Bill C-8

Economic and Fiscal Update Implementation Act, 2021

An Act to implement certain provisions of the economic and fiscal update tabled in Parliament on December 14, 2021 and other measures

Part 1 amends the Income Tax Act and the Income Tax Regulations in order to
(a) introduce a new refundable tax credit for eligible businesses on qualifying ventilation expenses made to improve air quality;
(b) expand the travel component of the northern residents deduction by giving all northern residents the option to claim up to $1,200 in eligible travel expenses even if the individual has not received travel assistance from their employer;
(c) expand the School Supplies Tax Credit from 15% to 25% and expand the eligibility criteria to include electronic devices used by eligible educators; and
(d) introduce a new refundable tax credit to return fuel charge proceeds to farming businesses in backstop jurisdictions.
Part 2 enacts the Underused Housing Tax Act . This Act implements an annual tax of 1% on the value of vacant or underused residential property directly or indirectly owned by non-resident non-Canadians. It sets out rules for the purpose of establishing owners’ liability for the tax. It also sets out applicable reporting and filing requirements. Finally, to promote compliance with its provisions, this Act includes modern administration and enforcement provisions aligned with those found in other taxation statutes.
Part 3 provides for a six-year limitation or prescription period for the recovery of amounts owing with respect to a loan provided under the Canada Emergency Business Account program established by Export Development Canada.
Part 4 authorizes payments to be made out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund for the purpose of supporting ventilation improvement projects in schools.
Part 5 authorizes payments to be made out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund for the purpose of supporting coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) proof-of-vaccination initiatives.
Part 6 authorizes the Minister of Health to make payments of up to $1.72 billion out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund in relation to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) tests. It also sets out reporting requirements for the Minister of Health.
Part 7 amends the Employment Insurance Act to specify the maximum number of weeks for which benefits may be paid in a benefit period to certain seasonal workers.

Economic and Fiscal Update Implementation Act, 2021

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for a very insightful speech. I agree with most of the points she brought up.

I am disappointed that the Liberals are blaming the provinces, because as she pointed out, it is a partnership and we have to make this money available to get it on the ground. It seems that they are failing over and over again. She also pointed out the challenge with offshore money flipping. I am getting emails with concerns that we need to tighten that up, and I am hearing a lot from seniors.

I wonder if she could expand on the issue of housing for seniors and the problems they are having with inflation, because it is not just housing, but food and everything else that is going up. Making ends meet seems to be impossible. Could she expand on the issue of inflation?

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Madam Speaker, so many seniors are struggling right now with the rising cost of living. I hear from them every day. It is the cost of food and medication, which is one of the many reasons we need a truly universal pharmacare program.

I also hear from a ton of seniors who have just recently experienced clawbacks in the GIS. Those seniors will now have to wait until May for the government to fix its policy mistakes, its policy incoherence. They are struggling. I spoke to a senior who was in a motel. He was about to lose the roof over his head because the government is delaying paying back the money from his GIS clawback. It is heartbreaking talking to these seniors. The government needs to do more.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Madam Speaker, I really enjoyed my colleague's speech. I think she understands that the housing crisis is one of the most serious crises in Canada right now, because she sees it in her riding, just as I see it in Longueuil and throughout Quebec. We are facing a health crisis and a climate crisis, but we also have a housing crisis.

A Scotiabank study released two weeks ago reported that there is a shortage of 1.8 million housing units in Canada right now, relative to the G7 average, and Scotiabank is not exactly an extreme left-wing group that campaigns for the right to housing or funds the NDP.

We in the Bloc Québécois believe that it is time for the government to recognize the magnitude of this crisis and allocate 1% of its total budget to the current housing crisis.

I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on that.

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member.

I apologize for not being able to answer him in French.

I think it is a bold idea. We need more bold ideas from the government. Unfortunately, it has a track record of big promises but no follow-through.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Madam Speaker, I rise this morning to speak to Bill C-8, which would enact tax and spending measures outlined in the government's fiscal and economic update introduced in December.

The Liberal government has now been in office for more than six years. Six years in, we have an inflation crisis, an affordability crisis and a supply chain crisis. The government has presided over massive deficits and massive debt. They are historical levels of debt. In two short years, the government has managed to double the national debt to a staggering $1.4 trillion. Forty per cent of Canadians are living paycheque to paycheque, $200 away from insolvency. These same hard-working everyday Canadians are being hit hard by the Liberal government. They are being hit hard in terms of their spending power being diminished as a result of 30-year-high inflation, and they are being hit hard with Liberal tax hikes, including carbon tax and CPP tax hikes. After six years, that is the sad state of affairs in this country under the failed policies and failed leadership of this failed Prime Minister.

What has Bill C-8 done to address these significant challenges? In short, it has done very little. Instead, it does what the government only knows how to do, and that is to spend and spend some more. Bill C-8 would provide a fire hose of $71 billion in new spending. That is on top of the nearly $600 billion of spending over the last two years, a third of which was completely unrelated to COVID as determined by the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

How much is $71 billion? To put it in some context, it is about 40% more than the government provides to provinces in health care spending by way of the Canada health transfer. It is double what the government collects annually in GST. In short, $71 billion is a staggering amount of new spending and new debt, and for what purpose?

The Parliamentary Budget Officer does not think this fire hose of new spending is a good idea. Indeed, he recently stated:

It appears to me that the rationale for the additional spending initially set aside as ‘stimulus’ no longer exists.

The rationale no longer exists. All this will do is pour gasoline on the fire that is inflation, making life even less affordable for everyday Canadians.

Among the measures of new spending provided for in Bill C-8 is $300 million over the next three years to fund the Liberal government's vaccine mandates. Less than a year ago, the Prime Minister ruled out the imposition of such mandates. He then flip-flopped on that commitment, and when he imposed the mandates, they were understood to be temporary. We have now learned that they are not temporary, and that the government intends to make them permanent.

This is alarming. These vaccine mandates have done nothing to keep Canadians safe. What they have done is destroy lives and livelihoods. Hard-working, law-abiding, tax-paying Canadians have lost their jobs and lost benefits they paid into their entire working lives. These same Canadians have had their mobility rights infringed upon. They are unable to get on airplanes or trains, which inhibits their ability to travel freely within Canada, never mind leave the country.

This is in a free and democratic country. If one would have described what the government is doing to fellow Canadians in Canada two short years ago, no one would have believed them, but here we are today. These mandates infringe upon the medical privacy rights of Canadians, and they infringe upon the ability of Canadians to make individual health decisions free of state coercion. These mandates without more are punitive, discriminatory and un-Canadian, and they could not be more ill-timed because in much of the rest of the world, governments are moving in the opposite direction. The U.K. has lifted all restrictions. Most EU countries have lifted all or most restrictions. The majority of U.S. states have lifted all restrictions, many of which did so some time ago. Saskatchewan has announced it is lifting restrictions. Alberta is about to follow suit, but not this government under this Prime Minister.

Instead, he is doubling down with new permanent mandates, and he is expanding mandates to the transportation sector that will do nothing more, and are doing nothing more, than to exacerbate the serious supply chain issues that we face. For the Prime Minister, it is not about science. It is not about data. It is not about keeping Canadians safe. What it is about is dividing Canadians for short-term political gain and using COVID as a pretext to vastly expand the size, scope and control of government.

It does not have to be this way. In much of the rest of the world, it is not this way, and on this side of the House, we are going to do everything to ensure that it does not remain this way so that Canadians can once again take control of their lives against this massive state overreach.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate)]

Madam Speaker, I find it fascinating that the member would talk about adding fuel to the fire, when his entire speech about mandates, and the Prime Minister supposedly putting in these mandates that lock down the freedoms of people, is absolutely ludicrous.

The only mandate that the member is concerned about that actually relates to the federal government is the fact that we have to provide a vaccination certificate when we cross the border into Canada, which, by the way, we have to provide if we cross the border into the United States to start with. In order to be travelling back into Canada, we have to have already gone into the United States and shown our vaccination status.

All other mandates related to wearing masks, closing businesses and so forth have been set by the provinces. The member knows that, yet he accuses this side of throwing fuel on the fire.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Madam Speaker, I would respectfully say that the hon. member is misinformed. In fact, the mandate that he spoke of is one mandate, but it is not the only mandate. In my speech, I noted that if a person is not fully vaccinated they cannot get on a plane or train. Federally regulated employees have lost their jobs and they have lost benefits if they are not vaccinated. Those are punitive mandates that have had a real impact on hurting people, including constituents of mine, and I am going to fight for them in this place.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Madam Speaker, the economic update does not include any solutions to address the labour shortage or any ideas on how to increase productivity.

I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on that.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member is quite right. We have a significant backlog now of immigrants who are skilled workers and who are unable to get here to join the workforce. He is absolutely right that this is a serious issue that the government, despite spending a lot of money, has failed to address.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Madam Speaker, I know we have been talking for over a week now about what is going on outside. I am disappointed to hear what the member had to say. The mandates are in place to protect people: to protect health care workers and protect a system that is so overrun that it cannot keep up. It is to protect those who need the supports in other areas of our health care system, so they are able to access them.

I am absolutely in agreement that the government has not provided the health care transfers to the provinces that it needs to provide. This is something that started, however, with cuts by the Harper Conservative government.

Could the member speak about those needs in our health care system, and the need to better strengthen that system that so many Canadians rely upon and that so many health care workers are now in doubt about?

I am sorry. I am very frustrated, as many are, but we need to protect people and that is what mandates are supposed to do.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Madam Speaker, these mandates have not worked, but I do appreciate the hon. member's question about health care. I will note for her that, under the Harper government, health care transfers increased 6% annually through to 2014, every single year.

With respect to the $71 billion of new spending, there is no money for health care. This is at a time when we have a serious issue in terms of capacity that resulted in some of the restrictions and lockdown measures that provincial governments put into place. The ICU capacity is one-third that of the United States. When it comes to the OECD, we rank at the bottom, other than Mexico, in terms of ICU capacity. All of the provinces have been calling on the government to step up to the plate. All of the opposition parties are united on this, and the government, despite spending $71 billion, could not allocate more money to address this crisis.

[Marc Dalton, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am happy to speak to the bill, but I cannot say I am happy with the bill. However, I will start off with a few positive comments about the bill.

I am a teacher by profession. I know that one of the items here is a school supplies tax credit, which would increase the credit from 15% to 25% for teachers who spend on supplies out of their own pockets, including for electronic devices. I think it might be about $100 for the year that they would get back, so that is positive. School ventilation improvements in B.C. would come to about $11 million, so certainly the comfort and health of students is important. There is also the eligible air quality expenditures for businesses.

There are some carrots inside the bill, but that is to be expected because the Liberals, when the opposition might potentially vote against this, will ask us how we could vote against teachers and how we could do this and that when it is such a nice bill. These are just the carrots. It is the essence of the content of the bill that is very problematic.

One of the problems in the bill is that it would be adding $70 billion of inflationary fuel to the fire. Since the pandemic began there has been about $176 billion in increased expenditures beyond those that were COVID-related. That is very significant when our debt right now is about $1.2 trillion. The Liberals might yawn and say that for $1.2 trillion they can just print some more money and ask what the big difference is. There is a real impact being felt at the kitchen table, in homes, with seniors, with younger people and with people everywhere.

The policies from the current government, which has lost control of its expenditures, have an impact on the cost of living. Right now we are facing inflation of about 5%. The wage increase is about half of that, 2.4%, in the last year. As such, people are falling behind in paying their bills, and it is getting harder for them and for anybody who does shopping. I went shopping yesterday or the day before with my wife, and I was noticing that, at Costco and every store, everything is going up. The Liberals will say it is supply chain issues and a worldwide issue and deflect any criticism from themselves.

The fact of the matter is that their out-of-control spending has an impact. The Parliamentary Budget Officer was very clear about that and said, “It appears to me that the rationale for the additional spending initially set aside as ‘stimulus’ no longer exists”. Government deficits can and do contribute to inflation. The Liberals have more than doubled our debt load since they have been in. Think of all the prime ministers before this. Under the current Prime Minister it has more than doubled.

What is the problem with that? I think back to the eighties and nineties, when almost one-third of all the tax revenues from all sources, such as income tax and capital gains tax, went to pay for the interest charges on debt that had been accumulated. There are consequences to out-of-control spending, and it will only get worse because we are at historic lows as far as interest payments. However, as that increases, and the Bank of Canada governor has said that it will be going up, that will add to the debt and to the need for more revenues from people, because the government has to pay its interest charges.

More money spent on interest means less money spent on everything else, such as health care and infrastructure. All of these things have a real impact. The cost of living is going up $1,000 in just inflation alone, not including the hundreds of dollars more in CPP payments for individuals this year. It is difficult, but put the onus on this government.

When I was driving in the Vancouver area, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, gas was $1.78 a litre. Someone driving a pickup truck for work is looking at $200 in the Lower Mainland to fill up the tank, and if one has to fill up every week, it is very expensive. However, it is interesting that when demand goes down, prices go down, and when demand goes up, prices go up. There is an increased demand worldwide for oil and gas, but the approach of our Liberal government is that this is an industry of the past and we need to move on.

Canada has the third-highest proven reserves of oil and gas in the entire world, yet the Liberals want to phase it out. Ten per cent of our economy is based upon this, providing hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue and hundreds of thousands of jobs, yet this is to be phased out because it is not appropriate. We provide some of the cleanest energy in the world, yet the Liberals would rather close down the sector with all the jobs and import from Saudi Arabia or other countries via oil tanker than to produce it right here in this country. I think that is a real shame.

Right now, outside on the streets we have protests happening all across Canada. People are very upset about the direction of this government and what it is doing. The Liberals call people who are not vaccinated “anti-vaxxers” and inside the report, the finance minister said that it is about 20% of the population who are not vaccinated. Well, 20% of the population is over seven million Canadians and the Prime Minister, when he was being interviewed in Quebec, was questioning if we should tolerate these people. That is irresponsible, inflammatory and wrong. It is inappropriate. I could not believe it. That is terrible, and that is why there is frustration.

I know the Liberals will point to some radicals and, yes, there will be some that are extremists, but it is being felt. People are upset. They are losing their jobs. If members across the aisle or other people lost their jobs, how would they feel? However, it is happening in the tens of thousands. Many of these truckers are losing their jobs because they cannot drive across the border. Not only does that impact our supply-chain issues, raising inflation and costs, but it impacts jobs and the economy. People are upset.

People may say that it is for health, but people need to be able to make their own health care decisions. We support that.

I am double vaccinated, but guess what. I was not here the past couple of weeks, because both my wife and I had COVID. A person who is vaccinated can carry it just as much as a person who is not. I would like to read this letter before I close. It is from a 35-year-old female lawyer. She writes that she is an ultra-marathon runner and spends eight, nine or possibly 10 hours a day running. Before that, she was a varsity athlete at a university in Ontario. Saying she has always been fit would be an understatement. She has no pre-existing conditions, but when she got the vaccine, she started having chest pains and operating at a max threshold, even on walks, doubling and tripling her heart rate. As it stands, she is a 30-year-old with chronic heart pain.

She feels this constantly, and even on a slow walk she is out of breath. She goes on to say that she is not a conspiracy theorist. She actually make a lot of money defending the largest pharmaceutical companies, but with that comes the knowledge that sometimes mistakes are made and sometimes we don't—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

The hon. member's time is up, but he will be able to add during questions and comments.

Questions and comments, the hon. government whip.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member seems very concerned about inflation. I just want to ask him this very simply. He ran on a platform that purported to spend far in excess of what the Liberal Party, in fact, committed to spend in the last campaign. Why?

[Marc Dalton, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Madam Speaker, we cannot believe what the Liberals say. During the 2015 election they said there would be a $10-billion deficit. Then what happened? It was $30 billion, and that was pre-COVID. They were out of control prior and now they blame it all on COVID. They were not accurate with what they said then, and they will not be accurate about what they say in the future. That is my position on that.