Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise to resume my intervention on Bill C-8.
Earlier, I noted that Parliament is supposed to be a legislature based on collaboration, not coercion. I also highlighted how important the role of Parliament is in scrutinizing the spending of public funds. Now I want to bring this around to something that the leader of the NDP, the member for Burnaby South, said just last week in his speech on the budget.
He said that in the past couple of years, Canadians have had to deal with the pandemic and the growing cost of living, which is at a crisis level now. The cost of everything has gone up, from filling up our cars to buying groceries to finding an affordable home and to paying rent. On top of that, there is a war that makes everyone across the world feel less safe. In this context, Canadians sent us to Parliament, he said, in a minority government, to get them help and to find ways to help them solve the problems they are dealing with.
My hon. colleague then went on to claim victory, touting potential dental care as a surefire sign of victory. All it took was surrendering the most basic function of parliamentarians to the Liberal government, and that is their ability to scrutinize public expenditures. This is what their confidence and supply agreement necessitates, the automatic support of money bills. In my opinion, that is not a win for Canadian. That is an abstract shirking of the most basic duties of a parliamentarian. I find it incredibly difficult to believe that my colleagues in all parties are satisfied with the content of this legislation. Out of a 124-page bill, there is a singular area for improvement and nothing else that they would like to see added to the legislation.
On this side of the House, this is not the case. For example, at committee my colleague from Northumberland—Peterborough South raised concerns about the inequitable nature of the distribution of the carbon tax rebate for farmers. He rightfully pointed out that a dairy farmer in Stirling would have different expenses than a wheat farmer out in Saskatchewan. There are both regional differences and industrial differences, differences that the legislation does not differentiate. This was confirmed by Ms. Lindsay Gwyer, the director general of the legislation, tax legislation division in the tax policy branch at the Department of Finance.
Subsequent witnesses confirmed that the government's approach was not ideal. When asked whether his members supported the approach to the carbon tax rebate as laid out in the private member's bill of my colleague from Huron—Bruce, as opposed to the patchwork job in Bill C-8, Mark Agnew, of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce replied, “We'll take what we can get in the meantime, but certainly working towards Bill C-234 is what we hope can happen.”
My colleague from Calgary Centre rightfully questioned the value and efficacy of a 1% increase in housing tax. He said:
I cite in the House of Commons the example of British Columbia, where there is a municipal tax already on foreign transactions in the housing market of up to 2%, depending on the buyer, plus a provincial tax up to 3%, for a total of up to 5%. In addition, there is a 20% transfer tax on foreign buyers, and yet 7.7% of activity in the Vancouver real estate market is still being consumed by foreign buyers of real estate in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland.
These small taxes aren't having much of an effect on buying, unless we're looking ex post facto at this. How do you suppose an extra 1% jurisdictional overreach is going to solve the housing problem in Canada?
The response from the government official was, “I will just point out, very simply, that this is a tax, the purpose of which is to raise revenues. It's estimated that the tax will raise $735 million in revenues over the next five years.”
Another witness styled the tax as perfunctory, stating:
I would say at a very basic level that you are looking at with the cost of doing business is. In this case it's the business of crime. When you are talking about laundering millions of dollars, a 1% hit on that could be considered the cost of doing business.
This is why we talk about, as well, the need for penalties for money laundering to be highly substantive and not just seen as the cost of doing business, to properly dissuade money launderers from exploiting Canadian housing.
At a time when young Canadian families are living in their parents' basements because of the obscene increase in housing prices, this government comes in and increases it further, and not to combat foreign ownership or restrict purchasing, but to exclusively raise money to pay for its record spending.
It was interesting to have been able to approach this particular type of legislation with a different mindset than I had had previously. Armed with new information, we were able to contextualize how Bill C-8 would truly affect Canadians. Paired with the budget, Bill C-8 clearly signals what this government views as a priority and, unfortunately for many people across Canada, including struggling families in Hastings—Lennox and Addington, they are not included.
I had previously highlighted some areas I believe the government needs to focus on to best serve struggling Canadian families. This includes investment in rural infrastructure, taxation relief, cutting red tape and support for our agricultural sector. It is my firm belief that these are the most effective measures to get our economy going and stifle crippling inflation.
The record increase in inflation we experienced months ago has not subsided. The cost of fuel has continued to increase, and with that, the cost of living. Canadians need a government that will help them through this extremely difficult time. Through my eyes, Bill C-8 would not do that.
