realize it in the coming months.

I am not saying there is a problem, but rather that we do not know whether there is a problem. Despite the intelligence and experience of everyone around this table, no one here can say with certainty that we won't cause a problem for the companies we are trying to help. While the underlying intent is good, it is very risky to pass amendments that would change the wording of the bill.

That is all I wanted to say.

[Trevor McGowan]

Maybe I'll start with your second question first. As noted, there's a concern that because the rules apply to all dividends and not just dividends paid on the publicly listed shares, they could require repayment of the wage subsidy where one entity in a corporate group is moving funds to another entity in the corporate group for the group's purposes and not actually returning any amounts to shareholders. That's a very common way for public companies and large corporate groups to move money around and ensure that funds are in the correct legal entity. Likewise, it could adversely affect corporations that have issued preferred shares as part of their corporate financing programs. I think those are probably the two largest.

In terms of what impact the amendment would have on the administration and enforcement of the rules, of course the Canada Revenue Agency has been working tirelessly to put these structures and programs in place in order to implement the new measures contained in Bill C-2. Any change to them could require the Canada Revenue Agency to tweak its systems. While I don't know—I'm not involved in the development of the Canada Revenue Agency's IT systems—that does seem to be a risk.

Conversely, public corporations could be required to proceed with the rules without necessarily having full certainty as to how they are intended to apply—for example, whether it applies to the qualifying period that ends after the date of royal assent, or before, or whatnot.

So there would be those concerns. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about the Canada Revenue Agency's technical systems to advise or to opine on whether they would need to be redesigned, but that is something that I think we'd want to check.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chambers.

I propose that we strike out the last part, the second part of the amendment here to Bill C-2, NDP-3, paragraph (b). We could strike that out because there is a problem with retroactivity. If we took out the retroactive clause there, “Subsection (18.1) is deemed to have come into force on March 15, 2020”, I would propose that to my colleague from the New Democratic Party. I think the intent of that would be clear, that companies cannot access the benefits if they are paying dividends or increasing the payouts to their executives.

We would like to have language in there that includes share buybacks as well, because it's all about income distribution one way or another and access to these programs should not be benefiting shareholders at the expense of taxpayers. I think we all agree on that. I think it's a flaw in the initial bill that went through that we have this. Nevertheless, there are companies that followed the rules and applied those rules to make sure they survived that period. Retroactively.... The programs were not loans at that point in time. The programs were, “Here's a program to make sure you hang on to your employees and that your employees have the sustenance required.” Some of those companies have since emerged as dividend-paying companies.

I want to make sure that the timing on this is very clear, that we're talking about the go-forward plan, with no retroactive element involved in this that would require all kinds of financial restatements and all kinds of public market shenanigans that would happen at that point in time. I do appreciate very much the intent of the bill as far as matching revenues with expenses goes.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would propose that as a friendly amendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Mr. Blaikie.

Is there any further discussion?

I'll now give my ruling on this amendment. It is inadmissible, and here's my reason for that.

Bill C-2 provides for further support in response to COVID-19. The amendment seeks to amend subparagraph 56(1)(r)(iv.1) of the Income Tax Act to remove any COVID-related financial assistance amount from the calculation of the taxpayer's income in order to receive an old age security benefit.

As House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, states on page 770, “An amendment to a bill that was referred to a committee after second reading is out of order. It is beyond the scope and principle of the bill.” In the opinion of the chair, the amendment is a new concept that is beyond the scope of the bill, and it would also require royal recommendation.

Therefore, I rule the amendment inadmissible. This ruling also applies to NDP-2, since the two amendments are consequential.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

It's 6:30. I call this meeting to order.

Welcome, everyone, to meeting number nine of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance.

Pursuant to the House of Commons order of reference adopted on December 2, 2021, the committee is meeting on Bill C-2, an act to provide further support in response to COVID-19.

I know I've gone over a number of the health and safety measures with all of the members, as well as with the witnesses who are with us today. They are ministry officials who understand the different protocols we have to abide by—the two-metre physical distancing, the wearing of masks and the hygiene.

Also, when it comes to using our technical system here for the hybrid—

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I have two motions that are more in the spirit of the actual work of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, work we are all eager to tackle in a meaningful way.

The first concerns the situation facing artists, something the Standing Committee on Finance has talked a lot about in the past few days, further to its examination of Bill C‑2. We, as the heritage committee, can do something, and that is studying a piece of federal legislation, the Status of the Artist Act. Quebec has a statute with some very helpful provisions.

The motion reads as follows:

That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the Committee undertake a study on the Status of the Artist Act and its impact on improving basic working conditions for artists; that the Committee invite officials from the heritage department, tax experts and other stakeholders and groups from the culture sector to follow up on this issue and that the Committee hold a minimum of four (4) meetings to that end; and that the Committee report its findings and recommendations to the House.

Tourism

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

Mr. Speaker, let me outline just a few of the supports that the government has put in place for entrepreneurs and people in the tourism sector: $100 million to help Destination Canada market us around the world and in our own country, $200 million to support festivals and events, $200 million to support small festivals and large festivals, $500 million for the tourism relief fund and $1 billion in 2021.

If the other side of the House would like to deliver a Christmas present to the tourism sector, they could vote for Bill C-2 and see $7.4 billion put into our economy.

COVID-19 Economic Measures

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

Mr. Speaker, although we are seeing some encouraging signs of economic recovery, it is also clear that not all regions of the country nor all sectors are recovering at the same pace. That is especially true for the tourism sector.

I can see it in my region which, to my impartial eye, is the most beautiful in Canada. My region usually welcomes thousands upon thousands of tourists every year and has a vigorous tourism sector, but it has been affected by the pandemic.

I would like to ask the Minister of Tourism and Associate Minister of Finance how Bill C-2 supports the tourism sector.

Tourism Industry

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we know that the pandemic is still taking a toll on our Canadian economy. Currently, the hardest-hit sector is tourism and hospitality, which employs 1.8 million Canadians.

On Friday, the Conservatives proposed that Bill C‑2 be split into two bills, to directly address the problem in the tourism and hospitality industry.

Is the government prepared to work with us to ensure that we can adopt the measures for tourism and hospitality immediately, so we can provide direct assistance to the 1.8 million Canadians affected by these issues?

[Bea Bruske]

Thank you for that.

While we welcome any type of new benefit, our concern with the benefits proposed under Bill C-2 is whether workers would actually qualify for those benefits. We're worried that when there are outbreaks in various parts of the country that may be workplace specific, where workers do not have access to things like paid sick time, they will also not have access to this benefit, based on the fact that there isn't an actual lockdown for that particular region. That is going to leave workers significantly short.

The other concern we have is that employers may not necessarily qualify under the hospitality benefits, for example, because they may not have lost 40% of their business or more. However, workers may have lost a shift or two during that week. For a worker to miss a fifth of their paycheck, that's a fairly significant chunk that they have to navigate and negotiate in terms of how they make their rent check and how they put those groceries on the table, so we are concerned that those benefits don't go nearly far enough.

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

All right, that's clear. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will ask Ms. Hogan the same question that my colleague Mr. Poilievre asked her. First, let me explain why. What does this have to do with Bill C‑2? We, the legislators, are being asked to vote for a multi-billion-dollar bill. As in the case of the aid programs during the pandemic, we are talking about huge sums. In order to move forward, people need to have absolute confidence in the government and our various institutions, whose role includes auditing the work of the government.

Ms. Hogan, I will take Mr. Poilievre's question as my own: did your office present the audits to a lobbyist before they were presented to the House?

[Bea Bruske, President, Canadian Labour Congress]

Thank you, Chair, and good afternoon, committee members.

My name is Bea Bruske, and I am the president of the Canadian Labour Congress.

The CLC is Canada's largest central labour body speaking on issues of national importance to all working people in Canada.

Since the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak, the Government of Canada committed to doing whatever it took, for as long as it took, to get Canadians through the pandemic. The government has consistently said that no matter how much longer the crisis lasts, and no matter where you live, they've got your back. Despite this, back in October, the government announced it would be terminating the Canada recovery benefit. It did so in the midst of the pandemic. It did so before the labour market had fully recovered, and it did so with no system of unemployment benefits in place for vulnerable workers who cannot access EI.

The pandemic is far from over. Today, the number of daily COVID-19 cases is 135,000 higher than when government announced that it was ending the CRB. Many Canadians continue to struggle with joblessness and underemployment. In November, there were 1.2 million Canadians who were officially out of work, and another 630,000 working people who wanted full-time work but couldn't find it.

Statistics Canada's labour underutilization rate captures the full range of people who are available and who want to work. In November, the labour underutilization rate was 12.4%. In other words, 12.4% of the potential labour force was either unemployed, not participating in the labour force but wanting work, or employed but receiving far fewer than their usual hours of work. When the government decided to end the CRB, the official jobless rate was still a full percentage point higher than in February 2020. Total hours worked were below prepandemic levels.

One labour market indicator had recovered to the prepandemic levels, and of course that was the labour force participation. In other words, in our mind, there is little evidence of people staying at home on CRB benefits rather than taking part in working or looking for employment. Many CRB recipients were in fact working while they were receiving those benefits, as the CRB permitted them to do. They relied on those benefits to cope with insufficient hours of work and with reduced earnings. In the period just before the government's decision to terminate the CRB, 970,000 Canadians received it, and in the final eligibility period, there were still over 600,000 CRB recipients. The number continues to climb as workers retroactively claim those CRB benefits.

Let's be clear. The Canada recovery lockdown benefit is not a substitute for the Canada recovery benefit, which workers continue to need.

The restrictive benefit may never be used, or used very sparingly. Last Tuesday we heard this committee, and this committee heard from government officials who were unable to identify a single instance, between the announcement of the benefit on October 21 and now, where the lockdown benefit would apply. We still haven't heard how much the lockdown benefit is expected to cost, possibly because the actual cost will be negligible, or perhaps even zero.

It's doubtful the lockdown benefit would help families in places like Alberta, where the government has dragged its feet on putting lockdowns in place, despite the widespread risk of COVID. As a regional benefit, the lockdown benefit is not designed to respond to workplace outbreaks like the ones we've seen at Cargill, at Amazon and at Canada Post.

Honourable members, the decision to terminate the CRB, pulling the rug out from under struggling workers, self-employed workers in the hard-hit hospitality and tourism.... They've relied very heavily on the CRB. In contrast, the measures in part 1 of Bill C-2, extending the emergency wage subsidy and emergency rent subsidy to the tourism and hospitality sectors, will do very little for those workers.

We recommend urgently restoring the CRB benefits for workers who cannot access employment insurance. We also recommend several amendments to improve the lockdown benefit, which I'd be pleased to detail for you if there's an opportunity.

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

What is the relevance to Bill C-2, Mr. Poilievre?

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

How is it relevant, Mr. Chair?

I have a point of order. What's the relevance to Bill C-2?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Is it relevant to Bill C-2?

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

No. What's the relevance of the question to Bill C-2?

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Again, I have a point of order.

What's the relevance of this to Bill C-2?

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

What's the relevance of this to Bill C-2?

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

That's very interesting.

Let's step back to the Canada emergency wage subsidy. You've been talking about that.

You did release a series of findings and implications, one of which was that:

...without effective controls for validating payments, the integrity of the program is at risk and ineligible employers might receive the subsidy.

This is an important factor to consider, and I appreciate what you just said about the social insurance numbers. Given the amount of public attention on the cost of the pandemic recovery and how the government is going to pay for it, I'm wondering again if your office was consulted at all about the executive compensation components within Bill C-2 and if you feel those provisions address the concerns that you mentioned in your report.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

It's been quite interesting listening to my colleagues and their views on this specific motion. In the past 20 months, I think our government—in fact, just team Canada—has done all that we can to ensure that Canadians are protected and had the ability to stay at home while COVID raged in public settings, whether it was through providing CERB or supporting small business through the business account or wage subsidies. I think it's a little surprising that there seems to be an automatic assumption of guilt declared by a couple of our members here on how we were able to support hundreds of thousands of Canadians to get through what has been the most challenging part of their lifetimes and of our generation.

We worked really hard—not just members on the governing side but also members from all parties—to ensure that our constituents were well supported throughout this whole process. I think we need to continue doing that—indeed, we realize that COVID is not yet over—whether through Bill C-2 or other ways. We want to continue to support Canadians and I think we should. I think we need to find that collaborative approach. We need to find that balance in the work that we do here in this committee to make sure that Canadians are feeling supported and are being supported.

The last thing I think that our committee should be doing is using this committee for political posturing or to distract from the work we've all been doing among all parties over the past 20 months. We need to ensure that, as we continue to finish the fight against COVID, we all lend our hands and work together and really try to move things forward.

I think there are other more pertinent issues that we should be looking. As members have said, this one was really hashed out in the 43rd Parliament. I think artificial intelligence, facial recognition and equity are huge topics that Canadians are very much concerned about, and we would be doing an injustice if we played into what I think may be political posturing. I think it would be an injustice if we stepped way from continuing to protect Canadians from this changing world, from the changing digital space and from the changing normal of what COVID has brought for us.

I would respectfully ask my colleagues to think about this, guys. We have an opportunity to move forward. We have an opportunity to do the right thing. We have an opportunity to really work on issues that impact each and every one of us every single day, and we can do that here in this committee. I would really encourage you to work on those issues as opposed to rehashing things that have already been settled, and not participate in what is going to be a political posturing session. I think Canadians deserve better than that.

Thank you.

[Karen Hogan, Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, I wish to acknowledge that the lands on which we are gathered are part of the traditional unceded territory of the Anishinaabeg People.

Thank you for this opportunity to contribute to the committee's study of Bill C‑2, An Act to provide further support in response to COVID‑19..

I'm happy to discuss our audit reports, including the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy and the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, which were tabled in the House of Commons on March 25. Joining me today is Philippe Le Goff, who was the principal responsible for the CEWS audit.

Our audit of the CEWS, or Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy program, focused on whether the Department of Finance Canada provided analysis on the program and whether the Canada Revenue Agency limited abuse by establishing appropriate controls in its administration of the program.

Overall, we found the department and the Canada Revenue Agency worked together within short timeframes to support the development and implementation of the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy, CEWS.

The design and rollout of the subsidy highlighted pre-existing weaknesses in the Canada Revenue Agency's systems, approaches, and data. One of the weaknesses is related to the lack of up‑to‑date tax data, which meant that the agency did not have all the relevant information for assessing the applications before issuing payments. This revenue information would have allowed the agency to validate the reasonableness of the revenue drop that was declared by applicants.

To prioritize issuing payments quickly, the Canada Revenue Agency decided to not implement certain controls that it could have used to validate the reasonableness of subsidy applications. For example, the agency decided that it would not ask for employee social insurance numbers, although this information could have helped prevent the doubling up of applications for financial support.

The limitations of the agency's information technology systems affected its ability to perform some pre-payment validations, as did the absence of complete and up‑to‑date tax information. As a result, the agency will have to perform more post-payment verification work.

Let's now turn to our report on the Canada emergency response benefit. This audit focused on the analysis carried out by Employment and Social Development Canada and the Department of Finance in the design of the benefit. It also examined whether Employment and Social Development Canada and the Canada Revenue Agency designed mechanisms so that the benefit would support eligible workers who had suffered a loss of income for reasons related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Working within a short time frame, Employment and Social Development Canada and the Department of Finance supported the design of the benefit to quickly deliver support to workers who had lost income because of COVID-19. The department and the agency made an early decision to focus on post-payment controls to simplify the process and expedite issuing benefit payments. The department and the agency introduced additional controls once the benefit was rolled out.

Based on our audit work on the original design of the two programs, both will need to rely heavily on post-payment verification, which will be time-consuming and costly. The post-payment work on these two programs was expected to be the subject of an audit by my office to begin in early 2022. However, we have been informed by the Canada Revenue Agency that it has deferred or delayed its work and that it is highly unlikely that a significant amount of post-payment work will be completed by 2023. Given that there will be little for us to audit, we have postponed our work.

This concludes my opening remarks. We would be pleased to answer any questions the committee may have.

Thank you.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Ms. Chatel, thank you for the question.

To recap some of what I said earlier, the Liberal government has been there from the beginning. Since 2015, it has invested a lot of money in organizations like the CBC, the Canada Media Fund, Telefilm Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts and so on.

What did we do when the pandemic hit? As early as April, the government invested $500 million in emergency funds to maintain jobs and support business continuity. We realized that this sector needed an extra boost. Then on November 30, as part of the 2020 fall economic statement, the government announced an investment of $281 million. One of the purposes of this investment was to respond to the film and television industry's request for assurances, to ensure that they would be covered if something happened during filming. Subsequently, there was a record investment of $1.93 billion in the 2021 budget. These are huge sums.

We are now continuing to provide assistance through Bill C-2. As you said, this bill affects cultural organizations, agencies and businesses. However, it lacks direct assistance to self-employed workers. We provide this assistance through Canadian Heritage and existing programs. So we don't need a bill because, as we promised in our platform, we will make an investment of about $50 million. In addition, we will continue to fulfil our election commitments, such as holding a summit in a month and a half, among other things. There is a continuity in all of this, which is to never forget our workers in the cultural sector.

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Good morning, Minister, and welcome to the committee. It's a pleasure to see you this morning.

I would also like to thank your colleagues from the Department of Canadian Heritage, who have indeed done an extraordinary job during this pandemic.

I wanted to quickly come back to what some of my colleagues from the Conservatives have mentioned. Minister, I don't want you to leave with the wrong impression here. We called FINTRAC as a witness. In their testimony, they concluded that in the standard that this government has developed over the years to ensure accountability when there is something suspicious about any of our programs, there are checks and balances in the system to red flag it and immediately move toward an investigation.

We heard that banks, very early on, identified some suspicious transactions that were, by and large, very small numbers of payments. Immediately, it went to FINTRAC, which launched an investigation. The collaboration between FINTRAC and the Canada Revenue Agency went very well.

Minister, I want you to understand that the witnesses said the system and standards in place for all of our programs are very good. This is supported by the Auditor General report that investigated those systems and concluded that, through the program we had in place, the money went to the right person and abuses were taken care of.

I will ask my questions in French, because, as you know, the arts and culture sector is very important in Canada from coast to coast, and particularly so in Quebec. This is also the case in my riding.

I am very pleased to hear that our programs really helped the sector during the pandemic.

Also, I am very interested in the summit you are going to organize. I'm also hearing concerns that the arts and culture sector needs to receive financial support quickly.

As you mentioned, Minister, Bill C‑2 will go a long way to help organizations, businesses and employees in the sector, who will benefit from maintaining the employer-employee relationship. There is still a need to help the self-employed in the sector and I am very pleased to hear you say that help will be available to them.

I believe I understood that no new legislation will be required to provide assistance to these workers, as these programs are already in place.

Can you give us more details about this aid? Will it get to them more quickly as there is no need for a bill?

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

As far as the cultural sector is concerned, this is definitely going to help the organizations, cultural businesses and others. The part that is also necessary, which is not through Bill C-2 but what we're doing now, is to help the gig workers, the independent workers. It's absolutely necessary, and we're doing it right now.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

We also had some information last week about the hiring recovery benefit. It has a very low take-up, with about 10,000 approved applications.

If we're trying to convince people to re-enter the workforce, should we be concerned? In Bill C-2, we're asking to extend the Canada hiring recovery benefit program, but we're extending a program that seems to not really be that effective.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you.

You mentioned encouraging people to get back into the workforce, but we also heard testimony last week about the severe labour shortage and the challenges for many stakeholders, in particular those in some of the industries we're talking about today, of finding people who are available to work once they open back up. In Bill C-2, we don't really see much of anything with respect to labour shortages and trying to help these organizations find workers.

Do you have any comments on the labour shortage?

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

We decided on a series of measures to help the cultural sector, Bill C-2 being one of them, going directly to organizations. The other one, through consultations with the organizations, and also at the recommendation of a lot of those associations—I'm talking about ACTRA, the UDA and others—was that maybe working with them would be the best way to do it.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

In our platform, we have provided $50 million for financial assistance for self‑employed workers. Bill C‑2 has a lot of things for cultural businesses and associations and so on, but the financial assistance for self‑employed workers should be about $50 million. Again, we haven't finalized this support measure, and we're still working on it.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

We're moving quickly, but through Bill C-2 you also have money that is going to the organizations and cultural businesses so that they will be able to keep those people. That is touching a lot of people in the cultural industry. For those who are not touched by this, there is the program that we're talking about that is coming very soon.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

We had many discussions with finance, of course, to make sure that the cultural sector would be included. This is why associations, groups and cultural businesses will have access, as you know, to what's provided by Bill C-2—the wage subsidy to 75%, the rent subsidy and in any other event, in case of lockdowns, the rest of Bill C-2.

We're going one step further internally. You don't need legislation for that. We have the programs to do it. We will go one step further to make sure that we're there for our independent workers.

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

Thank you.

I hear what you're saying, but I see a lot of gaps in the service. I'm really worried about what that impact will be on this particular arts, culture and heritage sector.

Could you talk to the committee about how your department was consulted about the structure of income supports in Bill C-2 in order to best serve the workers in this particular industry?

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

We know, as you mentioned, that before the pandemic, there were about 678,000 workers. It went down to about 606,000 workers, so about 70,000 workers are left. Some of them, though, can benefit from the different programs in Bill C-2, and some of them are independent.

I'm talking about self‑employed workers.

What we're doing within Canadian Heritage is to help those independent workers, but to answer your question, 70,000 jobs were not recuperated.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the minister and his officials for being here today to talk about this very important issue.

I'd like to follow up a bit on what my former colleague spoke about. We know that the arts, culture and heritage sector represents about 673,000 jobs in the Canadian economy. They're important jobs. The government has also really made it clear that Bill C-2 is the last set of pandemic income supports they will be offering.

We know that the arts and culture sector is one of the last to recover. Do you know around how many arts and culture workers were still using the Canadian recovery benefit on October 23?

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

We've always known that there was a significant need in the cultural sector. However, as you already know, Mr. Champoux, we sometimes help artists through various programs such as the Canada emergency wage subsidy, or CEWS, because these programs enable them to keep their jobs.

You rightly referred to self‑employed workers. We'll help them by creating a program to supplement Bill C‑2. This bill will help organizations, cultural businesses and so on. However, at the same time, we don't need a bill to implement our plan, because we'll use existing programs. We're working with the Union des artistes, or UDA, and others to quickly put together a program that will help self‑employed workers by giving them money directly.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for joining us today, Minister Rodriguez. I also want to thank your esteemed colleagues. As my colleague said earlier, they do an excellent job at the Department of Canadian Heritage. We always greatly appreciate your efforts. We hear nothing but good things about you.

Minister Rodriguez, you spoke earlier about the programs that the government has implemented to assist the cultural sector since the start of the pandemic. Last year, at the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, we conducted a study to understand how the pandemic was affecting the cultural community in particular. The study found that the programs in place were helping the cultural community, but that the money wasn't getting to the self‑employed workers and the artists. In other words, the industry, production companies and theatres were receiving assistance, but the artists, self‑employed workers and technicians weren't obtaining any of the money and assistance that they needed.

As you know, the figures are quite alarming, and we're noticing this more and more. That's why we specifically asked for the continuation of assistance programs such as the Canada recovery benefit, or CRB, for the hardest‑hit sectors, including the cultural sector. Obviously, we saw that self‑employed workers in the cultural sector aren't covered by Bill C‑2. I have a question for you, Minister Rodriguez, but it could also be addressed to the deputy minister.

When did you find out that the cultural sector, artists and self‑employed cultural workers wouldn't be protected by Bill C‑2?

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Thank you for the question.

We've seen it right from the start in helping to maintain jobs. For example, what Bill C-2 is doing is still helping those industries with the wage subsidy and the rent subsidy. This applies to the cultural sector, one of the sectors that was the most hit by the pandemic. When you think about it, after the tourism sector, I think it's the cultural sector that's been the hardest hit. It's there, through those programs, to help the organizations and associations.

What we're also trying to do directly through my department is to help the self-employed through direct funding. This is what we're working on at this moment with the foundations, guilds and unions.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you.

I was really pleased when you highlighted in your opening remarks that Bill C-2 already has a lot of support for artists and those in the cultural sector. It was important for you to point that out, because when we have these debates in the House, people often forget that there is actually quite a bit of support there.

I have a question for you. Why do you think it's important to have so many different funding streams for arts and culture, and how have we seen these programs meeting the needs of workers and organizations?

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Minister of Canadian Heritage]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, committee members and colleagues.

First, congratulations on being elected and on being appointed to this important committee. I also want to thank you for inviting us to appear today to discuss our government's support for the cultural sector during the pandemic.

The hundreds of thousands of workers in the sector, including 158,000 professional artists, are vital to our economy and society. Our government has known this for a long time. We've always been there for them, and we'll always support our arts and culture sector and our heritage.

To understand the scope of all that has been accomplished, you must think back a bit to 2015. At that time, the cultural sector had just gone through a decade of budget cuts, and we said enough was enough. That's basically what we told Canadians. Under a Liberal government, our culture and our languages would be protected from now on. That's what we've done. As soon as we were elected in 2015, in the 2016 budget, we started to reverse the budget cuts.

One of the first things we did was to reinvest $675 million in CBC/Radio-Canada. That same year, we announced the largest increase in history to the budget of the Canada Council for the Arts. We also invested in Telefilm and the Canada Media Fund. I could go on and on, Mr. Chair, but long story short, we made the biggest reinvestment in our culture in the history of our country.

When Canada began to feel the full impacts of COVID-19 in March 2020, the culture and heritage sectors were among the first and hardest hit. Many in the creative industry found themselves with little or, quite often, zero income.

We immediately understood that we had to help the cultural sector quickly. Time was of the essence and there wasn't a moment to spare.

I would now like to take the time to thank all the employees of Canadian Heritage and its portfolio agencies. Despite the pandemic and its challenges, they were able to quickly respond to the urgency of the situation.

We responded right away with a $500-million emergency support fund for cultural, heritage and sports organizations. It was delivered in record time and protected many jobs. The results speak for themselves: 77% of people said it helped them stay in business, and 95% of them were satisfied with the speed of the program.

The Liberal team has always been an ally of the cultural sector. We said that we would reinvest, and we did. We said that we wouldn't leave anyone behind during the pandemic, and we kept our word. Now we're telling people that we'll be there to help them hang on until the economy fully recovers, because this hasn't happened yet. People in the cultural community across the country know that they can count on us.

It should be noted that, as a result of the plan implemented by my colleague, the Minister of Finance, our recovery is very strong. However, the recovery isn't equal for everyone. Not everyone is benefiting from it in the same way. I'm thinking in particular of self‑employed workers in the cultural sector.

Even though most Canadians have acted responsibly by getting vaccinated and taking the necessary precautions, several sectors of the industry will need time to return to pre‑pandemic levels. There's still a gap.

That's why, in the 2021 budget, we made a historic investment of $1.93 billion to help the arts and culture sector join the recovery. I think that's important.

We've created several emergency assistance programs to support our creators, our festivals and our various institutions.

Mr. Chair, once again, I could go on and on, but I don't think you want that.

Let me focus on what's ahead of us.

On January 31 and February 1, we'll hold a summit on the recovery of the arts and culture sectors. During this summit, we'll focus on medium‑term and longer‑term solutions and priorities.

We're working with the Deputy Prime Minister on a key commitment in the Liberal plan presented to Canadians during the campaign.

We said that we would create a transitional program tailored to self‑employed and independent workers in the industry. That's what we'll do.

We're currently working with artist associations, guilds, unions and all sector organizations to create the program as quickly as possible.

They're telling us—and I think they also told the committee—that this step is extremely important and necessary. They want it done quickly, but more importantly, they want it done right. This is my top priority at this time.

I'm relieved to hear my colleagues talk about this issue. During the election campaign, the Liberals were the only ones who talked about transitional support for self‑employed workers in the sector. I must say that I was concerned.

Today, I'm pleased to know that my colleagues are asking the government to fulfill its own commitment. I can tell you that we'll do just that. This shows that we aren't alone. This is a good move for our workers and our culture.

I want to thank all my colleagues for their enthusiasm and support for our plans to help the cultural sector, our artists and our craftspeople.

In closing, I consider it important to take concrete steps and to act together.

In Bill C-2, there are very important measures for our arts and culture sector. For the hardest-hit organizations and for the people in the cultural sector, these are essential measures to help them pay up to 75% of wages and rent. This includes live performances and exhibits, museums, heritage sites, cinemas, festivals and others. Bill C-2 also contains measures that will help these organizations hire more people.

Our creators need it. They need the support provided in this bill right now. I know my colleagues from all parties are serious about supporting workers in the cultural sector, and I'm counting on them to make sure that Bill C-2 moves forward without any further delay.

On behalf of all our workers, everyone involved in culture, I'd like to ask my colleagues to quickly pass Bill C‑2.

These people were there for us during the pandemic. They made us laugh, they sometimes made us cry, and they often made us think. We've been there for them too. Now it's time to take the next step together.

I will now take your questions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I call this meeting to order. I hope everybody is doing well and wasn't affected too much by the windstorm over the weekend in this area.

Welcome to meeting number eight of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance. Pursuant to the House of Commons order of reference adopted on December 2, 2021, the committee is meeting on Bill C-2, an act to provide further support in response to COVID-19.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of November 25, 2021. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website. The webcast will always show the person speaking rather than the entirety of the committee.

Today's meeting is also taking place in a webinar format. Webinars are for public committee meetings and are available only to members, their staff and witnesses. Members enter immediately as active participants. All functionalities for active participants remain the same. The staff will be non-active participants and can, therefore, only view the meeting in gallery view.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to remind all participants at this meeting that taking screenshots or photos of your screen is not permitted.

Given the ongoing pandemic situation and in light of the recommendations from health authorities as well as the directive of the Board of Internal Economy on October 19, 2021, to remain healthy and safe, all those attending the meeting in person are to maintain a two-metre physical distancing and must wear a non-medical mask when circulating in the room. It is highly recommended that the mask be worn at all times, including when you are seated. You must maintain proper hand hygiene by using the hand sanitizer provided at the room entrance. As the chair, I will be enforcing these measures for the duration of the meeting, and I thank members in advance for their co-operation.

To ensure an orderly meeting, I would like to outline a few rules to follow. Members and witnesses may speak in the official language of their choice. Interpretation services are available for this meeting. You have a choice at the bottom of your screen of floor, English or French. If interpretation is lost, please inform me immediately, and we will ensure that interpretation is properly restored before resuming the proceedings. The “raise hand” feature at the bottom of the screen can be used at any time if you wish to speak or alert the chair.

For members participating in person, proceed as you usually would when the whole committee is meeting in person in the committee room. Keep in mind the Board of Internal Economy's guidelines for mask use and health protocols. Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. If you are on the video conference, please click on the microphone icon to unmute yourself. For those who are in the room, your microphone will be controlled as it normally is by the proceedings and verification officer. When speaking, please speak slowly and clearly. When you're not speaking, your mike should be on mute. I remind everyone that all comments by members and witnesses should be addressed through the chair. With regard to a speaking list, the committee clerk and I will do the best we can to maintain a consolidated order of speaking for all members whether they're participating virtually or in person.

It is now my pleasure to welcome our minister. Minister Rodriguez is with us here today. He is accompanied by Isabelle Mondou, deputy minister of Canadian Heritage, and David Dendooven, assistant deputy minister of strategic policy, planning and corporate affairs.

Minister and officials, we thank you very much for making yourselves available to the finance committee.

Minister Rodriguez, you now have the floor for your opening remarks.

[Philippe Méla, Legislative Clerk]

Good afternoon. I'm the legislative clerk for Bill C-2.

My question regarding the motion is about paragraph d), where it reads “that at 10 p.m. on Monday, December 13, every question necessary for the disposal of the said stage of the bill shall be put forthwith and successively without further debate or amendment”. I would like to know if, in the part of the amendment we are talking about, the amendments that are in the package that we're—

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Yes, I am. Actually, I am. I do have the floor, so thank you very little.

To go back to my point, the Liberals are learning that basically the taxpayer's being defrauded of money, that people are taking multiple CERB cheques in a week—even though it's a once-a-week benefit—that people who are organized criminals are defrauding the system and that people who don't even live in Canada are getting the money. What do they do? How do they respond to that news? They say, “Well, let's hurry up and pass some more government cheques” rather than “Boy, now that we've learned about all of this misappropriation, we'd better look into how that happened.” I think it's incredible how little interest they have in scrutinizing how the money is spent instead of just trying to shovel more and more of it out the door.

I would move an amendment to this proposed motion by adding the following paragraph—sorry; before I add the paragraph, I will say to delete all of the deadlines that Mr. Fragiskatos listed in his original motion for submissions of amendments and for reporting back to the House.

Instead, I would replace that with the following amendment: “That the Standing Committee on Finance continue to hear witness testimony on Bill C-2 the week of December 13, 2021; that the clerk reinvite witnesses who were unable to appear on Bill C-2 due to scheduling conflicts; that the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance appear before this committee on the economic and fiscal update 2021 for three hours prior to the House of Commons' rising on December 17, 2021; and that each answer that the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance provides does not exceed the time taken to ask the question.”

For some context—

[Janique Caron]

Again, in the same exercise, in terms of the measures that are proposed in Bill C-2, we think that at peak times—we increase and level off—we would need 650 full-time equivalents to administer these programs.

[Janique Caron]

Thank you for the question.

I believe that this was included in the information we shared in writing earlier with the committee. For the measures that are included in Bill C-2, at this point the preliminary estimate of the whole cost to administer these programs is $184 million over five years. They are preliminary estimates, in the sense that we still have some analysis to do. We need to consult some of the other government departments that are partnered with us. These costs include only the CRA costs, but it's the best information we have available at this time.

[Frank Vermaeten]

I'd be happy to start. I'm sure my colleagues will supplement my answer.

Yes, it is a challenge to target payments to a sector, simply because there are borderlines. Whenever you create any sector, you're going to have a challenge about who's in and who's out, no matter how well the legislation is defined or, previously, the rules are established.

In terms of establishing borderlines, I think that under the circumstances, Bill C-2 has done an excellent job to try to articulate, as much as possible, borderlines of tourism, but you can imagine how there's always a borderline situation. If you are, for example, providing food and you are a chip truck, a poutine truck, are you a restaurant or are you simply selling chocolate bars and chips? Those kinds of questions ultimately can never be fully specified in legislation, and therefore the CRA will need to do its job of looking at the facts and trying to distinguish whether you're in this sector or that sector. That's the challenge.

Instruction to Committee on Bill C-2

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food]

Madam Speaker, I do not have a lot of time, but it would be a waste of time anyway, since the Standing Committee on Finance is already studying Bill C-2.

I am surprised that the Conservatives would move such a motion today, considering that they are always advocating for less red tape.

I am surprised that the Conservative Party would introduce such a motion today knowing full well that the finance committee had already started to look at the bill on December 7. They sure know because the member for Carleton likes to give us lectures for about 20 minutes at a time. Probably the whole reason for this motion today was so that he could speak for 20 minutes, give us a lecture on rebel news economics and publish it on his Twitter, if it is not already published now.

In fact, as I speak, the finance committee is continuing to look at this bill.

We see the news across the world and there was some good news in November. Our economy added 153,000 net new jobs, but COVID is still real and we do not know what may happen in January, February and March. That is why it is important that the measures in Bill C-2 be debated and adopted at some point. I hope the bill passes because it provides the worker lockdown benefit. I hope our Canadian economy and provincial governments will not have to implement lockdowns, but they are obviously a tool to reduce the spread of COVID. I would hate to let our workers down because of shenanigans in this place. This is exactly what this routine motion would do.

The motion we are debating today essentially proposes the creation of two bills C‑2 that would be referred to the Standing Committee on Finance. This would lead to delays, including for workers who might need benefits if certain sectors of the economy had to close again. If we adopt the motion moved by the member for Carleton, then the bill cannot be passed before Christmas.

I had the opportunity to rise to speak to Bill C‑2 earlier this year. Some sectors of the economy are still not operating at full steam, including the tourism industry. I often think of the 417 Bus Line Ltd company, which offers transportation services for the tourism industry. That company has to pay between $15,000 and $20,000 just to put a bus on the road. Some benefits would have helped them rehire employees and cover some of those costs. That would have been a big help.

The member for Carleton knows really well Paul's Little Ray's Zoo. I am going to be meeting him at five o'clock today. He wants to know when Bill C-2 will be passed and I am going to have to tell him that his friend is trying to delay, through dilatory motions like this one today. I would expect those types of motions to be presented after six, seven or eight months. We know the official opposition plays games in a minority government. Of course, the Liberals have never done that. I am going to have to tell Paul that I do not know whether Bill C-2 will pass before the holiday season. I am going to tell him to talk to his business community and ask him to call the member for Carleton to explain the sense of urgency and why these measures are so important not only for the business community, but also the workers who may depend on them.

Numbers are really high in schools right now. Parents have to be off work and it is important for them to have access to the recovery caregiving benefit. Not everybody can stay home and be paid. They are not fortunate like the member for Carleton. Some of them have to rely on measures that we have introduced. That is why it is important that Bill C-2 passes as quickly as possible, because people are depending on it. As cases rise in schools, parents have to take time off work, and it is not their fault. We are asking them to get their kids tested, and that is a responsible thing by the government. We recognize there is a gap in the system, but we fill that gap through the recovery caregiving benefit and the recovery sickness benefit. They are measures included in Bill C-2.

I hope Conservative Party members join us. They can bring accountability to the finance committee, as they are doing as we speak, but Bill C-2 needs to pass before the holiday season.

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

Madam Speaker, “we are all in this together”. That is a phrase that has been uttered a lot since the pandemic first struck the country and for a time, that was true. There was a real sense of solidarity in our communities. We felt it across the country; we felt it here in this place, such as that was.

In the very difficult days of the early pandemic, we were able to secure proposals to help people that went above and beyond the government's initial proposals, because there was a real spirit of collaboration and working together to get things done and get them done quickly. That is why it was not a $1,000 a month benefit as the government initially proposed, but a $2,000 a month benefit for people who had lost their employment. It is how we were able to negotiate a benefit for students who originally were not going to be captured by the government's plan.

We negotiated a one-time payment for people living with disabilities and for seniors, although what we would really like to see is the government take responsibility for ensuring that they have a guaranteed livable basic income at a rate that is above the poverty line, something that we have not yet seen.

We were able to get meaningful improvements through negotiations in this place and that is what it meant for a time to say that we are all in this together. That is not the approach that Bill C-2 represents. It is not the approach that it represents in its substance, but it is also not the approach that the government has taken in the way that it is managing Bill C-2 through the House, in the early stages of its development before it was tabled. There was no discussion with other parties as far as I know, certainly not with us prior to the announcement on October 21, and there has been very little since.

The motion that is before us right now is about dividing even more. From this moment of solidarity and over the course of the last 20 months or so, the government has slowly been edging back from that sense of solidarity, and with Bill C-2, actually just turning its back on the idea that the Prime Minister just ran on in a campaign in September saying that they would not leave anybody behind.

However, splitting the bill would make that problem worse because there are two components to the bill. One is a component that provides help to businesses directly and to workers in those businesses. The other is something that is supposed to be there for workers who are self-employed or workers whose businesses do not opt to apply for the wage subsidy for various reasons, or maybe whose businesses do not quite meet the qualifications, but who nevertheless find themselves not able to work. We know that there are businesses that have let people go during the pandemic, but nevertheless did not qualify for the wage subsidy. There are all sorts of ways in which workers will continue to need help directly. In fact, we know that in October, there were still 900,000 of them that were needing that direct support.

We are not going to get to the point where we are negotiating effective solutions if we are picking off industries or particular players and advancing the programs that are there for them and leaving the others out of the discussion, particularly the ones with the least amount of economic clout and leverage themselves, the individual workers. Individual workers in exposed industries like hospitality and tourism or arts and culture are not a big business with their own personal lobby that can come to Parliament Hill and meet with 338 different MPs, just about one for every day of the year. They do not have that kind of money and that is why they are not reflected in the government's proposals in Bill C-2.

If we are going to solve that problem, we need to keep the components of the legislation together so that we are not picking some winners and allowing others to be losers any more than is already the case. That is why we in the NDP feel very strongly it is important to keep the bill together, a bill that frankly, we do not support because we do not think it goes far enough.

However, if we are going to get back to a place where we can have some meaningful negotiation, a situation that we did obtain in the last Parliament, then it is important that we are negotiating for everybody. We cannot leave the most vulnerable and those most hard done by in the current economy behind while accelerating the help for industry players, who have also been very much hard hit. It is tough, and we do want to see that help go to that industry, but we do not want to see some being helped and not others, or say that we will speed one up, but leave another to languish.

We need to maintain that sense of us all being in it together, instead of being picked off one by one in a divide-and-conquer strategy to ultimately roll back pandemic support for Canadians. That is where we actually see a pretty close affinity of intent and interest between the Liberals and Conservatives right now, who are talking about the extent to which they are going to roll back those supports. The widespread agreement there is that the supports are going to get rolled back.

The supports rolled back pretty naturally under the conditions of the program. Regarding the CRB and the CERB, at one time there about nine million Canadians availing themselves of the CERB. On its own, without government kicking anyone off the program, by October this year there were just under 900,000. That is a reduction in the program of over 90%, and therefore, a reduction of over 90% in the spending. As people could find work, they were leaving the program.

How many times have we heard Conservatives talk about how they want to see program spending reduced? This is a program whose spending had been reduced by over 90% because we in the NDP actually believe that Canadians do want to work. We believe that, but we also recognize that in the pandemic economy, such as it is, that is hard to do.

We recognize that there are a lot of people who desperately want to work, but the jobs are not there for them. It is not because there are not jobs available, but it is because people lost work in a particular sector, with a particular set of skills and a particular education, and those are not necessarily the jobs that are available now. Therefore, there is some work for us to do here, in conjunction with employers and employees, to talk about what jobs are available, who is available to fill them and how we train the people who are available to work in the jobs that are available. However, that is not the discussion we are having here.

The discussion we are having here is how to go from a program that was still supporting 900,000 Canadians who needed financial support in difficult economic times to a program that, to date, does not even apply in one single place in the country and that will not provide financial support to one single worker in the way the CERB did just a month or two ago. That is a big difference, and that difference is what the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party have in common.

I think the Conservative finance critic sometimes thinks he is a champion for workers. He certainly said as much. The member gave an interesting history lesson about the Magna Carta. He even waxed poetic about how the green here represents the commoners who were there at the Magna Cart when they signed a lovely deal that meant that there would be no taxation without representation. Indeed, he talked about the peasants.

He needs to know, and this is his blind spot and the blind spot of both Conservatives and Liberals, that the people who signed the Magna Carta with King John were not the commoners. The people who signed the Magna Carta with King John were the aristocrats and the barons who ruled over the peasants. They took taxes and whatever they wanted from them without any representation for them. That is the problem.

The Conservatives have this kind of mystical understanding of the Magna Carta, that it was this great progressive moment. It was an important moment on the road to democracy. A little over 600 years later, universal male suffrage would come to the United Kingdom, and it would be another 50 or 60 years before women had access to suffrage on the same terms as men in the United Kingdom. Therefore, yes, it was a milestone that laid the groundwork for some progress centuries later.

I think the Conservative finance critic misses a few steps. It is not an innocent mistake, and it is not an inconsequential mistake. Those same barons who were there to sign the Magna Carta are not unlike the 1% today who, as the Parliamentary Budget Officer reported this week, own 25% of the wealth in Canada now.

That was not always the case. Around the turn of the century, it was more on the order of 11% or 12%. Now 1% of the population is sharing 25% of the wealth in Canada, and 40% of the population is sharing 1% of the wealth. That is the tale of the one per cents in Canada right now. We have 40% of people sharing 1% of the wealth and 1% of people sharing 25% of the wealth.

The way we got there has a lot to do with both Liberals and Conservatives. That is why the Conservative finance critic wants to focus so much on the Bank of Canada lately. He does not want to talk about all the capital that was hoarded over the last 20 years or so. That is now being used in the real estate market, and had been used in the real estate market to cause significant inflation in housing well before the pandemic struck. There is no question there has been massive housing inflation since the pandemic began, but that is not where it started. It has been going on for a long time.

It has been going on since the corporate tax rate was cut from 28% in the year 2000 to just 15% today. We have seen overwhelming increases in the amounts of dividends that are paid out. Who are some of the people who are gaining the biggest amount of money from dividend payments as a result of corporate tax cuts? They are that 1%. That is how we got to the point today where 1% of the people own 25% of the wealth.

In the year 2000, the capital gains inclusion rate was cut from 75% to 50%, and nine-tenths of the benefit of that tax cut over the last 20 years has gone to the top 1%. That is cash in hand for them, and they have been sitting on it until they had a moment to spend it in a way that would create more money, just as the Conservative finance critic likes to talk about.

However, they are not getting all of that in liquidity from the Bank of Canada. They are getting it from increasing returns as corporations pay less and less of a share of government revenue. In Canada 65 years ago, corporations paid 50% of government revenue. Today, they pay 20%. That means individual Canadians are picking up 80% of the tab when they used to have to only pick up 50%.

The Conservatives will say, and Liberals will join them in saying, that if we cut their taxes they will invest back in the economy and that will create jobs and wealth. That is true to a point, except the cash holdings of corporations and the wealthiest individuals have skyrocketed over the past 20 years while the corporate tax rate went from 28% to 15%.

In fact, investment in real assets and productivity has stayed constant at around 5.5% of GDP. Even the late Jim Flaherty, whom some might remember, sat on the Conservative side of the House and scolded corporate Canada at one point for the extent to which it was failing to reinvest money from corporate tax cuts back into the economy.

The amount of $25 billion is what the Parliamentary Budget Officer, hardly a partisan office, has estimated that Canadians are losing every year to tax havens legally. That is how we got to the point that 1% of the population in Canada now owns 25% of the wealth. That has about doubled over the last 20 years or so.

There is a story to tell about the Magna Carta. There is a story to tell about wealthy individuals with a lot of pull and influence being able to constrain the government in a way that benefits them while they squash the people under them and take the value of their work for themselves.

Unfortunately, this is not that old of a story. It is an old story in the sense that it has been going on, but it is not a history lesson. It is a contemporary economic lesson, and we need to figure out how we are going to change that. That is why I am proud to have run on the idea of a wealth tax for fortunes of over $20 million, which does not cover a lot of Canadians.

It is pretty hard to get outraged at this idea for people who have amassed more and more of the economic pie. Their proportion of the pie has grown far more quickly than the pie itself, which means more and more people are sharing less and less, and people wonder why we do not have money to fund public services. It is not that we just magically have less money; it is that the people at the top are paying far less than they used to. They are hoarding that wealth, or they are spending it on themselves or they are using it to make investments in the real estate market, which is driving up the cost for everybody else. That is the real problem.

Therefore, I am always glad to talk history and economics with the Conservative finance critic, but there are some facts missing from his version of events when he talks about the Magna Carta. The people who are forgotten in his story are the same people who are being forgotten in Bill C-2. They are the people who have been unable to get back to work and were depending on a government that said it would have their back. However, they found that within a month after the election, with two days' warning, the very same Prime Minister who said he would have their backs turned his back on them. This is what we are dealing with in Bill C-2. If we are going to get to a decent solution, we are going to do it by talking about everyone at the same time instead of hiving them off into sections, leaving some to languish and others to get the help they genuinely need.

Make no mistake, the New Democrats are in favour of people getting the help they need and getting it rapidly. It is why we have not had any secrets about what we think needs to happen and what the government needs to do as we pass Bill C-2. In fact, we will have some suggestions on how it can include these measures in Bill C-2; how it can stop the clawbacks of the GIS, the Canada child benefit and the Canada worker benefit; how it can implement a low-income CERB repayment amnesty so it is not chase after people, who are already losing their homes, for about $14,000 in debt. In some cases, these people are negotiating payment plans for $10 a month. How long it is going to take for the government to get its $14,000 back at $10 a month?

Meanwhile, some of the largest publicly traded companies, like Chartwell, TELUS and Bell, gave huge dividends to their shareholders during the pandemic and increased the amount of their annual payout by anywhere from 3% to 6%, yet the government has not asked them for a dime back. That is the story of the barons getting together to design a system that would serve them so well, the system we have inherited here, and that is part of the tradition of this place in more ways than one.

We have ideas about how to end the clawbacks. We have proposals for a low-income CERB repayment amnesty. We have proposals on how to ensure that people in the arts and cultural sector and the tourism and hospitality industry can access the only benefit that would be left, which is the Canada worker lockdown benefit, in terms of a regular payment to people who are unable to work. The Liberals have laid out the industries in part 1 of the bill. All they have to do is say that anyone who earns their income in an industry named in part 1 of the bill will have access to the Canada worker lockdown benefit, whether there is a lockdown order in their part of the country not. The government already recognizes that those industries are in distress regardless of whether there is a lockdown order in effect.

These are just some of the proposals that we will be putting on the table. If the government adopts them, it can see swift passage of the bill in this place, and that is what it will mean to leave no one behind.

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

Madam Speaker, the other problem with the Liberals' proposed economic recovery plan is that it does nothing to help many people who are financially vulnerable.

One such example would be the families who receive the Canada child benefit, who are already low-income. Another example would be the seniors who receive the guaranteed income supplement and whose benefits were slashed because they received CERB payments. This problem needs to be addressed, because seniors are ending up in the streets, homeless.

I would like to know whether the Bloc Québécois would be inclined to support fast-tracking Bill C‑2 if it contained solutions to these problems.

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

Yes, thank you very much. As I'm sure you're aware, this is very relevant to the study of Bill C-2.

Madam Larouche mentioned the GIS. That's an important reference. We know that over 80,000 people have been impacted by accessing the COVID-19 financial supports. Would you be able to tell the committee what the average monthly reduction was for seniors in GIS payments as a result of that clawback?

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague, for whom I have a great deal of respect. We often have the opportunity to talk about agriculture, and we will have the chance to talk about it next Thursday.

My colleague really made some good points. For the past few weeks, the official opposition has been playing word games worthy of François Pérusse. I can say that François Pérusse is a lot better at wordplay than the Conservatives.

Today's motion is a waste of time. The Standing Committee on Finance is currently considering Bill C-2.

Why, then, are we debating a routine motion to determine whether it is the workers or employers who will receive their benefits first? Can my colleague tell us how important this issue is to his constituents?

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

Madam Speaker, one of the major problems with Bill C-2 is the lack of support for self-employed workers in the tourism and arts and culture industries. They do not have access to any financial support.

One way to give them this kind of support would be to get the Liberals to amend the bill so that workers in the arts, culture, tourism and hospitality industries have access to the benefits given to workers in case of a lockdown, whether a lockdown has been ordered or not.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Madam Speaker, I let the cat out of the bag at the beginning of my speech, when I said that we did not intend to support the Conservatives in their attempt to split Bill C-2 into two parts.

Also, generally speaking, when we think about bills and how we are going to vote, we think about who the bill is intended for and who it focuses on.

We therefore have no intention of throwing a wrench into the works.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to start by thanking the witnesses, the civil servants from the Canada Revenue Agency, for being here today. I want to start by thanking you for the hard work that you've done in helping to deliver the programs that have rescued countless businesses and helped Canadians put food on the table in a desperate time during a global crisis. I think I speak for my colleagues when I express my gratitude to all of you for all of your hard work. We thank you for that.

Before I ask my question, I want to speak to what Mr. Stewart said.

I am disappointed, because questions that the Conservatives keep asking continue to be answered, yet the Conservatives pretend they haven't been answered. One of the questions that Mr. Stewart said wasn't answered was where the funding was coming from to pay for the measures in Bill C-2. The very day that was asked—and you can check the Hansard—I read into the record the section of Bill C-2 that specifies where the funding is coming from. It's section 29. I'll repeat it again; it's in the consolidated revenue fund. The minister was clear in answering that question when she presented to us here yesterday.

On the question of the role of the Canada Revenue Agency in drafting the bill, which Mr. Stewart asked repeatedly of the civil servants from the CRA and argued that it wasn't answered, I thought that the answer from the representative from the CRA was very clear. They indicated that their role was to provide comments and input. The question has been asked. The question has been answered. On the first question, it was asked and it was answered.

It's shameful that some Conservative members are pretending their questions aren't being answered. It's shameful that they're treating our civil servants in this way, particularly the civil servants who have been part of the team that delivered the programs that have been so important to millions of Canadians.

I want to put that on the record, Mr. Chair.

My question to our witnesses is this. My understanding is that the Canada Revenue Agency would be responsible for administering the new benefits that are part of Bill C-2. Could I ask you to describe in detail the cost and the impact of delaying implementation of the programs in Bill C-2? What would be the impact for Canadian businesses and what would be the impact for Canadian workers?

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Madam Speaker, I want to say right away that I will be sharing my time with my wonderful, passionate and fascinating colleague from Berthier—Maskinongé.

I will start by being a good sport because I always like to find the good in any motion, bill or supply day topic that is presented. I will start by saying what I like about it. However, unfortunately, the thing I liked the most today was the historical content in the member for Carleton's speech. Just between us, if one day he decides to create a podcast with stories or interesting facts from history, then I will be the first to listen to it while driving home on the 417. He always has very interesting things to say. I will give him that.

I am, however, going to put an end to the suspense here. My Conservative colleagues might be disappointed, but the Bloc Québécois does not intend to support the motion. We are sorry about that. I will explain why, even though I think they may already have some idea. We do not intend to support the request to split this bill because we think that the two parts of the bill that the Conservatives want to split go together.

It is as though we are being told that on the one hand, there is a pandemic affecting businesses, and on the other hand, there may be something that could possibly affect individual workers, so maybe one day, we could address this issue differently. In reality, it is still the same pandemic that is affecting both workers and businesses. Since the bill covers two aspects of the same problem stemming from a single pandemic, I do not understand the motivation for splitting it as proposed.

As my colleague from Winnipeg North mentioned, people are waiting. I feel like coming back to that, although the Conservatives mentioned it too. We lost time because of an unnecessary election. In the meantime, people have suffered and still need support.

I do not see the point of taking a bill that has already passed at second reading and been studied in committee, and bringing it back to split it and start the process over again. In the meantime, there are businesses that will suffer from the delay in the process. I think this part was understood and that is the one the Conservatives want to hold onto, but there are likely even more ordinary folks who could suffer as a result as well.

We lost too much time with the unnecessary election to make people wait and suffer even more, when they have already gone through enough, in our opinion.

As we said during the election campaign, the initial benefits that were created were not perfect. They quite likely contributed to the labour shortage we experienced, although they were not the only factor. I am not saying that Bill C‑2 is perfect and that is why we do not want to split it, but I do think that if the bill goes to committee, it can be discussed and improved. A review of the benefits was warranted, and it still is, which is why it is important for the committee to study not only the wage subsidy and rent subsidy, but also the so-called individual benefits.

We are suggesting that there are still some workers who could be added to the list of benefit recipients. The Bloc Québécois has spoken about this a lot, but I am mentioning it again because it is important. I am thinking, in particular, about workers in the arts and culture sectors. It has been two years since musicians and actors were able to take the stage at any big shows, festivals or events. If we do not support these people, they could end up leaving the sector, taking their talents with them. Our arts and culture sector could lose its stars, its talent, its creative geniuses it they cannot earn a living. At some point, they will decide that half a loaf is better than none. If they have no way to support themselves, they could end up moving on to something else, and we would lose that talent.

The question we should be asking ourselves is: Are we prepared to pay the price of losing these creators?

Technicians, stage riggers, and people who run cables for sound systems told me that more and more of them have been leaving the field to go work in the mines, where the skill set and schedules are similar. These are not 9-to-5 jobs. These are two-week stints, like being on a concert tour. Mine work pays well, so if we do not support these people, they may decide to stay there. If we lose access to their expertise, we will be very sorry once the economy is back up and running again.

That is what is on my mind when I think about how it would be good to let the Standing Committee on Finance to keep talking about individual benefits by not splitting Bill C‑2.

It would also be good to keep working on things that affect businesses. This hare-brained Conservative motion could end up delaying work on the Canada emergency wage subsidy and support for businesses that need it.

The Bloc Québécois would like to share some thoughts with the committee regarding which areas could also benefit from government support through regulation. We are just waiting for the minister to confirm that she will be able to open up areas through regulation.

Two sectors in particular come to mind, one of which is extremely important in Quebec, namely the aerospace and aeronautics sector. This sector is one of the hardest hit by the current crisis, given that there is less travel and aircraft construction. We must support those businesses.

On top of that, so many manufacturers have been indirectly affected by the pandemic. For instance, there is a supply shortage of microprocessors, which has caused many manufacturers of trucks, armoured vans and various automotive products to have to slow down their production lines, not because of a labour shortage, but because of a parts shortage. This is a side effect of the pandemic, and these people also need help.

Ultimately, all I am seeing today is an attempt to slow down the process and delay the passage of Bill C-2 in its entirety or in part. The Conservatives are forgetting that, behind all of this, there are people who need our support, and that is the unfortunate part. I am not saying that we have to fix the mess made by the government, which delayed things with the election. However, we do need to realize that if we create even further delays, people are going to suffer. If we think about it, we are kind of doing what we accused the government of doing.

It is ironic to hear the Conservatives say that the government delayed recalling the House and that the election was pointless when they are doing the same thing by delaying the passage of bills. They are saying two different things, and I do not particularly like it. All that is to say that I do not see any merit in taking a bill that has been passed in principle, that can be improved, that is being improved at committee, and then splitting it, slowing down the process and returning to the House to do the same work over again. That is not helpful. There is already enough duplication of work with two levels of government, the federal government on the one hand and Quebec and the provinces on the other hand. We do not support making more work.

As long as there is a pandemic, it will affect both businesses and individuals. Bill C‑2 addresses both because there is only one pandemic, and therefore there is just one problem with multiple consequences. We must not attempt to separate out the consequences and deal with them individually. Instead we must take a holistic approach to the problem because it is the result of the same situation, and that is the pandemic.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, back in October, the Prime Minister talked about why we needed to continue to support our communities. Supporting communities means healthier communities.

The Prime Minister talked about Bill C-2 back in October. In essence, it is the first real bill. We also have Bill C-1, although I do not know exactly what its contents are offhand. However, in my books, Bill C-2 is the most important bill. That is why it was listed as the first priority coming in, and opposition members have known about it for many weeks, going on months now.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Of course, all questions will be through the chair.

I would like to thank the witnesses for being here today. We had a motion, and as a committee we felt it was really important for the CRA to have representation here. Over the course of the past week, we've had a very difficult time getting answers to questions. We know that the finance department, and all of our witnesses previously, couldn't tell us where the money that will be used is coming from. FINTRAC was here and let us know that they were not consulted with the drafting of this new bill, even with respect to their warning CRA, yourselves, in the summer of 2020, of the potential that these benefits could be defrauded.

On behalf of my constituents today in Miramichi—Grand Lake, number one, I hope we can break the streak and get some answers today. What role did CRA play in drafting the last emergency response bill related to the pandemic, the one previous to Bill C-2?

[Frank Vermaeten]

Good afternoon, everyone, and good afternoon, Mr. Chair.

I'm having some technical difficulties, as are some people in the agency today, so hopefully you can hear me loud and clear.

Thank you for the invitation to appear before this committee today to provide you with additional information regarding the support of the Canada Revenue Agency, or CRA, in delivering the Government of Canada's COVID‑19 emergency support benefits.

With me today are several of the assistant commissioners of the agency—namely, Cathy Hawara of the compliance branch, Marc Lemieux of the collections and verification branch and Janique Caron of the finance and administration branch.

Mr. Chair, over the past 20 months we have delivered support to both Canadians and businesses through several emergency support benefits, including the Canada emergency wage subsidy, the CEWS; the Canada emergency rent subsidy, the CERS; the Canada recovery sickness benefit, the CRSB; and more. I am proud to say that these benefits have been instrumental in Canada’s economic recovery. In fact, the CEWS has helped more than 5.3 million Canadians keep their jobs, with over $97 billion in support already paid out through the program to help employers rehire workers and avoid layoffs.

Additionally, the CERS has helped more than 215,000 organizations with over $7 billion in support for rent, mortgage and other expenses.

The Canada recovery sickness benefit has delivered over $829 million to 750,000 Canadians. This benefit has provided income support to employed and self-employed individuals who were unable to work because they were sick, needed to self-isolate due to COVID-19, or had an underlying health condition that put them at greater risk of getting COVID-19.

Mr. Chair, that is why the Canada Revenue Agency will be proud to continue to administer COVID-19 supports and benefits should Bill C-2 be approved. The proposed legislation would continue to provide targeted support where it is needed to those Canadians and Canadian businesses that are most affected by COVID. In fact, this proposed legislation would extend until May 7, 2022, the Canada recovery hiring program that was introduced in budget 2021, and would provide a subsidy of up to 50% to eligible employers with current revenue losses above 10%.

This extension would help businesses continue to hire back workers, increase hours and create the additional jobs Canada needs for a robust recovery. This bill would also deliver targeted support to businesses still facing significant pandemic-related challenges.

Additionally, this proposed legislation would support individuals who are affected by illness or family obligations through an extension of the Canada recovery caregiving benefit and the Canada recovery sickness benefit, as well as by establishing the Canada worker lockdown benefit to provide income support to eligible workers who are directly impacted by a COVID-related public health lockdown.

In closing, I would like to emphasize that the CRA's mandate is to administer tax, benefit and related programs, and to ensure compliance, thereby contributing to the ongoing economic and social well-being of Canadians.

For this reason, the agency remains committed to supporting Canadian businesses, as we have since the beginning of the pandemic, by putting Canadians at the centre of everything we do. CRA employees are very proud to have supported millions of Canadian workers and businesses, following our “people first” philosophy.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We would be happy to answer your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

The minister has been invited for this Monday, and also we have Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this week.

Members, welcome to meeting number 7 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance. Pursuant to the House of Commons order of reference adopted on December 2, 2021, the committee is meeting on Bill C-2, an act to provide further support in response to COVID-19.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of November 25, 2021. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website. So you're aware, the webcast will always show the person speaking rather than the entirety of the committee.

Today's meeting is also taking place in the webinar format. Webinars are for public committee meetings and are available only to members, their staff and witnesses. Members enter immediately as active participants. All functionalities for active participants remain the same. Staff will be non-active participants and can therefore only view the meeting in gallery view.

I'd like to take this opportunity to remind all participants in this meeting that taking screenshots or photos of your screen is not permitted.

Given the ongoing pandemic situation and in light of the recommendations from the health authorities, as well as the directive from the Board of Internal Economy on October 19, 2021, to remain healthy and safe, all those attending the meeting in person are to maintain a two-metre physical distance and must wear a non-medical mask when circulating in the room. As well, it is highly recommended that the mask be worn at all times, including when you are seated. Proper hand hygiene must be maintained through the use of the provided hand sanitizer at the entrance to the room.

As the chair, I'll be enforcing these measures for the duration of the meeting. I thank members in advance for their co-operation.

To ensure an orderly meeting, I'd like to outline a few rules to follow.

Members and witnesses may speak in the official language of their choice. Interpretation services are available for this meeting. You have a choice at the bottom of your screen of either “floor”, “English” or “French”. If interpretation is lost, please inform me immediately, and we will ensure that interpretation is properly restored before resuming the proceedings.

The “raise-hand” feature at the bottom of your screen can be used at any time if you wish to speak or alert the chair. For members participating in person, proceed as you usually would when the whole committee is meeting in person in the committee room. Keep in mind the Board of Internal Economy's guidelines for mask use and health protocols.

Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. If you are on the video conference, please click on the microphone icon to unmute yourself. For those in the room, your microphone will be controlled as it normally would be by the proceedings and verification officer. When speaking, please speak slowly and clearly. When you're not speaking, your microphone should be on mute.

I remind everyone that all comments by members and witnesses should be addressed through the chair.

With regard to a speaking list, the committee clerk and I will do our very best to maintain a consolidated order of speaking for all members, whether they're participating virtually or in person.

To members and witnesses, when you have 30 seconds left in your questioning time, I will signal you with this paper just to keep on track.

Members, before we get started with our officials today, I will tell you that we'll be going through three rounds to give enough opportunity to ask questions on Bill C-2. I'm leaving the remainder of our meeting time for some committee business.

I would now like to welcome witnesses from the Canada Revenue Agency. We have with us Janique Caron, chief financial officer and assistant commissioner, finance and administration branch; Cathy Hawara, assistant commissioner, compliance programs branch; Marc Lemieux, assistant commissioner, collections and verification branch; and Frank Vermaeten, assistant commissioner, assessment, benefit and service branch.

Clerk, is one of the witnesses going to make an opening statement, or will...?

Okay, one of the witnesses will make an opening statement for five minutes before we move to members' questions. Who will be making the opening statement?

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

Madam Speaker, first, I am not an economist, but I do have a basic understanding on how an economy works. I have always found it somewhat interesting when my colleague from Carleton goes into a diatribe about all the theories out there. He does tend to have that heavy right slant.

When I go back to my days at university, I think of the economy when theorists would have the whole dog-eat-dog world type of thing. I guess I am closer to the Keynesian type of theorist in recognizing that there is time for a government to come forward and take tangible actions to support our communities.

The member made reference to the fact that I should take notes. I did take a couple of notes as the member was speaking, because I wanted to make reference to a few of the thoughts he was espousing. He talks about the money. I will elaborate on that point, maybe not from an ivory tower perspective, but rather from the perspective of how I believe my constituents would like to hear it, and that is as plain as possible, my basic understanding of it.

He talked about where the money came from. I hear those types of things from members opposite, and no one uses them more than the member for Carleton. It is important for the people, who might be following this debate, to understand that the member is the finance critic for the Conservative Party, meaning the Conservative Party takes its lead from its leader sometimes on finance issues and at other times from the member for Carleton.

I do not say that to scare people. I say it because people should recognize why the member for Carleton says things. There was a time when the Conservative Party did not exist. There used to be a Progressive Conservative Party and the Reform Party. The member for Carleton would fit in quite well with the Reformers.

It is interesting to see the contrast when the leader leader trying to say the Conservatives are moderates or somewhat moderates. After all, that is why the Conservatives flip-flopped on the carbon tax issue, and that upset a lot of the old Reform members. That is why members of the Conservative Party, members of the caucus in particular, have a certain appreciation and respect for the member for Carleton, because his job is to keep that party to the right. He does a pretty darned good job of doing keeping them on the extreme right. Some of them applaud and I do not blame them for that, if that is their basic principle.

The member for Carleton talks about government expenditures and how wasteful they are. I would argue that government expenditure is a good thing. That how we support real people and businesses. That is why governments brought in programs during a very difficult time, not just in Canada but around the world. It was a global pandemic. This government recognized that we did not need to take the approach to economics that the member for Carleton would take. We needed to think about government spending that would support Canadians, small businesses, to have the backs of Canadians. That has been a first priority of the Prime Minister, the cabinet and Liberal members of Parliament from day one.

That was one of the reasons we went into an election, and were given a renewed, stronger mandate. The plan that we provided to the House of Commons is, in fact, supported by a vast majority of Canadians. Only a good portion of the Reform element of the Conservative Party calls into serious question why the government has made these expenditures. We should think of the consequences had we not provided the support, had we not listened to what Canadians wanted, had we not done the consultation that was so critical or had we not worked with the different levels of government, the non-profit organizations and many stakeholders, including health care workers and so many others. What would have been the alternative?

What would have happened if we had focused our attention on the Conservative Party's ideas, in particular the finance critic's ideas? We would not have had programs like the CERB, which provided millions of Canadians financial support during the pandemic, financial support that put dollars in their pockets so they could pay their bills, whether it was their mortgage, rent, utility bills or to put the food on their tables.

The Conservatives, led by the member for Carleton, repeatedly talk about the deficit, that right-wing element of the Conservative Party. Yes, the CERB program did cost a considerable amount of money, but had we not invested in that program, imagine the suicides, the family breakups, the costs resulting from mental health and the impact it would have had on our economy. Those are the reasons the Prime Minister acted quickly in making the statement that we would have the backs of Canadians and we would be there for them.

Let us think of the business supports we provided over the last 18 months. In particular, let us focus on our arts community and small businesses. The wage subsidy program allowed employers the opportunity to keep employees working. It ensured that many thousands of jobs would still be there when we recovered. We have been proven to be correct with that program.

We can think of the rent subsidy program. How many small businesses would not be here today had the government not provided support in the form of rent subsidy. The bills continue to come in, the suppliers still want to be paid and landlords still want to be paid. That program provided tangible support for workers and sick pay. These things made a difference and helped Canadians.

When we went to the polls back in September, Canadians agreed with the Liberal plan. That is why we are on the government benches. They agreed with the progressive policies that we had put in place. That is why a majority of Canadians supported parties that understood how important it was for government to continue to play a role in supporting people, whether they were seniors, people with disabilities, other vulnerable Canadians, Canadians who were losing jobs or Canadians trying to keep their businesses afloat. These are the types of things that really matter, and progressive parties in the House did well as a result.

What is Bill C-2? It is an extension of the programs I just finished talking about in one form or another.

Around this time last year, I would have been standing in this place, saying that the Conservative Party was playing a destructive role in the chamber. I am not surprised that the member for Carleton and the Conservative Party has decided to bring forward this motion, which proposes to divide the Bill C-2. The bill went to committee on December 2.

However, by literally dividing the bill into two bills, this is another way the Conservatives feel they can slow down legislation, possibly preventing it from being passed. What is next if this motion passes? Are they going to suggest that we need to strike up more committees to meet on these issues? Is this yet another indication from the official opposition that it wants to frustrate the legislation? Do the Conservatives not realize the cost of this legislation not passing?

Back on October 21, the Prime Minister indicated that the government had targeted business support programs, that it wanted the Canada recovery hiring program; create the tourism and hospitality recovery program and hardest-hit business recovery program; and establish the Canada worker lockdown benefit. The Prime Minister wanted to see the House of Commons act on this quickly. That is why it was no coincidence that when we were back in the House, literally, Bill C-2 was the very first piece of legislation. A good way for the government to express its priority is by the first piece legislation it presents.

When we first were elected in 2015, the first legislation created the framework for the tax break for Canada's middle class. It was also the legislation that established the need for an additional tax on the wealthiest 1% in our society. Interestingly enough, the Conservatives voted against that legislation. At the time, that was our priority; it was our piece of legislation.

We can look at what is happening around our country today. If we go back to the press conference the Prime Minister held on October 21, what will we find? If members do want to believe me, they should consult their constituents. Every region of the country is concerned about COVID-19. Everyone in the country wants to see a higher sense of co-operation taking place on the floor of the House of Commons. How is dividing such a critical piece of legislation, which, in essence, encapsulates in good part what is on the minds of Canadians, going to help in getting it passed through the House?

The bill went to committee back on December 2, and the committee already has had six meetings, and I think today is its seventh meeting. What is the real purpose of this Conservative Party motion today? We were supposed to be debating the throne speech, which deals with another aspect. It is the plan on how we continue to move forward.

The content of the throne speech, which we are not debating now because of this silly motion, highlighted the fact that we are still dealing with COVID-19 and that we still need to do what we can to minimize its negative impacts. Canadians realize it and have stepped up to the plate. I believe 86% of Canadians over the age of 12 are now fully vaccinated.

We recognize the strong leadership role that each of us has to play, but let us also recognize the important role that our communities have played. An 86% fully vaccinated community is a healthy community. We can still do better. We can still get more people fully vaccinated, but until we have achieved that optimum level we need to continue to be there in very real ways.

Some of our communities could be significantly hit into the future because of coronavirus mutations. That is one of the reasons why there is an important lockdown measure. We want Canadians to know that in the House of Commons, at least among the New Democrats, Bloc, Greens and Liberals, people understand that we need to have progressive measures in place to support real people and ensure that our communities are healthy into the future.

By investing and by supporting communities, we will all benefit collectively in the long run. Had the government of the day followed the Conservative Party, in particular the Conservative finance critic who is worshipped by many within the Conservative caucus, the programs that we have today would be in question. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that we would not have had the types of progressive programs that we have today.

As a result of those programs, we are in a far better position to recover, and we see that in the numbers. We actually have more people back and employed than we had pre-pandemic: far more on a per capita basis than the United States and other countries. The reason for this is because the government supported Canadians and businesses. Businesses were able to survive and people were able to overcome the biggest issue of the pandemic, specifically vaccination. Canada has led the world because there has been a team Canada, except for the Conservative Party, here on the Hill that has consistently talked about the importance of being fully vaccinated. As much as possible we have provided programs that would make a difference and would provide the disposable income that would save jobs and save businesses.

I would ask the Conservative Party to rethink its motion, and maybe put the member for Carleton's economic theories on hold for a while. Let us see if we can pass this legislation as it is out of committee.

Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Deputy House Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I listened intently to the speech by my colleague across the way, and one thing that jumped out at me was when he mentioned that we were here to legislate to fix problems. I agree. However, I think we have demonstrated that over the last six years, whether it was with medical assistance in dying or finally banning conversion therapy.

I would like to know if the member opposite will be supporting us with respect to Bill C-2 to make sure we are fixing the problem of the gaps currently being experienced because of COVID-19.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Madam Speaker, it has become more and more apparent that this is a Liberal government that has run out of steam and run out of ideas. We are now nearly three months away from what was supposed to be, in the Prime Minister's words, “the most...[consequential] election since 1945”, yet Canadians still have little clue about what direction the Liberal government is taking our country. Canadians can be forgiven, I think, for a profound sense of déjà vu as they read the latest throne speech delivered by the Governor General. In many ways, it reads exactly like the throne speech from 2020, so much so that Canadians are wondering just why we needed to have an unnecessary, reckless and expensive $600-million pandemic election.

To be sure, there are some important points in the throne speech, such as fighting the pandemic and getting Canada back to normal. There are promises to address reconciliation with first nations, to take action on climate change, to strengthen the middle class and to grow the economy. These are all important promises, but when we look at the record of the Liberal government, particularly over the last three years, we see a lot of talk, but little action. Conservatives believe that the purpose of winning elections is so we can legislate to fix problems and seize opportunities for our country. For the Liberals, it is the other way around. They legislate and make promises so that they can win elections and seize opportunities for themselves.

This abdication of leadership has led to a country that is dealing with more than one crisis, where the government can say the right thing, but action is rarely forthcoming. One columnist recently wrote that the Prime Minister is the return of the infamous Mr. Dithers character. Someone who has “hit the ground running at a sloth-in-slow-motion speed.” This is no longer the government of idealists elected in 2015. It is a government that desperately wants to hold onto power, divide and conquer Canadians, and take the bare minimum of action required to safely remain in government.

This has resulted in a terrible situation in our country, where very real problems are not being addressed with the seriousness they deserve. In the throne speech, I was disappointed to see little or no mention of the significant issues Canadians care about right now. For example, in Canada, we are undergoing the most significant period of inflation since I have been alive. For decades, Canadians could rely upon fiscal and monetary policy that maintained an inflation rate close to 2%. This meant that Canada’s economy could grow at a solid rate, while ensuring that prices for goods did not drastically increase. Now we are seeing very significant increases across all sectors, with food, fuel, housing and vehicles all seeing steep jumps in prices.

One recent report also indicated that almost every investment asset class, when calculating for inflation, is returning a net negative real return. The consequences of letting inflation run at these levels will impact families for generations to come. It will mean less money saved for retirement, more resources dedicated to just the essentials and less resources for achieving Canadians’ dreams. It will mean eroded standards of living for retirees on fixed incomes, who will look at the value of their nest eggs shrink as the money supply expands exponentially. The government promises that it will find a way to make Canadians whole, but we saw the consequences in the past of government trying to control wage and price inflation. It only exacerbated the problems further.

The most significant actions that have worked historically to address runaway inflation have been for the government to get its fiscal house in order and for the Bank of Canada to raise interest rates. These are bitter pills to swallow for Canadians who have grown used to massive government largesse and artificially lowered interest rates. The Liberals, I fear, will try and win politically by forestalling this inevitability by increasing spending and allowing the Bank of Canada to let inflation run even higher, thus forestalling the need for increased interest rates.

The consequences of this will mean exponentially more pain for Canadians in the future as the government loses its ability to finance deficit spending and the Bank of Canada loses its ability to control inflation. Canadians deserve a government that will make the tough choices to ensure future generations can have a better life than the one we have. I know from hitting the doors in my community that the cost of living was top of mind for many families. Canadians need to see leadership from the government and they are not seeing it right now from the Liberals.

There is also nothing in the throne speech to comfort the anxiety of my constituents in Alberta. In my region, we rely on the agriculture, forestry, oil and gas, and service sectors to put food on the table. On the agriculture front, there was only one mention in the Speech from the Throne, and that was about creating a Canada water agency. What about a plan to ensure that Canadian farmers can continue to access world markets? What about a plan to address the rising cost of agricultural inputs, such as fertilizer and fuel, which are threatening global food security? These are serious issues, but there was no mention of them by this government.

Where is the plan to fight the Americans on the unjust doubling of softwood lumber tariffs? Where is the plan to ensure that our oil and gas sector can continue to sustain our economy for generations to come while reducing and eliminating greenhouse emissions?

I see company after company from Alberta pledging billions of dollars in combined resources to implement revolutionary and effective carbon capture technology. Where is their willing partner in the federal government? Where is the tax credit for enhanced oil recovery, which will sustain new, low-carbon jobs and investments for decades to come? It is not to be found in the throne speech. Instead, we just see ideological talking points and promises to shut down our jobs and our industries.

The words “just transition” have become a nightmare for Albertans. Many people in my riding lost their jobs when coal-powered plants were phased out a few years ago. Communities and workers were promised by this Liberal government that they would have compensation and a just transition. The last promise in the 2019 budget said $100 million for coal communities.

Well, we have not seen any funding from this Liberal government, and it has been two years. Folks in my area know exactly what a “just transition” means. It means fewer jobs, less prosperity and more “just inflation”. It is time for the Liberal government to take co-operative action with the oil and gas sector to ensure the prosperity of all Canadians, not just those who are represented by Liberal MPs.

The Speech from the Throne also failed to address the elephant in the room in Canada right now. One of our most important institutions has been on the news on an almost daily basis, and not a lot of it has been good news. I am talking, of course, about the Canadian military and the numerous scandals that we have seen.

As someone who represents a large military community and CFB Edmonton, I know that my constituents are extremely proud of our Canadian Forces members, but every day they lose confidence when they see the Liberal government fail to act and fix problems. An institution as important as the Canadian military deserves far more attention from this government than it received in the throne speech, where it was not even mentioned once. Sadly, this is just another case of the Liberal government failing to tackle the important issues that Canadians want to see solved.

The Liberals' rhetoric has, yet again, failed to match the reality of action. When the Prime Minister said this was “the important election since 1945”, he clearly was not talking about its importance to Canadians. Instead, he was talking about its importance to his own ambitions for a majority government.

We are seeing bills being passed today that would have been, and could have been, passed if we had not had an election, such as Bill C-2, Bill C-4 and Bill C-6. We see legislation that was passed with unanimous support, like Bill C-3 last night, which fulfilled the promise from all the way back to May 2020 to implement paid sick leave.

This is legislation the Prime Minister said would be implemented without delay, but it took a year and a half to produce a mere page of legislation. In fact, it was not even important enough to merit its own legislation. It had to be merged together with a Criminal Code amendment. We are seeing a recycled throne speech. I praise the government for its commitment to recycling, but the throne speech largely repeats the promises and agenda of the government from last year in 2020.

It is clear, as I said at the beginning of my speech, that this Liberal government has run out of steam and out of ideas. Canadians are growing more disappointed each and every day as they see the priorities they talk about around their kitchen tables with their families every night not being reflected in the policies and action of this government. I hope for the sake of all Canadians that this government can get its act together.

The Economy

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources and to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change]

Mr. Speaker, I am thrilled that the member opposite would like to speak about the economy. Around the world, governments, including Canada, are taking immediate action to address the omicron variant. Earlier this week, Canada announced strong action at our borders and in regard to testing and entry. This is another reminder that all Canadians who can, should get their vaccines as soon as possible. There is no more important economic policy for Canada today than finishing the fight against COVID.

Today's renewed COVID fears are also a reminder of why the measures in Bill C-2, which provides targeted personal income and business supports, are so urgent and essential. Over the last 20 months, Canadians have faced tough times. Various health and safety precautions have caused financial and emotional distress for many people, not to mention those who have also had to care for or who have lost loved ones at the same time.

Across the country, many businesses have had to close, some temporarily and others permanently. The majority have experienced reduced revenues, even when they were open. This has translated into many people losing their jobs or having their hours reduced. That is why when the crisis hit, the government rapidly rolled out a full range of effective, broad-based programs under the economic response plan with much needed support for individuals, businesses and communities to see Canadians through our country's greatest economic shock since the Great Depression.

In terms of its scale, Canada's economic response, including budget 2021 investments, was one of the largest and most expeditious among G7 countries. It helped engineer a near-term economic turnaround at a faster than anticipated pace compared with some industrialized countries. This support has worked. Many businesses are now safely reopening. Employment has recovered to pre-recession levels and of the three million jobs that were lost at the peak of the crisis, all have now been recouped, faster than any other recession. Canada's economic recovery is well on track and the pandemic economy is fading from view.

As our government looks to secure a more prosperous future for Canadians, it is helpful to look back and consider the key measures that have helped us to get to where we are today. These include the Canada emergency response benefit, the Canada emergency wage subsidy, the Canada emergency rent subsidy and lockdown support and the Canada emergency business account. Federal support also includes significant financing for the provinces and territories through its top-ups to the Canadian health transfer, as well as through the safe restart agreement, the safe return to class fund and the essential workers support fund. All told, more than $8 out of every $10 spent to fight COVID-19 and support Canadians has come from the federal government.

In budget 2021, the government promised that if additional flexibility was required, based on public health considerations later in the year, it would continue to do whatever it takes to be there for Canadians. That is why in October, we announced the Canada worker lockdown benefit. We are working to ensure continued support to Canadians throughout this pandemic.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

You have 15 seconds, so we're going to wrap up now.

I just want to say, on behalf of all the members of the Standing Committee on Finance, thank you to the witnesses. Thank you for your testimony, for your answers to the questions and for informing this committee on this important piece of legislation, Bill C-2. We thank you very much for all of that.

At this time, members, we are going to adjourn.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Great. I understand completely.

Basically, the CRB ended on October 23. The government called an election and reconvened Parliament two months afterwards. Bill C‑2 was drafted and your organization was consulted during the process. However, as you mentioned earlier, a number of categories of artists have been excluded from the bill, especially self-employed cultural workers. Let me give you an example. In my constituency, Terrebonne, the Théâtre du Vieux‑Terrebonne used to play to full houses, but it's now operating at one third of its capacity.

We can see that Bill C‑2 has nothing for culture, whereas, as you so rightly said, we needed a program yesterday. We really want to hear about how badly we need a program, how urgent it is, and that, right now, the current program is not adequate. We need a specific timeline.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have another question for you, Ms. Prégent.

Were the Union des artistes and the Fondation des artistes consulted when Bill C‑2 was being drafted?

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to direct my question to Ms. Grynol again. One thing we've spoken a lot about is the importance of the measures in Bill C-2 for your sector. You've articulated that quite clearly. One conversation that has come up in the committee on a number of occasions is the suggestion by some that the programs here are helping businesses, but they're not helping people, like workers.

Can you speak to the impact these measures would have on Canadian workers?

Quickly, to my mind, the reason for these measures is to help businesses prevent all the negative outcomes that you've spoken about, namely the bankruptcies, the cutbacks and everything else you've spoken about. By keeping businesses functioning and operational, it allows them to then pay workers. By subsidizing wages, we allow them to pay workers.

Can you speak to what the impact would be of the measures in Bill C-2, in your view, on Canadian workers?

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

Thank you very much.

Ms. Prégent, in Bill C‑2, there is a tool called the Canada Worker Lockdown Benefit, which applies to self-employed workers in arts and culture only if there is a lockdown order in their region.

According to the government, all industry sectors that need exceptional assistance are included in Part 1 of the bill. I am wondering whether it would make sense simply to provide access for self-employed workers in arts and culture to the Canada Worker Lockdown Benefit even if there is no lockdown order in their region, because we recognize that the industry is suffering even without a lockdown.

Do you see that as a possible solution for the government?

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to hear more from Ms. Prégent.

Good afternoon, Ms. Prégent.

This morning, Minister Freeland came to talk to us at the committee. She said that, in Bill C‑2,the cultural industry is included in the Tourism and Hospitality Recovery Program, which is quite broad.

Ms. Prégent, do you believe that most members of the Union des artistes would be covered or would it simply affect self-employed artists and workers in the arts generally?

[Heath MacDonald, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

We can't depend on domestic travel for much longer. We need international travel. The new variant has put an impediment in the way of that.

If your sector doesn't get Bill C-2 passed, what alternative is out there? I know there are hotels right downtown in Ottawa that are huge, nice hotels that don't have their restaurants open. I'm sure some people in this room are likely staying at at least one of them.

What is the doom and gloom if this doesn't get passed?

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you.

I have a quick one for Ms. Kobluk.

Were you consulted or was your organization consulted during the development of Bill C-2 or have you had any recent conversations with the government about the challenges that some of your members are facing?

[Devorah Kobluk]

I think Bill C-2 is optimistic, and maybe unfairly so.

Let's think about who needs what. On October 23, the Canada recovery benefit ended. On that same day, almost a million workers qualified for the Canada recovery benefit.

I was speaking to some of our workers' rights allies yesterday. They mentioned that over 600,000 workers are forced to work part-time, so they actually aren't getting by. Their bank accounts have not recovered yet. They're being left behind, and with every month, it gets worse. That's also what we're seeing with seniors: every month it gets worse.

If we look at the fact that these people have lost their GIS, now it's going to be five months if they don't change this. That's 15% of their yearly income gone, which they are being asked to continue to lose. If we think that some seniors in the first month may have had some very small savings, and people entering poverty often don't—

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

Thank you.

Ms. Kobluk, one of the things we've heard from the government is that Bill C-2 is about moving into the recovery phase of the pandemic. One of the other things we often heard from the government, not just recently, but particularly during the election campaign—which was before they had announced they were going to be summarily ending the CRB program in October—was that they're committed to not leaving anyone behind.

We're seeing a recovery where financially vulnerable people are having benefits clawed back. There isn't ongoing income support for a lot of people who are still struggling in an economy that isn't easy, in light of the pandemic. There are financially vulnerable people who are being pursued to repay debts. We then see on the wage subsidy side that there have been companies like Bell, Telus and Chartwell that received huge amounts of public subsidy and then paid out large dividends to their shareholders. They even increased the annual amount of their payouts by anywhere from 5%, 6% or 7%.

At a higher level, when we talk about the principles of the recovery—what it means not to leave people behind and to make sure that we have a fair recovery and that we're building back better—does Bill C-2 represent a move in that direction, or does it paint a very different picture of what the Canadian recovery is going to look like?

[Susie Grynol]

We simply wouldn't have an industry standing today. We would have lost the anchor businesses in this sector. Here I'm talking about the hotels, the convention centres and the attractions. We would have lost hundreds of thousands of tourism operators who provide those Canadian experiences, not to mention the indigenous experiences we have across this country. We would have lost significant infrastructure in the travel infrastructure space, in the fleets of RVs and buses going back and forth. In our air sector we would have had a collapse had it not been for the support.

The reason Bill C-2 is so important is that we are so on that brink of collapse in our off-season with growing travel restrictions around us. Our goal here is to preserve the core anchor businesses within the sector so that we have the infrastructure standing on the other side to allow the sectors to build back.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thanks so much.

Thank you to all the witnesses for being here today.

Just before asking my question, I want to continue on the subject that Mr. Stewart was just asking about. I think it's important also to remember for broader context, and I think this was mentioned in the response to his question, that the labour challenges existed before the COVID pandemic began for a range of reasons. These presumably vary in different parts of the country and for different providers in the tourism sector. One of the key challenges, based on the reading I've done and The Economists I've read from, and also from what I've heard from my constituents in Etobicoke Centre who run businesses, is that the labour shortage is to a great degree driven by the fact that during the pandemic we had very little immigration. That has affected the labour force, not just in tourism but across all sectors. I think that's really important to remember.

I also think it's important to remember that Bill C-2, which is what we're here to discuss, is a pivot, as the finance minister spoke about this morning. The pivot is designed to really provide targeted support for those enterprises and those individuals who need it most. That's one of the key reasons for that pivot.

To the tourism association, when you look back, if the government hadn't put in place the previous support programs, such as the emergency wage subsidy, what would have happened? I apologize; it's not the tourism association but the hotel association.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am honoured to be able to talk to Sophie Prégent, the president of the Union des artistes. I had an opportunity to meet her briefly at the Juripop legal clinic. I would be remiss not to highlight all her activities in the area of sexual violence and assistance to victims. She has played an essential leadership role in our society. So I am delighted to see her here today, despite the unfortunate and difficult situation in which artists find themselves.

Thank you once more for continuing that involvement, Ms. Prégent.

My first question is very simple. If Bill C‑2 contains nothing for the cultural sector, what consequences will that have for culture? The word despair has been used and we know that people are hesitant in buying tickets for shows.

Why do you think that self-employed workers in the cultural sector are not included in Bill C‑2?

[Devorah Kobluk]

Thank you.

My name is Devorah Kobluk and I'm a senior policy analyst at the Income Security Advocacy Centre. ISAC is a specialty legal clinic funded by Legal Aid Ontario. Our mandate is to advance the rights and interests of low-income Ontarians with respect to income security and employment. We carry out our mandate through test case litigation, policy advocacy, community development and public education.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to Bill C-2. We are pleased to see an extension of the Canada sickness and caregiver benefits, but we have some concerns. First, the new Canada worker lockdown benefit offers an inadequate rate of $300 per week and is inaccessible since no region in Canada currently meets the lockdown requirement. Workers continue to experience the fallout from COVID-19, and this bill offers next to nothing moving forward. We recommend retroactively extending the Canada recovery benefit at its original $500 rate until the economy fully stabilizes and the impacts of the omicron variant are clear.

ISAC is also very concerned that there are no provisions in Bill C-2 to address the ongoing crisis for low-income seniors. In early August we were flooded with calls in the legal clinic system from seniors who had suddenly seen their GIS reduced or eliminated in 2021 because they accessed the CERB in 2020. The confusion and panic that began over four months ago have not subsided. The situation for these seniors is desperate.

We understand the CERB was developed rapidly when the pandemic hit and the goal was to get money out the door quickly. What we do not understand is why this bill does not seize the opportunity to correct unintended consequences of CERB/GIS interactions.

This government knew of these interactions as early as May 2020 and stated last month that there issues of fairness and equity to consider before addressing concerns. What is fair and equitable about clawing back a poverty-reduction tool, the GIS, during the unusual years of a pandemic?

The seniors impacted are the poorest seniors in Canada. They supplement their below-poverty GIS income with part-time work to make ends meet. At an age when one hopes to not have to work, these seniors work. When the pandemic hit, like everyone else they accessed CERB because of job losses and so, as a high-risk population, they could isolate and stay safe. They were not informed of possible consequences to their GIS.

Further, a loss of GIS disproportionately impacts women and older, indigenous and racialized seniors. At the end of July, these were the seniors who lost up to $600 of their monthly income, or sometimes more, with no warning.

Among those impacted is a 68-year-old senior in Ottawa who worked as a self-employed dog walker prior to the pandemic. The pandemic caused her small business to completely collapse. She used CERB to supplement her lost income and to pay for groceries, personal protective equipment and taxis to medical appointments. The avalanche of unintended consequences has been devastating. She is now trying to survive on approximately $650 per month. Her rent has increased because her rent geared to income was recalculated while she received CERB. She may have to leave her home of over 14 years. She has lost her Trillium drug program benefit that helped her pay for medication, and she is being asked to wait until July 2022 for this situation to be corrected. She will not make it.

As it is for other seniors in her position, with every passing month it is becoming harder to pay for rent, for food when prices are rising, for transportation and for medical supplies. The risk of homelessness increases.

The minimal recourse available to individual seniors is confusing and slow, and it offers no guarantees. A lawyer in our clinic system in Thunder Bay was told by Service Canada that there would be no reassessment for 2021.

In another situation, a Toronto MP's office contacted both the CRA and Service Canada on behalf of a senior constituent only to be told that nothing could be done. That senior was given a list of nearby food banks. We need a systemic solution.

We now know that over 88,000 seniors are impacted. We know that the $438 million needed to fix this problem was already earmarked in the budget. This government can and must fix this problem for the most vulnerable seniors now.

ISAC has reached out to several ministers and to the Prime Minister and has received no response. We wrote an open letter at the end of October, which was signed by 106 anti-poverty community and seniors advocacy organizations from across the country, asking that the government, first, exclude CERB from the calculation of income and recalculate the GIS benefits for 2020-21 and, second, retroactively return the lost benefits and apply the readjusted benefit amount for the duration of the 2021-22 year.

Today I urge the Standing Committee on Finance to amend Bill C-2 to include these provisions and further to also exclude the CRB from calculation of income with regard to the GIS so that this problem does not continue into 2023. Failure to do so will only guarantee ongoing cruelty towards the country's poorest seniors.

Thank you.

[Susie Grynol, President and Chief Executive Officer, Hotel Association of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for inviting me to appear before you today.

My name is Susie Grynol. I'm the president and CEO of the Hotel Association of Canada. I am also the founder and co-chair of the Coalition of Hardest Hit Businesses, which represents over 120 different business associations in the tourism, hotel and event sectors.

COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on Canada's travel and hospitality sectors. It has hurt our businesses more than 9/11, SARS and the Great Depression combined.

The accommodation sector itself saw a 71% decline in revenue from April to November of 2020. Hotels located in Canada's major urban cores have been the hardest hit of the hardest hit, with occupancy rates averaging less than 17% over the last nine months of 2020.

Our sector has now lost the better part of two years of business, and we are at a breaking point. Government support to this date has been our lifeline, and I want to thank every member of this committee and your colleagues for working together to keep our sector alive. It's why we have an industry still standing here today, but without Bill C-2's tourism and hospitality recovery program for the coming winter and spring, there will be significant business failures and sizable job losses. As the rest of the economy recovers, the tourism industry continues to deal with variants, changing restrictions and capacity limits. Tourism remains the hardest hit, and it is not expected to recover to 2019 levels until 2025.

Small family-run businesses make up 99% of the tourism sector in Canada. Many people assume that hotels are owned by the recognized international brand on that hotel, but the reverse is true. For the hotels in your riding—and you probably know which ones they are—it's people in your riding who generally own these hotels. These are small business operators who have now spent all of their livelihoods and reserves trying to keep these assets afloat. They have taken on as much debt as they possibly can, and now they are on the brink of survival.

Major festivals, concerts, indigenous tourism experiences and business events have been cancelled. Events planned for 2022 are being reconsidered. Even immediate travel plans to Canada for Christmas or to come and ski over the winter are being called off due to new variants. Put simply, we are at a standstill.

Perhaps the most heartbreaking fact of all is that tourism lost 880,000 workers in the first two months of the pandemic. Today, we employ 350,000 fewer people than we did before the pandemic. With our slow recovery—compared to the rest of the economy—most of these workers have now permanently left our sector.

According to our June survey of the Coalition of Hardest Hit Businesses, 60% said they will go out of business without an extension of government relief programs through the winter of 2022. Simply put, if Bill C-2 doesn't pass, we could lose the infrastructure that supports our events businesses in Canada, the unique local attractions that enhance our visitor experience and the hotels and event spaces that anchor the travel sector.

We are grateful that all parties offered support to our sector during the election campaign. Every party committed support to our sector. Bill C-2 accomplishes the key goal of providing support to only the hardest hit of the hardest-hit businesses in order to keep them alive. This is an investment in a sector that will come back with a vengeance if given the opportunity. It will also help keep people in the workforce who otherwise would be laid off, many of whom are Canada's most vulnerable—women, young people and immigrants.

We are recommending the swift passage of this bill today, without amendments. Tourism and accommodation businesses must have immediate access to liquidity to get through the winter. Passing Bill C-2 in its current form will save thousands of businesses and jobs.

Travel will resume with a vengeance. Of this, we are certain. With the passage of this bill, we will have an industry still standing on the other side of this pandemic, and we cannot wait to welcome the world back to Canada.

I urge all members of this committee to vote in favour of this bill and pass it without delay. Our survival depends on it.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Yes. I will do that, Mr. McLean. It's more when we have a hard stop when that would happen.

Welcome to meeting number six of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance. Pursuant to the House of Commons order of reference adopted on December 2, 2021, the committee is meeting to study Bill C-2, an Act to provide further support in response to COVID-19.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of November 25, 2021. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website. Just so you are aware, the webcast will always show the person speaking, rather than the entire committee.

Today's meeting is also taking place in the webinar format. Webinars are for public committee meetings and are available only to members, their staff and witnesses. Members enter immediately as active participants. All functionalities for the active participants remain the same. Staff will be non-active participants and can, therefore, only view the meeting in gallery view.

I'd like to take this opportunity to remind all participants in this meeting that screenshots or taking photos of your screen is not permitted.

Given the ongoing pandemic situation and in light of the recommendations from the health authorities, as well as the directive of the Board of Internal Economy on October 19, 2021, to remain healthy and safe, all those attending the meeting in person are to maintain a two-metre physical distance and must wear a non-medical mask when circulating the room. It's highly recommended that the mask be worn at all times, including when seated. You must maintain proper hand hygiene by using the provided hand sanitizer at the room entrance. As the chair, I'll be enforcing these measures for the duration of the meeting, and I thank members in advance for their co-operation.

To ensure an orderly meeting, I'd like to outline a few rules. Members and witnesses may speak in the official language of their choice. Interpretation services are available for this meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of either floor, English or French. If interpretation is lost, please inform me immediately and I will ensure interpretation is properly restored before resuming the proceedings.

The “raise hand” feature at the bottom of the screen can be used at any time if you wish to speak to or alert the chair.

For members participating in person, proceed as you usually would when the whole committee is meeting in person in a committee room. Keep in mind the Board of Internal Economy's guidelines for mask use and health protocols.

Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. If you're on the video conference, please click on the microphone icon to unmute yourself. For those in the room, your microphone will be controlled as normal by the proceedings and verification officer. When speaking, please speak slowly and clearly. When you're not speaking, your mike should be on mute. Remember that all comments by members and witnesses should be addressed through the chair. With regard to a speaking list, the committee clerk and I will do our very best to maintain a consolidated order of speaking for all members, whether they are participating virtually or in person.

To members and witnesses, when you have 30 seconds left in your questioning time, I'll signal you with this paper.

Now, it's my pleasure to be able to introduce our witnesses. We have with us, as an individual, Stephen Saretsky, a real estate businessman; from the Hotel Association of Canada, Susie Grynol, president and chief executive officer; from Income Security Advocacy Centre, Devorah Kobluk, senior policy analyst; and from the Union des Artistes, Sophie Prégent, présidente.

Witnesses, each entity will have up to five minutes to make opening remarks. Mr. Saretsky is not here yet, so we are going to start with the Hotel Association of Canada.

Ms. Susie Grynol, you have five minutes.

Business of the House

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague, who asks an excellent question every Thursday.

This afternoon we will continue debate on the Conservative motion. Tomorrow will be the fourth day of debate on the address in reply to the Speech from the Throne.

Next Tuesday, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance will present the fall economic statement in the House at 4 p.m. We will schedule a relevant ways and means vote the following day, on Wednesday afternoon.

Further, we will also focus our efforts to pass two bills next week, namely Bill C-2, an act to provide further support in response to COVID-19, and Bill C-3, which would amend the Criminal Code and the Canada Labour Code to provide workers in federally regulated sectors with 10 days of paid sick leave and make it an offence to intimidate or prevent patients from seeking care.

The Economy

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

Mr. Speaker, we saw through the campaign that the Conservative Party was skilled at flip-flopping, but I find it particularly shocking that the flip-flopping is happening during the same question period.

Do they actually want us to invest more or less in Canadians, because if it is more, then they should vote for Bill C-2.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Minister, we thank you very much on behalf of the Standing Committee on Finance. We thank you for coming before us and for answering many fulsome questions on Bill C-2, a very important piece of legislation that we all want to see passed in the House as quickly as possible.

On behalf of this committee, we thank you and also, of course—

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, University—Rosedale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. MacDonald. I've had the very good fortune to spend some time in P.E.I., and I'm familiar with the great tourism businesses you have there. I've heard directly from them how this virus has hit them—through no fault of their own.

P.E.I. also very admirably put in place some strong coronavirus protection measures that inevitably had an impact on your tourism industry. Bill C-2 is a very necessary measure to support tourism businesses in P.E.I. and across the country in view of the fact that they can't fully reopen. I must say that when we announced these measures at the end of October, we didn't know omicron was coming, but we knew there was uncertainty and we knew it was still impossible for those businesses to fully reopen. I'm very glad we're able to provide this support.

[Heath MacDonald, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's interesting to sit here and see what we've gone through in the past two and a half years. It was unprecedented, and we had to react very quickly. The subtext from the opposition continues to pose that they would choose austerity over supporting Canadians during the pandemic, and that's unfortunate.

We're positioned very well. Coming from a small province of 160,000, Bill C-2 is so necessary. I can't stress enough how important it is. I think with 56% of the tourism labour force in rural Canada, every riding across this country, including the ones represented at this committee today, should be pushing pretty hard for Bill C-2.

As I'm the last speaker, Mr. Chair, I'll let the Deputy Prime Minister have the last say.

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, University—Rosedale, ON]

To the point about the calculations we have around the likely take-up of the C-2 benefit, because it is a good one, I want to reiterate to members that in view of omicron, which is a new factor that has emerged since we initially announced these measures, we are making some additional calculations. We'll have more to say on Tuesday when we present the fall economic update, but we are making some calculations and provisions to take into account the possible...although right now, you know, it's impossible to fully specify the impact of omicron—

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

Thank you very much.

I think one of the aggravating factors in terms of people's frustration and anger over the benefit clawbacks is that they look at some of the companies that received assistance under the Canada wage subsidy, whether that be Bell or Chartwell or others—we could go into some of those examples, if you like—who increased significantly the dividends they paid to their shareholders. In some cases, there were share buybacks. The government hasn't so much as even asked for any of that money back, let alone pursued them in the way that some of the financially vulnerable have been pursued by the government.

Bill C-2 was an opportunity to incorporate some of the advice that this committee gave to government in the last Parliament around dividends and around share buybacks and ensuring that recipients of the wage subsidy wouldn't engage in those kinds of activities. Why did the government choose not to incorporate those restrictions around dividends and share buybacks in addition to executive compensation in the new legislation?

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

It's part of my preamble, Mr. Chair.

I think what both Mr. Poilievre's and Mr. McLean's statements underline is what the Conservatives would have done had they been in government in response to COVID-19 to support Canadians through the pandemic. What they would have done is nothing.

My question to you, Deputy Prime Minister, is that, in Ontario at least, where my riding is located, cases are up. On December 7, it was reported that new modelling from the science table forecasts a rise of 250 to 400 intensive care admissions in January, even without omicron. The science table said, “Case numbers count, because too many Ontarians remain un/under vaccinated & will end up in hospital”. I think that's a good reminder for all of us to work hard to make sure everyone gets the vaccines they're eligible for, and a good reminder that, as you have said, “the single most important economic policy for Canada continues to be making sure that everyone who can get vaccinated does get vaccinated.”

In light of this new modelling, Minister, and in light of the emergence of omicron, what could be the potential impacts for constituents of Etobicoke Centre and businesses should the measures in Bill C-2 not be in place soon?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Bill C-2 proposes another $7 billion of inflation, so it is very relevant.

I just find it incredibly insulting that the day that a report comes out showing that it's going to cost an extra $1,000 for average families to feed themselves, the government comes here and says, “Well, don't worry. The stock market is up.” Frankly, the middle class folks who are walking down grocery aisles not able to buy nutritious food because it's too expensive can't afford stocks right now. Their concern is putting food on the table.

A 30-year-old called me from my community of Greely a couple of weeks back to say that he's still living in his parents' basement because he can't afford a townhouse, even though he has the same job that his mother—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Madame Chatel.

Mr. Poilievre, perhaps you can get to your question, and hopefully it will be relevant to Bill C-2.

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

A point of order, Mr. Chair.

I'm new to the committee, but we have to discuss Bill C‑2, and I'm having trouble seeing the connection between what Mr. Poilievre said and what we have to decide in committee.

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, University—Rosedale, ON]

Thank you for the question, Mr. Ste‑Marie.

I really want to thank you for the work that you and the Bloc are doing for workers in the cultural sector. I agree with you that it is an important sector and that it has been particularly affected by the COVID‑19 pandemic. I also agree that this sector is not only important economically, but also culturally, socially and I would even say politically. So we must support this sector.

We made a commitment during the election campaign, and I am very happy to say today that we have a program. We are consulting on how to provide this much‑needed help. We are talking to cultural organizations to ensure that the assistance will be appropriate.

I also want to say that Bill C‑2 is also important, because the cultural organizations will be able to benefit from the subsidies that are provided for in it. It isn't enough in the sense that Bill C‑2 will not address cultural workers, but many cultural organizations need it.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Madam Minister, you confirmed to us that the government is currently working on a targeted program for self‑employed cultural workers, as Bill C‑2 doesn't include any measures to support them. Could you confirm that the program can be implemented within a time frame that will satisfy these people and that it will be sufficient to ensure an acceptable standard of living?

Thank you.

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, University—Rosedale, ON]

Mrs. Chatel, I am very pleased to answer your question. In addition, I think that Mr. Leswick is happy to see a former colleague again. Finally, I thank you for your hard work in the Organisation for Economic Co‑operation and Development.

Bill C‑2 is very important for our government. I also think it's important for us all for three reasons.

First, there are sectors of the economy that still need help. Think of the tourism industry, hotel industry and cultural industry. I am extremely proud to see that Canada's economic recovery is robust. We have been able to fight back against the COVID‑19 and the recession that it caused. However, we must not forget that some sectors of the economy cannot fully reopen, as restrictions are still in place. This is the case at the border, for example. Our approach is to preserve Canada's economic capacity through subsidies. To be preserved, these sectors need a little more help.

Second, we offer subsidies to people who are ill and to those who have to stay at home to care for a loved one. These measures are very important, and they are more important than ever since the arrival of the Omicron variant. We need to encourage people to stay at home when they are ill.

Third, it is a measure to ensure that the government will be able to put tools in place very quickly, if lockdown measures are still needed to combat COVID‑19. I hope this won't be the case, of course. However, we must be prepared for any eventuality.

For all these reasons, I hope everyone will vote in favour of the bill.

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Madam Deputy Prime Minister, thank you for joining us today.

I would like to come back to Bill C‑2.

Madam Deputy Prime Minister, what are the consequences if we don't pass this bill by the holidays, if there's a delay, or if we never pass it? This has been one of my concerns since the beginning of the study.

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, University—Rosedale, ON]

Thank you very much for your hard work, Yvan, and for your constituents in Etobicoke.

The reason we are describing Bill C-2 as the final pivot is that we have come a long way in our fight against COVID. We have come a long way in our fight against the COVID recession, and that is a really good thing.

Notwithstanding some irresponsible partisan posturing, which we hear sometimes in the House and sometimes in committee, it is really important for the economy for Canadians to understand that we have made real progress and that we're going into the end of the year and the beginning of next year with a strong economy and strong economic growth underpinning that with a real tailwind. Keynes talked about animal spirits and their importance in the economy, and that continues to be true today.

I do really want people to come away from today with an understanding that we have done a really good job as a country dealing with what was a devastating economic crisis and what could have been much worse, particularly on jobs but also on a strongly recovering GDP. Canadian households, on average, are in a strong financial position right now. They're in a stronger position than they were before COVID hit on a number of measures. That is good news.

Why, then, is Bill C-2 necessary? It's necessary for two reasons.

First, we know that there are some sectors which, through no fault of their own, are particularly hard hit and just cannot fully reopen. There's tourism and hospitality. We spoke earlier today about the culture sector as well. Our philosophical approach in putting together our COVID support programs has been that we did not want to permit economic scarring. We didn't want Canada's economic muscle to atrophy during the COVID recession, because we knew that if it did, coming back from that recession would be even harder. Bill C-2 is designed to provide that targeted support to the sectors that need it.

The second part of it, which omicron has made even more important, is an insurance policy. We still don't know what's ahead. We're all going to hope—I'm going to knock on wood here—that the smart public health measures that have served us well, and the border measures, will keep omicron under control. Please get vaccinated. Please get your boosters. That's so important as well. However, I think it is really prudent to have lockdown support in our tool box, in case that is needed.

That's the thinking behind Bill C-2, and that's why it is a pivot. It's different from the support needed at the height of the crisis. It does cost less money and that is very important to me, to Nick and to the whole Department of Finance, but it is still necessary to have that little bit of extra support.

I really hope and believe this is the final push.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Madam Deputy Prime Minister, thank you for being with us today to answer our questions.

Since the beginning of the COVID‑19 pandemic, the government has protected Canadians with public health measures and vaccines. Canada has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world. The government has also provided support to Canadians and businesses to the tune of approximately $289 billion, as of the end of October 2021.

All of these measures have saved lives, kept businesses going through an incredibly challenging time and protected workers. They protected their jobs and they protected their incomes. In my riding of Etobicoke Centre, people express to me constantly that they are grateful and appreciative that the Government of Canada stepped up and provided that support. We had their backs during COVID-19.

You described the measures in Bill C-2 in your remarks as the final pivot. For the constituents of Etobicoke Centre, who are eager to know about C-2 and what supports will be offered, could you explain what the “final pivot” means?

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

Thank you.

It's good to see you at committee, Deputy Prime Minister.

As you know, I only have six minutes and I am hoping to get in more than one question, so if the answers are long, I may cut in a little bit.

Working middle-class Canadian families are certainly feeling the pinch at the grocery store, as are the financially vulnerable, like people living with disabilities and seniors on fixed incomes. It's not because Canadians are suddenly buying way more food than they did before. In other words, it's not too much money chasing too many goods in the grocery sector. There are other factors at play.

One of the roles the government can play is to support people financially in what continues to be a difficult time because of the pandemic. In fact, a lot of vulnerable people—whether they're low-income families on the CCB, recipients of the Canada worker benefit or GIS recipients—are seeing their benefits being clawed back. I know you talked a little bit about the GIS issue in your opening remarks.

Bill C-2 doesn't actually include any provisions that would prevent the clawback that we're seeing. It's one thing to have to address it retroactively for the CERB and for the CRB. The Canada worker lockdown benefit is a forward-looking benefit, but there's nothing in there that would prevent the kind of clawback that we're seeing.

Why did your government choose not to include anything that would prevent a similar clawback in this legislation?

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, University—Rosedale, ON]

Thank you for the question and for your co‑operation. Let me also thank you for our work together over the last few years and our work together on Bill C‑2.

I am very pleased that you noticed the effort I made at the beginning of my remarks to respond to your letter. That was intentional. We read your letter and discussed those themes. You raised the issue of the cultural sector. I want to start by saying that our government is also concerned about the cultural sector.

It is an important economic sector, both socially and in terms of the national identity of Quebec and Canada. As we were negotiating the new NAFTA, we stressed this aspect and we defended the cultural sector because our government understands the importance of the sector, especially, but not only, in Quebec. We agree on that. We also agree that the cultural sector is particularly affected by the COVID‑19 pandemic. It is a sector that cannot completely reopen. So we agree on what needs to be done.

That being said, we must determine how it needs to be done. In October, we made a decision, and today I am completely convinced that it was the right one. We decided to change the way we do things and convert general support programs for all to targeted programs. We made that decision because the situation had changed, because our fairly successful fight against the virus allowed us to change our approach. We also did so because it is important for us, as it is for everyone around the table, to take a fiscally prudent approach. So we have moved from a broad approach to a targeted approach.

In order to have a targeted approach, we are going to do three things. First, the programs in Bill C‑2 will help many businesses in the cultural sector. We need to see that. Second, Mr. Ste‑Marie, I agree with you on the importance of the issue of self‑employed cultural workers. Finally, we believe that a targeted program must be created for those workers because they are in a special situation.

During the election campaign, we made a commitment to help those workers. We are working out the details of the program that will be rolled out. I am absolutely ready today to reiterate publicly that we are doing that. We will be rolling out that program.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Madam Minister, thank you for being here and for your opening remarks. I also appreciate your willingness to answer our questions.

The Bloc Québécois believes that it is important to follow up on the support measures for the sectors, for the workers and for the businesses that are still experiencing difficulties because of the pandemic. Bill C‑2 will address that, which is important to us.

As we have said time and time again, we could have started work on Bill C‑2 earlier if the House had been called back sooner after the election, instead of waiting two months. Nevertheless, we supported the principle of the bill. We are here to study it, and we are very pleased to do so.

As you know, the leader of the Bloc Québécois, my colleague Ms. Sinclair‑Desgagné and I sent you a letter expressing our concerns about Bill C‑2. You addressed the issues in your remarks, and I thank you for that effort. I appreciate that very much. I would like us to go back to it together, to determine your position and the government's position on it.

As you mentioned, our biggest concern is for self‑employed cultural workers. We are very pleased to see that Bill C‑2 targets the cultural sector with more generous measures. This is what we have been asking for.

We are very disappointed that the bill does not provide income support for self‑employed workers in the cultural sector. In Quebec, a few years ago, these people, particularly artisans in the sector, were asked to become self‑employed, freelance workers. At the outset, we wondered why they were not offered the Canadian recovery benefit (CRB). We were told that the department and the federal government would not be able to properly target people working in those sectors. What are you offering those people?

We don't want them to find a job in another sector, to retrain. In recent decades, in Quebec, we have managed to consolidate the cultural sector, and we want to maintain the expertise. That is why I am asking you this question.

Thank you, Madam Minister.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for being here. It's good to have you at our committee.

Minister, I want to take you back to something you said in October 2020 in a speech you were giving to the Toronto Global Forum. At that point, you stated that deflation and subpar growth would be a greater risk to Canadians than the threats of inflation and spiralling debt. That was well after COVID had begun. The markets were rebounding. The housing market was heating up. Our own finance critic, Mr. Poilievre, warned back in May and many more times that inflation was going to be the threat, and it truly is the threat that Canadians are facing right now. We just heard today that Canada’s food price guide said that, again, food prices will be going up.

You are asking us today to look at Bill C-2. You are asking us to approve more money that's going to be inserted into the economy. We're not sure where that's coming from—if you're going to be borrowing or if you're going to be cutting other programs—but we do know that Canadians are dealing with an inflation crisis, one that up until even about a week and a half ago you were not admitting was even happening.

My question is with regard to your comments back in October of 2020. Were you ill-informed? Did you believe that deflation was going to be the problem? Were you trying to manipulate—maybe not viciously, but were you trying to manipulate? I'm trying to get to the bottom of what you were thinking when you said deflation was going to be a problem in October 2020, when we saw, between March 2020 and October 2020, the signals in the economy that things were already roaring and heating up. What were you thinking? Were you ill-informed? Why would you say that?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you very much, Minister, for that opening statement and the information. I know the members thank you for coming before our committee, and I know they're very eager to ask you questions about Bill C-2 and our recovery supports for those affected by COVID-19.

Now we're going to move into our first round of questions. Each member will have six minutes. We're going to start with the Conservatives.

We have Ms. Bergen for six minutes.

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, all members of the committee and committee staff. I know how hard you work. It is great to be here.

I wouldn't call Nick “my assistant”, or anyone else's. He's a very senior Department of Finance official. In fact, he's the second most senior. Greg McLean will be interested to know he's also originally from Alberta, from outside Calgary, so we have a strong Alberta presence in the department. My chief of staff is from Edmonton. She went to the same high school that I did, but many years later.

Mr. Chair, congratulations on assuming the chair, and thank you for your invitation.

I'd like to say to all the members here that I imagine we may have some robust exchanges, but congratulations to everyone on being elected and thank you for your hard work.

Since the House has returned, the emergence of a new COVID variant has forced new travel restrictions in a number of countries, including Canada, and created renewed uncertainty in global markets. The emergence of the omicron variant is a reminder that the best economic policy remains finishing the fight against COVID. That fight isn't over yet, and that really underscores the need for us to continue to protect Canadians and Canadian businesses and, in fact, the need for this bill.

When the COVID‑19 crisis hit, our government rapidly rolled out a historic set of broad‑based programs so that we could save lives, ensure our economy could withstand public health restrictions, and have the backs of Canadian workers and Canadian businesses so they could get through the pandemic.

Our income, wage, and rent support programs have helped keep food on the table, protect millions of jobs, and keep hundreds of thousands of Canadian businesses going through the darkest days of the pandemic.

Having said that, our support measures were always designed to be temporary emergency support measures. As many members of this committee have noted, the emergency nature of this support meant that there have been bumps along the way.

Unfortunately, some seniors who received COVID supports have seen their GIS benefits affected. Our government—very much including me, personally—is very aware of this issue and is actively seeking a solution. Our most vulnerable seniors should not be penalized, particularly those who lost income due to the pandemic.

We know that many seniors rely on GIS payments to help make ends meet, and I am confident that the government will have more to say on this issue in the next few days. Today, with high vaccination rates, over a million jobs created, children back in school and businesses across the country reopening, the time has come to adapt the business and income support measures to these new and improved circumstances.

Across the country, businesses are reopening. As of last month, more than 106% of the jobs lost in Canada in the depths of the recession have been recovered. This is compared to just 83% of jobs recovered in the U.S.

Thanks, in part, to our government's support measures, we have avoided the sort of deep economic scarring that followed the 2008 recession and that would have done permanent damage to our economy. Just last Friday, Statistics Canada reported that strong job growth continued in November, with 154,000 new jobs created. This outpaced market expectations. These new jobs lowered the unemployment rate to 6%, the lowest since the pandemic began, and only 0.3% above pre-pandemic levels of February 2020.

However, some areas of the country and some sectors of the economy are slower to reopen and continue to need targeted support. That's why, in October, our government announced a pivot from the broad-based support that was appropriate at the height of lockdowns to more targeted support that will provide help where it is still needed, while also prudently and carefully managing government spending.

On November 24, I introduced legislation in Parliament to deliver this more targeted support and that's what we're going to discuss today.

Bill C‑2 allows us to move forward while keeping in mind that the recovery is still uneven and that public health measures that save lives continue to restrict certain economic activities.

Given the fears caused by the new Omicron variant, Bill C‑2 is more important than ever. That is why I am here today to ask you to act in the best interests of Canadians and Canadian businesses by helping them through the pandemic and these uncertain times.

Bill C‑2 will provide critical support for the economic recovery and protect workers in the hardest hit sectors, including tourism. As outlined in the list of eligible tourism and hospitality entities released with Bill C‑2, we have ensured that businesses in the arts and culture sectors, including those offering live performances and art exhibitions, as well as museums, will be eligible. In practical terms, this means that the bill includes significant measures to support the jobs of artists and cultural workers.

That being said, our government recognizes that the arts and culture sector remains disproportionately and negatively affected by the pandemic. That is why, during the election campaign, we made a commitment to provide targeted support to cultural workers and technicians, including the self‑employed. While we want to quickly deliver the support measures included in this bill, we are working hard to keep our promise to artists so that they can continue to shine here and around the world. We will be able to give you more details soon.

For artists in Quebec and across Canada, we must move quickly to pass Bill C‑2 while working together to introduce new measures that will directly support artists and the cultural sector. Among the measures included in Bill C‑2 is the Canada worker lockdown benefit, a new income support benefit that will take into account the decisions of the public health authority, which remain uncertain and unpredictable.

The Canada worker lockdown benefit will provide $300 a week to workers who are directly affected by a COVID‑related local lockdown and will be available to eligible workers retroactively from October 24, 2021, to May 7, 2022.

We're taking this step because we want to make sure that no one is left behind, including workers who are unable to do their jobs due to future public health restrictions, should they be required.

Bill C-2 is also designed with an understanding that some workers may require income support if they need to take time off because they're sick, under quarantine or have caregiving responsibilities. That's why the bill proposes to extend eligibility for both the Canada sickness benefit and the Canada caregiving benefit.

We want to make sure that businesses can continue to grow and recover and drive up Canada's labour force participation rates and our level of employment. That's why we're proposing to extend the Canada recovery hiring program until May 7 and increase the rate of support to 50%.

We also know that there are some businesses that have been most deeply affected by the pandemic and that continue to face significant pandemic‑related challenges. The new tourism and hospitality recovery program will deliver wage and rent subsidies to employers such as hotels, restaurants, travel agencies, and tour operators. The bill includes details of the types of businesses that would be eligible. The subsidy rate for this highly targeted group of tourism and hospitality businesses will start at 40% for applicants with a 40% loss of income and increase based on their loss of income, up to a maximum of 75%.

For businesses in all sectors, the hardest-hit business recovery program will provide support through wage and rent subsidies to employers who have experienced deep and enduring losses throughout the pandemic. The eligibility for these programs will be a two-key system. One key will consider whether the employer has faced a significant revenue loss over the course of the first 12 months of the pandemic. The second key is revenue loss in the current month.

The local lockdown program will be there to provide employers facing temporary new local lockdowns with a subsidy rate of up to 75% through the wage and rent subsidy programs. This is important because it will ensure that local authorities and public health officials can continue to make the right public health choices, knowing that support will be there for workers and businesses if needed.

While we are all hoping that lockdowns will not be necessary in the future, recent developments related to the omicron variant serve as a reminder that the fight against COVID is not yet over, and to underscore a key aspect of Bill C-2, it would enable the government to take immediate action to support workers and businesses directly affected by local lockdowns should the public health situation require it.

I will note that we will continue to have measures in place such that any publicly listed corporation that chooses to increase executive pay while receiving government support will have the wage subsidy support clawed back.

The broad-based set of business and income support measures, which we introduced at the height of the pandemic and which came to an end, as we committed, on October 23, had an estimated cost of $289 billion.

Mr. Chair, I can today report that the Department of Finance has estimated, on October 21, that the total cost of the measures in Bill C-2 would be $7.4 billion, and it would come from the consolidated revenue fund. The government will account for the potential economic impact of the omicron variant, including the increased possibility of the need to use the insurance policy, which is the lockdown support measures in Bill C-2, in our economic and fiscal update on Tuesday.

Fighting COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdowns we put in place to save lives required unprecedented government spending in Canada and around the world. Canadians supported that extraordinary spending because they understood that it was not only the compassionate thing to do, but the right thing to do economically.

With Bill C‑2, we will continue to have Canadians' backs while delivering support that is more targeted—and prudently manages public finances.

I hope all parliamentarians will vote to pass this legislation so that Canadians who need support can access it without undue delay.

Finally, Mr. Chair and fellow members of Parliament, I'd like to reiterate as clearly as I can that the single most important economic policy for Canada continues to be making sure that everyone who can get vaccinated does get vaccinated. We have one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, with 89% of Canadians 12 and older having received at least one dose of the vaccine. We have the second-lowest mortality rate in the G7. Children between five and 11 started getting vaccinated last month. Many of our parents and grandparents are now getting their booster shots, and the rest of us will start getting them soon too.

I have to say, speaking as a daughter, what a relief it is that our parents and grandparents are getting their boosters. I think that feeling is one common to many Canadians.

We can be proud of how we have come together to fight COVID‑19. Our battle is not quite finished yet but we are getting there. The measures in this legislation are an important part of what we need to do to get the job done.

On that note, I am pleased to answer any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number five of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance. Pursuant to the House of Commons order of reference adopted on December 2, 2021, the committee is meeting on Bill C-2, an act to provide further support in response to COVID-19.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of November 25, 2021. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application. The proceedings will be available via the House of Commons website. The webcast will always show the person speaking rather than the entirety of the committee.

Today's meeting is also taking place in webinar format. Webinars are for public committee meetings and are available only to members, their staff and witnesses. Members enter immediately as active participants. All functionalities for active participants remain the same. Staff will be non-active participants and can therefore only view the meeting in gallery view.

I'd like to take this opportunity to remind all participants in this meeting that screenshots or taking photos of your screen are not permitted.

Given the ongoing pandemic situation and in light of the recommendations from the health authorities, as well as the directive of the Board of Internal Economy of October 19, 2021, to remain healthy and safe, all those attending the meeting in person must maintain two-metre physical distancing, wear non-medical masks when circulating in the room—and it is highly recommended that the mask be worn at all times, including when seated—and maintain proper hand hygiene by using the provided hand sanitizer at the room entrance. As the chair, I will be enforcing these measures for the duration of the meeting, and I thank members in advance for their co-operation.

To ensure an orderly meeting, I'd like to outline a few rules to follow.

Members and witnesses may speak in the official language of their choice. Interpretation services are available for this meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of floor, English or French. If interpretation is lost, please inform me immediately, and we will ensure interpretation is properly restored before resuming the proceedings. The “raise hand” feature at the bottom of the screen can be used at any time if you wish to speak or alert the chair.

For members participating in person, proceed as you usually would when the whole committee is meeting in person in a committee room. Keep in mind the Board of Internal Economy's guidelines for mask use and health protocols.

Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. If you are on the video conference, please click on the microphone icon to unmute yourself. For those in the room, your microphone will be controlled as normal by the proceedings and verification officer. When speaking, please speak slowly and clearly. When you're not speaking, your microphone should be on mute. I remind you that all comments by members and witnesses should be addressed through the chair. With regard to a speaking list, the committee clerk and I will do our best to maintain a consolidated order of speaking for all members, whether they are participating virtually or in person.

It's now my pleasure to welcome our Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Chrystia Freeland.

Minister, we know how busy you and your department are, and we appreciate your being here with us today for these proceedings. I know that you're joined today by your assistant, associate deputy minister Nicholas Leswick.

Welcome, Minister and Nicholas.

We also have some of your staff here virtually from the Department of Employment and Social Development and the Department of Finance. I won't go through the list of names, but they are available if information is needed from them.

With that, Minister, we now are going to hear from you in your opening statement. After your opening statement, we will move to questions from members for a two-hour period.

Minister, the floor is yours.

Supplementary Estimates (B), 2021-22

[Élisabeth Brière, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions and Associate Minister of Health]

Madam Chair, I am pleased to participate in tonight's debate on the supplementary estimates (B).

Tonight's debate comes at a key moment for Canada and its recovery. Bit by bit, businesses are safely reopening. Employment has recovered to prerecession levels.

All of the 3 million jobs lost when the crisis was at its peak were recovered faster than in any previous recession. Canada's economic recovery is on the right path, and the pandemic's impact on our economy is fading away.

This has been possible because our government was there to support Canadians and Canadian businesses through the worst of this pandemic. Programs such as the Canada emergency response benefit, the Canada emergency wage subsidy, the Canada emergency rent subsidy, lockdown supports and the Canada emergency business account kept businesses from closing their doors and kept Canadians from losing their jobs.

At its height in the spring of 2020, the Canada emergency wage subsidy supported 27.6% of all employees. Our performance was better than almost every other country's.

Thanks to our solid policy and support, we recovered all the jobs. We recovered the 3 million jobs lost during the crisis. Just last week, we got great news: 154,000 jobs were created in November.

According to the OECD, Canada was one of the first countries to recover all of its hours worked by March 2021.

As good as all this news has been, we know there is more work to be done. We know that not all sectors have fully recovered, and we know that risks remain from new variants of this disease.

Before the House are two key matters to help get us through the end of this pandemic. The first is tonight's supplementary estimates and the second is Bill C-2.

Through the supplementary estimates, the government is seeking parliamentary approval for $8.7 billion in new voted spending. Approximately $1.2 billion of the proposed voted spending in the supplementary estimates (B) is for the government's ongoing response to the COVID‑19 pandemic.

This is so we can continue the work we have been doing since the start of the pandemic.

Federal support also included significant financing for the provinces and territories through top-ups to the Canada health transfer as well as through the safe restart agreement, the safe return to class fund and the essential workers support fund. All told, more than eight dollars of every $10 spent to fight COVID‑19 and support Canadians has come from the federal government.

As outlined by the Minister of Health last night, in the supplementary estimates (B), the Public Health Agency of Canada is transferring $12.4 million to the Canada Border Services Agency for the ongoing development of the ArriveCAN app. This service helps travellers crossing the border comply with COVID‑19 public health measures before, during or after crossing the border by storing proof of vaccination, for example.

In addition, the Public Health Agency of Canada is transferring $7 million to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research so it can support additional research to better understand the nature of immunity after an infection and a COVID‑19 vaccine.

Finally, for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, there is approximately $23.7 million in voted items and $495,000 in statutory credits in the supplementary estimates (B).

As I pointed out earlier, the economic recovery is uneven, and public health measures, although essential to our health and safety, continue to restrict some economic activities.

In budget 2021, the government promised that if additional flexibility was required based on public health considerations later in the year, it would continue to do whatever it takes to be there for Canadians. That is why in October we announced the Canada worker lockdown benefit, which I would like to spend some time on in my remarks.

This proposed new measure was first announced on October 21 and is part of the legislation we are debating today. To ensure that workers continue to have support and that no one is left behind, this benefit will provide $300 a week in income support to eligible workers should they be unable to work due to a regional lockdown until May 7, 2022, with retroactive application to October 24, 2021 if required. It will continue to offer support to those who still need it if the pandemic requires further public health lockdowns in any part of the country, including workers who are both eligible and ineligible for employment insurance.

Assistance would be available in all regions of Canada designated by the government for the duration of the lockdown. This measure could be obtained quickly to support affected workers in the event of a lockdown in the region where they work.

Temporary lockdowns are still a possibility in the months to come. While the government hopes it will not be needed, the Canada worker lockdown benefit offers peace of mind and some economic certainty in these uncertain times.

With children aged 5 to 11 now eligible to get vaccinated, we know that this increased immunization coverage brings us one step closer to a situation where restrictions and closures will no longer be necessary.

Further down the road, we are also looking forward to loosened restrictions on hospitality, travel and tourism, and arts and culture. This new measure and the other targeted supports, such as the tourism and hospitality recovery program and the hardest-hit business recovery program proposed in the bill we debated today, will help bridge Canadians to full recovery in hard-hit sectors.

Canada is now well on its way to economic recovery. Thanks to one of the most successful vaccination campaigns in the world, many businesses are safely reopening. Employment in November was higher than it was in February 2020, prior to COVID-19.

In the coming months, Canada's economic recovery will continue, because our vaccine successes and the safe reopening will allow Canadians to return to what they have been missing most for almost two years.

However, we must remain vigilant, especially with the arrival of the omicron variant, which we continue to monitor.

I am therefore asking everyone to help the government in this fight. Canadians across the country expect no less.

I would now like to ask a question.

Prescription drugs are not always affordable for Canadian families, especially those affected by rare diseases. Can the Minister of Health inform the House of the work that is being done to help these families and their loved ones?

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Madam Chair, we are hopefully going to pass Bill C-2 and see supports for hotels, tourism operators and the entire tourism sector. We will monitor the program carefully. That is what our officials do.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Madam Chair, as the House examines Bill C-2, which is in front of the finance committee currently, we are looking at spending another $8 billion.

What is the government doing to ensure that fraud does not occur in the future?

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Madam Chair, the best thing that the House can do to address labour shortages for the hardest-hit sectors, including tourism, is vote for Bill C-2, pass it and help these businesses to get back on their feet and get the workers they need.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Madam Chair, I just want to remind my colleague opposite that Bill C-2 would extend the Canada recovery hiring program until May 7, 2022, and that would allow employers to hire people back at a discounted rate of 50%. That is one of the solutions to help the labour shortage.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Madam Chair, if the Conservatives want to help Canadians get through this pandemic and have an affordable future, they can support Bill C-2 to get people back on their feet.

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

Madam Chair, it is nice to see you in the chair again.

In the member's area, represented by the ACOA, a regional development agency, the regional relief and recovery fund provided more than $225 million to businesses in Atlantic Canada going through difficult times. It helped protect more than 16,000 jobs and supported close to 2,500 businesses. Our message to small businesses, including in the tourism sector, is clear: We are here for them now and we will work with them to help relaunch the economy.

The Canadian economy will not fully recover until the tourism sector has recovered. As my hon. colleague knows, and as we are encouraging all members in the House to recognize, we need support for Bill C-2. It is what operators in the tourism sector are asking us for. Bill C-2 would help hotels, motels, cottages, B & Bs, youth hostels, restaurants, food trucks, caterers, cafés, tour operators, theatres, music halls, charter buses, dinner cruises, holiday horse carriages, museums, heritage sites, zoos, botanical gardens, gyms, sports centres, ski resorts, leisure boat docks, amusement parks, dance halls, kids camps, hunting camps, fishing camps, cinemas, drive-in theatres and much more.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you so much, Ms. Potter.

Ms. May, thank you for joining our committee for our third and last round with these witnesses.

On behalf of all the members of the Standing Committee on Finance, all the staff, all the interpreters and everybody here, thank you very much for your testimony. We thank you for what you do, and all your members. We are hopeful that Bill C-2 will bring the supports that are required by industries that have been very hard hit and hurt. Thank you very much.

That concludes our meeting for today.

We are adjourned until tomorrow at 11 a.m.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you.

In my riding of Davenport, I have a huge group of artists and people who work in the cultural sector. I have a lot of heart for them and I'm one of their biggest champions. Now, that being said, this Bill C-2 is not intended to actually address additional supports for the arts sector. However, that said, we have made a commitment to the arts sector to provide some additional emergency supports because we know that artists have been disproportionately impacted and we know it's going to take more time for them to come out on the positive side as we try to move through this pandemic. The Minister of Canadian Heritage, Pablo Rodriguez, has committed to developing a plan to support self-employed cultural sector workers, and I've actually held a couple of round tables in my riding with my artists to get their best ideas.

Mr. Laperrière, what recommendations would you have for such a program, based on your experience in supporting artists?

Did you understand the question?

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

There's a first time for everything on this committee.

Mr. Agnew, some members of this committee have suggested that there's help in Bill C‑2 for businesses only, and not for Canadian workers. My view is that by protecting businesses from bankruptcy, by subsidizing wages, we're actually supporting Canadian workers.

My question to you is this. Through Bill C‑2 and the programs in Bill C‑2, are we not supporting Canadian workers, and if so, could you describe what you think the impact will be on Canadian workers as a result of the programs in Bill C‑2?

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

That's very helpful. Thank you.

My next question is much like the previous one and goes to the representatives of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

In your view, what impact will the programs in Bill C‑2 have on companies in Canada? You have about a minute to answer the question.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair. I appreciate it.

Thanks to all of you for celebrating with me.

My first question is for the tourism association. I'm wondering if you could speak briefly to the impact that the programs proposed in Bill C-2 will have on companies in the tourism sector.

[Beth Potter]

Access for sole proprietors has been a real challenge across many of the programs that have been available through COVID, so certainly we are constantly looking for an opportunity to correct our course on that one. If there were that opportunity in Bill C-2, we would of course support it.

Our whole priority, really, is to get back to work. We want these programs to be in place, but we would like to not have to use them if we didn't have to, so yes, we would—

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Laperrière.

For Ms. Potter from the Tourism Industry Association, we know that there are a lot of people who are self-employed in the tourism industry who won't be covered by the measures in Bill C‑2. Do you think it would be helpful for self-employed people in the tourism and hospitality industry to have access to the Canada worker lockdown benefit, notwithstanding whether there's a lockdown order in their particular region?

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

Bill C‑2 would put in place the Canada worker lockdown benefit.

Would it be a good thing if self‑employed cultural workers had access to this benefit, even if lockdown wasn't imposed in their region?

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank the witnesses for their presence and for their patience. Indeed, today's meeting requires it.

In recent months, and especially during the useless election campaign we went through this fall, the Bloc Québécois insisted on the importance of maintaining certain programs for the sectors of the economy that would have the most difficulty recovering from the pandemic. One of these sectors is culture. Yet, this does not appear at all in Bill C‑2, which we are talking about today and which we were all waiting for. There is nothing in Bill C‑2 for self‑employed cultural workers. Several weeks ago, we told the government that this category of workers had to be included in the bill, or we would oppose it. We are told that the government is not able to include them. This is an answer that we find difficult to accept.

I would have a few questions for Mr. Laperrière from the Fondation des artistes.

Good afternoon, Mr. Laperrière. I'm pleased to have you with us today.

How did the cultural industry react when it realized that there was no support for the cultural sector in Bill C‑2.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Okay. Thank you for that. I appreciate that.

As you know, if we look at a breakdown of Bill C-2, we see a section for the tourism and hospitality recovery program. We also have the hardest-hit business recovery program, and under that specific program, we list very specifically a number of key sectors. There are specifics in terms of supports for key businesses, for key sectors within the hardest-hit sectors.

My question to you is this: Do you agree with the list? Was the Chamber of Commerce consulted?

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. I want to thank all the presenters for their excellent presentations.

Thank you so much for your patience while we were voting upstairs.

My first question is going to be for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. I think it's important for me to just outline a little bit the state of our economy. We have the lowest GDP-to-debt ratio in the G7. Over 106% of our jobs have been recouped. Our business confidence is up. StatsCan has reported that in Q3 our GDP growth was 5.4%. Canadians are saving more. A number of our international credit agencies have reaffirmed our AAA rating.

In spite of all this—and I think it was Mr. Agnew who mentioned this—we know we're not out of the woods yet. We know that the recovery, as we're trying to get out of COVID, is uneven. We're still battling COVID. We know that public health measures continue to restrict our economic activity. We know that the trajectory of COVID and its variants remains uncertain and unpredictable.

As you know, a key part of Bill C-2 is moving away from the broad-based supports to more targeted supports. Do you agree with this approach of being more targeted in our supports as we move forward?

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

Thank you.

Was FINTRAC consulted by CRA or the Government of Canada for the drafting of Bill C-2?

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

Thank you for the answer.

As a follow-up question, was FINTRAC consulted during the drafting of the original bill? We're here today to talk about Bill C-2, but out of curiosity, on the original bill that held the CERB and CEBA programs, I wonder if FINTRAC was consulted on the drafting of that bill to assist the government or assist the Canada Revenue Agency with the types of preventive measures that might prevent the potential for what we're discussing here today.

[Beth Potter, President and Chief Executive Officer, Tourism Industry Association of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, I would like to thank you for inviting me to appear before you today.

My name is Beth Potter. I am the president and CEO of the Tourism Industry Association of Canada. I want to thank you for allowing me to appear before you today and for the opportunity to share with you just how important Bill C-2 is to businesses and employers in Canada's tourism industry.

TIAC is the national voice for tourism in Canada. We aim to improve its global competitiveness through leadership and advocacy. We represent a broad suite of tourism sectors, and our advocacy work at the national level involves promoting and supporting policies, programs and initiatives that will benefit the sector's growth and development.

Many of you will have heard me say this before, and I will say it until it is no longer true: When the pandemic struck, the tourism industry was the first hit and the hardest hit, and it will be the last to recover. TIAC's top priority is to work to recover what has been lost over the last 20 months because of COVID.

Before the pandemic, in 2019 total tourism spending in Canada hit an all-time high of $105 billion, and it had been growing for years. Fast-forward one year: Total tourism spending dropped by half, down to just over $53 billion in 2020. Fifty per cent of total tourism spending in Canada disappeared in just one year. Domestic spending dropped by 40%, and international spending got decimated by 87%. Total tourism GDP dropped by 50%, and as a result, our industry's contribution to Canada's total GDP dropped from 2% to 1%.

Employment in our industry also saw a significant decline. In 2019 we had 748,000 direct jobs and we supported almost two million in total. One in 10 workers in Canada had a job related to tourism. In 2020 that all changed. The number of direct jobs dropped by close to 30%, down to 533,000. The number of related jobs dropped to 1.6 million.

These stats are not just numbers on a piece of paper. Jobs are a sense of pride to many. It is how they pay their bills and support their families. Jobs in our industry make a mark on this country, our friends and our neighbours.

The pandemic impacted tourism more than any other sector. By December 2020, there were 10% fewer active tourism businesses than there were the previous year. This is more than three times lower than the contraction of the Canadian economy overall, at 3.1%. No sector was spared.

With the recent new variant and increasing testing requirements, as an industry we feel as though we are going backwards. Tourism businesses and the many thousands of workers they employ are still at serious risk today without continued federal support, especially over the winter months, until higher tourism levels are expected to return in the spring. This, of course, is assuming that new variants are kept under control and new infection cases continue to decrease.

Since the onset of the pandemic the industry has effectively lost two full seasons as borders were closed and other travel restrictions and lockdowns were in place. Businesses have faced crippling revenue losses and drained financial reserves and have taken on substantial debt. Without the financial support provided by Bill C-2, many companies simply will not survive the winter, and many more jobs will be lost. It is imperative that the support provided through Bill C-2 be made available to all eligible tourism businesses, including indigenous tourism businesses.

Before the pandemic, I would note, the growth of the indigenous tourism sector was outpacing that in the industry as a whole. I would also highlight that emergency support programs put in place at the onset of the pandemic did not respond to the realities of many indigenous businesses.

We appreciate the support Parliament has already put in place, but as the rest of the economy recovers, the tourism industry continues to deal with changing restrictions and capacity limits, and that is why we have advocated sector-specific support. That said, TIAC encourages the passing of Bill C-2 as quickly as possible. We also look forward to working expeditiously with all MPs during this parliamentary session towards the development and implementation of a number of strategies to address other critical issues related to the indigenous tourism sector and the significant labour shortage, and to rebuilding overall traveller confidence. I am confident that by working together over the months and years ahead, we will achieve our mutual goal of recovering Canada's travel economy and regaining our leading competitive position in the global tourism market.

In closing, I wish to express my deepest appreciation for the leadership each of you and your respective parties have demonstrated in support of helping to rebuild Canada's tourism industry. While I've delivered these remarks in English, I would be pleased to answer questions that you may have in either English or French.

Thank you.

[Barry MacKillop, Deputy Director, Intelligence, Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for inviting FINTRAC to participate in this panel as part of your review of Bill C-2.

As was mentioned, I am joined by Dan Lambert, my assistant director for intelligence. In respect of the time of the committee, I will do the opening comments this afternoon.

This afternoon, I would like to speak briefly about the intelligence mandate of the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, or FINTRAC, and the valuable role the centre plays in supporting the investigations of money laundering and terrorist financing by Canadian police, law enforcement and national security agencies.

I will also discuss the strategic financial intelligence we produce that enables us to identify new patterns, trends and tactics used by criminals to launder money or fund terrorist activities.

As one of the 13 federal departments and agencies that make up Canada's anti‑money laundering and anti‑terrorist financing regime, FINTRAC is responsible for ensuring compliance with the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act by specific industry sectors, as well as for generating financial intelligence that will enable Canadian law enforcement and national security agencies to take appropriate action.

FINTRAC's financial intelligence has been more important than ever as criminals and terrorists have sought to take advantage of the global pandemic to enrich themselves and advance their illicit enterprises. Over the past year, the centre generated more than 320 disclosures of actionable financial intelligence related to the laundering of proceeds stemming from fraud, corruption and other financial crimes associated with the global pandemic. In total, throughout the 2020-2021 reporting period, FINTRAC provided 2,046 disclosures of actionable financial intelligence in support of investigations related to money laundering, terrorist activity financing and threats to the security of Canada.

Since becoming operational in 2001, the centre has provided more than 21,000 financial intelligence disclosures to Canada's police, law enforcement and national security agencies. Last year our financial intelligence contributed to over 376 major resource-intensive investigations and hundreds of other individual investigations at the municipal, provincial and federal levels across the country.

As I mentioned earlier, Mr. Chair, FINTRAC also produces strategic financial intelligence, the goal of which is to inform Canada's security and intelligence community, regime partners and policy decision-makers, Canadians and our international counterparts about the nature and extent of money laundering and terrorist financing activity in Canada and throughout the world. For example, FINTRAC prepared a classified financial intelligence brief early in the global pandemic to help inform law enforcement and national security agencies in select federal departments of the various types of fraudulent activity that was being directed at the Canada emergency response benefit and the Canada emergency business account. This financial intelligence brief was based on 395 suspicious transaction reports that FINTRAC received in relation to the Canada emergency response benefit and the Canadian emergency business account between January 1 and June 30, 2020.

It is important to note that our financial intelligence brief was based on information provided by businesses subject to the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act. It is not evidence of any wrongdoing.

For context, Mr. Chair, our financial intelligence brief also highlighted that as of August 2020, 8.5 million unique applicants had submitted 23.72 million applications for benefits under the Canada emergency response benefit program alone.

Following this classified brief, the centre also produced and published a special bulletin identifying increased money laundering risks associated with the global pandemic. These included the laundering of proceeds of crime by counterfeiters selling fake COVID-19 test kits and pharmaceuticals and cybercriminals employing COVID-19 versions of popular phishing and blackmail scams that directed victims to send virtual currency for donations and ransom payments. The bulletin was meant to assist businesses subject to the act in managing their money laundering and terrorism financing risks during the global pandemic.

Since the first lockdown in 2020, FINTRAC has continued to receive and analyze reports, including suspicious transaction reports, and provide actionable financial intelligence to police services, law enforcement and national security agencies in Canada. We are committed to working with Canadian businesses and our domestic and international partners to protect the safety of Canadians and the integrity of Canada's financial system.

Thank you very much.

[Alla Drigola Birk, Director, Parliamentary Affairs and Small and Medium Enterprises Policy, Canadian Chamber of Commerce]

Thank you, Mark.

Good afternoon, committee members. It's great to be back.

Since early 2021, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce has been calling for a more sector-specific approach to the government's business support programs. While the pandemic has touched all of us in a number of ways, the fact remains that businesses in certain sectors have felt the impacts of COVID more acutely than others. That is why we are pleased to see the next iteration of business support programs include a suite of measures that allow businesses in different stages of recovery to access supports to see them through the pandemic.

With Canada's high vaccine uptake and the adoption of proof-of-vaccine credentials by provinces across the country, many COVID restrictions impeding the ability of businesses to operate at full steam over the last two years have either been removed or relaxed, but as Mark noted earlier, this is not uniform for all sectors.

Businesses are acutely aware that public health measures can be reintroduced at any time, and we need to make sure that they have adequate government support to get through these situations. Bill C-2 introduces business support measures that are comprehensive and that provide support for those businesses that continue to have operations restricted as well as for those that are seeing their revenues return.

The tourism and hospitality recovery program provides targeted support for the tourism, travel and hospitality, and arts and culture sectors, while the hardest-hit sectors recovery program provides some relief to businesses in other sectors that continue to see revenue declines of 50% or more. For businesses that do not fall into either of these categories because of revenue declines that are less severe, the Canada recovery hiring program is available to help cover wages if a business's wage bill is higher today than it was in March and April of 2021.

Bill C-2 also includes maximum wage and rent subsidy supports for businesses that are impacted by fresh lockdowns in the future, an important measure as uncertainty increases with the emergence of the omicron variant. Ultimately, the most important thing is to ensure uninterrupted support for those businesses that are still struggling. Therefore, we encourage all parliamentarians to pass this legislation without delay. This is also especially important in light of the upcoming holiday season and the previously mentioned uncertainty around the omicron variant.

Thank you for having us here today. We look forward to taking your questions.

[Mark Agnew]

Thank you.

At the top of our presentation I certainly want to urge passage of Bill C-2. I think it's important to say a brief word to situate how we see this bill in the context of the Canadian economy, particularly with the fall economic statement coming next week.

Businesses have repeatedly made clear to us that compounding additional uncertainty and burdens on their competitiveness is not an option. Just to name two of the challenges we've heard about in companies, there is the continuing application of the automatic escalator on excise taxes for alcohol products, as well as retroactively applied digital services taxes which would scope in Canadian companies and risk retaliation from the United States. There are many, many challenges I could go on about, but certainly, in a period of economic uncertainty, we are also seeing a very fragile recovery for our members.

Although the macroeconomic job numbers are positive, with employment at 186,000 jobs higher last month than it was pre-pandemic, there's certainly a lot of work to be done. Accommodation and food services employment is still at 16% below its pre-pandemic levels, or roughly 200,000 jobs, according to Statistics Canada's November labour force survey data.

The last piece of context that I think is particularly germane to the discussion about the hardest-hit sectors and the travel and hospitality industries is the public health restrictions that are still being imposed upon these businesses. Provincial rules continue to constrain the capacity of businesses to operate, and certainly no company opened with success predicated on operating at only half capacity. As for tourism, certainly no operator in any of your constituencies would have opened with an assumption for success based on not being able to access foreign tourists as part of their business model.

Canadians continue to face a fairly fluid landscape, it's fair to say, with respect to our travel restrictions. We, unfortunately, don't have clear data to outline how decisions are made. Certainly, while public health is always paramount, I think it's fair to say that the rules remain complex across different modes of transportation, country of departure and length of trip. The current rules do act as a disincentive to travel, which I think means that companies that are in the travel and hospitality space are operating with one hand behind their back.

In the most recent Canadian survey on business conditions, over 55% of the accommodation and food services businesses said that they expect their profitability to decrease in the next three months.

This isn't to go down a deep tangent on issues that aren't related to the question at hand with Bill C-2, but certainly I think it's quite important to help set the context for the discussion on the importance of this bill.

Now I'll turn to my colleague Alla to speak a little bit more to the specifics about the legislation.

[Mark Agnew, Senior Vice-President, Policy and Government Relations, Canadian Chamber of Commerce]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We'll be splitting our time this afternoon.

Mr. Chair and honourable members, thank you for the opportunity to speak to Bill C-2. It's great to be back at parliamentary committees, albeit still in a virtual form. I'd just say congratulations to this committee for being first out of the gate in terms of various committees with work under way on the House side.

Many of you will be familiar with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Canada's largest business association. We look forward to working with all of you throughout this upcoming parliamentary session. My colleague Alla will speak in a moment about some of the specifics of Bill C-2.

However, at the top of the presentation —

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number four of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance. Pursuant to the House of Commons order of reference adopted on December 2, 2021, the committee is meeting on Bill C-2, An Act to provide further support in response to COVID-19.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of November 25, 2021. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website. Just so that you are aware, the webcast will always show the person speaking rather than the entirety of the committee.

Today's meeting is also taking place in the webinar format. Webinars are for public committee meetings and are available only to members, their staff and witnesses. Members enter immediately as active participants. All functionalities for active participants remain the same. Staff will be non-active participants and can therefore only view the meeting in gallery view.

I'd like to take this opportunity to remind all participants of this meeting that taking screenshots or photos of your screen is not permitted.

Given the ongoing pandemic situation and in light of the recommendations from health authorities, as well as the directive of the Board of Internal Economy on October 19, 2021, to remain healthy and safe, all those attending the meeting in person are to maintain a two-metre physical distance. Everyone must wear a non-medical mask when circulating in the room. It is highly recommended that the mask be worn at all times, including when you are seated. You must maintain proper hand hygiene by using the provided hand sanitizer at the room entrance. As the chair, I will be enforcing these measures for the duration of the meeting, and I thank members in advance for their co-operation.

To ensure an orderly meeting, I'd like to outline a few rules to follow. Members and witnesses may speak in the official language of their choice. Interpretation services are available for this meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of “floor”, “English” or “French”. If interpretation is lost, please inform me immediately. We will ensure that interpretation is properly restored before resuming the proceedings.

The “raise hand” feature at the bottom of the screen can be used at any time if you wish to speak or to alert the chair. Members participating in person should proceed as they usually would when the whole committee is meeting in person in the committee room. Keep in mind the Board of Internal Economy's guidelines for mask use and health protocols.

Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. If you are on the video conference, please click on the microphone icon to unmute yourself. For those in the room, your microphone will be controlled as normal by the proceedings and verification officer. When speaking, please speak slowly and clearly. When you're not speaking, your mike should be on mute. All comments by members and witnesses should be addressed through the chair.

With regard to a speaking list, the committee clerk and I will do our very best to maintain a consolidated order of speaking for all members whether they are participating virtually or in person.

Witnesses and members, this is the tool I use so that you will know when your time is coming up. I'll give you a marker, this 30-second note, which everybody will have. It just keeps everybody on track.

Witnesses, you will have the opportunity to make your opening statements for five minutes.

Members, as we get into the questions, if you can pose your questions to whichever witness you would like to answer them, that may make things more efficient and help us through the meeting.

We have a number of witnesses before us today.

From Campaign 2000, we have Leila Sarangi, national director.

From the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, we have Mark Agnew, senior vice-president of policy and government relations, and Alla Drigola Birk, director of parliamentary affairs and small and medium enterprise policy.

From the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, we have Barry MacKillop, deputy director of intelligence, and Dan Lambert, assistant director, intelligence operations.

From the Fondation des artistes, we have Michel Laperrière, president.

Finally, from the Tourism Industry Association of Canada, we have Beth Potter, president of the association.

We will go in the order I followed in the list, starting with Campaign 2000's Leila Sarangi for five minutes.

Go ahead, please.

Employment

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

Madam Speaker, I know the hon. member's riding very well, having spent a lot of time there as a business person before entering politics, and from training for an Ironman triathlon in the region, which feels like it was almost half a lifetime ago. It was certainly back in the days when I had more hair.

Moving on to other things, the member opposite raises an important issue. It is a whole-of-government preoccupation for us. I have had conversations with the Minister of Immigration on this. I think if we can set the table with 106% of jobs recovered since the lowest point in the pandemic, 154,000 jobs reported as added to the Canadian economy in the last month, and all of the hours that were lost during the pandemic having also been recovered. Those are important elements to put on the table as we get into the matter.

There is no more important economic policy for Canada today than finishing the fight against COVID. That also impacts who we are able to bring here and how we are able to address the labour shortage. I think Bill C-2 is an important piece of this puzzle, because it contains targeted business and income supports, including the emergency lockdown supports we need to fight omicron.

If we take a step back and look at when the crisis hit, our government rapidly rolled out a full range of effective broad-based programs to support Canadians through our greatest economic shock as a country since the Great Depression. These actions were necessary and unprecedented in our lifetime.

All across the country, these programs have been lifelines for workers and businesses. They protected millions of jobs and hundreds of thousands of Canadian businesses through the worst of the pandemic.

However, those emergency measures were always meant to be around just long enough to help people get through the crisis. Fortunately, we are now moving into a new phase that promises to be very different from the dark days of our fight against COVID‑19.

Thanks to one of the most successful vaccination campaigns in the world, most businesses are safely reopening and employment is now exceeding pre-pandemic levels.

We know there are still workers and businesses whose livelihoods are being affected as a result of pandemic-related restrictions on their activity. That is why it is important to pivot to our support measures. It is a move to more targeted measures, which will provide help where it is needed most and continue to create jobs and growth while prudently managing government spending.

Some may wonder how we can tell when we have reached a turning point in Canada's economic recovery from the COVID recession. Allow me to highlight the markers of our government's successful economic response plan, which have brought us to where we are today.

In last year's throne speech, our government promised to create one million jobs, a goal we achieved in September of this year when Canada recovered all of the jobs lost at the lowest point of the COVID‑19 recession. That is a total of three million jobs recovered since the spring of 2020.

Shops and businesses are open, and Canadians are doing their part to make sure we have a safe reopening. They are rolling up their sleeves, getting their shot and following public health advice. This is an important part of the overall plan to get Canadians back to work to fully recover from the COVID‑19 pandemic.

We understand and appreciate the member opposite's concern, and we are working with a whole-of-government approach to address it.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is a privilege to be here at this very late hour to be granted an adjournment debate on the labour crisis.

The government's recent economic recovery speech said it was committed to leaving no worker or region behind, yet nowhere in the speech was there a single mention of the labour shortages that thousands of small and medium-sized businesses face. Leaving small businesses adrift is a roadblock to our recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. As the member of Parliament for Kelowna—Lake Country, my local businesses are feeling the crunch of not having the staffing levels necessary to offer their goods and services like they are used to.

Jason Davis, who operates the Okanagan branch of a security company, told me that a significant drop in employee candidates has left the company running at a loss. They estimate losing over $100,000 in contractually guaranteed revenue because of lost staffing coverage. That is in addition to the hundreds of thousands more they have been forced to incur in penalties for not meeting contractual obligations, higher costs of recruitment and the inability to take on any new work. This is similar to stories I hear from many business owners. Working in security, they are able to see how labour shortages have been damaging to their sector and the many other businesses they work with.

However, employers like Jason are not coming to my office just to talk about difficulties. They are coming to me with solutions. He has suggestions on the temporary foreign worker program, and this side of the House has similarly looked at offering solutions to tackling this labour crisis. Along with the chairman of the Thompson Okanagan Tourism Association, I have already sent a letter to the Minister of Immigration asking him to extend working visas that have expired for people already in Canada. This is an easy fix, yet so far we have received no response and the government is silent. Ignoring our warnings on this labour crisis will not make the problem disappear. It will leave our recovery on the rocks.

Statistics Canada said that in September there were over one million job vacancies. During that same month, there were about a million people on the CRB. RBC Economics reported that one in every three businesses is grappling with labour shortages. A report from the government's own Business Development Bank says that 55% of entrepreneurs struggle to hire the workers they need.

We do not have to let this country run into a growing iceberg. We can choose to take action to ensure our recovery lifts up all businesses and workers. We can ensure that Canadians continue to be employed at good-paying jobs that support their communities with affordable goods and services. We need to get people who are able to work back to work.

We can keep Canadians spending at small businesses by tackling skyrocketing inflation, which is escalating gas and grocery bills. We can strengthen our supply chains by ensuring Canadian warehouses, ports and trucking companies have the staff to meet their needs. We can address the increasing debt that small businesses are currently carrying, with an average of $170,000 in new debt. We can address rising costs for small businesses by halting federal payroll tax increases.

I urge the government to take note of these and the many more ideas expressed by my colleagues across partisan divides. Rushed legislation like Bill C-2 will not solve staffing shortages. I ask the government to work collaboratively in the House to tackle the growing labour shortage threats that are crippling small business and impeding our economic recovery.

Supplementary Estimates (B), 2021-22

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Madam Chair, it is clear to members of the House that Bill C-2 is a comprehensive piece of legislation that is focusing on the hardest hit sectors. We have heard from the hotel sector. We have heard from the tour operator sector. We have heard from outfitters. We have heard from gun ranges. We have these operators and tourism operators from coast to coast to coast included in Bill C-2.

Why? We listened to Canadians. We listened to entrepreneurs. We listened to people in the sector who needed our help and support. What they need is a bridge through this last toughest time. We are talking about entrepreneurs who lost 50% of their business. We are talking about entrepreneurs who simply could not continue to keep their staff employed because the demand was shut off because we closed the borders to keep Canadians safe.

As I said at TIAC last week, safety first, then travel. What the tourism sector has asked us for is a bridge of supports to get through this winter into the spring. We have heard the appeals from independent travel agents and we will continue to work on this issue.

We have gone to the wall for Canadians and for entrepreneurs in the tourism sector. We have put Bill C-2 on the floor of this House. We ask for the support of members from all parties to get Bill C-2 passed so we can give our tourism sector, which touches every single riding represented in this chamber, the support and hope it needs to get through the winter into the spring and into Q3.

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

Madam Chair, the minister says we should vote for Bill C-2, but Bill C-2 does not help the independent travel advisers. He said the recovery has been uneven. Well, Bill C-2 is uneven and leaves a lot of people out in the cold, including independent travel advisers.

I would ask him whether the Liberals would amend Bill C-2 to help them, and also if they would amend Bill C-2 to help the start-ups. Many businesses were starting up just as this pandemic hit. People put in thousands of their own dollars in investments into new companies. They took out loans, signed leases and started businesses, many of them in the tourism and hospitality sector, just as this pandemic hit and they were immediately shut down.

These are restaurants, hotels or whatever, and these businesses have received no supports at all from the government throughout the pandemic because they did not have any business record to compare their losses to. They have plans and mechanisms they are asking the government to implement in Bill C-2, or however the government would do it, to give them some support.

They have struggled along and managed to survive in the face of competition with other companies that have received the supports they needed. They received the wage subsidy, but the start-ups received nothing. They are asking the government to let them access programs like HASCAP in such a way that they can continue on and survive, because they are hanging on by their fingernails.

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

Madam Chair, I would like to thank my hon. colleague, who is the critic for tourism among other responsibilities, for his advocacy, his passion and his decency. We have had conversations about this and other issues. I think we can set the table on the backdrop of the fastest recovery of any recession in Canadian history, with 106% of jobs recovered since the beginning of the pandemic and 154,000 jobs announced just this week.

As my hon. colleague mentioned, the sector recovery is uneven, and we know that. That is why I had the honour, on behalf of the Minister of Finance, to table in the House, to encourage our colleagues in the House to support the tourism sector and the hardest-hit sectors, and to put in new measures as we get to the final stretch of this pandemic. I encourage all members in the House to support Bill C-2.

I can say very clearly that the overwhelming unanimous support of hundreds of people who attended the Tourism Industry Association of Canada's conference here last week was emphatic. They are appealing to every single member of the House to pass Bill C-2, so that the sector can get through what will be another tough winter and into the spring and the third quarter. That is when we believe brighter days will be in place for members of the tourism sector.

I have spoken to people in the independent travel agent sector, and I know that they are facing challenges. However, I need to put on the record that we have supported this very important group of Canadians and entrepreneurs. When there was a risk of these operators not getting the money they had earned from large airlines and other sectors, we went to the wall for them in our LEEFF negotiations with those airlines and we delivered. We are working through this issue. It is a complex issue. We have heard from many colleagues in Ontario, in B.C. and across the country. I think the message that has been reinforced by the finance minister is that the supports put in place were exceptional. We will be there for the tourism sector.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Madam Chair, 106% of jobs have been recovered. We had 154,000 jobs added in the report from the last week. The recovery across the country is uneven. We know that restaurants and tourism operators across the country need our support, and I encourage the opposing parties to vote for Bill C-2 and support the sector.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have to thank my hon. colleague for his exuberance and his perspicacity.

We are here for workers in the cultural sector. We are here for workers in the tourism sector. Bill C-2 is the bridge the tourism sector needs to get through this last winter to the end of the pandemic, well into the third quarter of 2022, when we can welcome Canadians from coast to coast to coast and travellers from around the world to come to Canada to see Folklorama, the Edmonton Folk Music Festival and all the other great festivals and tourism attractions in Canada from coast to coast to coast.

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

Mr. Speaker, my friend the minister has been a very strong advocate for tourism since long before he was appointed Minister of Tourism. I

In Winnipeg, we have this wonderful thing called Folklorama. It is a two-week extravaganza of Canada's diversity. We can visit the Philippines, the Punjab, India, Ukraine and all over the world during those two weeks. The cultural diversity is simply amazing. We can participate in things such as dance, food and phenomenal entertainment.

The Prime Minister had the opportunity to meet with the Folk Arts Council. The Folk Arts Council said that the wage subsidy program enabled them to keep their doors open. This is not a new organization. It has been there for over 50 years. The point is that through programs, the government has been able to keep our arts and cultural communities, among others within our tourism industry, active and around to be able to survive the pandemic, in many ways.

The NDP and Conservative coalition voted against Bill C-2. This was going to extend the benefits for many of those businesses, communities and arts and cultural organizations. I am wondering if the minister can express why he believes Bill C-2 is so important for businesses and Canadians as a whole.

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

Mr. Speaker, since the beginning of the pandemic, Canadians have been called upon to take extraordinary measures to ensure the safety of all. We have been in an emergency situation that has required large‑scale lockdowns and closures, which have threatened the ability of millions of Canadians to work and thousands of businesses to continue operating.

In response to this extraordinary situation, our government has taken unprecedented action thanks to the collective effort of so many people working tirelessly to help their fellow citizens. We have put in place a comprehensive package of measures to help workers and businesses across the country meet these challenges.

We saw neighbours helping neighbours, frontline workers who did double and triple shifts to keep our communities safe, and people who retooled their entire business lines to produce protective equipment for frontline workers and Canadians in need. In this time of historic commitment to helping others, our government was there to ensure that Canadians, their families, their businesses and their communities would be supported through the worst.

Our income and wage support programs, along with rent subsidies, made it possible for households to support their families. Those programs also enabled millions of Canadians to keep their jobs and hundreds of thousands of Canadian businesses to keep operating during the darkest days of the pandemic.

Thanks to robust public health measures, vaccination rates are high and the child vaccination campaign is moving along quickly. Grandparents and others who need it are receiving their third dose, the booster dose. Our health care system is finding better and better ways of dealing with the virus.

While the recent emergence of the omicron variant of COVID-19 is cause for concern, there is still reason for cautious optimism that we are turning the corner in the fight against this virus and seeing better days. Thanks to the hard work of Canadians, we are approaching the last mile of this long and difficult journey.

On the economic front, the recent OECD December 2021 economic outlook confirmed that Canada is still expected to have a strong recovery relative to pre-pandemic levels of GDP, ranking the second-fastest among G7 economies by 2023. Of the three million jobs that were lost at the peak of the crisis, all have now been recouped, faster than after any other recession. This has been possible because of the supports we provided. They prevented unnecessary increases in insolvencies and kept Canadians and Canadian businesses largely intact. They limited economic scarring and laid the foundation for a strong recovery.

In my riding of Edmonton Centre, I spoke with the now third-generation owners of Kunitz Shoes. The owners live in my riding. It is a third-generation shoe store on Jasper Avenue. It was going to go under, but because of collaboration with other business leaders in the community and due to the supports that we had in place, Kunitz Shoes is now thriving and back on its feet, if members will excuse the pun. The owners told me that they paid taxes, in their case for over 60 years, with the expectation that when they needed it, the government would be there for them. They said it had never happened in the history of the company, but it happened in the past year. The government was there for them, and they thanked me and my colleagues for that.

In short, the government took action and it worked. Canadians and most parliamentarians supported this unprecedented spending because they understood that it was not only the compassionate thing to do, but also the economically smart thing to do. Our government strongly respects that Parliament plays a key role in enforcing this accountability, and I would like to recognize all members participating in the committee of the whole tonight for their role in this regard.

The Department of Finance has also played a key role in enforcing this accountability through its budgets, fiscal updates and reports to Parliament, and it will continue to do so. Further to this goal, as the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance has announced, the government will be providing an economic fiscal update on December 14.

Through these supplementary estimates, the government is seeking parliamentary approval for $8.7 billion in new voted spending. These planned expenditures would support Canadian priorities with infrastructure and services to address the specific needs of indigenous communities, the government's ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and supporting access to COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics in developing countries.

In fact, approximately $1.2 billion of the proposed voted spending in supplementary estimates (B) is for the government's ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic. I do not think it would be an exaggeration to say that Canadians are counting on this funding to protect their health and well-being.

However, Canadians are not just counting on us to invest in their health and well-being. Canadians need and want good jobs with fair wages and clear rules. Therefore, we need to make sure that businesses, especially small businesses, have the support they need. That is why we have introduced Bill C-2 in Parliament.

Among other things, the bill would extend the Canada recovery hiring program until May 2022 at an increased 50% subsidy rate. This would encourage businesses to continue to rehire workers, increase their hours and create additional jobs that Canada needs for a full recovery from the COVID-19 recession.

That said, the government is also aware that some businesses are unable to resume all their activities and create those jobs because of the public health measures that, as I said, are necessary to protect Canadians. We are therefore proposing in Bill C-2 two new support programs targeting specific types of businesses in order to promote economic recovery. In both cases, the businesses must show that they experienced significant revenue declines during the first 12 months of the pandemic as well as the current month.

I will start with the tourism and hospitality recovery program, which will help hotels, restaurants and travel agencies, which are still grappling with public health restrictions and the fact that people are travelling less because of the measures in place.

The Canada emergency wage subsidy and Canada emergency rent subsidy rate for these businesses will be 40% for those with a current-month revenue loss of 40%. The rate would increase in proportion to this revenue loss up to a maximum of 75%.

This legislation is key to getting us to the end of this pandemic and it is unfortunate that our colleagues in the Conservative Party and the NDP are voting against it. Make no mistake: This support will be crucial to getting our tourism sector back on its feet. I spoke with many leading tourism operators and businesses at the Tourism Industry Association of Canada's conference here last week and I can say that they are emphatically asking and demanding that everyone in the chamber support Bill C-2.

Since taking on the role of Minister of Tourism and Associate Minister of Finance, I have been moved by the passion of those in the tourism sector for the work that they do. These are the people who tell our story to the world and they are the people who are going to inspire people from around the world to come and fall in love with Canada.

At this moment, this industry is reeling from the body blow of this pandemic. Revenue has declined almost 50% from 2019 levels. Jobs directly attributable to tourism decreased 41% from 692,000 to 409,000 in the same period.

However, even with these challenges, Canada’s tourism sector is moving forward, and our government recognizes the vital role that tourism plays in providing employment and opportunities for small and medium-sized businesses and further fuelling economic growth. In short, our economy will not fully recover until the tourism sector recovers. With government support, businesses in this sector are starting to get ready to welcome Canadians back to experience the great places and activities this country has to offer.

This support includes the measures introduced in budget 2021 to support the tourism sector, totalling $1 billion over three years. This includes $500 million over two years flowing through regional development agencies to help our hard-hit tourism businesses adapt their products and services and invest in future growth.

This also includes $200 million through the regional development agencies to support them and help ensure that Canada continues to draw millions of visitors from all over the world to our large arts and cultural festivals and major events.

I have to thank the former tourism minister, who is now the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the entire government for their foresight and for including all of these measures in budget 2021.

Our government will continue to ensure that Canadians are informed of the details of not just our spending, but of all the investments that we have made to protect and support Canadians in the fight against COVID-19. A full recovery will take time, but we are committed to doing what it takes to finish the fight against COVID-19, to speed up the recovery, and to lay the foundation for years of strong, sustained growth.

As we continue to gain ground in this fight, our support for Canadians is becoming more targeted, ensuring that help is being focused on those who need it the most.

Help is here and hope is on the horizon.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the hon. member's focusing on the issue of labour, because it allows me to remind all members that we have before this House a crucially important piece of legislation, Bill C-2. I would remind colleagues that Bill C-2 would extend the Canada recovery hiring program until May 7, 2022 for eligible employers and increase the subsidy rate to 50%. In short, this benefit will be good for Canadians. We hope the opposition will support it.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, our record speaks for itself. We supported millions of Canadians during the pandemic. We are continuing to support Canadians in the hardest-hit sectors as we come through this recovery period. I might say to my hon. colleague that if he wants to make sure some of the most vulnerable people are supported, I encourage him and his caucus members to support Bill C-2.

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you.

Ms. Demers, I have a second question for you.

In the past, there have been issues with the payment of benefits. The payment of some of these benefits has affected other benefits received by fairly vulnerable groups. The example of the guaranteed income supplement was provided.

How does Bill C‑2 address these issues so as to avoid what we've seen in the past with other benefits?

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As my colleague pointed out, it should be noted that the officials working on Bill C‑2 are working very hard and are available to answer our questions.

For example, some important questions were asked that aren't exactly related to Bill C‑2, but that are nonetheless quite relevant, such as Mr. Blaikie's question about how the provinces will deal with the bill. Some questions were also not related to the Department of Finance, as my colleague Mr. Stewart said earlier. I'm thinking of the cost of running these programs, for example. Mr. Poilievre also asked about the future audits.

As a new committee member, I learned about the procedures that could help my colleagues obtain specific answers to their questions. I learned that questions beyond the scope of the discussion can be submitted in writing in advance. This makes it easier for officials to do their job. That's what I did last night. I sent in a question. I would encourage you to follow that procedure, Mr. Blaikie.

Ms. Demers, I want to ask you about workers who may have to repay benefits if, for whatever reason, they were deemed ineligible. I'd like to know the repayment strategy. This matter concerns part 2 of the bill.

Is there a strategy to ensure, as we've seen in the past, that taxpayers don't need to pay back the benefits received?

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

What we're really getting at is that we're being asked to fast-track a bill's passage. There was some ongoing work being done over the last two years.

A bill like Bill C-2 requires a significant amount of time, but legislators and departmental officials had to deal with an election, which seems to have delayed the drafting of this bill, or the conclusion of the drafting of this bill. We then had to wait a significant amount of time for it to come back to Parliament to be introduced as new legislation, and now we've been asked, because of the need for haste, to fast-track the bill's passage.

What we're hearing—at least what I'm hearing—is that it was difficult to get this done on time.

[Trevor McGowan]

I can only speak to part 1 of the bill, as I was involved in the drafting of that. It's been an iterative process, from tabling the first bill, hearing stakeholder responses and then iteratively improving on the programs over the last almost two years.

In terms of the work on Bill C-2, that was going on in concert with the announcements. It's not been days or weeks, I'm sure.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

When did the government start drafting the Bill C-2 legislation? What was the approximate date? Was it on or about...? “A week” or “a month” would be fine. Was it last week, two weeks ago, three weeks ago, two months ago?

[Heath MacDonald, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Can you explain how the general economic situation has improved because of the programs that were put in place—and potentially the program that we're dealing with right now, Bill C-2?

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

Thank you very much.

I wanted to ask about the Canada worker lockdown benefit. Of course, we've talked a bit about the retroactivity of the benefit. Canadians will have 60 days to apply after the coming into force of Bill C-2, but my understanding so far—and I'm looking for confirmation from the department—is that there is no region in Canada that has met the requirements that would trigger the Canada worker lockdown benefit between the period starting on October 23 and now. Is that true?

[Douglas Wolfe, Senior Director, Strategic Policy and Legislative Reform, Strategic Policy, Analysis and Workplace Information Directorate, Labour Program, Department of Employment and Social Development]

Thank you, Mr. Blaikie. I can respond to that question if you'd like. I'm from the labour program.

You're quite right that the provisions do only apply to federally regulated workers, so it's a small fraction of the overall labour force. Certainly, provinces and territories are aware of these provisions and are certainly aware that Bill C-2 is making its way through Parliament. We fully expect that they will make the amendments that would be required so that employees within the provincial and territorial jurisdictions could also have job-protected leave.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

So in summary, we are on the same page when it comes to businesses.

With respect to seasonal workers, previously, they could collect the Canada recovery benefit, or CRB, without having to do so through their enterprise. Now, according to Ms. Demers' response, they will still be covered by Bill C‑2 if they generated more than $5,000 in earnings over the 12 months in question.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I thought I had two and a half minutes. It's good that I have six.

My first question is about seasonal workers. I would like to know how far the bill applies to them.

As I understand it, there are two criteria. Firstly, you have to have suffered a fall in your average earnings over a well-defined 12‑month period, from March 2020 to March 2021. The second criterion, however, is that you must have experienced a 50% decline in revenue in the current month compared to the same month in a previous year. However, for seasonal businesses that do not earn income during the off-season, how can 50% of zero be calculated? That is particularly difficult.

I would like to know what Bill C‑2 provides for seasonal workers and how they can be compensated.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome, everybody, to meeting number three of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance.

Pursuant to the House of Commons order of reference adopted on December 2, the committee is meeting on Bill C-2, an act to provide further support in response to COVID-19.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format pursuant to the House order of November 25. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website. Just so that you are aware, the webcast will always show the person speaking rather than the entire committee.

Today's meeting is also taking place in a webinar format. Webinars are for public committee meetings and are available only to members, their staff and witnesses. Members enter immediately as active participants, and all functionalities for the active participants remain the same. Staff will be non-active participants. They can only view the meetings in gallery view.

I'd like to take this opportunity to remind all participants in this meeting that taking screenshots or photos of your screen is not permitted.

Given the ongoing pandemic situation and in light of the recommendations from health authorities as well as the directive of the Board of Internal Economy of October 19 to remain healthy and safe, all those attending the meeting in person are to maintain two-metre physical distancing and must wear a non-medical mask when circulating in the room. It is highly recommended that the mask be worn at all times, including when you are seated. You must maintain proper hand hygiene by using the provided hand sanitizer at the entrance of the room.

As the chair, I will enforce these measures for the duration of the meeting and I thank members in advance for their co-operation.

To ensure an orderly meeting, I'd like to outline a few rules to follow.

One, members and witnesses may speak in the official language of their choice. Interpretation services are available for this meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of either the floor, English or French. If interpretation is lost, please inform me immediately, and we will ensure that the interpretation is properly restored before resuming the proceedings.

The “raise hand” feature at the bottom of the screen can be used at any time if you wish to speak or alert the chair.

For members participating in person, proceed as you usually would when the whole committee is in person in the committee room. Keep in mind the Board of Internal Economy's guidelines for mask use and health protocols.

Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. If you are on the video conference, please click on the microphone icon to unmute yourself. For those in the room, your microphone will be controlled as normal by the proceedings and verification officer. When speaking, please speak slowly and clearly. When you are not speaking, your mike should be on mute. I remind everyone that all comments by members and witnesses should be addressed through the chair.

With regard to a speaking list, the committee clerk and I will do the best we can to maintain a consolidated order of speaking for all members whether they are participating virtually or in person.

I'd like now to welcome our witnesses. We have already heard opening statements from these witnesses, who are the same witnesses who were at our second meeting earlier this morning.

We are going to proceed directly to our question time. For the first round of questions, which will be six minutes for each member, we are going to start with the Conservative Party, and, I believe, Mr. Chambers for six minutes.

You have the floor.

The Economy

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, I can say one thing that all members of the House, including the members opposite, could do this week for the tourism and hospitality sector. That is to help us pass Bill C-2. This legislation is there to help precisely those tourism businesses.

We understand that omicron is here. We understand those businesses need support. However, what I do not understand is why the Conservatives, who allegedly care so much about these vital small businesses, do not want to actually help them.

COVID-10 Economic Measures

[Carla Qualtrough, Liberal, Minister of Employment]

Mr. Speaker, I can assure everyone in the House that we have been unwavering and continue to support workers throughout this pandemic. That is why Bill C-2 talks about continuing the Canada recovery sickness benefit and the Canada recovery caregiving benefit. That is why we are creating the lockdown benefit. That is why we are continuing with support for businesses to hire workers and to provide rental support.

There is a lot we are doing for workers and businesses, and as the Deputy Prime Minister has said, we have regained 106% of the jobs we lost during the pandemic. Our unemployment was down last month again, for the sixth month in a row. We are within 0.4% of our record high in February 2020.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much.

I just want to address two key things that I think keep coming up. The first is that we started the session with $7 billion and where it's coming from. I was really pleased when it was pointed out by my colleagues that it has come from the consolidated revenue fund. I think Mr. McGowan also pointed that out.

Just for those who might be listening, I hate it when we're asking questions and it seems as though officials are taking time to respond. I think it's important to just point out that we have officials who are here to address specific elements of Bill C-2, and I want anyone who might be listening to know that there will be an opportunity to answer the questions around the $7 billion in a couple of days or in upcoming testimony from other witnesses.

I also want to address the issue of fraudulent activity or criminal activity taking advantage of some of our emergency programs. We do know that CERB has implemented both front-end safeguards and back-end verification measures to make sure not only that we are getting these emergency payments out quickly throughout this whole pandemic but also that we are ensuring that cases of fraud or deliberate misrepresentation are identified. I'd even say and just remind everyone that in our fall economic statement in 2020 we did actually provide additional resources and measures that would allow CRA to continue to improve their investigations and their verification measures.

I'll also indicate that in August 2020 the Government of Canada issued a statement indicating that the CRA and other departments had been targets of cyber-attacks. All of these investigations were directed to the RCMP, which has been helpful in investigating some of the suspected activity as well as any suspected frauds relating to the emergency relief benefit.

I just don't want to leave the impression with anyone who might be listening or anyone in this room that there has not been aggressive activity on the part of the CRA to make sure that the emergency supports continue to get to where they are supposed to go or that, if there is any suspicious or fraudulent activity, it is not being acted upon.

In the remaining time I have, which is about a minute and a half, whether it's on section one or section two, whether it's Ms. Demers or Mr. Baylor, I wonder if you can explain to what extent the programs, particularly the ones that we are proposing, have pivoted to respond to the public health situation. If each of you could respond on that for 30 seconds, I'd be grateful.

[Trevor McGowan]

The calculations of revenue in Bill C-2 are based on the existing rules for the wage and rent subsidies that are found in the act and that have been relied upon by businesses since the inception of those programs.

I can say that there has been some thought given to providing additional flexibility—and this was evident from the start of the program—for businesses in terms of determining their revenue calculations. For example, there is an option to elect a cash-basis revenue calculation, which would be, I suppose, the opposite of what would be hoped for here, whereby you look to cash revenues to determine what revenues fall in what months, but the basic rule is to rely upon revenues for accounting purposes, which is more typically done on an accrual basis.

The revenue rules that are in Bill C-2 are based on the existing ones.

I would mention that, for some of the programs that look to year-over-year or prior-year revenues, those are based on revenues over a 12-month period, which would hopefully smooth out some of those timing issues. In addition, as we discussed earlier, there is the deeming rule that could apply, which would allow for an entity to pick the higher revenue decline for the current period or the prior period.

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

Thank you very much.

One category of business that I've heard from, which I will just take as an example, is New Flyer Industries in my riding, which is a bus manufacturer. They have struggled in the pandemic. Obviously ordering new buses wasn't top of mind for cash-strapped municipalities.

They are optimistic about their future, but the way the ongoing support is structured for the hardest-hit business programs doesn't take into account the way a business like theirs receives their revenues. They may have very little revenue for months at a time, and then they deliver an order and get paid in one month for maybe several buses. They have a revenue spike, and then the following month they are back to working on some of what's left of their remaining pre-pandemic orders, and they may not be paid again for some time.

I'm just wondering if the department contemplated businesses that operate on this kind of model and what recommendations they have for them.

Is there anything in Bill C-2 that would provide assistance to these businesses, or are they out of luck because of the nature of their revenue cycle?

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

Thank you for the clarifications.

A freelance worker in the cultural sector does not have eligible expenses for rent. So a program will be needed to support self‑employed workers. Bill C‑2 contains no measures for these people, yet this is a sufficiently important sector for us to say to ourselves, as a society, that we cannot afford to lose this expertise.

I will come back to this later, because my time is up.

Thank you very much.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My colleague Sophie Chatel mentioned the cultural sector, which is included in the tourism and hospitality recovery program. Mr. Poirier confirmed this, and we are very happy with that inclusion.

We, in the Bloc Québécois, are very concerned about self‑employed workers in the cultural sector. In fact, a few years ago, the model for independent and freelance workers in the cultural sector in Quebec took the form of self‑employed workers. What is understood from Bill C‑2 is that self‑employed workers in the cultural sector currently find themselves without a support program, as there is no longer the Canada emergency response benefit, or CERB, or the Canada recovery benefit, or CRB.

Could Mr. Poirier or Mr. Baylor confirm this for me?

Thank you.

[Heath MacDonald, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Has an analysis been done? If Bill C-2 doesn't go through, what negative effect will it have on our economy?

[Trevor McGowan]

I would note that, in budget 2021, and as enacted in Bill C-30 of the last Parliament, the government introduced rules that would require repayment of the Canada emergency wage subsidy for public companies that have increased their top executive compensation between two reference periods. It started in 2021, versus 2020. Now that the subsidies are being extended into 2022, you will find measures in Bill C-2 that would extend the government's announced requirement to repay the wage subsidy for large companies or public companies based on increases in executive compensation. That feature is continued.

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

Thank you very much for explaining, that was very clear. I can't always get my head around all the technical details quickly.

I would like to ask one more question, and it will be brief.

It is difficult, if not impossible, for companies that started up after the beginning of the pandemic to apply for pandemic assistance programs.

If I understood correctly, with respect to the extension of programs proposed in Bill C‑2, nothing has changed in that regard. Is that right?

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Actually, it is two and a half minutes. I say that for the sake of transparency and to respect what was voted.

Mr. McGowan, I didn't find the final answer to my last question to be very clear, so I would like confirmation that, directly or indirectly, the Minister of Finance can modify the percentages established in Bill C‑2 with respect to lost revenue and subsidies paid out.

As you said, directly or indirectly, she would have the authority, by regulation, to include struggling sectors? Did I understand correctly?

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

Thank you very much.

One of the purported goals of Bill C-2 is to support the tourism and hospitality industry. If you take independent travel agents as a case study, about half of the folks who are represented by the Association of Independent Travel Advisors have been very clear that they were being paid under the Canada recovery benefit program as opposed to any of the wage subsidy programs.

There's a reason for that. It's because they work for themselves. It's an industry that's about 85% women. A lot of them work out of their basements. Many of them continued to work in the early days of the pandemic helping their clients secure their rebates or travel vouchers. Many of them are working now to help as folks start to contemplate vacations and, in the interim, create bookings. Of course, they won't be paid until people actually take the trip.

This bill really doesn't provide any ongoing support for them. We know they are getting close to a time when they can support themselves financially, but this bill is an admission that this is a sector that has not yet recovered, and yet there's no help for those folks.

I'm wondering. What was the decision? What was the discussion around choosing to proceed in a fashion that would exclude such a high percentage of people in an industry that the government itself has said it wants to continue to support?

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

All right, thank you.

As I understand it, the minister would therefore have significant regulatory authority. If Bill C‑2 were to pass, the economy shifted and it was determined that small and medium-size businesses as opposed to large businesses, say, or a particular sector, should receive more assistance and a percentage had to be changed to ensure that they have access to one of the various components mentioned here, the minister would have that authority. New legislation would not be needed.

I would just like a confirmation.

Since my time is up, I will wait for the next round of questions.

Thank you very much.

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

Very good, thank you.

My next questions are also for Mr. McGowan.

Mr. McGowan, can you confirm for committee members that if Bill C‑2 were to pass in its current form, would the minister have the authority, by regulation, to add other sectors to the tourism and hospitality recovery program?

For example, if any sector was facing significant challenges and needed a more generous assistance program, can you confirm that the minister would have the authority, by regulation, to include it in the tourism and hospitality recovery program?

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I, too, would like to thank all the public servants for being here today and for the work they do.

I will begin with a reminder. Earlier, the interpreters reminded us that when witnesses read out a speech, it is easier to interpret if the text has been provided to them beforehand. Thank you.

My first question is for Mr. Baylor.

Mr. Baylor, I would like to understand the calculation used in Bill C‑2 to determine eligibility for the wage subsidy. I will use the hardest-hit business recovery program as an example.

As I understand it, for each qualifying period, the business must have had a revenue decline of at least 50%. If a business has a 60% revenue decline one month, a 40% decline the following month and a 60% decline the month after that, then it would be eligible for the subsidy for the first and third months, but not for the second month.

Is that how it works, or is there a way to calculate average losses over several periods?

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

Yesterday this committee passed a motion whereby we laid out a schedule for our work for the coming week, the purpose of which was to make sure the different questions that members had could get answered. I know that Mr. Poilievre wants an answer to this question. That question is best directed to the Minister of Finance.

We agreed on an itinerary. I think it's important that we ask the questions at a time when the witnesses who are present can actually answer them. These witnesses are here to help us with Bill C-2, and I think questions should be directed to them on those topics they can answer. Then, when the minister is here, Mr. Poilievre and others can ask the minister questions that are pertinent to the Minister of Finance.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, as much as I love to hear the opposition member talk about this, we have wonderful officials here who are here to answer very specific questions around Bill C-2. Again, it seems that these questions are excellent questions. I think they could be directed to our Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, who is scheduled to come before us this Thursday.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Ms. Dzerowicz.

The officials who are before us are here to speak to Bill C-2 and any of the technical matters within Bill C-2, any of the questions that should be posed to the ministry of finance or ESDC. There shouldn't be political questions posed to non-political witnesses.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, I believe we have officials here who are speaking specifically to Bill C-2. I believe the member from the opposite side of the bench is asking questions that are more appropriately directed at our Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance.

He will have the opportunity to ask her that question when she comes before us this Thursday.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Right. Bill C-2 has a $7-billion bill. That's the price tag. That's what I'm asking about. Where is the $7 billion coming from? A lot of people are willing to talk about how they're spending the money, but no one wants to talk about where it comes from.

Mr. Chair, how many witnesses do we have here? Do we have the number?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Mr. Poilievre, the witnesses are here, respectfully, to answer questions on Bill C-2, as we study it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Pursuant to the House of Commons order of reference adopted on December 2, 2021, the committee is meeting on Bill C-2, an act to provide further support in response to COVID-19.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of November 25, 2021. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website, and the webcast will always show the person speaking rather than the entirety of the committee.

Today's meeting is also taking place in the webinar format. Webinars are for public committee meetings and are available only to members, their staff and witnesses. Members enter immediately as active participants. All functionalities for active participants remain the same. Staff will be non-active participants and can therefore only view the meeting in gallery view.

I'd like to take this opportunity to remind all participants of this meeting that taking screenshots or photos of your screen is not permitted.

Given the ongoing pandemic situation and in light of the recommendations from health authorities, as well as the directive of the Board of Internal Economy on October 19, 2021, to remain healthy and safe, all those attending the meeting in person are to maintain two-metre physical distancing. Everyone must wear a non-medical mask when circulating in the room, and it is highly recommended that the mask be worn at all times, including when you are seated. You must maintain proper hand hygiene by using the provided hand sanitizer at the room entrance. As the chair, I will be enforcing these measures for the duration of the meeting, and I thank members in advance for their co-operation.

To ensure an orderly meeting, I'd like to outline a few rules to follow. I know this is our second meeting. I'll go over these rules. I think at subsequent meetings we won't have to do this because everybody will know what the rules are.

First, members and witnesses may speak in the official language of their choice. Interpretation services are available for this meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of floor, English or French. If interpretation is lost, please inform me immediately, and we will ensure interpretation is properly restored before resuming the proceedings. The “raise hand” feature at the bottom of the screen can be used at any time if you wish to speak or alert the chair.

Members participating in person should proceed as they usually would when the whole committee is meeting in person in the committee room. Keep in mind the Board of Internal Economy's guidelines for mask use and health protocols.

Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. If you are on the video conference, please click on the microphone icon to unmute yourself. For those in the room, your microphone will be controlled as normal by the proceedings and verification officer. When speaking, please speak slowly and clearly. When you're not speaking, your mike should be on mute, and this will also help the interpreters a great deal.

I remind everyone that all comments by members and witnesses should be addressed through the chair.

With regard to a speaking list, the committee clerk and I will do the best that we can to maintain a consolidated order of speaking for all members whether they are participating virtually or in person.

I would now like to welcome our witnesses.

From the Department of Finance, we have with us Trevor McGowan, director general, tax legislation division; Lindsay Gwyer, director general, legislation, tax legislation division; Maximilian Baylor, senior director, saving and investment section, business income tax division; and Yves Poirier, director, economic development, business income tax division.

From ESDC we have Elisha Ram, associate assistant deputy minister, skills and employment branch, Employment and Social Development Canada; Catherine Demers, director general, employment insurance policy, skills and employment branch, Employment and Social Development Canada; Benoit Cadieux, director, special benefits, employment insurance policy, skills and employment branch, Employment and Social Development Canada; and George Rae, director, policy analysis and initiative, employment insurance policy, skills and employment branch, Employment and Social Development Canada.

Doug Wolfe is in, but his sound is bad, so we may have some challenges there.

Also with us is Sebastien St‑Arnaud, manager, labour program - policy dispute resolution and international affairs directorate.

For opening statements from the Department of Finance and ESDC, we will hear from Maximilian Baylor and Catherine Demers for five minutes each.

The floor is yours, Mr. Baylor.

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

Yes.

The government is telling us that they are not able to include what we were asking for in Bill C‑2, but that they will put it in another bill. So, we want to make sure that this will be the case when we vote on Bill C‑2. Otherwise, the bill will be missing a part, from our perspective. So we would like some reassurance on that.

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

No, this does not change Bill C‑2.

May I answer the question, Mr. Chair?

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks for the clarification. It answers a question I was about to ask. Indeed, any changes to the Income Tax Act are really the responsibility of the Department of Finance. I did not understand how the Minister of Canadian Heritage's proposals were related to the bill that the committee must vote on. It seems to me that the positions of the Bloc Québécois and the NDP on Bill C‑2 are more akin to a political argument. In any case, this is outside the scope of the bill.

I just want confirmation that this will not change what the committee has to analyze.

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

I thank Mr. Baker for the points he has made. Unfortunately, I do not agree with him.

The support program that would be proposed for self-employed workers in the cultural sector would come from the Department of Canadian Heritage. For us in the Bloc Québécois, this is so important that it will determine whether or not we give our support to Bill C‑2 at the committee stage as well as at the report and third reading stages in the House. Since it is the Minister of Canadian Heritage who has negotiated with the organizations representing the people affected, and since we are talking about a program or a bill that would come from him, it is essential that he be the one to come and explain it publicly to all the members of the committee and to the entire population.

We want to ask for clear and specific commitments on this and then get confirmation from the organizations representing those affected that this is acceptable to them, before we support Bill C‑2 at the next stages. We feel this is essential, and it will have a direct impact on our vote.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Dzerowicz, Mr. Baker and Mr. Blaikie, for your comments.

Actually, I used the same wording as in (d), but that could be different. I'll get to that in a moment.

Why does the minister have to come and testify? Because Bill C‑2 extends the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy as well as the Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy, and provides specific support for sectors like tourism and culture. Most workers in the cultural sector are self-employed; they are freelancers. Because the Canada Recovery Benefit is not being extended, these individuals are left without support.

During the first negotiations we had with the minister, we told her that we should not forget these people. For us in Quebec, culture is paramount. We don't want cultural workers to end up taking training in other sectors and for the cultural sector to be weakened. What I understand is that the government would have a solution for these people. So I would like the Minister of Canadian Heritage to come and explain it to us here, since this falls under his department. We could then submit his suggestion to the self-employed in the cultural sector and make sure that it fits their needs.

As a friendly amendment that would suit everyone, I would be prepared to ask for a one-hour appearance rather than two hours. Then we could remove the date of December 9 to give the minister more latitude. Also, this was not in the original wording, but given Mr. Blaikie's point, I want to make it very clear that the minister should not appear at the same time as Minister Freeland, because that would take away from our discussion time with her. I would not want the committee to interpret from the wording that the appearance time would be split in half.

So I will reword it. It's still modelled on point (d), but I'll make some changes. It would say, quite simply, “That the committee invite the Minister of Canadian Heritage to appear for one hour, in addition to the length of his opening remarks.” It is understood that this would not be at the same time as the Minister of Finance and would not take away from her appearance time.

I hope I have answered everyone's questions.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The motion passed in the House states that the minister must appear before the Standing Committee on Finance for at least two hours. In the usual jargon, that suggests that she would be there for two hours, but depending on the wording, it could be for a longer period.

The committee and the House have two weeks left to pass Bill C‑2, so time is limited. My thanks to the Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Roger, for showing us the time slots available for the committee this week. As far as I know, the other committees will be sitting next week, so we must consider the issue of time.

I agree with my colleagues Mr. Chambers and Mr. Poilievre that there are a great deal of concerns and that we have a lot of questions for the minister. However, at this point, I would prefer that we limit ourselves to two hours for questions. If we then find that the two hours are not enough, we could invite the minister to a subsequent meeting to answer our questions.

At this point, given the limited time we have to tackle all the work we have to do, I think I'm going to vote against the proposed amendment, but leave the door open. So I would suggest that the minister appear to make her remarks and answer our questions for two hours. Afterwards, if we find that's not enough, we can discuss whether we should invite her to another two‑hour meeting.

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

I'll start by reassuring Mr. Baker that I don't know how things work on his side of the aisle, but typically, for New Democrats, the study that we do and the witnesses we hear do inform our work on bills. We're looking forward to the benefit of witness testimony in order to help craft the solutions that we think would be most appropriate in the case of this bill.

On the case of timing, I want to emphasize that I appreciate the sense of urgency for those who will be helped by this bill, but it's obviously a much smaller number than it should be. Even within the affected industries, the lack of any kind of CRB-style benefit for people in the hospitality and tourism industries leaves a lot of people behind.

This is also the case for people who work in the arts and culture sector. If there is no financial support for the self‑employed, there will be a real problem, because this bill will let a lot of people down.

When it comes to the Canada worker lockdown benefit, the committee should probably know that I had the opportunity to ask the associate minister of finance, when he led the debate on this bill, if there was anywhere in Canada between October 23—the date that this bill is retroactive to—and now that would meet the criteria for the Canada worker lockdown benefit. His answer was, quite clearly, no. Unless something really significant changes, the government has designed a benefit that applies to no one. No one is currently waiting for help under the criteria for the Canada worker lockdown benefit. It doesn't apply anywhere in the country at the moment. It has not applied anywhere in the country since October 23. Members of the committee ought to know that.

What I said earlier, and I maintain this, is simply that I think it's premature to set a deadline. We don't have to set one today in order to set a stringent deadline tomorrow. The extent to which the government is willing to make some changes to its approach to the recovery, as it's currently put in Bill C-2, will have a lot to do with how quickly the bill can move forward.

I'm not in favour of setting a deadline today. That's why I'll support the Conservative amendment to strike paragraphs (e) and (f) from the motion.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Thank you.

I'd like to move an amendment to Mr. Beech's motion. It would strike paragraph (f), removing the words “That the committee commence clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-2 no later than Friday, December 10th.” By consequence, it would remove paragraph (e) as well, which reads “That all amendments to the bill be submitted to the Clerk of the Committee before 3:00 PM on Thursday, December 9th”.

Can I speak to that?

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

That was my understanding. Thank you.

First, I would like to say that I am very concerned about my colleague Mr. Poilievre's arguments with respect to urgent action. Many businesses, particularly those in the tourism and cultural sectors, are depending on public support measures and wage subsidies.

At the same time, we, in our role as lawmakers, have an extremely important duty to address this and to study it in depth, as my colleague mentioned in his arguments. It is disappointing that it took two months after the election for Parliament to be reconvened and that the committee was called back only today to study Bill C‑2. I hope that the study will go smoothly.

First, I would like to admonish the government, if I may use that expression, for being so slow in dealing with the business in the House. Second, I see the urgency to act for the businesses that need the programs that are in place. So it's going to be quite a challenge for us. We will have to sort of make up for the government's laxity. I'll come back to that in more detail once the amendment is introduced.

I'd like to raise a few points and ask a few questions. Perhaps Mr. Beech can answer them.

First, would it have been possible to have the Minister of Finance appear as early as tomorrow, Tuesday, instead of just Thursday? Why would she not be available tomorrow?

Normally, when we consider a bill proposed by a minister, the minister is there right at the outset of the study to introduce their bill. This allows us to have our questions answered before we question witnesses.

I have told some members of the committee who represent the government that I would also like to meet with the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Pablo Rodriguez. The Bloc Québécois is very concerned about self‑employed workers in the cultural sector. It seems that something is on the table, so I would like to get some confirmation from Minister Rodriguez. I wonder whether he could appear before the committee. He could appear at the same time as the Minister of Finance, for example.

In addition, the list of witnesses is an important part of the committee's study. The Bloc Québécois would like to be able to propose at least two witnesses. For us, that would be the bare minimum. Clearly, if we had the opportunity to propose more, we would certainly accept it. I'd like to have that confirmed before we vote on the motion.

Let me recap. Would it be possible to have the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Canadian Heritage appear on Tuesday instead of Thursday? Can I have the guarantee that the Bloc Québécois will be able to propose at least two witnesses?

Those are the two questions I wanted to ask first; I have combined them in the same comment. I will wait for the answers to my questions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Mr. Poilievre.

I do have a speaking order here. I have Monsieur Ste-Marie next. Then I have Mr. McLean, Mr. Baker and Ms. Dzerowicz speaking to the motion that is before us on Bill C-2.

Go ahead, Monsieur Ste-Marie.

[Terry Beech, Liberal, Burnaby North—Seymour, BC]

Mr. Chair, I move:

That, pursuant to the motion adopted in the House on Thursday, December 2, the Standing Committee on Finance proceed to the consideration of Bill C-2, an act to provide further support in response to COVID-19, and that

a) The committee direct the chair to, resources permitting, schedule extended meetings for the purpose of studying the bill

b) The committee invite departmental officials from relevant departments to appear on Tuesday, December 7

c) That further witnesses be submitted to the Clerk in an ordered list by 10:00 AM on Tuesday, December 7

d) That the committee invite the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance to appear for two hours, in addition to the length of her opening remarks on Thursday, December 9th

e) That all amendments to the bill be submitted to the Clerk of the Committee before 3:00 PM on Thursday, December 9th

f) That the committee commence clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-2 no later than Friday, December 10th.

That is the full motion, Mr. Chair.

Criminal Code

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Madam Speaker, what a joy it is to be back in the House and be here for the rare occurrence of hearing the member for Winnipeg North speak. It happens about as often as a full eclipse of the sun. It is amazing. I am going to tell my grandkids that I was here to hear the member speak. It is actually disappointing that the Liberals have so many new members, yet time and again it is the same chap who stands up, as much as I do understand.

I will be sharing my time today with the member for Cumberland—Colchester, who is one of the new members we are allowing to speak.

We are talking about Bill C-3 today. I am glad to get a chance to get a word in edgewise, with the member across the way, but also to speak before the Liberals perhaps prorogue Parliament, call another snap election or use any other of their usual ploys to avoid accountability.

Bill C-3 is probably a needed bill, but it is an odd bill. Half is related to justice and the other half to the Canada Labour Code. I am not sure why the Liberals have put the two of them together instead of presenting them to the House separately. I hate to think doing it this way is a typical Liberal ploy, or that they are hoping someone will object to part of it, so they can scream and yell and say we are anti-health care workers. I know I am being cynical because there is no way in the world they would ever consider doing that. They would never try to wedge folks.

We have heard repeatedly from the government, and our colleagues from the NDP and the Bloc, about how much this bill is needed. Why now? Why not a year ago? Why not six years ago with the Canada Labour Code? Why have the Liberals waited? They have had the backing and support of all the parties during the COVID crisis to put through almost everything with unanimous consent. Why would they wait so long?

The labour changes the bill mentions easily could have been brought in before. Their delay reminds me of a great Seinfeld episode in which Newman, the postal worker and Seinfeld's nemesis, helps to kidnap Elaine's neighbour's dog and eventually gets caught. When a policeman comes to arrest him, he, à la son of Sam, asks what took him so long. I have to ask the same of the government. If it was such a priority, why would it wait?

We could have had this before the House, debated it and sent it to committee long ago. The election took place on September 21 and we waited two full months to sit in the House again. In the U.K., Boris Johnson was able to re-form the House and get its Parliament back to work in six days. It took the government two months just to get us here.

We could have easily dealt with Bill C-2. In the House today during question period, we heard the Liberals tell the Conservatives to get on side and pass Bill C-2. We heard them say in debate that we should help small businesses and pass Bill C-2. Why did they not convene Parliament to get us back to work immediately so we could pass Bill C-2? It is the same with Bill C-3.

With respect to Bill C-4 on conversion therapy, people thought it was Bill C-6 or Bill C-8, because it was brought to the House several times. It was killed when the government prorogued Parliament. It was killed again when it called an early election, which no one really wanted and was not needed, as we ended up the same. If it were that important, why did the Liberals not try to pass the conversion therapy bill earlier? They had six years to bring it in.

One bill I remember they brought through in 2017 as a higher priority than the conversion therapy was Bill C-24. At the time, and I was using another Seinfeld quote, I called it “a bill about nothing”. Basically, the bill changed the bank account the old ministers of state were paid from in the estimates process. I think it also changed the official name on the cheques from Public Works to PSPC.

This was a bill we debated in the House and tied up the committee with. Somehow the government decided that was more important than a conversion therapy bill. They had been paid that way since Confederation. The ministers of state were paid out of one small bank account, and the other ministers, technically the government, were paid out of another. We could have continued doing that and brought the conversion therapy bill then.

The reality is this: The government is not serious about how it puts forward its legislation. It delays, obfuscates, throws it out and then demands that opposition parties get on board and hurry up to pass it, when it could have done that a long time ago.

Generally, everyone supports the first part of the bill, on criminalizing threats toward health care workers. We have all seen, during the election, the blocking of ambulances from getting to hospitals and the harassing of health care workers. We have heard the horrible stories from my colleague for Timmins—James Bay, where a small-town doctor, vitally needed, was chased out of his community by these threats. We just heard from him about the single mother who was horrifyingly harassed just for getting a vaccine.

Therefore, perhaps we need this legislation, but I would like to hear more details. Apparently, a lot of this is covered already under provincial or other laws. I would like to see how the bill would strengthen the protection for our doctors and nurses and, as my colleague mentioned, for people who are just going for a vaccine. There are the doctors and nurses we have to protect, but we also have to protect Canadians who are trying to access health care facilities.

During the election, we Conservatives had, as part of our election plan, the critical infrastructure protection act. This would provide additional security from those protesting vital infrastructure, such as our hospitals and our rail and pipelines. We saw what just happened in B.C., with its supply chain devastated because of the cuts to the CN and CP rails. That was obviously an act of nature as opposed to protests, but protests can be just as devastating, and we have seen it be just as devastating to our health care when we do not have consequences. I hope my colleagues in the House will eventually adopt a law that would protect other vital infrastructure besides our hospitals, and also our supply lines.

Unfortunately, from day one, we have had mixed messaging from this government regarding vaccines and the COVID crisis, and it has led to confusion, fear and anger. None of this, nothing this government or anyone else has done, excuses the violence and harassment of our health care workers, doctors and people trying to access health care. However, what the government has done has not helped. When Canadians needed certainty, leadership and consistency, we got false information from the government, like we saw with the Deputy Prime Minister being admonished for fake news on Twitter.

It is funny. We heard earlier that my colleague, the member for Winnipeg North, when he was out door-knocking, was surprised by the anger from the vax versus the anti-vax people. I felt the same thing. We had people threatening us with a shotgun if we dared come with that. We have all felt it, but he was surprised. I want to read something from the National Post for the member. It said that in January, the Prime Minister had argued against mandatory vaccines as “divisive” in our “community and country”. It said that in March, he mused about the inequality and inequity of vaccine passports. In July, he said there would be no mandatory vaccines. However, two weeks later, apparently led by internal polling that showed he could divide the country for political gain, he announced a mandatory vaccine, cynically just in time.

The article goes on to say that the Prime Minister's “flip flop on vaccine mandates” exemplifies “a governing philosophy based on political calculus”.

This is not governing based on bringing us together, or on trying to get the unvaccinated vaxxed by convincing them of how good vaccines are and how they will lead us out of the troubles we are in. There is nothing about that. It is using it based on polling to create divisiveness in Canada for political gain.

The Prime Minister, when speaking out against protesters, used the term “you people” when describing the protesters. Now, I might perhaps, against some of the people who are blocking hospitals, have used harsher language, but he used the term “you people”. Now, I note for our feminist Prime Minister that the website everydayfeminism.com says “you people” is a racially coded phrase. Again, nothing the Prime Minister has done excuses the protesters and their actions, but nothing the Prime Minister has done has gone to alleviate the divisions in Canada. He has used this to divide the country.

Apparently I am out of time, so I will let it go and perhaps leave it open to questions and comments to address the second part of the bill.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, I will just continue with one of the most recent questions, as I thought it was of interest. The member just made reference to five days and 10 days. The idea of paid sick leave for workers is something that is important to all of us, and we recognize that. In fact, the member might make reference to the number of asks by the leader of the New Democrats, but he should remember that in 2019, the government actually instituted the three-day paid sick leave for workers. As it was pointed out, B.C. has seen to bring it up to five days.

One of the things the Prime Minister has consistently talked about over the last number of months, and probably from the beginning, is that we can try to learn things through the pandemic. That is why we are seeing before us the legislation that we have today. I will get into that in more detail shortly.

I wanted to start off by underlining what I think is a very important point. Everyone, whether they are a health care provider or a health care client, should feel safe when going into a health care facility. That is one of the two motivators for all of us to get behind this legislation and pass it through.

I am quite encouraged. To say it up front, in the last few days we have seen a great deal of optimism on the floor of the House of Commons. The other day, we passed the conversion therapy bill unanimously through second reading, committee stage and third reading. That could not have been done without the support of every member inside the House of Commons.

Yesterday, Bill C-2 got to the committee stage. Members recognized that it was important, because it continues to provide the supports Canadians need. This includes for small businesses, individuals and the communities we all serve. It was great to see the debate collapse and Bill C-2 go through.

This morning we have another wonderful debate taking place. From what I have heard thus far, we have had Conservatives, the Bloc and New Democrats talk positively about the legislation, believing this is the type of legislation that it would appear everyone can get behind. I can appreciate there are members who have some ideas in terms of amendments, and we will wait and see what kinds of amendments surface. I suspect there might even be some amendments today. Members are waiting for the bill to get to committee, where they will propose the amendments.

Having been a parliamentarian for a number of years, I have always thought that one of the best ways to get amendments dealt with is to share them as much in advance as one can, or do that consultation with parties on all sides of the House, making sure the department is aware of it. This is, as are the other two initiatives, a very important piece of legislation.

I reflect on the last election, and having gone through a number of elections as a candidate, I can tell members that it is not that often that we get real anger at the door. On the issue of vaccinations, what surprised me was the degree to which so many people were very upset. We could see the divisions even within a household.

I can recall at least two or three occasions when I was talking to a person at the door and the individual would be getting visibly upset. Someone else from the household would come and ultimately save the day, if I can put it that way, and lower the temperature. We have to try to get a better understanding of why that is taking place.

During the election we really started to see the protests. When I was at the doors, I would often to say to people that, whether it is members of the Green Party, the Liberals, the Conservatives or the New Democrats, we are all saying that people need to get vaccinated. All political parties, with the exception of the People's Party, were encouraging that.

People would ask about their individual freedoms, the Charter of Rights, and so forth. I suspect that, if the federal or provincial governments were denying people those basic human rights, opposition parties of at least one of the two levels would have stood on their feet to say we had gone too far. However, I am not familiar with any political party or individual member of Parliament sitting today who is saying that people should not be getting vaccinated. Yes, there are some concerns that some are not, but at the end of the day, to the best of my knowledge, I like to think that positive message is getting out.

One has to ask why the anger is out there. We need to expand upon that. What brought us to the point we are at today where that aspect of this legislation is necessary?

We can go back to March 2020, when very few people had an in-depth understanding of what the coronavirus was and its long-term impact, let alone its short-term impact. It was not that long ago when we were just told to wash our hands” Health care and science experts, at the beginning, were not saying that we had to wear masks. There was a learning curve, and it was very steep.

As we proceeded through the pandemic, we learned a great deal. Today, as a result, we find that people will continue to wear masks. I envision it will continue even after a year. Someone was saying to me that, if they were to have a cold, they would be inclined to wear a mask, as a consideration. I believe that masks will continue to be worn well into the future for different circumstances. It is not just something that will be gone two years from now.

I believe that people have a far greater understanding of why it is important to wash their hands. The 95% alcohol sanitizers are going to be selling well into the future because people will continue to use them. In the long term, this will actually save health care costs.

I used to be a health care critic in Manitoba, as well as a critic for a number of other portfolios. I would take tours of facilities, and I do not recall seeing people using the type of PPE that we have today. I suspect some of the things we are seeing now will linger into the years ahead, as it should. We have learned many measures through this pandemic.

If we look back to March of 2020, we were trying to get a better sense of the science. Health experts came together to make sure the advice they were giving to Canadians was right on the mark. That is why I consistently told people, virtually from day one, that I am not a health care expert, so the best thing they could do was follow what our health care experts were saying.

What we provided, as a government and as members of the House of Commons, was a first-class, second-to-none website presence through Health Canada, which was constantly being updated to provide the necessary information, so people could have a sense of comfort in knowing that the professionals were out there and there is a science to this. By clicking in, or by phoning their member of Parliament, Canadians could get an understanding of what was taking place and be brought right up to date. Provincial and territorial entities across the country, in all regions, also did likewise.

The problem was false news and people intentionally spreading misinformation. This is what fed into the whole anti-vax mentality. It somehow gave additional strength to anti-vaxxers. I was concerned when we started seeing rallies with people being bold enough not to wear masks in situations where there was a high concentration of people. People were coming together without masks to say that vaccinations were not the way to go. I would suggest that to think that did not have an impact would be wrong.

That is why each and every one of us has a role to play. The outcome of that misinformation, which provided an empowerment of sorts to those anti-vaxxers, was that it enabled them to espouse garbage, which is the best word that comes to my mind. We started to see protests. Let us imagine, if we can, some of the most vulnerable in society, the sick in a hospital facility, or those wanting to visit them, as there were limitations, and there were people protesting, making it more difficult for them.

Health care workers have really stepped up, working long hours and overtime, some of which was never ever claimed. Many health care workers got into that profession not because of the money, but because they truly care about the health and well-being of people. They want to contribute.

Those health care workers, and I am using that in the broadest terms, as I am talking about the cooks in our hospitals and the workers who kept our hospitals and long-term care facilities open, as well as the registered nurses, doctors, nurse practitioners, nurses aides and lab technicians, saved thousands of lives. All those wonderful people ensured Canada's population was, as much as possible, being provided the services that were absolutely critical to getting through this crisis situation. They prevented thousands more from ever having to go into ICUs. They were there, providing advice so people could ensure they could minimize the chances of people getting the coronavirus in the first place, whether it was testing, bed care in an ICU or the care provided in a long-term care facility. These are the heroes who took us through the pandemic.

I find it appalling that there are some in society who would actually protest people's entry into facilities, and the screaming and the yelling that was taking place. Whether they were protesting health care providers and workers, patients or visitors, they need to really reflect on that behaviour. We have to think about the roles we all play. During the election, there was no hesitation in my mind. When people would bring up the issue, I was right there, recognizing that people should not be protesting in the manner in which they were protesting. It was not right. Canadians recognized that, and this legislation deals with an important election promise.

I see I only have two minutes to go, and I have not even talked about the 10 days' paid leave. I am going to hop right over to that and maybe address more on it during questions and comments.

The federal government, a couple of years back, brought in three days of paid leave. In the last 18 months, the Prime Minister said to Canadians, and to Liberal members in Parliament on so many occasions, that we need to build back better, and this is a good example. Let us take a look at what Bill C-3 is doing. This is giving more social benefits to workers in Canada. This is something that is very strong and positive, and all of us should get behind it.

People who are sick should not have to go to work. This extends what we previously did in 2019. It was nice to hear that B.C. is following suit. If Ottawa were to pass this legislation, I do believe it would send the positive message to our provinces and territories that we could have better labour laws. If the provinces and territories get onside and support this type of legislation, then all workers in Canada, not the minority but all workers, would be able to benefit.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Madam Speaker, my colleague from Rosemont—La Petite‑Patrie talked about the importance of supporting certain workers during the ongoing pandemic. My thoughts are with the workers in the cultural sector, who will continue to struggle for a long time to come because we are not out of this crisis yet.

The Liberals are good at dragging their feet and throwing the ball in someone else's court, like the Minister of Canadian Heritage and the Minister of Finance are doing when it comes to Bill C‑2. Will someone consider helping our cultural sector workers?

Is my colleague prepared to work with the Bloc Québécois in committee to advance the file of workers in the cultural sector by proposing measures in Bill C‑2 specifically adapted to their needs?

Small Business

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Minister of Innovation]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for the question because it gives me a chance to explain something to the House and to Canadians who are watching at home this morning. One thing that Canadians and small businesses across this nation will remember is that we have been with them every step of the way through this pandemic, both at the start and during the pandemic, and we will continue.

I have one piece of free advice for the Conservatives. If they are genuine in wanting to help small businesses in Canada, why do they not support Bill C-2 instead of voting against it like they did yesterday?

The Economy

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Minister of Innovation]

Madam Speaker, I understand because earlier this year, I myself helped distribute food hampers to families in need.

If there is one thing that Canadians will remember about our government, it is that when Canada went through a pandemic, we were there to support them. We were there for families, we were there for workers and we were there for businesses.

The best thing to do, and this is the advice I am giving the member opposite, is to support Bill C‑2, which will continue to help Canadian families and workers.

Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, let me start off by echoing the statement the member just made. Let us shop local and encourage our constituents to recognize the difficult times that our businesses have had to endure over the last 18 months. One of the ways we can support them is to shop local.

There is another thing we can do collectively here in the House. We understand now that Bill C-2 will be going to committee, and I am hopeful and optimistic that we will see it come out of committee and ultimately get the support that is necessary to see it pass, because it too would support small businesses.

My question is more related to the issue of housing. We have seen over the years the amounts of money being invested in social housing, and they have been historic. There has been a housing strategy too, something that has never happened before in the history of Canada, at least for the last number of generations.

I am wondering what specific initiative the member believes would make a difference, from his perspective, because there are a number of initiatives already in place that are having an impact.

An Act to Provide Further Support in Response to COVID-19

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

It being 3:15 p.m., pursuant to order made earlier today, the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at the second reading stage of Bill C-2.

Call in the members.

The House resumed from November 29 consideration of the motion that Bill C-2, An Act to provide further support in response to COVID-19, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, depending on the Conservative member of Parliament who is standing, we often get a different approach on the CERB benefits. Sometimes Conservatives will be critical of the government because of the benefits. Then other Conservatives will talk about how important those CERB benefits were.

What is the policy of the Conservative caucus with respect to Bill C-2, which continues to support workers and businesses in different situations? Does the member support the principle of Bill C-2? On that matter, would he also provide his thoughts on whether Revenue Canada should be collecting where mistakes are made?

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the member hit has it right on the head. Our government was there throughout the pandemic and continues to be there with the introduction of Bill C-2, which would support the hardest-hit businesses across the country.

We did put the program in place to end on December 31, 2022. The fact of the matter is, that is something we could look at. Our fiscal framework will be challenged because we have just gone through the pandemic. We do have to focus on supporting small businesses, but I will leave that for the Minister of Finance to ultimately make her decision.

[Clifford Small, Conservative, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the kind comments of the member opposite. When it comes to Bill C-2, we have a lot of discussion that needs to take place in this House. We need to know if that bill fits what is needed in my industry and in all of the hospitality and tourism industry in Canada. I have many friends from coast to coast who call me, email me and text me on a daily basis and say, “Cliff, we need help. Speak up for us.”

I am here to advocate within my caucus and to work with members opposite. I will do my very best to make sure that the right thing is done with Bill C-2.

[James Maloney, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Madam Speaker, my question arises from the first minute and a half of the member's speech when he was talking about his personal experience running a restaurant business and how much he appreciated the ability to carry on.

Can we work together and will he support Bill C-2?

Travel Advisers

[Marc Dalton, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to table e-petition 3643 on behalf of over 2,500 signatures and 12,000 independent travel advisers across Canada. These advisers in Canada have been working without income for 19 months due to COVID‑19 travel restrictions. The Liberal Party promised financial aid for these advisers, but sadly there was zero mention of it in the throne speech and they are not included in the provisions of Bill C-2.

The petitioners call upon the government to provide sector-specific funding for independent travel advisers in the form of bridge financing until May 2022 at the very minimum until they are able to see a recovery in their business, and ensure that independent travel advisers are included in the class of eligible applicants for the tourism and hospitality recovery program announced by the government on October 21.

Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply

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

Madam Speaker, the recent bill we were discussing, Bill C-2, specifically addresses the issue of the hardest-hit sectors in the pandemic. If businesses have been hard hit and have still not been able to recover, they should look into the legislation, and the programs that will come through that legislation, which is before the House.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Madam Speaker, our government has a very strong plan. I was not here for the last Parliament when we saw a number of COVID reliefs come in to help Canadians, including businesses, get through a very difficult period. We are now working through the Speech from the Throne and legislation coming out of it, such as Bill C-2 that was introduced earlier this week, to help Canadians continue to thrive and survive, to deal with issues such as labour shortages and get people into the workforce. That is why I am so proud to be part of this government moving forward through COVID relief and doing the work that needs to be done in Canada.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Madam Speaker, I want to see Bill C-2 advance to committee so we can discuss it. I encourage the member to reconstitute committees.

There is so much missing from this throne speech. There are so many voices that are not heard: the voices of rural Canadians, the voices of those who work in the energy sector and the voices of those who have been impacted by the floods in B.C. The government can do more. The government can always do more.

I implore the member to include everybody in the throne speech and not just the select few of the Liberal Party.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, if we take a look at the throne speech, we will find a very ambitious plan. Part of that plan is the materialization of bills that are so important to all Canadians. I am talking about one that we were debating yesterday, Bill C-2. Canadians understand the sacrifices that have been made over the last 18 months and the importance of government stepping up to the plate to be there for small businesses and individual Canadians, to support health care workers and Canadians in general.

This is something I believe Canadians want us to do. Does my colleague across the way see herself recognizing the need to see Bill C-2 advance? The principles of Bill C-2 would continue to provide the support Canadians want, and it is just a part of what we saw in the throne speech.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

Madam Speaker, we have put in place measures that have made a real difference in helping Canadians access home ownership over the last few years. However, we definitely know that we have more to do.

One of the commitments we made during the election was a $4-billion housing accelerator fund for municipalities. That $4 billion will help them move faster in building supply, issuing permits and developing low-income and middle-class housing, creating the supply that is so needed to take the pressure off families and communities. This is in addition to the other initiatives we have had, whether it is the Canada housing benefit or the rapid housing initiative that has worked with municipalities.

However, we will also do more. We will help families buy their first home sooner, with a more flexible and generous first-time home buyer incentive and a new rent-to-own program, and by reducing closing costs for first-time buyers. These are all concrete, tangible solutions that will help move things in the right direction for Canadians.

Even as the Conservative politicians these days are rending their shirts about the housing crisis, they offer no solutions. Indeed, the only concrete solution they had in their platform during the 2021 election was, get this, to give a tax break to wealthy landlords to help them sell their buildings. It really takes a federal Conservative to think we are somehow going to help people rent or buy homes they cannot afford by giving tax breaks to wealthy landlords. That simply does not work. What we have is a comprehensive plan that will indeed support Canadians in buying affordable housing and finding lower-priced places to stay. We are working on housing affordability.

Every step of the way our focus has been on supporting Canadians, whether it is by indexing the Canada child benefit to the cost of inflation or through a child care program that is not only going to help families with their costs, but also get more women into the workplace while giving kids the level playing field they need to succeed. We are making investments for the longer term of our future. We are standing up for the middle class, and will continue to address the labour shortages by boosting economic immigration levels and investing in skills training.

Obviously, Canadians are concerned about the economy, and they want to know that we are there to help them. We are going to be there to do that, and we are going to be there to invest. However, there are other issues that Canadians expect us to work on, and that is exactly what we are going to do.

Canadians want concrete action, and that is what we will do. They want us to take action on climate change, to innovate in new technologies and clean energy, and to create green jobs. They want us to build a more inclusive country and move faster on the path to reconciliation.

We recognize that climate change exists. Furthermore, we have long recognized what the Conservatives refuse to recognize, even today in 2021, which is that we cannot have a plan for the economy if we do not have a plan for the environment.

The Conservatives refuse to address climate change. They refuse to build an economic future for Canadians that will achieve net zero by 2050, not just for our country, but for our planet. We need to make the investments necessary to transform our economy in order to have lower carbon emissions, more innovation, more green jobs and, most importantly, green careers.

Unfortunately, these are the issues that the Conservatives continue to block, from putting a price on pollution to capping greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas sector until they reach net zero by 2050. This is how we will prepare our economy, our industries, our workers and our energy needs for the 21st century.

These are investments we are making, not only for the economy and jobs, but also to protect nature.

When we took office in 2015, barely 1% of our coastlines and oceans was being protected by the Harper government. In just a few years, we brought that up to 14%, and we are on track to reach 25% by 2025 and 30% by 2030. The same goes for our lands, 30% of which will be protected by 2030.

We know that protecting the environment means more than just preserving its beauty and resources for future generations. It also means taking meaningful action to fight climate change now. That is our vision. It means understanding that by protecting nature, wetlands, and our rivers, lakes and oceans, we can ensure a better future with less climate change, while making unprecedented investments to transform our economy the right way.

As for reconciliation, we know that we need to build partnerships and that we need to find solutions to address climate change. In fact, we would not have been able to protect as much of our coastlines and oceans if not for the leadership of indigenous peoples and our partnerships with them. I am thinking specifically of the Inuit, who have shown a solid understanding of the fact that addressing climate change and spurring economic growth in their communities and across the country must go hand in hand.

I appreciate the Leader of the Opposition raising reconciliation in his address to Parliament a little earlier. One thing we can all do concretely in the House is work towards the full implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Unfortunately, however, the Conservative Party voted against the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the last Parliament. I hope that the indication by the Leader of the Opposition that reconciliation is important to him means that the Conservatives are going to change their approach on UNDRIP, and actually realize that the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is an important thing for Canada and the world to lead on. We will also continue to work with all parties in the House on these sorts of issues as we move forward.

I want to respond to a few of the points the Conservative leader made in his approach this morning. Unfortunately, he did not really demonstrate all that much in the way of leadership as much as he tried to score cheap political points.

We all know that the best thing for our economy is to put the pandemic behind us, yet the Conservative Party will not even confirm how many of its own MPs are vaccinated. That is simply not leading by example. We can hear from the members opposite that they hate it when people bring this up. At a time when we know the way through this pandemic is through vaccinations, they cannot be unequivocal on the need to get vaccinated and the need to lead by example. It is really disappointing. If the Conservatives had won in this past election, right now people would be travelling on planes and trains without the need to be fully vaccinated and would be putting Canadians at risk. That was a commitment the Conservatives had made to Canadians: that they would not have to be fully vaccinated to travel on a plane or a train.

That is simply not the kind of leadership Canadians expected. It is certainly not the kind of leadership they chose. It is also something that would be bad not just for the course of the pandemic in our country, but indeed for the economy. The Conservatives continue to demonstrate that they do not understand that the best thing to do to grow our economy is to finish this pandemic.

The members opposite have spoken a lot today about Canada's relationship with the United States as well. We will continue to stand up for Canadian interests. We will continue to stand up in the fight for the removal of softwood lumber tariffs, the fight to continue producing electric vehicles in Canada and the fight to continue making sure that our products, such as potatoes, continue to have access to the United States.

When the Conservative leader talks about the fact that we are not doing enough to go at the United States, it reminds me of what he said when we stood up for steelworkers and aluminum workers against the last American administration. His comment was that those retaliatory tariffs were dumb. That was the word he used. He said that it was a dumb thing to push back against the United States when they were imposing tariffs on steelworkers and aluminum workers and threatening massive waves of protectionism.

We did not listen to the Leader of the Opposition then. We went ahead in standing up strongly and firmly for Canadian interests, and that U.S. administration backed down. We protected our steelworkers and our aluminum workers, so members will understand that I am not going to take lessons from the leader of the official opposition on how to capitulate to the Americans. We will instead stand up strongly and firmly every step of the way.

Our government is focused on concrete solutions that deliver results. We have one of the most successful vaccination campaigns in the world. This reminds us, again, of the complaints and the partisan, personal attacks made by members of the official opposition, the Conservative Party, that when we were getting our vaccines they were not coming fast enough, we did not do well enough and we were not covering Canadians. Here we are, with one of the top vaccination rates in the entire world, and the party that spent all its time complaining that we were not doing enough to get vaccines into this country is now the only party in the House that did not bother to get fully vaccinated. That sort of playing political games and scoring cheap rhetorical points while not actually following up on the substance of what needs to happen to keep Canadians safe is, unfortunately, par for the course for the Conservative Party of Canada.

Despite all the talking down of the Canadian economy and our approach to supporting Canadians during the pandemic by the Conservatives, we have now recovered over 100% of the jobs we lost during the peak of the pandemic and have created new jobs on top of that. That is something that happened because we have been investing in Canadians and supporting small businesses across the country.

Over the past few months I could not go into a small business or a restaurant across the country without someone telling me, “Thank you for that wage benefit,” or “Thank you for the support that you were able to give us to get through it.” In return, I thanked them for hanging in there and staying open, and now for getting going again. I say yes, we will continue to support them in fighting the labour shortage that we are facing.

We had a year of closed borders to immigration when we were able to accept only a small number of people as immigrants. We now know that we have to get back to bringing people in to continue to grow our economy. We need to work on skills training. We need to give young people opportunities. We will continue to work not just to make sure people have jobs, but that jobs are filled. Growing the economy requires a government with a commitment to do what we have said from the very beginning: that every step of the way, we will have Canadians' backs.

We continue to be there for the economy and for small businesses. We continue to be there for families, with the Canada child benefit indexed to inflation and $10-a-day child care.

We will provide targeted support for the hardest-hit sectors, such as tourism. The leader of the official opposition talked about support for the tourism industry. I hope his party will work with us and we will get their support, because right now coming before the House we have Bill C-2, which will have targeted supports for the tourism industry. This is a sector that is very worried about what consequences the omicron variant might have for its industry and people's plans.

We have a piece of legislation we are putting forward that would make sure we are there to support those industries that are hardest hit. It would make sure we are there to support small businesses or businesses that are facing challenges, but would also make sure that we have lockdown supports if provinces have to move forward with targeted measures.

We will be there as a federal government, as we have been from the very beginning, to allow Canadians to make it through this health crisis knowing that their government has their backs and that we will bounce back and come roaring back stronger than ever. That is what is in Bill C-2 that we are moving forward. I certainly hope that the Conservatives and the other parties in the House realize that Canadians deserve a Parliament that is focused on them and is there to support them every step of the way.

We are committed to establishing the Canada mental health transfer to expand the delivery of high-quality free mental health services. We know that Canadians, like people around the world, have suffered because of the pandemic. The isolation, the pressures, the anxiety and the challenges they have faced have left their mark, and that is why investing historic amounts in mental health supports across the country will go a long way to help Canadians.

In the first days of this Parliament alone, we have introduced legislation to bring in 10 days of paid sick leave for workers in the federally regulated private sector and we will work with the provinces on echoing that across the country.

We want to protect health care workers from unacceptable intimidation. We are going to ban conversion therapy. However, there is always more to do.

Of course, we know that there is always more work to be done, but Canadians expect us to work collaboratively and respectfully in the House of Commons.

They fully understand that there are different points of view and that there will always be robust debate about how best to help and serve Canadians. I look forward to these discussions.

However, Canadians expect to see parliamentarians who are there for them, who think every day about how to serve them better and how to provide them with support and growth that they can benefit from. That is what they expect, and that is what this government is prepared to do.

I am reaching out to all parliamentarians with this Speech from the Throne, which focuses on concerns that we agree on. As I said, I look forward to the debates on how best to meet the expectations of Canadians.

The key question is whether we will be there for Canadians. I can assure the House that on the government side, the answer is yes.

The Economy

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, we absolutely do believe that increasing supply is an important part of addressing the housing challenge, but all of us have been talking a lot about the economy today. That is entirely appropriate, so let me propose one thing we can all do to support Canadians in this difficult moment, when the omicron variant has appeared. It is to support Bill C-2, which would provide essential targeted support for tourism and hospitality, and critical lockdown support, should we need it. Let us set aside partisan posturing and support this essential and urgent legislation.

Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Madam Speaker, this is exactly the kind of discussion we need to be having about a bill like Bill C-2 so we can talk about who is falling through the cracks. The start-ups and those individuals who cannot prove revenue prior to 2019 or 2020 are having a difficult time getting support from the government and have been throughout the pandemic. I agree with the point that my hon. colleague has raised and wish we could discuss it further with the government.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Madam Speaker, another issue that has surfaced in my riding of Vancouver East concerns start-up businesses. They have been excluded from pandemic support and many of them are struggling. We now have an opportunity before us with Bill C-2 to make changes so that start-up companies can get the support they need to survive the pandemic.

Would the Conservatives support such a change?

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Madam Speaker, it would be nice to talk about Bill C-2 at committee if we could get it up and running.

Of course, we need to step up and help Canadians. However, we also need to make sure that the Canadians who need the most help are the ones getting the help. We would know this if we could get a discussion on Bill C-2 about who is falling through the cracks. I mentioned a few individuals in my speech, in particular the independent travel agents who do not seem to fall within Bill C-2. We would like to get some further clarification on that. I think it would be important to have a full understanding of the bill before we decide whether to support it or not.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, I listened to the comments of the leader of the official opposition and now those of the member opposite. The concern I have is that I expect the Conservatives will vote against the throne speech, which would not surprise me, and I do not think it would surprise anyone in Canada.

When it comes right down to it, there is a a very tangible plan for all of us. One of those plans is Bill C-2, which is a continuation of supports for Canadians to get through the pandemic, both for the individual and small businesses, in particular.

Anticipating that the member will be voting against the throne speech, could he give an indication of what he will be doing with the tangible plan that is being dealt with in Bill C-2 ?

[Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Liberal, Hochelaga, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague across the aisle for her intervention.

As I was saying, in my riding, a large number of students are obliged to live together in small and increasingly expensive apartments.

There is also a real homelessness problem, and providing more housing is an obvious solution. I am thinking about the organization L'Anonyme, which, thanks to funding from the Reaching Home program, was able to offer housing to people who do not qualify for social housing, and the organization CAP-CARE, which used the $1 million in funding it received to provide more than 22,000 overnight stays to people dealing with homelessness. Today, these people are living in uncertainty, not knowing whether they will be able to find a permanent home to meet their urgent need.

I would also like to point out the close connection between poverty, access to housing and drug addiction. Poverty and homelessness are among the major causes of the opioid crisis. Across Canada, 17 people die of drug-related causes every day, and in Montreal alone, 14 die every month.

Montreal's regional public health care department recorded a 25% increase in drug-related deaths between March 2020 and March 2021. Organizations such as L'Anonyme, Dopamine and CAP-CARE are on the front lines of the opioid crisis. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their commitment, their dedication and all the work they do every day on the ground.

The government and I are aware that there is still a lot to do, especially in the riding of Hochelaga. From coast to coast to coast, our government will work tirelessly in collaboration with the provinces and territories to improve access to housing, free up funds for more housing units and protect Canadians' rights.

Access to housing is an essential need, but access to high-quality green spaces close to home is good for physical and mental health. Access to a high-quality living environment is also a right. Our government is investing more than $60 million to reduce pollution, adapt to climate change and support clean economic growth. These are our priorities.

Hochelaga and Montreal East are particularly affected by climate change. Our industrial past has left its mark, with highly contaminated land, heat islands, a lack of transportation infrastructure and bike paths, and, of course, a conspicuous lack of green spaces.

In fact, a group of doctors recently wrote the following in an open letter in La Presse:

...the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods, such as Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, have a greater lack of green spaces and a higher number of heat islands.

Let us be clear: This is a deadly combination.

It is vitally important for all of us to move forward with strong, bold measures. That is why the government wants to cap and cut oil and gas sector emissions, invest heavily in public transit, and mandate the sale of zero-emission vehicles.

We need to support local initiatives so that all communities across the country can help fight climate change. One concrete example in my riding is the funding of a vertical greenhouse in a major industrial area. This is a first in Montreal East. This farm will eventually be able to grow 80 tonnes of vegetables for food banks and for the community. Not only do we need a roof over our heads and a high-quality green community, but we also need full refrigerators.

I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge organizations working in the food banks and on the front lines. We are lucky that they have been there to support everyone in the community, including seniors, families, and people experiencing homelessness. I want to thank them very much.

A resilient and inclusive economy means that we as a government will be there to help families, workers and businesses get through the pandemic.

We are people of action. We know that my colleague, the Minister of Finance, tabled Bill C-2 to extend certain programs to support the economic recovery.

We will continue to make sure that no workers are left behind by establishing the Canada worker lockdown benefit and extending the caregiving benefit and the Canada recovery sickness benefit.

Not a day goes by without employees, employers and community organizations telling me that they and their businesses were saved by the measures we took during the pandemic.

One important measure in the throne speech is the first-ever Canada-wide early learning and child care system. This will not only support the economy, but it will also help women get back to work. We know that women have been hit hard by the pandemic.

It is unacceptable that families should have trouble finding affordable day care for their children. It is unacceptable that fathers and mothers should have to choose between their career and their children. Our government has reached an agreement with the government of Quebec. This historic $6‑billion agreement will help improve Quebec's child care system, a system we have been very proud of for more than 20 years.

Many members of the House came to Canada as immigrants. We rely on many entrepreneurs, artists, restaurateurs, scientists, professors emeritus and workers from other countries, to name but a few. These people have helped build a resilient and competitive country, and they continue to do so.

Our economy's vitality will depend on our ability to welcome new Canadians, and our government is committed to streamlining that process. I would like to thank the team in my riding and my colleagues' ridings for their work. My team has worked on more than 400 immigration files since I was first elected.

The most important issue for our government is the fight against COVID-19, and I think that we can all agree that it is the number one priority. We have seen with the variants that we still need to remain vigilant. That is what we need to do and will do in collaboration with the other levels of government. We gave health care workers across the country the tools to fight COVID-19. I do not have strong enough words to thank our health care workers and frontline workers for what they have done. We can now be proud that 85% of Canadians aged 12 and over have been vaccinated. This is a good example of how we can do anything when we work together. We are aware that there is still work to do when it comes to access to health care. We need to work with the provinces and the territories to strengthen the health care system and find solutions to specific problems, in particular mental health issues.

As a racialized woman, I have been a victim of racial profiling. My children, who were born in Quebec, have also been profiled. We need to recognize that systemic racism exists and that we need to do something about it. It is time for a change, time to make sure that people are protected against discrimination. That starts with reforming the criminal justice system and policing.

As a proud francophone, I am pleased to see that the modernization of the Official Languages Act is one of our governments' priorities. We need to protect and promote the French language, which is a minority language in North America.

I will conclude my speech by talking about the Broadcasting Act. There is a climate emergency, but there is also a real francophone cultural emergency. I urge all of my colleagues in the House to vote in favour of the upcoming bills aimed at safeguarding the French language in Canada.

[Yves-François Blanchet, Bloc, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak in the House again now, at the beginning of a Parliament that I must remind my colleagues should not exist. We should be continuing with the previous Parliament. Clearly, that was the view of both Quebeckers and Canadians.

All of us, all governments, all countries, all hospitals and all seniors' residences, are desperately trying to really, truly emerge, once and for all, from a crisis where the main issue, besides the economy and the pressure that the crisis is putting on the health system, remains a human issue: the fear, anxiety, illness and distress of loved ones. We seem to be having great difficulty in emerging from this crisis, and once again, this applies to all governments, but this does not free us from the solemn obligation to do everything in our power, at all times, to come out on the other side in better shape and, shall we say, with as many people as possible.

It was in the wake of this human tragedy with far-reaching economic impacts that the Prime Minister of Canada decided, out of the blue, to call an election in the middle of the summer, although it did not come as a surprise to anyone because the writing had been on the wall for a long time. He was kind enough to explain the concept of urgency to us. Obviously, this all-powerful being had to be given a strong mandate to tackle the pandemic head-on and get us out of it once and for all.

I had my doubts, as I am sure many others did, the day after that very poorly timed, extremely disorganized, ill-conceived election. Some polling stations did not have enough staff. Things were done in haste and risks were taken, particularly with regard to health measures. The directives were unclear and applied differently from one polling station to another. If this election had been urgently required, we would have understood, but it was neither urgent nor necessary. The credibility of the democratic system was somewhat undermined when some MPs were told that they had been elected, only to be informed later that they had not actually won. It was completely ridiculous.

In addition, Canadians and Quebeckers asked, what is this nonsense? They felt so strongly about it that they re-elected the same Parliament. It is almost the same in Quebec. The people told the government that they had given it a mandate, so it should get to work and stop bothering them. The government should not betray or pervert its mandate out of sheer ambition by saying it would like to outnumber the other party. Clearly, that is not what voters wanted.

We were sure all of this would be explained in the Speech from the Throne. It is not the Speech from the Throne; it is more like the speech from the timeout chair. I took the liberty of saying that, even read slowly, it was very short. Any college or university student, such as the former students of my esteemed colleague from Mirabel, who is here with us, could have written something more creative, clear and captivating.

That is the throne speech. That is why we went out and spent $600 million. That is why Parliament shut down for five months. That is why it took two months to write something that could have been written in two hours and probably was.

People feel like the government is laughing in their faces. Is it any surprise that they are not engaged in our democracy?

The throne speech was an amateur job with no real substance. It did not offer a pandemic recovery plan or a specific agenda. I know we will be hearing more about that during and after this particular debate. There is no vision, no statement of intent. For crying out loud, it is a whole lot of nothing.

There is something of substance we have already touched on: Bill C‑2 on pandemic recovery programs, which is quite a bit clearer and more specific. There is more in the first bill they introduced than there was in the throne speech, which was supposed to put us on a four-year path to glory, prosperity and good health, or so they would have us believe. That is a bit odd.

When the government puts forward a good plan, we respond positively. Bill C‑2 is a bill that calls for collaboration, and we are ready to collaborate. Naturally, there is room for improvement; that is what the democratic legislative process promotes and demands.

In the meantime, the government's mandate, which was to manage and overcome the crisis and to pass this legislation much earlier, has not been fulfilled, and people have told the government to go do its job.

The Speech from the Throne contains the buzzword “collaborate”.

Not so long ago, there were expressions like “we walk hand in hand with Quebec and the provinces”. My God, I hope there were handcuffs involved, because the hands would not have been close for long.

We have everything but collaboration. Does the word “collaborate” in the Speech from the Throne, which was skilfully read out in several languages, mean “we will listen to what the provinces want”?

What the provinces and Quebec want is simple: an immediate, unconditional transfer of funding to cover 35% of health care system costs. Without this transfer, in the short term, the provinces and Quebec will have to divert resources to the health care system that should be allocated to other things and, in the medium term, some provinces will basically go bust, go bankrupt. This is because the great federal tradition, especially the Liberal one, is to try to bring the provinces, which are conquered territories if ever there was one, to their knees in exchange for a little money.

The Liberal approach is “sell us your jurisdictions”, which is why the throne speech ignored, or mentioned only very quickly, the fact that collaboration means a give-and-take on both sides. That left us dangerously dissatisfied and reveals something a little shocking. In the last few days and weeks, a lot of attention has been paid to the magnitude of the tragedy, to figuring out what led to a such a high number of deaths.

Sometimes the media will also try to politicize it and point fingers—

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Mr. Speaker, it is great to see the leader of Her Majesty's loyal opposition back in this House. It is great to see him in the same seat as in the 43rd Parliament. He mentioned during his speech $400 billion that the government had perhaps overspent. I do not have the words right in front of me. By rough math, that is about two-thirds of what the government took on during the height of the pandemic to be able to support Canadians with the wage subsidy, the emergency business account and the CERB.

I think it is important for him to be able to come clear with Canadians what programs he would not have supported. The problem I have, if I may, as a backbench MP being able to address him, is that I hear in one moment from his colleagues that we should do more and are not doing enough and in the next breath that too much has been done and that there are deficits and debt.

What is the member's position? There has been flip-flop, whether it is on guns or vaccines. It is not clear to Canadians what this party stands for. We talked about tourism and small businesses. Will this party support Bill C-2, the measures to protect our tourism-related and hardest-hit sectors, in the days ahead?

An Act to Provide Further Support in Response to COVID-19

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, I have had the opportunity to ask a number of Conservative colleagues across the way what their personal intentions might be with respect to Bill C-2. I would be very much interested in the member's insights as to whether he would see fit to personally support the principles of the bill, recognizing the pandemic is not over, that we still need to be there for Canadians in a very real and tangible way. That is what this bill would do, whether it is supports for business or for people. Could we expect to see the member personally voting in favour of the bill in principle going to committee stage, given the comments he has just made?

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Madam Chair, I like to call where I come from the promised land. We have the honey capital of Canada and 7,500 dairy animals, so it is literally flowing with milk and honey.

I want to start by thanking my team back home. Starting on the home front, I thank my wife for putting up with me and delivering a baby smack dab in the middle of the election. I told my campaign manager that the due date was the third, so I would just book that day off and we should be good to go. Right on schedule little Claire showed up, so I took the day off. I was there for a little while, but she did come on the due date, which was like winning the lottery, so we were pretty excited about that. Claire is doing well and her mother is doing well, for sure.

I want to thank my children. They came out door-knocking with me. Nothing is better than a bunch of little kids coming along to do the door-knocking. They run a lot faster than I do, and they get pretty good at finding the doorbells and making friends with all the puppy dogs everywhere we go. I think there is an average of one dog per house where I come from, so I met a lot of nice puppies along the way, no doubt.

I also want to thank our volunteer sign guys who put on over 7,000 kilometres putting up signs in northern Alberta. It is a few days' ordeal to put up signs where I come from, so I want to thank John and Richard and Stan. They really did a good job.

I want to thank our door-knocking team and Liam in particular. One of the things that I was going to get to later on in my speech is that with all the job opportunities out there I have been harassing Liam that he has to go and get a job. He just told me that he has finally landed a job. While he was a great asset to my team, door-knocking every day for us, it turns out now that he has a job. I hope that he can now put all that door-knocking experience to use in his job, although I am not exactly sure where it is.

I want to thank my extended family and my sister in particular, who goes above and beyond in keeping everything organized, and her husband as well. They do a great job.

I want to thank my campaign manager, Josh. He is all the way from Calgary, though we do not hold that against him. We cheer for different hockey teams, but we are good friends, nonetheless, and he delivered the win again in northern Alberta. Congratulations to Josh, and thanks.

I also want to take this moment to congratulate the elected senators in Alberta. Bang, bang: Right after each other, we ended up having two elections simultaneously. The municipal elections were happening during the federal election, so we had those together. It was great to see that the Conservatives on the ballot took the number one, two and three spots here in Alberta. I look forward to the senators' rapid appointment so we can get some representation for Alberta in the Senate as we go forward. I note that Senator Scott Tannas is still there, but I am looking forward to the rapid appointment of two new senators representing Alberta.

Bill C-2 is the bill in front of us. I want to talk a bit about what should be in this bill and what is missing from it.

During the last few months, I went for dinner at Brothers Diner in Whitecourt. It is a great little place and has a 1950s retro feel. When I am sitting in there, I feel like I have stepped back in time, but I wish that all the 1950s cars with the big wings were parked outside there, with the high-rise tails and the round cars. A lot of them were aviation-inspired, so while they were not the fastest or the best-handling cars in the world, they were some of the coolest-looking. If I say “Cadillac Eldorado”, people are probably thinking “1950s car”.

It was my first time ever being in that little diner, and I was chatting with the waitress. I said, “I was here last night and the place was shut down. I was here at about 7:30.” She said, “Oh sorry, we close at 4.” I said, “This is a diner, and diners do not typically close at 4.” She said, “We only have three waitresses, and when none of us are available the restaurant is closed.” It was a Tuesday afternoon, and she said they close at 4 on Tuesdays.

That was the situation in northern Alberta. There are just not enough workers to keep the restaurants open, never mind having people come to the restaurants. Folks who started new restaurants during the pandemic were concerned about how this was going to go and they said they have the customers but do not have the employees. We see temporary foreign workers being brought in during the time of a pandemic to staff the restaurants in the area.

One of the other things that the bill does not correct as well is the following. I am thinking about folks who started a Dairy Queen in my riding in January 2020. The owners are unable to collect some of these benefits because their business was started in January 2020. The decision to start a new Dairy Queen did not come overnight, so the decision was made months, maybe years, in advance. A large amount of money was laid out, yet they had no revenues until January 2020, so they did not have a revenue drop from 2019 to 2020. They had no revenue in 2019; they were busy building the building. The grand opening was January 2020. That was one of the things I was hoping we would see fixed in the bill. We did not see that.

The other thing is around getting the pipelines built, supporting oil and gas in northern Alberta, supporting the industry that is the largest percentage of GDP in this country. I was looking forward to having support for that in the bill, to talk about how we can people get back to work and make sure people feel safe, but also make sure the pipelines are defended and promoted in this country.

President Joe Biden in the United States wrote a letter to OPEC asking them if they could increase production by 500,000 barrels a day so that they could reduce the cost of fuel in the United States. The Keystone XL pipeline would deliver about that many barrels a day of oil if it were operating. The president could knock on our door and could approve Keystone XL and could be getting ethically sourced oil from northern Alberta supplied to the United States. He did not do this. Then he said he would lower the price of fuel by using up some the reserves in the United States. The reserves are 1% of 1% of their annual consumption of fuel, so that is going to make a short blip and really is not going to solve the problem.

Between Line 5 and Keystone XL, we see that the bill says nothing about what the plans are for ensuring that the oil patch can continue to operate and get its product to market. We do not see anything like that. The oil patch is also looking for workers. I talked to my friend, Murray, in Slave Lake. He runs an oil field service company and he said he thinks he is going to have to bring in temporary foreign workers to work in the oil patch, starting at $55 an hour. That is the challenge he is facing. He has to bring in presumably Mexican oil field workers because he cannot get workers from northern Alberta.

This is a tragedy. We have people from across the country who have traditionally worked in northern Alberta, but are unaware that the oil patch is up and running again and who are making a calculation between government subsidies and paycheques and deciding that the government subsidy is a better deal.

We warned the Liberals not to mess with the labour market with their subsidies, however, they did not listen to us. They say no, no, hurry up and pass this legislation. We said we will not stand in the way of it, but it would be good to scrutinize this and send to committee to ensure the best ideas come through and that there is no impact to the labour market as we go forward with this $7-billion bill.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Madam Speaker, that was a great question from my colleague across the aisle.

Bill C-2 covers all of the industries that are hard hit. It is based on the economic hit that the industry has had and whether it has reached the threshold. Those that are hard hit will receive the wage subsidy, as required, and we know that the tourism and hospitality sector have been the hardest hit currently and the slowest to recover, due to the travel restrictions. I think that those industries and those pilots will benefit from it. The larger industry, as a whole, has been provided assistance and those in smaller industries will also get the assistance they need.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Madam Speaker, we welcome the fact that the tourism and hospitality sectors were included in Bill C-2. However, the bill does not currently cover upstream industries in the supply chains of those sectors, such as aircraft or bus manufacturers, or those that manufacture goods for the tourism and hospitality sectors.

My question is this: Do you think that the list currently included in Bill C‑2 is exhaustive?

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to be here today to speak to Bill C-2, an act to provide further support in response to COVID-19. Our government is moving into the next phase of the recovery, with more targeted support for Canadians, as our economy continues to reopen. The benefits outlined in this bill are and will continue to be essential for Canadians who will be impacted by the pandemic in the months to come.

I do not think any of us in this room could have imagined the immense cost that the COVID-19 virus was going to take on the world when we left the Hill for the weekend and headed home to our constituencies on March 13, 2020. However, here we are about 20 months later continuing to find new ways to respond to the individual and collective toll that the virus has taken on us all.

In the midst of all this hardship and heartbreak, we have also seen incredible resilience and innovation. We have seen health care workers, first responders, service providers and government employees work through continually evolving situations for months to take care of patients, provide essential services and ensure that our country was able to continue to function. We saw the creation, clinical trials, approval and distribution of multiple vaccines for COVID-19.

I heard from many Surrey Centre constituents who expressed how important the previous round of pandemic benefits were for them. I would like to extend my extreme gratitude to all those constituents and stakeholders who have provided very important feedback to us throughout the last year and a half, as well as to the government officials, who have listened to that feedback to make our pandemic supports stronger to support more individuals and businesses.

As we continue to see the evolution of the pandemic, we will continue to adapt our approach to address it. That is what our government is doing with Bill C-2. Our strategy to support Canadians is evolving with the situation, and we are now shifting our focus from blanket support measures to a more targeted approach. By taking a more targeted approach, we will reduce our spending on COVID support while continuing to support those who have been hit hardest by the health and economic impacts of the virus.

I would like to take this opportunity to talk about the proposed support and extension of support in this bill for individuals and businesses. They will be essential to Canadians as we move forward through pandemic recovery.

The bill proposes extending some existing COVID support benefits, including the Canada recovery hiring program; the Canada recovery sickness benefit, which has given income support to employed and self-employed individuals who are unable to work because they are sick or need to self-isolate because of COVID-19; and the Canada recovery caregiving benefit, which has given income support to individuals who are unable to work because they must care for a child or family member who needs supervised care. This applies if their school or care facility is closed or unavailable to them because of COVID-19, or if they are sick, self-isolating or at risk of serious health complications because of COVID-19. These three benefits will be extended until May of next year when this legislation is passed. This bill also proposes the creation of new benefits, including the Canada worker lockdown benefit, a measure that will support workers who are unable to work because of a government-imposed public health lockdown; the tourism and hospitality recovery program; and the hardest-hit business recovery program.

We all know that the tourism and hospitality industry, in particular, has been extremely hard hit by the pandemic. With most of world shutting their doors to non-residents in the early months of the pandemic, the tourism industry faced a sharp decline. Canadian cities and towns across the country rely heavily on the tourism industry to support their local economies. According to Statistics Canada, in March 2020, Canada saw a nearly 55% decrease in international arrivals. With travel and movement restrictions across the country, hotels were at less than 20% occupancy levels. Restaurants and bars were also hard hit during this time, when real GDP dropped by 39.5%.

I met with many constituents and local stakeholders to hear about their concerns, especially restaurant, hotel and banquet hall owners and operators in Surrey. The hotels, restaurants and banquet halls in my riding were particularly hard hit by the lockdown, with local lockdown restrictions forcing many establishments to close their doors completely for a few months, which meant cancelling weddings and other events, and requiring them to switch their service operations to provide takeout and delivery options. Similarly, restaurants had to shut down dining rooms and have takeout only, therefore having to let go of the servers and staff who normally worked there.

Surrey's hotels, like the Civic Hotel, rely on business travel, most of which had come to a virtual halt. That made it very difficult for them to survive. Surrey has a large banquet and wedding industry that was also hard hit due to severe restrictions on the size of weddings. Therefore, many venues and vendors were completely shut down, leaving hundreds out of jobs.

Things have begun to look up for these industries. In the second quarter of 2021, there was an increase of employment generated by the tourism industry with 453,200 jobs added. This time also saw an increase in tourism spending in Canada by over $10.6 billion. We may not have the international travellers coming and going as we are accustomed to, but Canadians have been stepping up and increasing local travel within the country.

With winter coming, though, we know that many businesses and workers will need support as tourism winds down for the season. I am confident that the travel and tourism industry will come back after these hard times. They have shown their resilience and the support offered through these proposed benefits will help this industry though the end of the pandemic.

Our government is committed to working with our international partners to ensure that countries around the world have fair and equitable access to vaccines. As we continue to see the rates of vaccination increase, we will be able to continue to reopen our beautiful country to the world once again, with the knowledge that our families, friends and neighbours will be protected.

We know that winter will most likely bring more challenging times related to the pandemic in different regions across the country. I am very pleased to see that this bill addresses the possibility of local lockdowns, with the Canada workers lockdown benefit. Anticipating these events now will ensure that Canadians have the support they need to get through these challenging times, whether it be to support an ill relative, care for their children or ensure that they can continue to put food on the table should they become ill and need to take a few days off work.

Our health care providers have done a phenomenal job of getting Canadians vaccinated well ahead of our original schedule. We now have 76.3% of the population who have received the full dose of vaccines and the numbers continue to grow.

As vaccine manufacturers continue their clinical trials for younger children and with the approval of the Pfizer vaccine for children ages five to 11 by Health Canada, we are well on our way to ensuring that all Canadians who are able to receive the vaccine have access. As we continue to move through the changing circumstances of this pandemic, our government will continue to be there for Canadians and Canadian businesses.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Madam Speaker, today I rise to continue debate over Bill C-2, the government’s inaugural post-election spending bill, targeted to support businesses and those impacted by COVID-19 lockdowns. This $7.4-billion piece of legislation may seem like a drop in the bucket compared to the spending that was approved in the last Parliament, but we know our nation’s finances are increasingly in precarious shape.

As we seek to navigate our way out of this pandemic, the responsibility we have as parliamentarians to do our due diligence is vital to our recovery. There are many examples from the previous Parliament on why it is so essential to do our due diligence and ensure that this and other spending bills are providing targeted support to precisely the sectors that need it the most.

The fact is that in the last Parliament, billions of dollars in taxpayer funds were needlessly directed to otherwise profitable businesses in the form of wage subsidies and other subsidies. In fact, even in 2020, with the carnage of the COVID-19 lockdowns from March onward, the TSX, the Toronto Stock Exchange, was still able to post a modest gain of over 2%.

In 2021 alone, year to date, with wage subsidies and other subsidies in place, the TSX has grown by over 20%, dwarfing the 10-year annual return of around 6%. It is abundantly clear that the fiscal stimulus, provided by the Liberal government through taxpayer resources and debt-financed by those taxpayers, and the unprecedented amount of quantitative easing by our central bank, have significantly propped up the returns of Canada’s biggest businesses.

These same factors have also led to a massive rise in inflation that is unrivalled in most of the developed world. The price of housing in some parts of Canada has skyrocketed to all-time highs, with prices in Ontario jumping between 20% to 35% this year alone. It is no wonder so many people in my generation, the millennial generation, and following generations will have to wait years longer than previous generations to own our very first home, if we ever can.

Those millennials who are fortunate enough to be able to purchase their first home are often doing so through generous gifts from their parents or grandparents. Otherwise, they are often leveraging themselves to the hilt, sometimes by 20 times, just to afford a modest townhome in the suburbs. We know this is unsustainable. We know interest rates are going to increase, making the cost of servicing that massive mortgage debt for young families more and more unaffordable.

As well, we know the government, while trying to get families into their first overpriced home, will do nothing or little to avert or mitigate the carnage we will see when mortgage rates reset over the next few years.

If the increasing price of housing was not bad enough, the increases to other essentials for families due to inflation and flawed government policies will also contribute to major economic problems for Canadian families. The prices of inputs into agricultural production are growing fast. The prices of fertilizer and fuel, the cost of drying grain due to carbon taxes, clean fuel standards and now inflation threaten to make all food products less affordable for families.

The price of a pound of bacon is up over 20% since January 2020, and that is just one example from hundreds where food prices are going up. Consumers are getting big cost increases, while the government, the central bank and the big producers pass along the costs.

Sadly, many of the farmers I know and have the honour of representing, especially the cattle ranchers, are not benefiting from these cost increases. While beef at the grocery store may be up 20% since the beginning of 2020, the price of a head of beef cattle has gone up by only 2.7% since 2017. It is not the farmers who are getting rich off the government's inflation.

Across Canada, we also see that there are over a million job vacancies. This labour shortage affects all regions of Canada and it persists in all sectors of the economy. Supporting Canadians in need was the right thing to do, and it always will be. That is why the Conservatives supported help for Canadians who were prevented from working because of the COVID-19 lockdowns.

However, we cannot continue to support people to not work while our economy is open and there is a nationwide labour shortage. The hospitality and food service industries are experiencing an all-time high in job vacancies, with over 89,000 vacancies. In manufacturing and construction, there are over 60,000 job vacancies. In the retail sector, we are seeing 84,000 unfilled jobs. How will this bill address those vacancies?

The Business Development Bank of Canada has reported that 64% of Canadian businesses say that labour shortages are limiting their growth. These labour shortages are severely impacting the ability of Canadian businesses to recover from COVID-19. As a result, our economic recovery in Canada is stalling. I see nothing in Bill C-2 that would address or alleviate these rampant job vacancies across the country.

Getting back to the specifics of Bill C-2, it is positive that the government is taking a more targeted approach to pandemic stimulus. I have been calling for that in the House for the past year. It is critical that the industries that are the most impacted, like tourism, hospitality and travel, get the resources they need so we can ensure job creation, retention and a strong economic rebound.

That being said, I am deeply concerned that the government is seeking to fast-track this legislation before the House of Commons has even convened its finance committee to undertake a review of it. I like that one of the Liberals who spoke earlier did admit that the programs were not perfect, but given how flawed some of the pandemic spending is, we have seen that negative consequences have been created. Should the government not be welcoming strong oversight from opposition parties to ensure the strongest possible legislation?

Here are a few examples of how previous pandemic spending was flawed.

I had constituents reach out to me who needed to access the CERB. They were seniors who are not used to using a computer. Instead of accessing their benefits through the Canada Revenue Agency portal, they felt prey to a third party group that promised to process their benefits for them. In fact, the Competition Bureau of Canada is investigating one such firm for suspected deceptive false and misleading practices that saw Canadians lose out on 8% to 10% of their entitled benefits.

These constituents, when accessing the website of this third party, believed that they were being assisted in accessing benefits directly from the government. The reality was that they were accessing these benefits through a deceptively designed website that charged significant fees for their services. Those who did not want to pay those fees were subject to an aggressive collections campaign that threatened to ruin their credit scores.

Why did the government design this legislation to allow unscrupulous businesses to benefit on the backs of unaware Canadians? Why is it that when I raised my concerns with the minister, I was told that it was not illegal?

We have heard multiple times already that prisoners, suspected fraudsters and members of organized crime have accessed pandemic benefits, and there is no plan from the government to recoup those monies. Canadians are furious that this happened, and they want a full accounting of those funds and a plan to ensure that this abuse does not happen again. So far I do not see that with this legislation.

It is therefore critical that we bring the finance committee back into session so that we can thoroughly examine the bill. Enough is enough. The trust that opposition parties gave to the government in the last Parliament to fast-track legislation for pandemic benefits has been abused. This is unacceptable and it demonstrates the need for a thorough study by the finance committee before moving forward and passing this bill. Once we are assured that this due diligence has been done, we can move expeditiously to ensure that Canadians who need their benefits can get them. I know many in the hospitality industry and in the independent travel agents sector who desperately do need support to keep their businesses alive until we can get through the pandemic.

In closing, we have seen how well-intentioned spending designed to help Canadians who are in need can be misused or used by those who do not really need it. It is critically important that we get the finance committee in order so that we could thoroughly study this bill to ensure that spending goes where it is needed and it does not contribute to the further rising inflation that we see in this country.

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

Mr. Speaker, the last time I got up to speak, I do not think you had yet been appointed as Deputy Speaker. Your predecessor, who was also a member of the Conservative Party, was an excellent Speaker and I have no doubt that you are already on your way to following in his footsteps in that regard. Congratulations on your new role and I look forward to working with you in the months and years to come.

We are talking today about this very important legislation, Bill C-2. It is a bill that would continue to provide necessary supports for businesses and individuals, in particular the hardest hit. This is part of a phase-out program. It is part of moving toward getting back to normal in terms of our economic activity, but it is still extremely necessary.

Before I go down the road of talking about why the bill is so important, I want to go back to a number of things I have heard from the opposite side of the House today. The last speaker, in particular, mentioned it, but a number of other Conservatives have as well, which is the rollout of the initial programs back to March of 2020 and those that followed. I believe I am quoting the previous speaker correctly when he said that it was a poor rollout.

Let us go back to March of 2020 for a second and consider exactly what was going on. The world was in confusion and chaos not knowing exactly what was in front of us, not knowing how long it was going to last, not knowing how people were going to be supported and yet our incredible public service was able to put programs together and get them out in lightning speed, when we think about it. I have said this many times in the House before that it only took four weeks to go from the World Health Organization declaring a global pandemic to getting money into the bank accounts of 5.4 million Canadians.

When we talk about the rollout, it is important to reflect on the fact that there was a lot of confusion. Perfection was not the goal back then. The goal was to help as many people as possible and then deal with the imperfections later on. I will be the first to admit, as I did in a previous question, that a lot of those imperfections that were identified and addressed came through deliberations and discussions with the other parties and debate in the House.

That is why, in my opinion, all members of the House supported those measures through unanimous consent motions at times. For those who do not know, a unanimous consent motion basically means everybody agrees without debate and we move on. That is how we were passing a lot of those measures back then.

For members of the House to be hypercritical of the rollout and of the measures that were put in place is absolutely confusing when they participated in these unanimous consent motions. Nonetheless, here we are.

Let us talk about Bill C-2 in particular. This is about helping businesses that are still struggling. As we know, a lot of businesses are not struggling anymore, but many are.

There are three main components or programs in the bill.

The first is the tourism and hospitality recovery program. As we know, a lot of tourism operators are still struggling, and this is one of the most affected industries by this pandemic. We know we need to continue to deliver supports. A lot of these businesses are seasonal by nature, so as we push toward getting through this pandemic, they may have lost a significant chunk of income or revenue stream in the season that just passed, being the season that a lot of people travel. That is why ensuring the subsidy of 75% of wages can continue is extremely important. There are a number of criteria. Not all tourism sectors are included. Some are hit harder, so the program is designed in a way to be reflective of the actual need.

The next one is the hardest-hit business recovery program, and this is to help those businesses that have been hit the hardest by this pandemic. I think of a good friend of mine. He is an audio engineer. When we go to conventions with several thousand people, we go into a ballroom and we often see all the lighting and sound equipment that is set up. There is a lot of work that goes into that, and an audio engineer is somebody who will go in and assess a room to determine exactly what is required to put a production on. My friend, in the beginning of March 2020, had nine months' work ahead of him. He is a contractor who contracts out his services. In a matter of 48 hours, he went to no work at all. Every single contract that he had lined up for the next eight to nine months had been cancelled, all at once.

In this particular sector, we see a lot of people coming together, with people moving around like at conventions, which are unlike a hockey game, where people are stationary for the majority of the time they are there. What makes it worse for these sectors is that they are going to come back the latest. They are the ones that are taking the longest to come back online. This particular sector, when we think about it, was hit immediately, right at the beginning, and is going to be one of the very last to come back online. That is what we are talking about when we talk about the hardest-hit business recovery program. This is about providing subsidies to make sure eligible organizations can continue to get through the rest of this pandemic.

Finally, there is the local lockdown program. This one is probably, in my opinion, the most important. What we have seen through the pandemic, at least as I have been able to observe in Ontario, is that putting in the hands of the local or regional health units the power to implement lockdowns from time to time really gives an opportunity to spread out the need for various different tools at various different times. While one region might have a lockdown and another one does not, it gives those localized areas that have really been affected the opportunity to have different supports in the event that they are going to be locked down. Therefore, this is a program that is extremely important in terms of continuing to provide a wage subsidy and various other supports.

The only other thing I wanted to touch on is with respect to the discussion that has been going on today around inflation. We heard it a lot during question period. We heard it a lot from the opposition in terms of questions in this debate. It is important to point out that despite the rhetoric in everything we are hearing, we have to look at this in a global perspective. I find it quite hilarious that the Conservatives, who have for so long criticized this Prime Minister and this government for not being able to accomplish anything, have now suddenly given them credit for being able to control global inflation, as though the Prime Minister and this government can now set global inflation.

Let us look at what is actually going on in the world. Let us look at the OECD countries. These are the developed countries that we do all our trading with. These are the countries that are quite often in the same boat as we are. We are well below the OECD average for inflation right now. Let us look at our neighbouring partner, with which we do the most trade, the United States. It is almost a full two points higher than Canada in terms of inflation. Although we must treat inflation extremely seriously and we must be very careful with the tools and with what we are doing right now, it is germane to at least recognize that it is not a problem that has been created by this Prime Minister and this government. It is indeed a global problem that is going to have to be addressed through various different policies from various different governments throughout the world.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, at times, the Conservatives can be very confusing on whether they support the legislation or they do not support it. Depending on the member who speaks, we often get the sense that the Conservatives do not support the monies that the government spent to provide support to Canadians through a wide spectrum of programs. Then there are other members who seem to feel that we should have been spending more money in different areas. This legislation, Bill C-2, is all about the extension and providing supports for Canadians during the pandemic and going forward.

Could the member clearly give some indication, if not for the Conservative Party, how he will be voting on the legislation?

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his concern for seniors. As I mentioned in my intervention, it depended on how seniors applied for the program. For some it was counted as taxable income and others it was not. The ones where it was considered as taxable income are now seeing their GIS payments clawed back.

We have had constituents in tears on the phone because they cannot afford their rent, or their groceries or their medications. They do not know how they are going to move forward because of the poor rollout of the programs and the poor explanation given to the individuals. Those people are asking for compassion.

I hope as Bill C-2 rolls out and we get a better look at it that there is more consideration for those negative effects that can happen if the bill is not drafted properly.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in this House today. Once again, I thank the voters of North Okanagan—Shuswap for trusting me to represent them here in Parliament.

As I open, I must also recognize the individuals and organizations in British Columbia and beyond who stepped up and continue to mobilize in support of British Columbians during wildfires and flooding this year. While all British Columbians have been affected by these disasters, some have lost everything except hope and perseverance. Across British Columbia, including the North Okanagan—Shuswap, recoveries and rebuilding are under way. We have strong spirits and we will continue to rebuild together as a province. I certainly hope the federal government will be a partner in that recovery.

It is an honour to rise to speak to Bill C-2, an act to provide further support in response to the COVID-19 pandemic that has ravaged our nation for the past 20 months. Canadians are continuing to reel from the impacts of COVID-19. Some of the impacts have been evident for months, others are becoming apparent just now. Early impacts included business closures, job losses, social isolation, families not able to get together and more. Now we are witnessing mounting inflation and rising costs of living that are affecting all Canadians, including those most vulnerable.

When we take stock of the many layers of crisis and instability facing Canadians today, there is a thread of commonality woven into each layer: the absence of prevention. I hope that all members can agree that a primary responsibility of the Government of Canada is to take responsible and reasonable steps to ensure collective security and to prevent crises.

Twenty months ago the pandemic's first wave was mounting and the government failed to deliver enough action to protect Canada. It failed to prevent all the crises that COVID-19 has inflicted on Canadians. The government was slow to close borders and shut down flights from hot spots where the pandemic was burning through populations. The government failed to initiate vaccine deals with the right vendors early on, because it chased a doomed partnership with Beijing, down a rabbit hole.

Then there was the government's erratic communications that sowed uncertainty and division around health guidelines and risks of the pandemic. All these instances represented failures because they were missed opportunities to prevent dangers from taking hold and proliferating across our nation and throughout our society.

Then, a year and a half after the pandemic started, and which had claimed tens of thousands of lives, the Prime Minister called an election that only he and his Liberal caucus wanted. It was not because an election would fight the pandemic or help Canadians, but because they saw an opportunity to win more power. At the exact time that Canadians needed their federal government to be laser-focused on working for Canadians, the Liberal government elected to serve its own narrow political interests.

After the pointless election was over, the Liberal government delayed the return of Parliament for nine weeks. Now that Parliament has finally resumed, we are once again debating legislation that is a necessity due to the government's inability to prevent harm. Today we are assessing Bill C-2, a bill that proposes business and personal income supports announced by the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister on October 21, 2021.

The bill represents a move away from broad-based support to more targeted programs, a move that Conservatives have previously called for because it is important to focus resources on the specific needs they are meant to meet. While Conservatives supported getting help out to those who needed it early in the pandemic when businesses had to close and travel was restricted, the mismanagement of funds since then has led, and is leading, to headaches and hardship for many others.

My office has received many calls from seniors who were provided benefits in error and are now seeing their GIS payments clawed back. These seniors are unable to afford rent and groceries, because the government failed to provide clarity on eligibility and taxation implications as programs rushed out the door. These situations could have been prevented.

I have also been contacted by businesses from every sector, from food service to professional offices, that have been unable to fill job vacancies because too many are finding it easier to stay home on relief benefits.

One of the most impacted sectors I have heard from is the food production and processing sector, the people who provide food on Canadian dinner plates.

I see orchards in my riding of North Okanagan—Shuswap with thousands of pounds of apples hanging frozen and withering on the trees because the orchardist could not find pickers to hire.

I have heard from meat processors that are running 30% to 40% short on staff and are unable to process food for Canadian dinner tables because they cannot fill shifts. This is food that is not grown or not processed that will never reach the dinner tables where Canadians need it. All this lost food and increasing cost of processing what does get processed will be adding to the already high inflation rates Canadians are paying as a result of the current government's money management policies, or I should say lack of money management policies.

It was our illustrious Prime Minister who in the middle of the election when asked about the rising cost of living stated, “you’ll forgive me if I don’t think about monetary policy.” Because the Prime Minister and his cabinet have not been thinking about monetary policy, Canadians are now having to do much more of that thinking just to make ends meet. Groceries, home heating costs, repairs and maintenance are all costing Canadians more because of the lack of attention by the Liberal government on money management. Those same seniors who are having their GIS payments clawed back are facing higher costs of living, adding to the unbearable stress they are already experiencing.

How does all of this relate to Bill C-2? The bill before us has been introduced because the Liberal government has failed to lead the country and its citizens out of the pandemic. Individuals and businesses are still needing assistance because previous relief programs and measures have failed to target where they were needed and have left businesses unable to rebuild.

As I conclude, I want to thank all the individuals and businesses in North Okanagan—Shuswap for their perseverance through this challenging time that we have all faced. I recently had the opportunity to attend the Greater Vernon Chamber of Commerce business excellence awards program, where businesses were recognized for the ingenuity and creativity in their operations, such as expanded patios, new delivery systems, improved online information and ordering systems, all to provide their customers with the services they needed in the safest and most efficient ways possible.

We as legislators in the House must strive to find the same ingenuity in the legislation we introduce and debate to provide the programs and services that Canadians need the most. We as Conservatives will continue to review Bill C-2 to see if it will provide what Canadians need in the most efficient way possible.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, Humber River—Black Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my hon. colleague's comments. Whenever he gets up, it is always interesting. We never know quite what he is going to say.

Let me speak to the importance of getting Bill C-2 through, as the next piece of the pandemic recovery, so that we can then be focusing on the financial economy, the economic plan that I know is being worked on. We will bring it forward so that we can help people. However, I think we have to give people the confidence that they can go out to restaurants, maintain their six-foot distance or book travel for this coming summer. That is what is going to help people, if we can start getting people out into the business community, to move forward.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, Humber River—Black Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, congratulations again. It is always interesting to see different people sitting in the chair, and I think your French is very good. I am probably learning and picking up a few words from you as you proceed.

This is my first opportunity to stand in the 44th Parliament. I am not sure if this is my ninth time or my 10th time here, but it has been quite a few times. I have to thank the people of Humber River—Black Creek.

I have a very interesting riding. I am next to Etobicoke North and just up from York Centre, which are all ridings that have tremendous challenges. A lot of new immigrants who come to Toronto and region end up in these particular communities, so naturally, their needs are enormous. There are new immigrants trying to settle and so on, and then along came the pandemic. We really had our hands full trying to deal with all of that.

Before I go too far, I must do what my other colleagues have done and thank my husband of many years. I am not going to say how many years that is either, but it is many years. Sam is the one who loves politics in the family, much more than me, and he is very engaged in everything that goes on here in the House and in the community. Then I have my daughters, Cathy and Deanna; my son, Saverio; and my sign chairman, my wonderful son-in-law, Graziano. Without him, it would have been really difficult to get through this year.

While we are here, spending the amount of time we spend here in the House, we have to rely on our constituency staff because that is where it all happens. We can make policies, do all kinds of things, yell at each other and all of that, but the real work happens in our constituency offices.

I have been blessed over many years to have had fabulous staff, dedicated people. My staff are Amy, Albert, Juan, Abby, Mitch, Patrick and of course, my dear friend Mary Anne, who was a campaign manager for me in my very first election in 1989 for city council, and she is still there with us. Without having those kind of people around, I do not believe I would have been here the amount of years I have been. Everyone is committed, and I want to sincerely thank all of them for their commitment, not just to me, but to the people of Humber River—Black Creek. This is about caring for people who live in Humber River—Black Creek, recognizing their needs are enormous and looking to see what we can do for them.

Some of the volunteers who came out in this past election are Lena Muto, Lucia Catania, Mr. Tran, Alicia, James, Grant, Syam and Nero. The list could go on, but I tried to pull out just a few to give an example of the diversity of the volunteers who came out in the riding.

The pandemic hit, and like everywhere else across the country, the ridings were devastated. I never thought in our lifetime that we would end up having to deal with a pandemic, and many people did not understand half of what was going on, but the community mobilized very, very quickly. We had people delivering food. Wherever we found out that there was a family in distress, we made a point of getting to them, communing with them and supplying them with food or even toilet paper. Whatever they needed, we tried to find it to help them out.

When our government started with the various programs, it was an absolute life saver for thousands and thousands of people who live in Humber River—Black Creek who needed the support. They had no way to pay their rent, and with the rent subsidy program, they were able to get their rent paid. With the CERB, they were able to help get bills paid and put food on the table.

I am immensely grateful to our government for what it did and for those programs, and they went all the way across the country. It does not matter what party someone is in or anything else. The people needed help, and we all worked together to make sure that help was going to be given to them in various different programs.

There were many phone calls that we would have with the ministers, and questions for them where we identified a particular problem in an industry, or this group or that group, and immediately a program would be created. We know this is not always easy.

Government does not turn on a dime, but with respect to the pandemic it had to turn on not only a dime, but a penny, because it had to create programs to get money out there to help people, such as seniors, children, families and many other people.

The Humber River Hospital mobilized, along with the Black Creek Community Health Centre, to try to reach the people who were reluctant to get vaccines. We had a very high proportion of people who did not want to get vaccinated. Between the Humber River Hospital and the Black Creek Community Health Centre, they literally went to the lobbies of apartment buildings, educated the residents as to why it was important to get vaccinated and would then administer the vaccines. That happened a lot to try to get our numbers up into a higher rate.

Of course, we also had the school issue, with children in schools and those who were home. The TDSB and the Catholic board were able to get iPads for many of the children to be able to work from home and also paid for the Internet in order to be able to educate the children. I have to say that the work the school trustee for the Catholic Toronto District School Board, Ida Li Preti, and the public school board trustee, Chris Mammoliti, did was unbelievable to try to protect families and children as much as possible. In fact, last weekend and this week, there are 12 schools that are open and providing vaccines, which was organized between the two school boards to make sure those children are getting vaccinated. However, in all of those lineups on the weekend, there were a lot of parents and other people who were not vaccinated either. It was not just children in those lineups, so we are continuing to push to make sure we are educating people to understand the importance of vaccines.

I need to recognize the Jamaican Canadian Association, the Belka Enrichment Centre, the Jane and Finch Boys and Girls Clubs, the Afri-Can FoodBasket and Kitchen24 as examples of organizations that helped to deliver food and hot meals to many of the people who were struggling in the riding.

I will move on to Bill C-2 and the small businesses that still need help. I am very pleased to see Bill C-2. It is so important. I will tell the House about Islington Travel Agencies on Islington Avenue. I believe it has been there for 35 years. It is owned by a sole proprietor who is a woman. She used to have six people working for her. She has been trying to carry the business forward by herself. She gets some help, but she owns the building, so it creates other problems with respect to some of these different programs.

I believe Bill C-2 will really target the tourism and travel industry. When we talk about what we have to do to get through this pandemic and get over it, and unfortunately it looks like we are heading for another challenging issue, we need to give people the confidence that they can travel, go to restaurants or go out and feel safe, but wear their mask if necessary. Unfortunately, I see far too many restaurants with very few people in them. People are still very intimidated regarding any exposure they might have. Dolcini's is another business that without the help of the government would no longer be in business today. It used to provide beautiful sweets to the major hotels and banquet halls in the city. Once those businesses were no longer functioning, it no longer had a business to serve. It has managed, little by little, with the help of the government, to be able to move forward.

All of these different companies are so grateful, as am l, for what the government has done. I hope we can pass Bill C-2, get it to the finance committee and ask the questions that are necessary to make it better and stronger. From here, I hope we will move into the economic recovery that we all want to see.

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

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on her very moving speech.

Earlier we heard about how urgent these actions and programs are. There are some people who were not eligible for certain programs, which is unfortunate. Urgent action was needed, but the government decided that an election was more urgent.

We could have adopted measures this fall to support people with serious illnesses and self-employed workers who do not get any financial assistance, as my colleague pointed out.

What does my colleague think about improving Bill C‑2 to help self-employed cultural workers, which is something the Bloc Québécois is calling for? Does she agree with that?

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I stand here as a member who is happy to know that many people received the help they needed with the push for $500 a week on the CERB when it first came out, but right now there are people who are still suffering. Even in my own community they are out every day, every weekend, fully on the weekend, getting food to people who cannot pay the bills right now and cannot get food on the table.

In my words and in my comments today, I talked of enhancements to Bill C-2. I talked about these gaps that are missing and, most certainly, it has to do with the need for $500 a week for families who are still trying to feed their family.

Also, we cannot send workers to work if they are sick. We need these 10 days of paid sick leave for all workers.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, listening to the member's comments, I am going to draw the conclusion that the NDP will not be supporting Bill C-2. I would find that most unfortunate because it continues to provide Canadians and businesses real, tangible support through the pandemic. We have had a number of members make reference to seniors, who we have fully supported throughout this pandemic, and we will continue to do so.

The member and her caucus seem to be of the opinion that under all circumstances, without any exceptions, there should be no clawbacks to any federal program. Is that a fair assessment, or could she provide some examples?

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the voters of Port Moody—Coquitlam, Anmore and Belcarra have bestowed their faith in me to work on their behalf in the House. I am grateful for their trust and I am here to serve them.

I stand on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people. The Port Moody—Coquitlam riding is on the unceded traditional territory of the Coast Salish Tsleil-Waututh. I extend my gratitude to the volunteers and activists who knocked on doors this election in the wind, rain and heat during a pandemic, who made phone calls, built signs and delivered them and stepped up to tell family, friends and neighbours that better is possible. I also stand in gratitude to those volunteers in 2019 who laid the groundwork that led to me standing here today and to those in my family who are by my side every moment.

I am here to tell the stories from the doorsteps. There has been too much loss and too many struggles. One story stands out. A mother, who had been intubated from October to December, lost her businesses and 60% of her lung capacity. She said the hardest part of her COVID journey was those weeks she had to spend alone in a hospital bed with no human touch, no visits from her children or family and no one to put a straw to her lips when she was too weak to do it herself.

COVID has been hard on everyone. On a doorstep, I met a high school graduate who asked me if he would be able to find a good-paying job when he graduates from university. I met a deejay who lost his income and his rental home twice due to the commoditization of housing, and I met an education assistant approaching retirement who was worried her next home would be a tent: The home she lives in is being scooped up by developers, and she cannot afford one of the new luxury condos that will take its place.

I stand for affordable housing. Too much housing stock has been redeveloped into luxury condos, and the federal government has not invested enough to keep and build co-operative and non-market housing. The most vulnerable are being displaced. It is getting harder every day for people to stay in my riding of Port Moody—Coquitlam. Rapid and robust investment in stable, affordable housing is critical to ensure we can all live, play and work in the communities we call home.

I stand for youth who are inheriting a future of uncertainty. Please know that they are scared of what the future will look like for them. Youth will no longer accept words and intentions. They want action on climate, and they want it now. During this year of heat domes, fires and floods in B.C., youth have taken to lying down in the streets of Vancouver to try to get across to us the urgency of their asks.

I stand for people living with disabilities. People living on provincial and federal disability payments were already struggling before the pandemic, and it has gotten worse. I have friends in Port Moody—Coquitlam who have not been able to go out into society for almost two years because of the risk to their immune systems. For vulnerable people living on such limited incomes, the costs of the necessary PPE alone have caused hardship. At the NDP's urging in the last Parliament, the government announced COVID-19 financial support for seniors, students, workers and businesses, but Canadians living with disabilities have consistently been left behind.

There is a lot of work to do. In the spirit of collaboration and co-operation, we can work together in the House to build a better Canada for all and repair the eroded safety nets that keep food on the table and people in their homes. That work includes enhancements to Bill C-2.

When the government cut assistance for nearly 900,000 Canadians and decided to claw back the guaranteed income supplement from seniors and the Canada child benefit from parents, these people winded up with less money to pay for the essentials, like food.

These cuts have come at a time of increasing prices because of inflation, rising gas prices and supply chain issues locally, nationally and globally. According to Canada's Food Price Report, a family's annual food expenditures is expected to rise by $695 this year. These increases will be the heaviest for those who can least afford them.

Throughout this pandemic, in Port Moody—Coquitlam, families have already relied on the generosity of committed volunteers from organizations like the Immigrant Link Centre Society, the People's Pantry, Tri-Cities Moms Group and the SHARE Food Bank.

Let me share some alarming statistics from Food Banks Canada's HungerCount 2021 report: food bank use increased by more than 20% across Canada since the start of the pandemic; 9% of those who are accessing food banks are seniors and the rate of increase of this group is far out-pacing other age groups; and 18% of those accessing food banks are single-parent households. Single-parent households need to feed their children.

When we factor in the cuts to CRB and the clawbacks to the GIS and CCB, the only options for too many people will be to seek help from already stretched food bank charities, rather than have the financial assurance the government promised to them during the recent election. The government promised to support people for as long as they needed. That promise must be kept.

What workers need now is the extension of the Canada recovery benefit to $500 per week, as long as they need it, to ensure that no child, worker, senior, or person goes without food. As part of an enhanced bill, in Bill C-2, 10 days of paid sick leave needs to be extended to all workers. This is essential for every worker in Canada as long as COVID is with us.

Let me share a story of a young worker in my riding who had to make the impossible choice to go to work sick or not be able to pay their rent. They had done everything right to keep themself safe from COVID, but they were infected by someone in their own household. Entire households are impacted when one of the working adults is unable to bring home a pay cheque.

If we want to stop the spread in our community, we must make it possible for all workers to stay home for 10 days, without risking loss of income.

In closing, the COVID-19 pandemic is not over. The fourth wave is still hitting hard. We do not know what the impacts of new variants such as Omicron will bring, but right now we know it is not the time to cut supports. Too many Canadians still need the government to help them stay healthy and to make ends meet.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in fact the program that we are talking about in Bill C-2 is called the tourism and hospitality recovery program. It targets all tourism and hospitality businesses to ensure they can still access the wage subsidy and the rent subsidy. It targets them in order to help them continue to recover. We recognize that because of the structure of their industry and how they have been uniquely impacted by COVID-19, the businesses are going to need those supports for many months to come.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member was speaking earlier about transitioning, but Bill C-2 does not have a transition for hotels, restaurants, or the arts and culture industries. It is just more subsidies.

Where is the government plan to get tourism going again, to get people into our restaurants, to get people into our theatres and into our concert halls? These companies and organizations cannot just live on handouts from the government every once in a while. We need to get back to business.

Where is the government's plan for that?

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Mr. Speaker, let me congratulate you and the people of West Nova for your re-election. We appreciate the important role that the Speaker plays in our parliamentary system.

As this is my first speech in the House in the 44th Parliament, I would like to thank the people of Whitby, who have put their trust in me to be a strong, rational voice for them in the House, and I do stress rational. Their trust and support is not something I ever take for granted, and I will seek to do my very best every day to move our country forward in a way that brings value to them and their lives. Whether it be advocating for specific projects like a geothermal district energy solution to help us get to net zero, a community building with 500 units of net-zero housing, a Whitby sports complex or a skilled trades innovation centre, I am working to make a tangible difference in our community. I am also committed to being a conduit for them to give input in the legislative process, as we have done throughout the pandemic so far.

I will also try to provide strategic leadership on how we create a stronger local innovation ecosystem and build affordable housing and enhance our two downtowns. Whitby is very fortunate to have Brooklin and Whitby as downtowns in our community, so we have two downtowns to build.

I will always seek to be a strong, reliable and responsive MP who is a source creative solutions, and I seek to enhance the work that our government is doing. I thank Whitby again for its support and thank residents for being actively engaged with my office and team on a regular basis. Their input makes me a better MP.

Also, I would like to take a moment to thank the two most important women in my life, who make it possible for me to be here and whose effort and support mean the world to me. They are my wife Suze and my daughter Alexis. I love them both beyond words and appreciate all the sacrifices they have made and continue to make so that I may do the very important work the people of Whitby have elected me to do. Knowing they are both on my team makes all the difference.

I also should take this opportunity to quickly and emphatically thank all the many dedicated volunteers in Whitby who supported me in my campaign. Their dedication to civic engagement is a source of inspiration for me every day, so I thank them very much for all their support.

On the topic at hand, we know that throughout the pandemic the waves of COVID-19 have caused immeasurable hardship and countless challenges for the average small business owners. Whether they run an established business or a recent start-up, or they have a family-run business or are self-employed, their business is their livelihood. They have put countless hours and blood, sweat and tears into starting and growing their business.

As a small business owner myself for over 12 years, who gave advice and provided hands-on support to help entrepreneurs start new businesses, I have first-hand knowledge of the many challenges businesses face in the best of times. I have helped many business owners manage and scale their businesses. However, operating a business over the last 20 months has been like no period I can remember. No one had experience running a business through a global pandemic. There was no road map. However, I have been regularly checking in with local businesses in my riding throughout this time and listening deeply.

We all need to acknowledge what entrepreneurs, business owners and sole proprietors have experienced and endured over the past 20 months. It is bordering on almost unbearable, frankly. These times have been tougher than ever and filled with uncertainty, frustration, anxiety and disappointment because of the worst public health crisis in 100 years and the necessary health restrictions put in place to protect people's health and safety.

I want to acknowledge that all those business owners have been through an emotional roller coaster. I want to let all business owners out there know, especially in Whitby, that I have been listening and I feel their stress.

That said, our government has done its utmost to ensure that business owners were consulted across Canada throughout the pandemic and that we offered broad-based and inclusive supports to the greatest number of businesses. Programs were designed in a way targeted to meet the needs of those businesses, and they were modified over and over again until they essentially filled all the gaps that were initially discovered.

As everyone can appreciate, our government rolled out these broad programs in record time, providing pandemic-related financial support to hundreds of thousands of businesses across Canada.

In Whitby alone, we had 4,100 businesses avail themselves of the CEBA loan, for example. The combination of worker benefits such as CERB, and later CRB, and the business supports such as the wage subsidy, rent subsidy and the $40,000 to $60,000 partially forgivable, zero-interest business loans provided a life raft to these businesses. They enabled these business owners to weather probably one of the most turbulent times in their lives.

These programs and others insulated the Canadian economy from the worst economic scarring that surely would have resulted from widespread business closures if our government had not stepped up and shouldered the burden so that Canadian families and businesses would not have to.

The recovery period would have been significantly extended and the trough of economic decline would have been much more painful, as the Great Depression was, had our government not acted quickly and provided the extensive programs that brought financial support to Canadians. We need to remember that $8 out of every $10 in pandemic supports came from the federal government. Yes, our government did the heavy lifting.

Things have now changed. We are entering a new chapter of the pandemic story line as the COVID-19 virus has gone through successive waves. At this point our case numbers are relatively low, although recent numbers are going up in our province, which I admit is very concerning. Vaccination rates are high. The general public has become accustomed to masking and social distancing, and we have gone back to many of the activities that we were once asked to give up for the sake of our collective health and safety. Let us remember our vaccination rate is one of the highest in the world, and we have just recently had the welcome news of vaccines being approved for children between the ages of five and 11 years old. This is a huge contribution to the fight against COVID-19.

We have also seen one million jobs recovered that were lost due to the pandemic. Canada has had one of the most robust recoveries so far and is primed for growth. We just have to compare Canada with our southern neighbours and we will see that Canada's job recovery has far surpassed the U.S., at 100% compared with 81%.

Our government predicted a long time ago that the rise in public expenditure for COVID-19 financial supports would be sizable in order to ensure a strong, robust and speedy recovery. It was also predictable that as the pandemic conditions changed for the better, eventually these broad-based programs would no longer be necessary and would gradually be dialed back or stopped and replaced with more targeted measures. This is exactly what we are seeing with Bill C-2.

Out of prudence and fiscal responsibility, our government realizes that there is no longer widespread support for broad-based programs and they are no longer necessary. What was once necessary in the minds of the public is no longer necessarily justified. The legislation has been proposed. Bill C-2 aims to provide more targeted supports for several categories of businesses that are still struggling, including hospitality and tourism, and other industries that have been the hardest hit, while building in flexibility to provide support in circumstances where regional surges in COVID-19 case numbers necessitate further lockdowns and make businesses vulnerable again.

Bill C-2 aims to extend the Canada recovery hiring program until May 7, 2022, for eligible businesses with current revenue losses above 10%, and to increase the subsidy rate to 50%. Bill C-2 also aims to create important essential programs: The tourism and hospitality recovery program will continue to provide wage and rent subsidies at a rate of up to 75% to businesses operating in tourism and hospitality. These include hotels, tour operators, travel agencies, restaurants, pubs, food trucks, coffee shops, hotels, motels, cottages, bed and breakfasts, youth hostels, live performances, exhibits, museums, zoos, nature parks and dinner cruises. The list goes on. I can tell members that in my community we really need these supports.

Bill C-2 is going to help the hardest-hit industries get through the rest of this pandemic. Their revenues are not expected to return until at least six months from now. I urge all members of the House to support the safe and speedy passage of Bill C-2.

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

Mr. Speaker, I commend you not only for recognizing the riding of Laurentides—Labelle but also for your appointment.

Some excellent points have been raised with regard to Bill C-2, which seeks to provide assistance to businesses and individuals. However, as has already been mentioned, we are very disappointed that there is nothing in the bill to help self-employed workers.

Does my colleague think that we could improve this bill to ensure that artists can get the help they need? Most of them are low-income.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is great to see you in that chair.

It is really an honour to rise in the House for the first time in the 44th Parliament.

Before I speak to Bill C-2 and this government's out-of-control spending, let me take this opportunity to thank the residents of St. Albert—Edmonton for placing their trust and confidence in me for the third time. It is a great honour, indeed it is the highest honour of my life and a great privilege to serve in this place. With that honour and that privilege come many important responsibilities that I take with the utmost seriousness.

While it is not possible to thank all those who helped me through the campaign, because there were so many, I want to acknowledge and thank my campaign manager, Jeff Wedman, for his leadership. Most importantly, I want to thank my parents, Tom and Rita Cooper, who worked harder than just about anyone on my campaign. Without their steadfast support, I could not have done it, and so I thank them.

On to the substance of Bill C-2, it is legislation that proposes to spend billions and billions of dollars. This is billions and billions on top of this Liberal government's $635-billion spending spree in 2020, and billions and billions on top of the $101 billion of additional spending provided for in last spring's budget. With this blizzard of spending, it is difficult to keep track of it all. It begs the question: Where is all this money coming from? Simply put, this government is spending money it does not have. What it is doing in an unprecedented fashion is printing money.

To put this in some context, when this government delivered an historic $354-billion deficit, the largest deficit in Canadian history, the Bank of Canada bought 80% of the government's debt. Over the past year, we have seen a massive increase in the supply of money, a 23% increase. This is unprecedented in modern times. Indeed, we would have to go back to the early 1970s, 50 years ago, to match the increase in the supply of money.

Now, in the face of historic deficits and the doubling of the national debt in less than two years as a result of this barrage of Liberal spending, the approach of this government is to say, “There's no issue. We can turn on the taps and keep the tap going without consequence.”

During the spring of 2020, I served on the finance committee when this government started to turn on the tap in a big way. I vividly recall my good friend, the member for Carleton, warning the government that all this spending would soon lead to inflation. I vividly recall ministers on the other side of the House dismissing out of hand the warnings of the member for Carleton, notwithstanding that his concerns, his warnings, were grounded upon empirical economic science, and notwithstanding that those concerns were grounded upon economic history. “Oh no,” they said, “Forget inflation. Let us talk about deflation.”

They said the rules did not apply to them, that it was 2020 and those were old rules. They said interest rates were low and that now was the time to spend and double and triple down.

Fast-forward a year and a half and, surprise, surprise, the member for Carleton was right and the government was wrong, because we have seen record levels of inflation. It was 4.7% in October. What does 4.7% mean? It is well more than double the Bank of Canada target of 2%, but even more worrying is that it is some 40% above the upper range of the Bank of Canada's control range of 3%. It is not as if this is an aberration. It is not as if this is a one-off. We have seen, for the past seven months, inflation above 3%, again above the upper end of the Bank of Canada's control range of 3% and well above the Bank of Canada's target of 2%.

Recently, we heard the Prime Minister say that he does not think about monetary policy. It is quite shocking on some level for him to say that. Why is it that the Prime Minister would not be thinking about monetary policy? Is he kidding? However, to give the Prime Minister some credit, it might be the first time in his life that he actually told the truth, because if there is one thing that Canadians have learned about the Prime Minister over the past six years it is that he does not think much about anything other than himself.

Consistent with the fact that the Prime Minister does not think much about anything, literally in the next breath, after he said he does not think about monetary policy, he said that he thinks about families. Here is a news flash for the Prime Minister: If there is any group of Canadians who are thinking about inflation, it is hard-working everyday families, because it is they who are paying the brunt of the Prime Minister's inflation tax. Thanks to the Prime Minister, for everyday working Canadians, prices are rising while wages are declining. Indeed, right now inflation is growing at two and a half times the rate of wages.

The cost of living is getting more expensive. The cost of essentials is going through the roof. We are talking about a 30% increase for gasoline and double-digit increases for essential food products. We have the third-highest level of food inflation in the G7. For home heating, there is a double-digit increase. I know that does not mean much to the Prime Minister, but for everyday Canadians working hard to put food on the table and to pay their rent or mortgage it is a big deal, especially at a time when 40% of Canadians are $200 away from insolvency.

If the Prime Minister really does think about families and he really does care about families, it is long past due that he starts to think about monetary policy and starts to think about inflation and his disastrous policies. He should not only think about this, but come back to the House with a plan to get spending under control, to tamp down inflation and to restore sound monetary policy.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Mr. Speaker, you better not be giving out any blank cheques, because the member certainly has been directing those questions through you.

I watched the member's speech both earlier in the House as well as from the government lobby. I know the member across the way is very passionate, but I do not think she does a whole lot to advance her cause in a credible way.

I want to say a couple of things on the blank cheque piece. We are in a minority Parliament. We were in a minority in the 43rd Parliament. The government had no blank cheques. We worked with parliamentarians of all stripes to be able to pass legislation here. We had to work with members from all sides. I presume the member opposite actually voted against some of the support measures.

Let us talk about Bill C-2, because that is why we are here today. Does the member support Bill C-2 and the measures that are going to support the Canadian businesses that are still impacted, yes or no?

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to be here. I will be splitting my time with the member for St. Albert—Edmonton. He has always got such incredibly intelligent debate and I always look forward to his words.

I am so thrilled to be back in the House. I very much thank the people of Calgary Midnapore for returning me to the chamber with the highest percentile of votes in Calgary, the highest percentile of votes in any major centre and what I am most proud of, the greatest number of votes for any woman in Canada. It is an honour to be back in the House.

I would also like to take a moment to thank my team, which was so incredible throughout the election. I would like to thank my campaign manager, Mr. Justin Gotfried, the son of Richard Gotfried, the MLA for Calgary-Fish Creek. I would also like the thank Katie Cook who was my communications point person and my sister Holly Schramm who served as my official agent, keeping me in line and out of trouble with those books. I would also like to thank all the incredible volunteers. I would like to thank my parents Keith and Angie Schramm, who are still my constituents to this day, and my very good friends who I grew up with in Calgary Midnapore who put out signs and raised money for me, Joanna Shaw Morin and Caroline Baynes. Of course, I cannot go without thanking the loves of my life, my husband James Kusie and my beautiful son Edward Kusie who supported me in this journey back to the House of Commons. I thank them and I love them.

Again, I thank so much the people of Calgary Midnapore.

Here we are again in the House debating legislation on new benefits. As the member across the aisle indicated, yes, we on this side of the House were very collaborative and certainly went along with the government's requests for funds and for programs, because we care about Canadians. We are compassionate individuals and we knew that was what Canadians needed at that time.

I will give a brief history of all the times we went along with the legislation despite concerns because we knew that was what Canadians needed at that time.

Let us go back to March 13, 2020, when Bill C-12, an act to amend the Financial Administration Act, was presented; one billion dollars in funding for approval. We did not put up a fuss on this side. In fact, it received royal assent the very same day.

Let us go forward a little further into time. On March 24, 2020, we had Bill C-13, an act respecting certain measures in response to COVID-19. As the shadow minister for families and social development at that time, it was legislation to fix the shortcomings that the government missed at the time it created the original legislation, but, one again, we did not put up a fuss on this side of the House. We recognized that was what Canadians needed at that time. That bill also received approval from the House that day and royal assent the very next day.

On April 11, 2020, there was a second act respecting certain measures in response to COVID-19, Bill C-14,, which was CEWS, and we know there were certainly a lot of faults with that at the beginning, as well as the CERB. It received royal assent the very same day. Again, I am just pointing out the collaboration this side of the House had always provided the government in getting Canadians the benefits they need.

Here we are again today, being asked to approve Bill C-2, but we are in a different time. We are heading out of the pandemic. I recognize we have the omicron variant, and I hope no fifth wave, but Canadians want to move forward into the future.

Therefore, I have a message for the government today, and it is that you do not get a blank cheque.

It is time to move our economy from benefits to jobs, and I am very proud to say that as the new shadow minister for employment future workforce development and disability inclusion. We currently have one million job openings, with a 16.4% jump from August to September alone. That is incredible.

One-fifth of those are in the hospitality sector. Other major vacancies occur in these critical health care sectors, including nurses and psychiatric nurses. We have heard in the House about the crisis in the trucking industry, how the average age of truckers is near retirement age and how there are just no new workers coming forward to take these positions. In fact, over one-third of employers have indicated that they have limited their growth in general as a result of not being able to find employees.

This affects every region and so many sectors. I said this when I made my request for an emergency debate on Friday to have a discussion about the shortage of workers in the country. It affects Quebec, the manufacturing sector in Ontario and of course the tourism sector in my home province of Alberta. For this reason again, I say again to the members opposite, “You don't get a blank cheque.”

I would like to move on to something that is very uncomfortable to talk about, and that is the fraud that we have seen with these programs. In fact, FINTRAC reported that there were organized criminals who knowingly and actively defrauded the government with both CERB and CEBA programs, that social media was used to recruit people, and in fact that stolen identifications were used in an effort to get these funds. There was the use of prepaid cards to prevent a paper trail, so they were very smart about this. They knew what they were doing, unfortunately for the government.

In addition, there were individuals who received these funds while not even living in Canada and in fact living in jurisdictions of concern, countries that posed a higher money-laundering or terrorist financing risk. From the start of 2020 until October 31, 30,095 suspicious transaction reports were registered for COVID-related benefits. That is over 30,000. Sadly, 30,000 of those also dealt with human trafficking and drugs, two issues on which the government has failed, but prosecutions are unlikely. Why? In July 2020, the Canadian Revenue Agency advised the House of Commons finance committee that the program had been targeted by organized crime and that Canada does not prioritize the investigation and prosecution of financial criminals. In fact, in the past decade alone, Canada has secured fewer than, wait for it, fewer than 50 laundering convictions. The government is not taking organized crime seriously. Again, for that reason, “You don't get a blank cheque.”

Finally, we in this country need to get a grip on inflation. Canada is among the top 10 countries with the highest inflation rates in the G20. Canada has the second-highest inflation rate in the G7, second only to the United States, which I know the government thought it would get along better with, since the Liberals still talk about the previous president all the time. Rates are predicted to reach 4.9% this month, a three-decade high, and are expected to stay there well into 2022.

Some provinces, including Prince Edward Island, are experiencing rates as high as 6.3%, and unfortunately it is low-income Canadians who spend one-third on shelter and 15% on food and higher energy prices. We cannot control the pandemic, but we can control spending. There was $74 billion on the CRB and there will be $8 billion for Bill C-2 if it passes. We should investigate the fraud. We should evaluate this further. Perhaps we should bring it to the finance committee if the Liberals are willing to strike the finance committee up again, but my final message to them is this: “You don't get a blank cheque.”

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from the Liberal Party mentioned earlier that the old age security benefit was for seniors aged 75 and over, but I think it is more pertinent to talk about seniors aged 65 and over.

I want to come back to what he said. We had an unnecessary election that delayed the introduction of new programs. That is very clear and, as a result, our discussions and our work in the House on the new programs have also been delayed.

It is also important to remember that self-employed workers do not currently have access to EI. Bill C-2 does not provide any financial support to self-employed workers in this area. We are extremely disappointed.

We are also worried about self-employed workers because they might have to change jobs this winter, and the stakes will be higher then.

What does the government want to do? Does it want to do something to improve Bill C-2?

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague opposite for his question.

First, Bill C‑2 definitely covers tourism businesses and businesses hit hard by the pandemic. In addition, our election platform contained a specific promise for craftspeople and the cultural sector. I am confident that the Minister of Canadian Heritage will create a measure for craftspeople and the cultural sector.

I apologize for my French.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a moment to congratulate you on your appointment. You have a voice that carries, and everyone can hear you all the way at the back of the House. I think that, even without a microphone, you could make yourself heard and maintain order in the House. Congratulations.

The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance stated her firm intention to help the sectors most affected by the pandemic. Tourism is obviously one of them, as is the cultural sector. However, Bill C‑2 contains nothing on the cultural sector. We were promised a program that would help artists and self‑employed workers in the cultural sector. Once Bill C‑2 is passed, help will be available to the hardest-hit sectors.

Here is my question: Can we tell artists and self‑employed workers in the cultural sector when this help will be available to them?

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I did not think that the trouble with interpretation would be with my English, but here we are.

I want to take a moment, for my colleague who had trouble with interpretation, to talk about the government's decision to use a more targeted approach. I would say to my colleagues that we are truly at a different time here today than we were at the height of the pandemic.

I want to take us back to March 13, 2020. It seems to be that infamous day in history when we were all put on airplanes to go back home, and we thought that maybe the pandemic would only last a couple of weeks. However, of course, it has been much more severe than that, and the government certainly took measures, whether it was the wage subsidy, the rent subsidy, the emergency business loan or the individual benefits through the Canada emergency response benefit.

Vaccination is now at a much higher rate. As I mentioned in my speech, we have returned the roughly one million jobs that we had lost at the height of the pandemic. In fact, many of the conversations here today seem to be about making sure that we have enough people to help drive our economy forward, and I share that sentiment.

For colleagues who might have some concerns about the benefits that are being wound down, I think this is extremely important and I want to give one example. After the election, my fiancée and I had the opportunity to travel to Newfoundland and Labrador for a short vacation, just to spend some time together. We were in Port aux Basques, where the ferry comes from North Sydney to Newfoundland, and I went into the local Circle K. At the time, they were offering a $500 bonus for a $15-an-hour cashier position. For some of my colleagues who are asking why we are cutting back the Canada emergency response benefit, or the CRB at the time, it is because we are at a point now where the pandemic is not necessarily an impediment to finding employment in the economy. I certainly applaud where the government is going with this legislation and the direction of being much more targeted in the days ahead.

There are those who are concerned about income supports, because I heard, as I sat here this morning, people talking about disposable income, particularly for vulnerable Canadians. Whether it is the members of the NDP caucus or others in the opposition who are concerned, I want to direct them to a couple of things.

One is the guaranteed income supplement. In the last Parliament, from 2015 to 2019, we increased the guaranteed income supplement by 10%. It was a historic investment that brought a quarter of a million seniors out of poverty. We are pledging to increase that by $500. We pledged that during the election, and that is something we will be working toward here in the 44th Parliament.

Another is old age security. We have already delivered on that, with a 10% increase for seniors who are 75 and up.

However, there is one I really want to hammer in. If members are worried about income supports, let us all collectively in the House work toward the Canada workers benefit, something that rewards individuals who are working in lower-income positions. The government has pledged to increase it. I invite all members of the House, on this side and otherwise, to help push and move that forward, because that is going to be very important.

I also want to take a an opportunity to talk about the position of Her Majesty's loyal opposition. As I look over to the screens that are here, I know some of our colleagues are participating virtually. When I was sitting at home at the height of the pandemic, I would hear a Conservative member in one breath say that the government was spending too much, the government was running major deficits and we have to be very concerned about debt. Honestly, as a member of Parliament I think the conversations about deficits and debt are very important and real. However, in the very next breath, the next member up for the Conservative Party would say that the government was not doing enough for small businesses and individuals. It is that inconsistency that I have trouble with. There are big-tent parties here in the House, and I know not every parliamentarian is going to always see eye to eye on everything. However, we need to make sure that we have a consistent conversation.

Our government has taken an approach. If we are criticized for doing too much, I would rather be in that position since we supported Canadians and small businesses through the pandemic. The economic repercussions of doing less were far too grave.

Bill C‑2 basically consists of four program categories. First, there is the tourism and hospitality recovery program, which would provide certain tourism and hospitality businesses, such as hotels, tour operators, travel agencies and restaurants, with subsidies at a rate of up to 75%.

Second, the hardest-hit business recovery program would provide other businesses that have sustained heavy losses with subsidies at a rate of up to 50%.

Third, the local lockdown program would provide businesses affected by temporary local lockdowns with subsidies at a rate of up to 75%.

Lastly, the Canada worker lockdown benefit is specifically targeted to individuals affected by provincial public health restrictions.

I want to conclude by saying that I truly believe the measures the government is putting forward are measured. We have been there at the height of the pandemic to spend the money necessary to protect Canadian businesses and individuals.

The government is now recognizing that we are in a different place in the pandemic. Employment opportunities are available, but we still want to be mindful of the COVID situation, no doubt. We see in the news today the variants and challenges that are persisting, so we are not though this yet, but we are trying to be much more targeted in our approach of supporting Canadians who need it because of lockdown measures during COVID-19 and the businesses that remain challenged as a result.

I think the government is being prudent in its approach. We are making sure we are there, but we are making sure we are targeted and being mindful of our fiscal position and the need to protect it as we move forward in the days ahead. With that, I look forward to questions.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time this afternoon with my hon. colleague, the member for Saint John—Rothesay.

It is a privilege for me to rise today to speak to extending the government's support for businesses and individuals.

Before I speak to the content of Bill C‑2, I want to highlight all of the work that the government has done throughout the pandemic to help individuals and businesses deal with the worst consequences of COVID‑19.

Our government supported Canadians, with programs including the Canada emergency response benefit, which provided support to nine million Canadians, and the Canada emergency wage subsidy, which provided support to hundreds of thousands of employees and protected millions of jobs. Our economy has recovered the jobs lost during the pandemic and our situation is much better than it would have been if the government had not intervened.

I want to take a moment to address the government's decision to take a more targeted approach. I suspect that I will be asked by some colleagues, at the end of my 10-minute speech, why the government is choosing now to move in a different direction—

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-2, An Act to provide further support in response to COVID-19, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I am trying not to lose my train of thought.

I was saying that, in 2020, a similar bill, Bill C-2, an act relating to economic recovery in response to COVID-19, also sought to urgently pass economic measures. We were being asked to take urgent action because the House had been prorogued, not just for a day or two, but for five weeks. We therefore found ourselves in a situation where the House had to rush to support businesses and workers. In that case, we did not have enough time because we had wasted time on ethics issues.

Now, in November 2021, we have before us a similar bill with the same number, Bill C-2. Once again, we are being asked to urgently pass measures. This time, it is because the Liberals called an election rather than allowing us to continue our work in the House, even though there was nothing preventing us from doing so since the opposition parties were co-operating appropriately on the issues being examined. The Liberals decided to call an election anyway, which I think was useless and irresponsible.

We also had to wait two months before the House resumed sitting. In fact—

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by sincerely thanking the constituents of Thérèse‑De Blainville for placing their trust in me again in the last election. I also want to thank my team, the wonder team, and my volunteers for their tremendous support during this campaign. As I say to my constituents of Thérèse‑De Blainville, I am always on the go and proud to be a strong voice for them here in Ottawa.

I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C‑2 before us. Since the beginning of the pandemic and during the last Parliament, as the critic for employment, labour and skills development and inclusion of persons with disabilities, I have stood many times on issues that directly affect businesses, shops, overcoming this crisis, but also workers and their employment situation.

The government is telling us that Bill C‑2 is essential. I agree. It is also urgent. When it comes to the urgency of the matter I feel like I have seen this film before. We are told about the urgency, but we are not upstream of the questions being asked because it is past the eleventh hour. We are behind. The situation has become urgent because the measures in place came to an end. We are being asked to hurry up and adopt new measures to ensure that there is no interruption. I feel like I already saw this scenario play out because in September 2020, Bill C‑2, An Act relating to economic recovery in response to COVID‑19, proposed three new economic benefits in addition—

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. From what I understand, he is working very closely with the Minister of Canadian Heritage on this program to help artists and self-employed workers in the cultural sector, and I thank him for that as well.

There was one thing that bothered me. The member said that Bill C‑2 would help businesses that have been hit hard, including those in the arts and culture sector. I hope that my colleague would agree that helping the businesses will also help the workers.

Does the member agree that when we provide assistance to businesses, we are also helping the workers and technicians he mentioned, as well as the entire arts sector?

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to inform you that I will share my time with my colleague, the hon. member for Thérèse-De Blainville.

Before I begin my speech, I would like to come back to the answer the colleague from Outremont gave me a few minutes ago. I realize that theatres and cultural enterprises will be able to continue to benefit from these programs, but artists and workers are not included in Bill C‑2. What is in the works is not a bill, but an assistance program, which is much more complicated to put in place and could be done much more quickly with Bill C‑2. I will stop there for the time being, because we hope to have the chance to come back to it.

Since this is my first time rising in the House in this 44th Parliament, I would like to take the opportunity to thank the constituents of Drummond, who have put their trust in me a second time. It makes me feel honoured and proud, and I will prove worthy of that trust.

I also want to thank the volunteers who gave it their all, their time, energy and passion, and spent long hours working on the campaign. I am thinking of two wonderful volunteers in particular: my parents, my mother and father who are 81 years old. They gave of their time and travelled around the riding, and they were very happy to do it. I want to be young like them when I am old.

I want to thank the team in my riding office, who are so essential. I want to sincerely thank them for their support and for the excellent service they provide to the people of Drummond. I am thinking of Andrée-Anne, Marie-Christine, Marika and Jacinte. I am also thinking of my assistant Mélissa, here on the Hill, and of Alexandre, who works with us. They are invaluable, and I care about them a lot.

I will close by thanking my family and friends. I mentioned my parents earlier. My colleagues in the House are all too familiar with the effect that political life can have on a family. My children, Lily-Rose, Tom, Christophe and Alexandrine, are wonderful. I want to thank my wife, Caroline, for being in my life. A wife is completely essential in the life of a politician.

I would like to take a moment to talk about the white ribbon I am wearing this week to express my support for women as part of the campaign to eliminate violence against women and girls, which runs until December 6. This problem concerns us all, and I wear the ribbon with pride. I hope there will come a day when we no longer need to wear this kind of symbol, because such violence is unacceptable.

I also want to say a special hello to Yvette Mathieu Lafond, whom I have already talked about in the House. Last year I celebrated her 100th birthday with her. When I saw her for her 100th birthday, Ms. Mathieu Lafond and I agreed to meet up again for her 101st. We have plans to get together this Friday, and I hope to celebrate her birthday with her for many years to come.

I mentioned my family and my children earlier. My nine-year-old son Tom is very funny. When he was little and something scared him or worried him, he would close his eyes and say that it would magically disappear that way. It was quite cute. Kids do that kind of thing. However, kids are not the only ones; the Liberals are doing the same thing.

Members will recall that is what they did with WE Charity last year. They prorogued Parliament to put an end to debate about the scandal so that it would disappear. They also did it this summer when they called the election. They thought they could get re-elected without anyone ever again talking about their missteps. By trying to win a majority, they were hoping that the opposition parties could no longer put the government's feet to the fire. The Liberals closed their eyes and hoped that it would magically disappear.

Here is the difference between the Liberals and my nine-and-a-half-year-old son. He plays soccer and is sometimes the goalkeeper. He knows that if he closes his eyes when faced with three opponents who have the ball, it might be kicked in his face, so he keeps them open, waits for his opponents and, in an effort to prevent them from scoring a goal, he faces them and stands his ground. We expect the same courage from those in charge of a G7 country.

I have to admit that I let myself be taken in somewhat this summer. When the Liberals called the election, I really believed they were doing it in the hope of wiping the slate clean, coming back quickly and taking charge of the situation. I believed they were going to deal with the urgent matters caused by the pandemic, such as the labour shortage and the recovery of affected sectors such as tourism, aerospace and culture, as quickly as possible.

I thought that we were going into an election campaign and that, when we came back from the election, we would sort it out without any nonsense, but that was not the case. We had been hammering away at these issues throughout the election period.

The election took place on September 20, and we waited until November 22 to return to Parliament. Five months have elapsed since our last sitting day in June. During this time when we looked the other way, did the pandemic and all its problems disappear? The answer is no.

When the election was called, a fourth wave was on its way, and here we are now again with a new variant to worry about. If Parliament had been allowed to work, we would not need to discuss Bill C‑2 today, because instead we could have developed assistance programs according to need and put in place the expected assistance for artists and self‑employed workers in the cultural sector. We could even have resumed work on Bill C‑10 after the Senate had finished hacking it to bits.

Everyone here knows how long it takes to pass legislation and get programs up and running. We have to debate in the House and in committee, meet witnesses, conduct studies and so on.

If we had truly put the public interest ahead of political interests, we would have had a normal return to Parliament, we could have done our work as usual and brought programs up to date. We could have also brought in new programs and adapted. Unfortunately, that is not what happened, and we ended up wasting time.

In the meantime, self-employed workers and artists in the cultural sector are saying that they are no longer getting any assistance or money, and they do not know what to do. Based on the Minister of Finance's promises, we would have expected some form of assistance for workers in the cultural sector this fall. That is not what is happening with Bill C‑2.

We know that the Minister of Canadian Heritage is currently working on a program to help artists and workers in the cultural sector, who are the hardest hit. That is good, and I promised, along with the Bloc Québécois, to co-operate to ensure this happens quickly. In fact, artists and artisans in the cultural sector have not received any income or assistance for a few weeks now, and they are getting worried.

Without this pointless election and reckless belief that if they close their eyes the problems will disappear, we could have moved forward and there would have been support for everyone.

It really makes me mad. I know that while everyone here continues to receive their paycheque, skilled and essential workers in the cultural sector are looking to reinvent themselves in other industries because they no longer see any way for them to manage. Some of my friends, people with whom I worked and spoke to recently, think they will not even be able to buy a little Christmas gift for their children. Previously, these people were not working small contracts here and there; they had a good, steady income.

I have friends in the world of performing arts who are technicians. They have taken different jobs since the pandemic began and they will never return to the cultural sector. It is a tragedy, because this type of expertise is difficult to replace. It is truly sad to see that we are abandoning a category of workers and especially people who are passionate about their work.

I have a group of friends, including actors and audiovisual technicians, who decided to do something productive during the pandemic, since there was no work. They decided to get together and go shoot a documentary abroad. This was before the fourth wave. They all travelled together to Bangladesh, India and Nepal, hoping to meet ordinary people. They just wanted to chat with them, to learn more about their culture and their reality during the pandemic. They did it at their own expense and did not ask anyone for money or grants. The idea was to put their talent to good use during the crisis. Hopefully, we will get to see the results of their work at some point. The government is failing passionate individuals like these by postponing the help that could be given to them now, through programs that are not yet defined.

I support Bill C-2, because it does include some important assistance and good measures. However, workers in the cultural sector have been overlooked once again, which is really sad.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my Liberal colleague for her speech.

Many seniors who are on the guaranteed income supplement need jobs in order to make sure they have enough to pay the bills each month. However, they, like many Canadians, lost their jobs in 2020 when the pandemic hit this country full force.

I first brought this issue to the attention of the government in August. Here we are on the eve of December, and Bill C-2 represented a perfect opportunity to give CRB amnesty to our lowest-income seniors.

I have heard the Liberals talk about working on it, but this is an urgent situation. Could my Liberal colleague please inform the House when the government will actually help these seniors? They are having to make impossible choices right now about how they are going to pay their rent and put quality food on the table.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Madam Speaker, during the campaign, and even long before that, the Bloc Québécois kept saying and is still saying that certain industries have been harder hit than others and are having a harder time recovering from the pandemic. Aeronautics, aerospace, as well as the tourism and hospitality industries are doing well, but arts and culture is not.

I heard my colleague from Outremont speak very passionately and call on us to support this bill to help hotels, restaurants, the tourism sector and all of these other industries.

Why are artists, craftspeople and others working in the cultural sector not included in Bill C‑2? Why are they being egregiously left out?

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-2, an act to provide further support in response to COVID-19. This bill will implement some significant support measures, including measures for the sectors hardest hit by the pandemic and for the workers and small businesses that have really been struggling, for example those in the tourism and hospitality sectors.

There is no denying that COVID‑19 has had devastating consequences for workers and business owners in these sectors. They saw a nearly 50% drop in revenues, down from $104.4 billion in 2019 to $53.4 billion in 2020; in that same period, the number of jobs directly connected to the tourism industry dropped by 41%. Preliminary projections put revenues for summer 2021 at about 50% of the figures for the summer of 2019.

Despite these challenges, owners of tourism-based businesses and their employees have all proved to be tenacious and resilient, ensuring that their services will be available when the crisis is well and truly over. Many of them have said that the assistance from the federal government is the only reason why the workers in the sector are able to continue putting a roof over their heads and food on their tables. However, we know that many stakeholders in the tourism and hospitality industry are still struggling. I am talking about hotels, airports, travel agencies, cruise lines, theatres and restaurants, which are vital.

Restaurants make our main streets what they are, and members have heard me say this many times in the House. I have spoken directly with countless impacted restaurant operators, who tell me just how hard the last 20 months have been, how they were the first to close and often the last to reopen and how even now many of them are only partially open.

As parliamentary secretary for the Minister of Small Business in the last mandate, I represented the government on many different working groups, including the Restaurant Revival Working Group, where I worked closely with Restaurants Canada and heard first-hand from independent restaurateurs across our great country. The bill we have before us today responds directly to their plea for continued support from the federal government as we continue to fight COVID-19.

I now want to speak in concrete terms about the support that Bill C-2 will provide hard-hit sectors through two new main components.

First, the tourism and hospitality recovery program will support hotels, tour operators, travel agencies, restaurants and many other businesses by providing them with wage and rent subsidies of up to 75%. Second, the hardest-hit business recovery program will provide subsidies that could cover 50% of the costs of businesses that have faced deep and enduring losses. The government is also proposing to extend the Canada recovery hiring program until May 2022 at a new rate of 50%, with the possibility of extension if needed.

I find it very important to lay out some of the details of what is in the bill we are debating today because it often seems that some members in this place would like to debate something else entirely. For example, on Friday, I believe it was the member for Carleton, in his 20-minute speech on Bill C-2, mentioned inflation 33 times. That is about once every 36 seconds. How many times did he mention tourism, hospitality or small businesses? It was zero times, none at all.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Madam Speaker, my wife and I volunteer to deliver food for the food bank, so we certainly understand the circumstances that many people are facing these days. The programs that are in place now have been a great benefit to the people who I am speaking to, and as we go forward, the targeted approach that we are planning in Bill C-2 will benefit those in the most dire need.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Madam Speaker, I would like to start by advising the House that I will be sharing my time with the member for Outremont.

I will start by taking my first opportunity to speak in this House to give heartfelt thanks to the residents of Newmarket and Aurora for placing their trust in me a second time, to my team for its hard work in getting me here, and to my family for its continuous support.

It is an honour to rise today to speak to Bill C-2, a bill that is so important to so many across this country, one that we are all lucky to call home. We are lucky for many reasons, but especially because when times get tough, Canadians step up to help one another. It would not be any different with our government.

When the pandemic first hit, we were quick to roll out a number of broad-based programs to support those who saw their livelihoods completely change. Canadians needed help, and help was delivered. The Canada emergency wage subsidy has helped more than 5.3 million Canadians keep their jobs; the Canada emergency rent subsidy and lockdown support have helped more than 215,000 organizations cover their rent, mortgage and other expenses; the Canada recovery caregiving benefit has provided income support for over 400,000 employed and self-employed Canadians while they had to care for a child or a family member for COVID-related reasons; and the Canada recovery sickness benefit has supported over 700,000 Canadians unable to work because they were sick.

These are just a few examples of the essential support programs provided to Canadians during one of the toughest crises our country has ever faced, supports that kept businesses going through the worst days of the pandemic.

While we are seeing some better days now, there are still some sectors in our economy that need support. This is why we are moving from broad-based economic supports to targeted measures. This is why we introduced Bill C-2.

The comprehensive set of programs our government introduced has evolved as the pandemic has evolved. This has allowed us to continue to provide support to Canadians who need it the most. Right now we are reaching a turning point in the fight against COVID and in our recovery, but the recovery is uneven, and as the pandemic is ongoing, public health measures that are saving lives are also restricting some economic activity. Our focus is to protect and create jobs, so we can make sure that Canada has the strongest possible recovery. With Bill C-2, we would be better able to address the challenges that certain sectors in our economy are still facing.

To support organizations that have been deeply impacted in the tourism industry since the start of the pandemic, we are introducing the tourism and hospitality recovery program. This program would provide wage and rent subsidies up to 75% to eligible businesses with current month and average 12-month revenue decline of 40%. Other businesses that have faced significant losses but do not qualify for this program may receive support through the hardest-hit business recovery program. This is a wage and rent subsidy at the rate of 50% available to eligible businesses with current month and 12-month average revenue loss of at least 50%.

Certain programs do not need a pivot, but rather an extension, so we continue to support those in need. This is why we are proposing to extend the Canada recovery caregiving benefit and the recovery sickness benefit until May 7, 2022, and to increase both by an additional two weeks. These are programs that are working and helping self-employed and employed Canadians from coast to coast to coast. We are committed to making adjustments necessary to reflect the new phase of the recovery.

Finally, we recognize the challenges that may arise from the resurgence of this virus. Bill C-2 provides support for workers and businesses who may be subject to a public health restriction that is necessary to save lives and stop the spread of the virus.

The local lockdown program would provide support for businesses whose local public health guidelines require them to cease activities, resulting in closures and revenue losses. This is a new, targeted benefit available to businesses at a rate of up to 75%, regardless of the sector they are in and regardless of the losses over the course of the pandemic.

Additionally, to assist those who are unable to work as a result of a lockdown, we are proposing the Canada worker lockdown benefit to provide $300 a week in income support, retroactive from October 24, 2021, until May 7, 2022. This would be accessible for the entire duration of the lockdown and would be available to workers who are ineligible for EI or who are eligible but were not paid benefits through EI for the same period. These measures would guarantee that if a government-imposed lockdown occurs, Canadians can have full confidence that they will be supported through challenging times.

Last week, when the Deputy Prime Minister tabled this bill, I reached out to a constituent who owns a hotel. As a local business owner in one of the most impacted sectors of our economy, I wanted to get his thoughts on the bill but also on the economic supports provided by our government throughout the pandemic. When we spoke last week, I was happy to hear that he is currently experiencing a revenue rebound and no longer qualifies for certain programs, and he is happy about that as well. At the same time, he understands that a number of his industry colleagues still do need support, and he is appreciative of the supports and programs that are available to help them bounce back.

He also told me that one of the biggest challenges he is facing right now is finding staff, so I shared with him that in budget 2021 our government introduced the Canada recovery hiring program to help employers hire the workers they need to recover and to grow, with a subsidy of up to 50% of the additional eligible salary or wages. We are both pleased to see that this program will be extended until May 7, 2022, so that businesses in our community and across Canada can continue to receive the help they need to hire back workers, increase their hours and create additional jobs. This provides the certainty that businesses need to rehire and return to growth.

However, while the government programs and the recovery go hand in hand, they are only a part of the solution. We also need Canadians to join us in this fight against COVID-19 by doing what it takes to keep themselves, their loved ones and their communities safe. A few months ago, colleagues opposite speculated that Canada would not receive vaccines until 2030, yet it is still 2021 and we have had the largest vaccination campaign in our country's history and one of the most successful in the world. Thanks to the millions of Canadians who have gotten their first and second doses, businesses across this country are safely reopening, travel is slowly returning, the economy is rebounding, we have surpassed our goal of creating a million new jobs, and our employment rates are back to pre-pandemic levels.

We have come a long way, but we still have some way to go and all of us have a role to play. As a government, that means adapting our income and business support measures to target support to those who continue to need it. In my opinion, as Canadians, it means supporting our local businesses, helping organizations that provide services to those in need, and getting vaccinated to keep our communities safe. I want to take this opportunity to urge those who are eligible and able but have not yet gotten their vaccines to do so as soon as possible and help us put an end to the fight against this virus once and for all.

I remind Canadians that our government has been and will continue to be there for them, to provide help where help is needed.

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

Madam Speaker, I would like to know what my colleague thinks of the fact that Bill C-2contains nothing for self-employed workers in the cultural sector, even though they are among the hardest hit by the pandemic.

Does he not think that there should be something in the bill for self-employed workers in the cultural sector?

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Madam Speaker, Bill C-2 is very much a missed opportunity. It does not provide the proper targeting we believe is necessary. There will be people in need who fall through the cracks.

One of the issues we have been talking about for a year and a half now is with respect to the companies that opened just before COVID happened. It is by no fault of their own. Perhaps they started building a month before the lockdown happened and required two or three months before they could open their business. We asked repeatedly in the House for help for restaurants, hotels and other businesses. Every time, a Liberal minister stood up and said that it was under consideration, or that the government was monitoring it, which was my favourite. As if a person could pay bills by the government “monitoring it”.

This bill could have been so much better. I hope the government will take this opportunity to get it to committee to improve it for Canadians.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is a strange time in my riding, because I have never seen so many “help wanted” signs. However, those jobs are not being filled. We had recovery benefits almost a month ago, but we have not seen the corresponding return of workers to where the jobs are. That shows me there is a disconnect in how the federal government is approaching this.

Obviously, the skill sets these jobs demand are not being met by the current workforce. With the ending of these benefits, especially the Canada worker lockdown benefit, there will be very vulnerable people who are going to be without any kinds of benefits or job prospects at a time when inflation is going through the roof. Therefore, I would like to ask my colleague this. Does he see Bill C-2 as a missed opportunity, when we could have invested a lot of money in retraining to make sure these workers have the skills that many industries in my riding and across this country are now very much looking for?

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

Madam Speaker, I listened to the brief comments the member made regarding Bill C-2. I know he spent quite a bit of time talking about and being very critical of other government subsidies, as though he did not vote in favour of them. All of the subsidies and supports that were given to Canadians, with the exception of those that came at the end of June through the last budget, were passed with the unanimous consent of the House. The member is very critical of those supports, yet he voted in favour of every one of them. Perhaps he could explain to us why he voted in favour of them if he is so critical of them.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is linked. Perhaps the member opposite could stop interfering. That gentleman has been here long enough and knows the rules of the House. I beg him to stop interfering and just allow me to give my speech, like an adult.

As I mentioned, this is about blocking accountability. We saw it at the operations committee, where ministers could not log on. Even after a year of having a hybrid Parliament, the ministers could not log on. Bureaucrats, who were there to defend the government or the estimates, were not able to sign in. We had meetings cut short because of the lack of resources. Let us be clear that it has nothing to do with safety. It is about reducing accountability.

I had asked a question on Friday about Bill C-2, and whether the new spending in four parts had gone through the Treasury Board approval process. The members opposite were not sure, but they assured me that they would probably follow the rules. I asked because new spending is required to go through the Treasury Board approval process. In parts of this bill, the Liberals might be able to say that it is a tax issue and therefore it does not have to. They may get away with that, but not all parts of it are. There is some new spending that has to go through the Treasury Board approval process. This is why I am worried. I did not get a straight answer.

If we look back at the previous Parliament and the wage subsidy of $110 billion, famously a lot of it went to very profitable companies. We asked the president of the Treasury Board at the time, who is now the health minister, if the wage subsidy went through the Treasury Board approval process. It was $110 billion.

Does anyone have an answer or a guess? Of course it did not.

What did we end up with? Let us look at some of the people who received some of that $110 billion of taxpayers' money. Rogers cable, a government-protected duopoly that received $26 billion for a buyout of Shaw, received government handouts. Lululemon, which at the time had increased its market capitalization by $9 billion, still got taxpayers' money. Air Canada famously got taxpayers' money through the wage subsidy and used it to help pay executive bonuses. Bell Canada, which I think is the largest of the telecoms, is another protected duopoly in a lot of markets. It received money. Telus is another one worth billions with huge profits. It increased its dividend. I know this because I am a shareholder. It was able to increase dividends at the same time as it received taxpayers' money. Nutrien is another one and, of course, what would a trip to the Liberal trough be without SNC-Lavalin and Irving also receiving money?

That is the issue. Has the new spending in Bill C-2 gone through the Treasury Board approval process properly, so that we know the taxpayers' money is getting to the businesses and people who are truly in need?

Bill C-2 is a bit of a “forward/backward” budget. The famous Allan Fotheringham, also known as Dr. Foth, used to call our old Progressive Conservative party the forward/backward party. That is similar to Bill C-2. At the same time as we have a labour crisis, we have the government offering incentives for companies to hire, but also incentives for people to stay home. We are subsidizing one and the other.

We see again that the government wants to put more money into the recovery sickness benefit and the caregiver benefit, both of which had billions set aside for them in the economic update. The government underspent by about 90%, so the money was not needed, yet here we are with $500 million and $300 million being put back in. We want to see more oversight. It is not that we do not support Bill C-2, but that we want to see proper oversight and a proper plan.

The other part of the bill talks about helping at-need industries, such as hotels and restaurants. I proudly grew up working in the hotel and restaurant industry, and did so for 35 years. When I talk to hotel and restaurant owners and workers, they are not asking for another handout, please. They want bums in beds. They want bums in seats. They want people travelling again. They want to see a plan. Hotels with mortgages of $50-, $60- or $70 million are not going to last forever on subsidies. Small restaurant owners are not going to last forever with subsidies. We need a plan to get the economy going. We need a plan to get people travelling again.

We need to address the issue of the difficulty of travellers coming into Canada with PCR testing. A three-day visit is not enough.

What we are looking for is not only a plan for the current government to get people working again, but also a plan to address our concerns with respect to its accountability and its oversight of this pandemic.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I appreciate the additional clarification from the hon. member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford. I will remind all members that when they are debating in the House, they need to debate the bill before the House.

I am sure the hon. member for Edmonton West will bring his debate around to Bill C-2.

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

Madam Speaker, the member has, by his own admission, only been speaking to Bill C-1. He spent at least two or three minutes speaking to Bill C-1. Perhaps we could discuss the bill before us, which is Bill C-2, and not bills that have already been voted on.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Madam Speaker, as this is my first speech in the 44th Parliament, I beg the House's indulgence to allow me a few minutes to thank some folks. First of all, I want to thank the good people of Edmonton West or, as I call it, “Edmonton West Edmonton Mall”, for sending me to this place for the third time. Each time I have been elected has been as special as the first, so I thank them very much. I am very honoured to be representing them here in Ottawa.

I want to thank my fantastic family for their support, especially my beautiful wife Sasha, who has been putting up with me for 24 years now. I realize some of my colleagues have been putting up with me for six years. If they think that is bad, she has been putting up with me for four times as long, so I want to thank her for that. She has endured nine moves across the country with me from Victoria to Newfoundland, back again, and then back to the Prairies. She helped me raise, mostly on her own, two boys and several dogs.

She has worked two nomination campaigns with me, three elections and multiple elections for other people since I started the political process when I was very young. No one can do what we do in the House without the support of their spouses, and I am certainly an example of that. Sasha, my wife, is no different from all the other spouses who are the real force behind all of us here working. I thank Sasha very much. I love her and she is beautiful. I promised her before there would be a lot more champagne after this election, and I will ensure that happens.

I also want to thank my two sons, Jensen and Parker, who have done campaigns with me since they were in grade one and two. One is now in law school and the other is in the workforce. They door-knocked for me this time, and in 2019 and 2015 as well. I thank them very much.

I want to thank all the volunteers who have helped me out through the campaign. There are too many to mention, but they know who they are. I will point out just one gentleman: Dennis, my financial agent. Dennis has a goal of keeping me out of jail while he does the books for Elections Canada, and so far so good. I thank Dennis.

I also want to thank my constituency staff. We all know we are just the figureheads and the ornaments on the car for the staff who do all the real work in our constituency offices. I want to thank Oula, who has been with me since day one. Before me, she worked with the honourable Laurie Hawn and with Peter Goldring before that. I want to thank Linda, Brandon, Sante, Ory and Surj who have joined me here in Ottawa. They make me look partially good, so I thank them for that.

We are finally back in the House and discussing Bill C-2. There are 14 or 15 people glued to their TVs or to CPAC, wondering if this is Bill C-2 what was C-1? What was the biggest thing on the government's agenda before this? Was it addressing the out-of-control inflation? Was it addressing COVID or perhaps a new variant? Was there a C-1 talking about the supply chain crisis, or perhaps talking about Abbotsford and having more resilient infrastructure? Was it about the out-of-control debt that we have, at a trillion dollars? Perhaps it was about reconciliation.

If people thought the government's priority would be one of these things, then they thought wrong because the government's priority in C-1 was to force the House back into a hybrid Parliament. In fact, there are probably more Liberals mailing it in by Zoom than are physically in the building debating today, which is a shame.

The Liberals said they had to do this for safety reasons, yet on Monday of last week when we all got together for the first time back here, it was almost a party on the floor. We had government members giving each other high fives and hugging each other. The Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister were close talking, as Seinfeld would call it. There was no social distancing, yet that was safe. However, is it safe for working in person in the House during a debate? It is not so much. It is safe to go to Glasgow and yuk it up with 20,000 people, and sometimes 1,000 people maskless in a reception, but not safe enough to be here serving Canadians in person.

We know that this is not about safety. We know it is about hiding, covering up and a lack of accountability to Canadians. We saw it in the previous Parliament, when we were in the Zoom hybrid setting. We saw it when Wayne Easter famously turned off the power when things were getting hot for the Liberal side in committee.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am happy to see my colleague back in the House of Commons for his debate. I hope we can continue to have this debate in the House of Commons.

There are some issues around Bill C-2 that we need to address. I would like to address them in committee, so we could get to the details on them. We do need to provide some support for some Canadians going forward to make sure we come out of this transition. We need to do so very effectively. We have overspent in many ways.

We could talk about the money that has gone out in fraudulent payments. We could talk about organized crime and its participation in the targeted programs that were delivered during COVID. We need to make sure we look at this. We also need to acknowledge the provinces and how much they have had to increase their spending to deal with the actual on-the-ground expenses of health care.

Those are things that I hope we could address very clearly in committee.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Madam Speaker, I have been here for two years, and I have found the member to be quite articulate in his points. However, one thing that concerned me in his speech, and he talked a lot about debt and deficits, was he made almost no mention of the fact that we have just gone through a global pandemic and the fact that the government has had to intervene to make sure that Canadian businesses and individuals were supported.

It was not just Canada but across the globalized economy, countries have been intervening. Would the member suggest we not have intervened? Let us bring this back to Bill C-2, because that is what we are here to talk about right now. Does the member support this legislation? Does he think this is needed, notwithstanding his treatise on debt and deficit spending?

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Madam Speaker, I congratulate all of my colleagues for winning their election in this 44th Parliament and making sure that we come here to discuss Canada's issues in Parliament. I am looking forward to that and more debate in the House of Commons.

First, as it is the first time I have risen in the House since the election, I would like to thank the constituents of Calgary Centre for giving me the honour of coming back here to represent their interests in the House of Commons, in the debates that we are going to have here, and make sure that we have better legislation for Canadians going forward. I also want to thank my campaign team and my wife, in particular, who has always been my biggest supporter.

Today, we are talking about Bill C-2 and how we can try to make it better. This is about government spending, and it is one of the main things the government does. I also want to talk about inflation, especially monetary inflation, the cost-of-living increases and, of course, asset inflation.

I will start with the fiscal situation and federal government debt.

When I ran for Parliament in 2019, I decided to become a candidate because I thought Canada was overspending. We were spending our children's money, and going deeper into debt to pay for today's programming at the expense of tomorrow's taxpayers. In 2019, Canada's debt was $721 billion. Where is it now? It is $1.234 trillion.

I will note that I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Edmonton West.

We have $1.234 trillion in debt, which is $500 billion more in debt than we had two years ago. The government has based this on what it wants to continue, a debt-to-GDP ratio of around 53%, which is up from 30% only a few years ago. That is a ridiculous increase, and the government plans to leave it there in its spending plans for the foreseeable future. It is as if arriving at a 53% debt-to-GDP ratio is the goal, and we just keep adding debt so the debt ratio of our country is kept high, and it is very high. This is a government that believes it does not have to make choices about where it spends taxpayers' dollars or borrows funds from future generations.

Interest rates are low, because the debt issued is held by the Bank of Canada. Interestingly, in a technocrat approach to access leverage, a Canadian Crown corporation buys the debt that it issues to the government to pay for its spending. It is a nice balance-sheet trick where the entity that is setting the market rate for issuing government debt actually participates in the market as a buyer to ensure that the debt is bought at that market rate. The end result of this is that the Bank of Canada, a funded subsidiary of the Government of Canada whose debts are guaranteed by the taxpayers of Canada, has grown its balance sheet from $105 billion in 2020 to over $500 billion today. Of course, it has the bonds on its balance sheet guaranteed by the taxpayers of Canada as well, but let us remember that it bought these bonds, some from bond sellers in the open market, at a rate that it set at very low.

I will give a little background to understand this concept. Low interest rates, or “coupons” as they are sometimes called, equate to higher bond prices. The correlation is automatic. When the government is buying bonds from market participants at a low market rate that it set, it is overpaying for the bond. Eventually, rates will reset higher. Higher rates equal lower prices for the bonds on the Bank of Canada's balance sheet. What does that mean? It means that the adjustment to reducing the quantitative easing experiment in which the government is participating is going to be very expensive. We are buying high and we will need to sell lower. How much lower? Well, with an increase of $400 billion on its balance sheet, normalization will require a loss of billions of dollars of value for the Bank of Canada per year until $400 billion of Government of Canada debt has been sold into the market. This quantitative easing, a way for central bankers to keep public spending ratcheting higher, in any iteration, in any country, has never shown a path out. We are experimenting here without any concept of the outcome.

Remember that Canada's debt total is $1.234 trillion. About 40% of that is now held by the Bank of Canada, so we, the people of Canada, have become the de facto only buyer of Canada's debt. We must add those billions in impacted losses onto Canada's fiscal deficits going forward, because they are not included in any of the fiscal plans at this time. These are the plans continuing to have a debt-to-GDP ratio above 50% for the foreseeable future. Even after the recession of 2008-09, that ratio was only 30%.

Canada is on a train to a cliff, and the conductor is not looking ahead. There is no magic money tree.

Canadians will recall the last time in our recent history when government spending grew out of control, which was from the Trudeau government deficits in the 1970s and 1980s.

With rising interest rates, payments on our national debt became the government's largest expense line item. Taxpayers were paying bondholders from around the world excessive amounts of interest. Those tens of billions of dollars per year that taxpayers contributed could not be allocated to programs like improvements in our health care system.

The final outcome of this period was the Chrétien Liberal government cutting federal funding to health care in 1996. At the time, it was Canada's second-largest budget line item after interest payments on debt. Is this foreshadowing?

Canadians still have health care, although the federal government's share has fallen from the conventional 50% to 22%. The rest has been thrust onto the backs of the provinces unilaterally. The provinces' finances have suffered ever since.

Let us think about the Liberal government's promises on spending in provincial government jurisdiction, on borrowed money. What happens to these services when the bill becomes due?

Debt ratio metrics are only relevant when we are comparing to other countries. As far as balance sheets of governments go, the measure is irrelevant. Corporations have debt-to-value ratios because it is a measure of how they can leverage their operations with cheaper tax-assisted financing and therefore earn a higher return for their owners. That notion does not exist for governments, and no government should ever embrace the notion that a country accumulates debt it will never pay back.

It is an excuse to have future generations of Canadians pay for today's expenses, as if our children will not have their own bills to pay with their own taxes. They will be paying for decades for services we delivered today.

Let us remember that a country's debt profile is not just the federal government's debt, we need to include provincial government debt, which has skyrocketed during COVID because of the provinces' needs to increase health care funding during a health crisis. It also includes corporate debt, which has increased remarkably, and household debt.

In total, Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio rose by 80% in 2020, by far the largest increase in the world. The closest runner-up in this ratcheting metric was Japan at a 50% increase. The U.S. saw a 45% increase, the U.K. saw a 35% increase, China saw a 30% increase and Australia only saw a 12% increase. Comparably, Canada stands alone in its profligacy.

Monetary inflation leads to asset inflation, which is most exemplified by the housing market. Mortgage debt increased by $100 billion. Canadian households are personally in debt for $2.5 trillion, or $64,000 per capita. Mortgage debt has increased by 22%. Single-family home prices have increased by a similar amount of 23% over the past year.

Canada now stands at the top of the most overvalued housing markets in the world. Whereas in the U.S. the increase in real disposable income slightly exceeds real home prices, in Canada housing prices have increased at a rate almost double the increase in real disposable income.

This is trouble we need to address here at this level so we understand what the future looks like for Canada's finances. We need to examine this bill closely in an actual team Canada approach.

In that respect, I am looking forward to this bill's review at the House of Commons Standing on Finance, where all members of the House of Commons will be able to provide input to ensure the bill meets the needs and expectations of Canadians.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am not sure if I can give a brief answer to this question. It is something that is very close to my heart. However, Bill C-2 does commit to continue to provide support. I really respect our restaurant owners and all the hoteliers in the tourism industry, understanding just how gendered that impact is within the tourism industry, and how much more support we need to provide.

I look forward to continuing to work with the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands in ensuring that all of our tourism within Canada is thriving. I would love to see more Canadians going out and about to different parts of the country.

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

Madam Speaker, one of the areas of focus in Bill C-2 is, of course, the tourism sector. I wonder if the member has any insights as to whether there will be more. This will not be enough to support key tourist destinations. Part of the problem is that we need to think of all the ways in which COVID continues to impact tourism, particularly on inconsistent rules about whether people need certain tests to re-enter Canada from the United States. I do not know if the member has any thoughts on that.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House in this 44th Parliament.

Early on in the pandemic, when the provinces first when into lockdown, a constituent reached out to me for help. She could not work because of public health lockdowns and she was worried about how she would take care of her children without an income.

When we introduced CERB and enhanced the Canada child benefit early on, it created a lifeline for her while she waited for her job to come back. At different times over these last 20 months, when cases surged and lockdowns returned, she used CERB and the CRB to keep food on the table and to provide for her kids.

We reconnected this month and I was glad to hear that she was in a much better position than she was in those early months. She had not needed government assistance for some time, but then she said something that stuck with me, “I hope your programs will still be here during the next lockdown.”

Canada is in a good place right now, but we all know that this may not be the last, and we have all seen the news of the omicron variant. Residents in my riding of Mississauga—Erin Mills are working day-to-day knowing that as long as this pandemic continues, as long as there are still those who are unvaccinated, another lockdown is always a possibility.

It is a privilege for me to lend my voice in support of Bill C-2, an act to provide further support in response to COVID-19. This legislation is an important next step in our government's fight against the virus.

Throughout the pandemic we have been nimble. We have adjusted and adapted our support programs to the evolving nature of this once-in-a-lifetime crisis. We always knew that to win the fight against COVID-19 and to protect Canadians through the worst impact of this economic crisis, we needed to adapt our programs to the conditions of the moment. We have done this to ensure that they remain effective in protecting Canadians and in supporting the strong recovery as Canadians pull together to win this fight.

When the COVID-19 crisis struck, our government immediately rolled out a comprehensive range of broad-based effective measures in response to the greatest economic shock that our country had suffered since the Great Depression. We were able to deliver the Canada emergency response benefit and the wage and rent subsidies rapidly, with unprecedented speed for a program of such a size and scale.

As our communities went into lockdown, over eight million Canadians had emergency income support, and hundreds of thousands of businesses received emergency subsidies. These support programs proved to be a lifeline for workers and businesses across the country. They helped pay the rent. They helped keep food on the table. They helped to protect millions of jobs and keep hundreds of thousands of Canadian businesses going through the darkest days of the pandemic. For thousands of families in my riding of Mississauga—Erin Mills, that support in the early days of the pandemic meant the difference between eating or paying rent.

However, these emergency measures were always designed to be temporary, to address the broad impact of the mass lockdowns that were necessary at that time.

Today, we are in a very different stage in the fight against COVID-19. Canadians have done their part by respecting public health measures, by getting vaccinated and by contributing to one of the most successful vaccination campaigns across the world.

As a result of their efforts, we are now turning the corner in this fight. Restrictions are now carefully being eased in our communities and at our borders. Many businesses are safely reopening. Jobs are being created and employment is now back to pre-pandemic levels.

Residents in Mississauga—Erin Mills understand that getting to this point required unprecedented government spending, not just in Canada but across the world. For example, the U.S., trillions of dollars were spent to provide supports to Americans during this pandemic. They supported this extraordinary spending during the darkest days of the pandemic because they knew that every dollar spent puts food on their neighbour's table and delivered masks and sanitizers to nursing homes, which saved lives. Every cent protected a family-owned business from closing down and the workers from losing their jobs. They understood that the cost of cutting corners, of nickel-and-diming Canadians in a time of crisis, could be paid with lives. It was the right thing to do. It was the smart thing to do, economically and socially. It allowed us to save lives and prevent the sort of lasting economic damage that could have come from mass business closures and job losses.

Today, Canadians understand that the situation has evolved, and we are in a much better position. Canada has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world. The economy is rebounding and we have blown past this Liberal government's goal of creating one million jobs. Therefore, the time has now come to adapt our income and business support measures to these improved circumstances, and Bill C-2 is precisely about that.

The legislation would effectively pivot us from the very broad-based supports that were appropriate at the height of lockdowns to more targeted measures that would provide help where it would still needed and create jobs and growth, while prudently managing government spending.

At the same time, Bill C-2 would move us forward on the understanding that while our recovery is strong, we are not out of the woods yet. Our recovery is uneven. The pandemic continues to affect economic activity, especially in certain sectors of the economy subject to ongoing and still necessary public health restrictions. That is why Bill C-2 contains measures that would snap into action immediately to support workers in the event of a new regional lockdown. This would include a new benefit, the Canada worker lockdown benefit, which would provide $300 a week to workers who are directly impacted by a public health lockdown imposed to curtail the spread of COVID.

This new benefit would be strictly available to workers whose work interruption would be a direct result of a government-imposed public health lockdown. It would be available to workers who are ineligible for employment insurance as well as those who are eligible for EI, as long as they are not paid benefits through the EI program during this same period.

The Canada worker lockdown benefit would be available until May 7, 2022, with retroactive application to October 24, 2021, should there be applicable lockdown situations, and it would be accessible for the entire duration of a government-imposed public health lockdown up until May 7, 2022.

This support, however, will be for those who are doing their part to protect their fellow Canadians and support the fight against COVID. This means that under Bill C-2, individuals whose loss of income or employment is due to their refusal to adhere to a vaccine mandate would not be able to access this benefit.

Bill C-2 also contains measures that would extend eligibility to both the Canada recovery sickness benefit and the Canada recovery caregiving benefit until May 7, 2022, and it would increase the maximum duration of each benefit by two additional weeks. That means that the caregiving benefit would be increased from 42 to 44 weeks, and the sickness benefit would be increased from 4 weeks to 6 weeks.

As we know, the Canada recovery caregiving benefit provides income support to employed and self-employed individuals who are unable to work because they must care for their child under 12 years of age or a family member who needs supervised care. It has delivered $3.74 billion to 486,910 Canadians.

The Canada recovery sickness benefit provides income supports to employed and self-employed individuals who are unable to work because they are sick, or they need to self-isolate due to COVID-19 or have an underlying health condition that puts them at greater risk of getting COVID. It has already delivered over $829 million of much-needed support to 758,670 Canadians.

The extension of these benefits is important, because we still need to protect ourselves, we need to grow and we need to ensure that those businesses that are suffering have the support from our government.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to welcome my colleague back to the House. He is a fellow alumni of the class of 2015. In his speech he made mention of targeted assistance. We know that many poor seniors, such as those on the GIS, need supplemental income in order to pay the bills each month. They, like many Canadians, also lost jobs when the pandemic hit our country.

Now those seniors are in a situation where the Canada recovery benefit income is being clawed back from their GIS, meaning many of them cannot afford to make rent payments or put good quality food on the table. I have a simple question. Why, when we have this golden opportunity with Bill C-2, did the government not make any mention of targeted assistance to help the most vulnerable Canadians in this country? Will the Liberal government quickly fix this? It is an urgent problem in my riding and right across the country.

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her important question.

We have included additional supports for self-employed workers, on top of past investments. It was difficult at the outset to address all the issues involved in this particular situation. We now want to invest in art and culture, and we will certainly take care of self-employed workers to be there for them. The purpose of Bill C-2 is to ensure that everyone can get through the pandemic and recover.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Madam Speaker, Bill C-2 does contain some good measures, particularly the support that is finally being provided to carriers that offer charter bus services. Carriers in my riding have been calling for that support from the beginning. A bus costs $700,000, and then they need maintenance, which is also expensive. When they cannot be used, it becomes even more expensive.

The government has finally thought of charter operators, but it is still overlooking self-employed workers in the cultural sector, the boom operators and sound engineers and so on, who are already living in precarious situations, which have only gotten worse with the pandemic.

Will my colleague and his party commit to including self-employed cultural sector workers in Bill C-2?

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his question and welcome him back to the House. As he knows, we have started with strong legislation here in Bill C-2. We want to deliver supports to Canadians, those who were hit with even more difficulties throughout the pandemic. We need to get supports to them as soon as possible. This bill will allow us to do that and we are going to move on it as quickly as possible.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to stand in Canada's Parliament once again to represent the good people of Battle River—Crowfoot.

I will make this question short. The member talked about the urgency to ensure that we as parliamentarians can get to work for Canadians. Would he therefore support the immediate reinstatement of committees, so that this House can actually get to work doing things like studying Bill C-2 and the many issues that were cancelled because of the Liberal Prime Minister's unnecessary election? Would he support the immediate reinstatement of parliamentary committees, so that we can in fact get to work?

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS]

Madam Speaker, before I begin my speech, I would like to let members know that I will be sharing my time with the member for Mississauga—Erin Mills.

It gives me great pleasure to speak in the House again today and thank the people of Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook for re-electing me for a third mandate. My objective is to continue working and advocating on behalf of all citizens in the riding of Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, all of Nova Scotia, and of course all of Canada.

I have to say that on March 13, 2020, I remember leaving the House of Commons, taking a plane back home to Nova Scotia, and thinking Parliament would be shut down for two weeks. That two-week period was extended, as we all know, a lot further than that. Those two weeks were the beginning of a crisis as big as the Great Depression. We had challenges. It started off slowly, but we quickly realized that we were in a very difficult situation and it would take a government that would work with all members of Parliament to make sure we were there to protect all Canadians.

We were faced with three to four million people losing their jobs overnight, things being shut down, the business community being shut down and people being scared. We went through all those stages, but I have to tell members that I was proud to be a member of Parliament during those difficult times. The reason I was proud is that every night for 67 nights in a row, I and many other Liberal MPs, along with cabinet ministers and our Prime Minister, talked about what types of programs were needed. We worked with the public service, took suggestions from the opposition and started building programs that would help all Canadians.

The reason I was proud to do that daily is that I was hearing the fears and the problematic situations that Canadians faced, but every night we talked about how we would help them. I was getting 100 to 150 emails and calls per day from concerned individuals. Some had lost their jobs, some had lost their businesses and some were worried about day care centres being closed. Those were very difficult times.

However, when we are elected and representing people, we are able to contribute to help create programs. I got information from constituents saying that the help was not working for them, was not reaching as far as they needed, or was not helping their business. We then tweaked and improved as we went along. That is true representation of the people: listening to the challenges, finding solutions with them and then helping them through that process. That is why I am so happy to speak to Bill C-2. This is the next step in the transition toward a strong recovery.

I have to say how very hard it was for Canadians who lost family members. To date, some 30,000 Canadians have lost their lives to COVID-19. It was hard for families. It was hard for seniors in long-term care homes. It was very hard for teenagers, who, as we know, really like socializing. It was hard for parents when schools closed during the crisis. It was hard for teachers, who had to change how they taught and significantly augment their ability to deliver instruction in virtual schools, which have been going on for quite some time now.

As I was saying, we lost one million jobs during the pandemic. However, if we look at where things stand today, we have recovered those million jobs. What is more, roughly one million more jobs are available now. This is a testament to the good work our government is doing and to all the MPs who contribute to ensuring a good economic recovery, prosperity and everything that goes along with it.

In Bill C‑2 we see targeted investments for businesses, individuals, and organizations that faced extra challenges or are still going through an especially tough time.

I am talking about the tourism and hospitality sectors. My son owns a restaurant and it has been very tough for him. We know there are restaurants that closed, then reopened with limits on the number of customers, that are still around. As my colleagues know, hotel operators are also having a tough time. Last week Monday and Tuesday, the Delta hotel had only 6% occupancy. Imagine how tough it must be for these businesses.

We have also seen organizations suffer in the arts, culture and leisure sectors, as well as travel agencies, mostly for the lack of clients due to lockdowns. That is why we are investing more in these sectors.

We are also investing in companies that have not been able to reopen for all sorts of reasons. These companies have specific needs. There are other organizations that may need other investments in the event of further restrictions. We will support those organizations and we will invest in businesses that continue to rehire their staff.

There are many investments in Bill C-2 that need to be delivered as quickly as possible, and our government is moving forward on those. I want to focus on the support for workers, because there could be, even tomorrow or next week, closures in certain regions that would see individuals losing their jobs again. They may have COVID and need to stay home, or maybe their children's school will close and they will have to stay home to support their children. There are many challenges of that nature. We need to continue to support those individuals. We will have some investments to support those families and those individuals.

In closing, I want to thank the public service, the people who worked with the government to get these programs established very quickly. It was very important. I want to thank the Speaker of the House. Throughout COVID, we were able to vote online, through our phones, to allow us to continue to do the work that is so crucial.

At the end of the day, the day care investment that our government is moving forward with is essential. As I shared earlier in my speech, one million jobs are available today, and we will be able to get more Canadians working because of the day care centres we will be investing in as we move forward.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Madam Speaker, since I have only 30 seconds, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the people of Montcalm for trusting me to represent them in the House for the third time. I can assure them I will do my utmost to be worthy of their trust.

Self-employed workers in the cultural sector are artisans fashioning the future of our nation. Every member of every party in the House voted in favour of the Bloc Québécois's motion to recognize the Quebec nation.

Can my Conservative colleague explain why Bill C‑2 overlooks self-employed arts and culture workers?

[Scott Aitchison, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to stand up in the House of Commons and speak about any issue. Of course, this particular bill, Bill C-2, is an important one that requires a lot more study.

Targeted support sounds really good, especially for the tourism and hospitality sectors, which are some of the hardest-hit sectors in our economy. Of course, I am the member of Parliament for Parry Sound—Muskoka, and many will know that tourism is a pretty significant part of our economy. Like every other member in this House, I do not just come here and hope people hear what they need to hear. I speak to folks in my community to find out what is going on.

When it came to Bill C-2, I felt it was important to find out what those sectors are saying. What is being said in the tourism and hospitality sectors and the hardest-hit sectors? Restaurants Canada is reporting that they are desperate to find people to work. Job vacancies in Canada have surpassed one million now. Employers in high-contact industries, such as restaurants and hotels, have the highest proportion of unfilled positions, at about 14.4%. They are looking for people. They are busy. They have the business, but they cannot get people to work. It begs a question: What is really going on? When I read this I thought that I needed to speak with some folks locally in my area.

There are countless local stories in Parry Sound—Muskoka of small businesses, restaurants and hotels that are open and busy with lots of business. They could be open seven days a week, but they cannot find the staff to do it.

Jamie Blake of Blakes Memories of Muskoka in Seguin township pays well over minimum wage. They are trying to hire a manager right now. It is a really good position that pays well. They just cannot find anybody, so they have to close two days a week. They can only be open five days a week and are missing out on a lot of business.

I spoke with Jeff Watson, who owns a couple of Tim Hortons in Gravenhurst. His stores went from being 24-hour operations to having reduced hours. They have hired an agency to help them find employees but have yet to receive a single application. They cannot get anywhere.

I spoke with Didier Dolivet. He is the general manager of Red Leaves Resort, a very nice resort in Minett and one of the fanciest ones in Muskoka. He said that business is great, domestic travel has gone up and Ontarians have discovered Ontario. It is great. They are travelling locally, and there is lots of business. The problem, of course, is that they cannot get staff.

Traditionally in motels, hotels and resorts, it has been a challenge really for years to find staff to work in the housekeeping department specifically, but Didier reports that housekeeping is just the start of it now. They cannot find people in every single sector of their business. As a result of the lack of staff to fill positions, such as chefs, and leadership and management positions, they are unable to maximize their occupancy because of the shortage of labour. Their inability to fully staff their resort means service levels have declined, and as a result of that, visitor satisfaction is declining. It is actually almost worse for their business right now, so they are really struggling.

The message is clear: Businesses need people to work. Should we be incentivizing people to stay home right now?

It is not just the tourism sector that has this issue. Greg Lubbelinkhof of Cedarland Homes in Parry Sound is trying to build homes to help solve the housing crisis that exists there. Despite offering full training, exceptional wages and great benefits, they cannot find people to do the skilled trades. They are putting work off up to two years. They are turning work down because they just cannot find the people to do the work.

The BDC has reported that 40% of small and medium-sized business are struggling to find employees. Statistics Canada has indicated that job vacancies have increased in every single province. It is certainly worse in British Columbia, Atlantic Canada and Ontario, but every single province is struggling to find people.

How did we get here? I have done a little reading, and I came across a special report on the high cost of living by Philip Cross. He is with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute now. He is an impressive man. If he is listening, I would like to meet him sometime and chat with him because I think I could learn a lot from him.

Philip Cross is a Munk Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. Prior to joining it, he spent 36 years at Statistics Canada specializing in macroeconomics. He was appointed the chief economic analyst in 2008 and was responsible for ensuring the quality and coherency of all major economic statistics. He also wrote the “Current economic conditions” section of the Canadian Economic Observer. This guy knows what he is talking about. He is a pretty impressive guy.

What he has illustrated is that overspending by a government during the pandemic actually created significant distortions in the economy, which drove up personal savings, particularly of the wealthier in our society, and made significant distortions in labour market choices. The programs simply were not targeted enough. He writes:

Average net savings for households in the top income quintile nearly doubled, from $12,000 to $21,322, in the second quarter of 2020. Meanwhile, average household savings in the bottom two quintiles rose by $2,000 each. Swollen household incomes and savings had repercussions for housing, labour markets and inflation.

The government's most striking distortion during the pandemic was to provide so much emergency income support that personal disposable incomes actually rose in a recession. Earned income fell sharply, but massive government support more than made up for the difference. The increases in incomes and savings show that much government aid was not needed, especially during the slow shift from the economy-wide stimulus to targeting specific sectors.

People had too much money. People were not working, and they had lots of money. We have heard my colleague say that too much money chasing too few goods means inflation, so now everything is more expensive. Families in Parry Sound—Muskoka are telling me that it is more expensive for them to drive to work, it is more expensive for them to put groceries on the table for their families, it is more expensive for them to heat their homes and many of them simply cannot find a home at all. We need our committees digging deeper into this.

I give the government at lot of credit. It came to the rescue very quickly and reacted to this pandemic, the uncertainty in our economy and in our world. It reacted very quickly, but it was sloppily done, and government members were almost hostile when Conservatives and other members of the opposition made suggestions to improve things and to make things more targeted. As a result, we are in a situation now in which it has overstimulated the economy. The rich have gotten richer, and the poor are getting poorer, and we are making life more difficult.

Targeted supports are important. I am not sure I trust the government to actually target them properly, which is why it is absolutely crucial for the House to get back to work and for committees to get to work and dig deeper into this to make sure we are analyzing these targeted supports. We need to make sure that money is not being wasted and that we are not overstimulating the economy unnecessarily in specific areas.

We have a lot of work to do. I am eager to get going on that work, and Canadians deserve a real plan to make their lives more affordable. Canadians need a real plan to dramatically increase the housing supply all across this country. Canadians need a real plan to responsibly reduce the government's inflation-causing spending. Canadian businesses need people to work and they need us to get to work, so let us get to work at committees.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Parry Sound—Muskoka.

I rise today to speak to Bill C-2. Specifically, I want to address the government's position when it comes to the growth and recovery of our small businesses. It is disappointing that this is my first opportunity to rise in five months to debate any legislation on economic recovery because of the shutdown of Parliament.

Despite the Prime Minister stating that the election he called this summer was the most important in decades, he took an extended vacation. It is shameful that the Liberals took two months to recall Parliament. Of course, this should not actually surprise Canadians. We cannot forget that it was the same Liberal government that prorogued Parliament just last year to escape scrutiny for its ethical scandals.

When Parliament is shut down, committees cease to exist and all ongoing work in Parliament stops. When would this legislation even be going to a committee to be studied? We have no information from the government as to when committees will be reconstituted.

Prior to the election, I was sitting on the international trade committee, which was undertaking critical studies on clean-technology exports and getting COVID-19 vaccines to developing countries. Unfortunately, reports and recommendations that were going to be made to the government simply will not happen because the election was called. That is what happens when we have a Prime Minister who puts politics before country.

When the Prime Minister called an unnecessary $600-million power-grab snap election, the Okanagan, where I live, had enhanced health measures and was at the height of its wildfire season, with ash falling from the sky in Kelowna—Lake Country. Simply put, in their typical fashion, the Liberals love to be in government but they loathe governing. It is because of this series of political choices that we are continually asked to rush legislation through to make up for the failures of ministers to manage their portfolios and the House's legislative agenda. We saw this with CUSMA and the Canada-UK Trade Continuity Agreement, and earlier pandemic-relief legislation. Like a bad dream, here we are again.

Deadlines have been missed and we can bet that the Liberals will try their hardest to somehow blame a slowdown of legislation on the Conservatives. However, Canadians are smarter than that. The Liberals can only try to play the same old tricks for so long before everyone gets wise to their tactics. Canadians know that right now it is the job of the Conservatives to hold the Liberals to account.

My Conservative colleagues and I want to ensure that government legislation does not have unintended consequences. We want to ask the tough questions at committees and make solid recommendations to ensure that legislation such as this is right for our constituents and for our country.

We should have been back in the House a month ago. The Conservatives were calling for this back in early October. We wanted to get back to work here. The Liberals wanted to avoid scrutiny. I had thought that this may be because they were taking the time to develop a real plan for Canadian small businesses to recover and grow, a real plan addressing real issues for my constituents, businesses and not for profits in Kelowna—Lake Country. The Conservatives have been writing to ministers and speaking publicly about real measures that will address the challenges facing small businesses across the country.

When budget 2021 was debated, I highlighted how the recovery support programs were not working for many businesses, and this legislation really is much of the same and does not address some of the most important issues facing small businesses, such as labour shortages, inflation, supply chain issues, hindering sales, tax increases and paying off or accessing debt. That is what happens when we have a government that does not listen to people and a government that puts headlines before policy.

Small businesses, especially micro-businesses, in the most devastated sectors are the ones with the least capacity to absorb pandemic-related disruptions and have been the most impacted and need us to focus on these important issues. To make a bad situation worse, businesses that have now started to slowly recover are facing labour shortages, as I mentioned, that could bring their recovery to a screeching halt.

The labour crisis is crippling industries in every sector in every region. According to RBC Economics, one-third of Canadian businesses are grappling with labour shortages and they expect labour shortages to get worse. Small businesses cannot continue to weather the COVID-19 pandemic without the federal government focusing on the real challenges they are facing, such as a slow economic recovery, labour shortages, rising costs and debt.

In the September 2021 report from the Business Development Bank of Canada, it states that out of a survey it conducted, 55% of entrepreneurs are struggling to hire workers they need, causing them to delay or refuse new orders; 64% say the ongoing labour shortages limit their growth; and 44% have delayed or are unable to deliver orders to clients. The government's programs simply are not working.

During the course of the pandemic, it has been reported that small businesses have also taken on nearly 170,000 dollars' worth of new debt on average. I have talked to many small business owners who have personally lent their businesses money in order for their business to survive, and this legislation would do nothing to address this potentially devastating economic issue. If the government's support programs were so successful, why are small businesses forced into higher levels of unmanageable debt?

What has become clear is that the government is failing to focus on warning signs. Its members are forgetting that it is the job of government to ensure that it creates an environment where businesses can thrive, not just survive. Reducing regulatory burdens, tackling the supply chain crisis that started before the pandemic, addressing the labour-shortage crisis through various worker visa extensions, getting people who can work back to work and halting all tax increases for businesses are just a handful of ways to focus on economic recovery. Measures like these need to be taken up urgently.

Just this past Friday, a report in The Globe and Mail said job vacancies have soared beyond one million. Statistics Canada says that nearly a fifth of all vacancies are in the hospitality sector. The government, in this debate, is choosing to boast about its recovery numbers, but members should try asking the average restaurant owner, hotel manager, farmer or construction company in my riding how they are seeing our job market. They cannot remember a time when they have needed to recruit so many workers just to keep the lights on.

The government will no doubt want to lay all these shortages at the feet of the global pandemic. However, the chief economist at the Business Development Bank of Canada recently pointed out that, “Even before the pandemic, employers had difficulties in recruiting.”

Without urgent attention to address this crisis, new and existing businesses will not have the ability to grow their reach, meet their orders or even keep existing employees on their payroll. Shortages mean fewer employees or owners trapped working longer hours, which only adds to our ongoing mental health crisis. According to Statistics Canada's most recent survey of business conditions, more than one in four businesses expects their profitability to decline before year's end. If the government does not take action to get people back into the workforce, there will not be the good-paying jobs out there in the private sector for them to go back to.

After almost two years of pandemic-related disruptions, rapidly rising inflation, serious supply chain issues, skyrocketing and automatically increasing taxes, costs and debt, international trade disputes where Canada continually ends up on the losing end and a labour shortage preventing our economic recovery, not to mention trying to maintain mental health, small businesses, the backbone of our local communities, are on the brink of collapse. For these entrepreneurs and organizations, “help wanted” has never rang more true. It is a cry to keep their entrepreneurial spirit alive. Unfortunately, the government has decided to pursue a course that would do nothing to address these underlying issues.

The Conservatives will continue to stand up for small businesses across this country. We will continue to advocate for real action that delivers concrete results. We are putting policies before headlines. I am fighting for small businesses because I have been a small business owner and know what it is like to have everything on the line.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate you on your appointment as Deputy Speaker.

Over the weekend, I was extremely pleased to participate in various cultural activities in my riding of Thérèse-De Blainville. If Bill C-2, which is before us today, is so important and urgent in order to continue to support workers, how is it that this bill makes no mention of essential government assistance for self-employed arts and culture workers?

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is good to be here bright and early on Monday morning after flying through the night to get here.

I would like to talk a bit about Bill C-2 and the member's speech. One of the things we have seen throughout the pandemic is the lack of ability to scrutinize some of these bills. The Liberals always come here saying that it is an emergency that we pass a bill immediately. We warned the government when it was bringing in bills and spending a lot of money during the pandemic to try to minimize the impacts on the labour market. Today, we see over a million vacant jobs in the country. We also see that this Parliament does not have a finance committee that can scrutinize this bill and make recommendations. When we have a fulsome debate on bills, we can bring amendments at committee and make them better so they do not have an impact on the job market like we have seen with some of the other bills and programs that have been brought in. Would the member not agree that by working together we would be able to make some of the best programs possible?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, the point is that the Canada child benefit and child care program are assisting families in a very real and tangible way.

Ten-dollar-a-day child care, and the agenda for putting that into place, is quite significant. It is going to assist families from coast to coast to coast. The majority of territories are now onside. All political stripes have recognized its value.

I use this as an example for two reasons. First, it is going to substantially decrease the cost of child care. It is also going to ensure more people are eligible for, and able to participate in, the workforce. One only needs to look at Quebec and how well it has done in the introduction of its $10-a-day child care program, or in investing in child care, as well as how the program has changed its workforce deployment.

I and members of the Liberal caucus believe that Canadians from coast to coast to coast will benefit by being able to enter the workforce and will see a substantial reduction in child care costs, going into hundreds of dollars every month. That is an example.

Bill C-2 would continue to provide the supports Canadians need. I believe we have been there as a government for Canadians from day one. We have demonstrated support for Canada's middle class, those aspiring to be part of it and those who are in high need.

Not that long ago, when we were elected into government, our first pieces of legislation saw tax increases for Canada's wealthiest 1%, support in the form of a tax reduction for Canada's middle class, substantial increases and reform of the Canada child benefit program, and substantial increases to the guaranteed income supplement. All of these programs have increased the disposable income of Canadians.

We understood then, as we did when the pandemic hit, that people needed to have disposable income in order to move our economy forward. To have healthy communities and a stronger economy, people needed the money to pay their mortgages and utility bills, to go out to restaurants and to purchase necessities.

When the pandemic hit and health orders at the local level were shutting down the economy, people had no choice. Two years ago one could drive down some of the busiest streets in Winnipeg and see there was minimal travel. The pandemic took its toll for a number of months, especially going into the second wave.

One can only imagine what would have taken place if the government did not step up and provide programs such as CERB. CERB, as a program, supported over nine million Canadians. That is an incredible percentage of the population. Our population is over 37 million, and nine million Canadians were supported by one program that was created out of nothing.

The civil service and the different stakeholders involved made sure that the program became a reality, and they did an incredible job. There is no doubt that when a program is created quickly, there is going to be some abuse of that program. I suspect that when I hear from my Conservative friends, they will highlight some of those problems today. We are very much aware of them. Are they trying to say that they do not believe we should have brought in the CERB program? Are they trying to say that those nine million Canadians are not honest people?

It is a program that was absolutely essential. It is why I highlighted the importance of disposable income. However, it was more than just people. If we did not provide that kind of support, what would the social cost of that have been? Whether it was mental illness, the loss of employment, suicides or breakups, it would have been significant. We recognized that and we stepped up to the plate.

Today, with Bill C-2, we continue to recognize that. The changes being incorporated into Bill C-2 show it is a government that continues to believe that we need to be there for Canadians.

Bill C-2 also recognizes the importance of businesses. Pre-pandemic, the government reduced the small business tax. Ministers listened to what small business owners had to say, and tried to assist in whatever way we could. It is one of the reasons we had record employment numbers. Stephen Harper took 10 years to create one million jobs. We did it in four years, and they are full-time jobs.

At the end of the line, we know what it takes to build a healthy economy. We demonstrated that pre-pandemic and we are seeing it today. We are already at pre-pandemic employment levels because, in good part, the Government of Canada worked with other levels of government and Canadians to make sure that we were in a good position to recover.

How were we able to do that? We came forward with programs that really made a difference, such as the wage subsidy program, so individuals could stay employed and businesses could continue to employ people.

The other day, the Bloc made reference to our arts and cultural community, which every member of the Liberal caucus truly cares about. I had the opportunity to talk with the Folk Arts Council of Winnipeg. The members commented about the wage subsidy program. Chances are it would not have survived without it.

The Folk Arts Council provides a wide spectrum of heritage and arts events and performances. It is incredible. It has been around for over 50 years in Manitoba. There are dozens of pavilions every summer that participate. Amazing talent is discovered. So many people are engaged in it. It is a program that has supported arts and culture, our private sector and even non-profits. It was there because there was a need to support small businesses and people.

That is exactly what the wage subsidy program did. I would argue that it saved hundreds of thousands of jobs in all regions of our country.

We also recognized the need to support businesses through things like the rent subsidy program. Imagine those people who had operational businesses getting hit by the pandemic. The did not having consumers coming in or they lost out on contracts. The rent subsidy program allowed thousands of companies throughout Canada the opportunity to receive support from the government, which allowed them to keep their doors open. I would suggest it is one of the reasons why, through the government and the co-operation of many others, we were able to prevent thousands of bankruptcies all over Canada. Small businesses understood they had a government that was prepared to develop the programs that were necessary so they would be able to get themselves through this pandemic, yet the Conservatives were still saying that we were spending too much as a government. The main comment we heard from across the way is that we are wasteful.

The House resumed from November 26 consideration of the motion that Bill C-2, An Act to provide further support in response to COVID-19, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House to give my first speech in the 44th Parliament. I want to start off by thanking the wonderful people of Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry for returning me to the chamber once again. I am very grateful each and every time I come to the nation's capital and into the chamber to represent my community at a federal level. It is an honour and a privilege and not something I take lightly in the work that I do and will be doing in the House in the coming months and years, or however long this Parliament may last.

Since it is my first time to be able to speak at length, I want to acknowledge and thank my family and numerous friends and supporters who not only have been involved during the recent election campaign but continue to support me and my work in many ways, both personally and professionally. I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge my staff, both in my Cornwall constituency office and here on the Hill.

At the same time, it is always an opportunity for me to speak a little French. It is a work in progress. There is a francophone community in my riding, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry. One of the advantages of being in the House is that it gives me the opportunity to study a second language. I am a francophile, and I know how important the francophone community is. I study every week at the ACFO in Cornwall with my teacher, Sonia, to improve my second language.

We are finally back to work here. Sixty-two days after election day we have the opportunity to gather in Ottawa and get back to the work that people sent us to do. After $610 million were spent, it did not change the seat count here much, but here we are several months later, dealing with a bill as we continue to try to get past COVID.

This is an economic bill on government spending and there are a few things that I want to take some time to talk about specifically. The member for Yorkton—Melville just asked a good question of the previous speaker about a few areas of concern that I am hoping to use my time today to highlight. I want to highlight what I feel the government has perhaps not learned from previous support programs that have been offered as we get through the pandemic.

A few weeks ago or earlier this month, intelligence reports came out that were shared by a wide variety of Canadian media and were very concerning. The headline of an article read “Organized crime 'knowingly and actively' exploited federal pandemic benefits: intelligence reports” and “FINTRAC not sure total amount of CERB/CEBA funds may have gone to organized crime”. I also want to acknowledge the great work, at both provincial and municipal levels in my riding in the city of Cornwall, of a service manager for various provincial social services programs, who outlined a number of potential and actual fraud cases in the applications for benefits.

As this pandemic unfortunately continues, and hopefully we are seeing light at the end of the tunnel, the one thing I look for when I see a new piece of legislation in the rounds of benefits is what the government has learned from previous iterations in a commitment to close those gaps. We have not seen details in the bill, and I do not believe there is a firm commitment. I have a lot of concerns about the details of that.

We have heard previous speakers from the government benches say it has the Canada Revenue Agency or various departments that will work hard to do X, Y and Z in reaction to fraud and different aspects of organized crime being involved in these programs. What members have heard Conservatives say is that as a matter of fact, we should be proactive, not reactive, when it comes to these things. There are better checks and balances as we go along, and those are going to be the things I am looking for as a member of the chamber in the coming weeks and months, as we debate the legislation.

That is a segue to talking about how we scrutinize these bills. At the beginning of the pandemic, as I and many of my colleagues have mentioned, we supported programs as Canadians needed them to get through this. It has been a challenging time economically and on the physical and mental health of Canadians. However, when we talk about doing better, we had an unnecessary election; we had an unnecessary period of 62 days to wait for Parliament to come back and, as a bit of a procedural item, it now looks like the finance committee that would normally look over and review a bill such as Bill C-2 may not even be constituted until early next year at some point, when we return in January and committees get set up, elect the chairs and so forth.

We now have the opportunity and the duty to Canadians to say that for legislation like this, we need to hear from experts such as I just referenced in the news articles and intelligence reports that were coming out.

What more can we do, as we are spending taxpayers' hard-earned money to reduce and eliminate, as best we can, fraud and organized crime from “knowingly and actively” exploiting these federal programs? I often say there is a lot of good talk and well wishes in the government saying that it will take a look at it and see what it can do.

At this point in the pandemic, when we saw the WE Charity scandal, which got a lot of attention, and the intelligence reports that got a lot of attention, I believe there is a lack of confidence among Canadians, especially when they read the reports. They see these reports being publicized and documented, and there is no clue of what is going on. Again, there is a concern that with having 62 days for Parliament to come back and table this bill, there are not enough details and prevention measures in there with respect to what we can do.

I mentioned the work of our shadow finance minister, the member for Carleton, who gave a great speech this morning and took questions in the opening round of this debate. He talked about how, as we look at this bill and at the feedback we are hearing from our constituents, there are “help wanted” signs in the windows of many businesses in the united Counties of SDG, the city of Cornwall and Akwesasne. This is replicated right across the province. We are seeing a real gap between getting people back to work and supports to reopen businesses, get them back to 100% and get our economy through this.

Inflation is something we saw referenced only once by the current government in this week's priority document: the Speech from the Throne. The government finally acknowledges inflation as a crisis, reaching a staggering 4.7%. This is an 18-year high, and an economic bill such as Bill C-2 is an opportunity to give detailed plans to address this. My friend and colleague for Carleton raised this morning that, when we look at statistics from around the world, there is a correlation between governments that spent hundreds of billions of dollars in debt and deficit spending and those that now have an inflationary problem. We were told there would be deflation. We now have inflation. There is a direct correlation. There is a direct correlation with our housing values and prices as we go forward.

From the feedback I have heard in my community in eastern Ontario, constituents and businesses want us to get back to work to create jobs and get businesses going at 100%, not pay people to stay at home. They also want us to address inflation. It is a serious strain on the quality of life and the budgets of those who are on fixed incomes, whether they are seniors, young families or people finishing school with student debt and looking to get into the workforce. We are forced to ask for emergency debates to try to get these as this bill goes forward. It needs more scrutiny. We need to hear from experts on things that can improve the bill, and we could talk about addressing getting the economy back to full strength.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak here today in the chamber. I look forward to the questions and comments. At the end of the day, let us get back to work, get Canadians back to work and get our economy firing on all cylinders again. That is what Canadians are asking for.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the chamber today and join colleagues in this important discussion.

This is my first opportunity to take up more than a few minutes in the House, and I want to thank all of my constituents, all the folks in my community, for their support over the last three years. My community has had three federal elections in three years that have returned me to this place, and so while we are very practised at elections, we are very much looking forward to being able to get down to the business of the nation.

I would not have been elected any of those three times if it were not for the support first and foremost of my family: my wife Amanda and our wonderful children Luke, Ama, Michaela, James and Nathan. We are not quite adding one child between each election, but I would appreciate all members' support in giving us some time as we adjust to our growing family.

In addition to the growth in the size of my family over that time, of course we all have to learn our new roles and support each other. I have been supported tremendously by my wife Amanda. Parliamentarians, folks in this place, know how much our partners and spouses give to us in terms of their support and time. I can never thank Amanda enough. I love her. I appreciate her making it possible for me to be here.

In addition to the support from my family, the support from my team has been exceptional. To all of them, and hopefully I will have an opportunity to take advantage of Standing Order 31 to thank some of them a little later on, I thank them, particularly Joan Lahey and everyone who helped her in her efforts.

I will be sharing my time with the member for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry. We are looking forward to hearing what my neighbour to the east has to say. We just heard from his neighbour to the east, but in response to that, I am very excited to hear what the member for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry has to say.

Today we are talking about Bill C-2 and these pandemic measures. This pandemic started 20 months ago in the spring of 2020. The pandemic measures we introduced in March of 2020 were done unanimously by all members in this place. We took a look at what Canadians needed, what we thought they might need in the face of these unprecedented times we were facing, and it was an all-hands-on-deck approach.

That help did not happen without a hard look from the official opposition and the other opposition parties. The government, and let us be fair, was faced with a situation that had not been seen in modern times. It proposed measures, some of which appeared as though they would have been adequate and some that appeared to be wholly inadequate. The government was able to put forward measures, with the support and the help from opposition parties and all members in this place, to adequately support Canadians. I think of the emergency wage subsidy as one of those measures that was vastly improved with the help of the opposition.

One of the first things, in those chaotic first days of the pandemic, the government looked to do was introduce legislation that would have given them the ability to tax and spend without parliamentary oversight for nearly two years. That is incredibly concerning. We know response to the pandemic is very important, but it also requires proper scrutiny. It requires the voices of all members of this House to represent their constituents.

What have we been hearing? First of all, we heard from the government that we had to have an election this summer because there were things that had to be taken care of right away. It was urgent, an urgent election. Without having lost the confidence of the House, the Prime Minister triggered an election via the Governor General and off we went to the doorsteps, where we heard from constituents.

I will circle back to what we heard from constituents, from the folks in our communities and from communities across the country.

The election happened and those of us in the room were elected. Hats off to everyone who put their name forward in the election and ran as a candidate. It is such a critical part of our democracy to have people with different perspectives, all looking for a better Canada, putting their name on the ballot. We elected 338 members, and then we waited and we waited for Parliament to be recalled. It was two months before we returned to this place, just this past Monday. It does not seem urgent. It does not seem like the government was ready to deliver on its plan.

The Liberals' plan up to this point has overseen some pretty scary stuff, some really challenging times. We have heard that the inflation crisis gripping our country is okay. We have heard it is the same as countries around the world. I guess it depends on which data set they want to compare it to, but it certainly is not okay.

When inflation is the highest it has been in my adult life, the highest it has been in 18 years, at 4.7%, vastly outstripping wage increases that most Canadians will receive, it is a tax on everything. The price of everything has gone up. Feeding a family, putting gas in a car and heating a home is costing more and more. The percentages by which they have increased vary, but certainly energy costs are through the roof.

The plan we have seen from the government has delivered excruciating price increases. We have also heard that the government is going to have a windfall on account of having taxes on higher prices. I am not reassured that the Liberals are going to spend it well. I am very concerned about that. I think about one of their jobs plans from the pandemic where they spent $100 million to create 100 jobs. Certainly the benefit to those folks who had the jobs created or the spinoff from each of those jobs was not $1 million, at 100 jobs costing $100 million.

We have to allow Parliament to do its work. We have to dig into this stuff and take a look at what measures Canadians really need. Are we spending too much? For all the worthy programs that have been put forward and for all the programs that were managed well, some were not and they have been exploited by organized crime and bad actors.

Therefore, now is not the time to continue the money presses and printing cash to pay for programs that not only can we not afford, but in some cases we just do not need them anymore. We need to ensure that we support the job creators. We need to ensure that we support employers, so they can welcome workers back into their workplaces. We need to ensure that we allow people to have that dignity of work, that return to work and that return to normal for which we long. That is what we have been working for throughout the COVID pandemic, surviving lockdown after lockdown. Now it is time to get back to business. That means shutting off the printing presses and focusing on doing what only government can do. Let us match up employers and workers, and return our economy and Canada to the front of the pack.

That is what we need to see from the government. The plan we have had to this point has not delivered the prosperity Canadians should have. Let us not compare bad data with bad data or compare outrageous other countries that have bad economic performance as well. Let us return Canada to its leading position. That is where we deserve to be. That is what Canadians expect from us. That is what they elected us to do.

I look so forward to working with my colleagues to return Canada to that leading position.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-2 is not about shortages of labour, but I assure my hon. colleague that if he has solutions to the lack of labour for food processing, I would love to sit down with him and hear him out.

I know that the flexibility within the temporary foreign worker program was something that, back in April 2020, all the food processors were asking for, and I would say to them simply that they are competing against themselves, which is okay. That is good for workers.

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

Mr. Speaker, congratulations on your appointment.

I would also like to take a moment to thank the people of the riding of Abitibi—Témiscamingue for putting their trust in me once again. I am very honoured. I would also like to thank my wife, Émilie, and my children, Léon and Jules, for all the sacrifices they make so that I can represent the people of my riding. I also want to thank my team and the volunteers who helped out during the election campaign. I am grateful for their contribution.

That being said, we could all have done without this election, especially considering the results. The government's goal was obviously to get a clear mandate to better manage the pandemic. In the end, the response from Canadians showed that what we were doing was good.

One of the first measures announced by the new government was to abolish the CRB. However, the Liberals did not talk about that during their election campaign, even though the campaign should have been used to promote pandemic management measures.

In the context of Bill C‑2, there are also self-employed workers in the cultural sector who have been left out.

The member for Glengarry—Prescott—Russell seems prepared to talk about it in order to improve the situation. What can we do to help people, the self-employed workers in the cultural sector?

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague and I have had the pleasure of serving together on the government operations committee for six years. I hope to see both of us again on OGGO, despite what he may wish.

My colleague probably knows that the last time around with the wage subsidy, we had a lot of criticism, as it was going to wealthy hedge fund managers, big corporations and Chinese communist state-owned companies. We asked the previous Treasury Board president if the $80 billion of new spending went through the required Treasury Board approval process, and the minister stunned us all by saying it had not.

I am wondering if my colleague could assure us that the new spending in Bill C-2 has gone through the Treasury Board approval process, as required by the Treasury Board framework.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as I rise for the first time in the House to discuss a bill, I want to thank all of the constituents of Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, my wife, Kathryn, and my son, who is on his second election already even though he is only two and a half. He is going to be a super-volunteer later in life.

Today we are discussing Bill C‑2, an act to provide further support in response to COVID‑19. I want to thank the Public Health Agency of Canada, which has been working hard since March 2020 and probably since February 2020 when we found out about this virus.

The situation we are in now compared to the beginning of the pandemic is good news. Our health authorities are doing excellent work. Dr. Paul Roumeliotis has done excellent work in my riding and I am sure that the member for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry agrees with me on that.

The vaccine is now approved for children aged five to 11, which is good news. I know that clinical trials are under way. Dr. Tam, our excellent chief public health officer, said last week that clinical trials for children under the age of five were under way. This is something that affects me personally, and I hope that these clinical trials will be successful for our children. There is no question that if the trials are successful my child will be vaccinated. That is the responsible thing to do.

The pandemic has had a huge impact on workers and small businesses. The COVID‑19 lockdown measures have been very difficult. I know that everyone has spoken to all kinds of business owners and self-employed workers. I have had a number of conversations with hair salon owners who lost all revenue overnight and no longer knew how they would pay the bills at home. That is why the Canada emergency response benefit, the wage subsidy and the rent subsidy were created.

Even in my riding, we helped several businesses move online given that people could not go out to shop and had to stay home. Our government implemented measures to help businesses grow their online services. The Prescott-Russell Community Development Corporation did excellent work at home to ensure that several businesses had an online presence.

When we made these announcements on July 1, it is true that the CERB was changing. However, everyone knew that it would end on October 23, 2021. Shortly after that, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, together with the Prime Minister, made an announcement about the main components of Bill C‑2, which we are discussing today.

I obviously support Bill C‑2 because I believe that it targets the crux of the problem. When we were locked down, there were no jobs available. All the stores were closed and everyone was asked to stay home. Today, we have heard from several parties that there is a labour shortage. It existed even before the pandemic, which has made it worse. We have a support program for certain people who have lost income, and that is the purpose of the programs announced today. If a province or a municipality ever has to lock down again, I am pleased to say that we will be there to answer the call.

It is called the Canada worker lockdown benefit, and it is important. Hopefully we will not go back there, but if we do, and a province decides to implement lockdown measures, then at least our constituents will have something to go back on to help them pay for groceries and whatever expenses they have related to their home.

There is another important one. We have all had discussions with the tourism sector and the restaurant sector. When the economy opened, they were not able to take advantage of a fully reopened economy because they were limited by being asked to ensure that customers were six feet apart, so they could not have as many restaurant tables in their restaurants. Obviously, that has a direct impact on their revenues, which is why the tourism and hospitality recovery program is important to help them get through this pandemic as the economy reopens.

Another important measure deals with the hardest-hit sectors of our economy. I had the opportunity to talk to people from 417 Bus Line, who told me that a good portion of their company's income is related to school transportation, which has resumed, but that they are still missing the income generated by the charter buses that transport tourists to various communities.

I am pleased to say that the measures we are announcing today will help that company. I want to tell the Laplante family that I heard what they had to say, as did the minister, our government and the Prime Minister.

It should be noted that it costs between $15,000 and $20,000 just to get a bus back on the road after it has been parked for two years. Obviously the measure that we are announcing here is not directly related to the cost of getting these buses back on the road, but it will help cover other expenses, such as the cost of rehiring workers later.

We all wish that the measures we have announced were not necessary, but we have a responsibility as a government. We have a responsibility to manage risk, and that is what these measures do. They will be available to help our businesses if necessary. These businesses will have access to programs that will help them grow or deal with costs associated with any new lockdown measures.

The opposition parties have identified some flaws in these measures, and I invite them to join the conversation. We introduced a bill, but we are definitely open to certain amendments if necessary. That is part of the debate. I would also encourage parliamentarians to discuss Bill C‑2 with their constituents. If there are flaws in the bill, it is our responsibility to find ways to correct them. I think the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Tourism and Associate Minister of Finance are open to those conversations.

In conclusion, I would like to say that Bill C‑2 is important to Canadians and our businesses. It puts forward tools to help our businesses, but it will not be the only way to meet those needs. Let me point out that we have a Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario and that we are seeing positive spinoffs. The agency is also doing excellent work by making interest-free loans available to entrepreneurs and businesses so they can buy new equipment or acquire new technology to help them get through the pandemic.

The message I want to send today is that our government has always been there to meet the needs of our business owners, our workers and our fellow citizens. In closing, I would like to once again thank the voters of Glengarry—Prescott—Russell.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, hopefully the member can answer this specific question.

For a business like the Windsor casino in my municipality, hundreds, if not thousands of workers were shut out of their jobs through government intervention with regard to closures. The reopening has not allowed them to get enough weeks to qualify for employment insurance and they appear not to be eligible for this program. Could the member let us know if that is the case? If not, those workers will have to go on welfare. Will the government deal with that situation? There are others, but it is a good example.

We have thousands of people who did not have the ability to get the weeks they needed to qualify for employment insurance. By the rules I see in the bill, Bill C-2, they are basically being pushed onto welfare. Is that the government's plan? Just them to push onto welfare?

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

Mr. Speaker, it is very important for our government to help all businesses across the country.

It is very important for us to help all enterprises in Canada, but also all sectors. If there are ideas within the House that need to be brought forward, obviously those should bring them forward. That has been our motto since the beginning of the pandemic. That is how we have gotten our legislation even better than on the first iteration.

Most important, this hardest-hit measure that we have put in place in Bill C-2 falls under the Canada emergency wage subsidy, which I remind all members in the House assisted 5.5 million workers and literally hundreds of thousands of firms to maintain that attachment between employer and employee.

[Eric Melillo, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his thoughts on this bill. I would like to once again congratulate on his re-election.

In northern Ontario, in the Kenora riding, one of the greatest economic issues we are facing right now is a severe labour shortage. I do not believe there is much, if anything, in this bill that would address that.

I would like to ask my friend across the way if he feels that Bill C-2 would address the labour shortages across the country. If not, could he fill us in on what measures the government would be taking to do so?

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

Mr. Speaker, good afternoon to you and all of my colleagues who are here in person and here virtually. I wish a happy Friday to everyone.

It is my pleasure to rise today to speak to Bill C-2, which continues to support Canadian businesses and workers from coast to coast to coast.

I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Glengarry—Prescott—Russell. He is a big supporter of the agricultural community in Canada and a great friend.

I am pleased to take part in today's debate on this very important bill, Bill C-2, which would provide and continue to provide essential supports that are needed now to continue Canada's robust economic recovery from the COVID recession.

When the crisis hit, our government rapidly rolled out a full range of effective broad-based programs to support Canadians through our country's greatest economic shock since the Great Depression. Yes, we had the backs of Canadian businesses, we had the backs of Canadian workers and, most importantly, we had the backs of Canadian families. These actions were necessary and unprecedented in our lifetime.

These programs were a lifeline for workers and businesses across the country. They protected millions of jobs and helped hundreds of thousands of Canadian businesses get through the worst of the pandemic.

However, these emergency measures were always meant to be temporary to help us to get through the crisis. Fortunately, we are now entering a new phase that looks very different from the darkest moments in our fight against COVID‑19.

Thanks to one of the most successful vaccination campaigns in the world, including almost 90% in the region of York, the region I represent in my riding of Vaughan—Woodbridge, most businesses are safely reopening and employment is now back to pre-pandemic levels. However, we know there are still workers and businesses whose livelihoods are being affected as a result of the pandemic-related restrictions on activities. This is why it is important to pivot our support measures to more targeted measures that would provide the help where it is needed most and continue to create jobs and growth while prudently managing government spending.

I am happy to say, which I believe the Deputy Prime Minister also said, that Moody's and Standard & Poor's have reaffirmed and confirmed our country's AAA credit rating. We are only one of a few countries in the world to maintain an AAA credit rating from the rating agencies, which is great to see and is thanks to the hard work of all Canadians.

Some may wonder how we can tell we have reached a turning point in Canada's economic recovery from the COVID recession. Allow me to highlight the markers of our government's successful economic response plan that have brought us to where we are today.

Last year, in the throne speech, our government promised to create one million jobs, a goal that we reached in September of this year, when Canada recovered all of the jobs that were lost at the height of the recession caused by COVID‑19. That means three million jobs were recovered since the spring of 2022. In fact, according to the Statistics Canada labour force survey from October, the reported unemployment rate is now 6.7%, the lowest it has been since the beginning of the pandemic. The number of jobs continues to be above the pre-pandemic level.

In fact, Canada's job recovery rate is well ahead of that of the United States, which has recovered only 91% of the jobs it lost at the height of the pandemic.

It is a welcomed sight that we can all see the differences between this fall and the one prior. Shops and businesses are open in my riding and from coast to coast to coast. Canadians are doing their part to make sure we have a safe reopening by rolling up their sleeves to get their vaccines and following public health advice. Children, including two of my three children, are also back in school, enabling parents to fully participate in the workforce. The early learning and childhood agreements our government is putting in place, with a total of nine agreements signed to date with the provinces and territories, are already making a difference in the lives and wallets of families across this beautiful country.

We have accomplished all of this together while sticking to health restrictions that have saved lives and putting in place the necessary resources and supports Canadians and Canadian businesses needed to survive, the small local businesses in all our ridings that we have the privilege of representing.

However, as welcome as these economic markers and signs of recovery are, our government recognizes that it has been an uneven recovery and some of the necessary health measures that continue to save lives, while less restrictive than before, are still restricting some economic activity. What this means for our government is that we are entering what I hope and believe will be the final pivot in delivering the support needed to ensure a robust, inclusive and sustainable recovery that benefits all Canadians.

The service industry continues to drive economic recovery, but progress in the retail sector has been partly offset by losses in other sectors, such as the restaurant and accommodation sector. As the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance indicated in October, a number of business revenue support programs have ended now that the economy has reopened.

With this change, and through Bill C-2, which we are debating today and which I hope all opposition parties will support, we are moving from the very broad-based support, which was appropriate at the height of our lockdowns, to more targeted measures that would provide help exactly where needed. This would include extending the Canada recovery hiring program until May 2022, which would help us finish the fight against COVID-19 and continue to ensure lost jobs are recovered as quickly as possible.

For eligible employers with current revenue losses of about 10%, our government would provide a subsidy rate of 50% to enable employers to hire the staff they need to grow and thrive.

In addition, our government is proposing to deliver targeted support to businesses that are still facing significant pandemic-related challenges. Let us think about the businesses, such as the hotels in a typically busy tourist designation that has not seen a return to the usual amount of visitors as in years past, or alternatively, a curling club that is just beginning to see more patrons as public health restrictions ease and Canadians begin to engage more in the recreational activities they enjoyed prior to the crisis.

These are examples of the businesses that still need our support, this chamber's help and assistance as we push to fully recover from the COVID-19 recession.

That is why our government wants to provide support through three new programs for businesses still grappling with major pandemic-related challenges. The first is the tourism and hospitality recovery program, which would provide support to, for example, hotels, tour operators, travel agencies and restaurants with wage and rent subsidies of up to 75%.

Next is the hardest-hit business recovery program, which would provide support to other businesses that have faced deep losses, with wage and rent subsidies of up to 50%.

Last is the local lockdown program, which would provide businesses that face temporary new local lockdowns up to the maximum amount available through the wage and rent subsidy programs. These programs will be available until May 7, 2022, and the proposed subsidy rates will be in effect until March 13, 2022. From March 13 to May 7, 2022, the rates will be reduced by half.

In conclusion, the economy continues to reopen and jobs are being created. People are being vaccinated. Children from ages five to 11 are now receiving theirs, and boosters are being offered to eligible Canadians. Restrictions are carefully being eased in our communities and at our border. The time has come to adapt our income and business support measures to these better and happier circumstances.

I appreciate this opportunity to speak on Bill C-2. I hope all opposition parties will support this important legislation.

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

Mr. Speaker, I just want to take a moment to thank, once again, the constituents of Elmwood—Transcona for having placed their trust in me to represent them in this place. I want to thank my wife, Janelle, and our children, Robert and Noah, who support me in my parliamentary service, as well as all of our family, friends and the many volunteers who contributed to my being here today.

I find this bill and the topic of pandemic supports interesting. I think it speaks to the crossroads that Canada finds itself at, in the face of two great challenges. On the one hand there is the challenge of pandemic recovery, and on the other there is the challenge of the climate crisis; they both raise similar questions.

They raise questions of how to support workers who suddenly see their industry dramatically hurt by forces beyond their control. They both raise the question of how to support vulnerable people who are not able to work through times of crisis and the economic effects of those crises, like inflation, as an example.

They both raise the question of how to direct investment in infrastructure and services in a way that makes us more resilient to the challenges we face. They both raise the question of how we decide who should pay the costs of these investments and what the mechanisms are by which those payments ought to be made. These are just some of the important questions that the pandemic and the climate crisis both raise.

Getting the pandemic recovery right is important, certainly in its own right, but I want to begin with a reminder that these are not questions that are going to be over with the pandemic. These are questions that we are going to face in the years to come as the climate crisis worsens.

The Liberals have been very clear in introducing this bill that, as far as they are concerned, we are turning the page on the pandemic. If we look around, it is quite clear that we are not past the pandemic. In fact, I heard many Liberal members yesterday in the debate about a hybrid Parliament make arguments about how we are not past the pandemic and how the effects of the pandemic and the imperatives of the pandemic still very much rule our lives.

Certainly, if we look around at different parts of the country, we can see that, in fact, we are in a fourth wave. Even when the public health crisis has passed, I think it is quite reasonable to expect that the economic consequences of the pandemic will extend past the end of the public health crisis and take longer to resolve.

Earlier this week, the Deputy Prime Minister said that Canada has recovered all the jobs lost during the pandemic, and that statistic may true in terms of the number of available jobs out there. However, it is also true that the unemployment rate is almost 7%. It is also true that the inflation rate is over 4% and that employers are complaining about a labour shortage.

What do all those numbers mean? We often throw figures and statistics out in this place without getting to the core of what those numbers mean for people across the country. They mean that there are many Canadians looking for work, but they are not the Canadians with the skills, the education and the experience that employers are looking for right now for their business. Otherwise, they would find it a lot easier to get that job, and more employers would be satisfied that they can find workers.

It means that even as this mismatch in the labour market is frustrating employers and keeping Canadians who want a job unemployed, both people and businesses are facing rising costs after depleting all of their reserves trying to cope with the economic disruptions of the pandemic. These numbers mean that it is absolutely not the time for the federal government to turn its back on the people who need help the most, yet this is the direction that Bill C-2 takes us.

New Democrats have been very clear that we believe the Canada recovery benefit should have been maintained for the time being and restored to its original level of $500 per week. We opposed the cut this summer to $300 per week. We were critical of the government not only for simply ending the CERB and doing it with only two days' notice, but also by choosing not to use the option they had of extending the CRB until November 20 just by regulation.

By a wave of their hand, they could have allowed for another month of support for the almost 900,000 people who were still availing themselves of the financial help under the Canada recovery benefit. They chose not to do that. That still would have meant that the benefits only lasted until a couple of days before we assembled here to talk about next steps.

We know that the cost of living never went down. In fact, it was quite the contrary, which is why it did not make sense to reduce the benefit. It was at $2,000 a month. The costs that people were facing for housing, food, home heating and other things went up and the Liberals thought it was time to bring the benefit down, leaving people to wonder how they were supposed to pay more for the essentials with less money in their pockets.

One has to assume it was a simple attempt to starve people back to work: to make sure that they did not have enough from the benefit and maybe they would rejoin the job market. When reducing the benefit to $300 a week did not work, the government decided to cancel it altogether. The problem is, as I mentioned before, the people who need jobs are not the people employers are looking for. If so, they would be employed. It has already been a month since there has been no CRB support. No one has received CRB support for the last month, yet we have not heard from employers that suddenly they are able to hire the people they need and want to hire in their businesses. That is because other factors are driving the labour shortage.

Consider that many people work in industries that have yet to bounce back. Jobs are not necessarily available in the sectors they had experience and training in, which can make it hard to find work. Consider that many people who were already close to retirement got to see what retirement life would be like, either by working a bit from home, or because they were laid off for a while during the pandemic. To protect their personal health, or just because they found that they could actually get by and they liked retirement life and it was their time to do that, they chose not to go back to work. They had worked hard all their lives and now it was time to take their retirement. There may be more early retirements as more workers are called back to the workplace and employers begin to end work-from-home mandates.

If the Liberals were serious about having the backs of workers until the end of the pandemic, they would be working with employers to identify the jobs they need to fill and the inventory of skills needed for those positions, and then train people off of the pandemic benefit into the jobs that are available instead of simply cutting the benefit. Instead, they chose to reduce and terminate that benefit and financial support that could have made it easier for people to pursue the education and training they needed to get those jobs.

This mean-spirited and ill-conceived approach to wrapping up pandemic benefits does not bode well for the promised reforms to the employment insurance system, because those reforms have to be about financially supporting people while they get the education and training they need to fill the positions that are available in the labour market. The Liberals had an opportunity to do that. With pandemic benefits, they failed to do that and now we have to worry that the same failure will plague the reform of the employment insurance system. I have to say, they are sure taking their sweet time on this. We have known for a long time that there are structural problems with the employment insurance system and we have not seen the Liberals act quickly in order to rectify those.

We talked about the costs of these pandemic programs. It is worth noting that what fails to be mentioned is that at the peak of the CERB and CRB, about nine million Canadians were availing themselves of those programs. When the program was cut there were fewer than 900,000 people on those programs, which means over a 90% reduction in demand for the program. That means a 90% or more cut in the cost of the program, and that is before we consider that the Liberals cut the amount of the benefit by 40%. The ongoing cost of maintaining CRB for another six or 12 months is significantly less than what we have already paid out in CRB spending.

Even if we accept for the sake of argument that it is time to pivot, as the Deputy Prime Minister has said, the targeted approach that the Liberals are taking fails by its own lights. I take the example of the tourism and hospitality sector. The government's targeted program is based on the wage subsidy program. It is a program that is only going to work for workers who are employed by somebody else, when many people such as independent travel agents are actually self-employed. There is no small number of people in that industry. About half of the independent travel agents fall into the category of being self-employed. About 80,000 or 90,000 are represented by the Association of Canadian Independent Travel Advisors. We are talking about 40,000 to 45,000 people. Those are some of the 800-and-some thousand who were still on the CRB.

That is an industry that is composed of about 85% women. A government that likes to pride itself on gender analysis of its policies clearly has not done its homework here, and there is a gendered impact of the failure to extend a benefit like the CRB, because these women are going to have no income support under this.

We spoke earlier about the arts and culture sector where many self-employed workers have no financial support. These people no longer receive financial support such as the CERB because these programs no longer exist. Without an employer, they have no way to receive financial assistance.

Bill C-2 would also ignore the opportunity to address problems with the Canada emergency business account. We have heard from many small businesses, which clearly needed the support the most, that the one-year repayment deadline in order to enjoy the forgivable loan portion of that program is simply unrealistic, because they continue to be in serious economic trouble.

Let us talk about the Canada worker lockdown benefit. When I asked the Associate Minister of Finance earlier today, we heard that it is going to be retroactive to October 23, so it is okay that they cut the CRB with only two days' notice for the people who were still on it. However, the Associate Minister of Finance confirmed earlier today that no region in Canada meets the criteria for the Canada worker lockdown benefit so far, so the fact that it is retroactive to October 23 is completely meaningless. It will not help anyone, because there is no region that meets the criteria in the legislation to date. Maybe there will be down the road, up to May 7. That is the cut-off for the Canada worker lockdown benefit. That is interesting, because the other provisions allow the government, by order in council, to extend those provisions to the end of June or the beginning of July. There is no such provision for the Canada worker lockdown benefit. That will end in May, short of another legislative intervention.

When it came to the CRB, the government decided not to extend the benefits through October and November. They extended the other programs they could, but they chose not to do that for the CRB. When it comes to the CRB's replacement program, the government has created a program that does not cover the time between October 23 and now. The Liberals have also chosen not to give themselves the option to extend that program past May 7. We have to wonder what workers have done to the government to make it feel such a strong sense of retribution.

This is just part of why this bill would really fail to take us in the direction that we have to go, and I think it is going to fail to address some of the immediate economic problems that we have, such as the labour shortage that employers are so keen to solve. It would actually take the government showing leadership and working with employers and employees or workers who are out of jobs to figure out how to match their skills to the jobs that are available.

These are just some of the problems with the bill as written. In fact, the omissions from the bill are worse. The Liberals have failed to take the opportunity to implement a low-income CERB repayment amnesty. We know a lot of people who are already poor took the government at its word when it said that if they needed help they should go ahead and apply for help, and if they had doubts about whether they were eligible for the help that the government had created, they should apply. The government would figure it out later and they would not be punished or persecuted.

I think of the kids who aged out of foster care in Manitoba during the pandemic. They went to the provincial government, because there were no jobs available in the summer of 2020. Let us not kid ourselves. It was not like there were a bunch of jobs on the market that they could have walked in to, and the provincial government said they could not apply for help from the province until they had applied for every other avenue of help. The government showed them the website for CERB and directed them to apply there. That was a no-fail application process, so of course those kids were going to succeed and they were going to receive CERB money. They did, and now the federal government is asking that they pay that back. The province sure as hell is not going to give them retroactive social assistance payments to cover the period that they missed because they applied for this federal program. Instead of showing some compassion, the federal government is chasing them down for money they do not have. What that will do is make it harder for them to get a proper start in life because they are already starting from behind. That is why we need to see a low-income CERB repayment amnesty in Canada now.

I think of George from my riding, who is on the GIS. He applied for the CERB because he lost some employment income. It turns he just did not meet the $5,000 qualifying income threshold. He just missed it. Therefore, he has been asked to give that money back.

George filed properly. He paid his taxes on that money, and because he was paid the net amount, he never got the gross amount. The government wants the gross amount back. On top of that, the government has included that income from CERB in what it is demanding back in the eligibility calculation for his guaranteed income supplement. He has had his guaranteed income supplement cut by $750 a month, while the government asks for the gross amount that it paid him in CERB when all he got was the net amount. His normal income has been shredded by the government's uncompassionate approach to the GIS and its failure so far to fix this problem, which is affecting up to 88,000 seniors across the country.

I want to talk about these clawbacks a bit too. People were told that if they need help to take the help. We were told: “We are here for you. We have your back. We have your back until the end of the pandemic.” Seniors who were working to top up their GIS took the government at its word. What they found out this July was that they were not getting a pandemic benefit, they were getting an advance on their guaranteed income supplement for the next year, except they were not told so they did not bank the money.

We know of some people who finally got dental work done. They had problems in their mouth that had been causing them pain and plaguing them for years. They could not afford to fix it before because we do not have any kind of national dental strategy, which is an issue for another day that I am happy to talk about, and it is something that the federal government should get moving on. Therefore, they used some of that money to fix their teeth.

Sometimes people used some of that money to fix their car, which is how they get to work. They used it to pay off bills that they had not been able to pay off and on which the interest was piling up on. These people did not misuse the funds, but it turns out they were spending tomorrow's paycheque without knowing it because the government did not bother to tell them.

There have been recent media reports that show the government knew about this problem at least as early of May of this year. The GIS reassessment happened in July. Why the government could not be bothered to at least issue a letter to let people know so that they could begin to develop a strategy, I do not know. It is shameful and the government has a real obligation to let them know.

I have to say I was a little shocked this week. I heard the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion, in response to a media question on this very point at a press conference, say, “It's a more complicated issue than one would think because there's serious kind of fairness and equity issue for people who may have earned similar amounts in employment income. If a senior worked last year and made an equivalent amount, they too would have lost their GIS or had their GIS potentially reduced, and so we're working on a path forward that recognizes this.”

It is interesting because the Liberals have no concept of equity and fairness when it comes to the largest corporations. Only when it comes to the poor, are they willing to nickel and dime.

Let us talk about the Canada wage subsidy program and quote from the good work of The Globe and Mail on this issue. This is from May 10, 2021:

Beyond a handful of hedge funds, some of the largest wealth managers in the country - household names such as Franklin Templeton, CI Financial, Gluskin Sheff & Associates - collected [the wage subsidy]. Collectively, these three companies manage close to $110 billion of assets in Canada. The Scotiabank Hedge Fund Index, which measures the monthly performance of Canadian-domiciled hedge funds with assets under management of at least $15 million, shows an average return of 11% in 2020, the best year for the industry in a decade.

Another wage subsidy recipient was the hedge fund JM Fund Management appears in the same article:

It's JM Catalyst Fund had such a good 2020, with outsized returns not seen by the fund since 2016, that it was ranked as the third-best performing hedge fund at the 2020 Canadian Heritage Fund Awards.

Where is the concern for equity and fairness there? Companies who had competitors who did not take the wage subsidy are not being asked to pay any of that back, and they walked off with tens of millions of dollars, but God forbid that somebody who is poor got an extra couple of thousand dollars to fix their car, fix their teeth or pay off a late bill.

That is why I think this bill gets us off on the exact wrong foot for the pandemic recovery, because that should be about making sure that the people at the top are paying for the recovery and the people at the bottom are getting the help they need, and this is not what we would be doing with this bill.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, in Canada we have over a million job vacancies. Restaurants are closing at four o'clock in the afternoon because they cannot find people to work there. In my riding they are talking about bringing in temporary foreign workers to work in the oil patch. Those are $55-an-hour jobs that they cannot find people to work for.

I see nothing in Bill C-2 that would help to alleviate the job crisis that we have in this country. What does the member have to say about that?

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by thanking my esteemed colleague from Joliette for sharing his time with me, and my other colleagues for allowing him to do so.

I would like to draw everyone's attention to the fact that this is day two of the days of action on violence against women. As we all know, women were the pandemic's first casualties. They suffered psychologically and physically. There were more cases of intimate partner violence during the pandemic. We also know they paid the heaviest economic price. In fact, 68% of those who lost their jobs between October 2019 and October 2020 were women. That is more than two-thirds of the newly unemployed, and it is a huge segment of the population.

In addition, many female entrepreneurs worried they might not be able to make it through the crisis. We know that what women need is financial independence. That is why it is the government's job to protect vulnerable populations and to protect women, and that is why it should offer programs to support that segment of the population.

As my colleague from Joliette mentioned, that is why the Bloc Québécois is in favour of measures to support workers in need and those segments of the population that need the most help. This health crisis has been going on for 20 months, and for 20 months, the government has been proposing measures that we do not feel are targeted enough. One the one hand, business owners are coming to see us and saying that the government needs to do away with benefits for all workers because they are contributing to the labour shortage, but on the other hand, some segments of the population have been left out of Bill C-2, as my esteemed colleague mentioned. I am thinking about cultural workers, mostly. Self-employed cultural workers are not included in this bill, and that is one of its shortcomings. That is why we need to discuss it and work on it. I want to point out that this situation is unacceptable. It is not right that, after 20 months of this pandemic, we are still at this stage and some sectors in need are still being left out. This includes self-employed cultural workers. Currently, they are not covered by the emergency measures. That is because the government called an election, and we are now dealing with a bill that is seeking to speed things up and fails to propose any measures for cultural workers.

We called for a better targeted bill and it took 20 months for the government to introduce one. The government has not done its due diligence for the most vulnerable members of society.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my NDP colleague for his question and comments.

I would like to correct one main fact. The Bloc leader did not say that he would support Bill C‑2. We are debating it.

We actually have some serious concerns, in particular with respect to self-employed workers in the cultural sector. When we read the bill, we do not see anything about that. The government is telling us that there will be something, but we do not know when. The Liberals are telling us that this is difficult.

I am sorry, but in a G7 country with considerable financial resources, the state has the means, if the government is so inclined, to quickly put in place measures to support self-employed workers in need, especially those in the cultural sector. The government has the ability to effectively target these support measures.

For that reason, if the bill is passed at second reading, it will be important to take the time to study it in committee in order to discuss the points raised by my colleague.

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

Mr. Speaker, the NDP shares the Bloc Québécois's concerns about the arts and culture sector and its self-employed workers. The problem is that there is no real equivalent to the Canada recovery benefit for that sector, and the Canada emergency wage subsidy is not available to people who are self-employed.

That is why I was a little surprised that the Bloc leader was so quick to support Bill C-2 and say he would vote in favour. It is clear that there is a gap in the bill with regard to self-employed workers in the arts, culture, travel and tourism sectors. This gap needs to be filled, and I would like to know how we can work together to achieve this before the bill is passed.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is important to remind everyone in the House that the health measures are important.

I want to start by humbly thanking the people of my riding of Joliette for putting their faith in me once again. I also thank all the volunteers and campaigners who pitched in during this election campaign. I am truly honoured to speak on behalf of the people I represent in Joliette.

I will be talking about Bill C‑2, regarding the economic impacts of the pandemic.

As members know, the pandemic caused a huge economic downturn, a recession. Some sectors had to be shut down to comply with health measures, and these closures dealt a blow to the economy.

Over the past century, economics has shown us that the least bad solution during these periods is for the government to step in with income support measures. We had measures such as the Canada emergency response benefit, the Canada emergency wage subsidy and the Canada emergency rent subsidy. These measures obviously need to be specific and well targeted if they are to be effective. This is why the Bloc Québécois was generally in favour of them. The Bloc is in favour of effective spending and against waste.

We now seem to be emerging from the pandemic-induced economic crisis, and that is encouraging. The latest statistics released by the government show that for period 21, there were just over 300,000 applications for the wage subsidy, which is about 10 times fewer than there were a few periods ago. We appear to be on the right track.

However, we all know that some economic sectors, businesses and workers have been hit harder by the pandemic. Some sectors will need more time to get back to the way things were before the pandemic. We think it is important to bring in effective programs to help these sectors overcome the pandemic. We believe in that, because we want to be able to count on the women and men who work in these sectors after the pandemic, once the new normal sets in. In the meantime, however, we have to be prepared to work together for the common good.

In one of our first encounters after her appointment during the last Parliament, I pointed out to the Minister of Finance the importance of targeted measures and predictability. Unlike in previous years, when this was rarely the case, these two components are included in Bill C‑2.

The two measures proposed in the bill will apply until May 2022, with the possibility of being extended until July. That provides some important predictability and, for the first time, specific sectors are targeted. This all seems great, and we applaud it.

Right now, the government is telling the House that action is urgently needed. The last period has ended, and the bill must be passed to avoid an interruption in subsidies. Therefore, we must hurry up, so much so that the government wants to invoke closure.

I would like to remind the House that the Liberal Party and its government are the ones responsible for this urgent situation. Did the public really want a general election? It seems that they did not, but the government was hoping to win a majority. Voters said no. Moreover, it took the government two months to recall the House. During that time, we could have been studying Bill C‑2 and taking the time to ensure that it adequately meets people's needs and the needs of our economic sectors. We did not get that time, because the government preferred to delay opening the new Parliament and resuming the work of the House.

Now the government is saying that action is urgently needed. That is obvious. It reminds me of a student who has two weeks to study or do their assignment, but who waits until the day before the deadline or the exam and realizes they must get going. Yes, it is urgent, but the student should have started earlier.

The government could stand to learn that lesson. It needs to take responsibility. If Bill C‑2 passes second reading, and the Bloc Québécois will soon be sharing our concerns about that possibility, we believe it will be extremely important to take the time to study the provisions properly in committee.

The bill sets out percentages for sectors such as tourism and culture. There are some more targeted and more accommodating proposals. There are measures for other sectors in general. The bill requires a business to have lost 40% or 50% of its revenue before being eligible for assistance. Are these percentages carefully targeted? For the Canada emergency wage subsidy, people will receive a specific percentage. Is that percentage appropriate?

All of this must be studied in committee. We need senior officials to explain the reasoning behind these percentages and share their figures and information. We can then decide whether the policy proposed in this bill is appropriately targeted. We need to do the work. We will have to hear from different groups and sectors in society about whether the measure is good and whether they have any amendments to suggest.

When the House passed economic aid bills under a gag order, the government had to come back to the House a month or two later to say that it was wrong, that it had made mistakes and that it had cut corners. Why? It is because those bills were all passed at the last minute, without taking a step back and without taking the time to study the bills and improve them. Sometimes, when we try to move too fast, it slows us and everyone else down.

At the beginning of the pandemic, it was important to act quickly, so there may have been flaws in the legislation. However, the government could have quickly done better by targeting the measures more carefully and by taking more time to examine the issue, rather than proroguing Parliament or, more recently, calling an election and taking two months before coming back to the House.

I would like to remind members that the wording of Bill C‑2, as it now stands, gives the Minister of Finance a lot of discretion. If certain sectors need to be added during the designated assistance period, she would have the power to do so, just as she could change the percentages if needed. Our hope is that, if this bill is passed, the government will use that discretion to support industries properly and respond to needs quickly.

One group is conspicuously absent from this bill: self-employed workers. Yes, there is the rent subsidy, but there is essentially nothing else in the bill. The people I have in mind are self-employed workers in the cultural sector. Supporting them is extremely important, but there is nothing in the bill as it stands. That is an issue I have with the principle of the bill. Why were these workers left out? That is a huge problem.

The government has hinted that there will be a program a few months from now, but how are these self-employed workers supposed to make it through until then with no income? This is very troubling.

Members may recall that, a few years ago, technicians and salaried employees in Quebec's cultural sector were asked to switch to self-employment to better meet the industry's needs. That is what they did, so now we need to help and support the sector. There are lots of self-employed workers in the economy, but the government is not giving them anything in this bill. That is a problem.

This sector is made up of people, women and men who need support. We must help them overcome the effects of the pandemic, which they are still grappling with. We have not forgotten them, and this oversight forces us to question our support for the very principle of this bill.

That was an overview of our thoughts on the bill. Once I have answered members' questions, the House will hear a wonderful speech from my colleague from Terrebonne.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-2, An Act to provide further support in response to COVID-19, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Small Business

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, that was a bit of a kitchen-sink question with lots of elements thrown in, but let me try to take them in turn.

When it comes to the flooding in B.C., we are there working with the Province of British Columbia. The Prime Minister will be there today.

When it comes to supply chain issues, we are monitoring that very, very closely. Let me point out that this is a global phenomenon. All Canadians appreciate that.

Finally, on small businesses, one way we can all help them right now is to vote for Bill C-2.

Employment

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, we are absolutely focused on supporting Canadian small businesses and Canadian workers. It is worth reminding everyone in the House of the success of Canadian businesses and Canadian workers in recovering those three million jobs that were lost during the COVID recession. A 101% recovery is great news for Canadians.

When it comes to supporting small businesses, I would like to take this opportunity to urge all members of the House to support Bill C-2. Small businesses in B.C., in Alberta and across the country need that support.

An Act to Provide Further Support in Response to COVID-19

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I too look forward to working with my hon. colleague across the way to determine how we can boost tourism in northern Ontario and across the country. Several factors are facing us right now as a country: welcoming people to our shores in a way that is safe for Canadians and the travelling public, making sure Canadians feel safe and are safe travelling within our own country, making sure that we can use the supports in Bill C-2 to help the people the hon. member spoke of bridge this winter season, which we hope is the last mile of getting tourism-based businesses through the global pandemic, and welcoming more Canadians to these businesses as well as more people from around the world to Canada.

We are one of the safest jurisdictions in the world to travel to, and that is a pathway we will continue to pursue.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate you on your appointment. I also want to congratulate the Minister of Tourism and Associate Minister of Finance on his re-election. It is a pleasure to see him in the House, for he is always cheerful and makes himself available to opposition members.

We in the Bloc Québécois believe that targeted and predictable measures are needed, as the minister said, and that is what we find in Bill C‑2. However, support measures for self-employed workers, particularly in the cultural sector, are conspicuously absent from this bill.

What measures does the government plan to introduce for self-employed workers in the cultural sector?

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

moved that Bill C-2, An Act to provide further support in response to COVID-19, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, is it ever good to be back here.

It is my pleasure to rise in the House to discuss Bill C-2, an act to provide further support in response to COVID-19. However, before I get into the substance of Bill C-2, I would like to say a few words of thanks to the residents of Edmonton Centre for once again giving me the great honour of representing them in this chamber. I also want to offer my love and deep thanks to my partner David, to my family and friends and to the countless volunteers who made today possible. Serving Edmontonians, serving the city I love, is the single greatest honour of my life. My remarkable community, on the banks of North Saskatchewan River, is back at the table here in Ottawa.

I would like to take the chamber back in time to a moment in 2020 and the beginning of the global pandemic. Canadians were asked to take unprecedented actions to keep each other safe, forgoing celebrating life's milestones, forgoing time together with family, forgoing so many of the things that bring joy to each of our lives. We saw front-line workers answer the call of duty, doing double and triple shifts to support our society and keep people safe. We faced an emergency that required widespread lockdowns, threatened millions of Canadians' ability to work and put at risk hundreds of thousands of businesses.

To respond to this unprecedented moment, our government took unprecedented action. Under the leadership of the Prime Minister, and thanks to the collective efforts of so many, we worked tirelessly to put in place a comprehensive suite of measures to support Canadian workers and businesses. Our income, wage and rent support programs kept households afloat, kept millions of Canadians in their jobs and allowed hundreds of thousands of businesses to keep going through the darkest days of the pandemic.

These are not just empty numbers. These are real people who were able to put food on their tables and real businesses that kept their doors open. It is the woman I met door knocking back in Edmonton during the election campaign who told me to look at the three houses to the left of hers, the three houses to the right and her own home. She said that if it were not for the government supports, the whole block might have lost their homes. It is the Credo Coffee shop on 124 Street, with two other locations, run by Geoff, Andrew and the team. They have been able to continue to provide incredible service and “caffeinations” to Edmontonians, including their member of Parliament.

Thanks to the hard work and sacrifices of Canadians and our health care workers, we are now seeing better days. Vaccination rates are high, approaching 80% of eligible Canadians; children are beginning to get their doses; grandparents are getting boosters; and our health care system is finding more and more ways to treat the virus. Schools are back in session and businesses across the country are reopening. Canada has now recovered 101% of the jobs lost in the depths of the COVID-19 recession, compared with just 81% in the United States. I want to applaud the work of my friend and colleague, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, whose stewardship of our economy has put hope back on the horizon for so many Canadians. In short, our government took action, and it worked.

However, we also understand that there are some sectors of the economy that continue to need support. With the public health situation still unpredictable, we need to make sure there are targeted supports that enable Canadians to continue to take the necessary precautions to save lives, including necessary public health restrictions that limit some economic activity. The time has come to adapt federal support measures to these new and improved circumstances. These were temporary emergency measures and were always meant to be just that: for emergencies.

Bill C‑2 will therefore make it possible for the government to implement targeted measures to support those who still need help.

As parliamentarians, we have a duty once again to take action and deliver important targeted support measures that will ensure Canadian workers and businesses that have not yet been fully able to recover from the impacts of COVID-19 have the support they need. Bill C-2 would do just that.

Like the measures for businesses, the assistance programs for Canadians will be targeted to meet the needs of those who still need help. We see that the fourth wave of the pandemic is hitting some regions of the country extra hard. It is still possible that public health officials will impose new temporary lockdowns in some regions in the coming weeks or months.

We are therefore proposing to immediately implement a program on which Canadians can depend should the need arise.

This new proposed program is the Canada worker lockdown benefit. As the Canada recovery benefit has done, this new targeted program would provide $300 a week in income support to eligible workers. It would snap into action to support employees unable to work because of a local lockdown any time until May 2022, and eligible workers would be able to access it retroactively to October 24. The program would be available to workers who do not qualify for employment insurance and also to those who do qualify, provided they are not receiving EI benefits for that same period.

That is one way we are helping, but we know that Canadians may also need continued support from the Canada recovery sickness benefit and the Canada recovery caregiving benefit, because we all need to protect ourselves and our family, friends and co-workers by staying home when we are sick. Furthermore, many children still cannot be vaccinated and are therefore particularly vulnerable, which means parents need to be able to stay home to take care of them.

That is why we want to extend the Canada recovery sickness benefit and the Canada recovery caregiving benefit until May 7, 2022. Bill C‑2 will also increase the maximum duration of these benefits by two weeks.

We know that what Canadians want most are good jobs, so we need to make sure Canadian businesses, especially small businesses, have the support they need.

This bill would extend the Canada recovery hiring program until May 7, 2022, at an increased 50% subsidy rate. This would encourage businesses to continue to rehire workers, increase their hours and create the additional jobs Canada needs for a full recovery from the COVID-19 recession.

That said, the government is aware that some businesses are unable to resume all their activities and create those jobs because of the public health measures that, as I said, are necessary to protect Canadians.

We are therefore proposing two new support programs targeting specific types of businesses in order to promote economic recovery. In both cases, the businesses must show that they experienced significant revenue declines during the first 12 months of the pandemic as well as the current month.

I will start with the tourism and hospitality recovery program, which will help hotels, restaurants and travel agencies still grappling with public health restrictions and the fact that people are travelling less because of the measures in place.

The Canada emergency wage subsidy and Canada emergency rent subsidy rate for these businesses will be 40% for those with a current-month revenue loss of 40%. The rate can go as high as 75% depending on revenue loss.

On that subject, allow me to pause for a few moments on what this means for our tourism sector. Since taking on the role of Minister of Tourism and Associate Minister of Finance, I have been moved by the passion and pride of those in the tourism sector for the work they do. As a former business owner, I too have felt that passion and pride and know the anxiety and heartache that comes when a person's life's work is placed in jeopardy by forces beyond their control.

These tourism businesses, these tour operators, are the people who tell our story to the world. They make possible the memorable experiences people carry with them for the rest of their lives.

However, this incredible industry was dealt a body blow by the global pandemic. In 2020, revenues declined almost 50%, from $104.4 billion to $53.4 billion, and jobs directly attributable to tourism decreased 41%, from 692,000 to 409,000, in the same period. Revenue projections for summer 2021 are expected to be about half of summer 2019 revenues.

However, even with these challenges, Canada's tourism sector is moving forward and our whole government recognizes the vital role that tourism plays in providing employment and opportunities for small and medium-sized businesses, and further fuelling economic growth. In short, the Canadian economy will not fully recover until the tourism sector recovers.

With government support, businesses in this sector are starting to get ready to welcome Canadians back to experience the great places and activities this country has to offer. This support includes the measures introduced in budget 2021 to support the tourism sector, totalling $1 billion over three years.

This included $500 million over two years flowing through the regional development agencies to help our hard-hit tourism businesses adapt their products and services and invest in future growth. It also included $200 million through the regional development agencies to support them and help ensure Canada continues to draw millions of visitors from all over the world to our large arts and cultural festivals and major events. This has ensured that they can continue to celebrate Canada's artistic excellence and unique character. To draw visitors to our smaller local festivals and events, as part of this package Canadian Heritage also received $200 million.

While the country is opening up, the organizations that host artistic, heritage and sport events and exhibits have been among the hardest hit during the pandemic and many Canadian artists and cultural workers have struggled to find work. With reduced revenues, many heritage, arts and sports organizations run the risk of not surviving through to the other side of the pandemic without additional support. We promised our tourism sector we would get it through to the end of this pandemic. With this suite of measures and the new supports contained in Bill C-2, we have delivered.

The other program we are proposing is the hardest-hit business recovery program. It would be available to employers in all sectors who have faced deep and enduring losses. The wage and rent subsidy rate in this case would start at 10% for applicants experiencing a 50% current period revenue loss. It would increase to a maximum of 50% for those with a current period revenue decline of 75% or higher.

In addition, we are proposing a new local lockdown program that would provide rent and wage support of up to 75% for organizations that face temporary local lockdowns and experience current month revenue losses above 40%. Support through these programs would be available from October 24, 2021, to May 7 of next year.

Fighting COVID-19, and the lockdowns it required to save lives, demanded historic government spending in Canada and around the world. It was a historic crisis, and Canadians supported that extraordinary spending because they understood that it was not only the compassionate thing to do, but the economically smart thing to do.

Our government delivered the economic support that has prevented the sort of economic scarring that followed the 2008 recession, and that would have done permanent damage to our economy and to our communities. Most importantly, these investments in our country saved lives. Today, more targeted support is required. We must adapt to provide help where it is needed, while also prudently and carefully managing government spending.

The measures in this bill will support Canadians and businesses still feeling the effects of the pandemic.

Together we have led much of our economy through the worst of this pandemic. Our actions have made it possible for our businesses to survive this once-in-a-century crisis. We have come so far and now we need to get the job done. This difficult journey is approaching its final mile. I call on all members to support this vital legislation and get our tourism and hardest-hit sectors home safe.

Order Respecting the Business of the House and its Committees

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

Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity to intervene in today's debate. I want to start by recognizing how difficult the last 19 months have been for everyone.

It has certainly been difficult from an economic point of view, and I will be talking a little about that tomorrow in the debate on Bill C-2, and also difficult in terms of coping with the consequences of some of the public health measures that have had to be taken.

It has been difficult to be shut in our homes. It has been hard not to be able to go out and get together. I fully understand people's desire to get out and reunite with people. Indeed, I have enjoyed being able to come to this place and see some colleagues, even as I have some reservations about whether it is the appropriate thing to do and whether we are really there yet.

We know we are in the middle of a fourth wave. Depending on where we are in the country, our experiences of COVID are very different right now. There are provinces where ICUs are full and they are worried about the consequences for their medical system, and there are other provinces that are faring relatively well for the moment but are wondering what the future holds. We just heard the premier of Saskatchewan, today or yesterday, express some regret for not having implemented more strict public health measures earlier in the province's own fourth wave.

What have we done? We have followed the advice of public health officials, which is the right thing to do. I am an electrician by trade. I would not take kindly to somebody doing some research on the Internet and then coming to tell me how to wire something. I would tell them that I am a Red Seal electrician: I have the experience, and if anybody is going to correct me it would be somebody with similar training and experience, not somebody who had been investigating things on the Internet.

It has been right and good to follow the advice of public health authorities throughout the pandemic. They have told us to wear masks. They have told us to socially distance. Sometimes they have told us to stay home. They have told us to get vaccinated and that vaccination is our way through this. We are getting closer to a normal time, because more people are accepting that advice and choosing to get vaccinated. I commend them for that, and I encourage those who have not done that to do it soon.

For every person with some medical credentials out there who is a COVID denier, there are many more who accept the science. I do not believe there is any great conspiracy. Frankly, having spent six years here, I do not think the government is capable of the intelligence, discipline and coordination it would take to orchestrate a conspiracy that vast, nor do I think the so-called government-in-waiting is capable of such a thing. I find these conspiracy theories simply unbelievable.

If vaccination is part of the way for us to get back to normal, then I think it is incumbent upon us as elected officials to show leadership in that. One of the principle barriers to us being able to talk about how we conduct ourselves properly here, or to get back to some kind of normally functioning Parliament, is that the Conservative Party in particular has not been forthright about how many of its caucus members are vaccinated and how many are not.

The Conservatives say we should simply trust the system. I think we should expect more transparency from people who are elected to public office. We often hear from them about the transparency they want from the government, and about the right to demand more transparency from the government. We have to show that in the way we behave ourselves. We have a leadership obligation to get vaccinated and to show, be honest and report our own numbers. Every other caucus here has done that.

I take the Bloc's argument for an in-person Parliament to be a little different. The Bloc members are coming from a different place. They are saying that they did the right thing: They all got vaccinated, and they want to come and meet in person. I think that reasonable people can disagree about whether it is the right time to do that and whether we should have a hybrid Parliament. Their argument comes from a different place, because they have been transparent and have shown that leadership. I thank them for that, even as I disagree on the issue of whether a hybrid format should be available.

The member for Vancouver East made the point very well earlier when she talked about many of us having to get here on a plane. The fact is that if I am showing any two minor symptoms or one major symptom, I have to fill out a COVID screening on my phone to get my boarding pass.

If I have a scratchy throat and a runny nose, which happens often in Winnipeg in the winter, I either have to lie and get on the plane, doing the wrong thing, or I have to stay home. I would be glad for the opportunity to participate in Parliament from home, and do the right thing by avoiding getting on a plane when I am presenting symptoms.

I did a lot of work in the virtual Parliament. I was frustrated by some of the things that other members have raised. I was frustrated by committee meetings that were disrupted by technical difficulties. I was frustrated by problems with interpretation. I felt for and talked about and stood up for our interpreters who were facing a disproportionate amount of injury as a result of the hybrid format. All of those things are true, but I was able to get a lot of work done.

We got a benefit of $2,000 per month for people who could not go to work. We got a student benefit that would not have happened if it had not been for the interventions of the NDP. We got a sick leave program that would not have happened if it had not been for the interventions of the NDP.

It is not just what we managed to accomplish for Canadians in their time of need, but it was also some of the accountability work that we did. Some people around here may remember a guy by the name of Bill Morneau, who did the wrong thing with respect to the WE Charity scandal. It was in the virtual summer sittings and virtual committee meetings of 2020, which the NDP negotiated, that testimony came to light that brought Bill Morneau down for his wrongdoing on the WE Charity scandal. That summer, he resigned his position and ultimately left the government. If that is not accountability, I do not know what is.

The idea that there cannot be good parliamentary work in a virtual Parliament, both in terms of helping people and in terms of holding the government to account, simply is untrue. I do not accept those arguments.

As I alluded to earlier, in the lead-up to this Parliament feelers were put out to the Conservatives and the Bloc to talk about what our Parliament would look like, whether we would have a hybrid Parliament and, if so, what shape that might take. However, they chose to abstain from those discussions. We might have had a hybrid Parliament where committees met in person. That might have alleviated some of the burden on our interpreters. We might have had some kind of understanding about how many Liberals might be in the House. However, instead of being able to have a constructive conversation, the conversation was about the disorder in the Conservative caucus and whether the Conservatives were going to require their MPs to be vaccinated. They were splintering off into a bunch of subcaucuses, and we could not have the kind of real conversation that we needed to have in the lead-up to this moment, because now we are back.

Finally, Parliament has met again after the election. It took too long, but now we are here. Parliament is in session and there are things to do that are actually about the people we were elected to represent. Therefore, we should not spend all our time debating this. There was a window to talk about how we were going to do this. Some chose not to participate, so then what is the most reasonable thing to do?

The most reasonable thing to do, if parties are committed to having a hybrid Parliament in this time when the pandemic is not yet over, is to adopt the same rules that those parties once agreed to. If we were going to do something different, that would be worse from the point of view of forging a new path. This at least is what they once agreed to, so our hands are somewhat tied by the fact that they would not engage in good-faith conversations about what kind of alterations to the hybrid Parliament we might make or if there were ways that we might scale back the hybrid element in certain parts of Parliament.

I imagine this may happen again. This has a deadline, and the pandemic may not be over by June 2022. The next time we discuss this, I invite these parties to come to the table and talk about how to make Parliament work with the 21st-century tools that we have, in a way that makes sense during a pandemic.

Business of the House

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question. I love questions, but I especially love the Thursday question.

I can say that tomorrow we begin debate at second reading of Bill C‑2, an act to provide further support in response to COVID‑19, which was introduced yesterday by the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance.

On Monday of next week, we will resume debate on the COVID-19 economic measures legislation. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, we will have a debate on the address in reply to the Speech from the Throne.

Resuming Debate on the Order Respecting the Business of the House and its Committees

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Outremont.

Since this is the first time that I am standing in the House in the 44th Parliament, I want to thank my constituents of Ottawa West—Nepean for putting their faith, confidence and trust in me once again as their member of Parliament.

I would also like to thank my family, especially my husband Don, my stepdaughter Courtney and my mom Maria, for always being there and supporting me throughout, as well as my volunteers and supporters.

I am pleased to participate in the debate on the government's motion to implement a hybrid sitting approach. The motion is proposing that we adapt our procedures and practices so that all members can fully participate in the proceedings of the House either in the chamber or by video conference. It is an important motion. The pandemic is ongoing and we require the flexibility that a hybrid system would provide.

I would like to paint a complete picture of the government motion.

First, the motion would allow all members to participate in the proceedings of the House in person or by video conference. The members who would attend in person would have to be double-vaccinated or have a valid medical exemption in accordance with the Board of Internal Economy's decision of October 19, 2021.

The motion also proposes certain changes to the Standing Orders of the House to take into account the virtual participation of members. For instance, members who participate remotely would be counted for quorum purposes. All standing orders relating to such requirements as standing when speaking, or being in one's seat in the House, would be amended to allow for participation by video conference.

The motion would also allow documents to be tabled or presented to the House in electronic format. For instance, members participating by video conference could table documents or present petitions or reports to the House in electronic format during Routine Proceedings. However, the documents would have to be forwarded to the Clerk prior to the members' intervention.

With respect to committees, the motion would allow members to participate in committee meetings remotely or in person on the condition that they meet the vaccine requirements set out by the Board of Internal Economy.

The motion proposes a process for recorded divisions in hybrid proceedings. The motion would bring the remote voting application back into use. This application was used successfully for over 120 votes in the second session of the 43rd Parliament. The remote voting application would also allow members to cast their votes safely, securely and conveniently. However, the motion takes a cautious approach. It would direct House administration to carry out an onboarding process of all members, which would be completed no later than December 8, 2021. The remote voting application would be put into use no later than December 9.

Until the remote voting application was implemented, members of the chamber would continue to vote by standing votes, and members participating remotely would be called one by one to cast their votes. The motion proposes measures to ensure the integrity of the remote voting application. Votes would need to be cast from within Canada using a House-managed device. A member's visual identity would need to be validated for each vote. Any member unable to vote because of technical issues would be able to connect to the virtual sitting to indicate their voting intention.

Lastly, the motion also proposes a process for the supplementary estimates (B) for the current fiscal year.

The motion provides that, on a day appointed by a minister of the Crown, consideration of the supplementary estimates shall be taken up by a committee of the whole at the ordinary hour of daily adjournment. At the conclusion of the four hours allotted for consideration, the committee shall rise, and the estimates shall be deemed reported. This is the approach that was used at the beginning of the last parliamentary session because the composition of the standing committees had yet to be established.

It is important to note that the motion states that this method of operation would be in effect until June 23, 2022, the last day on the sitting calendar before the summer break.

The government is proposing a reasonable and pragmatic approach to ensure that members are able to participate in House proceedings while respecting public health guidance. This motion supports the fundamental role of members of the House.

The government has always recognized our essential role in representing our constituents and holding the government to account. The government has supported members in fulfilling this role since it came to power. The government has promoted free votes for members of the governing caucus and established the Prime Minister's question period. When the House was adjourned at the beginning of the pandemic, the government sought ways for members to fulfill their roles.

The former government House leader wrote to the Speaker to ask whether House administration would be able to implement virtual sittings. This is because the government wanted to ensure that the House could continue to hold the government to account during the pandemic. The House passed government motions in April and May 2020 to instruct the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs to study how members could fulfill their parliamentary duties while the House was adjourned during the pandemic.

The committee undertook two thoughtful studies on this issue. In its second report, the committee recommended a detailed set of standing order amendments that would codify procedure for hybrid sittings and remote electronic voting. The committee also proposed guidance for the development, testing and implementation of a remote electronic voting application. The committee's reports provided valuable guidance to the House and to House administration in implementing a hybrid sitting approach in September 2020.

I want to stress this point. The motion does not propose anything new. During the last Parliament, in the face of an unprecedented public health crisis, the House adopted creative and innovative ways to debate, transact business and make decisions using a hybrid approach. From September 2020 to June 2021, the House sat with members in the chamber and members participating remotely. All regular business of the House was conducted, including consideration of government legislation and private members' business.

During this time, 19 government bills received royal assent. This legislation has a real impact on the lives of Canadians. For example, Bill C-4 created three new temporary recovery benefits to support Canadians who were unable to work because of COVID-19. Bill C-9 put in place targeted support to help businesses with emergency rent and wage subsidies. I hope members will come together to support the important economic measures that the government is proposing in Bill C-2 to address the current phase of the pandemic.

Regarding private members' business, six private members' bills received royal assent and six private members' motions were adopted during hybrid sittings. This success shows that it is possible to consider legislation and other important matters in a hybrid approach.

A hybrid parliament would also allow for better work-life balance, especially for members with young children. During the debates on the Standing Orders and House procedure in February 2021, several members from different parties mentioned the importance of work-life balance. Several members also noted that the hybrid Parliament and electronic voting made it easier for them to juggle their various responsibilities during the 43rd Parliament. Allowing members to choose whether to take part in House proceedings in person or remotely would make it easier for them to balance their responsibilities at home and at work.

I certainly hope that all members of the House will pass this reasonable motion so that we can do our work in a safe way for our constituents.

International Trade

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-2, An Act to provide further support in response to COVID-19.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)