The House resumed from June 6 consideration of Bill C‑47, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, 2023, as reported (with amendments) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.
Chrystia Freeland Liberal
This bill has received Royal Assent and is, or will soon become, law.
This is from the published bill. The Library of Parliament has also written a full legislative summary of the bill.
Part 1 implements certain measures in respect of the Income Tax Act and the Income Tax Regulations by
(a) enabling the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) to use electronic certification of tax and information returns and requiring taxpayers to file electronically in certain circumstances;
(b) doubling the maximum deduction for tradespeople’s tools from $500 to $1,000;
(c) providing that any gain on the disposition of a right to acquire Canadian housing property within a one-year period of its acquisition is treated as business income;
(d) excluding from a taxpayer’s income certain benefits for Canadian Forces members, veterans and their spouses or common-law partners;
(e) exempting from taxation any income earned by the Band Class Settlement Trust in accordance with section 24.05 of the Settlement Agreement entered into on January 18, 2023 relating to the attendance of day scholars at residential schools;
(f) providing an additional payment of the Goods and Services Tax/Harmonized Sales Tax (GST/HST) credit equal to double the amount of the regular January 2023 payment;
(g) providing for automatic, quarterly advance payments of the Canada Workers Benefit;
(h) allowing divorced and separated spouses to open joint Registered Educational Savings Plans and increasing educational assistance amounts under those plans;
(i) extending, by three years, the ability of a qualifying family member to be the plan holder of an individual’s Registered Disability Savings Plan and expanding the definition of “qualifying family member” to include a sister or a brother of the individual;
(j) allowing defined contribution registered pension plans to correct contribution errors and requiring that the contributions or refunds are reported to the CRA for the purpose of correcting the RRSP deduction limit;
(k) modifying reporting requirements in respect of reportable transactions, introducing reporting requirements for notifiable transactions and providing reporting requirements with respect to uncertain tax treatments, as well as extending the reassessment periods applicable to those transactions and creating or modifying penalties for non-compliance with those requirements;
(l) allowing the CRA to share taxpayer information for the purposes of the Canadian Dental Care Plan;
(m) expanding the definition of “dividend rental arrangement” to include “specified hedging transactions” carried out in whole or in part by registered securities dealers;
(n) implementing the Model Reporting Rules for Digital Platforms developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development;
(o) requiring annual reporting by financial institutions of the fair market value of registered retirement savings plans and registered retirement income funds;
(p) expanding the permissible borrowing by defined benefit pension plans; and
(q) implementing a number of technical amendments to correct mistakes or inconsistencies and to better align the law with its intended policy objectives.
It also makes related and consequential amendments to the Excise Tax Act , the Tax Rebate Discounting Act , the Air Travellers Security Charge Act , the Excise Act, 2001 , Part 1 of the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act and the Electronic Filing and Provision of Information (GST/HST) Regulations .
Part 2 implements certain measures in respect of the Excise Tax Act and a related text by
(a) clarifying that the international transportation of money benefits from Goods and Services Tax/Harmonized Sales Tax (GST/HST) relief and other special rules in the same manner as a service of internationally transporting other kinds of freight;
(b) permitting a pension entity, in specific circumstances, to claim the pension entity rebate or an input tax credit, or to make the pension entity rebate election, after the end of the two-year limitation period;
(c) specifying that cryptoasset mining is generally not considered a supply for GST/HST purposes; and
(d) ensuring that payment card clearing services are excluded from the definition “financial service” under the GST/HST legislation.
Part 3 amends the Excise Act , the Excise Act, 2001 and the Air Travellers Security Charge Act in order to implement two measures.
Division 1 of Part 3 amends the Excise Act and the Excise Act, 2001 in order to temporarily cap the inflation adjustment for excise duties on beer, spirits and wine at two per cent, for one year only, as of April 1, 2023.
Division 2 of Part 3 amends the Air Travellers Security Charge Act to increase the air travellers security charge that is applicable to air travel that includes a chargeable emplanement after April 2024 and for which any payment is made after April 2024.
Part 4 enacts and amends several Acts in order to implement various measures.
Division 1 of Part 4 amends the Bank Act to strengthen the regime for dealing with complaints against banks and authorized foreign banks by, among other things, providing for the designation of a not-for-profit body corporate to be the sole external complaints body. It also makes consequential amendments to the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada Act and related amendments to the Financial Consumer Protection Framework Regulations .
Division 2 of Part 4 amends the Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985 to, among other things, provide for variable life benefits under a defined contribution provision of a pension plan and amends the Pooled Registered Pension Plans Act to, among other things, provide for variable life payments under pooled registered pension plans. It also makes a consequential amendment to the Canadian Human Rights Act .
Division 3 of Part 4 contains measures that are related to money laundering and to digital assets and other measures.
Subdivision A of Division 3 amends the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act to, among other things,
(a) require persons or entities referred to in section 5 of that Act to report to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada information that is related to a disclosure made under the Special Economic Measures Act or the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act (Sergei Magnitsky Law) ;
(b) strengthen the registration framework for persons or entities referred in paragraphs 5(h) and (h.1) of the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act , which are often referred to as money services businesses;
(c) create two new offences relating to persons or entities who engage in activities for which they are not registered under that Act and the structuring of financial transactions undertaken to avoid reporting obligations under that Act, as well as a new offence relating to reprisals by employers against employees who fulfill obligations under that Act;
(d) facilitate the sharing, between the Minister of Finance, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions and the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, of information that relates to their respective mandates; and
(e) authorize the Minister of Finance to issue directives to persons and entities referred in section 5 of that Act in respect of risks relating to the financing of threats to the security of Canada.
Subdivision A also amends the Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1 in relation to the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act .
Subdivision B of Division 3 amends the Criminal Code to provide for a new warrant authorizing a peace officer or other person named in the warrant to search for and seize digital assets, including virtual currency, as well as to expand the list of offences on the basis of which an examination of information obtained by the Minister of National Revenue under various tax statutes may be authorized. The subdivision also makes related amendments to other Acts.
Division 4 of Part 4 amends the Customs Tariff to extend the expiry date of the General Preferential Tariff and Least Developed Country Tariff to December 31, 2034 and to create a new General Preferential Tariff Plus tariff treatment that will expire on the same date. The Division also aligns direct shipment requirements for tariff treatments under that Act with those that apply to free trade agreements.
Division 5 of Part 4 amends the Customs Tariff to remove Belarus and Russia from the List of Countries entitled to Most-Favoured-Nation tariff treatment.
Division 6 of Part 4 allows the Bank of Canada to apply, despite sections 27 and 27.1 of the Bank of Canada Act , any of its ascertained surplus to its retained earnings until its retained earnings are equal to zero or the ascertained surplus applied to its retained earnings is equal to the losses it incurred from the purchase of securities as part of the Government of Canada Bond Purchase Program.
Division 7 of Part 4 enacts the Canada Innovation Corporation Act . That Act continues the Canada Innovation Corporation, which was established under another Act, as a parent Crown corporation, sets out the Corporation’s purpose to maximize business investment in research and development across all sectors of the economy and in all regions of Canada to promote innovation-driven economic growth and includes transitional provisions. The Division also makes consequential and related amendments to other Acts.
Division 8 of Part 4 amends the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act to authorize additional payments to the provinces and territories.
Division 9 of Part 4 amends the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act to renew the authority to make Equalization and Territorial Formula Financing payments for another five-year period beginning on April 1, 2024 and makes a technical change to improve the accuracy of the programs. It also makes a technical change to the calculation of fiscal stabilization payments. Finally, it provides for the publication of the details of all amounts authorized to be paid under that Act.
Division 10 of Part 4 amends the Special Economic Measures Act , the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act and the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act (Sergei Magnitsky Law) to strengthen Canada’s ability to take economic measures against certain persons.
Division 11 of Part 4 amends the Privileges and Immunities (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) Act to, among other things, enable the Paris Protocol to be implemented in Canada.
Division 12 of Part 4 amends the Service Fees Act to, among other things, clarify the definition “fee”, exempt certain fees from the application of that Act, make certain exceptions in that Act applicable only with the approval of the President of the Treasury Board, make certain changes to the annual adjustment provisions and provide authority for the President of the Treasury Board to amend the regulations made under section 22 of that Act by taking into account the factors established by regulations.
It also amends section 25.1 of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency Act to provide for the application of sections 16 to 18 of the Service Fees Act to low-materiality fees, within the meaning of the Service Fees Act , that are fixed under section 24 or 25 of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency Act .
Division 13 of Part 4 amends the Canada Pension Plan to allow the Minister of National Revenue to make available information to the Minister of Employment and Social Development that is necessary for the purpose of policy analysis, research or evaluation related to the administration of that Act.
Division 14 of Part 4 amends the Department of Employment and Social Development Act to grant the Minister of Employment and Social Development the authority to collect and use Social Insurance Numbers for the purposes of administering or enforcing any Act, program or activity in respect of which the administration or enforcement is the responsibility of the Minister.
Division 15 of Part 4 amends the Canada Labour Code in respect of leave related to the death or disappearance of a child to, among other things, increase the maximum length of that leave from 104 weeks to 156 weeks and to repeal paragraph 206.5(4)(b) of that Act.
Division 16 of Part 4 amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to provide that a claim for refugee protection made by a person inside Canada must be made in person and, with regard to a claim made by the person other than at a port of entry, that the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration may specify the documents and information to be provided and the form and manner in which they are to be provided.
Division 17 of Part 4 amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to clarify that the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration may give instructions in respect of an application to sponsor a person who applies for a visa as a Convention refugee, within the meaning of that Act, or as a person in similar circumstances.
Division 18 of Part 4 amends the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants Act to, among other things,
(a) provide that the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants may seek an order authorizing it to administer the property of any licensee of the College who is not able to perform their activities as an immigration and citizenship consultant;
(b) extend immunity against proceedings for damages to directors, employees and agents and mandataries of the College, among others;
(c) authorize the College to enter into information-sharing agreements or arrangements with any entity, including federal or provincial government institutions; and
(d) expand the areas in respect of which the Governor in Council may authorize the College to make by-laws.
The Division also makes related amendments to the Citizenship Act and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to clarify that any person who is the subject of a notice of violation issued under either of those Acts has the right to request a review of the notice or the administrative monetary penalty set out in the notice.
Division 19 of Part 4 amends the Citizenship Act to, among other things,
(a) grant the Minister responsible for the administration and enforcement of that Act the power to collect biometric information from persons who make an application under that Act — and to use, verify, retain and disclose that information — in accordance with the regulations;
(b) authorize that Minister to administer and enforce that Act using electronic means, including by using an automated system; and
(c) grant that Minister the power to make regulations requiring persons who make an application or who provide documents, information or evidence under that Act to do so using electronic means.
Division 20 of Part 4 amends the Yukon Act to authorize the Minister of Northern Affairs to take any measures on certain public real property that the Minister considers necessary to prevent, counteract, mitigate or remedy any adverse effect on persons, property or the environment.
Subdivision A of Division 21 of Part 4 amends the Marine Liability Act to, among other things,
(a) increase the maximum liability for certain claims involving a ship of less than 300 gross tonnage;
(b) establish the maximum liability for claims involving air cushion vehicles;
(c) remove all references to the Hamburg Rules;
(d) extend the application of the International Convention on Civil Liability for Bunker Oil Pollution Damage, 2001 to non-seagoing vessels;
(e) provide for public notice requirements relating to the constitution of limitation funds under that Act;
(f) clarify that the owner of a ship is liable for economic loss related to fishing, hunting, trapping or harvesting suffered by an Indigenous group, community or people or suffered by a member of such a group, community or people; and
(g) expand the compensation regime of the Ship-source Oil Pollution Fund to include certain future losses.
Subdivision B of Division 21 amends the Canada Shipping Act, 2001 to, among other things,
(a) expand the application of Part 1 of that Act in relation to certain pleasure craft;
(b) expand the exemption powers of the Minister of Transport and the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans;
(c) allow the owner of a Canadian vessel to enter into an arrangement with a qualified person under which that person is the authorized representative of the vessel;
(d) give the Marine Technical Review Board jurisdiction to make decisions on applications for exemptions from interim orders;
(e) authorize the Governor in Council to incorporate by reference in certain regulations material that the Minister of Transport produces;
(f) broaden the Governor in Council’s power respecting fees, charges, costs or expenses to be paid in relation to the administration and enforcement of matters under that Act for which the Minister of Transport is responsible;
(g) increase the maximum amount of fines for certain offences;
(h) provide authority, in certain circumstances, for the Chief Registrar to refuse to issue a certificate of registry and for the Minister of Transport to refuse to issue a pleasure craft licence;
(i) authorize the Governor in Council to make regulations respecting emergency services;
(j) authorize the Minister of Transport to, among other things,
(i) direct a master or crew member to cease operations,
(ii) authorize the Deputy Minister of Transport to make interim orders in response to risks to marine safety or to the marine environment, and
(iii) direct a port authority or a person in charge of a port authority or place to authorize vessels to proceed to a place selected by the Minister; and
(k) permit designating as violations the contravention of certain provisions of Parts 5 and 10 of that Act and the regulations made under those Parts.
The Subdivision also makes a related amendment to the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act .
Subdivision C of Division 21 amends the Wrecked, Abandoned or Hazardous Vessels Act to, among other things, establish the Vessel Remediation Fund in the accounts of Canada and provide the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans with certain powers in relation to the detention of vessels.
Division 22 of Part 4 amends the Canada Transportation Act to, among other things,
(a) allow the Governor in Council to require air carriers to publish information respecting their performance on their Internet site;
(b) permit the sharing of information to ensure the proper functioning of the national transportation system or to increase its efficiency, while ensuring the confidentiality of that information;
(c) allow the Minister of Transport to require certain persons to provide certain information to the Minister if the Minister is of the opinion that there exists an unusual and significant disruption to the effective continued operation of the national transportation system;
(d) establish a new zone in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, in which any interswitching that occurs is subject to the rate determined by the Canadian Transportation Agency, for a period of 18 months; and
(e) broaden the scope of the administrative monetary penalties scheme.
Division 23 of Part 4 amends the Canada Transportation Act to, among other things,
(a) broaden the authority of the Canadian Transportation Agency to set fees and charges to recover its costs;
(b) replace the current process for resolving air travel complaints with a more streamlined process designed to result in more timely decisions;
(c) impose a greater burden of proof on air carriers where it is presumed that compensation is payable to a complainant unless the air carrier proves the contrary;
(d) require air carriers to establish an internal process for dealing with air travel claims;
(e) modify the Agency’s regulation-making powers with respect to air carriers’ obligations towards passengers; and
(f) enhance the Agency’s enforcement powers with respect to the air transportation sector.
Division 24 of Part 4 amends the Customs Act to, among other things,
(a) allow a person arriving in Canada to present themselves to the Canada Border Services Agency by a means of telecommunication, if that manner of presenting is made available at the customs office at which they are presenting themselves; and
(b) subject to the regulations, require that the operator of a commercial aircraft arriving in Canada ensure that baggage on board the aircraft is transported without delay to the nearest international baggage area.
The Division also makes a related amendment to the Quarantine Act .
Division 25 of Part 4 amends the National Research Council Act to, among other things, provide that the National Research Council of Canada may procure goods and services, including goods and services relating to construction and to research-related digital and information technology. It also establishes a new Procurement Oversight Board.
Division 26 of Part 4 amends the Patent Act to, among other things,
(a) authorize the Commissioner of Patents to grant an additional term for a patent if certain conditions are met;
(b) authorize the Governor in Council to make regulations respecting the number of days that is to be subtracted in determining the duration of an additional term; and
(c) authorize the Commissioner of Patents and the Federal Court to shorten the duration of an additional term if the duration as previously determined is longer than is authorized.
Division 27 of Part 4 amends the Food and Drugs Act to extend measures regarding therapeutic products to natural health products in order to, among other things,
(a) strengthen the safety oversight of natural health products throughout their life cycle; and
(b) promote greater confidence in the oversight of natural health products by increasing transparency.
Division 28 of Part 4 amends the Food and Drugs Act to, among other things, prohibit
(a) the sale of a cosmetic unless its safety can be established without relying on data derived from a test conducted on an animal that could cause pain, suffering or injury, whether physical or mental, to the animal, subject to certain exceptions;
(b) the conduct of a test on an animal that could cause pain, suffering or injury, whether physical or mental, to the animal if the purpose of the test is to meet a legislative requirement that relates to cosmetics; and
(c) deceptive or misleading claims, on the label of or in an advertisement for a cosmetic, with respect to testing on animals.
Division 29 of Part 4 enacts the Dental Care Measures Act .
Division 30 of Part 4 amends subsection 41(1) of the Canada Post Corporation Act , in response to the decision in R. v. Gorman , to limit the Canada Post Corporation’s authority to open mail other than letters.
Division 31 of Part 4 expresses the assent of the Parliament of Canada to the issuing by His Majesty of a Royal Proclamation under the Great Seal of Canada establishing for Canada the applicable Royal Style and Titles.
Division 32 of Part 4 amends the Public Sector Pension Investment Board Act to provide that the Public Sector Pension Investment Board may incorporate a subsidiary for the purpose of providing investment management services to the Canada Growth Fund Inc. It also amends the Fall Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2022 to increase the amount that may be paid out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund on the requisition of the Minister of Finance for the acquisition of shares of the Canada Growth Fund Inc. and to provide that the Canada Growth Fund Inc. is not an agent of His Majesty in right of Canada.
Division 33 of Part 4 amends the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions Act , the Trust and Loan Companies Act , the Bank Act and the Insurance Companies Act to, among other things,
(a) expand the mandate of the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions to include the supervision of federal financial institutions in order to determine whether they have adequate policies and procedures to protect themselves against threats to their integrity or security; and
(b) expand the Superintendent of Financial Institutions’ powers to issue directions to, and to take control of, a federal financial institution in certain circumstances.
It also makes a consequential amendment to the Winding-up and Restructuring Act .
Division 34 of Part 4 amends the Criminal Code to, among other things, lower the criminal rate of interest calculated in respect of an agreement or arrangement and to express that rate as an annual percentage rate. It also authorizes the Governor in Council, by regulation, to fix a limit on the total cost of borrowing under a payday loan agreement. Finally, it provides for transitional provisions.
Division 35 of Part 4 amends the Employment Insurance Act to extend, until October 26, 2024, the increase in the maximum number of weeks for which benefits may be paid in a benefit period to certain seasonal workers.
Division 36 of Part 4 amends the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 to, among other things,
(a) establish an account in the accounts of Canada to be called the Environmental Economic Instruments Fund, for the purpose of administering amounts received as contributions to certain funding programs under the responsibility of the Minister of the Environment; and
(b) replace references to “tradeable units” with references to “compliance units”.
It also makes consequential amendments to the Canada Emission Reduction Incentives Agency Act .
Division 37 of Part 4 amends the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation Act to clarify that the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation may administer any contract related to deposit insurance entered into by the Minister of Finance and to allow the Minister to increase the deposit insurance coverage limit until April 30, 2024.
Division 38 of Part 4 amends the Department of Employment and Social Development Act to, among other things,
(a) establish the Employment Insurance Board of Appeal to hear appeals of decisions made under the Employment Insurance Act instead of the Employment Insurance Section of the General Division of the Social Security Tribunal; and
(b) eliminate the requirement for leave to appeal decisions relating to the Employment Insurance Act to the Appeal Division of the Tribunal.
It also makes consequential amendments to other Acts.
Division 39 of Part 4 amends the Canada Elections Act to provide for a national, uniform, exclusive and complete regime applicable to registered parties and eligible parties respecting their collection, use, disclosure, retention and disposal of personal information.
All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from the Library of Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.
The House resumed from June 6 consideration of Bill C‑47, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, 2023, as reported (with amendments) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.
The Speaker Anthony Rota
Pursuant to order made earlier today, the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded divisions on the motions at report stage of Bill C‑47.
The question is on Motion No. 1. A vote on this motion also applies to Motion No. 2.
(The House divided on Motion No. 1, which was negatived on the following division:)
The Speaker Anthony Rota
I declare Motion No. 1 defeated. I therefore declare Motion No. 2 defeated.
The question is on Motion No. 3.
A vote on this motion also applies to Motions Nos. 4 to 14.
(The House divided on Motion No. 3, which was negatived on the following division:)
The Speaker Anthony Rota
I declare Motion No. 3 defeated. I therefore declare Motions Nos. 4 to 14 defeated.
The member for Mississauga—Lakeshore has a point of order.
The Speaker Anthony Rota
I just want to clarify that because the vote has already been announced, we have to ask for unanimous consent.
Do we have unanimous consent?
Some hon. members
Agreed.
The Deputy Speaker Chris d'Entremont
The question is on Motion No. 15. A vote on this motion will also apply to Motions Nos. 16 to 111.
(The House divided on Motion No. 15, which was negatived on the following division:)
The Deputy Speaker Chris d'Entremont
I declare the motion defeated. I therefore declare Motions Nos. 16 to 111 defeated.
The next question is on Motion No. 112. A vote on this motion also applies to Motions Nos. 113 to 121.
(The House divided on Motion No. 112, which was negatived on the following division:)
The Deputy Speaker Chris d'Entremont
I declare Motion No. 112 defeated. I therefore declare Motions Nos. 113 to 121 defeated as well.
The question is on Motion No. 122. A vote on this motion also applies to Motions Nos. 123 to 125.
(The House divided on Motion No. 122, which was negatived on the following division:)
The Deputy Speaker Chris d'Entremont
I declare Motion No. 122 defeated. I therefore declare Motions Nos. 123 to 125 defeated.
The question is on Motion No. 126.
A vote on this motion also applies to Motions Nos. 127 to 232.
(The House divided on Motion No. 126, which was negatived on the following division:)
The Deputy Speaker Chris d'Entremont
I declare the motion defeated. I therefore declare Motions Nos. 127 to 232 defeated.
The question is on Motion No. 233. A vote on this motion also applies to Motions Nos. 234 to 440.
(The House divided on Motion No. 233, which was negatived on the following division:)
The Deputy Speaker Chris d'Entremont
I declare Motion No. 233 defeated. I therefore declare Motions Nos. 234 to 440 defeated.
We have a point of order from the hon. government whip.
Steven MacKinnon Liberal Gatineau, QC
Mr. Speaker, I am sure it has not been lost on the Chair that this sudden technological difficulty outbreak has been limited to one party in this House. I would just ask, as we are voting on the budget, that we show a bit of respect for this place.
Manifestly, these people are outside in the lobby—
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
The Deputy Speaker Chris d'Entremont
I would just remind the member that we cannot say whether somebody is in the chamber or outside the chamber.
We have a point of order from the hon. member for La Prairie.
Alain Therrien Bloc La Prairie, QC
Mr. Speaker, there is no interpretation. There is nothing but silence on the French channel. I am not sure why.
The Deputy Speaker Chris d'Entremont
I think a phone was ringing while the member was talking.
The hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby.
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
Mr. Speaker, this is the second time we have had technical problems that have only impacted one party. I believe it is showing profound disrespect for the interpreters, who do an excellent job each and every day on our behalf. They deserve more respect than that.
Mr. Speaker, I would ask you to undertake an investigation. This is the second time the Conservatives have turned votes into a circus. I would ask you to undertake a thorough investigation of this misuse of parliamentary time.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
The Deputy Speaker Chris d'Entremont
Order. I am going to make two comments on this.
I will refer people to chapter 13, “Rules of Order and Decorum”, under “Decorum During the Taking of a Vote”. We did see a lot of people get up and move during the vote, and I do not want that happening, because it creates a lot of confusion for the table officers. It reads:
During the taking of a vote, no Member is permitted to enter, leave or walk across the Chamber or to make any noise or disturbance from the time the Speaker begins to put the question until the results of the vote are announced. Members must be in their seats to vote and must remain seated until the result of the vote is announced.
I want to quote what the Speaker ruled on June 5, which was Monday morning after the Friday incident. He said:
The Chair has the utmost respect for the voting process. The success of the voting application depends on the good faith of members. All members are to treat their right to vote in this place with the sanctity and respect it deserves.
This applies especially to a budget vote.
Let us see how we get through the next vote. I will remind folks that if they are voting online, have trouble with it and join us by Zoom, I need a “yea” or “nay”. I do not need to know anything else. Please stick to that.
The question is on Motion No. 441. A vote on this motion also applies to Motions Nos. 442, 445, 684 to 689 and 691 to 729.
(The House divided on Motion No. 441, which was negatived on the following division:)
The Deputy Speaker Chris d'Entremont
I declare Motion No. 441 defeated. I therefore declare Motions Nos. 442 to 455, 684 to 689 and 691 to 729 defeated.
The next question is on Motion No. 730.
A vote on this motion also applies to Motions Nos. 731 to 749 and 751 to 904.
(The House divided on Motion No. 730, which was negatived on the following division:)
The Deputy Speaker Chris d'Entremont
I declare Motion No. 730 defeated. I therefore declare Motions Nos. 731 to 749 and 751 to 904 defeated.
Helena Jaczek Liberal Markham—Stouffville, ON
moved that the bill, as amended, be concurred in at report stage.
The Deputy Speaker Chris d'Entremont
If a member of a recognized party present in the House wishes that the motion be carried or carried on division or wishes to request a recorded division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.
(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)
Kamal Khera Liberal Brampton West, ON
moved that Bill C-47, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, 2023, be read the third time and passed.
Rachel Bendayan LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Tourism and Associate Minister of Finance
Madam Speaker, I am extremely pleased to participate in this evening's debate on Bill C‑47, which implements our government's 2023 budget.
The budget sets out a host of measures for supporting Canadians and growing the Canadian economy of the future. That is our government's priority.
This week, the Conservative leader let us know what his priority is. On Monday, he said his priority is to use all procedural tools at his disposal to block the budget from passing. This morning, he doubled down by saying that he intended to speak all night to filibuster this debate. After witnessing the cheap tricks that the Conservatives have been pulling since last week to sabotage the work of this House, it is obvious that all of our Conservative colleagues are following their leader's example.
Of course, this is not a serious attempt to prevent the budget from passing. If it were, they would be trying to rally support from a majority of House members. The Conservatives are not trying to persuade anyone. They just want to block the bill. Not only is this approach an insult to our democratic institution and to the spirit of co-operation that we must strive to maintain, it is slowing the delivery of vital programs and benefits to Canadians.
We are finally at third reading of the budget implementation act, a critical piece of legislation. It is a bill that would enact our economic plan for Canadians. It is about creating more good-paying jobs. It is about growing our GDP, and it is about Canada staying competitive in the global market. This is important to me. It is important to every single member of the government. When I am asked in my riding what my priority is, or when a journalist wants to know what our government’s priority is, the answer is clear: It is the economy.
The Conservative leader, however, has made no secret of what his priority is. He stated it so very clearly. His priority is to “use all procedural tools at our disposal to block the budget from passing including 900 amendments, lengthy speeches, and other procedural tools”. This, I must emphasize, is not how Parliament is supposed to function. These 904 amendments are fake amendments. They are 904 motions calling on the government to delete the 904 clauses of the budget implementation act. It took hours of the Speaker's time just to read out those amendments and four hours to vote on them earlier today. This was after 40 hours of Conservative filibusters on the budget implementation act.
This is not even a serious attempt at preventing the passage of the budget. If that were the case, the Conservative leader would be trying to rally a majority of MPs in the House, but that is not what the Conservatives are doing; they are not trying to convince other parties or other members. These are simply stunts, ones that serve only to undermine the work of Parliament and to obstruct the democratic will of the House. Similar to those stunts, more of the same can be expected tonight. The leader of the Conservative Party said earlier today that he will keep speaking and keep blocking.
While the Conservatives are clapping, they perhaps would like to explain to Canadians why they want to block important benefits and programs: benefits for low-income workers and benefits for families, consumers and homebuyers. The Conservatives are blocking assistance for Ukraine, which is included in this bill before the House. The Conservatives are blocking an anti-flipping tax, when we know that speculation in the housing market is causing pain for Canadians. The Conservatives are stalling the next steps in our dental care plan, when we know that seniors would like to access this important support. The Conservatives are preventing low-income workers in this country from getting the support they need. The list goes on and on. Why are the Conservatives doing this? Why has this minority of members in the House of Commons decided to delay important benefits and programs for Canadians who need them?
It is simply because Conservatives do not believe that climate change exists or that we should take climate action in this country. That is the only logical conclusion, given the debates in the House. They do not believe the 99.9% of climate scientists when they tell us we need to substantially cut emissions if we hope to safeguard our environment for our children and our grandchildren.
As we all know, major economies around the world are moving at an unprecedented pace to fight climate change and build the net-zero industries the world needs now. As a country, we must seize this opportunity. The International Energy Agency estimates that the global market for clean-tech manufacturing alone will triple by 2030, to $650 billion U.S. per year. We cannot let that opportunity pass us by. Budget 2023 is the government's plan to seize that opportunity today and to lead the way in rapidly expanding global industries that will ensure that Canada can and will be a leader in that global economy.
I have to say that, in that race, the recent passage of the Inflation Reduction Act represents a major challenge to our ability to compete in industries that will drive the economy of tomorrow. If we do not act quickly, the magnitude of U.S. incentives will compromise Canada's ability to attract the investments necessary to make our country a leader in the clean global economy.
If Canada does not keep pace, it will fall behind. If we fall behind, that will mean fewer investments in our communities and fewer jobs for a whole generation of Canadians.
As we can see, economic imperatives are leading us toward the development of the green economy. However, that is not all.
It is also critical that we consider the devastating impacts that climate change is having on Canadians. Earlier this year, we witnessed this when an ice storm swept across much of Canada, including my community in Montreal, elsewhere in Quebec, and in Ontario. The damage was significant. Unfortunately, we know these storms will become more frequent due to climate change. Sadly, lives were lost. Now, as we all know, wildfires are ravaging communities across the country, leaving a path of destruction behind and literally making it difficult to breathe.
Today is actually Clean Air Day in Canada, a day meant to recognize how important good air quality is to our health, to our environment and, yes, to our economy. Today, in Ottawa, the air quality is rated at 10 plus, on a scale of 10, which means maxing out the scale entirely. This is the worst level on Environment Canada's Air Quality Health Index, and it indicates a very high risk to human health. If this does not serve to finally wake up the climate deniers in the House, I genuinely do not know what will. These natural disasters serve as yet another reminder of the urgent need to take action against climate change, to get our economy to make the green transition we all need, and to turn this into a real economic opportunity for Canadians as we create the economy of tomorrow. The time for action is now.
The transition to the clean economy will require massive investments, both public and private. For Canada to remain competitive, we must continue to build a framework that supports these types of investments in Canada, and that is what we are doing with this budget.
By making significant investments so that Canada does not fall behind in this period of tremendous change and opportunity, budget 2023 ensures that our clean Canadian economy will create prosperity, jobs for the middle class and stronger communities across the country.
The measures set out in Bill C-47 give us the means to match our ambitions, the means to chart a path to net zero and to good jobs for years to come.
Growing a clean economy, both here in Canada and around the world, will depend on our supply of clean electricity.
The good news is that Canada already has one of the cleanest electricity grids in the world. In fact, roughly 83% of our electricity comes from non-emitting sources, such as hydroelectricity, wind, solar and nuclear.
In budget 2023, the federal government is proposing significant investments to accelerate the supply and transmission of clean electricity. We will expand Canada's electricity grid, connect it from coast-to-coast-to-coast, and ensure that Canadians and Canadian businesses have access to cleaner and cheaper energy into the next century.
By way of example, budget 2023 proposes to introduce a 15% refundable tax credit for eligible investments in non-emitting electricity generation systems such as wind and solar; abated natural gas-fired electricity generation; stationary electricity storage systems that do not use fossil fuels in their operation, such as batteries, pumped hydroelectric storage and compressed air storage; and equipment for the transmission of electricity between provinces and territories. Both new projects and the refurbishment of existing facilities will be eligible.
This made-in-Canada plan follows the federal tiered structure to incent the development of Canada’s clean economy and provide additional support for projects that need it. With this plan we are introducing the necessary tools to put Canada’s electricity sector on the path to reducing its emissions to net-zero from the 56-megatonne CO2 equivalent in 2020, and to meeting our commitment to achieve a net-zero electricity grid by 2035.
We know that as we look to seize the opportunities presented to us in growing the clean economy of the future and building the opportunities of tomorrow, we must continue to support Canadians today. Since our election in 2015, our government's main focus has been on investing in the middle class, growing the economy, strengthening Canada’s social safety net and making life more affordable.
We have introduced the Canada child benefit, which has lifted hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty, including more than 15,000 in my riding alone. We have been giving millions of families a head start in giving their children the best start in life possible. We have increased the guaranteed income supplement for single seniors, increased old aged security and enhanced the Canada pension plan with our provincial partners, because we know that those who have contributed and given to this country for their entire working lives deserve to enjoy a secure and dignified retirement.
We know that without the involvement of women in our workforce, we will never succeed in building the economy we want. Because of that, in 2021 we made a historic investment in a Canada-wide system of affordable early learning and child care. That investment has already delivered a 50% average reduction in fees for regulated child care in this country. It has also brought down fees to just $10 a day in six provinces and territories in this country, with the rest on track to meeting this milestone in just a few years' time.
The statistics speak for themselves.
We have increased our employment by over 900,000 jobs since prepandemic levels. Our unemployment rate sits at just 5%, which is lower than prepandemic levels. Our labour force participation rate is at 65.6%, well above that of the United States, and our labour force participation rate for women in their prime working years is at a record high of 85.2 %. We have also had the fastest year-over-year growth of any country in the G7. That is right. It is right here in Canada.
We have made a lot of progress over the years in supporting Canadians, but we also know that millions still find it difficult to make ends meet. Budget 2023 was developed with a dual purpose in mind: supporting Canadians who need the help and need the government to step in to help them make ends meet today, while laying the foundations to build the economy that Canadians need tomorrow, with good-paying jobs. We cannot have one without the other. We cannot build an economy for the future without supporting the most vulnerable in our society today, and that is a challenge our government is ready to meet.
Predatory lenders often take advantage of some of the most vulnerable people in our communities, including many low-income Canadians, newcomers and seniors, often by extending very high interest rate loans. That is why in our budget implementation bill, we proposed that the federal government lower the criminal rate of interest under the Criminal Code from 47% to just 35% and launch consultations on whether that rate should be further reduced. Today’s legislation also proposes to adjust the Criminal Code's payday lending exemption to impose a cap on the cost of borrowing charged by payday lenders.
Another topic is supporting our young people. Supporting post-secondary education not only is one of the best ways to continue to make life more affordable, but also prepares the next generation of Canadians with the skills they need to succeed. The cost of getting a post-secondary education has risen in recent years for many Canadians. RESPs are an important part of saving for that education. In a typical year, about 500,000 students withdraw funds from their RESPs to support their education. However, the withdrawal limits have not increased in 25 years.
That is why, in the legislation before this House today, we are proposing to increase limits on those withdrawals from $5,000 to $8,000 for full-time students and from $2,500 to $4,000 for part-time students. We are also proposing to allow divorced or separated parents to open a joint RESP for their children, which would ensure more young Canadians have the opportunities they wish.
I would also like to quickly address another aspect of the bill before us this evening. The changes that this bill makes to the Canada Elections Act confirm that Parliament has always intended that the Canada Elections Act should regulate uniformly, exclusively and comprehensively the federal political parties with respect to privacy.
Parliament has already established a set of exclusive, comprehensive and uniform rules for the collection, use and disclosure of personal information by federal political parties, requiring political parties to establish and comply with privacy policies governed by the Canada Elections Act.
Some provincial privacy commissioners have questioned this interpretation, and this piece of legislation before us confirms that the intention of the Canada Elections Act has always been that voters across Canada benefit from that same set of privacy rules during federal elections.
Communication with voters is at the very heart of politics, and the collection, use and disclosure of information is essential to that communication. This legislative measure will provide important certainty. MPs, federal political parties, candidates, campaigns, party officials and volunteers will be subject to a single, comprehensive and uniform set of federal rules for the collection, use and disclosure of information, and no province will be able to separately regulate or restrict the ability of MPs, federal political parties, candidates, campaigns, party officials and volunteers to communicate with voters or to collect and use their information.
I would like to conclude by saying that, thanks to the measures in Bill C-47 and others in budget 2023, we have the opportunity to build a clean, prosperous and sustainable economy right here in Canada. This will benefit not just ourselves and our children, but also our grandchildren in every part of this magnificent country. The time has come to seize this opportunity and to move forward.
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, AB
Madam Speaker, the Liberal approach to this debate has been completely unserious. We listened to the member, just like other members before her, talk about the wildfire situation. The government has been in power for eight years and somehow the wildfire situation we are facing is everybody else's fault. It has been in power for eight years.
The Liberals talk about cuts and fearmonger about potential cuts. Do members know when we had the worst cuts in Canadian history to health, social services and education? In 1996-97, the Liberal government of the day cut 20% from transfers for health, social services and education, and then the next year cut another 12%. It cut 32% over two years because of the absolutely disastrous economic policies of the last Trudeau government, the Trudeau government of the seventies and eighties, with 14 deficits in 15 years.
I wonder if the hon. member and her friends, who have scrambled around to be in the background of her shot, will promise to stick around and will be open to being persuaded by the Leader of the Opposition's speech tonight.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
Order. There is no time for debate here unless the member is being recognized.
The hon. member for Outremont.
Rachel Bendayan Liberal Outremont, QC
Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question. I believe, if I understood it correctly, he is talking about getting serious. I could not agree more.
It is time to get serious. The member pretends that he does not know who is to blame for these wildfires. I will tell him. It is climate change. Climate change is to blame for these wildfires.
What we have done is put forward a concrete plan. It is called climate action. Over the course of the last several months that the new Conservative leader has been in the chamber, he has consistently asked us to stop that climate action, to stop fighting climate change. We will not stop fighting climate change.
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
I want to remind members that they have had an opportunity to ask a question. It is a not a free-for-all here. They have to wait to be asked. They have to wait for me to say “questions and comments” before they are recognized. I just want to let them know that they cannot continue to heckle or try to answer questions while someone else has the floor.
Questions and Comments, the hon. member for Repentigny.
Monique Pauzé Bloc Repentigny, QC
Madam Speaker, I listened carefully to my colleague's speech. She talked about the clean economy. That is great. That resonates with me.
The government is going to create the Canada growth fund with a $15-billion capital investment. However, the Canada pension plan is the organization that is going to manage this fund. Wait a minute. The Canada pension plan is responsible for its own performance, its own investments. It is not really concerned with environmental issues. For instance, a large part of its portfolio is invested in oil stocks.
We are told that the Canada growth fund will be used for hydrogen projects created from fossil fuels and for carbon capture and storage projects, which are the scam of the century. The government has fallen for it.
Rachel Bendayan Liberal Outremont, QC
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from the Bloc Québécois. Our government is proposing to give an organization the mandate to create the clean economy of tomorrow. This mandate will have very clear instructions attached. We are in government and we have the power to do it. We will do this not only in Quebec, but across Canada. This will benefit all Quebeckers.
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Madam Speaker, the planet is on fire. I can smell the burning of the planet from my window in northern Ontario. It has been burning for days and days. We had an emergency debate the other night on fires, and not a single Conservative showed up. Obviously they do not care.
My question is for the government. Over the last year, the environment minister proposed an increase of 109 million barrels of oil a day. The government has put over $30 billion into the TMX boondoggle to ship unrefined bitumen to other destinations.
If the government is serious about climate change, when is it going to stop promoting the expansion of bitumen projects with the highest carbon intensities on the planet? As our planet burns, if we are going to be serious about a climate future, we have to stop the expansion of the oil lobby. When is the government going to stop working for the oil lobby and actually start working for Canadians?
Rachel Bendayan Liberal Outremont, QC
Madam Speaker, indeed, here in this House we can also smell the smoke from the wildfires. It comes right into this chamber. I hear my colleague when he says he can smell it where he is in northern Ontario.
I, too, found it deplorable that not a single Conservative participated in the emergency debate on wildfires. Communities right across the country are being evacuated. Seven thousand Quebeckers were recently evacuated in Chibougamau.
This is a very serious issue, and I believe that as elected officials, as parliamentarians, every single one of us should be concerned and every single one of us should have to speak to it.
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1Government Orders
Kingston and the Islands Ontario
Liberal
Mark Gerretsen LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate)
Madam Speaker, when the member for Timmins—James Bay asked his question moments ago—
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
We have a point of order from the hon. member for Battle River—Crowfoot.
Damien Kurek Conservative Battle River—Crowfoot, AB
Madam Speaker, I found it very troubling that the previous two speakers referenced Conservatives not participating in a debate that we did, very clearly—
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
This is a point of debate.
The hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.
Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON
Mr. Speaker, what I found deplorable was that when the member for Timmins—James Bay was asking his question and talking about how he could literally smell forest fires from where he was sitting in his community, Conservatives were just laughing.
Somehow, Conservatives think that climate change is a partisan issue, but even their buddies in the Bloc do not agree with them on that. They take it seriously.
I am wondering if the parliamentary secretary could comment on whether it is time to put partisanship aside when it comes to climate change. We can have debates about whether or not a policy is right or whether a different policy is the way to go, but what we should not be debating are the actual facts, the fact that climate change is real.
Would the parliamentary secretary like to comment on that?
Rachel Bendayan Liberal Outremont, QC
Madam Speaker, I do agree that this is a not a partisan issue and I regret very much that it has become one in the House.
There was a time when Brian Mulroney, a friend of mine, was a leader, the then-prime minister of Canada, a Conservative prime minister. He brought forward important life-changing reforms in order to make our planet greener, in order to fight climate change.
The Conservatives have changed since then. This new Conservative leader does not believe that climate change is something that we should act on. He does not believe that climate action is important.
We disagree, and we will continue to fight climate change.
Marty Morantz Conservative Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB
Madam Speaker, there is one aspect of the budget on which I want to get clarification.
In the fall economic statement, in the 2027-28 business year, the fall economic statement projected a $4.5-billion surplus. Only 140 days later, on March 28, the budget introduced a table for the same year that showed a $14-billion deficit, an $18.5-billion swing.
I wonder if the member could give us some details as to why there was the change.
Rachel Bendayan Liberal Outremont, QC
Madam Speaker, I appreciate my colleague opposite. I know him to be a learned member of the House.
The simple fact is that a majority of Conservative Party members voted against climate action in the House. We know that the global environment has changed. There are challenges at the moment, but what the Conservatives are proposing are simply cuts.
What the Conservatives are proposing are austerity measures, and as I mentioned in the speech—
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
The hon. member for Edmonton—Wetaskiwin is rising on a point of order.
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, AB
Madam Speaker, I believe the rules of the House dictate that when a question is asked, the hon. member answering the question should at least attempt to refer, in some way, to—
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
This is a point of debate.
The hon. parliamentary secretary.
Rachel Bendayan Liberal Outremont, QC
Madam Speaker, I find it ironic that the Conservatives are talking about answering questions.
Several times, we have asked the Conservatives what they are proposing by way of economic policy or what they are proposing by way of climate policy, and the answer has been silence. It has been silence on the other side. They have no plan for the economy. They have no plan for our planet. They have no plan for our future.
Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Madam Speaker, I will be very brief.
This whole charade is impressive. Everything that has happened since Friday has been things I did not want to see or hear, and I can say that because the Bloc is not looking to form government. It has been about partisanship, foreign interference, climate change and forest fires come early. However, when I go back to my riding, I see that seniors are being abandoned.
Come on, what is going on? It is going to be a real show here tonight, right up until midnight.
I want to talk about seniors exclusively. I want my colleague to explain why they were abandoned.
Rachel Bendayan Liberal Outremont, QC
Madam Speaker, I also deplore what is happening in the House. I would have liked to have a debate on the issues, including how we could help our seniors.
We have already done a lot to support our seniors. We have increased old age security. There are other policies we could put in place, but we spend our time dealing with the Conservatives' partisan games, which is unfortunate.
Pierre Poilievre ConservativeLeader of the Opposition
Madam Speaker, I am rising today to speak, and to speak and to speak, for the people who have no voice, the people who have been silenced for too long, the quiet ones, the ones who toil away to pay their bills but have no means to pay any longer.
They are the ones who cannot hire lobbyists to make their voices heard in the halls of power and they have no connections to get their concerns into the headlines of the newspapers, but they are the quiet ones who do the nation's work, who carry the country on their back. They are the ones who rise when it is still dark and work until it is dark again, but lately, for them, it has felt like nothing but darkness.
In this period of difficulty, everything feels broken, and the government is broke. These are the people who skip meals because they cannot afford the price of food. These are the people who quietly go to food banks because they know it is the only way they will have a chance to feed their children. These are the 33-year-old men and women who did everything we asked them to do, worked hard, paid off their bills, had a job or two or three right through university, and yet still cannot afford a home and have calculated that they will never be able to afford a home, because prices are too high and rates are too burdensome for them ever to do so.
When the Prime Minister rose today to complain that I would be on my feet for hours and hours at a time to block his latest assault on the paycheques of these quiet, patriotic working people, let me inform him that I was not deterred. I will speak for those people who cannot speak for themselves because they are too busy carrying the nation on their backs.
I am rising in the House today to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves because they are carrying the weight of the nation on their backs. I am speaking on behalf of single mothers who are skipping meals because that is the only way they can afford to buy groceries for their children.
I am rising in the House today to speak on behalf of truckers who work seven days a week and do not even see their children anymore because that is what it takes for them to pay the bills. I am rising for the nine out of 10 Canadians who say that they will never be able to afford a house after eight years under this Prime Minister.
I am rising in the House to speak for taxpayers who cannot afford to pay the carbon tax that the government wants to increase to 61¢ a litre. I am speaking for all those who cannot afford to pay any more and who need a voice in the House of Commons, who need us to take action so that they can earn a decent living, have a home and have financial security, which security is threatened day after day because of this inflationary deficit budget.
We will work and fight to prevent this budget from being passed.
In order to understand where we go from here, we have to understand how we arrived here in the first place. To understand the future, we have to understand the past. To know tomorrow, we have to know yesterday. This is not a unique concept. In fact, I learned it from the great Winston Churchill.
Winston Churchill was probably the most prescient statesman of the 20th century. We know that he predicted the ravages of the evil Hitlerian regime in the early 1930s, before many of his own countrymen had realized the risk that was gathering. In a 1931 essay that he wrote in Maclean's magazine, “Fifty Years Hence”, he predicted the iPad, which he described as a device that one would hold in one's hand and use to talk to a friend on the other side of the world as though they were just sticking their head out the window to talk to a neighbour.
He predicted that we would have wireless modems in houses. He used other words to describe them, but he described them with incredible precision. He described the fierce power of the atom. He even wrote back then, at the beginning of the 1930s, about how we would one day unlock the force of hydrogen as a fuel source, which is something that the government is celebrating as being a completely new concept, almost a century later.
He said, at Westminster College in Missouri, that an iron curtain was descending across Europe, and at that moment described what would become known as the Cold War before anyone else was able to predict such a thing.
How was he able to see so far into the future? Of course, he was able to because he had been so capable of seeing into the past.
I see there has been an improvement on the government side, by the way. It is a big improvement, if only the cameras could see the very impressive people sitting there.
He predicted all of these matters into the future because he had so completely understood the past. He wrote 58 volumes of Nobel prize-winning literature, almost all of it historical in nature. Because he understood history, he could tell where the future was going. He understood that our imagination is really just fragments of memory put together and that we can have no imagination of what is to come without those fragments from the past, and that is how he was able to see forward.
Today I will use the methodology that he gave in kind of an IKEA instruction manual on how to tell the future. It would be like a pocketbook for every fortune teller.
What he said is that there are two ways you can predict the future. One is to look at where you are and where you were, and you can project to where you will be. It is obvious that this method is based on trajectory. The second way is that there is something called the “cycle of history”: The things that have gone around and around again will come around and around in the future. I am going to use both of these methods to foretell where we are headed and, unfortunately, to deliver some dark warnings about the perils that accumulate in front of our eyes if we do not change course and do so very quickly.
Let us start with where we were, where we are and where we are headed.
I start by pointing out that only eight years ago, the average cost for a house in Canada was $450,000. The average mortgage payment was a mere $1,300 or $1,400. The average rent was $900. Unfortunately, because the government has unleashed a torrent of government spending, it has doubled the national debt, increased the size and cost of government and delivered to us 40-year high inflation, all of which have doubled housing prices, doubled rent, doubled monthly mortgage payments and doubled the necessary down payment needed to buy a home. How did we get here?
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Madam Speaker, I know that the members across the way would like to continue to talk me down and to silence my voice because they do not want—
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
Order. Order.
I seem to have one of the official opposition members heckling him as well.
I would ask members to please not interrupt. I want to remind members that while someone has the floor, it is not very respectful for others to be speaking. If they wish to have conversations, they should take them outside and allow the hon. member to have the floor to be able to do his speech, because I know they will have questions and comments.
Stephanie Kusie Conservative Calgary Midnapore, AB
Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. It is not respectful to leave no one in the room on the government side when the Leader of the Opposition—
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
There are individuals in the room, and that is not a point of order at this point. I do not think that the hon. member could even call for quorum. There is quorum, so I will recognize the hon. leader of the official opposition.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
It is still happening. I think we can have it quiet as a mouse. Is that possible?
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
Order. If hon. members want their own members to speak, I think they should be quiet.
The hon. member for Timmins—James Bay.
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Madam Speaker, I have been in the House many years and I have always enjoyed the leader of Stornoway's stunts.
Are we actually saying that there is going to be historical precedence and they are upset that nobody bothers to listen to him? Is that literally a point—
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
That is not a point of order; it is a point of debate.
The hon. leader of the official opposition.
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Madam Speaker, it was good to hear from the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay. He does make a lot of noise, but that is because an empty wagon rattles the loudest. The people of Timmins keep telling me, as I have been there four times in a year, that they have seen more of me in the last year than they have seen of him in the last decade, and they are happy about that.
Over the last eight years, we have seen a massive, possibly unprecedented, mounting of both public and private debt. We have to understand where we were and where we are in order to understand where we are going. In the last four years, the government has doubled our national debt. That is more than half a trillion dollars of new debt. The Prime Minister has added more debt than all previous prime ministers combined.
He will be quick to point to many different excuses that have caused this run-up in our national debt. I will point out that while there was a COVID pandemic, this is not the first crisis we have ever seen in the history of the world. While there has been a war between Russia and Ukraine, this is not the first war ever fought in the history of the world.
We had the great global recession under the previous Conservative government. We had two wars: one in Afghanistan, and another in Iraq and Syria. We managed to do so while keeping the debt the lowest in the G7 and balancing the budget. Other countries faced similar challenges without adding as much debt.
For example, the Swiss, who are right in the centre of Europe, closer to the conflict in Ukraine, and more dependent on global supply chains than we are because they are a landlocked nation surrounded by the European Union, were able to balance their budget, pay down their deficit, pay down their debt and keep interest rates, inflation and unemployment lower than all of the other OECD countries. That proves that just because there is a pandemic or a war in one part of the world, it does not force a government to completely bankrupt itself.
Let us recall that the Prime Minister added $100 billion of debt before there was a single case of COVID. He has added roughly $100 billion since COVID came to an end. During the COVID pandemic, 40%, or $200 billion of the new debt that he added, had nothing to do with COVID whatsoever according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer. The idea that we can blame all of this new debt on factors out of his control is provably false.
The Prime Minister had a choice and his decision was to spend without any thought for future generations or for the financial viability of the country. In order to enable his spending, he unleashed nearly unprecedented printing of cash. This was done through something called quantitative easing where the central bank purchased government debt at exceptionally high prices, driving down yields on that debt, and ultimately pumping $400 billion of new cash into the economy in less than two years.
Many will say the Liberals had no choice. There was a pandemic after all. Let us review that excuse. The pandemic did not bring a liquidity crunch. In fact, the economic phenomenon of the pandemic was that people had more cash than ever before, but they were banned from spending it. The problem was not the lack of cash, as had been the case in the previous great global recession.
The problem was that people and businesses had bank accounts that were overflowing with cash with nowhere they were allowed to spend it. In that kind of environment, the worst possible thing one could do is to print more cash and further overflow bank accounts with that money, which, in the end, we knew would ultimately have led to inflation.
During that run-up of the size of our monetary base that kept money printing, the Minister of Finance, always looking for the trendiest new slogan that would win her applause in Davos or Brussels or at some other international symposium, said that all this cash that was filling up bank accounts was like a “pre-loaded stimulus”, something that could be unleashed to revive a dead economy. Of course the economy was only dead because governments had shut it down, not because there was a lack of cash with which to facilitate commerce. When the economy opened, all of that excess cash was unleashed, and the goods we buy and the interest we pay were automatically and predictably bid up.
We do not fault the government for having created programs to pay people's bills while governments locked them down and prevented them from paying their own. Where we did object was with the government giving out $2,000-a-month payments to prisoners, to dead people, to teenagers who did not have that kind of money before the crisis occurred, and in many cases had no jobs at all.
We objected to the government continuing to pay out these benefits well after there were more than a million vacant jobs. In other words, we were paying people not to work while there were a million vacant jobs they could have been filling. Simultaneously driving up unemployment and job vacancies, an unusual coincidence of achievement or, in reality, negative achievement in the use of this policy.
The reality is that we warned the Liberals at the time that if they did not restrain themselves this would lead to a crisis. It would start with inflation and be followed up by an interest rate increase. This was not based on some invention—
Jasraj Singh Hallan Conservative Calgary Forest Lawn, AB
Madam Speaker, I have a point of order. The members on the other side are speaking even louder than he is. I would ask that they show us—
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
I do want to remind members, if they want to have conversations, to please take them out to allow the speaker to be heard, so that MPs could be ready for questions and comments.
The hon. Leader of the Opposition.
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Madam Speaker, I know that the Liberals across the way would love to silence my voice. They want to silence Canadians by censoring the Internet. They want to bring their woke censorship ideology to university campuses—
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
Order. The hon. parliamentary secretary knows full well that he should be a role model to other members and should not be making any disturbance while someone else has the floor.
I would ask him to put his eyeglass piece away as well.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
Order, order, order. I am sure we can get through this evening. It would be beautiful if we could run through this evening smoothly. I have a feeling that is not quite going to happen, but I am going to try.
Again, I want to remind all members, if they want to have conversations, to take them out.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
Order. Even when I am speaking, I think I deserve the respect of this House.
The hon. Leader of the Opposition.
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Madam Speaker, I think we can all agree that if the member from Kingston is our role model, that is a good reason why we are in so much trouble today.
This spending that has led to the inflation was utterly predictable, but its consequences have been utterly devastating. It is obvious by looking at the lineups at food banks across the country, which, in many cases, actually go many blocks down the street and around the corner. There are the cases of the young people who now estimate that they will be in their fifties before they will be able to move out of their parents' homes. These are not anecdotes.
Just the other day, one prominent financial institution estimated that if a family was earning a quarter of a million dollars, it would take them 25 years in Toronto to save up for a down payment. It used to be that 25 years was the term it took to pay down a mortgage, now it takes that long just to get a mortgage, which illustrates the immense contortion that our economy has suffered. This is not without notice around the world. The IMF now says that Canada has the economy that is most at risk of default crisis out of all the countries in the advanced and developed world. Right now, household debt is 107% of GDP, which is to say that the combined debt of Canadian families is 7% bigger than the entire GDP of our country, and we have the worst household debt of any G7 country.
This debt was not an accident. When governments create cash, they are sloppy about it. They do not simply print the money and hand it over to the Prime Minister to spend, although I think he might prefer that kind of efficiency, rather they have a central bank purchase government bonds on what is called the “secondary market”. In other words, the government sells the bonds to the financial institutions and the central bank buys them back.
This creates an artificial private-sector demand for government debt, which makes it very easy for government to borrow money. After all, if I say to members that I will sell them a bond today for $1.00 and buy it back tomorrow for a $1.10, it is pretty easy to imagine that members would accept that transaction so that they could arbitrage the 10¢ profit on the back and forth. This allows government to spend cash very easily and it also increases the money supply. It balloons government and the financial industries. It is why, when the Federal Reserve is engaged in this practice of so-called quantitative easing, it has been wildly popular in both Washington and on Wall Street among Democrats who like big government and among Republicans who like big banks, because both of them actually profit when government creates cash to inflate financial assets and to inflate the spending capacity of itself.
Therefore, what ends up happening is that those who benefit off government expenditures profit, those who benefit off the financial sector profit—
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
I will interrupt for a second.
I am made aware that there is someone who is taking pictures from the lobby into the chamber. I will ask one of the clerks to go over there and ask anybody who has been taking pictures from the lobby into the chamber here to delete those pictures.
I would remind members that they are not to be taking pictures in the House whether they are in the House or in the lobby looking into the House. If they want to take pictures, they can take pictures from the TV.
I am hoping someone will take care of it.
The hon. member for Mégantic—L'Érable on a point of order.
Luc Berthold Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC
Madam Speaker, we just heard a government member say that she took a picture in the House. I would ask her to delete the photo from her device, since everyone saw it happen.
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
If members have taken pictures, I would ask them to make sure they delete those pictures. Members know that taking pictures in the House is not permitted. If they cannot help but take pictures, I would ask them to leave their phones in the lobby.
I will also remind members not to be talking across the chamber. They can take their conversations into the lobby.
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Madam Speaker, as I was pointing out, this practice of so-called quantitative easing was not invented in Canada. In fact, it started long ago in Japan, which caused a massive gap to appear between the rich and the poor, because the Japanese government printed cash, inflated asset values, left the working class behind and inflated the wealth of the super-rich. This led to a long-standing slump in Japanese economic growth, because investors no longer had to invest in productive assets that would generate wealth for the Japanese economy. Rather, they could just sit on their property, their stocks or their bonds and allow the Japanese central bank to inflate the values. The Americans then replicated this idea of quantitative easing in the U.S. financial crisis. The result was a disaster. It was a decade of very slow economic growth.
Furthermore, there was a major expansion in the gap between rich and poor. While the working class in America was losing its jobs to automation and outsourcing, it was not enjoying any of the lower prices that those competitive forces should have provided because the central bank was neutralizing cost savings by inflating the cost of living by printing cash. We saw a massive explosion in the wealth of Wall Street and Silicon Valley, while the working poor in industrial states, such as Pennsylvania, Ohio and others, found themselves more and more disenfranchised. Their wages were going down, yet their prices were going up. They looked around and saw incompetent CEOs and other financial sector insiders, the same ones who had caused the U.S. financial crisis, not going to jail where they belonged. Rather, they were getting richer and richer. Therefore, the working poor came to believe that the system had ultimately been rigged against them.
Now I bring this to the present, because the government claims that because all central banks were engaging in quantitative easing, we had to do it as well. The American federal reserve is our big, friendly neighbour to the south. The argument goes that if it does something, we have to do it too. However, that is provably false. In the 2008-09 financial crisis, the American government printed cash to buy government debt. They did something called quantitative easing. In Canada, we did not do that. Our government signalled to the central bank that it would not be authorized to participate in fiscal policy by printing cash to buy government bonds. Yes, we ran small, temporary deficits to get through that financial crisis, but we did it by borrowing real money, not by printing cash. That is why we rebounded faster than the Americans did. We had lower unemployment. We were the last in and the first out of the recession, and we never had inflation above 4%. We were back to our inflation target in a year. This proves that we did not need to do what the Americans did, just as our mothers taught us. Just because our friends are jumping off a bridge, does not mean we should do the same.
We know that the Swiss did not print cash during the COVID crisis. Rather, they used real money; when they ran deficits, they borrowed real money. They quickly returned to a balanced budget, and the result was the lowest unemployment, the lowest interest rates and the lowest inflation. This was despite the fact that their European neighbours all had massive inflation crises because their central bank on that continent had behaved differently.
All these experiences were laboratories to demonstrate the folly of the government's actions. I called this folly out on the floor of the House of Commons as early as the fall of 2020, when all that cash was moving into our economy and already beginning to inflate the cost of living. Core inflation was already rising and starting to break above the 2% target, yet they continued when it was clear that there was—
The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-47, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, 2023, be read the third time and passed.
Pierre Poilievre ConservativeLeader of the Opposition
Madam Speaker, now that we know what worked and what did not work, we have to understand the consequences of the fact that the government took the wrong path. I do not need to go on at any length about the ravages of inflation. We have all heard the stories. We can all tell heartbreaking stories.
I see a member right now looking at emails on his phone from people who cannot pay their bills. I see a member across the way saying that our member for Barrie—Innisfil is in trouble for looking at an email from a constituent. He should be looking at those emails. Maybe that member would benefit if she looked at emails from her constituents as well. I understand that, if she were to do so, it would be a great burden on her personal guilt to learn of the single mothers who are skipping meals, the families who are now defaulting on their loans from a 16% year over year increase and the number of Canadians who are missing their mortgage payments. She could take a moment to look into the eyes of the 37-year-old who has been working all his adult life and still cannot afford a home. She could talk to the farmer who borrowed so he could expand his farming operation under the government's promise that the interest rates would be low for long. If she looked at their emails, then maybe she would be less arrogant in supporting the very inflationary policies that have caused all this misery. Maybe, if the Liberals would listen to the people who pay the bills in this country, just for once, we would not be in the mess we are in right now.
This was all so predictable. The great Nobel Prize laureate and economist Milton Friedman said, “Inflation is taxation without legislation.” He also said, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.” In Friedman's view, central bankers try to avoid their last big mistake. Every time there is a threat that the economy will contract, they overstimulate it by printing too much money. This results in a rising roller coaster of inflation, with each high and low being higher than the preceding one. Rapid increases in the quantity of money produce inflation. So said the greatest expert on monetary economics in the history of the world, as recognized by the Nobel Committee.
Thomas Sowell, one of the greatest economists ever, said that “inflation is a way to take people's wealth from them without having to openly raise taxes. It is the most universal tax of all.” He said that the first lesson of economics is scarcity. That is, “there is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. Meanwhile, the first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.”
The great Hayek said, “With government in control of monetary policy, the chief threat in this field has become inflation. Governments everywhere and at all times have been the chief cause of the depreciation of the currency. Though there have been occasional prolonged falls in the value of metallic money, the major inflations of the past have been the result of governments either diminishing the coin or issuing excessive quantities of paper money.” He also said, “A great many of the activities which governments have universally undertaken in this field and which fall within the limits described, are those which facilitate the acquisition of reliable knowledge about the facts of general significance. The most important function of this kind is the provision of a reliable and efficient monetary system.” That is something the government has failed to provide.
Furthermore, the great French philosopher Frédéric Bastiat said, “Money serves only to facilitate the transmission of these useful things from one to another.... When legislators, having ruined men by war and taxes, persevere in their idea, they say to themselves, ‘If the people suffer, it is because there is not enough money. We must make [more].’”
The tactic the Prime Minister deployed was nothing creative or new. It has been the tactic of emperors, kings, presidents, prime ministers, and incompetent and self-indulgent leaders. When they run out of other people's money, they create more cash.
I think of the story of Henry VIII, who spent lavishly and without restraint on himself, spoiled his court and, of course, ran out of money. However, there was a difficulty in creating cash in his time. That was because the British pound was actually a pound of silver. When people ran out of silver, they ran out of the ability to make money. Henry VIII had a silver coin. How could he create cash when he had no more silver left? He had already spent it all. What did he do? He had his smelters melt it down and remint it with copper on the inside and a tiny layer of silver on the outside. Then he could multiply the number of coins almost without limit.
I know members are anxious to hear the rest of the story.
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
I know members may be very interested, but I do not think they should be chatting at this point or trying to answer some of the questions that the Leader of the Opposition is asking during his speech. It is not quite time. I would remind members to afford the speaker the respect he deserves.
Aside from the person who has the floor, I would ask members to please be quiet. If they are having a hard time doing that because they are sitting together, I can do what teachers do and separate them.
The hon. leader of the official opposition.
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Madam Speaker, I know they are just excited to hear the rest of the story and that is why they are having troubling containing themselves.
What was Henry VIII to do? He used copper on the inside of his coins and silver on the outside to multiply the coins without limit. There was only one problem, and that is that he put his big, ugly, fat mug on the front of the coin facing outward. He wanted everyone to see him straight on. That meant his nose protruded. His nose would rub on the inside of pockets, and that silver would rub off and then everyone would see the red nose. Every time an Englishman pulled out a coin and saw a silver coin with a big, ugly red nose in the middle of it, they knew they had been robbed of the real purchasing power of their money and that Old Coppernose had stolen from them again.
By the way, the money supply in that period increased by 80%. Guess how much prices went up in the same time period: They went up 80%, but he was not the most creative.
An hon. member
He knows.
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Madam Speaker, the House leader knows. He is the most ambitious student in the lecture hall today. In fact, he knows he could give the lecture. He knows more about it than I do. The great House leader of the Conservative Party is here today.
Henry VIII, despite the creativity of his copper coins, was not the most creative at all. I would say that Dionysius was even more creative in generating new cash. Let me tell members about Dionysius, and then that member can tell me about Diocletian afterward.
Dionysius was a Greek ruler of the island of Sicily. Yes, the Greeks at one time ruled Sicily. I know it is now Italian. Members do not need to tell me that, but back then it was Greek. Dionysius could not control his spending either, just like Henry VIII. He would run out of money, so he sent his men out to take all of the jewellry off the statues of the gods so he could sell them off, saying that they were merely loans that had come from the gods above.
When those riches ran out as well, Dionysius had to resort to other tactics. This is what he did. He took all of the coins he had collected, which were called drachmas. That is the Greek word for what we would call a dollar. Every coin was one drachma. He said he had a simple answer and just marked a “two” in place of the “one”. All of a sudden they could have twice as many drachmas.
I hesitate to share this story in front of the Prime Minister, because I do worry he might simply turn every loonie into a toonie and every toonie into four. If we run out of money, we can always create more. To the Liberal friends across the way, please do not tell this story to the Prime Minister. I thank them very much. We have a bargain. This is a strict secret. By the way, those listening out there are sworn to secrecy as well. Do not tell the Prime Minister. We do not want to give him any ideas.
The result of course was that all of the working people on the island effectively had a real cut in their purchasing power of 50%. Yes, they had the same number of drachmas but half as many coins, so each drachma would buy half of what it did. He literally cut the wages of the people in half, but he was able to spend those coins before the inflation set in. In other words, he was able to enjoy the newly created riches for the brief instant in time they lasted before inflation melted them away, and then it was the people who lost the purchasing power.
So it is with so-called quantitative easing. It is always the bankers and the government insiders who touch the new money first and, therefore, enjoy the riches most splendidly. The working class only get those dollars when they trickle down from the top and they no longer have their purchasing power. That is why we must, and when I am Prime Minister we will, once and for all put an end to trickle-down economics. It does not work. It never works. I will never allow it.
We know the creation of cash has caused the inflation that exists, the massive poverty, the misery and the feeling of brokenness across the land. The tent cities, all of that, are the result of what the government has caused through the creation of cash, but I am here today to warn of a much graver and insidious risk still ahead of us.
This is where I rely on Churchill's second method of foretelling the future, and that is the cyclical method: Look at what has happened in the past to predict the cycles of the future. We know that this is not the first time governments have created cash or run up massive debts. We need to understand where it leads after the inflation cycle is gone, and what can often come next.
Here, today, I rely on the wisdom of the Stoics. The author of Stoicism, the modern author of Stoicism, Ryan Holiday, wrote of the “premeditation of evils”, a Stoic exercise of imagining things that could go wrong or be taken away from us. As Seneca would say, the unexpected blows of fortune fall heaviest and most painfully, which is why the wise man thinks about them in advance.
I regret that I have to think about these unfortunate and possible blows of fortune that are coming our way.
I have a question for us. If someone had a time bomb ticking away under their home, what would they do about it? Well, if the person did not know it was there, they would not do anything at all because they would have no reason to respond. Assuming that the person survived its detonation, they would have to scramble to rebuild their life.
We know what it is like to be struck by unexpected blows. We have seen them: the attacks of 9/11, the COVID pandemic, of course the U.S. financial crisis, all things that were little foreseen and little foretold. As a result, we all had to scramble to respond to what we did not prepare for.
Why is it that western nations have such difficulty foretelling the dangers that are coming? In recent decades, we have been breathtakingly unprepared for terrorist attacks, natural disasters, mortgage crises and al Qaeda. All of these things were words that were unknown until, all of a sudden, they struck.
I quote again from Ryan Holiday that it is impossible to prepare for or prevent something you're unaware of, yet in each of these recent crises, the warning signs were there if we had looked for them. If we only listened to the ticking time bomb, we could have found that bomb and defused it before it detonated, saving the world untold misery.
Now a new danger gathers in this country. It is the growing probability of a debt crisis. Here is the simple math. When governments and their people amass a total stock of debt that is three times bigger than the size of their economy, they become predisposed to experiencing massive debt crises. I regret to report to the House of Commons—
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
There is some feedback from the government's side. I would ask them to please be respectful and to be quiet.
The hon. leader of the official opposition.
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Madam Speaker, I regret to inform the House that, while history shows that countries where the debt is more than three times the size of the economy have a strong propensity toward debt crises, according to S&P, Canada's total public and private debt is now 474% of GDP. That includes government debt, household debt, business debt and financial sector debt combined. This makes us the second most indebted country, relative to GDP, of any country in the G7, with only Japan being worse.
I spent a lot of time when I was the shadow minister of finance studying debt crises, and there is a phenomenal book called Big Debt Crises, written by Ray Dalio, the single most successful hedge fund manager in the history of the world. In it, he quantifies the precursors to debt crises. He put together the 48 biggest debt crises that have happened in modern world history, and he put together a chart of the debt-to-GDP ratios of all of those countries. I will list off some of the crises that might come to mind.
There was the Greek debt crisis that happened roughly just over a decade ago in Europe. That crisis then spread to Spain, Portugal and other European countries. There was the U.S. financial crisis, which was ultimately a mortgage debt crisis. There are the examples of the Argentinian debt crises of 1998 and 2001. I could go on.
In putting together all 48 of these biggest debt crises, he recreated the debt-to-GDP ratios that all of these countries had, public and private debt as a share of GDP, and I took the liberty of taking Canada's current debt-to-GDP ratio and putting it in that list. What did I find? Our current debt-to-GDP ratio is bigger than all of those other crisis countries except for two. In other words, there were 46 countries on this earth that had massive financial meltdowns with significantly smaller debt levels relative to the size of their economy than we have here today.
The question is why we have, up until now, not had a full-scale meltdown. The answer is obvious. It is because we have had such inordinately and artificially low interest rates. Even today, as rates rise, much of the debt that is in the current stock of the country is still locked in at lower rates, but that is not a permanent phenomenon. In other words, every passing day, somebody's mortgage comes up for renewal, and the artificially low rate they had up until then renews at a much higher rate. This is the fundamental risk we have. The same goes for government debt. Some of it is locked in at lower earlier rates, but governments have mortgages.
Bonds are just mortgages. They are just varied terms. Some of these mortgages are 90 days. Some of them are 30 years. Most of them are somewhere in between, but all of them at some point come up to renewal, and when they renew they do so at the rates that are present when the renewal occurs. Slowly but surely, that is happening already.
Where do we manifest the higher rates? Ironically, it is in the Bank of Canada itself, because the bank purchased government debts and government bonds when rates were low, and is therefore collecting a small yield on those debts. The bank purchased those debts by depositing money in the central bank's accounts of financial institutions, which sold the bonds back to the bank.
Those deposits are receiving the policy rate of interest that the central bank pays out, which is now 4.75%. In other words, the Bank of Canada has bought government bonds that pay out 0.6% and paid for them with deposits that it now has to pay out 4.75% on, so our central bank is losing money every single day. In fact, the central bank, were it not backed up by the government, would be bankrupt today, because its liabilities are worth so much more than its assets. This is a very unusual situation, but it is a precursor for what everyone else is facing.
I ask this: What happens in the year 2026 when all of the mega mortgages that people took out five years before at artificially low rates with artificially high home prices all come up for renewal, and the rates are three or four times higher than the families had been paying up until that time? All of a sudden, we are going to have hundreds of thousands of people renewing their mortgages at the same time at an increase of interest rates of 3% or 4%. That is not a three or four percentage point increase. That is a 300% increase, because four is actually 300% higher than one. The artificially low rates then create a multiplying effect when they collide with new and real higher rates.
Imagine then that there are hundreds of thousands of people who can no longer afford their monthly payments because they have gone up by $1,600 a month, and the average family only has $200 extra in their bank accounts. They are now paying $15,000 or $16,000 more per year in interest on their mortgages, all at the same time. What will they all think to do? They will sell. What else are they going to do? They cannot afford their homes anymore, and they cannot pay for them, so what will they do? They will sell when everyone else is selling and then, all of a sudden, there is a fire sale.
Furthermore, who is going to be around to buy? Are other people going to be able to pay 5% or 6% mortgages on million-dollar homes? Of course not. Therefore, there will be a preponderance of sellers without buyers to match then. Then what happens? House prices—
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
I would ask the hon. parliamentary secretary to hold off until it is time for questions and comments. There is still a little while until then, so I would ask him to be patient.
The hon. Leader of the Opposition.
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Madam Speaker, that was an unusually helpful comment from the member across the way. He says that there is no guarantee that interest rates will be that high when people are up for renewal. There is no guarantee that I will get into a car accident, so why should I wear a seat belt? There is no guarantee that the plane cannot land itself, so why could the pilot not just have a nap while the flight is in course? There is no guarantee that I will die if the parachute does not open, so why do I not just forget to pull the cord? That is the kind of logic we get from the other side. It is so ridiculous, and we wonder why we are in such a mess.
There is no guarantee that the house will get robbed, so why bother locking the doors, right? There is no guarantee I will get into a car accident, so why buy insurance, right? Why would we mitigate against any risk because there is no guarantee that risk will manifest itself into any mal, right? That is exactly the kind of mentality that is getting us into this trouble. He is saying that because there is no guarantee that things will go wrong, we should do nothing to protect against it going wrong.
An hon. member
What would you do?
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
What would I do? Well, I have been telling them what to do for the last three years, and if they had listened, they would not be in the mess they are in today.
What can be done? Obviously, we have to find a way to bring rates down before those mortgages come up for renewal. As I said earlier, why did the rates go up in the first place? Government deficits led to higher inflation, which led to higher interest rates, which will lead to higher defaults. How do we reverse that? We bring down the government deficits so we can bring down the inflation, which allows the Bank of Canada to bring down interest rates, and this will allow us to bring down the defaults. That is my IKEA instruction manual for the hon. member today. That is obviously what we need to do to avoid the crisis that is ahead of us.
However, make no mistake, this is a crisis, and it is one that is coming quicker and quicker. It is like a train that is coming down the track, and if we do nothing to prepare ourselves to get off the track now, we will face that very real threat. Now, the member across the way might say “Oh, the debt crisis, who cares? That's something accountants and economists will fray about. They'll wring their hands and it will be discussions on business channels about what that means. Why should anybody really care?”
Well, let me tell members that a debt crisis is a massive humanitarian crisis. The human toll of debt crises are staggering. They produce massive unemployment, which leads to increased depression, suicide, alcohol and opioid addiction, overdoses and other miseries that we are already beginning to see.
Two Harvard economists who studied over 800 years of debt crises, Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart, found that debt crises typically bring a 35% decline in house prices, leaving people with mortgages that are worth more than their homes. On average, GDP falls 9%, roughly twice the GDP drop during the COVID recession of 2020. Unemployment rises, on average, 7%, which lasts, on average, four years. That means not just a loss of livelihoods but also a loss of lives.
A University of Calgary study found that a 1% increase in unemployment increases the suicide rate by 2.1%. A paper by the British Journal of Psychiatry estimated that, in Europe and North America, the great recession is associated with at least 10,000 additional economic suicides between 2008 and 2010. There were 10,000 people who killed themselves. More people killed themselves during the great global recession in the United States than would otherwise have done so absent that financial crisis.
The same thing happened in Asia. According to researchers in the British Medical Journal, it is estimated that the 1997 economic crisis in Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong resulted in over 10,000 excess suicides.
The long-term job loss from a financial crisis would be at least as bad as what we experienced during the COVID lockdown with the devastating personal consequences. Unemployed men and women would have no job to go to in the mornings and nowhere they could afford to go in the evenings for recreation.
As a result, they end up isolated and alone. Many turn to alcohol and drugs. We are already seeing these pernicious mals exacting themselves on our people today.
Calls to one national suicide prevention line rose 200% over the period of COVID, according to CBC. That prompted one of our members, the member for Cariboo—Prince George, to introduce a bill creating the 988 suicide prevention line. Make no mistake, the forced unemployment that happened during COVID led to more suicides, and if we do have the kind of financial crisis I am trying to avoid, I am afraid to report to the House, then there will be similar desperation.
The number of overdose deaths in B.C. alone in 2021 was by far the highest on record, and more than twice as high as it was in 2019. In Ontario and Alberta, opioid deaths spiked almost 50% during the lockdown periods. All of this could be associated with unemployment. Researchers have found that, when unemployment in a country rises one percentage point, the opioid death rate jumps 3.6% and opioid overdose emergency room visits jump 7%.
When the greek debt crisis happened, there were problems with wages, pensions and social programs, and desperate people flooded into the psychiatric units across the country. The Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe wrote in a report, “Most patients admitted under this regime are unemployed persons, bankrupt businessmen, or parents who have no means of taking care of or feeding their children. Most are reported to be over 40 years old and have never shown previous signs of mental illness.”
Then there are the painful government policies that follow debt crises. Some of the harshest austerity measures, of which we have been warned by the Prime Minister, happened in Greece under a Marxist government. It was led by something called the coalition of the radical left, an alliance of communist, eco-socialists and anti-capitalists.
Why would a party, that has an ideology that believes in boundless government programs, slash public spending so dramatically in Greece? It is for the same reason that the federal Liberal government slashed health care and 45,000 public servant jobs in the 1990s. It is the same reason that the Saskatchewan NDP, a party that credits itself with inventing Canada's medicare program, shut down 52 hospitals in Saskatchewan in the 1990s.
Why? They ran out of money. That is what real austerity is, it is when we run out of money. That is the result of major debt crises like the one I am trying to warn against right now, which proves that debt crises actually do not care about ideology. Numbers are not partisan. Merciless mathematics trump political philosophy in a debt crisis.
When the money is gone and no one will lend more, where the funds have been exhausted, how do we pay the wages of the public servants, the pensions of the retired, the hospital bills, the schools, the food and other essentials? As Pythagoras said, “numbers rule the universe”. Austerity is almost never a choice. It happens when irresponsible governments, like that one over there, make it mathematically unavoidable.
Harvard economists, Reinhart and Rogoff, also found that financial meltdowns cause government debt to further explode. It is an explosion within an explosion, and a crisis on top of a crisis. That is why it is always most humane to protect the country's finances in advance to avoid the need for austerity. That is what we, as Conservatives, do. We protect the finances, not just so that an accountant can be happy with the balance sheet, but because we care about health care, education and the social safety nets that we desperately need.
That is why we want to protect our finances. That is why we want to avoid the nasty and ruthless cuts that the Prime Minister has in store for this country if he succeeds in bankrupting the nation's finances. We have seen these ruthless mathematics under his father, who gave us not just inflation, but also stagflation. He was successful at delivering both record highs in inflation and unemployment at exactly the same time.
Look at the years of 1980 and 1983. During those years of the Trudeau debt crisis, unemployment and inflation both hit 12% at the same time. That means we had a misery index of 24. Inflation plus unemployment is the misery index. That drove interest rates up to an almost unimaginable 19% a year. I remember those days. In fact, some of my earliest memories—
An hon. member
You would have been in diapers.
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
That is pretty close, actually. A member says I would have been in diapers. I was born in 1979. I just turned 44.
My earliest memories started to appear around 1982-83. I remember the horrible strain and stress my parents faced. There was actually the national energy program, whereby the Trudeau government demolished the Alberta economy, where I was growing up. We were largely protected from that because my folks were teachers, so they did not lose their jobs, unlike many of the unfortunate but greatly patriotic and courageous Albertans and Saskatchewanians who were hit directly. However, my folks had a few little rental properties that my mother had scrounged and saved to make possible, and we were all hit with the higher interest rates, rates that could not be paid with the rent the tenants were paying. We could not pay our mortgage, so we had to move to a smaller house.
That period was very stressful. There was massive dislocation. It is no wonder that the misery index reached its highest level, because misery is the best way to describe it. Some people cannot take the misery. During that time period, the suicide rate reached a record high. In 1983, when I would have been four years old, the suicide rate hit 14.8 per 100,000 people, an 8% increase from 1980. Seven of the eight worst years for suicide rates in Canada happened when Pierre Elliott Trudeau was prime minister. That is because people's lives were coming apart.
Members can just imagine. It is not just money. It is not just the desire to have more stuff. It is the shame of coming home to one's kids and saying, “You can't go on that little camping trip. I'm cancelling your hockey. We have to leave this house and move into a tiny, little apartment.” That is the real, human anxiety, the guilt, the pain and the frustration that literally break families apart and cause divorce and suicide. People lose hope, and everything falls apart.
When I talk about the possibility of a very real debt crisis, with all of these mortgages that were locked in at low rates three years ago, two years ago, even one year ago, I am not talking about an accounting phenomenon. I am talking about a human phenomenon, one that we have a duty to avoid. We have a duty now to foretell the dangers that are coming and to protect our country against the ravages they would mean for our population. We know how to do that. We know there are simple, common-sense decisions that we can make in order to avoid such an eventuality here in our country, as we have seen all around the world and that we could replicate if we do not change course now.
We know what the necessary steps are today. It is about spending less and creating more. The member across the way will instantly assume that if something costs less, it must be of less value. This is a fundamental breakdown in his understanding. The Prime Minister is the worst for this. He thinks that if something costs more, it must be worth more, as though the half-billion dollars he wanted to give to WE Charity was worth more than, for example, just having a passport actually delivered to people on time. Just because something costs more does not mean it is better.
For example, the government has a housing program. It has spent $89 billion on it. In fact, the number one bragging point it has is that its housing plan is really expensive. One can almost imagine a restaurant running an advertisement: “Come dine with us. We have terrible ambiance; the service is garbage; the food is rotten. It might even make you sick, but guess what? It costs 1,000 bucks a plate. Therefore, it must be the best, because it is the most expensive.”
Let us take this back into the government realm. When I was employment minister, we had a program, which I believe is still in place today, to help visually impaired Canadians read books by sending them CDs with the books on them. They could then put them in their computers, hit play and listen to them. One of my constituents was actually capable of listening to books at four times the speed, because she had trained herself. To the rest of us, it would sound like gibberish, but she had trained herself to speed read using audio players. It was a wonderful program.
However, the Canadian National Institute for the Blind said there was one problem, which was that it did not use CDs anymore, so we did not have to pay Canada Post to ship these CDs to people's homes. It had come up with a technology that would allow the Canadian government to simply pay the cost of having radio personalities go into an audio room and record the book, and then it could be sent as an audio file, a particle of light through cyberspace, and people could read the book without having to have a cassette.
It turned out that this reduced the cost of the program by about 80%. Furthermore, we signed a deal with the other countries that had the same English-speaking and French-speaking books as we had. We said we would waive copyright on all of our recordings, and all the authors would agree to waive copyright if the other countries did the same. That way, the other countries could give all the books they had to us and we could give all the books we had to them. Therefore, everyone would have more books, and because there was no longer a physical copy of any of these books, we were going to massively increase the number of books by something like 500,000, all of a sudden.
The cost of the program went down by 80%. Using Liberal logic, Liberals would say that was a savage cut and ask how we could do such a thing, even though it meant more convenience, more books and a faster turnaround in customer service for people. Just because it cost less did not mean it was not worth more. This is common sense.
Let us think about it this way. We have had these arguments with the Prime Minister. He says that my time as housing minister was no good because I did not spend $89 billion on housing, but housing cost half as much. When I was housing minister, the average mortgage payment was $1,400 and the average rent was $900 for a single-bedroom apartment. The average down payment needed for a house was $22,000. Now it is double, double and double.
However, the Prime Minister would say that his is a success, because even though nine in 10 young people believe they will never be able to afford a home, he has the most expensive housing program in Canadian history; therefore, it must be the best. He thinks that the price is equal to the value. There is a difference between value and cost, a distinction that the government never makes. That is why it has spent so much to achieve so little.
How can we organically impose discipline on government to ensure that it gets more for less? One way is to impose the simple law of nature, called scarcity. Every creature in the universe, every bird in the trees, every fish in the sea, must live with the law of scarcity: maximum use of scarce resources. They can have this or that, not this and that, or they can find a bargain on this and that. The single mother who wants to build a new porch might pass up on the vacation, or she might go to the local lumber yard to see if she can get a bargain on the lumber to build the porch for a lower price and maybe get a bargain on kids' camp so that she can do both. That is the common-sense budgeting that families do every single day.
Politicians are the only creatures in the universe that do not have to live by the universal law of scarcity, because by using inflation, taxes and debt, they externalize the scarcity on everyone else. They push austerity out of government and into the living rooms of the people, into the small businesses and onto the farm gate, where someone else has to deal with more scarcity because government is pushing its costs onto everyone else.
What if we internalized that scarcity? What if we required that government make the same trade-offs, the same common-sense bargains that the single mom, small business person or farmer makes every single day? What if we passed a common-sense law, called the “dollar for dollar law”, that required a politician to find a dollar of savings for each new dollar of spending?
I promise, by the way, to be conservative in my remarks, if members promise to be liberal in their applause. That is my idea of a bipartisan speech: Conservative content and Liberal applause.
This—
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
The hon. member for North Okanagan—Shuswap is rising on a point of order.
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Madam Speaker, I did not say anything previously, but I just noticed another government member coming into the House actually eating something, and as we all know, especially members who have been here for a long time, we are not allowed to eat in the House.
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
I want to remind members that they are not to eat in the House. From what I understand, the member was finishing up what he already had in his mouth, so he did not have it physically in his hand, but I want to remind members that they are not to be eating in the House.
The hon.—
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
Order.
Now it is becoming a bit of a debate or discussion, and I would just ask members to let the official opposition leader finish his speech.
The hon. leader of the official opposition.
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Madam Speaker, the member across the way accused one of our MPs of sleeping during the remarks, but what he does not understand is that it was mindful meditation—
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
I would ask the leader of the official opposition to stick to his speech and not to address what is going on behind him or try to have a conversation with the hon. members.
The hon. leader of the official opposition.
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Madam Speaker, thank you. I will obey that edict and stick to my speech.
I was speaking about the common-sense idea of a dollar-for-dollar law. I would love to be the originator of the law, but it came into place during the Clinton era in the United States of America. Members will recall that during that time, the American government had racked up massive debts, so Congress passed a law called the PAYGO law requiring the U.S. administration to find a dollar of savings for every new dollar of spending.
What happened? The American government balanced its budget for the first time in half a century. It paid off $400 billion of debt. We are always being told that when we balance budgets and pay off debt, as the Liberals say, it will just shrink the economy. Actually, the economy underwent one of the most spectacular expansions in American history, with unemployment dropping to its lowest level in the postwar period. Inflation stayed low, and the American government was able to restore its solvency and its financial foundation.
The bad news is that when the law lapsed, the U.S. government went right back into deficit and has not emerged ever since. Why is that? It is proof that politicians need legal limits on their spending; otherwise, they will find it impossible to control themselves. They will want to spend more and more of other people's money to aggrandize themselves and buy votes. We need to impose legal limits on government spending, the same limits that every other Canadian imposes on themselves.
That is one common-sense idea that would cap the cost of government while the economy and the taxpayer catch up. The solution is not only to control spending, but to ensure that the size of government grows more slowly than the size of the private economy. We know that all prosperity flows from the production of goods and the free exchange of product for payment, investment for interest and work for wages. That is the miracle of the free market economy.
Let me talk a little about this incredible miracle. I was in a coffee shop the other day. I walked up, bought a cup of coffee, paid for it and said thanks. Do members know what the lady said back to me? Does anyone want to guess?
Julie Dabrusin
I cannot imagine.
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Madam Speaker, she cannot imagine. Well, it does not take much imagination. Some people might think she said, “Thank you. You're welcome.” That is the sequence we are taught as kids: “Thank you. You're welcome.” However, what she said was, “Thank you.”
Does anybody ever notice that when they make a transaction or a purchase in the free market, it is never “Thank you. You're welcome”? It is always “Thank you. Thank you.” It is the double “thank you”. Why? It is because both participants in a voluntary transaction are better off than they were before. Each of them has something worth more to them than they had before the transaction occurred. If they did not, they would not have agreed to the exchange.
If I have an apple and someone has an orange, and I want an orange and they want an apple, we trade and we are both better off, even though between us we just have an apple and an orange. Why? It is because we each have something worth more to us than what we had before. Thus is the miracle of the free enterprise system, the voluntary exchange of work for wages, product for payment, investment for interest. It is voluntary, so we know that everyone entering into the transaction is better off, because otherwise they would not agree to do it.
What is different about government? Every transaction is done by force. Everything the government does, even the good things, is done by the coercive force of taxation, a gun to the head. People cannot get away from paying the price. Even when government does perfectly justifiable things, like funding the military or building a hospital, it has to force the money out of the pockets of the people. We all admit that some force has to be applied, but it is force.
As Conservatives, we believe that it should be the minimal amount of force and the maximum amount of freedom. That is the fundamental difference. When people are paying government taxes, it is done by coercion, and that is why no one writes “thank you” on their tax forms. Is that not true? However, should they not, if it is just a transaction like mine at the coffee shop, with people buying all these services off the government? Would the Liberals tell people that they should be writing “thank you” because they are doing this wonderful transaction and are getting back more from government than they are paying? Well, we do not know that because people have no choice in the matter.
Every time the government creates a new program that purports to give people more than they paid for it, the government has to impose it by force. That can never be a relationship that favours the weak. Always in relationships of force it is the powerful who benefit.
This is the great lie of the socialists. They always claim they want to aggrandize the government because they want to protect the weak from the strong. However, since when, in relationships of force, is it the weak who benefit? We know that it is always the strong. We know that in societies where governments get big and powerful, the small group of wealthy elites gets more and more powerful themselves. Why? It is because they have more proximity to the power that controls the money. If all the money is in the vaults of the state, the people with the keys to the vault are the ones who are going to get rich.
For example, they will say that we need for G to take from A in order to give to B, because G has determined that B does not have enough and A has too much. What happens then? Well, then A goes to G and says, “I want some back so I am going to make a donation to somebody who is part of G” in order to get G to give money from B to A. Before they know it, it is not A or B who are benefiting; it is G, because it is G who decides who gets what. That is ultimately what government does when it gets too powerful. It does not take from one to give to another; it takes from everybody to give to itself. That is what we see with the current government: an ever-increasing size of the state, an insatiable appetite for other people's money. We see that playing out with very real human consequences for the people who can no longer pay their bills.
Those with power and influence are better off than ever before. Why? It is because they can hire lobbyists. Other than marijuana, lobbying is probably the biggest growing industry in Canada. We have seen under the Prime Minister a 100% increase in registered lobbying interactions. Why is that? It is because businesses have judged that the way they get rich is not by investing in new product but by investing in political influence. It is the best return on investment they can get anywhere in the Canadian economy today.
There is a company in New York that did a study on the amount American business spends on Washington relative to the size of the U.S. government. It found a near-perfect correlation between the amount of money that Wall Street and businesses spend lobbying Washington and the amount of spending that Washington does as a share of GDP. As government gets bigger and more powerful, businesses shift their focus from making profit by serving customers to making profit by influencing politicians and bureaucrats. The number one commodity goes from being a product that people buy, food they consume or entertainment they enjoy to the most important commodity of all in a government-controlled economy, which is power and influence. So it goes, and so we see today that the very rich and the very powerful get richer and more powerful every single day.
Look, for example, at our friends at McKinsey, or I should say the Prime Minister's friends at McKinsey. He gave them over $100 million in contracts, and we do not know what they did. We investigated. We cannot figure out what value they provided anybody. However, they have proximity to power, and they were able to get close to the Prime Minister throughout his entire political career and ultimately dominate his political agenda. They therefore get the money, but not only that. They avoid culpability.
This is a company that helped bring about the opioid crisis. It designed plans to have bonuses for distributors of opioids, which caused overdoses. Literally, they had a plan to supercharge the opioid crisis because they knew it would profit their powerful clients. What has been their reward for their friendship with the Prime Minister? The federal government has thus far not sought or received a single penny in settlements from McKinsey, despite the fact that Canadian taxpayers are paying a fortune for the opioid crisis that this company helped to cause.
In the United States of America, the U.S. government has obtained awards from McKinsey and other companies for having caused that crisis, but because of the immense political influence of that company, the government in Canada has not been able to do that. Some $600 million is what 49 jurisdictions have taken from McKinsey because of the opioid crisis that it caused, but here in Canada, the Prime Minister has not been able to get a single solitary cent, or perhaps more accurately has not wanted to get a single solitary cent, back from this corrupt enterprise, which helped cause an immense misery and loss of life.
All of this is to say that in a socialist or government-controlled economy, those with political influence are always better off because they can pull strings and get what they want, and the working-class people, the families whose lives have been destroyed by the opioid crisis, get nothing at all.
I try not to assign ugly motives to the Prime Minister for the decisions that are so obviously destroying our working-class people. I try to never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence. However, sometimes, when we look at the ideology to which he adheres by his own words, we have to wonder if some of the damage he is doing is by design.
This is a guy who said he admires the basic Chinese Communist dictatorship. Those were his words. If one of us had accused him of that, It would seem totally and utterly ridiculous, but he accused himself of it. He said it. He was asked not if he admired the Chinese Communist dictatorship, but what government in the entire world he admired most. He volunteered that it was the basic Chinese Communist dictatorship.
Ever since that time, we have seen the reciprocal admiration that Beijing has for his regime, having intervened in two successive elections to help him win and having donated $140,000 to the Trudeau Foundation. The Prime Minister has said he admires Fidel Castro too. Therefore, when we witness the policies he unleashes on the Canadian people, we wonder whether it is really just incompetence or because he subscribes to an out-of-touch ideology that is radically different from the common-sense norms that everyday Canadians believe in.
As he destroys our money with reckless deficits, he does so knowingly. I used to think he just did not know any better, that he was perhaps naive. Having been raised with a trust fund bequeathed to him by his multi-millionaire petroleum grandfather, perhaps he just did not know how money worked because he had it all given to him. He did not come up through a working-class family, where scarcity is a daily guest in the house. He lived in a place where there was no scarcity, where things were provided to him at will, so perhaps he just does not know any better.
Six months ago, his own finance minister admitted that deficits cause inflation, an admission that I would have found quite encouraging if she had stuck to it. Then the Prime Minister tapped her on the shoulder and told her that they may cause inflation, but that is fine because they are going to go with $60 billion more in deficits. Is this his design? Is this part of his ideological objective?
The great John Maynard Keynes said:
Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some.
Is that the Prime Minister's purpose here? Is it to enrich a small group of people who can protect themselves by holding onto assets that are inflation-proof and protected, while ripping away the purchasing power of Canada's working class? Is it all an accident? Is it a function of his total incompetence? Is it just because he is a naive trust fund baby? Or is it because he deliberately believes in an ideology that concentrates wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands? I want to know.
What does my caucus think? Do they believe that it is incompetence that has led to this inflation or that it is the Prime Minister's malice?
Some hon. members
Both.
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Madam Speaker, there is a third option. It is both incompetence and malice.
I always said I was a democratic leader, and we hold votes right here in the middle of my speeches in the House of Commons to get these answers.
Melissa Lantsman Conservative Thornhill, ON
Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The members opposite in the government do not know what it is like to sit in the front row, but their voices really carry from there, and I cannot hear the member—
The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès) Alexandra Mendes
I have just asked for order, and I would repeat the request that we maintain decorum and let the hon. Leader of the Opposition proceed with his speech.
Order, please.
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order.
I am immensely enjoying the remarks of the leader, but the members in the front row this evening are repeatedly interrupting with regular points of order.
I actually had another point of order I wanted to raise briefly while I am on my feet, regarding—
An hon. member
Point of order.
The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès) Alexandra Mendes
I will deal with one point of order at a time.
The hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan has the floor.
The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-47, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, 2023, be read the third time and passed.
Pierre Poilievre ConservativeLeader of the Opposition
Madam Speaker, we can only, at times like these, quote Ecclesiastes:
What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
The Prime Minister claims he has invented some marvellous new concept: the government's taking over the economy, taking people's money and supposedly giving it back worth more than when they lost it, and that this is a brand new idea. In fact, all his ideas are very old. They have all been tried before and with exactly the same disastrous results. All we try to do here is to remind them a little of history.
The reason we study history is to avoid repeating its mistakes. Maybe that is why this Prime Minister is so fond of deleting our history. Is that right? If we can forget about the history, if we can wipe away the past, well, then we have unlimited power to control the future. Orwell warned of this, actually, in 1984, which, unfortunately, this Prime Minister thought of as an instruction manual instead of as a cautionary tale.
The Prime Minister wanted to delete some of the most beautiful images of our history from the passport: images of the great Terry Fox, a man who ran across the country on one leg to fight cancer, and images of the great Quebec City, the most spectacular and possibly the most historic city in all of North America, which would be washed away, but “Forget about it; we need not remember the great cities that built our country.” He wanted to erase the RCMP images and the images of the victory at Vimy over tyranny, which was a victory that the French and English both were unable to achieve, but one in which Canadians triumphed the first time. All the divisions of our Canadian Forces fought together as one. It was the first great triumph, one of which we could all be proud. Why delete all those beautiful images of history?
I will posit a few explanations as to why the Prime Minister is so determined to delete our history. Just as this member tries to silence me with his overbearing voice right now, it is this: If the government can delete our heroes, it can make the people feel weak and helpless, and therefore reliant on a powerful state. It can make the people think they cannot achieve great triumphs on their own and that great things can be done only by the government and by the great leader. I note that the Prime Minister deleted all these great images so he could put a childhood picture of himself swimming at Harrington Lake in Quebec, doing a little splash into a pond as though that little trivial moment in his life were more important than all the great historical triumphs of our nation. That is the triumph of egoism. That is what the statist really cares about: the idea of concentrating everything in the state, because “I am the state”, said King Louis, and that is the thinking of the Prime Minister. He wants to control everything, because it is the aggrandizement of the state; it is the aggrandizement of the head of the government. That is exactly what he tries to achieve. By making the people small, he can make himself big.
That is why he is always hectoring and lecturing the people, telling Canadians they are not allowed to use basic common language. One time, I remember, a young lady innocently used the term “mankind”, and he admonished her that it was “peoplekind”. He was trying to make her feel small for using common and well-understood language that he believed was offensive and unacceptable. He is constantly talking down our history and our past, treating Canadians as though they have had nothing but shame that has brought us thus far and treating our country as though it had nothing for which to be proud. He understands that, by making the country ashamed of its past, its history and its people, he can aggrandize the state.
He has recently become very angry that I pointed out that everything feels broken. I am speaking of the airports the federal government manages, the passport system it runs, the inflation it has caused, the housing market it has inflated and the red tape that prevents people from achieving anything in business or even in human mobility.
I point out all those things that are broken. He says I am not allowed to say “Everything is broken”, but the truth is that he believes the country is broken. We both agree things are broken; we just disagree on who and what broke them. I think the government broke these things; he thinks the people and our history broke things. That is what he thinks. He thinks we have a broken people and a broken past; I believe we have a broken government, a government we can fix by electing a new and common-sense government that stands up for the common people.
The great Thomas Sowell pointed out that for those on the hard left, it is not so much a view they have of the world, but a view they have of themselves as higher beings who are capable of deciding for everyone else. That is actually the core ideology to which they adhere, because, when we really look at the inconsistency in application of their woke ideology, we see that there is nothing underneath it other than the concentration of power. For example, the Prime Minister likes to preach about woke identity politics, but that did not stop him from firing the first indigenous attorney general. He had no problem doing that. Why did he fire her, by the way? It was because she refused to interfere to protect a wealthy multinational corporation from prosecution after it had stolen from Africa's poorest people.
Here we have a woke Prime Minister protecting a multinational corporation that stole from the poorest people in Africa, and doing so by firing the first female indigenous attorney general. Did he not violate all the precepts of wokeism in that one act? Of course he did. Why did he? It is because wokeism was never about any of those things; it was only about giving him more control. Wokeism is only about control. It is about dividing people based on their group identity rather than celebrating them for their individual humanity. We believe in judging people based on their personal character, not based on their group identity, and Liberals used to believe in that too. It used to be the basic precept of a liberal ideology, to look past people's race, their sexuality and their gender and just judge them as individual human beings. That is what “liberalism” was; that was the meaning of the word. Now, it means exactly the opposite; it means that there is nothing more important than a person's group or other identity. People should be judged only, according to modern-day woke thinkers, by the group with which Liberals and wokeists identify them.
We believe in the traditional view of individual freedom and responsibility, where we see each individual as a precious and unique creation who can live out their life based on their merits, and be judged for those merits, rather than being wrapped up in divisive ideologies that base their judgments on race, ethnicity and other irrelevant characteristics.
I point out that the reason for dividing people by group is that it allows the woke estate to control people. It is always easier to control groups than it is to control individuals, and we know that the Prime Minister's objective is to control them. It also creates the justification for all the censorship. The government can say that there is new language that is no longer allowed: for example, “mankind” versus “peoplekind”. Now, the Prime Minister has created the justification for censorship, because if people are allowed to freely express themselves, they might violate some of the new woke rules that have been invented. There are rules that are invented every day. The new words that must be stated and cannot be stated can only exist if we have a powerful state to impose those rules. The rules are for the rulers, and that is what the Prime Minister attempts to do through the corrosive ideology of wokeism, which does nothing but divide.
We, as Conservatives, do not believe in divide and conquer. We believe in uniting for freedom. Let us unite for freedom again in this country of ours. Why do we not judge people based on their individual character? We should treat them as people rather than as groups. Why do we not let individuals make their own decisions? Why do we not look past irrelevant characteristics like sexual orientation, gender, race? These characteristics should not define any human because, at the end of the day, we are all the same people. We are all one common people, are we not?
I go across this country and one of my favourite things to do is visit with people of different cultures and different backgrounds. Every time I do, what do I discover? It is how much we have in common. The other side would love to focus and obsess about the differences of the various traditions in our land. I believe that we should celebrate what we share in common, the common people. For example, I am very proud that I had the occasion to spend so much time with the Sikh community in this country, who welcomed me with open arms into their gurdwaras, to learn of their legends and their stories, and I found that they are the same stories that I grew up with, just different names, different characters, but all leading to the same human outcome.
I have learned from my shadow minister of finance the story of the khalsa. The story of the khalsa is that the 10th guru of Sikhism, Guru Gobind Singh Ji, abolished the caste system. He said there should no longer be different castes in society, but that all should be equal. Everyone should eat from the same bowl, he said, and he got rid of all of the caste-based names, so everyone became known as Singh. They had different first names, but they had the same last name of Singh, and “Singh” means “lion”. No longer would there be little people, everyone would be a lion. That, to me, is an incredibly inspiring story.
That was what I meant when I ran for prime minister. I said I was running for prime minister to put people back in charge of their lives by making this the freest nation on earth, so everyone can decide—
The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès) Alexandra Mendes
The hon. member for North Okanagan—Shuswap is rising on a point of order.
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Madam Speaker, I am in my eighth year in the chamber. A member across the way has been here that same period of time. It was brought to his attention earlier that we are not to eat in the chamber.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès) Alexandra Mendes
I cannot hear the hon. member. I would like some silence in the House so I can hear him.
The hon. member.
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Madam Speaker, there is absolute disrespect being shown on the government side of the House. We have already discussed this once today. The member said he was only finishing what was in his mouth at the time, even though I had seen him shovelling stuff into his mouth on his way into the chamber. The same member is now putting food into his mouth in the chamber. It is not what he walked into the chamber with in his mouth at the time. He is actually sitting in the chamber eating food.
Madam Speaker, you instructed him not to do this earlier. He has been here many years and should know that.
The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès) Alexandra Mendes
I had not noticed it, but I will look more closely and if I see it, I will call the member on it.
The hon. Leader of the Opposition.
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Madam Speaker, I understand the member is enjoying a little bit of popcorn. He is enjoying the show. I agreed to put on a show for the members of the government here today. I hope that they have learned a little bit here today because the message that I am bringing to them is one that they should have already known if they had spent more time talking to truckers, waitresses, welders and other great Canadians. I do include truckers among the greatest of Canadians. If they had listened to those people then we would not be in the mess that we are in.
It is funny. I would say on Parliament Hill, as the Liberals were printing all of this money, that we were going to have inflation. The Liberals would say, “Oh, that's so simplistic. That'll never happen." Then I would go out to my riding and I would say that to farmers, truck drivers and welders who would say, “Yes, of course”. Who was right in the end? The farmers and the truckers. The everyday hard-working people with common sense actually had the right answer.
In fact, I think we would all be better off if fewer of these so-called self-appointed experts, who consistently get it wrong, were in charge of the country and more of the common sense of the common people were brought forward. That is really the purpose of my candidacy for prime minister, to bring forward the voice of those common people, a voice that the Liberals would like to drown out.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Right now they are trying to shout me down and talk me down but they cannot silence me. The voice of the people is growing louder and louder. It is growing into a chant. The common sense of the common people will prevail against this tiny group of elites who continually try to silence them as it pushes us further and further into the trouble we face today.
We need to discuss how we are going to fix the mess that I will inherit when I become prime minister. Canadians deserve to know that there is a way to transform the hurt that the Prime Minister has caused into the hope that Canadians need, and so it is today that I bring forward that hope.
We are going to bring home lower prices by capping government spending, cutting government waste to eliminate inflationary deficits. Now this is a point on which the government agreed with me only six months ago when the finance minister said that she would deliver a 2027 budget balance, something that surprised but impressed me. Only six months later, half a year, she has plunged us deeper into debt with $60 billion of additional inflationary spending; that is $4,200 per person. By cutting waste like the ArriveCAN app, the $35-billion Infrastructure Bank, the contracts to McKinsey and the other consulting insiders, by rooting out waste and corruption, by finding ways to compress internal and back-office budgets, we will get back to a balanced budget and, in so doing, we will lower inflation and lower interest rates. That will allow those hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of families who will be renewing their mortgages to do so at a moderate rate in order to avoid the mass bankruptcies that I warned against earlier on today.
This kind of common-sense fiscal management is not foreign to Canadians. In fact, it was common across this country for a quarter-century from the mid-1990s until 2015, there was a consensus that government should balance the budget unless there was a recession or some major temporary crisis. This was a consensus, believe it or not, across all political parties, NDP, provincial governments, Conservative and Liberals here in Ottawa, a consensus that was shattered by the Prime Minister whose radical, leftist agenda took us into the permanent deficits, the permanent borrowing, the money printing that created the chaos that we have today.
What did that quarter-century of consensus give us? It gave us a massive increase in our quality of life as Canadian housing became more affordable, paycheques became more powerful and taxes were much lower. The cost of the government went from 52% of GDP in 1993 to approximately 37% of GDP. That meant that Canadians had more money to make their own decisions, to raise their families, to start their businesses, to build a future. We developed the lowest debt in the entire G7 as a share of our GDP, something that we protected and something that allowed us to be a shock absorber against the crises of the 2008 recession and the COVID pandemic.
All of that was enabled because governments accepted a common-sense approach to balancing their budgets and to reducing debt as a share of the economy year after year. A Conservative government, led by me as prime minister, would re-establish that common-sense consensus and make balanced budgets the norm and deficits the exception again.
That would allow for our debt to decline, for our interest rates to be low, for our purchasing power to be maintained or, perhaps, in some cases, even grow.
I see the members across the way say that there is no way that purchasing power could ever grow, but why not?
We have an increase in technology every single year, incredible technology that is able to generate more output with every hour worked. That is what technology does. We are actually able to produce more food on less land than ever before and we are able to produce more milk with fewer cows. We are able to produce more beer cans with less tin. We are able to produce more output with each hour. Why does this not translate into lower prices? Should it not? If the input is lower to produce the output, then why is the cost not lower to the end-user?
The answer is that the government continues to print cash, which neutralizes the cost savings and prevents people from truly benefiting from the massive productive power of the free enterprise economy.
By reinstating disciplined spending, our central bank can focus exclusively on preserving and protecting the purchasing power of our money. The Swiss did this for 25 years. Their average inflation rate was 0.8%, half of what it was here in Canada during the same time period. They have the lowest inflation today.
What this means is that over a 25-year period, the Swiss franc has now about 25% more purchasing power than the Canadian dollar. Why? Because they disciplined themselves to protect purchasing power, so that their money would be worth more. That means that the paycheques of the Swiss are more powerful and the money that those paycheques represent buys more.
That should be our goal, to have powerful paycheques but also more powerful money with which one can buy things. That is the dream that we must aspire to by disciplining government spending and respecting the currency that we use.
That is why I will get the central bank back to its core mandate, of protecting our money, and ensure that it does not engage in social and economic engineering. No more money printing. No more social causes. No more pushing governmental agendas that have nothing to do with the purchasing power of our money and no central bank digital currency. I will never allow the government to force people to put their money into a government bank account.
Rather, we already have digital money. It is called a bank account. We already have digital money. It is called a credit card. People can already send e-transfers. We do not need the government to nationalize electronic financial transactions because we know that would only mean one thing. It would mean government bank accounts, which would mean government surveillance and government control.
After the abuses that we saw with this government cracking down on the bank accounts of the people who disagree with it, I will make sure that this country never allows the government to take control of people's personal bank accounts.
By bringing common sense back to our money, we will bring home lower prices for our people. That also includes getting rid of the carbon tax, the inflationary carbon tax. This government has brought in a 14¢-a-litre carbon tax, which has increased the cost of living for everyday Canadians without benefiting the environment.
Today, the Prime Minister went so far as to claim that the carbon tax would mean fewer forest fires, something that is utterly contrary to basic science and basic reality. His carbon tax has not been able to reduce emissions; far be it to eliminate forest fires. The way that we combat climate change is with technology and not taxes.
An hon. member
Is climate change real?
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Yes, it is real but their policies to respond to it are not real. The policies to respond to it by the government are designed to raise money for the politicians to spend, not to protect the planet. Our approach will be to deploy technology, not taxes, to defeat—
An hon. member
Name one.
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Across the way, she heckles. That is okay. This could be a conversation—
The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès) Alexandra Mendes
Not really, because if we want to respect the Standing Orders, this is not a conversation. I would ask the hon. member from the government side to please let the hon. Leader of the Opposition continue his speech.
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Madam Speaker, the member asked for an example of a technology that can defeat climate change. There is one that the government killed, which is the tidal power the private sector was trying to build in Nova Scotia. It would have been a tidal power system that would allow the forces of the ocean to turn propellers and generate electricity, which could be beamed to the shores and put into the electrical grid without a single tonne of emissions going into the atmosphere.
What could stop such a common-sense idea from happening? The federal government could stop it by imposing six years of delays through Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Without even proving that a single, solitary fish or frog would lose its life, the Liberals managed to kill this common-sense idea and prevent Nova Scotians from powering their electrical grid with the forces of the seas.
Under my government, we would green light green technology and allow for our brilliant engineers to invent the technology that will bring about cleaner, greener and more affordable electricity.
I have a second example. I will throw it in for free. It is hydroelectric dams. I wish I could say this was a new idea, but fortunately, the brilliant Quebec engineers and construction workers mastered it, and the Manitobans did as well, with massive hydroelectric dams that use the force of gravity and H2O to generate the electricity necessary to power our homes. Again, that is without a single tonne of emissions going into the atmosphere.
What stands in the way? Duplicative bureaucracy and the government gamekeepers. The Prime Minister insists on doing a second level of environmental evaluations stacked on top of the first. That is the exact same process done twice, which takes over twice the time, making the projects back up their completion date and increase their costs.
For example, Quebec needs to increase its electricity by 100% over the next several decades. It can only do it if it builds more hydroelectric dams. Only a Conservative government, led by me as prime minister, will get out of the way to let Quebeckers build hydroelectric dams.
Then there is the mighty power of the atom with nuclear power here in Ontario. If we look around this room, one in two light bulbs that illuminate this room, so members can be here to hear this wonderful speech, is powered by nuclear energy. The nuclear power is safe, reliable and emissions-free, yet it takes up to 15 years to get a nuclear plant approved.
We all agree that nuclear power should be supplied safely and that all of the necessary steps to protect surrounding communities should be followed. That said, what are we going to learn about safety or environmental protection in years 14 and 15 that we could not have learned in years 1, 2, 3 and 4? We can have the exact same strict environmental and public safety protections, but do them faster so that we can bring in nuclear energy and small modular nuclear reactors.
An hon. member
Where?
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Where, they ask. “Where?” goes the chorus from the other side. The answer is Alberta, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Ontario. They have all signed a memorandum to create these small modular reactors. That is where.
I know this is not in the Standing Orders, for them to ask and me to answer, but we need practice because soon I will be answering lots of their questions. It will be refreshing to actually have a prime minister who answers questions, unlike this one, who does not even acknowledge them.
This is what it means to green light green projects. The Prime Minister stands in the way of the very projects that would lower the cost of carbon-free energy while he simultaneously raises the cost of traditional oil and gas on which Canadians continue to rely on.
His approach to the economy is as former President Reagan described: If something moves, he taxes it. If it keeps moving, he regulates it. If it stops moving, he subsidizes it.
That is the approach that he takes to the economy. My approach would be none of the above. It would be to get out of the way to let our creators create and let our builders build. I would let the great Canadian people do what they do best, which is to build. My friends across the way are starting to get the point. I hear the echo of “Bring it home” from across the other side of the House of Commons. Bring it home, indeed.
That is exactly what we are going to do. We are going to bring our jobs home, back to this country. I am glad the member reminded me of that because all of these gatekeepers who stand in the way of our economy are driving industry and resource production out of Canada. For example, according to Liberal former central banker David Dodge, a hard-core, dedicated, establishment Liberal, who was the central bank governor, said that Canadians now invest $800 billion more in other countries than the rest of the world invests in Canada. Why? It is because money goes where it can get things done. This is not one of those places now.
After eight years of the Prime Minister, we rank second-worst in the entire OECD for the time it takes to get a building permit. That is right. If someone wants to build a mine, a pipeline, a shopping centre, an office building or a house, God forbid, they have to wait longer in Canada than in every other OECD country, except one. The average building permit here, and this includes for very small things, such as home renovations, is 250 days. In South Korea, it is 28 days. Why do members think that countries like that are leaving us in the dust?
We are being left behind because we are a place that cannot get anything done. My biological grandfather came to this country from Ireland about 60 years ago. Like most Irish, he came here because Ireland was poor and Canada was a land of plenty. He came here, started a life and built his dream. He was a wonderful man, lived a great life, and unfortunately we lost him a few years ago.
However, today, the GDP per capita of Ireland is 70% higher than Canada. They have none of our resources, none of our land mass and none of our proximity to the United States of America, the most lucrative economy in the history of the world. They have none of those natural advantages, yet they are 70% richer than we are. Why is that?
It is because they removed the gatekeepers. They knocked down the government barriers. They sped up permitting. They cut taxes. They rewarded work. They reformed their tax system so that hard work would pay off, and big money from all around the world poured in and the great Irish people rose up to become among the most prosperous on planet Earth. We all know that the Irish invented civilization, and now they are reinventing free enterprise capitalism. That is why they are one of the most prosperous people on Planet Earth today.
The Irish have done it. The Singaporeans have done it. The Australians, the New Zealanders and the Swiss have all done it by unleashing the fierce power of the free enterprise system by getting out of the way of entrepreneurs and workers, and by lowering taxes to reward work, industry and savings. We could create a cornucopia of opportunities that could supply every Canadian with the life of their dreams. That is the country that we want to fulfill. That is the country we owe to our kids. That is the country that would generate the necessary wealth to avoid the debt crisis I warned of earlier.
I warned earlier on that the problem we face in Canada is the debt-to-GDP. There is a numerator and a denominator. If we could grow the denominator, that is to say the size of the economy, we could reduce the overall ratio. If we unleash the productive forces of our economy, and have a bigger and more powerful economy, then we could pay off that debt, pay off the interest and reduce the debt without having to reduce our quality of living.
That is the real opportunity that we face before us, to make Canada the fastest place on Earth in which to get a building permit. What a goal to strive toward. It is one of my first goals.
I will show up at the annual meeting of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, and I will show up at the first ministers' meeting, to challenge the cities and the provinces to join with me in a single goal: Let us make Canada the fastest place in the OECD to get a building permit. Get it done. Bring it home. Bring all the money back.
They are even nodding over there. I think we are actually seeing a kind of convergence of opinion. There is some excitement over there. I do not know if it is my words or the clear liquids they are drinking, but something has raised their spirits on that side of the House of Commons. Whatever they are drinking, I want some over here, and whatever I do not finish, I will bring it home.
The reality is that we can do this. We can unleash the productive forces of our economy. What would this mean for housing? What do we need to do to allow our young people to again afford a home? There is no natural reason that our young people cannot find a place to live. We have the second-biggest land mass on earth. We have more space where there is no one than we have space where there is anyone.
If we spread Canadians out equally across the country, every single Canadian would have 33 NFL-sized football fields to himself. It would be the perfect place in which to be a hermit. We would never see another human being if we were to spread Canadians out across the country. It is a staggering amount of land. I think there are a few hermits on the other side of the House. They are sitting all by themselves with no one around them. There is nothing wrong with that. Some of my best friends are hermits. There is nothing wrong with being a hermit.
The reality is that we have so much land, so how is it possible that we cannot house our people? We have the fifth-biggest supply of land per capita of any country on earth, yet no one can find a home. Why is this? It is crazy. The Americans have 10 times the people to house on a smaller land mass, yet housing costs there are roughly half of what they are here. For example, Vancouver is the third most overpriced housing market in the world when we compare median income to median house prices. Toronto is ranked 10th. Both are higher than Manhattan. They are higher than Singapore, which is an island. They have nowhere to move in Singapore because there is nothing but sea that surrounds them, yet somehow Vancouver is more unaffordable than Singapore and Manhattan.
Why is this happening? The answer is that we have the fewest houses per capita in the G7, even though we have the most land to build on, because it is the slowest place in which to get a permit. The permitting and other government costs are $650,000 for every home built in Vancouver and slightly less than that in Toronto. The reality is that government at all levels is partly responsible for delaying these permits. However, we know that cities that are controlled by woke, left NDP-Liberal mayors are the worst gatekeepers of all. Ironically, they are the most determined to keep poor people from owning homes.
What are we going to do about it? The federal government gives tens of billions of dollars to the cities for infrastructure. I would make this infrastructure an accelerator of home construction. I would say to the cities that the amount of dollars they get for infrastructure would be linked to the number of houses that actually get completed. I would require all big cities to increase housing construction by 15% per year, or they will lose some of their infrastructure money. Those that exceed the 15% target would get a building bonus, and I would require that every federally funded transit station be surrounded by and even built over top of with high-density housing.
Why does Hong Kong have the only profitable transit system in the world? It builds the housing right on top of the transit. It sells the air rights. It makes sense. The young people get on the elevator, go down to the bottom and hop on the train. It is the only city in the world where they can leave late and arrive early because the housing is right next to the transit. Why do we not require every single transit station funded by the federal government to have high-density apartments all around it? I do not want to drive by another transit station built by our federal tax dollars, handed out by the government, that has no housing behind it. We do not need transit stations in the middle of nowhere. We need housing all around transit stations, and that is what I would require when I am prime minister.
We have got these big, ugly, empty federal buildings. How many do members think we have?
An hon. member
Someone said 20,000.
An hon. member
Is it 30,000?
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Madam Speaker, they are getting close.
There are 37,000 of them. As I said, to be redundant, many of them are big, ugly and empty buildings. Why do we not sell them off and turn them into housing and use the proceeds to pay down the deficit? This is common sense. We are going to take that money and we are going to pay down the deficit. We are going to turn the buildings into housing so young people have a place to live.
We are going to bring in faster immigration for the building trades. I am going to allow the unions to sponsor immigration so unions like LiUNA can bring in labourers from other countries to fill the 50,000 job vacancies that desperately need to be filled. That will mean more builders in this country.
I am going to give parity of esteem. I am going to give the same respect and funding for the trades that we give to the universities. We should honour the people who build stuff, fix stuff and move stuff. They need the same support as our professionals. This is the common sense of the common people.
That is how we are going to bring home powerful paycheques and bring homes people can afford by getting government out of the way, but still we are going to need people to have bigger and more powerful paycheques, so how are we going to do that?
Let us look at immigrants. There are 20,000 immigrant doctors and 32,000 immigrant nurses banned from working in our hospitals because they cannot get a licence to practise even though many of them actually have practised in more sophisticated health care systems in places like Singapore. The gatekeepers block them from getting medical licences.
The federal government is not responsible for regulating those sectors. However, the federal government does provide money for both immigration resettlement and for health care. I believe we should use that money as leverage to get all the provinces to agree with a common national testing standard for all the regulated professions.
That would allow Canada's brilliant immigrants to take a test, not to get a shortcut but to take a test, to prove they meet the Canadian standard and that within 60 days of an immigrant applying to work in their profession they should get a yes or no based on their tested ability and not based on where they come from. I call this the blue seal standard. We have a red seal for the trades. Let us have a blue seal for the professions.
What has the federal government done? In the last eight years, it has done absolutely nothing. We at least, in the prior government, were able to reduce the wait time for an immigrant applying to work in their profession to one year, which I admit was too long but it was shorter than prior. Since that time, there has been no progress whatsoever and the list grows longer and longer of engineers, architects, nurses, personal support workers and doctors who could be helping our economy and serving Canadian patients but who are left on the sidelines in low-wage jobs because there is no simplified, streamlined process to accredit their abilities.
By the way, I will back up 30,000 small study loans so working-class immigrants who need a few months off work to study up to the Canadian standard can do so. Then they can get licensed, get practising, get a bigger paycheque, pay back the loan and that same money can then be lent out to the next deserving immigrant, who can then be propelled to a wonderful paycheque of opportunity serving Canadians.
This is just common sense. I would love to say that this is some work of art I am presenting to the House of Commons, but really it is the common sense of the common people I hear out on the streets when talking to those people every day.
Speaking of common sense, we need to bring home safety again. There is no way we can have a secure economy if we do not have safe streets. Crime has been raging out of control. Drugs, disorder, crime and chaos have become common in our streets under the Prime Minister. He has brought in catch-and-release, which allows the most violent repeat offenders to be released again and again and again onto our streets.
In Vancouver, the same 40 people were arrested 6,000 times, or 150 arrests per offender per year. If those same 40 offenders were just behind bars, we would have had 6,000 fewer people hit over the head with a baseball bat, stabbed with a knife or thrown onto a train track. Why not focus on putting those same repeat violent offenders behind bars?
I believe in second chances. I believe in redemption. I do not believe in a 75th chance. If one has committed 75 crimes, one belongs in jail. One should not have bail. One should not have parole after that many offences. The public's safety is more important than the criminal's right and we should protect the people and keep them safe. That is what we will do with a common-sense criminal justice reform.
We are going to bring home our loved ones recovered from drug addiction. We know that drug addictions have raged out of control under the Prime Minister. He has unleashed a wave of drug addiction since he became Prime Minister. Maybe he is trying to medicate poverty. Maybe he is trying to tell people that they should simply take drugs rather than have a future, because so many people are feeling hopeless and helpless after eight years of his leadership. They lose their jobs and suffer the pain of being unable to pay their bills. They are losing their homes. Many of them cannot take the suffering and end up addicted to drugs, drugs that were originally prescribed by doctors and pushed by powerful pharmaceutical companies.
Under the Prime Minister, there has been over a 200% increase nationwide in the number of drug overdose deaths. His solution has been to give people more tax-funded drugs, tax-funded narcotics like hydromorphone, an opioid more powerful than heroin, now handed out with hundreds of millions of dollars of Canadian tax dollars. We now know that those drugs are being resold by addicts who no longer find them powerful enough to get them high. They are selling to kids and the kids get addicted to those. Then they sell them to other kids and use the profits from selling these free government-funded drugs to buy more powerful fentanyl.
Thus, the places where this experiment has been most enthusiastically tried, like Vancouver, have been the places where the overdose rates have been the highest. There is a correlation both across time and across space of people dying, the more these government-funded drugs are available. The current approach is not working. The answer is, yes, I will shut down taxpayer-funded drugs and I will put all of the money into recovery and treatment.
Recently, I visited an incredible treatment facility in Winnipeg. The story has a tragic beginning, but a happy ending. The story starts with a young man, Bruce Oake, who died of an overdose in Calgary. His father, a legendary sportscaster, Scott Oake, said he was going to make it his life's mission to make sure that no other parent would suffer the same tragic loss that his family had suffered, so he raised the money to create a beautiful, gleaming place where people who had lost all hope and were addicted to drugs could go and have counselling, detox, job training, reconciliation with their families, sweat lodges, yoga, mandatory exercise. They helped them to regain their health and cleanse their bodies of poisons. Not only that, sober homes were built attached to the treatment facility so that when the graduates come out of treatment, they go into an apartment that is right next to the treatment facility, where they can go back any time to see a counsellor or maybe to mentor a new person who is coming in.
I was amazed to find out that most of the people there doing the work, right up to the accountants and the administrative staff, were all recovering addicts themselves. They said it is one thing to have book learning, but it is much more powerful to have real-life experience when sitting down with someone who is an addict, who is going through the desperate pain of withdrawal. When all they want is one more hit that will relieve their immense suffering, they want to be able to talk to someone who knows what they are feeling. The word “compassion” comes from the Latin word pati, to suffer. Passion is to suffer; compassion is to suffer with someone else.
They sit together in those rooms in that wonderful facility and share in each other's suffering, knowing that when suffering is shared, it is relieved and replaced with hope. We are going to replace people's pain with hope by ensuring that places like the Oake Recovery Centre are replicated hundreds and maybe even thousands of times across the country so that young people can go into those places, cleanse their bodies, get their lives back and then mentor the next crop of addicts to give them their lives back.
This cycle of hope will be repeated again and again and again, as a Conservative government gives people the chance to bring home their loved one drug free. I was just reminded by the member for Brandon—Souris that they have a big beautiful gymnasium in there where they do their exercises and play some sports. They have jerseys and every graduate has a jersey raised up to the ceiling with their name on it after one year of being clean, with the number one on the back of every jersey to recognize the single year, the full year, they have gone drug free. They told me this. There was pride on the faces of those young men when they saw their names go up on that jersey, up in front of all their families. They were able to say, “That jersey means that I won, that I scored the biggest goal in the history of the game of life. I got my life back. I've been through hell. There's nothing more that life can throw at me that I have not already been through”.
That is not weakness, that is a superpower, one that we should celebrate and recreate right across this country. That is what I want for anybody who might be listening tonight because I know that there are a lot of people suffering across this country. I meet these people.
One of the things that I find most emotional about being a leader of a political party is how much people vest in the leader, how much they rely on the leader's success that they have to come through for them. Most times when there are elections, we are really just debating about who is going to manage, who is going to run the store. The differences are fairly small on most occasions, but we are in an unusual time right now. People are suffering like I have never seen. It is really bad out there. I hear stories from people who come up to me at the gatherings I hold, people in tears who tell me I am their last hope, that they do not know what they are going to do because they are just hanging on by a thread. I want those people to know to hang on, keep on fighting. There are better days coming. Help and hope is on the way. That is what we are going to deliver to all the Canadian people who are thinking about giving up. Do not give up. Never give up. Better days are coming ahead.
I want to take a moment now to talk about why this has been such an extraordinary country. I am deeply grateful to this country. This country has been very good to me. I think sometimes that we talk about the country in a modern sense. Modern ideology lacks gratitude. It has become very trendy to talk down our history, talk about all of the horrible things that we as Canadians have represented. I think that is the wrong mentality. Yes, we must acknowledge the flaws and failings of history to correct them, but we do that not by deleting parts of our history but by painting in the entire story, the good and the bad, being honest and debating all of those parts of the story, but also about being grateful and showing gratitude for what this country has offered them.
Why is it that 300,000 to 500,000 people a year would want to come here if this is such an awful place, if we were such an awful country that is so filled with injustice? The answer is they would not. They come here for the promise of freedom. They come here not because there is anything special in the water that we drink, not because of the land or because the weather is more inviting than any other place. There are more tropical and sunny environments where they could go, but they come here for the unique foundation that we have in the form of our freedom.
The great former prime minister Wilfrid Laurier was asked to define our country. He was a good Liberal. I will give him credit. He would not be in that party today. He would not recognize the Liberal Party of today, because he was a Liberal who believed in liberty. He understood the meaning of the word, the real word, as it was meant in its origins, not the illiberal, wokist liberalism that we have on the side of the Prime Minister today.
Listen to what he understood about this country. He was asked what Canada's nationality was. In most countries, this would have been a very easy question to answer. If he had been in France, he would have said “French”; if in England, he would have said “English”; if in Scotland, “Scottish”, and so on. Most places define their nationality by the ethnocultural makeup of the country, but that was impossible, even back then, because we were already mixed up. We had Scots, Irish, indigenous, French, English, Catholic, Protestant, people from Asia and Africa back then, a century ago, so it was impossible to define our nation or our nationality on the basis of race, ethnicity or religion. What he said was, “Canada is free, and freedom is its nationality”, and so it is today. It is our freedom that fundamentally distinguishes us from so many places on this Earth. That is the reason people come from such far distances to live here in this country. It is not because of any new grand invention the Prime Minister has created; it is because people want to come here to live their own lives and make their own decisions. That is what I want to empower them to do.
When I was running for leadership of the party, some people asked me whether, if I could win power, I would take power. The answer is that I do not want to take power; I am running for prime minister to give power back.
I do not believe there is a special species of humans who are able to make decisions for everyone else. I believe that every human being is endowed with their own ability to make judgments about their own lives. When I go around the country and I meet with the mechanic who can take apart a transmission and put it back together; the farmer who can master meteorology, economics and soil chemistry; the waitress who can balance 10 plates on her hand, deal with 15 tough customers at once, go home and teach her kid math, and balance her budget on a minimum wage salary, I look at these people and ask myself what business I have running their lives. They know how to do that better than anyone else in this House of Commons.
I do not want to run their lives for them; I want to give them the freedom to make their own decisions.
That is why immigrants come here. They do not come here because there are these really brilliant politicians who can decide for them; they come to get away from politicians who think they can decide for others. That is why they come to our country. It takes a different kind of humility to be that type of leader, because if the government is small, then the leader's power is small and his reach is small. That is not what the Prime Minister wants. He wants big and powerful government because he thinks that it will make him big and powerful. It takes humility to be a leader who withdraws his control so that he can seed it back to the people to whom it truly belongs. It takes humility to lead a small and lean government, a small government with big citizens. That is the kind of humility that we need back in Ottawa, a humility that accepts the wisdom of the common people to decide for themselves. That is the fundamental essence of why I am running.
What does this come down to in the specifics? It means limiting the government's role in the economy. It means not throwing away money on corporate welfare, but rather lowering taxes for all productive businesses. It means allowing workers and parents to spend their own money, rather than having politicians spend it for them. It means allowing people to see and say on the Internet what they think, want to see and want to say without censorship by the state. Everything that is legal in the real world should be legal on the Internet and everything that is criminal in the tangible world should be criminal on the Internet, but no special censorship should be imposed on the people's thinking on the World Wide Web.
The Prime Minister passed Bill C-11, a law that empowers the bureaucracy at the CRTC to manipulate the algorithms of the Internet to control what people see, to give a bigger voice to the government's favoured broadcasters—
An hon. member
Like the CBC.
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Like the CBC. He just very honestly spit out that he wants the Internet to be controlled by the state broadcaster. It is nice when they accidentally tell the truth over there. It is so rare and so unintentional at the same time.
In real, free countries, they do not believe that a state broadcaster should have the monopoly on what people see on the Internet. That is only the case in dictatorships, like Communist China, like North Korea and like Cuba, places the Prime Minister admires and wishes to emulate.
This bill has been called creeping totalitarianism, not by me—my criticisms have not even gone that far—but by Margaret Atwood, a famous and, I believe, Liberal-leaning author, who testified that when bureaucrats are allowed to control the creation of art and culture, we are then heading to a very dangerous place. This Prime Minister has mused, recently, about going even further.
Let me give an example of one of the justifications he has been giving lately. He was over at, I think, a fire hall. He started rambling about how much time he spends studying people who believe in a flat Earth. He claims that this is the next big risk, that there are all these people who believe in a flat Earth, kind of like people who believe budgets balance themselves. Those are the kinds of weirdos we really have to watch out for.
He said that we have to be careful, that there are all these people who believe in a flat Earth. They are going to invade the world, and we are all going to forget, according to him, that the Earth is actually a sphere. He also said that this is the first time in human history that anyone has believed that the world is flat, and that it is because the Internet has too much freedom of speech that this crazy idea has spread.
Never mind that there have been many civilizations that believed the folly, and yes, I point out that it is a folly, and the Prime Minister was not fooled into thinking that the world was anything but round.
There have been others who have believed this over the years. What the Prime Minister failed to realize is that there have been many falsehoods about the physics of Earth and its relationship with the sun. For example, people used to believe that the Earth was stationary and that the sun went around it. Why did that falsehood persist for so long? It was because censorship prevented anyone from thinking otherwise.
In reality, the real purveyors of falsehood, of fake news, of information that is untrue, of conspiracy theories actually come into play when the state has too much control over our thinking, not too little. It is by challenging false ideas that we overcome those ideas. It is by smashing bad information with good information that the better information comes out on top. It is precisely in the pursuit of truth that we must allow freedom of expression online and everywhere to prevail.
Speaking of misinformation, the Prime Minister says one of the reasons he needs to have censorship is to stop all this misinformation. Well, I believe it is still on the Liberal Party's website that the budget would be balanced in 2019. I believe it was the Prime Minister who spread the misinformation that the Globe and Mail story about his interference in SNC-Lavalin story was false. It was the Prime Minister who spread that misinformation. It is was the Prime Minister's own fall economic update that said we would have a balanced budget in 2027, once again reiterating misinformation.
Here is the problem: If the government's mission is to stop misinformation, what happens when it is the government itself that is spreading that misinformation?
The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès) Alexandra Mendes
I apologize for interrupting, but I would remind the hon. members who would like to chat that they have a wonderful lobby to chat in. I would like to hear the Leader of the Opposition conclude his speech.
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Madam Speaker, that is what happens when it is in fact the government that is spreading misinformation, not the people. Is it not then more dangerous to have concentrated the power over what is seen and said in the hands of those few people?
It goes back to the fundamental and basic question: If a man is not capable of governing himself, how can he govern others? That is the basic and fundamental question and the contradiction that those who believe in the superiority of the state over the citizen fail to answer.
If everyday humans are so flawed that they cannot decide for themselves, how can those same humans decide for anyone else? Well, their answer over there would be that there is this small group that are made of finer clay, that have intellectual and moral superiority, and therefore, if we just hand over all of our decisions to them, they could correct all the flaws and frailties of humankind. However, we know that the opposite happens: When we concentrate more power into fewer hands, we attract power-hungry people who are more flawed and less capable, more incompetent and with less common sense, who then inflict all of their failings and bad behaviour on the rest of society. That is why a limited and smaller government is always better: It because it allows everyday individual people to make their own decisions and to have personal responsibility and personal freedom in how they do so.
That is why one of my first actions as prime minister will be to repeal Bill C-11. I will repeal the censorship law to let people express themselves online. Let freedom of debate reign so that everyday people can hash out their differences.
An hon. member
Freedom.
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
The member just mocked the word “freedom”. It shows how far they have gone. Only a short time ago, they used to celebrate something called the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and now they think freedom is something that should be mocked. Everybody should know that they mock freedom because they want to take away freedom. They do not believe that Canadians should have the freedom to make their own decisions.
We on this side of the House of Commons will always defend freedom. My purpose in running for prime minister is to put Canadians back in charge of their lives by making Canada the freest nation on earth.
Madam Speaker, they have the freedom to leave any time they want. Some bring happiness wherever they go, others bring happiness whenever they go.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès) Alexandra Mendes
I will ask all hon. members to please respect decorum.
The hon. member for Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies.
Bob Zimmer Conservative Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC
Madam Speaker, I am a former teacher and I have four kids, and I would be absolutely embarrassed if my kids were acting like that, and they never would. I think that is the point I want to make. My kids know better about how to act in this place than members of Parliament across the way. I would expect respect for our leader, who is making a great speech tonight about an issue that is very important to all Canadians. I would wish that they would grant him that respect.
The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès) Alexandra Mendes
That has been asked a few times by Chair occupants.
I must remind hon. members that heckling happens on both sides of the House, not that this is an excuse. We do wish to have some decorum and allow the hon. Leader of the Opposition to make his speech in peace.
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Madam Speaker, all of this chaos, all of this yelling and screaming, all of this rambunctiousness here on the floor of the House of Commons proves once again that Parliament is the worst system of government except for all the others, that the great debates are meant to be uproarious and distracting. That was said by Winston Churchill, a great member of the British Empire, alongside which we fought for freedom in the Second World War, and today, here in Canada, we continue to stand for freedom here in the new world. We will continue to stand for freedom in this country.
I have already said that I will repeal the anti-freedom legislation that the government has brought in that—
The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès) Alexandra Mendes
Could the conversations stop between members? It is on both sides right now. It was literally on both sides. Members on both sides were talking to one another, and I would like to give the hon. Leader of the Opposition the possibility to pursue his speech.
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Madam Speaker, this demonstrates again the peril of freedom of expression. It is frustrating, difficult and hard. However, it is the best thing we have. Freedom is the only way we can clash good ideas against bad ideas, so that the good can triumph over the bad. That is why I accept all the aggravations and petty interruptions. They are all worth it. Canada is worth it. Putting up with them is worth it to fight for this country. Our country is worth it. That is an inspiring, uplifting message for us all, is it not? That brings me to my next point.
Campus life is filled with these kinds of petty arguments. If I could, I will refer to Churchill one more time. He said, of student politics, that never had so few argued for so long about so little. However, those petty arguments are part of the open debate that exists in campus life. Unfortunately, of late, we have seen a movement by the woke totalitarian left to shut down that debate, to prevent students and faculty from expressing opinions that are not authorized by the academic consensus. The academy is losing its very purpose, which is the pursuit of knowledge and truth through open inquiry. It is a true marketplace of ideas where people come together without fear and without violence to share and express and, yes, sometimes to have their feelings hurt, to be frustrated and to be angry with what they hear. However, ultimately, it allows inquiring minds to compete and for the best to come out on top.
One of the most revered professors in modern Canada is Dr. Jordan Peterson. He was one of the most academically cited before he gained notoriety around the world. His prolific writings were respected by people across all the social sciences and humanities. This is a statistical fact. However, he expressed views that were not acceptable to the new totalitarian one-size-fits-all groupthink. As a result, he was driven out of the University of Toronto and silenced. More recently, he has been told that he might lose his licence to practise as a psychologist. In one case, he had a complaint against him because he retweeted me. In another case, he tweeted a criticism of the Prime Minister, and the association that licenses psychologists in Ontario said that this could provide great danger to his patients; if they were to see a tweet by their psychologist criticizing the Prime Minister, this might cause a massive psychological breakdown. My goodness, how fragile a supporter of the Prime Minister might be if they shatter like glass at the mere tweeting out of a criticism. Maybe the Prime Minister himself would find it psychologically devastating to see criticisms of him coming from someone like Dr. Peterson. My answer to those censors is this: If they do not like Jordan Peterson, they should not shut him down. They should debate him. I wish them luck with that.
I debate all kinds of people with whom I disagree. I disagree with the Prime Minister and his whole cabinet. I do not want to silence them. I want to debate them. In fact, I believe they help me make my case every time they open their mouths. I want them to speak even more.
We have something called section 2(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This is a section that protects freedom of expression: “2(b), or not 2(b)? That is the question”. My answer is this: A Conservative government led by me would uphold freedom of expression and require every campus that gets federal research dollars to give an oath that it will respect the freedom of expression of all students and faculty so that the best ideas can come out of talk in a free and open debate.
We are going to bring home freedom for all of our people. Let us review the bright and prosperous future, the hopeful destiny, that we will restore.
We will bring home lower prices by getting rid of the inflationary deficits and carbon taxes. We will bring home powerful paycheques with lower taxes and fewer clawbacks so that hard work pays off. We will remove the gatekeepers so that brilliant immigrants can work as professionals, our first nations can develop their resources and our energy companies can bring back production to this country. We will bring in homes that people can afford by removing the government gatekeepers. We will free up land and speed up permits to build, build, build.
We will bring home safety with jail and not bail for repeat and habitual violent offenders, and by ending the relentless government attack on law-abiding firearms owners. We will put money into reinforcing our borders against smugglers and will tackle the gun criminals who are shooting up our streets.
Some hon. members
Hear, hear!
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Yes, Madam Speaker, members can applaud that. Polite Canadians never want to interrupt, but I want them to feel comfortable interrupting my remarks with their applause.
We are going to bring home safety by focusing on the real bad guys. The problem with the Prime Minister is that oftentimes he targets the good guys. He punishes the good guys.
Have members heard of the latest story? He is kicking out these wonderful Punjabi students, 700 of them. These brilliant young people were defrauded by shady consultants who gave them fraudulent university and college admission letters. The students came here in good faith and did their studies, and many of them got jobs and have settled down. They have been in the country for four years, and all of a sudden when they applied for permanent residency, the border agency, which cannot stop illegal guns from coming into the country, was able to find the time and resources to harass these kids and tell them it was going to send them home with their debts.
Their families are often poor farmers in Punjab who mortgage all of their assets and use their life savings to send their kids here for a better opportunity. These kids will have to go back to the bankruptcy of their parents and lose everything. We need young people and we need workers, and these are good, decent kids.
Why are the Liberals going after the good guys? Why did they not go after the shady consultants who defrauded the system in the first place? Why do they not fire the bureaucrats who made the mistake of not verifying the admission letters at the front end, rather than trying to fix it five years later at the back end? Why do they not simply look into each case and find out which of the kids were acting in good faith and let those good-faith kids stay here? They are filling jobs, earning paycheques and contributing to the Canadian family. Why do they not have a bit of common sense and compassion for a change? It is shameful.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Madam Speaker, they are screaming at me and asking why I am still speaking. I am speaking for those kids who have no voice. That is why I keep speaking. Even as I am losing my voice, I will continue to be their voice.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès) Alexandra Mendes
Order. Do I need to start naming members? I have asked hon. members to keep order.
The hon. Leader of the Opposition.
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Madam Speaker, we are going to go after the bad guys, not the good guys, not the law-abiding hunter and farmer, and not the honest student who got ripped off by a foreign shady consultant. We are not going to go after the good and decent people. We are going to go after the multi-gazillionaires who stash their cash in faraway tax loopholes. We are not going to go after small businesses that are trying to save up for their futures. We would target the bad guys with punishment and reward the good behaviour of good, honest and decent people. We would be a government on the side of those who work hard, pay their taxes and play by the rules. Would that not be a change from what we have right now?
What we are seeing here are the contours of the hope that we are bringing for the Canadian people, hope that is so desperately needed, now more than ever, when the government is broke and everything feels broken, when the Prime Minister divides and distracts, and when everything costs more. Work does not pay. Housing costs have doubled. Crime, chaos, drugs and disorder are becoming more and more common on our streets. The Prime Minister tries to distract from it all by dividing our people on the basis of race, gender and other irrelevant distinctions.
We have a hope for a better way to bring home lower prices, paycheques, homes people can afford, safe streets and our freedom.
Every home is built on a foundation. In fact, the most important part of any home, as my finance critic, who was a home builder, would tell us, is the foundation. It is not the fancy decorations. It is not the new shingles we put out. It is not the colour we paint the front door. It is the foundation that supports the house and holds it up against the storms and the tempests of time, and our house, this House, was built on a solid foundation.
If we look around this place, we see stones. It was built of stone. If we look around the Centre Block building, we can actually see limestone that has fossils in them, which were embedded in that stone millions of years earlier. We are literally looking back millions of years in time when we look at those stones and those incredible fossils that are etched and crystallized in them forever. Why do we build these places with stone? It is to represent the permanence of the principles on which the entire place rests.
We are all just visitors in this place. We do not own these seats. We are lent these seats from the people to whom they belong. It is an 800-year-old tradition that we uphold in this place. It is 800 years since the Magna Carta, the great charter. In 1215 the commoners gathered in the fields of Runnymede and forced King John to reluctantly sign on to this great charter.
If we read the charter, we might say it is filled with all kinds of antiquated concepts that no longer have any relevance today, but we will also see some things that have preserved, such as no arrest without charge, no trial without jury, no confiscation without compensation, and no taxation without representation. All of those things originated in the Magna Carta.
Many of them, our American cousins across the border tried belatedly to take credit for, but really all they were trying to do in the American revolution was defend their rights as Englishmen and Englishwomen. It was actually more of a civil war than it was a war between nations. They were ancient principles that came from generations before and were slowly and painstakingly perfected. The most important principle of all in that document was liberty under the law, the recognition that nobody, including the king, was above the law. Everybody was under the law, and only that way could liberty be upheld for all of the people.
That inheritance is a precious one, and though it is 800 years long, it is only one generation deep. It is the duty of every living generation to take it from those who came before and pass it on intact to those who will come next. That is our duty. We are that living generation.
The great philosopher, the great Conservative philosopher Edmund Burke, said that liberty is a contract between the dead, the living and the yet to be born, and it is the duty of every living generation to pass down the ages. That is why we need to remember how small we are in this place. Our purpose is really to keep alive that tradition. That is the one thing we do as parliamentarians.
It is the most valuable thing of all because everything springs forth from that, such as the ability of people to have the freedom of enterprise to provide for themselves, the freedom of association to get married, to form friendships and other associations and the ability to work together to provide each other with health care and schooling. All of these things come from the foundation of freedom that is passed down through the ages.
If ever we allow that tradition to be broken, then it may never be regained. That is why we treasure so much these institutions that are represented by the stones on these walls, stones I hope my great, great, great, great, great-grandchildren will look up at and see and remember that during this brief time, during our time, we protected the freedom many generations after us would go on to enjoy.
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent, our shadow minister of the environment, reminds me about the green floors in this place. One might wonder why it is green and why the other place is red. Of course, this place is green because the first commoners met in the fields of Runnymede. In fact, the first House of Commons, the first Parliament, happened in the fields and the commoners represented those who worked and harvested the fields. They were the ones responsible for the bounty.
Of course, it was the aristocrats on the inside of the castle walls who made their way by taking what others had earned. Obviously, the greed of those within the castle walls was insatiable. The commoners pushed back and fought back for their ability to control what they had earned and to limit what could be taken from them, that nothing could be taxed from the people without the consent of the people.
That is why we are debating this budget here today. We debate something called the estimates. It seems like a technical procedural detail but it is not. No dollar can be spent or taxed by government without it being voted on in this place. That is because it is the people, it is the common people in the fields, who earned it whose consent is required before it can be taxed or spent. That is a powerful tradition.
We should never forget. Every time we look at the green, let us think of the people who continue to work figuratively and literally in the fields in order to deliver the harvest, the abundant harvest that is our blessing in this country, the prodigious harvest of Canada's workers, its farmers, its truckers and the people who dig stuff, fix stuff and move stuff. Those are the people who produce this great bounty, with God's help, and it is our duty to be custodians of their freedom and to work on their behalf.
The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès) Alexandra Mendes
The hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan is rising on a point of order.
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Madam Speaker, earlier we had a situation where members of Parliament were using props in this House. They were not speaking, but they were very clearly holding up props and making comments about them. It seemed to make a total mockery of the rules around props, and people it seems had brought in items that were supposed to represent certain things that were in relation to past comments the speaker had made.
There is a long-established convention in this place that members cannot and should not be able use props. I understand there may be some interpretations around whether the person is speaking or not, but the principle of not being able to use props and use them as a tool for heckling, prodding or in effect trying to disrupt another member should not be allowed.
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
I would ask that the Speaker call in particular the parliamentary secretary across the way, who should be listening to this point, because in the midst of heckling this point, the parliamentary secretary was in fact one of the offenders in the course of these events.
The members opposite should take seriously their obligations to follow the rules in this place. Instead of heckling, the members should listen to the point being made and should show more respect for the rules. When we have rules that are well established in the House, the members should be following them rather than engaging in this kind of activity.
The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès) Alexandra Mendes
I am well aware of the rules, and I called the members on that at the time. As the member may have noticed, there are no props in the House at the moment. There have been rules enforced for that reason.
The hon. Leader of the Opposition.
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Madam Speaker, we need to replace the pain that Canadians are feeling with the hope that they need. That is one of the reasons I am rising today in the House of Commons. It is not just to point out the suffering that the Prime Minister has caused by doubling the national debt, by fanning inflation to levels not seen in 40 years and by ballooning mortgage and government debt.
We need to acknowledge that this pain exists, but the official opposition also has a responsibility to offer an alternative to replace this pain and suffering with hope for the future. That is exactly what we are going to do. We need to recognize that hope is possible. We need to reverse the negative trends we are seeing and give Canadians hope for a better future. We are going to do that by using and recognizing the common sense of everyday Canadians.
What is our plan for doing that? What is the plan for bringing in a government that works for those who do the work?
First, we need to lower prices. We are going to do that by getting rid of the deficits and inflationary taxes that are causing the current problem. History has shown us that deficits lead to higher prices. More money chasing the same goods means higher prices. That is obvious.
To reverse that, we must control spending and put in place a law that requires politicians to save one dollar for every new dollar spent.
The United States implemented this policy in the 1990s, when Bill Clinton was in power. This policy made it possible for the United States to balance its budget for the first time in 50 years. We know that the U.S. government was able do pay down $400 billion in debt, which led to a considerable increase in wages during a period of economic growth with very low inflation. This strengthened the government's finances.
Unfortunately, when that law was repealed, the U.S. government fell back into deficits, and it is still running deficits. This demonstrates once again that politicians need legal discipline to control their spending. All living things in nature must live with limits. For all living things in nature, there are never enough resources and there is always rising demand. Only politicians can avoid this problem by imposing these limits and lack of resources on other people by creating inflation, debt and taxes. The only way to limit the costs that must be borne by citizens is to pass a law that will force politicians to save.
This is exactly what a waiter, a mechanic or a small business does when they choose between one expense or another, or when they try to make two purchases, but at a good price. It is the kind of self-imposed discipline shown by Canadian families and small and medium-sized Canadian businesses. It is the kind of discipline that I am going to impose on politicians. Canadians have had enough of cutting back on their spending. The time has come for politicians to show a little discipline themselves.
I am talking about discipline, not the austerity the government is imposing on families. Yes, the government has plenty of money, but that means less money for the workers, the entrepreneurs and the seniors who actually worked.
We will have a smaller government, which will allow Canadians to be bigger. This will also eliminate waste. It will force public servants and politicians to look around for ways to find savings in the bureaucracy, because there are opportunities to save money.
I mentioned an example earlier. There is a federal program that used to send CDs to people so they could listen to audio books. However, the Canadian National Institute for the Blind said it was too expensive and impractical to continue sending CDs. This is the 21st century, after all. Why not send them books digitally online? This meant cutting costs while increasing the number of books available to visually impaired people. It is a win-win situation for everyone.
Therefore, it is possible to reduce costs while improving services if we apply common sense to government management. That is exactly what this pay-as-you-go policy will accomplish, by continually forcing politicians to find ways to deliver services more cheaply. That is exactly what every other Canadian is doing, and that is exactly what my government will do as well.
We will stop giving contracts to consultants. We are going to shut down the Canada Infrastructure Bank, which receives funding to the tune of more than $35 billion and has been around for over five years, but has yet to complete a single project. We will eliminate a program that exists but offers nothing to taxpayers so that we can save money and leave that money in the pockets of ordinary Canadians, reduce debt and balance the budget in order to shrink inflation and interest rates.
People need bigger paycheques. These days work no longer pays. When a single mother with three children who earns $60,000 a year manages to earn an extra $1, she loses 80¢ of it, because the government makes deductions and imposes taxes. After payroll taxes and benefit deductions, she can lose up to 80¢ per dollar. She is penalized for working. The government is penalizing the people we need. There is a labour shortage, but the government is penalizing seniors, mothers and others who work. Why?
The government should be imposing penalties on those who drive too fast on the highway, those who commit crimes and those who break the law, but, in Canada, workers are the ones who are penalized the most. It is shameful to penalize work. An anti-work policy leads to a weaker economy. We need to reform the tax and benefit system so that Canadians take home a greater share of every dollar they earn and so that hard work once again pays off in Canada. I am going to implement that type of reform and cut taxes to support those who work and ensure that they are properly compensated, here in Canada.
In order to work, however, people need to be able to get to work, to make it there. That is why the war on cars has to stop. The woke Bloc and the Liberals are against cars. They tried to kill a major project in the Quebec City region, a third link that Quebeckers could have used to cross the St. Lawrence. Now, that is gone. The woke brigade have an anti-car agenda. It makes no sense. People in the suburbs and in the regions need cars to get to work.
That is why a government under my leadership, a common-sense Conservative government, will support public transit, but also highways and bridges so people can get to work. We are not going to make that more expensive. The Liberals and the Bloc want to raise the gas tax by 20¢ a litre. Quebeckers cannot afford an extra 20¢-a-litre tax. Quebec already has some of the highest gas prices in North America. We are the only party that will cancel this second carbon tax that the Bloc and Liberals are planning on charging. We believe that to save the environment, we need to make green energy less expensive, not make traditional energy more expensive. We are going to protect the environment through technology, not taxes.
As members can see, I am saying exactly the same things in English and French because common sense is universal. Common sense exists in every language. We are going to bring back bigger paycheques by getting rid of the red tape that is preventing energy production.
I have been challenged to express support for nuclear energy in French. Yes, I will support nuclear energy. It is very popular in France, by the way.
I know that the Minister of Environment, who is a radical and an extremist, is against any source of energy. He is even against nuclear energy. He wants to prevent Quebec from building hydroelectric dams. He says he will allow them, but it will take six or seven more years to conduct duplicate environmental assessments.
I have confidence in the Quebec government, which is one of the most advanced governments in the world in terms of environmental protection. The Quebec government will definitely want to protect the environment. There is no need for a second assessment for the same project. We will accelerate the approval of hydroelectric projects.
If we want to fight climate change, we must produce more electricity. How will our green friends charge electric cars if we do not have hydroelectric dams? What is the plan to double the amount of available electricity? We need dams and we need quick approvals for dams. I will eliminate the obstacles being put in place by the federal government so that Quebec can continue to build dams and generate more electricity.
When Stephen Harper's Conservative government was in place, there was a major global economic crisis. Projects had to be built quickly and without delay. The minister at the time, John Baird, said: one project, one assessment.
There was no reason to have a municipal assessment, a provincial assessment and a federal assessment, because prior to that, all three were needed. Sometimes the same consultant was hired three times by three levels of government to delay the project and prevent construction, increasing costs for everyone. At that time, however, projects had to be completed quickly to combat the effects of the global crisis.
The minister did something else. He told his officials he wanted a one-page permit application, because they were having to fill out 200 pages for one application. They said they were okay with the 200 pages. He said no, one page. They suggested a compromise of 100 pages. He repeated that he wanted one page. They said 100 pages. He insisted on one page. They said 50 pages. He again said one page. They offered to agree on 10 pages. He persisted and told them one page. In the end, the officials managed to produce a one-page permit application for a project.
Can we have more of that?
I was the MP for Nepean. The founder of Nepean, Aubrey Moodie, was the region's mayor. He used to tell the story of a man who came to his farm at 6 o'clock in the morning and told him that he had bought some land and wanted to build a car dealership. The next day, they met with the city's lawyers, and on Tuesday, two days later, construction had begun. That is how common sense works. Cut through the red tape. Eighty years later, that same company is still there. It sells cars and pays its employees. That is common sense. By removing bureaucratic obstacles, we are going to facilitate bigger paycheques and people will still be able to build in Canada. That is common sense.
When I am prime minister, I am going to issue a challenge to provincial premiers and municipal mayors. We are going to meet and I am going to tell them that, of all OECD countries, Canada will be the place where building permits can be obtained the fastest. We can do it. We can protect the environment and ensure safety, and we can do it quickly. We can get things done. We can still get things done in Canada. Yes, we can.
We want our young people to be able to buy a house. Right now, nine out of 10 young people cannot. Canada is the second-largest country in the world by landmass, but there are not enough houses for our young people. That does not make any sense. What is the reason for that? The reason is that Canada is the second-slowest country when it comes to issuing building permits. That is why we have the fewest houses per capita in the G7. Houses in Canada cost almost double what they do in the United States, and yet the U.S. has 10 times more people to house in a smaller territory. The price of houses in the U.S. is lower because they can get building permits.
Here, we should be encouraging our municipalities to build housing more rapidly. I will ensure that the funding for municipal infrastructure corresponds with the number of houses that the municipality manages to build. I will require every big city to increase building permits by 15% per year or they will lose their infrastructure funding. On the other hand, if they build more housing, they will get more infrastructure funding.
We will compensate successful municipalities. We will give more money to those that build more housing. We are going to force the big cities to build a lot more apartments near transit stations. We will bring in more immigrants who can build things. We are going to promote trades, not just professions, by supporting colleges and trade schools, not just universities. We are going to support the working class of the future.
For those who do not believe me when I say that housing can be built faster, just look at what the Squamish Nation has done in downtown Vancouver. In Vancouver, a single building permit costs $600,000 per house. That is the cost just for the permit, not for the materials, not for the workers, not even for the land. That is how much the government charges for the paperwork.
Fortunately, the Squamish Nation, part of which is located in the city of Vancouver, does not have to follow those rules and fill out that city paperwork. It is indigenous reserve land. They control it themselves. This has enabled them to build 6,000 apartments on 10 acres. That means 600 apartments for every acre. It is incredible. That means 6,000 families, 6,000 young people, 6,000 seniors who will have a place to live thanks to the Squamish Nation's ability to get things done and start building.
By following this example, we could build housing across the country. Let us follow the example of our Squamish friends and build housing more quickly. We will build homes that Canadians and Quebeckers can afford. We are going to make homes affordable again.
We will also bring back safety. The Liberal government and the woke Bloc are so out of touch with the real world that they are trying to ban hunting rifles. When the Bloc members saw the list of long guns that the Liberals wanted to ban, they thought it was a great idea, that it was the list they had long been waiting for and that they would be happy to ban all these hunters' guns.
Suddenly, the Bloc found out that there were hunters in their ridings. Many people go hunting in la belle province, but the Bloc did not know that. This is a tradition that has been passed down for thousands of years. Even before the arrival of the Europeans, there were indigenous people who hunted. Even after the French arrived and founded la belle province, there was a lot of hunting. It is a tradition that has existed since time immemorial. Many patriotic Quebeckers still hunt today.
The only party that was there to defend hunters against this unwarranted attack was the Conservative Party. We will never allow the Prime Minister to realize his dream of banning hunting here in Canada. Instead, we will invest that money in strengthening our borders. That is just common sense.
We know that 80% of gun crimes are committed with illegal weapons smuggled in from the United States. Why spend $5 billion to harass sport shooters who have licences, are trained and have already undergone RCMP checks, when we can invest that money in strengthening our border and providing more resources to our police so they can arrest the real criminals and street gangs? Common sense will keep every Canadian safe in this country. I am simply talking about common sense.
We will also bring back freedom. I know that freedom is a foundational principle of our country. The federal government wants to censor the Internet. The CRTC, a woke agency, wants to impose its values on Quebeckers. It is unbelievable to see what the Bloc Québécois, which calls itself a sovereignist party, is doing. It wants to give more power to the federal state, to a minister of the Canadian government, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, and to other woke bureaucrats here in Ottawa, who will control what Quebeckers can see and say on the Internet.
Only the Conservative Party defended the individual sovereignty of Quebeckers to choose their own thoughts, their own words and their own identity. I will never allow the federal government to dictate to Quebeckers what they can think or what they can say on the Internet. I will restore freedom of expression.
The days of being lectured to are over. The same goes for our universities. I applaud the government of Quebec for introducing an academic freedom policy. Unfortunately, the federal government is trying to force wokeism on Quebec universities by issuing the funds it pays for research and development to universities pursuing a woke agenda. Universities have to be woke to get money from the Liberal government. I will never allow that.
I am going to co-opt the freedom of expression policy that the Government of Quebec implemented to ensure that all students and teachers are able to express themselves without censorship and without being controlled by the woke.
We will never allow the central bank to create digital currency. We will protect the monetary freedom of every Canadian to have their own private bank account that is not monitored or controlled by the state. That is how we are going to protect economic freedom, which is just as important as freedom of expression and other freedoms.
If I had to create a party from nothing, it would be a “mind your own business” party. Letting people make their own decisions is the best way to run a country. The laissez-faire approach comes from the French. We need to let people make their own decisions. I believe in the common sense of ordinary Canadians.
These people are often referred to as ordinary people, but that is not true. The waitress who works a 12-hour shift, who has to juggle 10 plates at a time while serving 15 difficult customers at once, who gets home at 8 p.m. and then has to teach her child math while balancing her budget on minimum wage, is not ordinary. She is extraordinary.
The farmer who has a firm grasp on how to work with the soil and the weather to get food from his field to our plate is not ordinary. He is extraordinary. The electrician who helps light the House of Commons is not ordinary. He is extraordinary. These extraordinary people are the people we all work for.
We have to remember that they do not need a lesson. No more giving lessons. It is time to let people to live their lives free from the excessive interference we see from this government and all governments. We have to remember that we are servants.
The word “minister” means servant. The Prime Minister is the first servant of the country, not the master of the people. That is why we are calling for a fiscal policy that gives control back to ordinary Canadians, the people who do the work and pay the bills.
That is why I told the Prime Minister that I would end this speech as soon as he gave me the following two guarantees: First, that he would balance the budget to reduce inflation and the interest rates; second that he would stop all carbon tax increases. These two things would allow people to regain control of their money and be compensated for their hard work. Putting people back in control of their lives is our goal. It is common sense. Let us bring back common sense.
I could stop this speech on a moment's notice if the Prime Minister would walk in here now and just commit to me to make two commitments come true: one, that he will balance the budget to bring down inflation and interest rates, and two, that he will cancel all future increases to the carbon tax. Two simple demands, and I would stop speaking. Two demands is all it would take.
The Prime Minister will not do it because he wants to take more from the people. He believes he knows better; he knows how to control their money and run their lives better than all of those ordinary people.
These people are not ordinary. The waitress who balances 10 plates, serves 15 customers, helps her kid with math and balances her budget on a $15-an-hour salary is not ordinary; she is extraordinary. The farmer who brings the food from his field to our forks is extraordinary. The electrician who captures the electricity from the sky and runs it through a copper wire to light up this room is extraordinary. These are the common people for whom we fight. It is the common sense of the common people, united for our common home: their home, my home, our home. Let us bring it home.
The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès) Alexandra Mendes
The hon. House leader for the official opposition is rising on a point of order.
Andrew Scheer Conservative Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK
Madam Speaker, given the late hour and the special order we are operating under, we understand that you have to put the question, but I believe if you seek it, you will find unanimous consent to not see the clock at 11:45 p.m. and allow the hon. Leader of the Opposition to continue, because I think some Liberals remain unconvinced and he has some more—
Some hon. members
No.
The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès) Alexandra Mendes
It being 11:46 p.m., pursuant to order made on Tuesday, June 6, it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the third reading stage of the bill now before the House.
The question is on the motion.
If a member of a recognized party present in the House wishes that the motion be carried or carried on division or wishes to request a recorded division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.
The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès) Alexandra Mendes
Pursuant to order made on Thursday, June 23, 2022, the division stands deferred until Thursday, June 8, at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions.
The hon. Minister of International Development is rising on a point of order.
Harjit S. Sajjan LiberalMinister of International Development and Minister responsible for the Pacific Economic Development Agency of Canada
Madam Speaker, I move:
That this House do now adjourn.
The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès) Alexandra Mendes
Pursuant to order made on Tuesday, November 15, 2022, the motion is deemed adopted. Accordingly, the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m. pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).
(The House adjourned at 11:47 p.m.)
The House resumed from June 7 consideration of the motion that Bill C-47, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, 2023, be read the third time and passed.
The Speaker Anthony Rota
It being 3:19 p.m., pursuant to order made Thursday, June 23, 2022, the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at third reading stage of Bill C-47.
Call in the members.
(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)
