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

[Tony Baldinelli, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Madam Speaker, I will comment on the member's question by repeating that what we see on the streets of Ottawa today is a manifestation of the divisive nature of the government's politics. It is reaping what it has created by running on wedge issues. It is turning Canadians against each other.

We all believe in the right to peaceful protest. Where was the government this weekend? The Prime Minister decided to take a personal day off instead of working to resolve this issue. Canadians deserve better. We need to get back to work. We need to be working for Canadians.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am rising to speak on Bill C-8 with some sadness. Yes, there are some minor provisions in it that we support. However, what this represents is a real disconnect between the Liberal government and what is actually happening across the country. The fallout from COVID has been enormous, but it is not just from COVID. A series of policies put in place by the former Harper government and by the current government have all led to the same thing: massive levels of inequality, more poverty and misery, and more difficulties for Canadians.

Bill C-8 does not mention this, but it should: the appalling withdrawal of CRB benefits with just a few hours' notice when it took place a few months ago. There were 800,000 Canadian families who were depending on those benefits to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. The government crudely and irresponsibly ripped that safety net away from nearly a million Canadian families with a scant few hours' notice. It is unbelievable that any government would act this way, but the government does not seem to understand the impacts of its many policies that promote inequality and what that has done to Canadians over the last few years.

As I have mentioned in the House before, my wife, Limei, and I grow vegetables for local food banks in Burnaby and New Westminster out on Barnston Island. It has very fertile land and we basically use space that is rented by Chuck Puchmayr, a local municipal councillor. It is about 40 hectares of land. We are able to grow squash, tomatoes and a wide variety of vegetables. We then contribute to the food banks. We have been doing this for many years, and for many years we have seen, tragically, a maintaining of the long food bank lineups. Canadians of all backgrounds, seniors, people with disabilities and students, all have to go to a food bank to make ends meet.

In the last two years, we have seen a sharp increase in the number of Canadians, the number of British Columbians and the number of people in New Westminster—Burnaby who have had to go to food banks to make ends meet. We have seen in sharp relief how the massive level of inequality in this country and the devastation left by COVID has created more difficulties for Canadians. What we need to recommit to in the House of Commons is responding to what Canadians are feeling across the length and breadth of this country. Food bank lineups are growing. When the number of homeless are growing, there should be a compelling argument for the government to act to respond to those needs.

The government has an ability to act. We saw that at the beginning of COVID, on March 13, 2020, when the House leaders, and I was one of them, marched out into that corridor and announced that we would be suspending Parliament because of the incredible increase of cases across the country in this pandemic. We called at that time for the government to take immediate action to help Canadians. It acted promptly. Within 96 hours, four days, it took the initiative, without the support of the NDP, to immediately prop up Canada's big banks and their profits. They were given $750 billion in liquidity supports.

I want to say that figure again because it is so incredibly large it is unbelievable. There was $750 billion made available to the banking sector to make sure their profits were maintained, with no conditions. They did not have to do anything for that massive amount of liquidity support, including from CMHC, the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, which is supposed to be providing supports for Canadians to get housing. There were no conditions at all. They just threw the money at the banking sector so that they could maintain their profits. They got that in four days.

Therefore, the NDP got to work because the government really did not seem to have any direction at all. The leader of the NDP from Burnaby South and the entire NDP caucus leveraged our position in this minority Parliament to force the CERB at $2,000 a week, to put in place a student CERB and to put in place supports for seniors and people with disabilities. We made sure we pushed for paid sick leave for Canadians. This was absolutely fundamentally important.

The government's priority was to prop up banking profits. Fortunately, because it was a minority Parliament, we were able to force the Liberals to actually start thinking about people. There was $750 billion in liquidity support for Canada's big banks and a reluctance to do things for real people, except when they were forced to do so in a minority Parliament.

This is something that is clear to Canadians when they look at what the government has done since the increase in inequality and the massive propping up of the banking sector we saw under the former Harper government. The Harper government was criticized for $116 billion in bank supports and we are now at $750 billion.

The Harper government was criticized quite justifiably for the massive tax loopholes we have seen to overseas tax havens. In fact, Conservatives and Liberals agree on that. There is no limit when it comes to making sure the ultrarich can take their money offshore. Both parties have participated in this feeding frenzy to give as much as they can to the ultrarich. We are now looking at $25 billion a year. That is $50 billion since the beginning of the COVID pandemic. There was a quarter of a trillion dollars over the course of the last decade under the Conservatives and Liberals that the ultrarich were able to take offshore.

Imagine if we were looking at a Bill C-8 that actually responded to Canadians' needs, if we actually stopped those massive tax loopholes for the ultrarich and reinvested that money in housing, supports for seniors, post-secondary education and expanding our health care sector. When Tommy Douglas forced the government of the day to put in place universal medicare, it was always with the idea to move from there to public universal pharmacare, to put in place dental care and to make sure, as the member for Burnaby South says so eloquently, that we have health care from the tops of our heads to the soles of our feet.

If we just stopped for a moment that hemorrhaging of $25 billion a year to offshore tax havens, imagine the kinds of investments we could make in public universal pharmacare and dental care. We could actually make a difference in people's lives, Canadians who are struggling with record levels of inequality.

The inequality is getting worse. The top 1% of Canadians now have a quarter of the pie. Nearly 50% of Canadians, and that includes indigenous peoples and marginalized Canadians across this country, are within $200 of insolvency in the course of any month and have no share of the pie at all.

Look at the picture these policies have created. We see this in Bill C-8, where there are minor things done, which we support but that do not tackle the fundamental issues we are seeing in inequality in this country. Imagine a Bill C-8 that actually started to reinvest in Canadians, in the right to housing and in public universal pharmacare. Imagine a Bill C-8 that made the investments that are so important so that Canadians could see their standard of living improve. We would no longer have a country where half of Canadians are excluded from any share of prosperity or any share of the economic pie and where 1% of Canadians, the ultrarich, not only have access to a tax system that allows them to not pay taxes but also to hog a quarter of the wealth in this country.

We believe in this change and that is why we fight in this Parliament.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, within the legislation there is a significant allotment of $1.5 billion for rapid testing. I want to pick up on this point because it really highlights the importance of the national government working with provincial governments with respect to the federal government acquiring rapid tests. We had a stockpile of them, even up to the end of last year, with an additional 130 million purchases in the month of January alone, that were distributed to the provinces and territories, but it is the provinces and territories that actually do the distribution.

I wonder if my colleague can provide his thoughts on the important role both jurisdictions play in ensuring that Canadians and small businesses have access to rapid testing.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Madam Speaker, I think my colleague missed the point of my speech. There are measures in Bill C-8 that we support. Of course we support the provision for rapid testing. That was not the point of the speech I just made and I wish he would have listened a little more attentively.

When we have a situation where half of Canada is excluded from any share of the wealth of the country, where $25 billion a year in taxpayer money is sent to overseas tax havens, where the banking sector and pharmaceutical lobbyists are a higher priority than regular Canadians, where food bank lineups are growing day by day and where more and more Canadians are homeless, that is not a tenable situation. We cannot go back to business as usual. We need a government that actually puts in place the measures that will help Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

[Eric Melillo, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for New Westminster—Burnaby for his comments today. I always appreciate the thoughtfulness he brings to the discussion in this chamber.

He rightfully pointed out how expensive life is getting for Canadians and how inflation is continuing to rise at record rates. It is concerning for us on this side of the House and I think for everyone in this chamber. One of the solutions that the Conservatives have put forward is to have the government spend smarter, spend more efficiently, control its spending and get to a position where we stop printing money, which we know is driving up inflation. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has confirmed that.

However, it seems, from what I hear from that member and from many in the NDP, that if they had their say they would spend even more. I wonder if the member would agree it is time for the government to control its spending so that we can get the cost of living crisis under control.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would point out that I have been in the House now for a number of years and saw how the Harper government treated financial management. Conservative financial management is an oxymoron. What the Conservatives did over time was not only give $116 billion to the banking sector and run record deficits, but they created the condition, which shamefully the Liberals have continued, of massive handouts to overseas tax havens of $25 billion each and every year. That is money that seniors, students, families and a whole range of Canadians would benefit from. That $25 billion a year carves a massive fiscal hole, so we take no lessons from the Conservatives. Their financial management was appallingly bad.

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

Madam Speaker, I would like my colleague to talk a bit about my Liberal friends' optimism. I have been here for the past few days as we have debated Bill C-8 and the government's record, and the Liberals continue to rise to say how good things are, how great the government is and that things are fantastic.

Let us look at a few facts. The nation's capital is completely paralyzed right now, and we do not know when the government will take action. In Quebec, because Service Canada is so bogged down, 90,000 households have been waiting for months for the EI cheques they are owed and that they need to pay their rent and buy food. We are the worst G7 country in the fight against climate change. Canada needs an additional 1.8 million homes to achieve the G7 average. Quebec's health care system is on the brink of imploding because of 30 years of underfunding by federal governments of all stripes.

Even so, my Liberal friends are having fun and saying that all is well. Could my colleague comment on that?

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is true, they are jovial. The Liberals must be completely out of touch with what is happening to Canadians given their response.

The reality is that they have cut benefits that 800,000 Canadians needed to survive. They made the cuts with only 72 hours' notice. In my opinion, that shows that they are completely out of touch with reality, which is extremely sad and irresponsible.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I want to address Bill C-8. I want to make sure it is clear that I will be voting for it, but I find it inadequate. In that, my views are shared by the hon. member for Kitchener Centre. I want to reflect on the excellent points in his speech, especially related to the housing tax.

We had a speech given by our Deputy Prime Minister and finance minister on December 14. We are now debating it on February 7. Things change very rapidly right now.

As I think back to December 14, when the Deputy Prime Minister gave the speech, we would not have believed that we would be dealing with such a strain on our health care system, that the omicron virus would be so very transmissible, that so many people would be getting sick and that we would have the country, or at least the national capital, in a state of occupation with nerves frayed.

As an opening comment to my friends on all sides of the House, we need to do whatever we can as parliamentarians to display a non-partisan spirit of care and love for each other as neighbours and as Canadians. I have always felt that a hallmark of a Canadian debate is that we can agree to disagree without being disagreeable.

We are at real risk here. I never would have imagined in a million years that I would read, as I did on Twitter today, that there were such people as protesters in the nation's capital who thought it was a good idea to start a fire in the lobby of an apartment building. We really need to find ways to reach out, even to those people who are part of the convoy and who think they are in a glorious moment of grassroots democracy, to say please respect each other. Please be careful. Please go home.

As for Bill C-8, for those who have not studied it and for those who might be watching on CPAC or at home, the elements of it are all understandable, particularly with a lens on December 14, when there was a sense that perhaps we were coming out of the pandemic.

There is not nearly enough economic relief here for Canadians who are now not coming out of the pandemic as we felt we might be. The cutting of the benefit from $500 a month to $300 is completely unacceptable, and we know we need to see that improved. I certainly hope the government ministers recognize that this needs to change.

Yes, it is a good thing to see $1.72 billion for rapid testing. I agree with many of my opposition colleagues who have asked why it took so long. Why did we not have more focus on testing earlier?

I experienced what it was like to have daily rapid testing when I was on the Canadian government delegation to the climate negotiations in Glasgow at COP26. It was really interesting to know that the National Health Service in the U.K. could manage to test 35,000 people every single day. We tested ourselves and sent in the results, and then those results had to be double-checked. It did keep COP26 from being a super spreader event. They worked hard.

I think we need to look at testing, and I am glad to see this money is in the budget. I spent many months trying to prepare for people going back to school in the fall of 2020. I worked extensively with people in the office of the minister of finance and deputy prime minister, and attempted to reach all the ministers of education across the country, with a simple idea that the spaces that had been shut down because people were not allowed to congregate, such as community centres and empty buildings of all kinds, including hotels and convention centres, could be put to use as schools with greater distancing for children and better ventilation.

Of course, as ever, the barriers here were the provincial jurisdiction over education and the federal government having the role of providing money once the provinces asked for it. In that spirit, I think we are really late in getting around to ventilation in schools.

I do not uniquely blame the federal government for how long it has taken, because I know the barriers lie in provincial governments not asking. If a provincial government says, “Please, we need money to ventilate our schools better”, I am glad to see that the federal government, and we as parliamentarians, will approve that and write a cheque. This should have happened before our children and teachers, and in my case, my daughter is a teacher, all went into spaces that could have been made safer more than a year ago. It will take some time to use this money to better ventilate schools, but I am glad it is finally happening.

The measures here are good measures. At 1%, the so-called underused housing tax, or what could have been better described as a speculative investor housing tax, is a very small step in the right direction. We have seen the housing market skewed on the lower mainland of the province of British Columbia, as well as on Vancouver Island and throughout the province. Now, because COVID has led people to realize they can work from home and that they can buy a home anywhere, we have seen a real distortion, but a lot of that distortion has been from people buying houses for investments.

For Airbnbs and foreigners who keep houses empty, a 1% tax is good, but as the hon. member for Kitchener Centre said in his speech, it is like someone waiting for the fire department to show up when their house is on fire, and the firefighters coming with one bucket. This is not going to do the job. It will be a good first step. Perhaps we will learn from it and extend it to be a more meaningful tax to keep people from speculating in the housing market. Houses should be homes first, and not investments for those who do not plan to live in those houses.

There is much more I could say about what is in the bill. I want to talk about some of the things that are not there. We need, of course, more support on the EI front. There are EI changes in the bill, but we need more. We need more support for individuals who are falling between the cracks, but we also need to talk about what the real threat is globally of different, mutating forms of COVID-19. We know, and we have heard many members on all sides of the House say, that until everyone on the planet is vaccinated and until vaccine equity takes place between the industrialized world and the developing world, we will not be through it. It is now basically a giant petri dish of humanity, with the virus being more in charge than humans. We need to make sure that developing countries' citizens get access to vaccines.

Here we are. I am double vaxxed and I have had a booster, and millions of people around the world have not had a first shot. We need to get big pharma out of the way. To do that, Canada needs to side with India and South Africa at the World Trade Organization and support a waiver under the trade-related intellectual property regime, such that developing countries can manufacture their own vaccines without patent protection for the larger pharmaceutical companies.

I will note these larger pharmaceutical companies received millions of dollars from governments around the world to speed up the development of vaccines for COVID-19. I do not think they deserve any patent protection or profits out of this. I think some of the anti-vax protests that we see would be much reduced if the additional argument, which is really a logical fallacy, that just because big pharma is a terrible group and collectively represents a global version of organized crime, people are angry at vaccinations. We can be saying both that big pharma does not deserve a profit out of this, and that vaccinations are essential for public health.

In any case, I would have liked to see in this bill a commitment to move forward to get vaccinations to the developing world. I also look at this bill in the context of the Deputy Prime Minister and finance minister's speech back on December 14. She noted that the province of British Columbia had been walloped over and over again. We had a heat dome that killed 600 British Columbians in four days. We had an extremely stressful summer of emergency evacuations and stretched wildfire response to thousands of fires across the province. Just before the fiscal update was delivered, we had the loss of billions of dollars of infrastructure, as well as lost lives and devastating impacts, in Abbotsford and all up the Fraser Valley. We heard, and still hear, the Prime Minister's voice saying “We are with Lytton,” and that we would help them rebuild.

In point of fact, nothing has happened to help rebuild Lytton. There is not a new housing permit out there. We have a lot of backlog to make up for from climate impacts that have already occurred, yet as I speak today on February 7, Canada's commitment to hold to a target of 1.5° Celsius, which we committed to in the climate negotiations in Paris, remains unfulfilled. Even our promises will not get us there, much less our weak delivery.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, the member referred to the importance of one aspect of the bill that I think many Canadians are interested in, and that is the 1% tax on non-residents and non-Canadians where there are vacancies. We recognize that across the country we need to deal more with the housing issue. We have the rapid housing initiative and the housing strategy, and are working with the provinces.

Would the member not agree that dealing with the housing crisis Canada is facing is going to take more than just the federal government? I am looking at municipalities and provinces and their investments. I ask the member to provide her thoughts on that perspective.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I totally agree with the hon. parliamentary secretary. Multiple levels of government, and multiple orders of government, are involved in this moment. There was a period of time when the federal government took a hands-off approach to housing. I welcome the fact that CMHC has made a commitment on housing being a right, and that Canadians should have affordable housing.

There is more that the federal government could do. We used to have special tax treatment to encourage developers to build purpose-built rental housing. We have some of those programs now, but they are highly specialized. They increasingly say that they can build a property, but a small fraction has to stay below market. We need below-market pricing for rents. We have a huge problem with vacancy levels for people to rent decent homes. We also have, as we know, unaffordable-to-buy homes, but we need to look at smart development in our urban areas and in our communities, look at info, and find ways to promote smart housing, particularly co-operatives.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague because I obviously agree with most of what she said.

However, I would like her to rely on all her wisdom and experience to explain why Quebec, the provinces, organizations representing health care workers, and the public have been unanimously calling for immediate health transfers for months.

The government will say that it gave billions of dollars to fight the pandemic. That does not change anything. I would like my colleague to explain what the Prime Minister is waiting for. When will he increase transfers? The situation is urgent.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I completely agree, but I do not know what the Prime Minister is waiting for.

I think that, as always, the provinces and the federal government need to work collaboratively. There has always been conflict between the federal government in Ottawa and the governments in Quebec City and Toronto. We need to work together to protect our universal health care system.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Madam Speaker, I always enjoy hearing the thoughtful remarks of the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.

I want to let her pick up on where she left off on the cost of inaction on climate change. We lived with the effects of climate change in this past year. We are seeing immense costs.

Could she comment further on the ambition that the government has to show not only to fight climate change, but to adapt to it? We are stuck with it for the rest of our lives.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member for South Okanagan—West Kootenay is one of the more thoughtful and scientifically literate people in this place. I am grateful he is here.

We have a very brief amount of time to ensure that the climate impacts we experience are survivable. I do not think we talk enough in this place about worst-case scenarios. We assume a rosy future in which we adjust and adapt to bad weather. That is not what we are facing. We are facing an existential threat to human civilization and it requires courage, which is what the government lacks.