Bill C-59 (Historical)

Fall Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2023

An Act to implement certain provisions of the fall economic statement tabled in Parliament on November 21, 2023 and certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, 2023

Part 1 implements certain measures in respect of the Income Tax Act and the Income Tax Regulations by
(a) limiting the deductibility of net interest and financing expenses by certain corporations and trusts, consistent with certain Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the Group of Twenty Base Erosion and Profit Shifting project recommendations;
(b) implementing hybrid mismatch rules consistent with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the Group of Twenty Base Erosion and Profit Shifting project recommendations regarding cross-border tax avoidance structures that exploit differences in the income tax laws of two or more countries to produce “deduction/non-inclusion mismatches”;
(c) allowing expenditures incurred in the exploration and development of all lithium to qualify as Canadian exploration expenses and Canadian development expenses;
(d) ensuring that only genuine intergenerational business transfers are excluded from the anti-surplus stripping rule in section 84.1 of the Income Tax Act ;
(e) denying the dividend received deduction for dividends received by Canadian financial institutions on certain shares that are held as mark-to-market property;
(f) increasing the rate of the rural supplement for Climate Action Incentive payments (CAIP) from 10% to 20% for the 2023 and subsequent taxation years as well as referencing the 2016 census data for the purposes of the CAIP rural supplement eligibility for the 2023 and 2024 taxation years;
(g) providing a refundable investment tax credit to qualifying businesses for eligible carbon capture, utilization and storage equipment;
(h) providing a refundable investment tax credit to qualifying businesses for eligible clean technology equipment;
(i) introducing, under certain circumstances, labour requirements in relation to the new refundable investment tax credits for eligible carbon capture, utilization and storage equipment as well as eligible clean technology equipment;
(j) removing the requirement that credit unions derive no more than 10% of their revenue from sources other than certain specified sources;
(k) permitting a qualifying family member to acquire rights as successor of a holder of a Registered Disability Savings Plan following the death of that plan’s last remaining holder who was also a qualifying family member;
(l) implementing consequential changes of a technical nature to facilitate the operation of the existing rules for First Home Savings Accounts;
(m) introducing a tax of 2% on the net value of equity repurchases by certain Canadian corporations, trusts and partnerships whose equity is listed on a designated stock exchange;
(n) exempting certain fees from the refundable tax applicable to contributions under retirement compensation arrangements;
(o) introducing a technical amendment to the provision that authorizes the sharing of taxpayer information for the purposes of the Canadian Dental Care Plan;
(p) implementing a number of amendments to the general anti-avoidance rule (GAAR) as well as introducing a new penalty applicable to transactions subject to the GAAR and extending the normal reassessment period for the GAAR by three years in certain circumstances;
(q) facilitating the creation of employee ownership trusts;
(r) introducing specific anti-avoidance rules in relation to corporations referred to as substantive CCPCs; and
(s) extending the phase-out by three years, and expanding the eligible activities, in relation to the reduced tax rates for certain zero-emission technology manufacturers.
It also makes related and consequential amendments to the Excise Tax Act and the Excise Act, 2001 .
Part 2 enacts the Digital Services Tax Act and its regulations. That Act provides for the implementation of an annual tax of 3% on certain types of digital services revenue earned by businesses that meet certain revenue thresholds. It sets out rules for the purposes of establishing liability for the tax and also sets out applicable reporting and filing requirements. To promote compliance with its provisions, that Act includes modern administration and enforcement provisions generally aligned with those found in other taxation statutes. Finally, this Part also makes related and consequential amendments to other texts to ensure proper implementation of the tax and cohesive and efficient administration by the Canada Revenue Agency.
Part 3 implements certain Goods and Services Tax/Harmonized Sales Tax (GST/HST) measures by
(a) ensuring that an interest in a corporation that does not have its capital divided into shares is treated as a financial instrument for GST/HST purposes;
(b) ensuring that interest and dividend income from a closely related partnership is not included in the determination of whether a person is a de minimis financial institution for GST/HST purposes;
(c) ensuring that an election related to supplies made within a closely related group of persons that includes a financial institution may not be revoked on a retroactive basis without the permission of the Minister of National Revenue;
(d) making technical amendments to an election that allows electing members of a closely related group to treat certain supplies made between them as having been made for nil consideration;
(e) ensuring that certain supplies between the members of a closely related group are not inadvertently taxed under the imported taxable supply rules that apply to financial institutions;
(f) raising the income threshold for the requirement to file an information return by certain financial institutions;
(g) allowing up to seven years to assess the net tax adjustments owing by certain financial institutions in respect of the imported taxable supply rules;
(h) expanding the GST/HST exemption for services rendered to individuals by certain health care practitioners to include professional services rendered by psychotherapists and counselling therapists;
(i) providing relief in relation to the GST/HST treatment of payment card clearing services;
(j) allowing the joint venture election to be made in respect of the operation of a pipeline, rail terminal or truck terminal that is used for the transportation of oil, natural gas or related products;
(k) raising the input tax credit (ITC) documentation thresholds from $30 to $100 and from $150 to $500 and allowing billing agents to be treated as intermediaries for the purposes of the ITC information rules; and
(l) extending the 100% GST rebate in respect of new purpose-built rental housing to certain cooperative housing corporations.
It also implements an excise tax measure by creating a joint election mechanism to specify who is eligible to claim a rebate of excise tax for goods purchased by provinces for their own use.
Part 4 implements certain excise measures by
(a) allowing vaping product licensees to import packaged vaping products for stamping by the licensee and entry into the Canadian duty-paid market as of January 1, 2024;
(b) permitting all cannabis licensees to elect to remit excise duties on a quarterly rather than a monthly basis, starting from the quarter that began on April 1, 2023;
(c) amending the marking requirements for vaping products to ensure that the volume of the vaping substance is marked on the package;
(d) requiring that a person importing vaping products must be at least 18 years old; and
(e) introducing administrative penalties for certain infractions related to the vaping taxation framework.
Part 5 enacts and amends several Acts in order to implement various measures.
Subdivision A of Division 1 of Part 5 amends Subdivision A of Division 16 of Part 6 of the Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 1 to clarify the scope of certain non-financial activities in which federal ‚financial institutions may engage and to remove certain discrepancies between the English and French versions of that Act.
Subdivision B of Division 1 of Part 5 amends the Trust and Loan Companies Act , the Bank Act and the Insurance Companies Act to, among other things, permit federal financial institutions governed by those Acts to hold certain meetings by virtual means without having to obtain a court order and to permit voting during those meetings by virtual means.
Division 2 of Part 5 amends the Canada Labour Code to, among other things, provide a leave of absence of three days in the event of a pregnancy loss and modify certain provisions related to bereavement leave.
Division 3 of Part 5 enacts the Canada Water Agency Act . That Act establishes the Canada Water Agency, whose role is to assist the Minister of the Environment in exercising or performing that Minister’s powers, duties and functions in relation to fresh water. The Division also makes consequential amendments to other Acts.
Division 4 of Part 5 amends the Tobacco and Vaping Products Act to, among other things,
(a) authorize the making of regulations respecting fees or charges to be paid by tobacco and vaping product manufacturers for the purpose of recovering the costs incurred by His Majesty in right of Canada in relation to the carrying out of the purpose of that Act;
(b) provide for related administration and enforcement measures; and
(c) require information relating to the fees or charges to be made available to the public.
Division 5 of Part 5 amends the Canadian Payments Act to, among other things, provide that additional persons are entitled to be members of the Canadian Payments Association and clarify the composition of that Association’s Stakeholder Advisory Council.
Division 6 of Part 5 amends the Competition Act to, among other things,
(a) modernize the merger review regime, including by modifying certain notification rules, clarifying that Act’s application to labour markets, allowing the Competition Tribunal to consider the effect of changes in market share and the likelihood of coordination between competitors following a merger, extending the limitation period for mergers that were not the subject of a notification to the Commissioner of Competition and placing a temporary restraint on the completion of certain mergers until the Tribunal has disposed of any application for an interim order;
(b) improve the effectiveness of the provisions that address anti-competitive conduct, including by allowing the Commissioner to review the effects of past agreements and arrangements, ensuring that an order related to a refusal to deal may address a refusal to supply a means of diagnosis or repair and ensuring that representations of a product’s benefits for protecting or restoring the environment must be supported by adequate and proper tests and that representations of a business or business activity for protecting or restoring the environment must be supported by adequate and proper substantiation;
(c) strengthen the enforcement framework, including by creating new remedial orders, such as administrative monetary penalties, with respect to those collaborations that harm competition, by creating a civilly enforceable procedure to address non-compliance with certain provisions of that Act and by broadening the classes of persons who may bring private cases before the Tribunal and providing for the availability of monetary payments as a remedy in those cases; and
(d) provide for new procedures, such as the certification of agreements or arrangements related to protecting the environment and a remedial process for reprisal actions.
The Division also amends the Competition Tribunal Act to prevent the Competition Tribunal from awarding costs against His Majesty in right of Canada, except in specified circumstances.
Finally, the Division makes a consequential amendment to one other Act.
Division 7 of Part 5 amends the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act to exclude from their application prescribed public post-secondary educational institutions.
Subdivision A of Division 8 of Part 5 amends the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act to, among other things,
(a) provide that, if a person or entity referred to in section 5 of that Act has reasonable grounds to suspect possible sanctions evasion, the relevant information is reported to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada;
(b) add reporting requirements for persons and entities providing certain services in respect of private automatic banking machines;
(c) require declarations respecting money laundering, the financing of terrorist activities and sanctions evasion to be made in relation to the importation and exportation of goods; and
(d) authorize the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada to disclose designated information to the Department of the Environment and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, subject to certain conditions.
It also amends the Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1 in relation to the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act and makes consequential amendments to other Acts and a regulation.
Subdivision B of Division 8 of Part 5 amends the Criminal Code to, among other things,
(a) in certain circumstances, provide that a court may infer the knowledge or belief or recklessness required in relation to the offence of laundering proceeds of crime and specify that it is not necessary for the prosecutor to prove that the accused knew, believed they knew or was reckless as to the specific nature of the designated offence;
(b) remove, in the context of the special warrants and restraint order in relation to proceeds of crime, the requirement for the Attorney General to give an undertaking, as well as permit a judge to attach conditions to a special warrant for search and seizure of property that is proceeds of crime; and
(c) modify certain provisions relating to the production order for financial data to include elements specific to accounts associated with digital assets.
It also makes consequential amendments to the Seized Property Management Act and the Forfeited Property Sharing Regulations .
Division 9 of Part 5 retroactively amends section 42 of the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act to specify the payments about which information must be published on a Government of Canada website, as well as the information that must be published.
Division 10 of Part 5 amends the Public Sector Pension Investment Board Act to increase the number of directors in the Public Sector Pension Investment Board, as well as to provide for consultation with the portion of the National Joint Council of the Public Service of Canada that represents employees when certain candidates are included on the list for proposed appointment as directors.
Division 11 of Part 5 enacts the Department of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Act , which establishes the Department of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities, confers on the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities various responsibilities relating to public infrastructure and confers on the Minister of Housing various responsibilities relating to housing and the reduction and prevention of homelessness. The Division also makes consequential amendments to other Acts and repeals the Canada Strategic Infrastructure Fund Act .
Division 12 of Part 5 amends the Employment Insurance Act to, among other things, create a benefit of 15 weeks for claimants who are carrying out responsibilities related to
(a) the placement with the claimant of one or more children for the purpose of adoption; or
(b) the arrival of one or more new-born children of the claimant into the claimant’s care, in the case where the person who will be giving or gave birth to the child or children is not, or is not intended to be, a parent of the child or children.
The Division also amends the Canada Labour Code to create a leave of absence of up to 16 weeks for an employee to carry out such responsibilities.

Fall Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2023

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

I could not even hear what the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona was saying, so I will ask him to repeat it.

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

Madam Speaker, I am sorry I was not loud enough the first time.

I was wondering aloud if, when the leader of the Conservative Party decides to get his first job outside politics, he will be a—

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

That is not a point of order, but a point of debate.

The hon. Leader of the Opposition.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, so says the guy who has been living off a parliamentary paycheque since he was born, because his dad was a member of Parliament. He still is.

The reality is that the member for Kings—Hants was among those Liberal MPs banging on the door, begging the Prime Minister to relent on his carbon tax.

The Prime Minister, shaking on the ground, finally agreed to relent. Out he walked to an unannounced, unscheduled press conference, without any written materials. It was not even in his itinerary moments earlier. He announced that he would put in a temporary three-year pause, but just for some people, in regions where his poll numbers were plummeting and his caucus was revolting. There is now that temporary pause on the carbon tax, a carve-out.

His environment minister said there would be no more carve-outs. There already have been. For example, there is no carbon tax on the industrial sector in Canada. It has a carve-out. There is no carbon tax on large cement plants or concrete factories—

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

The hon. member for Jonquière is rising on a point of order.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Madam Speaker, I do not know if there is a problem with the interpretation, but this is very confusing. The member is talking about a documentary and a carbon tax that does not apply. I do not know whether it is a problem with the interpretation, but perhaps the Leader of the Opposition could speak a little more slowly. It is difficult for the francophones to understand what he is talking about.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, this is not a language issue. It is just that the Bloc Québécois does not understand common sense. That is the problem.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Madam Speaker, on a point of order, can the member for Carleton tell us if he will be continuing, so I can ask my question when he actually has a chance to re-engage on this?

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Madam Speaker, on a point of order, I would ask for the unanimous consent of the House to let the leader of the official opposition finish this wonderful speech, which is teaching us such great and marvellous things.

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

Does the hon. member have unanimous consent?

[Some hon. members]

No.

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

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I truly believe if you ask again, people would be so excited to hear the end of the story from the member for Kings—Hants.

[Some hon. members]

No.

The House resumed from December 12, 2023, consideration of the motion that Bill C-59, An Act to implement certain provisions of the fall economic statement tabled in Parliament on November 21, 2023 and certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, 2023, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

Happy new year, Mr. Speaker.

This is my first time rising in the House in 2024, and I want to wish everyone a happy new year.

It is 2024, and the Prime Minister is not worth the cost. That is the reality. That was the reality in 2023 and 2022, but the cost keeps going up every year.

That is why the Conservative Party has a very focused common-sense plan. We have four priorities that we want to work on in Parliament, and they are to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop crime.

After eight years in office, this Prime Minister has managed to drive up the cost of living at the fastest pace in 40 years by doubling the national debt and printing $600 billion. He has increased inflation and interest rates at the expense of the working class and our seniors, and he did so with the support of the Bloc Québécois. The Bloc Québécois completely agrees with the exorbitant spending increases and the cost of government, which are creating a burden for Quebeckers. The Bloc Québécois voted in favour of all of this government spending in the fall of 2023. It supported the tax increases on gas, which punish Quebec farmers and workers.

The common-sense Conservative Party is the only one offering an alternative to this destructive and costly policy implemented on the backs of Quebeckers.

First, we will eliminate the second carbon tax, which does indeed apply to Quebec.

Second, we will control spending by eliminating waste. We are going to get rid of the $35-billion infrastructure bank, which has not delivered a single project for Canadians. We will get rid of the ArriveCAN app and the so-called green fund which, according to the officials involved, is now a scandal on par with the sponsorship scandal. We will cut spending on consultants, who now cost every Canadian family $1,400. In eight years, this Prime Minister has doubled the amount spent on outside consultants. These are extraordinary costs that do not produce results for Canadians. It is work that could have been done by the government, by public servants, whose numbers have ballooned by 50%.

We are going to introduce a common-sense law, a dollar-for-dollar law. Every time ministers in my government increase spending by one dollar, they are going to have to find one dollar in savings to offset that spending. Instead of increasing the national debt, inflation and taxes, we are going to cap spending. Once the government is forced to reduce the cost that falls on the backs of our people, it will enable workers, businesses and our economy to grow.

Let us talk about our workers. There is a war on work right now. Workers are being punished with sky-high tax rates that claw back more and more of every dollar they earn. A common-sense Conservative government will lower taxes and reward work here in Canada, for our workers, small businesses and all Canadians, so that we can be a country that rewards work.

We will protect the paycheques of ordinary Canadians and ensure that they can earn bigger paycheques by doing away with unconstitutional laws that prevent natural resource projects from going ahead. We will allow Quebeckers to build dams and develop mines and other projects that generate wealth for our country, instead of sending money to China or other countries that are dictatorships. We will keep that money for ourselves, so that Canadians can have bigger paycheques. We are also going to build houses.

After eight years under this Prime Minister, the cost of housing has doubled, rent has doubled, the money needed for a mortgage on an average house has doubled, and the down payment needed to buy that same house has also doubled. In Montreal, it has tripled.

After eight years under this Prime Minister, the cost of a two-bedroom apartment in Montreal has increased from $760, when I was the housing minister eight years ago, to $2,200 now. Red tape has blocked the construction of 25,000 housing units over the past six years. Thousands of construction projects across the country are in limbo because of red tape. In Vancouver, whose former NDP mayor is incredibly incompetent, it is even worse. He added additional costs of $1.3 million to each housing development built. These increases are tied directly to the red tape and taxes charged by the governments.

In Quebec City, I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Trudel with my Quebec lieutenant. He told me that $500 of the monthly rent for these apartments goes toward taxes and red tape, the costs charged by the government. For apartments that rent for $1,000, half of that amount covers only the taxes and the bureaucracy. That cost is too high. That is why a common-sense Conservative government will encourage municipalities to speed up construction instead of obstructing it.

The federal government pays out $5 billion to municipalities through the sales tax program. Quebec receives about $1 billion. There are already a lot of conditions attached to that money, a lot of federal conditions. However, those conditions do not include accelerating construction. That is why we are going to work with the Quebec government on a new infrastructure agreement that incentivizes construction. We will tie the amount of money that each municipality receives to the number of houses and apartments completed in the previous year. That would mean that municipalities like Victoriaville, Saguenay and Trois-Rivières would receive substantial bonuses, because there has been a huge boom in construction there. Last year, for example, construction increased by 30% in those municipalities. That should be rewarded. Real estate companies are paid according to the number of homes they sell. Construction companies are paid according to the number of houses they build. We should pay local bureaucracies on the basis of the number of homes they allow to be built. This would encourage the acceleration of construction.

We should also insist that every transit station be located near apartment buildings. Transit stations should be surrounded by large apartment towers. Across Canada, in Vancouver, Montreal and elsewhere, we see beautiful transit stations, yet there is almost no housing around them. It is ridiculous.

The federal government provides funding, but often a third or a half of the amount needed. We should insist that this money not be invested if there are no apartment buildings where our seniors and young people can live next to a public transit station. That is how we are going to speed up home construction. We are going to insist that CMHC provide funding for apartment buildings within two months, not two years. Executives should be fired unless they meet that deadline. Finally, these homes should be located in safe communities.

After eight years under the leadership of this Prime Minister, crime has increased by nearly 40%. He has increased crime by allowing the same small groups of repeat offenders to keep committing the same crimes over and over, and by letting them out on bail the very same day they are arrested.

A Conservative government will replace bail with jail. We will target real criminals who use guns and seal our borders instead of targeting hunters and sport shooters. We will treat and rehabilitate people with drug addictions instead of decriminalizing crack, cocaine and other drugs, as the Prime Minister has already done in partnership with the NDP in British Columbia.

What I have been describing here is common sense. This is the kind of common sense used by ordinary Canadians. For decades, there was a common-sense Liberal-Conservative consensus that led to our extraordinary success. A Conservative government will rebuild that consensus to give Canadians back the country they love and deserve. That is our goal. We are going to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and, finally, stop the crime. It is common sense, and that is what we are going to do.

Madam Speaker, I wish you a happy new year. It is 2024 and the Prime Minister is still not worth the cost. He is not worth the crime. He is not worth giving up the country that we know and love. After eight years, everything costs more, crime is running rampant, housing costs have doubled, the country is more divided than ever before, and the Prime Minister seeks to distract and attack anyone who disagrees with him in order to make people forget how miserable he has made life in this country after nearly a decade in power.

Our common-sense counterpoint is very focused. In this session of Parliament, we will fight to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. That is how we are going to turn around the mess the Prime Minister has created in eight years.

Let us quickly touch upon that mess. After eight years of the Prime Minister, housing costs have doubled. This is after he promised that those housing costs would go down. In fact, they rose 40% faster than incomes, the worst gap in the G7 by far and the second worst among all 40 OECD nations. It is twice as bad as the OECD average, with roughly a quarter of OECD countries actually seeing housing affordability improve over the last eight years. Here in Canada, under the Prime Minister, we have seen it worsen at the fastest rate in the entire G7.

The Prime Minister has created a situation where only 26% of Canadians are able to afford a single-family home. It now takes 25 years to save up for a down payment on the average home for the average Toronto family, when 25 years used to be the time it took to pay off a mortgage. After eight years of the Prime Minister, it is now more affordable to buy a 20-bedroom castle in Scotland than a two-bedroom condo in Kitchener.

After eight years of the Prime Minister, a criminal defence lawyer reported on Twitter that numerous clients have asked if she can help extend their prison sentences so they do not have to live in this housing market and find a place to rent. In other words, the Prime Minister's housing market is worse than prison by the judgment of several people who actually live in prison.

After eight years of the Prime Minister, we have 16 seniors crammed into a four-bedroom home in Oshawa according to its food bank, which told me it had to house middle-class seniors together. They are all losing their homes because of the incredible rent increase the Prime Minister's policies have caused.

We have homelessness skyrocketing across the country. Every town and centre now has homeless encampments. Halifax has 30 homeless encampments for one medium-sized city. After eight years of the Prime Minister, who would have imagined that we would have 30 homeless encampments in one city, but that is the misery that he has created through his policies that are not worth the cost of housing.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister makes the problem worse. He gives tax dollars to incompetent mayors and bureaucracies to block homebuilding. The worst incompetence, of course, has been by the former mayor and the present mayor of Toronto, and the former mayor of Vancouver blocking construction in those cities and making it uninhabitable for many of the people who should be able to afford a home. We now have the second-slowest building permits of any country in the OECD. That is why we have the fewest homes in the G7, even with the most land by far to build on.

We were told that the media darling Minister of Housing, who was brought in in the fall, was going to fix all of this. He was going to hold photo ops right across the country, and all of a sudden there would be more building. What happened was that housing construction actually went down. There was a 7% reduction in housing last year under the leadership of the current housing minister.

Is it any surprise, when the guy who destroyed our immigration system was put in charge of housing, that we got a destructive result? It is not me accusing him of ruining the immigration system. It is his own Liberal successor. The current Liberal Minister of Immigration says that the system is out of control. In his own words, he claims that his predecessor was giving study visas for students to come and study at what he calls “puppy mills”. Those are his terms. I would never have used that term. It is insulting. They are actually human beings, not dogs. That is the language we get from the current immigration minister to describe the chaos that his own predecessor caused in the international student program and the temporary foreign worker program, not to mention countless other programs that have now been overwhelmed by fraudsters, shady consultants and bureaucratic incompetence. Now they take the guy who ruined all of that and say that this is the guy they are bringing in to resolve the housing crisis.

It is no wonder it gets worse and worse by the day. The Liberals' only defence is that they are spending lots of money. Failing is bad and failing expensively is even worse. That is what the Prime Minister has done after eight years. It is not only in housing. It is in generalized inflation. After eight years, inflation hit 40-year highs. After eight years, the Prime Minister has increased the cost of food so quickly that there are now two million Canadians, a record-smashing number, who are required to go to food banks in a single month. We have students forced to live in homeless shelters in order to afford food. We have seniors who say they have to live in tents in order to be able to shop and feed themselves, because food prices have risen so high.

In Toronto, one in 10 Torontonians are now going to a food bank, enough to fill the Rogers Centre seven times. If the monthly users of the food bank in Toronto alone were to go to the Rogers Centre, the place would have to be filled seven separate times, just to accommodate them all. Who would have thought we would have this many hungry people in Canada's biggest city, a city that has elected no one but Liberals since 2015? This is the result from that.

In that same city, crime and chaos rage out of control. In the adjoining suburbs, we now have stories of extortion, where small businesses receive letters saying that if they do not fork over big dollars to international crime syndicates, they will be shot at, their houses will be burned, their families will be targeted, and the government does nothing to protect them. Who would have thought that Canada would be so vulnerable to this kind of criminality and chaos that these foreign criminal syndicates would think Canada so weak and so easy to target that they could go after innocent small business leaders and their families in order to shake them down for money? Yet that is what has happened.

These same business owners go to bed at night with one eye open, because they know their car could be stolen as they sleep. I told some stories yesterday to the caucus, incredible stories of people in Brampton whose cars just vanished in the middle of the night. The cars go over to Montreal where they are put on a ship and sent off to the Middle East, Africa or Europe where they are resold at a profit. They are not even inspected as they go onto the ships in these containers.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister spends billions of dollars trying to buy back the legitimate property of licensed law-abiding firearms owners. He believes that the problem is the hunter from Nunavut or the professional sport shooter from Nanaimo, when in fact the real problem is the criminals.

Common-sense Conservatives are going to put an end to this madness. We are going to bring home the country we know and love. Let us go through the common-sense plan.

We are going to bring home lower prices by axing the carbon tax. It starts with passing Bill C-234 to axe the tax on farmers and food so farmers can make the food and Canadians can afford to eat it. Let us pass the bill unamended today and let Canadians eat affordable food. It is very easy. The House of Commons passed it once before. The Senate, under duress and pressure from the current Prime Minister, then sent it back with unnecessary amendments. Now the other opposition parties are flip-flopping and wavering. They agree in principle with the Liberal plan to quadruple the carbon tax, but say they might consider giving farmers a break on it. Now they are not so sure. They are siding with the costly Prime Minister again on keeping the tax on our farmers. Every time our people go to the grocery store and see those rising prices they will know that the NDP has betrayed working-class people in favour of greedy government with higher taxes on farmers and the single moms who are struggling to feed their families.

We are going to axe the tax on home heat not just for some or for a short time, but for everybody, everywhere, always. Common-sense Conservatives call on the Prime Minister to be consistent and not just temporarily pause the tax in regions where his polls are plummeting and his caucus is revolting, but rather let us axe the tax for every Canadian household to heat their homes in this devastatingly cold winter. It is incredible how cold it was in Edmonton, -50°C, and the Liberal member for Edmonton Centre voted to tax the heat of Edmontonians. Not only that, the Liberal member for Edmonton Centre wants to quadruple the carbon tax on the home heat of Edmontonians, so over the next several years, as the winter cold comes in and people crank up their heat, their bills will rise increasingly faster. In some places now the carbon tax is more expensive than the actual gas that people are buying. We are going to be sharing the bills that some of my caucus members have so that everybody knows how badly the Prime Minister and his NDP coalition are ripping off Canadians for the crime of heating themselves in -50°C weather. We are the only party that will axe the tax for them and for everyone, everywhere, always.

Our common-sense plan to bring home lower prices includes capping the spending that has driven inflation, the $600-billion increase in spending and debt, which means printing money. Printing money bids up the goods we buy and the interest we pay. In fact, government spending is up 75% since the Prime Minister took office. He has nearly doubled the cost of the government at a time when the economy has barely grown at all. In fact, it is shrinking while the government is expanding, which means it is gobbling up an increasing share of a shrinking pie and there is less left for everyone else. Right now the government is rich and the people are poor, because the Prime Minister cannot stop spending, and his greedy NDP coalition counterparts push him to spend even more of other people's money. Our common-sense plan would cap spending and cut waste. We would get rid of the $35-billion Infrastructure Bank, the $54-million ArriveCAN app and the billion-dollar so-called green fund, which is really a slush fund.

We would cut back on the money wasted on consultant insiders, who now consume 21 billion tax dollars a year, an amount that is equal to $1,400 for every family in Canada. We would cut back on this waste to balance the budget, and bring down inflation and interest rates, so that Canadians can eat, heat and house themselves.

We are going to unleash the growth of our economy. Instead of creating more cash, we would create more of what cash buys. We have the most powerful resources, perhaps the greatest supply of natural resources per capita of any country on earth, and we are very good at harvesting those resources to the benefit of our people and our environment at the same time.

The Prime Minister, with the help of the NDP, has been driving the production to other countries, where they pollute more, burn more coal and add more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. The Prime Minister would drive the production away from Canadians, who use among the cleanest electricity grids on Planet Earth, instead of bringing it home to this country. Our common-sense plan would repeal Bill C-69 and replace it with a new law that would not only protect the environment and consult first nations but also get projects built so that we can bring home paycheques for our people and take the money away from the dirty dictators of the world.

I was able to recently announce our new candidate in the Skeena—Bulkley Valley riding, the great Ellis Ross, former chief of the Haisla Nation. He is responsible for bringing Canada the biggest-ever investment in its history, which is the LNG Canada project. It is a project that was approved by the former Harper government, and the only reason it was able to go ahead under this government is that it gave the project an exemption from the carbon tax. Had the tax applied, the project never would have occurred. Had Bill C-69, the anti-resource law, been in place, the project never would have happened.

By the government's own admission, this project will reduce greenhouse gas emissions around the world by millions of tonnes because it will displace dirty, coal-fired electricity in Asia by sending clean, green Canadian natural gas, liquefied using hydroelectricity and our natural cold weather, and sent abroad on our shortest shipping distance, which means burning less fossil fuels to get it to market. This will displace more emission-intensive forms of energy in countries where they need to cut back. That is a solution to fight climate change and protect our environment, and thank God we had the visionary leadership of the great Ellis Ross to make that project happen, along with that of Stephen Harper.

Unfortunately, the Prime Minister has blocked every other LNG project from coming to fruition. There were 18 of these projects on the table when he took office, not one of them is completed. Only the aforementioned—