Bill C-31 (Historical)

Cost of Living Relief Act, No. 2 (Targeted Support for Households)

An Act respecting cost of living relief measures related to dental care and rental housing

Part 1 enacts the Dental Benefit Act , which provides for the establishment of an application-based interim dental benefit. The benefit provides interim direct financial support for parents for dental care services received by their children under 12 years of age in the period starting in October 2022 and ending in June 2024.
Part 2 enacts the Rental Housing Benefit Act , which provides for the establishment of a one-time rental housing benefit for eligible persons who have paid rent in 2022 for their principal residence and who apply for the benefit.
Finally, Part 3 makes related amendments to the Income Tax Act , the Excise Tax Act and the Excise Act, 2001 .

Motions in Amendment

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I, too, have not been able to identify one thing in seven years that the government has done right. We share that and have something in common.

I would cut $50 million from the arrive scam app. I would cut $50 million going to Mastercard. I would cut $12 billion going to Loblaws. I would have looked at the $200 billion in non-COVID-related spending or the $100 billion of pre-COVID deficit spending that has led to the inflation crisis and will cause children to go hungry tonight because the government cannot get its spending under control.

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

Mr. Speaker, let us be serious and talk about housing.

When they talk about housing, my Conservative friends are quick to criticize the Liberals, but they are not so quick to come up with solutions. They keep saying that the government should not be spending money. They think that we should let the market decide.

The housing crisis—

[The Deputy Speaker, Chris d'Entremont]

I must interrupt the hon. member because there is a problem with the interpretation.

I am told it is working now.

The hon. member for Longueuil—Saint-Hubert may start over.

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

Mr. Speaker, I was saying that, essentially, my Conservative friends are quick to criticize the government, and rightly so, because there is a huge housing crisis right now. Bill C-31 does absolutely nothing to address the issue, and I just wanted to point that out today in the House. However, we do not hear a lot of solutions coming from my Conservative friends. They keep saying that we should let the market decide and that the government does not need to get involved.

I spoke with an economist from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation two or three weeks ago. He said that in Quebec alone, if we allow market forces to run their course for the next 10 years, 500,000 housing units will be built, including houses and condominiums and so on. However, given the current problems with availability and affordability, 1.1 million housing units would need to be built to meet demand. That is a shortfall of 600,000.

How can we get these 600,000 housing units built? That is my question for my colleague.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think it is a bit of a mischaracterization that the Conservatives want to leave this up to the free market. We want to leave it up to Canadians because we believe in Canadians. We do not believe that the best decisions are made here in Ottawa. We believe they are made in Port Hope, in Quebec and everywhere else in this country.

Secondly, we would get the gatekeepers out of the way. It is governments that are the problem. They are stopping houses. We will sell off a percentage of federally held properties, as the government is the largest landlord in all of Canada, and we will get those properties to people. We need the government out of the way so we can get people into homes.

[Scot Davidson, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about global inflation and the reality is that Canada is the worst in the world. If we look at our ports, the Port of Vancouver is the worst in the world. Toronto Pearson International Airport is the worst airport in the world. People are waiting in line for passports for days. These are the failure of the Liberal-NDP government.

I want my colleague to comment on health care. In my riding, when I go out to doors, my residents are pleading with me. They say, “Scot, I would love to have a doctor.”

We are spending a billion dollars on this dental care program, and people are saying they do not have a doctor. People are waiting months and months for a specialist. Could my colleague comment on that?

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, it appears as though over the last seven years, more things in Canada are not working. More things are broken in our country. Whether it be getting a passport in a reasonable amount of time, getting a ship built in a reasonable amount of time, or delivering the most basic of government essentials, it seems like there is delay, and failure after failure. It is time for a change. The Leader of the Opposition will finally put people first.

[Mike Morrice, Green, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I understand that the member for Northumberland—Peterborough South is concerned with policies such as a carbon tax, which only raised gas prices by just over 2¢ a litre this past year while being an efficient tool to address the climate crisis and returning revenue to Canadians.

He is also aware that we are in a climate emergency. Oil and gas company profits were up 18¢ per litre this year alone. Can he talk more about the need to address affordability by addressing the gouging by the oil and gas industry?

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the organization or the institution that has been taking excess revenues is the Government of Canada, so perhaps he has gotten that, in fact, wrong. If we look at the oil and gas sector, it contributes, per worker, per hour, $645. For an average Canadian, that figure is $50.

The oil and gas industry is literally fuelling our economy as we go forward. We need to support Canadian energy. The carbon tax is raising costs. I am not sure if he has talked to the residents, but it is making gas unaffordable.

How many emissions targets has the government hit since it has had the carbon tax? Absolutely none. That is an abject failure.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank all my colleagues for coming here today to listen to my speech, my colleagues on this side of the House in particular. It is an honour to stand in front of the House and talk about a bill that is going to affect Canadians for a long time going forward, another trinket.

Let me start, because it is a big bill, by focusing my comments on the dental care benefit that is part of this bill, Bill C-31. I see the Liberals over there are shrugging their shoulders about the support they gave the NDP when it brought this legislation forward. They know the support from the NDP, to continue on with its support of the government, came cheap. Dental care is a cheap trinket for them to push forward here.

The House will note that the government has aligned with the NDP, continuing to drip a dental care plan into delivery with its continued deficit. Why would it not? No sooner would the Liberals deliver on their full promise for dental care than the NDP would up its demands for continued support of this spendy government. Who is playing whom in this support agreement? It allows the Liberals to continue to plunge the country into an economic hole, and it will take decades of responsible government to recover our previous fiscal stability.

That is why dental care is in front of the House. It is not for any health reasons and not because it is going to give something to Canadians that has been taken away with the inflation that is making a dent in their take-home pay. It is a political support agreement, so that the NDP can show people that it might be relevant, even though it is backing a government whose spending is out of control. A great amount of taxpayers' money is going to Liberal lackeys.

Dental care support is a nice gift. Like my colleague said earlier, it is a nice shiny trinket in the window. Dental care promotes good health. There is no doubt about it. Oral health leads to better health overall. We have known this for years.

I spoke to a friend at home. She brought it forth to me, asking why the federal government would establish a new federal bureaucracy in charge of Canadians' dental care, and why there is an “Ottawa knows best” approach to superimpose a new federal program on top of the existing provincial dental programs across Canada, because each provincial jurisdiction has a provincial dental care program. She asked how costly the program would be and how much taxpayer funds would be spent, or lost, in bureaucratic overlap. Federal bureaucrats would be interacting needlessly with provincial bureaucrats in a program that is already being delivered in every province across Canada. It would not be a health transfer to fix an underfunded health care system in Canada, but a new program overlap.

Let us ask the NDP about the Halloween candy it has bargained for with the government. It is provincial responsibility. Did any premiers, including the NDP premier in British Columbia, ask for dental care funding in their provinces? The answer is a very clear “no”. What did the premiers ask for? They asked for an extra $26 billion from the federal government to help the strain on our health care system, a strain that has been exacerbated by a pandemic that lasted two years, and to help with costs thrust upon the shoulders of the provincial governments.

Notably, all of this is provincial responsibility. The Canada Health Act imposed standards of health care delivery on the provinces, so it was a shared jurisdiction. For a while, health care was funded fifty-fifty, until the Liberal budget cuts of the mid-1990s, when suddenly it was changed and became not the fifty-fifty that the Health Care Act was premised on. Now, 22% of health care funding in Canada is funded by the federal government, and for every province health care spending has become the largest budget item.

The government has been running huge budget deficits the entire seven years since it was elected, so with this new program it is going to continue to buy Canadians with their own money and continue to put it onto the backs of taxpayers who are not paying taxes today and may not even be born today. This intergenerational transfer of taxation, versus the benefits that are being felt by Canadians today, is unjust.

The country's finances right now are more strained than they have been since the Liberals cut health care funding in the 1990s. Perhaps the NDP needs to take a lesson from history about how this ends.

My friend in Calgary and I did a little more research on dental coverage for people in my province of Alberta. Alberta child care benefits provide full dental coverage for low-income families. There are notable differences between the Alberta plan and the proposed coverage in this bill. The Alberta plan covers low-income households for full coverage up to the age of 18 in low-income families. This new plan would be for low-income families to cover children up to $650 per child up to the age of 12. In Alberta, it is up to the age of 18, no matter the number of children.

Additionally, the definition of low income ends in Alberta at $46,932, again, to cover 100% of the dental expenses of children under the age of 18. This new program would give a sliding amount per family up to a family income of $90,000 down to $260 per child. Will there be overlaps with these different definitions? Yes, of course, and obviously there will be. Private insurance pays out first; provincial insurance on top of that is a close second; and then there is the federal plan. Is this just another public service jobs debacle on the horizon? They are all different formulae and all different eligibilities. This spells huge bureaucratic overlap in the delivery of this new service.

Obviously, we would have to hire more federal government employees on top of the 15% increase we have had over the last two years. We are on a job-hiring spree, and we are getting less and less from federal government services. Surely, a realistic, accountable federal government could deliver a program like this a little more effectively. Unfortunately, a realistic approach to better dental care would not allow the government to buy the support of the NDP. This is another Liberal-NDP boondoggle. Canadians deserve better. They deserve not just optics, but the actual delivery of programs that help them and do not overlap with all their other provincial benefits.

Let us talk about inflation and how this is actually impacted. Every Canadian is having more expenses, including dental expenses, expenses for food, and expenses for housing, which is pronounced and is addressed by a minuscule amount in this bill. These are all mounting expenses for Canadians, and the government has thrust this upon Canadians with its full-on federal spending of over a half a trillion dollars in deficits over the past handful of years. It is a ridiculous financial strategy that has led us to where we are today, with mounting inflation, with mounting government debts and with no insight as to how or where this ends, except on the backs of future generations of Canada.

The cost of living is going up; inflation is going up; deficits are going up, and the government does not have a handle on how it deals with those real problems that are affecting the lives of Canadians. Its approach is to give trinkets. There are trinkets in this bill that would not be able to deliver but would place a huge cost upon the Canadian population writ large.

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

Mr. Speaker, the member talks about trinkets. I can assure the member that not every province is alike. For a 10-year-old child or an 11-year-old or a four-year-old child, depending on the province, there are different types of dental programs that are available. However, what we do know for a fact is that there are tens of thousands of children in every region of the country who will benefit by this dental benefits program.

We know that for a fact, yet the Conservatives seem to want to deny those tens of thousands of children having a dental benefit. We also know for a fact that many of those children will end up in hospital situations as a direct result of not having the types of benefits that are being proposed within this legislation. Will the member at least acknowledge that fact?

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I watched my colleague listen to my speech intently, but he seems to have missed much of what I said.

There is definitely dental coverage in every province. However, there is a better way of delivering increased dental coverage if the federal government wants to contribute to the provinces that are actually delivering health care services across this country.

These are different modes. If we think about the way Canada is governed, we are governed in a federal system, and we have provinces deliver real services to their constituents. We, as the federal government, also have our realm. This is very clearly the provincial realm. If the federal government wants to be involved in dental health care, it should say so, put some constraints and direction on the provinces, and transfer some funds. Do not just give it as a gift to the NDP in order to stay in power. It is a really obvious power buy at this point in time.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend the speech given by my colleague from Calgary Centre. I really appreciated it, especially when he alluded to health transfers. He also spoke a bit about the various federal and provincial jurisdictions in his response to our friend on the other side of the House.

One thing that disappoints me a little is that I have been asking the Conservatives the same question for three years now, and I have never had an answer. I feel I may have a chance with my friend from Calgary Centre, because he is an honest, reliable person, and I think he will answer my question.

The Premier of Quebec and the provincial premiers all agree. They made a formal request based on a strong consensus. They want health transfers to increase to 35%. I have never heard a Conservative say in the past three years that the Conservatives would agree to increase health transfers to 35%.

As the party that prides itself on having the strongest economic record, would they be willing to put a figure on the increase in health transfers, once and for all? I am asking my friend whether he agrees with Quebec and the provinces that health transfers need to be increased to 35%.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

I am not aware of the 35% that he mentioned in his question.

I do know premiers across the country have been asking the federal government to give the provinces $26 billion a year for Canada's health care system. I am not sure if that $26 billion is equivalent to 35%. I am sorry I am not aware of these figures, but I support the provinces' request for more federal money.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I had an adverse reaction to hearing national access to dental care being referred to as a trinket. It is very problematic to me when I hear day in and day out from constituents and Canadians across the country that they want access to dental care. We know that having access to dental care saves us money. There is no economic reason for us not to be proactive in preventing costs to our health care system.

I am wondering if the member could share what he has to say to constituents in my riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith and Canadians across the country who are asking for dental care, instead of doing what in my opinion is belittling the need for dental care by referring to it as a trinket.