Bill C-30

Spring Economic Update 2026 Implementation Act

An Act to implement certain provisions of the spring economic update tabled in Parliament on April 28, 2026

Part 1 implements certain measures in respect of the Income Tax Act and the Income Tax Regulations by
(a) modifying the Labour Mobility Deduction for eligible tradespeople by increasing the annual limit on expenses that can be deducted and by reducing the distance threshold for eligibility;
(b) making permanent the capital gains tax exemption for the sale of a business to an employee ownership trust or a worker co-operative;
(c) extending the repayment grace period under the Home Buyers’ Plan;
(d) providing temporary immediate expensing for eligible greenhouse buildings; and
(e) improving the interaction of the Electric Vehicle Affordability Program with existing tax rules.
Part 2 amends the Excise Tax Act to temporarily set the excise tax rate on gasoline and aviation gasoline to $0.00 and on diesel fuel and aviation fuel to $0.00 for the period beginning on April 20, 2026 and ending on September 7, 2026. It also amends the Excise Act and the Excise Act, 2001 to implement an additional two-year extension of the 2% cap on the annual alcohol excise duty inflation adjustment, and of the 50% reduction on excise duty rates for the first 15,000 hectolitres of beer brewed in Canada, effective April 1, 2026.
Part 3 amends several Acts in order to implement various measures.
Division 1 of Part 3 amends the Bank Act to provide that the Investment Canada Act does not apply in respect of certain transactions made by foreign banks or entities associated with a foreign bank if the transactions are subject to an approval under the Bank Act , the Trust and Loan Companies Act or the Insurance Companies Act .
Division 2 of Part 3 amends the Bank of Canada Act to combine into a single Act the Bank of Canada’s powers, duties and functions related to the recovery of costs incurred by it for or in connection with the administration of certain Acts. It also makes related amendments to other Acts.
Division 3 of Part 3 amends the Canadian Payments Act to provide immunity for the Canadian Payments Association and certain individuals from any civil liability, other than in contract, for anything done or omitted to be done in good faith in the administration or discharge of any powers or duties conferred under that Act.
Division 4 of Part 3 amends the Employment Insurance Act to, among other things,
(a) extend, until October 7, 2028, the duration of the measure that increases the maximum number of weeks for which benefits may be paid in a benefit period to certain seasonal workers;
(b) remove the description of the regions in which the workers must be ordinarily resident to be eligible for the increase;
(c) provide that those regions are established by regulation; and
(d) provide that paragraph 12(2.3)(b) of that Act is repealed on November 7, 2027.
Division 5 of Part 3 amends the Canada Pension Plan to reduce the contribution rate for employees, employers and self-employed persons for the year 2027 and each subsequent year.
Division 6 of Part 3 amends the Canada Transportation Act to require certain individuals and entities to provide the Minister of Transport with information that that Minister considers necessary for the exercise of the powers and the performance of the duties and functions of that Minister or for the development of transportation policies. The Division also amends that Act to specify the individuals and entities to whom such information may be communicated.
Division 7 of Part 3 amends the Canadian Food Inspection Agency Act to clarify the mandate of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and authorize the Governor in Council to, in certain circumstances, exempt persons, things or activities, or classes of persons, things or activities, from the application of provisions of certain Acts of Parliament, or regulations made under those Acts, that are administered or enforced by the Agency. It also makes a consequential amendment to the Agriculture and Agri-Food Administrative Monetary Penalties Act .
Division 8 of Part 3 amends the Pest Control Products Act to, among other things,
(a) require the Minister of Health to consider, as appropriate, national economic security, regional economic security or national food security, for the purposes of that Act;
(b) authorize the Governor in Council to, by order, after that Minister has decided that they do not consider the environmental risks of a pest control product to be acceptable, register or amend the product’s registration to permit its use in the emergency control of a seriously detrimental infestation, or amend, reinstate, or both reinstate and amend the registration of the product, if the Governor in Council considers it necessary to do so to protect national economic security, regional economic security or national food security; and
(c) provide that the Governor in Council may establish conditions in the order.

Taxation

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would just say that it has become apparent in the House, through question period and many of the proceedings, that the Conservatives claim that they are about protecting and supporting vulnerable people, but in fact, they just seem to use those people's hardship for political gain. They see them as a political opportunity, whether it is young people, seniors or other vulnerable people.

We have seen them not support measures such as the groceries and essentials benefit. They mocked the Canada summer jobs program, which offers 100,000 jobs. They just voted, again, against Bill C-30, which is offering skilled trades apprenticeship supports of $31,000 in total for each apprentice.

We have cut taxes in a number of areas, including income tax and the consumer carbon tax. We have suspended the excise tax on fuel. We have cut the tax on first home purchases. We have offered enhanced tax deductions for businesses in research and development and for buying new machinery and equipment.

If the hon. member really is for tax cuts, why did he just vote against seven new tax measures that will help with affordability for Canadians? It does not make sense to me. That includes Bill C-30, this afternoon at third reading, which the member voted against.

Government Business No. 13—Proceedings on Bill C‑22

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

Madam Speaker, I am rising at this hour to speak to the programming motion on Bill C‑22.

I have heard the speeches of a number of colleagues in this place with whom I agree, particularly my colleagues from the Bloc Québécois and the New Democratic Party.

As I explained earlier, in an answer to an earlier discussion with the hon. member for Vancouver East, the position we were in was not as members of the committee but as members of Parliament with the right to participate in the development of amendments. As we were not full members of the committee, our participation in the public safety committee, and when I speak of “we”, I mean the member for Vancouver East and me, was more limited than that of members who are full members of the committee.

I have been very concerned, from the very beginning, which was June 2025's tabling of Bill C‑2, the so-called strong borders act, there was an astonishing, broad, deep coalition of groups, over 300, that came together to oppose the bill on many grounds relating to human rights, as well as to privacy and overreach. Again, I just want to preface my discussion of Bill C‑22 by placing it, for citizens watching this, in the context of how we moved away from Bill C‑2, the strong borders act, which was strongly opposed, in June 2025. I do not think I have ever seen quite a diverse coalition. Certainly there are some bills that invite a lot of organizations to get involved and individual citizens to get involved. There was a breadth and a depth here that was certainly unusual.

The government realized it was in trouble. There was so much opposition to Bill C‑2. When we came back in the fall, I thought to myself that the bill, over the course of the summer, had been dumped and replaced as we now had Bill C‑12. It is not a completely different bill. It is largely the same chunks of language that were in the strong borders act, Bill C‑2, taking out the parts that were an overreach into privacy, for instance, the sections originally in Bill C‑2 that said that postal workers could open the mail and such things. There were a number of examples that got dropped.

The thing that is unusual about this, and I know it is complicated and I know the hour is late, but why would a government introduce a bill, which is widely panned, and then bring in a different bill, as opposed to amending the bill it already had on the Order Paper? I have not seen this before. It then brought in Bill C-12, which had most of what was in the strong borders act, and left Bill C-2 on the Order Paper while continuing to force through Bill C-12.

Time will tell when Bill C-12 will be challenged in the courts globally because it violates our charter commitments to the protection of refugee rights. I speak of that in terms of the global convention on refugees. It may also offend the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but I am speaking globally. It pulled that protection out from under people who had expectations. They had expectations of being in Canada but did not know their access to claiming refugee rights would be taken away so abruptly.

In any case, this has been bizarre. We had Bill C-2 staying on the Order Paper, and we had Bill C-12, which was largely language from Bill C-2, being pushed through.

The whole time we were thinking that at least we had avoided the surveillance concerns, the privacy concerns and the overreach concerns that were evident in the original Bill C‑2, the strong borders act, but come March 12, 2026, we had the bill that is before us tonight, Bill C‑22. Again, it is the government's, at this point, third run at crafting a bill that deals with lawful access.

I will give them this: Bill C‑12 actually avoided the lawful access sections and just focused on the portions that affected refugee rights. That one still grieves me, the fact that we had Bill C‑12 pushed through to final stages on a unanimous consent motion in this place last June. I really still regret it very much that it was pushed through. This is a phrase we will hear from the opposition members tonight, and we have it heard it often: pushed through, rushed through.

This is not hyperbole from opposition members. I am an experienced member of Parliament. I have been here 15 years, and I am honoured to have been so, but to my hon. colleagues in the government party on the other benches, it has been a shock to see how often we see these things. When mistakes are identified, previous governments have been more willing to say, “Ah, we have a mistake and we are going to have to rethink this. This is a mistake, and we are going to amend the bill. We are going to say where we made the mistake and how we are going to change it.” The government is quite unusual in not admitting mistakes, but it will bring in a different bill that does some of the same things. In this case, it is taking its third run at it.

This lawful access regime has many improvements over the lawful access regime of Bill C-2. There is no question and no doubt. There have been significant changes, and I think every group that was in the original coalition opposing Bill C-2 has said that Bill C-22 is much better. We have fewer problems with it, but there are still very serious problems, which is why it is lamentable that we were not able to have the kind of conversation one would have with a government that was more comfortable in its skin to say that it made a mistake with Bill C-2. Such a government would say, “We pushed too hard, too far, too fast. Now we are going to listen to people. As we craft a lawful access regime, we are going to really listen and we are not going to assume we have it right because we are right, or because we have the majority, so we are right.” This has been very difficult to observe.

Certainly, in committee, I have to say that I was surprised. I was taken aback when a reasonable request to have before the public safety committee the Privacy Commissioner, who had raised concerns, was rejected. We had a lot of witnesses there who represented government agencies and law enforcement to provide technical background. I try to be as non-partisan as possible, but I could not see any problem with getting the expertise of the Privacy Commissioner in the room as members were discussing and debating the impact of Bill C-22 and whether some amendments should work and how they should work, but the idea that the Privacy Commissioner should be in the room was rejected. I could not see, in any world, where that would not have been seen as helpful, but it was rejected.

I had some amendments before the committee. We will get to them later this evening. I do not think it is anything but a foregone conclusion that the motion before us is going to pass, but I lament that we have seen the government, and it is a pattern, moving very fast and passing legislation despite significant concerns from significant quarters.

A significant number of respected law professors and experts in privacy law and constitutional law wrote, as recently as last month, to most of the cabinet to express their deep concerns about Bill C-22. I think it is important to say that people are not just partisan here. Certainly law professors are not, and they acknowledge that they see the improvement over Bill C-2 in a number of areas. I will read from the letter, which was signed by 20 or 30 law professors from across Canada, and it is dated May 4, so anyone who is looking for it can find it. It reads:

We write as lawyers and law professors who teach and practice in the areas of privacy law and constitutional rights....

I will skip ahead to their conclusion, which reads:

...provisions of the bill as currently drafted raise serious constitutional concerns and fail to strike a reasonable balance between the legitimate needs of law enforcement and the privacy rights of Canadians.

Again, these are not the voices of people who have been misinformed through social media. These are people of depth, knowledge and experience, and they are very concerned.

One of Canada's premier policy wonk magazines is Policy Options, and I do not speak of it pejoratively here. Policy Options is not something one would pick up in the supermarket, such as “inquiring minds want to know”. Policy Options is serious.

There was an article just yesterday by Professor Cynthia Khoo, who is a professor at University of Toronto and a senior fellow at The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. She is an expert in both technology and privacy areas. Her conclusion was that “Ottawa should reject any data-sharing arrangement that allows U.S. law enforcement to access Canadians' personal information”. This is based on recent research within The Citizen Lab that the regime for surveillance being established by Bill C-22 could provide easy access for, for instance, U.S. homeland security to the private information of Canadians.

I know the government benches have heard, and do not want to hear anything more, from Professor Michael Geist, who is, again, a prominent critic of Bill C-22, starting with his opposition to Bill C-2. He pointed out that what he sees being spread by the government benches could be described as misinformation, mischaracterization, overly broad definitions and a failure to be precise in areas where one really has to be precise.

I am just going to quote from a blog he posted recently: “The political pressure against Bill C-22 has been steadily mounting, with the opposition parties,” as we can see, all the opposition parties in this place, “tech companies, and privacy experts, all increasingly” concerned about the need to amend this bill, increasingly concerned that all the government seems to have in response to the criticisms are, in his words, “misleading or inaccurate claims with little in the way of an actual defence” based on the facts. His conclusion is that “the government’s disregard for facts and privacy is fast becoming Bill C-22's legacy.”

Now, the criticisms come, again, from a broad sweep of legal, privacy and tech experts. They are not all the same. I practised law, and technology is not my area. I would not put myself out there as an expert in technology, though I read deeply. I am concerned about constitutional rights and privacy as a former practising lawyer, but it would seem to me that anyone with a background in the various areas that are touched by Bill C-22 would want to take the time to get it right.

There have been things claimed, like that all our Five Eyes partners have legislation just like Bill C-22. That has been debunked by numerous experts. We have been told that it was wrong to take a long time in committee. Obviously, as my hon. colleague on the other side the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance knows well, we had a very lengthy filibuster on Bill C-30 in the finance committee. I sat through those evenings waiting for the chance to speak to my amendments.

As I mentioned earlier, motions are passed by committees as if they are normal, and they are not normal at all, but the longer they are used, I guess, the more that future committees will just assume, as every committee did after this last election, that it is just normal to take away the rights of the smaller parties so that the larger parties do not have to fuss with them at report stage. That is the case. If it were not for the motions that were passed by committees, without thinking about them, taking away the rights of smaller parties, I would have the right to put forward amendments at report stage. I do not have that right at report stage only because I have been given this so-called opportunity to work really, really hard to bring forward amendments that give me the ability to sit in a room and not speak for days at a time, hoping for the chance to speak to the one or two amendments that I had brought forward.

I want to thank my hon. colleague from Vancouver East, from the New Democratic Party, because she is in the same boat and she brought forward many more amendments to Bill C-22 than I brought forward on Bill C-22. I think I was too busy trying to write amendments on Bill C-30.

In any case, what we have here is not just an imperfect bill but a potentially dangerous bill. We are now down to the final moments. The clock is ticking, and the words of experts from across Canada are being shut out because the government has determined it will move forward with Bill C-22. That is why we have a programming motion, to make sure that we do not have any further debate on the amendments that have been put forward by members of the Conservative Party, the Bloc Québécois, the Greens and the New Democrats. We are in a hurry.

Again, I have to push back and ask why. What is the hurry? What is the rush? As a reminder, the first attempt the government made to bring forward lawful access was in the very outrageously overreaching Bill C‑2 a year ago. A year has passed. One would have hoped that year would have been used well by allowing a real discussion and continually striving to have the best possible surveillance architecture to protect privacy, to give law enforcement what it needs, without tests of access that are so low, the reasonable grounds to suspect, which we do not think the courts will find to have been an adequate ground to seize personal information.

We are hearing concerns, again, from tech companies, constitutional and privacy law experts, those who work in the field and others, like OpenMedia. I am honoured to claim that the executive director of OpenMedia happens to be one of my constituents, so I also speak on behalf of my constituents when I stand here at this hour. We are hearing concerns, yet those voices seem to have just gotten annoying to the members of the government. They do not seem to be concerned, despite all the work and the full year that has gone by, that we could get this right.

Again, we hear that we have run out of time. Well, we have not. I do not think any of us are going to expire in any particular moment. We could meet next week. We could get together again and have more time for witnesses to actually discuss without a clock ticking, for witnesses and experts to share with the members of the committee in a respectful way how we can improve this.

I saw that the hon. member for Barrie South—Innisfil mentioned it earlier, but we are seeing news across the news wires that the Minister of Public Safety is about to make a step. Who knows, but certainly it was not the National Enquirer saying this. It was at least the CBC, saying that the Government of Canada is prepared to fundamentally change one aspect of this, which is not having to hold Canadians' private data for a year but maybe bringing that down to six months. Is that going to be presented? I do not know.

We will be going into committee after the programming motion is passed. There will be an opportunity for new amendments to be tabled, but not, of course, from me or the member for Vancouver East, because we had a deadline some time ago, and we either had to bring it in by that deadline or could not bring in something new.

There may still be that opportunity to improve the bill. I certainly hope so, because what we have in front of us may violate our own Charter of Rights and Freedoms, open up personal data, surveillance data, and do serious damage. If, good heavens, the Citizen Lab research is right and Canadians' private data would be available to the U.S. homeland security folks in large tranches, none of us are going to feel particularly happy about that.

Our government should be making sure that our privacy is protected. It is an inherent right that we have. I would like to say it is a right in the same way first nations have the right to clean drinking water, although we have now been informed that they do not have the right to that but only the hope of a gradual or eventual “realization” of a right. That term is just so extraordinary. Well, we have a right to privacy, and I do not want to hear that it is dialed back to a gradual realization of a right. We have a right to privacy. We can reasonably expect it of our government to ensure that our private data is not left in an architecture of surveillance that allows it to be accessed by foreign governments, any foreign government.

The Citizen Lab research that was just published in Policy Options yesterday talks about U.S. homeland security as an example, but I do not want my government asking tech companies to save, store and access private data about Canadians that is then available to foreign governments. We have certainly learned a lot about foreign interference, and we are waiting for the foreign interference registry to actually be established since we passed that law some time ago.

At this late hour, and I know I'm out of time—

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance and National Revenue and to the Secretary of State (Canada Revenue Agency and Financial Institutions)]

Madam Speaker, my understanding is that the components of Bill C‑22 were in a previous bill that was debated in committee and studied, just as Bill C‑22 was, which was also studied for at least eight or nine hours in committee.

As I have mentioned in the House today, I have not gotten one clear answer from any Conservative on why they chose to filibuster a spring economic update implementation act, Bill C‑30, which includes key economic measures, at a time when Canadians need the tax deductions and the support.

Why would the Conservatives hold up progress on the economy to block a bill that would give police officers and law enforcement agencies the tools they have been asking for to crack down on organized crime? It does not make any sense to me. Maybe the member can enlighten me.

Democratic Institutions

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Minister of Finance and National Revenue]

Mr. Speaker, what Quebeckers and Canadians see is that we have a lot to get done.

I am pleased to speak to Bill C‑30, a bill that is going to help families and workers, and that contains important measures for advancing Canada's economy. I am sure that our Bloc Québécois colleagues want to contribute to building a more prosperous Quebec.

On this side of the House, we will always stand up, we will always be ready to work, and together, we are going to drive the economy of this country and the economy of Quebec forward.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals are confusing their parliamentary majority with the right to do what they want, when they want. The time allocations never seem to stop, which is especially odd considering that their bills are certain to pass.

Yesterday, it was Bill C‑30, which authorizes the government to approve the use of previously banned pesticides. Today, it is Bill C‑22, which authorizes the invasive surveillance of Canadians. That comes on top of lots of other legislation, like the legislation arising from Bill C‑5, under which the Prime Minister is giving himself the power to circumvent laws.

Are the Liberals so quick to resort to time allocations because they want to keep the public in the dark about the scope of their abuse of power?

Government Business No. 11—Proceedings on Bill C‑26

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge all the brave men and women who are here tonight and who will be staying up late. I was joking around earlier with my colleague and neighbour, the member for Rivière-des-Mille-Îles. All kidding aside, I think that she knows that I really like her. I mentioned behavioural issues because she was talking really loudly. However, we really like hearing her voice. That said, she still plans to support a closure motion. She is still going to vote in favour of it.

This is not the first closure motion that we have debated. As Parliament winds down for the summer, ever since the government managed to scrape together a majority by poaching members from the Conservatives and the NDP, it has imposed closure on not one, two, three, four or five bills, but nine. The government is likely going to keep Parliament in session until very late this Friday. That is okay because it is our job to be here. However, this is happening because the government is not communicating with the opposition parties properly. It is not managing its work in the House properly, and it is having a hard time setting its priorities.

The government has even introduced closure on Bill C-22. This is a bill that could be highly detrimental to Canadians' privacy and that will, in a sense, give the police access to our phones and our private data. Everyone understands that the legal framework needs to evolve, but imposing closure on this today is not something we were expecting. This is preventing serious parliamentary work from being carried out, yet I do not believe there was any real urgency. This is not the economic update. This is not tax legislation.

The same thing happened with Bill C-30. The government turned up in committee. I agree that not all the proposed amendments were sound. However, when the first Conservative amendment was moved, after barely two minutes of debate, the government made its position very clear. Through the member for Whitby, it made it known that no amendments would be tolerated, that the government now had a majority and that, ultimately, committee time serves only a superficial purpose.

The government is muzzling debate on important issues. One example is Bill C‑30. Right now, the government is telling us that it was elected, that it has a job to do, that it has an agenda. The new government, which is now almost 11 years old, says it was elected with a job to do.

Now, the government is changing the law on pesticides to allow cabinet to make decisions that go against the science on pesticides. I am sure that there are plenty of great people in cabinet. However, there are no pesticide specialists or scientists who have conducted studies on the subject. The Green Party member came to talk to us about this in committee. She clearly explained that, when it comes to pesticides and the environment, this bill is the most regressive and the most damaging to human health and safety since possibly the 1970s. That was not in the Liberals' election platform.

Privatizing airports to funnel money into their so-called sovereign wealth fund, which does not have a single penny in it, was not part of their campaign platform. Allowing air passenger complaints to be outsourced to private sector companies chosen by the Minister of Transportation, who is himself buddies with the airlines, which may even choose the companies that will handle complaints about them, was not part of the Liberals' platform.

Even though filibusters may sometimes be necessary in cases of parliamentary deadlock, members of Parliament must still be allowed to do their jobs. They must be given the chance to do their jobs. Closure is a measure of last resort that is imposed when there is a genuine deadlock. After all, there is a reason why it exists in the rules. However, it is not meant to be imposed eight, nine, 10, or 11 times in two or three days simply because the government has not done its job properly.

I said it was not doing its job properly, so I will give some examples. Bill C-26 is one such example. Then there is Bill C-31. People need to understand that when a bill is introduced, opposition members must study it. To study it, they must be able to ask public servants very technical questions to have the bill's clauses explained to them. This is called a technical briefing. These briefings are generally provided shortly after we receive the bill, so that we can do our jobs.

When the Liberals imposed closure on Bill C-31, we had been asking the Department of Finance for a briefing for three weeks. We had not received a reply. Eventually, we were given a briefing on a Thursday, I believe, while everyone was attending committee meetings and almost none of the critics were able to attend. The following Monday, the Liberals introduced a closure motion. They claim that there is filibustering happening and that closure motions are necessary, but that is simply not the case. Now, we are in the same position with Bill C-26. We agree that Bill C-26 provides for unconditional payments to Quebec. This is rare; we welcome it and believe it is a sound approach. However, we have been asking for a technical briefing on Bill C-26 for about two months now. For two months, we have wanted to study and understand it, and now we are being hit with time allocation.

We finally came to understand it during consideration of the estimates. I was there for consideration of the estimates, and so was the Minister of Finance. There were many questions about this. At this point, we are taking the minister's word for it that he has reached an agreement with Quebec and that, based on this agreement, Quebec will receive its share of the funds, no strings attached. However, we had no way of knowing this from reading the bill. I had to stand up in committee of the whole to ask the Minister of Finance whether he intended to transfer the funds to Quebec with no strings attached. Only once we got answers in committee of the whole were we able to continue our own consideration of the bill. The bill states that the “amount of each payment is to be determined by the Minister”.

This means that, once Bill C‑26 is passed, the Minister of Finance can get up tomorrow morning and decide how much to pay each government. He has the right to do whatever he wants with this money; it is at his discretion. The bill also states that amounts are to be paid out “at the times and in the manner that the Minister...considers appropriate.”

Now we find ourselves in a situation where we have a vague bill, and we are realizing, after months, that the intent is there, that negotiations are happening, but also that our questions were legitimate. What is more, the explanations we got so we could understand this bill came from a press release. We had to pore over the press release to try to understand the government's intentions. It was almost like analyzing a religious text. Despite all that, we are in favour of Bill C‑26. However, the government is telling us that there is interference, that there is work to be done, that they need to move quickly, that this is very important and that the opposition is blocking the process. That is not what is happening in this case. What we have here is a case of poor management of House of Commons time and poor management of committees by the office of the government House leader.

I should point out that Quebec is the only province with permanent social and community housing construction programs. In Quebec, the definition of “social and community housing” differs from the definition of “affordable housing” used by programs in the rest of Canada. When it came to programs managed by CMHC, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, with the possible exception of the rapid housing initiative, Quebec rarely received its share because these programs focused on high-rise apartment buildings in cities in the rest of Canada.

During the minute of time that I have left, I wish to say that under the current circumstances, with the construction and community ecosystems that are familiar with Quebec's programs, what is being done here today is important. It is important to recognize that the most effective approach for these programs is to take 20% or 22% of the amount and pay it directly to Quebec. I will end by saying that this would prevent the Liberals from doing what they did with Canada's national housing strategy, in other words, setting tons of conditions like the Trudeau government did and ending up in negotiations for three or four years, while we miss out on tens of thousands of completed housing units.

We are pleased that the minister has agreed to pay Quebec its share. We are convinced that it will lead to housing starts on the ground and benefit Quebeckers.

Admissibility of Government Business No.13

[Jacob Mantle, Conservative, York—Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising this afternoon on a point of order concerning the admissibility of Government Business No. 13, which appeared on this morning's Notice Paper. Government Business No. 13 proposes to lay out a program for the remaining consideration of Bill C-22, the Liberal government's legislation concerning so-called lawful access.

While programming motions are, of course, not unheard of in our Westminster system and in Canada, they have become increasingly fashionable, first under the Trudeau government and now under the current Liberal government. In fact, we have witnessed three of them this week alone. What is troubling is that each successive programming motion has been more and more aggressive than the preceding one. Government Business No. 13 introduces a novel feature not seen in previous programming motions: a retroactive deadline for the submission of committee amendments. Subparagraph (a)(ii) states:

if the committee has not completed the clause-by-clause consideration of the bill within 30 minutes of the beginning of the meeting, all remaining amendments that were submitted to the committee by 4:30 p.m. on June 15, 2026, shall be deemed moved, the Chair shall put the question forthwith....

The point, as is clearly evident, is that the deadline set in this notice was yesterday at 4:30 p.m. Therefore, if adopted, Government Business No. 13 would only allow the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security to consider amendments that were filed yesterday. The Liberals' proposed deadline for committee amendments for Bill C-22, therefore, possibly preceded its notice of Government Business No. 13. It certainly preceded the publication of the notice, which comes out at about, as I understand it, two o'clock in the morning.

What is more egregious, or perhaps as egregious, than the proposal to ram through the House such a sweeping piece of legislation with significant consequences for the privacy rights of Canadians is that, if adopted, members will also be left with no ability to put forward any further suggestions on how to improve Bill C-22 or strike the right balance between public safety and privacy, because the motion itself prevents and precludes any report stage amendments by members.

Let me draw everyone's attention to paragraphs (b) and (c) of the motion. Paragraph (b) reads, “the bill may be considered at the report stage at any time following the completion of paragraph (a)(iv) of this order, and, when the order is read, it shall be deemed to have been concurred in, as amended, at the report stage”. There would be no amendments because the deadline for amendments is retroactive and there is no ability for amendments to be brought forward at report stage.

Let me contrast this with Government Business No. 12, which was the immediately preceding programming motion. That concerned Bill C-30 before the Standing Committee on Finance, and the House adopted it on Monday night. There was a committee deadline in that motion, but it was for 24 hours after notice had been given of the government motion. Members in that case at least had the time to put forward their best and last ideas, knowing that, regardless, the Liberal guillotine was at hand.

I will mention that Government Business No. 12 was not subject to a ruling, so I am not attempting to draw it as an authoritative precedent, but only as an example for the Speaker's consideration.

We have a government that is fascinated with all the ways it can censor Canadians. With Government Business No. 13, the Liberals are now verging into the territory of erasing the rights of members. That is what makes Government Business No. 13 so utterly offensive. The idea of a retroactive deadline is, I believe, entirely unprecedented and, therefore, I would like to go back to several first principles to lay out my initial opposition to this bill.

I will note that I am raising this at the earliest opportunity I can, having simply seen the notice this morning and raising it as quickly as possible. Therefore, I would beg the Speaker's indulgence to provide further arguments should my hon. colleagues across the way also provide theirs.

I will turn to the first principle, Standing Order 1, which we do not often quote in this place. However, I think it is necessary when we are talking about something that is unprecedented and novel. It states:

In all cases not provided for hereinafter, or by other order of the House, procedural questions shall be decided by the Speaker...whose decisions shall be based on the usages, forms, customs and precedents of the House of Commons of Canada and on parliamentary tradition in Canada and other jurisdictions, so far as they may be applicable to the House.

I would also draw the Speaker's attention to Standing Order 13, which, of course, gives you the ability to rule on whether or not any motion is in order in this place.

Beauchesne’s Rules and Forms of the House of Commons of Canada, sixth edition, observes at citation 12:

Parliamentary Law is something quite different from the ordinary Civil Law or Common Law. Parliamentary Law is based on centuries of tradition and precedents which have marked the evolution of parliamentary freedoms from the time that the first Parliaments were governed under the Divine Right of Kings to the stage of parliamentary sovereignty which we have now acquired.

One of the House's earliest clerks, Sir John Bourinot, in Parliamentary Procedure and Practice in the Dominion of Canada, second edition, at page 258, reiterated one of these most essential principles, which has evolved over the centuries. He said:

The great principles that lie at the basis of English parliamentary law have...been always kept steadily in view by the Canadian legislatures; these are: To protect the minority and restrain the improvidence and tyranny of the majority, to secure the transaction of public business in a decent and orderly manner, to enable every member to express his opinions within those limits necessary to preserve decorum and prevent an unnecessary waste of time, to give full opportunity for the consideration of every measure, and to prevent any legislative action being taken heedlessly and upon sudden impulse.

I know the Speaker will be aware of this general principle, but I draw him again to the section that refers to protecting the minority and restraining “the improvidence and tyranny of the majority”. That principle is reinforced again by our present-day Clerk, with his own comments at paragraph 5.1 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, fourth edition, which says:

...over the years, the ideal of “protecting the minority” has adapted to the modern dictates of an efficient legislative body.... Nevertheless, it remains true that parliamentary procedure is intended to ensure that there is a balance between the government’s need to get its business through the House and the opposition’s responsibility to debate that business....

Sir George's principles are also quoted authoritatively in Parliamentary Procedure in Québec, third edition, at page 49:

The rules of parliamentary procedure as a whole, then, must reflect these principles and create a balance between them. Procedure is thus at the service of noble ideals that ensure the highly democratic nature of the parliamentary institution. Even though they may sometimes be considered superfluous, the fact remains that the rules of procedure are extremely important for parliamentarians and for the functioning of the institution.

While Bill C-22 contains some measures that law enforcement agencies have asked Parliament for, part 2 of the bill and, indeed, certain sections of part 1 raise serious concerns regarding privacy, civil liberties, government powers and other issues. The government's own charter statement acknowledges this. Moreover, major Canadian industries and technology companies, including Google, Meta, Apple and others, have raised serious questions about encryption provisions, the requirement to collect and store the personal information of Canadians and the powers contained in part 2 for the minister to issue secret orders to companies.

The powers and the scope of this bill should be carefully considered, defined and targeted. This requires the balancing act that I referred to earlier. Parliament needs to get this right. Doing that requires time, patience and studying the procedures of this House, but Government Motion No. 13 would prohibit that.

Perhaps support for the legislation within the caucus of the Liberal Party has been declining more swiftly than we thought, after hearing from witnesses and stakeholders, and, therefore, a renewed urgency is upon the Liberals. However, that is no excuse to push this bill through the House on the very last week of its sitting.

It may be useful to recall the words of Speaker Milliken in a ruling he delivered on March 29, 2007, at page 8136 of the debates. He said:

...neither the political realities of the moment nor the sheer force of numbers should force us to set aside the values inherent in the parliamentary conventions and procedures by which we govern our deliberations.

The political realities of the Liberal government, facing increasing and growing scrutiny on this censorship agenda, are no excuse for what the Liberal House leader is proposing through his notice this morning.

As I said, Mr. Speaker, Government Business No. 13 has not yet been proposed, but I wanted to raise this matter at the earliest opportunity to provide you sufficient time to consider it. Should you wish us to raise this point of order when the motion is moved, we will do that as well.

As your predecessor said, also on March 29, 2007, at page 8137 of the debates:

Unlike the situation faced by committee chairs, a Speaker's decision is not subject to appeal. All the more reason then for the Chair to exercise its awesome responsibility carefully and to ensure that the House does not, in the heat of the moment, veer dangerously off course.

In our submission, Government Business No. 13 would do that. It would see this House go dangerously off course, all in the service of a bill that would therefore be denied the careful and detailed scrutiny it requires.

Let me finish by quoting citation 18 of Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules and Forms, fourth edition:

We use the words “House of Commons” very often without pausing to reflect upon what those words mean. The word “Commons” means the people. This is the house of the people; sitting on both sides of this house; and on both sides of the Speaker are representatives of every constituency of Canada. Collectively those of us who meet in this Chamber represent all Canadians. That is our responsibility! That is our duty. Our rights are important only to the extent that those rights represent the rights of the people themselves. If the traditional rights of the members of this House are released, limited or arbitrarily curtailed in any way, it is not our rights that are of concern. What is vitally important is that in that curtailment of rights—there is a limitation of the rights—of the people themselves. The freedom that we have here to shape and guide legislation, no matter on which side of the House we might sit, is part of the very freedom which we cherish here in this country of ours. It is here in the House of Commons, to which all the people of Canada must look for just laws properly considered and properly made, that Canadians in every part of Canada must look for the greater part of their freedom and for the assurance of that type of government which will be itself an expression of the freedom which has come down to us through so many generations of sacrifice and tremendous efforts.

The retroactive committee amendment deadline proposed in Government Business No. 13 is offensive to the rich and deep tradition of parliamentary law. It is compounded by the inability of members to move motions at report stage, effectively preventing them from providing any more input into this bill. It cannot be in order that a bill provides a deadline retroactively, known only to the government members and utilized only by the government members, unbeknownst to any other member of this House until that deadline has passed.

As such, it is my submission that Government Business No. 13 is not in order and, therefore, the whole of the motion should be equally called out of order.

Democratic Institutions

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, another day, another example of anti-democratic behaviour from this Prime Minister. Today, he is muzzling the opposition to pass Bill C-22, which contains serious privacy violations. Yesterday, he shut down the debate on Bill C-30, which allows him to approve pesticides that were previously banned by Health Canada.

It is simple. Since June 1, the Prime Minister has moved time allocation on no fewer than nine bills. This Prime Minister is muzzling all the parliamentarians who want to do their jobs.

Does he realize that his majority does not give him the right to subvert democracy?

Standing Committee on Finance

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

I wish to inform the House that pursuant to order made on Monday, June 15, the Standing Committee on Finance deposited with the Clerk of the House the third report of the committee.

The committee considered Bill C-30, an act to implement certain provisions of the spring economic update tabled in Parliament on April 28, 2026, and reported it with amendments.

Government Business No. 12—Proceedings on Bill C-30

[Tamara Kronis, Conservative, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Regina—Lewvan.

If the motion before the House, which we are considering today, is passed unamended, it will force a major fiscal bill through committee, cut off clause-by-clause review after only 30 minutes, deem amendments moved without meaningful debate, skip real report stage consideration, limit third reading to only a handful of speeches and restrict ordinary procedural tools after 6.30 p.m., while preserving special flexibility for cabinet ministers, but not for regular members of Parliament.

That would be a lot, and it would not be a minor adjustment to the parliamentary calendar. It would be a serious and unconscionable shift in power away from Parliament and toward the executive. That is why I rise today to support the amendments and ask the government to reconsider its current plans to ram this important legislation through the House.

Bill C-30 is broad. It would impact taxation, excise duties, fuel taxes, alcohol duties, housing-related rules, labour mobility, worker ownership, greenhouse building, banking payments, transportation information, employment measures, food inspection, pesticides and other areas of federal law. A bill of that breadth deserves Parliament's full attention. The government is asking the House to accept the appearance of scrutiny while bypassing proper review.

If the world is in crisis and if Canada is at a crossroads where we are attempting to do big things fast, to diversify our economy and our trade relationships, then we cannot afford to get this wrong. We need the best ideas to rise to the top, and that is the role of opposition. That is the role of committee. That is the role of clause-by-clause study. There is no boardroom table in a successful company that I know of where no dissent is allowed, where shortcuts get the best results or where the fastest policies are the best policies.

Clause-by-clause study matters. It is where members examine the actual words of the bill, not the press release around it. It is where we ask officials what a clause would do, how it would work, who it would affect and what would happen if were misused. It is where amendments are proposed and can be explained, tested and improved. It is where witnesses, members and sometimes the public catch drafting problems, unintended consequences and overly broad powers before they become law. That is not obstruction. That is how the best ideas rise to the top.

Under the motion, the committee would meet at 9 a.m., and, if clause-by-clause were not finished by 9:30 a.m., the remaining amendments would be deemed moved and then are voted on without further debate. This motion is a stopwatch, and in a time of global crisis, Canada cannot afford stopwatch law-making. The government's inability to manage a legislative agenda is not the opposition's crisis, no matter how much the government tries to bully us into submission.

This week, I spent some time at the public safety committee, examining witnesses about a Liberal subamendment to a Bloc amendment that related to privacy concerns that had been expressed to me by numerous people in my community. Others did the same. By the end of the interventions, we all understood and supported the clause as amended and subamended, and we had explained it in committee in a way that should reassure those watching from home that the clause would not cause undue harm to people's privacy. That is the kind of collaboration the government claims it wants, and when it comes to Canadians' privacy, it is what we all need, so why the government is shutting it down here in the House is beyond me.

The motion would short-circuit report stage. Then, at third reading, it would allow only a very limited number of speeches. Members do not come here as ornaments, here to decorate the government's bills with a few words. We come here to bring the lived and living experiences of Canadians into the policy choices that are before this country. When debate is reduced to a few speeches, those voices are marginalized. Canadians lose the benefit of having competing arguments tested before a vote takes place. In an unstable, volatile world, there is all the more reason for Parliament to take its time to make sure that Canada gets its policies right.

The proposed amendments would let the committee continue its work and protect the stages of review that help Parliament separate strong policy from weak policy before a law is passed. Some parts of Bill C‑30 deserve much closer public scrutiny than they are going to get, because they raise serious concerns about how the government now thinks about power.

One of the most troubling examples is the proposed change to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency Act. Buried in this spring economic update bill is a power that would allow cabinet, by order, to exempt persons, things or activities from the application of laws or regulations administered or enforced by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. In plain English, cabinet could create exemptions from food and agricultural rules for up to three years, and then extend them for another three years. That means there could be a possible six-year exemption from rules that exist to protect Canadians, our food supply, our producers, our markets and our public confidence.

Canadians should not have to guess about questions like, “What is an unreasonable risk? Who makes the decisions, and on what evidence? What notice would Canadians receive and what recourse would they have if the power were used badly?” Food safety should not depend on vague language and cabinet decisions. Those are all questions that I will never get to ask because of the way the government is planning to ram through this bill.

Canadians expect food safety rules to be clear, public, stable and enforced. They expect science, inspection and accountability. They do not expect broad exemption powers to be tucked into a budget-style bill and rushed through committee.

That same concern appears in the proposed changes to the Pest Control Products Act. Those provisions would allow cabinet to authorize or reinstate the use of a pest control product, even after the responsible minister has determined that the environmental risks are not acceptable, if cabinet decides that the product is needed for economic or food security. That should make every member pause. The regulatory process could say an environmental risk is unacceptable, and cabinet could still step in and permit the product. There may be rare, emergency cases when flexibility is needed, and reasonable people can accept that, but emergency powers should be narrow, clearly defined, transparent, time-limited and subject to strong oversight. They should not be drafted so broadly that Parliament is asked to trust cabinet first and ask questions later.

These two brief examples demonstrate why clause-by-clause matters and why committees matter. Canadians need more than abstract, procedural debates. We need safeguards. We ought to make space for members to find provisions such as these, ask what they mean, test the government's explanations, hear from officials and affected groups and improve the law before Canadians have to live with it. A government that is confident in its agenda should be willing to explain it, defend its legislation line by line and accept amendments that add clarity, accountability and limits.

Canadians should pay attention, because the kinds of motions we are debating here today are becoming a trend. Too often, the government seems to believe that if it has the power to do something, that is reason enough to do it. That is not how responsible government works. Just because a government can use a procedure to limit scrutiny, it does not mean that it should. The House of Commons is not an inconvenience in the legislative process, and it ought not be treated as such. It is the central democratic forum of this country, where public money is authorized, laws are tested, ministers are held to account and the executive must answer questions before it changes the lives of Canadians. The Prime Minister should be willing to propose and defend his vision for Canada here, in this chamber, reserved for commoners. We are everyday Canadians who deserve answers.

The government has the votes and the procedural tools to force this through, but just because it can, it does not mean that it should. A serious government should not ask members to vote first and understand later. For those reasons, I urge all members of this House to support these amendments. I urge the House to reject this shortcut, protect Parliament's role and allow Bill C‑30 to receive the scrutiny it deserves.

[Jamil Jivani, Conservative, Bowmanville—Oshawa North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is good to see you, as always.

I rise in the House today on behalf of the beautiful, wonderful people of Bowmanville—Oshawa North, to oppose the Liberal budget, specifically Bill C-30. I do so because this is the latest example of the current Liberal regime failing to meet the moment in Canada. The Liberals are simply tinkering at the edges of the status quo, without offering any positive, substantive changes for our communities to become stronger and healthier.

Liberals may ask, what is the moment we are in? Certainly, they seem unaware. It is a moment when a generation of Canadians are knocking on the door, asking to be admitted into the Canadian dream, yet they are having that door shut in their face by a government that continues to show very little self-awareness for what is going on in our economy today. For Canadians who, frankly, have been working hard for over a decade now to establish themselves in the economy, to buy their first home or to start a family, they are encountering an uncomfortable and unstable position. They are working hard to do so, despite the challenges they face.

If the Liberal regime were truly interested in meeting the moment facing our country right now, they would do more than just tinker at the edges of the status quo. Rather, this would be a government that would respond with real change and real hope for the builders, the dreamers, the strivers and the hustlers who are working hard to get ahead every day.

The part of this budget that I would like to focus on in particular is the matter of housing, because it has become emblematic of the challenges we face in our country today. In this budget, in Bill C-30, the government has a provision to extend the grace period for repayments in the homebuyers' plan. Now, in a vacuum, this might actually be a worthwhile idea. It is good to extend the grace period. However, the problem we face is that when we look at the context of our country right now, it is simply not enough. In fact, it is outrageous to sit in the chamber and see Liberals patting themselves on the back for continuing to fail to fix the housing crisis in this country, while failing to recognize that much more needs to be done.

While Liberals sit in the chamber or fly off to Europe to celebrate their half measures and their band-aid solutions, one of their own housing bureaucracies, one of several, has published data today showing that the housing crisis continues to be unaddressed by the Liberal Prime Minister, who promised to fix it, the second Liberal Prime Minister, I may add, who promised to fix it in the last decade.

From today's CMHC housing starts and construction data, we see that in the month of May 2026, “Actual monthly housing starts were down 5.2% year-over-year in centres with a population of 10,000 or more”. We also see in that data that “housing starts for all areas in Canada decreased [month to month by] 6% in May”. CMHC's deputy chief economist looked at all of this data and offered a comment that I think this House must consider. He said, “Overall, these results suggest that construction activity is uneven and taken together with the decline of approved units not yet started and market intelligence point to weaker momentum for future supply”.

If we zoom out for a moment and think about what this means for the young Canadians knocking on the door who want to get in on the Canadian dream but are having the door shut on them by the Liberal regime, we see that there are real consequences for real people behind all of these numbers. For every house that is not getting built or is too expensive for the average middle-class Canadian to afford, we know there is a life being put on hold: people who want to move out of their parents' house but cannot do so; people who want to make an investment in their future but cannot do so; people who want to start a family but cannot do so.

By the way, as an aside, I would like to add that if we fix the housing crisis, we might see the declining birth rate start to tick up and the Liberals would have less of an excuse to continue with their mass immigration plan. However, I will leave that for another day.

This is what is happening to young Canadians today. They deserve so much better than what they are getting from the Liberal government, from a regime that continues to put budget after budget forward that fails to solve a single serious problem and is not getting better results. Young Canadians are not getting the response they deserve from their own government, the government they pay taxes to and the government that is intended to serve them.

I would like to share a story of a young man I met yesterday, from north Oshawa. He runs his own business, and on the weekends he drives an Uber. He is a very hard-working guy who grinds every week, non-stop. He recently got married, and he does not have any children yet, but he hopes to be able to afford a home one day. He shared his family story with me, and he is a real family man. He told me about his father who recently beat cancer, and I could see how proud he was when he talked about his dad going through that hard time with a smile on his face on the other end of it.

This business owner in north Oshawa told me that he had a conversation with his wife last week, and he asked his wife an important question. He asked what she thought of some of the concerns weighing on him at the moment. Specifically, he was wondering whether he should continue to work so hard and continue to work two jobs and be away from his family as much as he is. He wondered if he should stop. He wondered if his effort was ever going to pay off based on what he saw happening in our country.

I will be honest; it was tough to hear him talk that way, because he is a talented and very capable young man, but he was considering giving up. He told me that when he had that conversation with his wife and asked her those questions, she thankfully told him that she thought he should keep trying. She expressed belief in him. When he told me about his wife's confidence in him, I could tell it meant the entire world to him.

I bring this up because people need to better understand what is happening to this generation of Canadians knocking on that door and trying to get in on the Canadian dream. They are often thinking about giving up and often questioning the merit of hard work. They are second-guessing themselves and the way they spend their time, and whether doing all of the things they were told a contributing citizen should do is actually going to bear fruit as they continue to get older.

This is exactly what is wrong with the Liberal regime's budget. It fails to offer any sort of understanding of what is going on today. It fails to show any contrition from a government that has, for 11 years now, made bad decision after bad decision, often sentencing young Canadians to a much harder life than generations past, making it harder to get ahead and making it harder for people to feel hopeful and optimistic about their futures. The Liberal regime then has the audacity to question the patriotism of people who say that they deserve better.

I would say that the young Canadians knocking on the door hoping to get in on the Canadian dream do deserve better. They deserve a lot better than what they have been getting. My message to all of the strivers, dreamers, builders and hustlers across this country is to just keep going. I know that it is hard and that often it feels like people in positions of power are not listening, but the reality is that we have no choice but to continue fighting for this country and for a better future.

Even when the people who are privileged enough to fly first class to Europe lecture us on what kind of country we should want to have here in Canada and even when they show us how tone-deaf they are, I want those who are fighting for a better future to know that someday I hope they will have a government that honours them properly.

God bless Canada.

[Carlos Leitão, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time.

It is my turn to speak to Bill C-30, which seeks to implement the economic update. I want to address several issues, but, first, I want to talk about why we are doing things a bit differently here today. Last week, at the Standing Committee on Finance, on which I serve, the Conservative members used some pretty intense filibustering tactics during the study of C-30.

What I found especially shocking was that the Conservatives themselves admitted that this filibustering had nothing to do with any specific concerns about this bill but everything to do with winning concessions on another bill, Bill C-22. They said so themselves. They made it very clear. To get concessions on Bill C-22, they were prepared to filibuster, change everything and take as long as necessary to achieve that goal.

This filibuster was clearly deliberate, especially given how much of the committee's time was spent on a single clause and on an amendment moved by the Conservatives themselves. They then moved subamendment after subamendment. They used a very clear tactic: These subamendments were drafted in English only. We had to wait for them to be translated before work could resume. We can see the mechanism at play. Also, the Conservatives' discussions on these subamendments involved a lot of repetition and many digressions that had very little to do with the matter at hand. That also contributed to delays.

In any event, we spent hours and hours on it. It quickly became clear that no progress was going to be made at all. That is a big problem because Bill C-30 is so important. It concerns the April 28 economic update, which contains a number of very useful and very important measures for our economy. I suspect I may run out of time, but before I talk about those measures, I want to address a few problems that have been mentioned today in the conversations and in the debates that we have had here so far.

For example, as of the end of the fiscal year, March 31, Canada had met the target of 2% of GDP for spending and investments in national defence. That was confirmed by NATO itself, and it is something that Canada had not done in a very long time. Liberal and Conservative governments kept national defence spending at 1% or 1.5% of GDP. We very quickly and practically reached the 2% target, and we committed to allocating 5% of GDP to national defence by 2035. That is a very significant commitment.

We are making this commitment because the world is a different place now. Today, our situation is very delicate. Our biggest trade and economic partner is also our neighbour: the United States. It is a partner that has very plainly and clearly told us that it does not need what Canada has to offer. We could discuss that at great length. It does not need anything except our energy, our aluminum and other resources.

The Americans imposed a number of sector-based tariffs, which is not entirely consistent with CUSMA requirements, but they did it anyway to put the Canadian government under a lot of pressure. They really want to put a lot of pressure on the economy to force us into making all sorts of concessions, to the point where our own sovereignty is at risk. That is why we are investing heavily in defence. It is also why we are going to keep strengthening ties with reliable, dependable and predictable partners.

That said, it is also clear that 70% of our exports go to the United States. Our neighbour will always be our neighbour. We cannot change geography. We still have good relationships with American businesses and the American people. We are going to maintain those relationships. We have also committed to doubling our non-U.S. exports. Let us look at the reasoning behind that. Even if we can double the 30% of our exports going to non-U.S. countries, and I think we will get there, 40% to 50% of our exports will still be going to the United States. It will still be important to maintain our trade relationship with the United States. That is why we are still committed to updating CUSMA. That work continues, despite the obstacles the administration sometimes puts in our way. We remain focused on that, but we need to have a broader perspective on all of this.

It is important to point out one other thing that is very clear in the economic update. Our colleagues opposite keep saying that we are running huge deficits, that we are heading straight for a wall and that things are not working. Our colleagues sometimes paint a rather apocalyptic picture. Let us review some basic facts. Our deficit stands at 2.1% of GDP, which is entirely manageable. Canada's public debt is equally manageable. In fact, that is why our AAA credit rating is being maintained. If Canada were truly a country on the brink of ruin, how could we still have a AAA credit rating?

I will conclude on this point. How is it that long-term bond yields, for example 10-year yields, are around 3.5%? That is roughly 100 basis points, or one percentage point, lower than in the United States. If we are as broke as our colleagues opposite claim, why are interest rates on the financial markets still so favourable in Canada?

We are on the right track. We are going to diversify our economy and continue to sign trade agreements.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay.

The government has asked us today to accelerate consideration of the spring economic update because we are told time is short. What the government neglects to mention is that much of the time pressure is entirely of its own making.

Let us be clear about what this motion would do. It would force all remaining amendments at committee to be moved and voted on without further debate. That is not a normal legislative process. It is Parliament being asked to do less of its most important job.

A budget is supposed to be a statement of priorities. It is supposed to tell Canadians what the government intends to do, how much it intends to spend and how it intends to pay for it, yet within weeks of presenting budget 2025, the Prime Minister began announcing billions of dollars in new spending commitments that had not been presented when the budget was tabled. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has estimated that these additional measures are roughly $48 billion over five years. Basically, a second budget is being unveiled piecemeal through press conferences and announcements, while Parliament is expected to simply keep up.

The most striking example is the newly announced Canada Strong fund, a $25-billion sovereign debt fund that did not appear as a central feature of the government's original plan. When a government finds $25 billion for a brand-new sovereign debt fund, only weeks after presenting a budget, Parliament should begin to wonder if perhaps these programs are not emerging from a coherent economic plan, but are being invented on the fly whenever the government finds itself in need of a new announcement. The same pattern can be seen in the government's new commitments on defence and international affairs. Billions of dollars have now been announced for new defence procurement structures, a Defence Investment Agency and a defence industrial strategy. Why do so many huge financial commitments continue to emerge after the government's fiscal plan was supposedly complete?

The Prime Minister has also unveiled team Canada strong, a multi-billion-dollar labour strategy. Then came the government's new electricity initiative. Canadians were told that billions more would be going towards transmission infrastructure, electricity corridors and long-term transformation of Canada's power grid. Once again, the government presented the announcement as though it had just came up with the idea at the last minute. How come these were not in the budget in the first place?

Then, last week, the government announced a $3-billion national food strategy. The government appears to believe that food security can be achieved through creating funds, hubs, agencies, financing mechanisms, planning structures and administrative frameworks. Food security has never been created by government planners. It has always been created by farmers, truckers, processors, retailers and entrepreneurs who bring the food from the field to the table. The announcement contains billions of dollars in new programs, but remarkably little discussion of the policies that have made food more expensive in the first place. Food security depends on farmers who can afford to farm, processors who can afford to process, truckers who can afford to transport goods and businesses that can operate in a competitive environment, yet after years of inflationary Liberal policies that have increased costs throughout the supply chain, the government now proposes another layer of inflationary programs and administration as the solution.

Each one of these announcements arrives with a new price tag attached to the national credit card. Every few weeks, Canadians are presented with another announcement, another commitment, another expenditure and another promise that government spending will somehow unlock future prosperity, yet after 10 years of this approach, Canadians have become entitled to ask a reasonable question: If government spending were the key to economic growth, why have the billions of dollars of new spending not made anything better?

The government would like Canadians to believe that these new programs are finally going to make life more affordable, but it is just an illusion. Every new fund, every new agency, every new strategy and every new spending commitment ultimately lands on the country's credit card. The bill always arrives. It arrives in the form of larger deficits, higher debt, rising interest costs and, ultimately, a higher cost of living for the very people the government claims it is trying to help.

Bill C‑30 is simply the latest example of what has become a familiar Liberal pattern: more spending, more borrowing, more debt and higher costs for Canadians. The Prime Minister promised fiscal responsibility. Instead, this budget more than doubles the deficit left behind by Justin Trudeau, from $31 billion to $72 billion. Outside the pandemic, this is the largest deficit in Canadian history. Canadians were promised a new approach, but it turns out that the new approach means spending way more than Trudeau could ever have imagined.

What makes this particularly troubling is that all of this is happening while Canada stands alone among the G20 countries as the only one in recession. The government continues to insist that more spending is the solution, yet with all that spending, Canada is the only G20 nation that has managed to achieve this disastrous distinction. One would think that after 10 years of disappointing results, the government might pause long enough to consider the fact that the remedy it keeps prescribing is actually making the illness worse.

Canadians are already carrying the highest household debt burden in the G7. They are coping with some of the least affordable housing in the developed world. Food bank usage has reached record lows and young families can only dream of home ownership. Seniors are stretching fixed incomes further every month. Working parents are making impossible choices between groceries, rent, transportation and basic necessities.

The Prime Minister did not campaign on doubling deficits. He did not campaign on larger government and ever-expanding spending commitments. He presented himself as the supposed adult in the room, the person who would restore fiscal discipline, bring competence back to the government and provide a new economic direction for the country. However, only months later, Canadians are looking at a $72-billion deficit, the largest deficit in Canadian history outside of the pandemic, and billions of dollars in additional spending commitments that were not even included in the budget.

The Prime Minister promised to lower the debt-to-GDP ratio. This budget shows it is rising. He promised spending discipline. Spending is increasing faster than inflation and faster than economic growth. He promised economic renewal. Canada remains the only G20 country in recession. He promised to build faster, yet despite his creating new offices, new agencies and new approval processes, Canadians are still waiting to see any results.

The concern is not simply that these promises have been broken. The concern is that the government appears not to have learned anything from the experience of the last decade. For 10 years, Canadians have been told that another spending program, another fund, another agency or another strategy will solve the problem, yet the problem continues to grow as the government continues to grow.

The result is a country carrying more debt, paying more interest, experiencing weaker growth and facing higher costs than Canadians were promised. At some point, governments must be judged not by the announcements they make but by the results they achieve. Now the government has asked Parliament to spend less time examining legislation at the very moment it is asking Canadians to accept more spending, more borrowing and more debt. That is backwards.

When a government announces another $48 billion in commitments after tabling a budget, scrutiny becomes more important, not less. When deficits are growing, debate becomes more important, not less. When Canadians are struggling to afford groceries, housing and everyday necessities, accountability becomes more important, not less. Parliament was not created to rubber-stamp government announcements. It exists to test them, challenge them and ensure taxpayers understand the consequences before the bill arrives.

After 10 years of rising debt, rising costs and declining affordability, Canadians have every right to ask whether more spending will solve the problem or simply make it worse. The government might not like that, but it is not a reason to curtail debate. It is the very reason debate exists.

That is why Conservatives support the amendment moved by my colleague from Cariboo—Prince George. His amendment would allow the finance committee to continue its work instead of forcing members to vote on remaining clauses and amendments without debate. It would restore the basic principle that Parliament should examine legislation before passing it. Canadians can no longer afford more of the same, and they certainly cannot afford less scrutiny of the policies that brought us here.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, no. We do not have to agree to it. The opposition parties are guaranteed those 26 days, which do not include the many days when the Conservatives brought in concurrence motions.

Here is why it is important. If the Conservatives follow along, they will better understand why there is time allocation. Let us look at the legislative agenda. There is Bill C-3, the Citizenship Act; Bill C-4, the carbon tax cut; Bill C-8 respecting cybersecurity; Bill C-5, the one Canadian economy act; and Bill C-9, the combatting hate act, a piece of legislation I know the minister responsible for crime is very keen on.

We have Bill C-10, the commissioner for modern treaty implementation act; Bill C-11, the military justice system modernization act; Bill C-12, the strengthening Canada's immigration system and borders act; and Bill C-13, respecting trade in Great Britain. We also had Bill C-16, the protecting victims act, and Bill C-20. Bill C-14 is the bail and sentencing reform legislation. I was just speaking about Bill C-16. There was filibustering even on that legislation.

There is Bill C-20, the Build Canada Homes act, which the Conservatives were criticizing in the speech before mine. There is Bill C-21, the Red River Métis self-government recognition and implementation treaty act, and Bill C-22, the lawful access act. When we brought in Bill C-2 regarding lawful access, the Conservatives said, “absolutely not”. They were going to oppose it, and there was no way they were going to let it pass. We had to bring in Bill C-22, and they are still opposing it.

There is Bill C-25, the strong and free elections act. Do members remember that one? I just made reference to it. Everyone agreed to it, yet the Conservatives still made the bells ring because they really did not want to debate, apparently.

Bill C-26 would authorize certain payments to be made out of the consolidated revenue fund for the purpose of improving housing supply. Conservatives talk a lot about housing and affordability, even though the average cost of a house has gone down since the new Prime Minister was elected. The average cost of rent has gone down since the Prime Minister was elected. However, we would not know that if we listened to the Conservatives.

The list goes on. Bill C-28, one I really like, is the Canadian space launch act. There is a whole industry, and there is industry potential. Thousands of jobs could be created. However, all the Conservatives say is that they do not like it and do not want it. We have to force legislation through.

That is not to mention the Senate bills. I can say that the Government of Canada, headed by our newly elected Prime Minister, has a very aggressive legislative agenda because we want to and will, despite what the Conservatives continue to put in our way, continue to fight and bring in legislation that is going to make our communities safer and stronger. As the Prime Minister says, we want a strong Canada for all Canadians. That is what we are striving for. We are saying we are going to build the strongest economy in the G7.

All one needs to do is look at the actions that the government and the Prime Minister have taken since the last election. All I made reference to was the legislation. In that legislation, there are a number of initiatives that complement the legislation. That is all part of the budget process and what the bill we are currently debating, Bill C-30, the spring economic update 2026 implementation act, is all about. It is the next step in supporting Canadians and building a stronger Canada, but the Conservatives still want to filibuster.

Let us look at what took place at the standing committee. On the one hand, the Conservatives say they want more time. They had 30 hours. From what I have been told by many of my colleagues and have heard from across the way, it was a filibuster show, with no discussions back and forth that could have taken place. That is a decision made depending on the motions that are brought forward. I know how standing committees work. When there is collaboration, good ideas and a willingness to work together, a standing committee can be very productive. I know that because there was a day I participated in standing committees. There is so much potential for all of us to work more collaboratively together on a wide spectrum of budgetary issues and legislative issues.

In fact, with respect to legislative issues, the first thing we did when we formed a majority government, contrary to what the Conservatives will say, is that we actually passed Conservative opposition private members' bills through to different stages. I suspect there is a real chance that under the Prime Minister since we have been a majority, in eight, nine or 12 weeks, whatever period of time it is, we have probably passed more opposition initiatives than Stephen Harper did in his four-year mandate. It would not surprise me if this is in fact the case.

I challenge members opposite to show me what private members' initiatives from the floor of the House of Commons actually passed when Stephen Harper was the prime minister, when the leader of the Conservative Party sat around the table, and contrast that to what we have done in eight weeks. There is no surprise there, because we have a Prime Minister who is committed to collaboration. Where there is a willingness to collaborate, we collaborate.

Let us take a look in terms of all the provinces. Let us talk about the major projects. Let us talk about Bill C-5, which I made reference to. That was possible only because of the collaboration between provinces and Ottawa under the Prime Minister. There is a reason we had the King of Canada make the throne speech. The King of Canada came in a historic moment and delivered the throne speech here. It was a significant time in Canada's history.

I think that, coming out of the election, we all need to recognize what was taking place prior to the last federal election. Canadians were concerned about our economy. They were concerned about what I classify as the three Ts: President Trump, the issue of tariffs and the issue of trade. We have consistently taken actions to address the issues Canadians have faced and will face yesterday, today and, obviously, looking forward into tomorrow.

All one needs to do is take a look at the actions we have actually taken. Shortly after the last federal election, numerous meetings took place between the Prime Minister and premiers, with the idea, as we said to Canadians in the last election, of building one Canadian economy. Based on what was taking place with President Trump in the United States, and to address the anxiety and the concerns Canadians had, the Prime Minister was working hand in hand with provinces.

By doing that, we were able to build a consensus. We were able to bring in the legislation. We were able to take down the federal barriers, interprovincial barriers that the federal government is responsible for, which enabled us to be able to talk and continue the dialogue with provinces to take down those provincial barriers that prevent the trade between provinces. We have had some success in doing even that. We continue to have dialogue with provinces.

All one needs to do is take a look at a province such as Alberta. In the province of Alberta, we are now implementing an MOU that was signed by the Prime Minister and the Premier of Alberta. The Conservatives can criticize that, but I believe that the Premier of Alberta is right in her assessment, as is the federal government, of the way in which we can in fact build Canada and make Canada a superpower when it comes to energy.

All one needs to do is to look at the consensus building that we have been able to bring together by working collaboratively through major projects from coast to coast to coast. There have been serious investments in things such as wind power and the expansion of energy opportunities on the east coast, as well as something I often talk about, which is the expansion of the Montreal port. We can take a look at Ontario and how we are enhancing the nuclear industry in Ontario through major projects.

In my home province of Manitoba, the Premier of Manitoba is NDP, but we work with all political entities. The people of Manitoba have realized that, for the first time in generations, there is now opportunity to have hope in regard to the port of Churchill and the potential of its becoming a port where things such as, potentially, LNG and certain minerals could go through, let alone other opportunities through agriculture. These are very tangible and real in my home province.

In Saskatchewan, we could talk about copper investments through the major projects. On the canola front, the Prime Minister was able to deal with it, at least in part and far more than what we saw when the leader of the Conservative Party was seated around the caucus table. We could talk about Alberta and B.C., the two of them together, whether it is on the issue of coming up with agreements on pipelines, LNG and other fossil fuels, or mining.

We could talk about northern Canada. It was not that long ago that the Prime Minister, was in, I believe, Yellowknife in northern Canada. I am not 100% sure it was Yellowknife, but he made the announcement about how we are going to protect Canadian sovereignty by investing literally billions of dollars. We have great potential, major investments, coast to coast to coast.

The government recognizes that building a stronger infrastructure, improving our economic corridors, if I can put it that way, through trade, means a great deal to our nation. It is where our future is in terms of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs. We have a Prime Minister who goes out and looks for investment. We have commitments for billions of dollars of foreign investment to come to Canada. In fact, foreign direct investment coming to Canada in the last 12 months, if it is not number one in the G7, which I believe it is, it could be as high as number one in the G20 countries. That factors out some of the commitments that were also made.

There is reason for us to be optimistic, because we have a government that understands the importance of investment, of bringing and building our infrastructure. We have a Prime Minister who is committed to enhancing where we can and being patient with the United States in regard to the trade file. We are not going to capitulate. We will continue to advocate for the very best deal for Canadians, and where we need to, we are assisting industries that are being hurt by the negotiations and what is taking place in the United States.

Let us recognize this: We have had 20 trade and defence agreements, and we have agreements in the making. I often talk about how important the United States is, and everyone should recognize that. I recognize that, but let there be no doubt that we have a government and a Prime Minister committed to expanding our trade opportunities beyond the Canada-U.S.A. border. That is where we got the 20 defence and trade agreements, and we also have had formal trade agreements not only signed off but brought into the House and passed as trade legislation.

I could also talk about the trade potential between Canada and India, two great nations. I would welcome and love to see a formal agreement signed off this year. The Prime Minister has met with the prime minister and the president of two great nations.

The opportunities are real and tangible, which is why there have been 17%, I believe, export increases to non-U.S.A. locations. Our government continues to work, day in and day out, at expanding opportunities for businesses, small, medium and large alike, because we realize the real beneficiaries from those are the citizens of Canada, and they are who we will continue to work for every day.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise and speak, in essence, to Bill C-30 and the motion we have before us. I would argue that it is a motion that is absolutely necessary because of the behaviour we have witnessed from the Conservative Party of Canada since the last election.

The Conservatives like to forget about it, but in the last federal election, just over a year ago, Canadians elected a new Prime Minister. Along with that new Prime Minister, dozens of other members of Parliament were elected. In fact, today, there are 70 new Liberals in the House of Commons. They have been here for just over a year. Whether the Conservatives like it or not, they need to recognize that there is a new government, with a very strong legislative and budgetary agenda.

What we have witnessed from the Conservative Party is constant filibustering and its doing what it can to prevent legislation from passing. It is interesting when the Conservatives stand up. They like to accuse the government of not being able to bring forward legislation or get its legislative agenda through the House.