Bill C-32

Fall Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2022

An Act to implement certain provisions of the fall economic statement tabled in Parliament on November 3, 2022 and certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on April 7, 2022

Part 1 implements certain measures in respect of the Income Tax Act by
(a) providing that any gain on the disposition of a Canadian housing unit within a one-year period of its acquisition is treated as business income;
(b) introducing a Tax-Free First Home Savings Account;
(c) phasing out flow-through shares for oil, gas and coal activities;
(d) introducing a new 30% Critical Mineral Exploration Tax Credit for specified mineral exploration expenses incurred in Canada and renounced to flow-through share investors;
(e) introducing the Canada Recovery Dividend under which banks and life insurers’ groups pay a temporary one-time 15% tax on taxable income above $1 billion over five years;
(f) increasing the corporate income tax rate of banks and life insurers’ groups by 1.5% on taxable income above $100 million;
(g) providing additional reporting requirements for trusts;
(h) providing rules applicable to mutual fund trusts listed on a designated stock exchange in Canada with respect to amounts that are allocated to redeeming unitholders;
(i) providing the Minister of National Revenue with the discretion to decline to issue a certificate under section 116 of the Income Tax Act in certain circumstances relating to the administration and enforcement of the Underused Housing Tax Act ;
(j) doubling the First-Time Homebuyers’ Tax Credit;
(k) expanding the eligibility criteria for the Medical Expense Tax Credit in respect of medical expenses incurred in Canada related to surrogate mothers and donors and fees paid in Canada to fertility clinics and donor banks;
(l) introducing the Multigenerational Home Renovation Tax Credit;
(m) allowing access to the small business tax rate on a phased-out basis up to taxable capital of $50 million;
(n) modifying the computation of income as a result of the adoption of a new international accounting standard for insurance contracts;
(o) introducing a new graduated disbursement quota rate for charities;
(p) providing that the general anti-avoidance rules can apply to transactions that affect tax attributes that have not yet been used to reduce taxes;
(q) strengthening the rules on avoidance of tax debts;
(r) modifying the calculation of the taxes applicable to registered investments that hold property that is not a qualified investment;
(s) modifying the tax treatment of certain interest coupon stripping arrangements that might otherwise be used to avoid tax on cross-border interest payments;
(t) clarifying the applicable rules with respect to audits by Canada Revenue Agency officials, including requiring taxpayers to give reasonable assistance and to answer all proper questions for tax purposes; and
(u) extending the capital cost allowance for clean energy and the tax rate reduction for zero-emission technology manufacturers to include air-source heat pumps.
It also makes related and consequential amendments to the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation Act , the Excise Tax Act , the Air Travellers Security Charge Act , the Excise Act, 2001 , Part 1 of the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act and the Income Tax Regulations .
Part 2 amends the Excise Act, 2001 and other related texts in order to implement changes to
(a) the federal excise duty frameworks for cannabis and other products by, among other things,
(i) permitting excise duty remittances for certain cannabis licensees to be made on a quarterly rather than a monthly basis, starting from the quarter that began on April 1, 2022, and
(ii) allowing the transfer of packaged, but unstamped, cannabis products between licensed cannabis producers; and
(b) the federal excise duty framework for vaping products in relation to the markings, customs storage and excise duty liability of these products.
Part 3 amends the Underused Housing Tax Act to make amendments of a technical or housekeeping nature. It also makes regulations under that Act in order to, among other things, implement an exemption for certain vacation properties.
Division 1 of Part 4 authorizes the Minister of Finance to acquire and hold on behalf of His Majesty in right of Canada non-voting shares of a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Canada Development Investment Corporation that is responsible for administering the Canada Growth Fund and to requisition the amounts for the acquisition of those shares out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund.
Division 2 of Part 4 amends the Bretton Woods and Related Agreements Act to increase the maximum financial assistance that may be provided in respect of foreign states.
Subdivision A of Division 3 of Part 4 enacts the Framework Agreement on First Nation Land Management Act .
Subdivision B of Division 3 of Part 4 contains transitional provisions in respect of the enactment of the Framework Agreement on First Nation Land Management Act and makes consequential amendments to other Acts. It also repeals the First Nations Land Management Act .
Division 4 of Part 4 amends the Government Employees Compensation Act in order to fulfil Canada’s obligations under the Memorandum of Understanding between the Government of Canada and the Government of the United States of America concerning Cooperation on the Civil Lunar Gateway.
Division 5 of Part 4 amends the Canada Student Loans Act to eliminate the accrual of interest on guaranteed student loans beginning on April 1, 2023.
It also amends the Canada Student Financial Assistance Act to eliminate the accrual of interest on student loans beginning on April 1, 2023.
Finally, it amends the Apprentice Loans Act to eliminate the accrual of interest on apprentice loans beginning on April 1, 2023 and to clarify when the repayment of apprentice loans begins during the interest suspension period from April 1, 2021 to March 31, 2023.

Fall Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2022

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Mr. Speaker, yes, you are right. I could have used other language to explain that my hon. colleague is completely out of touch. He certainly is.

He suggested that the Conservatives intend to cut health transfers. What rock did he climb out of? Nothing has ever been said about that. In fact, the Conservatives have been pushing for greater health transfers and for increased health care funding, including for mental health and addictions. On all of these things, the government seems to be lost.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

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

It is fascinating to hear the Conservatives say that for every new dollar spent, we have to find another dollar somewhere else. We agree with them. In fact, we could certainly find new revenue by fighting more effectively against tax evasion and tax avoidance. We could also collect revenue from GAFAM and other large corporations that do not pay taxes. We agree there are revenue streams to look into.

However, for the Bloc Québécois, there are also certain expenses that are essential. There are areas that we should not even think of cutting right now, such as health care, in light of the health crisis we just went through, which exposed the holes in our system. The government needs to transfer money to Quebec and the provinces. Then there is help for seniors and EI reform.

To put it plainly, if finding money and spending it on something else were already standard practice, then we would already have the money.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with my Bloc colleague. I think it would not take long to look at the wastefulness of the government and find not millions or hundreds of millions, but billions of dollars in absolute waste that has gone on. This is waste that could be going to health transfers and waste that could be going to dealing with the opioid crisis we have in this country and to addictions, poverty and homelessness. These are all the things we talk about. We have an Infrastructure Bank that got some $30 billion, and we do not know what projects are being done.

Plenty of dollars would be available from the government if it would rein in its wasteful spending.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Mr. Speaker, by demonstrating and trying to model respectful behaviour in this place, my hon. colleague, in his intervention, did add value to the discussion on the fall economic statement.

One area in particular that I would like to hear the member's comments on is the carbon tax. It is something we often hear slogans for, such as the “triple, triple, triple tax”.

I know how important it is to see a cost on pollution in Canada and across the world. We are facing truly catastrophic weather events across the world, and we know they are driven by climate change. We know they are driven by pollution.

The Conservative Party in the last election ran on a cost for carbon, and now we are seeing a flip-flop on that. As a matter of respect, the New Democrats, knowing this consideration and knowing that we wanted to make life more affordable for Canadians, attempted to offer an olive branch to the Conservatives. We attempted to work with the Conservatives to get GST off home heating. That is 5% off home heating, which the New Democrats have fought for for a long time.

I know the Conservatives, deep down, want to ensure there is affordability for Canadians, but why do they continue to vote against measures that are so important to getting Canadians results, such as getting the GST off home heating?

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to recognize that the Conservatives want the carbon tax to be cut, obviously, and giving GST rebates is a great gesture. However, it does not go far enough. There are a lot of things the government can do to cut costs that will make a huge difference. One of them is to get rid of the carbon tax, period. It is important to recognize that we need to be pushing for technologies that are built in Canada, making a difference on climate change initiatives across the world and gaining respect across the globe for our technologies to ensure environmental friendliness in industry. That will have a huge impact globally. That is where I think we should be pushing some of our—

[The Deputy Speaker, Chris d'Entremont]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Sarnia—Lambton.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to speak to the fall economic statement, and I am lucky I got the chance before the government shut down debate, which it is doing today. In my usual format, I will look at the different sections of the fall economic update and tell members what I think about them.

To start off, the first section is called “Sound Economic Stewardship in Uncertain Times”. That sounds like something everybody would want. These certainly are uncertain times, so sound economic stewardship sounds like just what we need. The problem is the document has nothing to do with sound economic stewardship.

We have more inflationary spending, after economists and experts have said that more inflationary spending is just going to cause more inflation. We have the highest levels of inflation we have had in 40 years. I am not sure why, but I expected more from a Prime Minister who has spent more money in his term in office than all other prime ministers have spent put together. The earning power of Canadians is at the lowest point it has been in decades, and I am very concerned that we have not taken the appropriate actions in the fall economic statement to address sound economic stewardship.

Our debt is so large that we will pay $22 billion of interest on the debt next year. In two years, we will be paying $44 billion for interest on the debt. That is not the debt itself; we are not paying the debt down. Just the interest on the debt will be $44 billion. That is more than all of the health transfers to all of the provinces. I really think that was a missed opportunity.

Let us move on to the second part: “Making Life More Affordable”. Again, it sounds like a really good idea. I think Canadians would say they need life to be more affordable. However, this is what the Liberals always do: What they say sounds good, but what they actually do is not that good.

Fifty per cent of Canadians cannot pay their bills. Personal debt is at an all-time high. What do the Liberals do? They increase the tax that is going to drive up the price of groceries, gas and home heating. Is that going to make life more affordable for Canadians? No, it is not; it is just going to make it worse. I really think the government needs to listen to what Canadians are saying and understand the dire straits that many Canadians are facing in losing their houses and having to choose between heating and eating. Something needs to be done and the “something” is not what was in the fall economic statement.

There is a lot of wasteful spending going on, and I was shocked to find out about the $450 billion we pumped out the door during COVID. Some supports were definitely needed during the pandemic, but I heard the Parliamentary Budget Officer say that 40% of them had nothing to do with COVID. That is an incredible amount of money. We have to stop wasting it.

I agree that climate change needs to be addressed and I agree we need to reduce emissions, but we have spent $100 billion and the Liberal government has failed to meet any of its emissions targets. We are number 58 out of 60 on the list of countries that went to COP27 with Paris accord targets. We spent $100 billion, but what do we get for it? We get absolutely nothing.

We have to do better about spending taxpayer money to get results. Members today were saying that it is a real emergency; we have flooding and wildfires. They can ask themselves how high the carbon tax in Canada has to be to stop us from having floods or stop us from having wildfires here.

As a chemical engineer, I will say that Canada is less than 2% of the footprint. We could eliminate the whole thing and we are still going to have the impacts of floods and wildfires until the other more substantive contributors in the world, such as China, which has 34% of the footprint, get their act together. We can help them get their act together. If we replace with LNG all the coal that China is using and the coal plants they are building, it would mean jobs for Canadians and would cut the carbon footprint of the whole world by 10% or 15%. That would be worth doing, but it was not in the fall economic update.

I do not know if there are problems with math on the opposite side, but the Prime Minister ordered 10 vaccines for every Canadian. I do not know if he knew that two or three vaccines, or four or five maximum, were all we were going to take. Now all the rest of the vaccines have expired and have all been thrown away. What a huge waste that is. They could have gone to countries that do not have vaccines or that cannot afford to buy them. That is just one example of the wasteful spending.

The next section was called “Jobs, Growth, and an Economy That Works for Everyone”, and I think that sounds like something everybody would like. Every Canadian wants jobs, growth and an economy that works for everyone. However, in the fall economic statement we saw that we have only half the GDP growth we expected and predicted earlier this year, so we did not get the growth, and we have lost a lot of jobs and gotten a few jobs back, but it did not work for everyone.

If someone was unable to take a vaccine due to a medical issue or because they made a personal choice, they got fired, lost their job. Just to make the pain double, even though they had paid into an employment insurance program, paid the premium and should get the benefit, the government made sure that nobody who refused a vaccine could get that, so it does not work for everyone.

The last section is called “Fair and Effective Government”. Again, who could disagree with fair and effective government? I want the government to be fair. I want to live in a fair democracy, and I want the government to be effective. That would be wonderful, but today we have passports taking seven months to process, and there are 2.5 million immigrants caught in the backlog at IRCC. The average wait time for some of those types of permits is 82 months. We have the Phoenix pay system and the ArriveCAN app. Everything is broken all over the government. There is not any effective government happening. Yes, I think we should have it, but it is not in there.

With respect to a fair government, this is the Liberal government that brought in the Emergencies Act. We are waiting for the final word on it, but a lot of people have said there was no threat to national security and there was no emergency. The law enforcement people did not ask for it and the provinces did not ask for it, yet the government froze the bank accounts of Canadians without any warrants. That is not a fair democracy.

There is a freedom of speech war going on in our country. Bill C-11, Bill C-18 and all the bills the government brings forward whereby the government is going to get to control the speech of Canadians and the media, are not fair. We have evidence that CSIS talked to the Prime Minister and said Chinese money from Beijing was funnelled to 11 election candidates, with no transparency on who they were, and that there was interference in the 2021 election, again with no transparency. That is not a fair, democratic government.

I could go on about rental and dental, where the government has driven up the cost of housing. The average cost of housing rental was $1,000 in Canada, and now it is $2,000. With one hand the government is going to give a cheque for $500, but with the other hand its policies cost an increase of thousands of dollars, $12,000 a month on average in Canada. That is the way the government is working. It gives a little but takes a lot back, and that is not what we want to see, so I cannot support the bill that goes with the fall economic statement. I think we have to do better.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is an engineer, and engineers think in a very rigorous fashion, so I was a bit surprised at her comment to the effect that Canada is responsible for only 2% of global greenhouse gases, and that it is not going to make a difference what we do because it is peanuts compared to what the big emitters like China are producing.

My question to her is very simple. Is she suggesting that Canada can take its foot off the gas and not do anything, because we are really peanuts compared to the big emitters?

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague opposite is a very intelligent man, having been an astronaut. I would say that Canada has green technology. I support that. We have nuclear technology. I support that. We have LNG and resources that we could be shipping around the world, and we would be helping those people who are the substantive portion of emitters reduce their footprint. If we do not do that, we certainly will feel the impacts of climate change, like flooding events and wildfires, but we can do nothing about them. Those impacts will come to us. The thing we can do is help reduce the overall footprint, because, as I said, and anyone can Wikipedia it, we are 1.6% of the total footprint.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech.

In passing, I would like to point out that we have had the pleasure of serving together on the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage since the beginning of this Parliament. I heard her talk about coal, oil and those types of resources, but I would like her to talk about another issue in connection with what my colleague from Shefford said about how we need to look for money where it can be found.

Apparently, the digital giants are not paying their fair share of Canadian taxes and are taking advantage of the public largesse. As my colleague is well aware, the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage is examining various bills. I would like to know whether she, too, thinks it is time that the digital giants paid their fair share and contributed to the finances of the country, Quebec and the provinces so that we can make improvements in important sectors. I am thinking particularly of health, where we have been waiting for transfers for a long time, of help for seniors and of many other issues. I am sure the member can give me some examples.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his question.

Bill C‑18 is another bill that we are working on. The principle of this bill is to help small media organizations. This is another example of the Liberals saying one thing and doing another. This bill will not really help small organizations because Bell Media, Rogers and CBC will get all the money. I would prefer that Facebook and Google put money into a fund and that the small media organizations sign an agreement to share the money.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives claim to defend working people, who are bearing the brunt of this inflation crisis while billionaires make record profits. However, we in the NDP called on all parties to get behind a plan to tax the rich, and the Conservatives voted against it. Why do the Conservatives refuse to make the rich pay their fair share?

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I really believe people should pay their fair share, but Conservatives are also advocates of reducing taxes to make a competitive business environment and to help hard-working Canadians who are struggling. Right now, that is why we are asking to cut the carbon tax. It is inflationary, and it is increasing the cost of groceries, gas and home heating, which are not luxuries. Why is the member who asked the question propping up the government to put those taxes up on Canadians?

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to rise in the House of Commons, especially to speak to financial bills.

I always think back, whenever I get an opportunity to speak in the House on a financial bill, to what our old friend Jim Flaherty must think of a bill such as this. I think he would have a wry little grin and probably think that it did not quite come up to the measure of what he would be able to do, perhaps.

I also think about Milton Friedman, the father of modern economics in many ways, and what he would say about inflation, because if members go to Santa Claus parades or events in their communities, what are people going to be talking about? They are going to be talking about the economy, inflation, the carbon tax and some world events. Milton Friedman has been dead a long time, but as he said, inflation is “too much money chasing too few goods”. He also said, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.”

The Liberal government has said many times, and has passed the hat on excuses for inflation, but it has kind of settled at its last chance to say that inflation is a global phenomenon and we had no chance. However, if we look at the G7 and G20 countries, they all spent; they mega spent. They spent huge percentages of their entire economy, so if everybody is spending that much, we just need to look at what Mr. Friedman said so many years ago. It is quite simple.

I will give the Liberals credit for one thing. Somebody in here slipped a line into the foreword that says, “But we cannot support every single Canadian in the way we did with emergency measures at the height of the pandemic.” The government was spending a lot of money, and some of it very valid. It continues with, “To do so would force the Bank of Canada to raise interest rates even higher.” Here the Liberals are admitting in one line that they cannot do it all for everybody because it would raise spending too much, and on the second line they are saying they would have to raise interest rates to fight the impending spending inflation that would be caused.

“It would make life more expensive, for everyone, for longer. So as the central bank fights inflation, we will not make its job harder.” Well, that would be the first time in seven years the Liberals have made that decision.

I know other members have talked about public debt. To service the debt, the interest we would pay, and members have heard the numbers already, is $24.5 billion this year, $34.7 billion next year and $43 billion in 2023-24. Now, we are not in a debt spiral like the one some of the countries are heading towards yet, but that is a concern.

In the notations in the fall economic update, there is 425 billion dollars' worth of T-bills and bonds that will have to be sent out to the market in the upcoming fiscal year. Now, that is a lot of money to put out into the market and ask people to buy the T-bills, etc. One huge concern out there is if there are no bids, and we have seen that happen in other countries where there are no bids on government debt. I think there probably will be, but that is an awful lot of money to put out in one year, which is a little surprising.

I still have Bill Morneau's first budget from 2016. He had that nice book, which is in my office. I looked at it before I came over here. The Liberals inherited a balanced budget from the Conservatives in 2015, which is a fact. I will also mention that the inflation rate in October 2015 was 1%. There was a balanced budget and 1% inflation. The debt when Bill Morneau was the finance minister was $1 billion. It was $1 billion for Bill Morneau. Under this finance minister seven years later, it was $1 trillion, and now the number is $1.8 trillion. That is $800 billion in seven years, which is a lot of spending. It takes an Olympic effort to spend that much money in that period of time.

The net debt is $1.2 trillion. That is what they always hang their hat on, the net debt-to-GDP. The issue that I think most of us would like to bring up, and I am welcome to be corrected if I am wrong here, is that a lot of the assets, about two-thirds of the assets that the government lists, is CPP and QPP. It is really not even a government asset, if we think about it. It is kind of a dotted line to an asset. Really, if we took out the CPP and the QPP, the net debt would be a lot bigger. I think what I saw on a report was that we would not be number one, in terms of dept-to-GDP. We would be more like four or five, in terms of debt-to-GDP.

These are just some clouds on the horizon. If we do not take care of our fiscal house, we are going to have some long-term issues.

The economic report also talks about what happens if things are not as rosy as presented. That is when it gets really concerning. From now until 2027, believe it or not, the best-case scenario is that we are going to add another $200 billion to our debt. The worst-case scenario is that it is 50% worse, and we are going to add $300 billion to our net debt. I think that is a concern because, next year, the worst-case scenario is a $50-billion deficit.

We keep adding these on, piling these on, and I think a lot of people are looking at this and they are saying, “What am I getting for my money?” A lot of people, in my area, if they are going on a vacation now, if they are lucky enough to be able to afford one, do their level best to avoid Pearson airport. They will try Hamilton. They will try somewhere else, like Kitchener. They do not want the hassles of the Pearson airport.

I think to myself, here we are in one of the wealthiest nations in the world. We should have the best: the best ports, best airports, best infrastructure and best government service. If we want a passport, it should almost be next-day service. Everything is a mess.

Look at immigration. Look at how many unfilled positions there are in our country. Our office is inundated with people who are at the end of their ropes with trying to get somebody to come and work in their businesses. It is just one mistake from immigration, another one and another one. We would like to bring these hard-working people in and let them really put our economy to work.

If we went around and we asked parents what some of their issues are, what some pinch problems in their finances are, health care might be one of them. It is maybe not a financial one, but certainly there are concerns regarding emergency rooms. I am sure that everybody in here who has a kid or an elderly parent knows that it is hours upon hours if we have to go to the emergency room. We have shortages in every position in health care. It would have been great to see a better plan from the government to really deliver an improvement to our health outcomes.

Even the $10-a-day day care business, I have a bit of an issue with that. According to Statistics Canada, there are about 660,000 Canadian families that do not use the government-run day cares. They receive nothing. They do not get $10-a-day day care, so almost half of the kids out there do not get that. Once we are in Ontario, say, for example, when one is in JK, at four years old, parents probably need the extended day program. That is $28 a kid every day. If one had two kids, that can be hundreds and thousands every month.

Yes, if one is lucky enough to get one of those spots in a licensed day care, one is going to pay $10 a day, but the other problem is that, in Ontario, we almost have a deficit of 100,000 ECE workers, day care workers. In the future, this increase to $10 a day is really zero if we do not have the staff to fill the jobs.

There is a lot here. I am sorry if I sound like I am being pretty critical here today, but there is plenty of material to be critical of. That is our job over here. The Liberals will tell us how great they are, and it is our job to point out some of their shortcomings.

The last point I have is on clean tech, hydrogen and critical minerals. I think we would find a lot of commonality, potentially, on all sides. One of the issues we have is that we can never get any of these projects done. To do these projects takes years if not tens of millions of dollars.

With that, I thank the House for the time and I will take my questions.

[Jenica Atwin, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Mr. Speaker, the member covered a lot, which was excellent and informative. I want to dive into one specific comment that was made around the supports that were given to Canadians during the pandemic.

Is the member asserting we should not have issued the Canada emergency response benefit, a benefit his party supported?