Madam Speaker, historically, the powers that be have always used crises as an opportunity to build an increasingly unitary government and spread its tentacles. The so-called Canadian Confederation has always been predatory and oppressive.
This was true after the Patriotes rebellion of 1837 and 1838 was quashed by the Act of Union, which was sanctioned following the recommendation of the fundamentally racist Durham report. It was true after the world wars, when taxes that had officially been called temporary became permanent.
It was also true after the 1980 referendum on sovereignty-association, with the unilateral repatriation of the Constitution, which Quebec still has not signed. It was true after the 1995 referendum, when the government unilaterally cut provincial transfers. I remind members that Ottawa used its new surpluses to create a plethora of programs, while Quebec was forced to slash funding for public services.
It would have been really naive of us to believe that the government would not use the COVID‑19 crisis to spread its tentacles into new areas it had no reason to be in.
Budget 2021 gave us a taste of that by setting up a structure of federal intervention in areas under provincial jurisdiction. The Liberal-NDP alliance, the new ultracentralist coalition in power, will be more successful than ever at cloaking its subjugating and imperious ambitions in progressive language.
The 1% tax on underused housing owned by foreign developers proposed in Bill C-8 is a prime example of that.
I want to make one thing clear. This is a good idea in and of itself. I had the opportunity to talk about it a few weeks ago, and I said that it is a good idea on paper, in principle, because it seeks to prevent speculators from buying and selling based on the ups and downs of the market. There is no doubt that real estate speculation is a real problem right now, given that the housing situation is on the brink of disaster.
It should be noted, however, that Ottawa has been shirking its responsibility to provide appropriate funding for the construction of social and affordable housing since the 1990s and that those cuts deprived Quebec of 80,000 housing units. That little dig at the federal government aside, the tax on real estate speculation is a good measure, even if it is a very minor one.
However, just because an idea has the potential to address a legitimate problem does not mean that the federal government should violate Quebec's sovereignty and interfere in its jurisdictions. That is why we are calling this tax the “invasion tax”.
On February 17, 2022, constitutional expert Patrick Taillon explained to the Standing Committee on Finance that this idea comes with some serious negative consequences.
The ultimate goal of this so-called invasion tax is to set some parameters surrounding the right to housing, which is an explicit and exclusive jurisdiction of Quebec and the provinces, and the government wants to do so without any prior consultation or agreement with the provinces.
I remind members that successive governments in Ottawa have boasted about engaging in co-operative federalism, which is a chimera. The concept of co-operative federalism has taken on several names over the years, but it is actually asymmetrical or open federalism. This would not be my choice, as I would opt for independence over unco-operative federalism. This is a particularly centralizing direction for federalism.
Mr. Taillon explained that if this legislation is meant to regulate the right to housing, then it is likely unconstitutional. The pith of the bill goes beyond the jurisdiction of Parliament; it is a provincial jurisdiction.
Ottawa used its usual creativity to try to find a way around the division of powers that it has an obligation to respect, so this is an attempt to disguise a regulatory measure that falls under Quebec's jurisdiction as a tax measure.
This is the very first time that Ottawa has dared to interfere in the area of property taxes by seeking to penalize non-resident, non-Canadian second home owners. If this bill is directly related to the housing act, then we must conclude that it is unconstitutional.
It goes without saying that no one here is challenging the government's right to impose new taxes. If the primary goal is not to generate revenue but instead to limit or discourage certain behaviours related to real estate speculation, then this is more of a regulatory measure than a new tax, and it must be associated with an area of jurisdiction, in this case housing, which has always been governed by the provinces.
Without an agreement with Quebec and the provinces or their collaboration, a federal property tax would compromise the fiscal balance, which I would politely describe as already being fragile. Why would we let Ottawa borrow a tax tool that is not its own from the various local authorities, namely the municipalities and school boards, that need this tool themselves?
That imbalance will only grow in the coming years, especially given rising health care costs that Ottawa is still refusing to finance appropriately. It is important to emphasize that the Parliamentary Budget Officer's Fiscal Sustainability Report, which was released in June 2021, confirmed that the federal government still has financial flexibility, in contrast to the provinces, which have none and are in fact facing long-term viability problems. This really is not the time to be interfering in their business.
History has made it very clear that, once Ottawa gets its hands on tax fields, it never lets go. Been there, done that. Take corporate income tax, for example, which was a supposedly temporary measure brought in after the First World War, or personal income tax, another supposedly temporary measure brought in after the Second World War.
This property tax sets a dangerous precedent because Ottawa will inevitably have to set up various delegation of authority tools and infrastructure to manage it. This tax does not work like other federal taxes, so it will require new systems. As Mr. Taillon explained, once the mechanism to administer property tax is in place, it will be hard for Ottawa to resist the urge to look for more good ideas to fill that space.
Given the new ultracentralist coalition in power, I think I am entitled to feel that this will inevitably hurt the provinces, municipalities and school boards.
My political party proposed a single amendment to address this issue. We tried to find a compromise by proposing that the property tax measures apply only if the province agrees. That would just make sense, but unfortunately, the Bloc Québécois's amendment was deemed out of order by the Liberal committee chair, without even being debated. That is too bad.
In conclusion, taxation powers are directly connected to political sovereignty. In usurping an exclusive jurisdiction of the Quebec state, the federal regime is becoming more and more oppressive and Quebec is losing its agency and its power. Independence has its price, to be sure, but dependence is even more costly. This invasion tax is yet more evidence of that.
