Bill C-4

Making Life More Affordable for Canadians Act

An Act respecting certain affordability measures for Canadians and another measure

Part 1 amends the Income Tax Act to reduce the marginal personal income tax rate on the lowest tax bracket to 14.5% for the 2025 taxation year and to 14% for the 2026 and subsequent taxation years.
Part 2 amends the Excise Tax Act and other related Regulations to implement a temporary GST new housing rebate for first-time home buyers.
Part 3 repeals Part 1 of the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act and the Fuel Charge Regulations .
Part 4 amends the Canada Elections Act to make changes to the requirements relating to political parties’ policies for the protection of personal information.

Making Life More Affordable for Canadians Act

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, what worries me most about that question is to hear the members say the Liberal government “will continue to”. I think what Canadians want to hear is that the Liberal government “will stop doing”. Canadians want to hear that the government will stop doing what it has been doing, because it is not working, and they would rather do something different. Frankly, during the election, the Liberals wanted to give the impression that they “would not continue to” and they “would stop doing”, yet we do see a lot more “continuing to” than stopping, and the trajectory continues.

The member's account of the numbers is simply wrong. He should read the StatsCan report; there is 7% unemployment, and one in five students cannot find a job. That is a terrible record. It is time to change course.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Madam Speaker, I have a question for my colleague that is particularly relevant to Quebec, but that may appeal to his Canadian spirit.

We often hear about the infamous equalization payments and the fact that English Canada, especially in the west and Alberta in particular, sends a lot of equalization payments to the rest of Canada. This time, however, it seems that Quebec made a large lump-sum equalization payment when the federal government scrapped the carbon tax.

The first thing the Prime Minister did after he was elected was abolish the carbon tax, yet he still sent out cheques. One could even say that he was writing NSF cheques, since people had not actually paid the tax to begin with. A total of $3.7 billion was paid out to all of Canada except Quebec. In the end, Quebec is left with a bill of $800 million.

Does my colleague think that is fair? Does he think it is all right to treat Quebec this way? At the end of the day, we got played. We got ripped off. We paid out $800 million to the rest of Canada. What does my colleague think?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, the member spoke about how, in the process of the elimination of the consumer carbon tax, there was a dissonance in the timing. I think we can clearly see that this was very political. The government wanted to be able to have things look as good as possible during the election and then not worry too much about the consequences afterwards.

When it comes to regional accounting, there are a lot of different things that are coming and going, and it should be viewed in a macro way. What is most important is that the Liberals have left in place the industrial carbon tax and other policies that clearly, according to today's numbers, are killing jobs and opportunities.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Madam Speaker, my colleague from a neighbouring community gave a wonderful speech.

The Liberals constantly talk about their great middle-class tax cut, which works out to barely $1.50 a day. In the recent main estimates, we saw the Liberals put in an extra $26 billion for high-priced consultants, such as those at McKinsey, GC Strategies and any other of the myriad of those connected to the Liberal Party. That works out to about $1,400 per household, but their middle-class tax cut would barely be $800 per household.

Could my colleague explain why the Liberals placed a higher priority on paying out taxpayers' money to their connected friends at McKinsey and GC Strategies and other management consultants than on looking after Canadian families?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, that is an excellent question from my colleague, the famous chair of the government operations committee, where we have worked so hard to dig into the outrageous sums of money the government has paid to well-connected consultants. Those who are following these issues of corruption and waste closely will be interested to know, and the member can correct me if I am wrong, that next Tuesday, the Auditor General will be releasing a report specifically on government contracts to GC Strategies, one of the firms at the centre of the arrive scam scandal.

Absolutely, the government is much more interested in supporting its insider consultant friends than it is in helping Canadians. This is evident in its spending, and it is evident today in the jobs numbers. I hope the government is seized with the jobs numbers and how bad they are. They need to change course as a result.

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Waterloo, ON]

Madam Speaker, I think it was less than six weeks ago that Canadians went to the polls and elected every member of Parliament in this place. It was a very interesting election, and at least in the Waterloo region, we saw a record number of Canadians engaging. I listened to what they had to say at the doors, and it was not a monolith; there was a diversity of views and perspectives. However, there was definitely a sentiment that government has a role to play.

What the member said was quite telling today. It is the first time that a Conservative has been so honest in saying the government has to “stop doing”. One thing Canadians in my community knew is that a Conservative government, and let it not happen anytime soon, would not invest in Canadians and would not be there for Canadians because Conservatives do not believe that government has a role to play.

The member has a history of voting against benefits and programs, such as the Canada child benefit, national child care and dental care, and voting against constituents, against Canadians. Is he recognizing that in this legislation, there are important measures that Canadians have supported and expect to see advance? Could he see himself advancing measures in this legislation to benefit Canadians ?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, what I said was that the Liberal government needs to stop doing the things it is doing and take a very different approach.

In response to what the member said, I want to draw her attention to her region. Maybe she has not seen it yet, but as she talked about what people in Kitchener-Waterloo are saying and thinking, I note that her region's unemployment is substantially above the national average. The national average is 7% unemployment, which is quite significant, and in her region, according to today's release from StatsCan, it is 8.5%.

Rather than ask such a partisan question, I think the member should have stood up and asked what we can do about the 8.5% unemployment rate in her region. Why does she not stand up for her region instead of constantly defending the government?

She wants to know what we should do. What we recommend the Liberals do is cut taxes, stop getting in the way of development, remove the gatekeepers so that individuals and businesses can invest and grow, and fix the mess they have created in the immigration system. If they do the things we have recommended all along, we will be able to address the very high 8.5% unemployment rate in her region.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

Uqaqtittiji, I would like to apologize in advance to the member. He did not really speak about what I am going to ask him in my question.

Having looked at Bill C-4, which is supposed to be about addressing affordability measures, I have noticed that it has amendments to repeal sections of the Elections Act. I wonder how he feels about these repeals in the Elections Act, which seem to have nothing to do with affordability measures.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is a bit of an odd combination of provisions to see these things together. I will let our shadow minister for democratic institutions speak in more detail about that later, though. I want to give him the opportunity to comment on those provisions specifically.

I just want to extend my best wishes to the people of Nunavut. In looking at the unemployment numbers in parts of the country, I saw there was a very dramatic increase, more than 1%, including—

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

We have run out of time.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Côte-Nord—Kawawachikamach—Nitassinan.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Côte-Nord—Kawawachikamach—Nitassinan, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to seek the unanimous consent of the House to share my time with the member for Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères.

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

Is it agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Côte-Nord—Kawawachikamach—Nitassinan, QC]

Madam Speaker, as I have not had a chance to do so yet, I would like to thank my constituents in Côte-Nord—Kawawachikamach—Nitassinan for electing me just over a month ago. They have given me their support for a fourth time, and I must say that I was deeply humbled and touched by this renewed trust. I thank my constituents.

I also want to thank my team, because an MP is nothing without their team. Yes, there are voters, but there is also our team and all the volunteers around us helping us continue to work on all the issues that are important to us. The election campaign centred on economic issues, and I expected that they would have been addressed in the House already, at the beginning of this Parliament. As several of my colleagues in the House have noted, this government was elected on a promise to “fix” things. In fact, it seemed as though that was the only promise made during the election. I say “fix”, but I do not know if that is the right word. On the one hand, the Liberals talk about the issue of tariffs with the United States. On the other hand, they also remind us that they want to create wealth and make Canada strong, from an economic standpoint.

I would like to reiterate something that I think is totally irresponsible on the government's part. I have to say it. In fact, that is what the Conservatives' amendment was about, the one we supported. The government is not even tabling a budget. It is talking about the economy and people's fears. The forestry, aluminum and steel industries are present in my riding. People are worried, but absolutely nothing is being proposed for those industries. The government is not even tabling a budget, but, in my opinion, the primary responsibility of a government is to explain how we are doing financially and where we are headed. It should provide a status update before deciding how to spend the money from the budget that no one knows anything about. That is the first thing I wanted to mention.

Part 1 of Bill C-4 proposes a tax cut. Evidently, we are surprised that the government is proposing a tax cut when it has not even presented a budget or economic statement. The government is already proposing spending without offering any indication of where the money is going to come from. That is causing a lot of concern. Now, we are not going to object to a tax cut. We support lowering taxes in principle. However, we need to know who will pay for the tax cut. Are health transfers going to be reduced?

I talked about the economy, but throughout my election campaign, people talked to me about health. As we know, the federal government's health transfers to Quebec and the provinces have dwindled to a trickle. People told me that they cannot get health care in my riding. Out of our 1,300 kilometres of shoreline, there are 400, 500, 600 or more where people cannot get a doctor or receive treatments such as dialysis, for example. As a result, people have to move away. That is a very specific, very concrete example of the needs that we have. We expect the federal government to assume its responsibilities. I will give the government the benefit of the doubt, but in my opinion, the promise to lower taxes was very much an election promise. The tax cut currently amounts to $4 a week. It will be $8 in 2026. However, the government is not saying where it is going to get the money to pay for this measure.

We hope that the government will respond to the amendment that was adopted and present a budget by the end of spring. We hope that it will respect all the areas under Quebec's jurisdiction that are governed by Quebec's institutions, namely the National Assembly. With that, I will segue to another aspect of the bill, which is the partial elimination of the carbon tax.

Once again, during the election campaign, the Prime Minister promised a cheque to all Canadians, except for people in Quebec and British Columbia, after he abolished the carbon tax. The cheque was meant to cover a three-month period ending at the end of June. The fact is, this cheque is not a rebate to consumers, since the tax is no longer being collected. This cheque is a vote-buying gimmick that will cost us $3.7 billion. I did say “us”, but Quebeckers are not among the privileged citizens who will benefit from this amount. Quebec is being deprived of $814 million. The Quebec National Assembly—

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

I must interrupt the hon. member.

She will have four minutes and five seconds to finish her speech after oral question period.