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

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

The member cannot say that a member is misleading this House in this chamber. I would invite the member to retract that statement.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will retract that statement and ask why the member said that.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, oh, what games the member is up to. I will tell her directly that the food program exists. Children are being fed. Contrary to the Conservative Party, the Government of Canada supports the children of Canada.

This is incorporated into the budget, and I sure wish the members opposite understood the program, supported the program and abandoned the leader of the Conservative Party's approach of not supporting the program.

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

Order. It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for York—Durham, Housing; the hon. member for Cloverdale—Langley City, Finance; the hon. member for Courtenay—Alberni, Mental Health and Addictions.

I hear members still engaging in debate and suggesting words the parliamentary secretary should have used during questions and comments, but that time is now over.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Thornhill.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to split my time.

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

Do we have unanimous consent to split the member's time?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there are three things that are assured in life: death, taxes and a Liberal government that breaks its promises.

Six months ago, the Liberals stood here and told Canadians to trust them just one more time. They promised lower spending, lower costs and to reduce the size and scope of the federal government. They said that they had heard Canadians loud and clear, that they finally understood the pain they had caused, like a toxic ex, and that things this time would be different. Every single one of those promises, like their record, is nothing but total and utter failure.

The House passed a budget with a record $78-billion deficit. That is more than twice the size of the one Justin Trudeau wanted to run years ago. That is not a tiny change. It is not a rounding error. It is billions and billions of dollars. If anybody thinks the Liberals are going to stop at $78 billion, I have a bridge to sell them, and I think the Parliamentary Budget Officer would also have something to say to it. In fact, he said the chances of their out-of-control spending being less than $78 billion was “less than 10%”.

If someone told a person there was a less than 10% chance of them being able to start their car in the morning, they would get a new car. If there was a less than 10% chance that someone would pass a math test, they would get a tutor. When we learn that the chances are less than 10% that the government will show just a bit of fiscal restraint or fiscal discipline, the Liberals will tell the Parliamentary Budget Officer he is likely going to be out of a job for telling the truth.

Here is what else he had to say, just so I can remind everybody watching. The spending is “shocking”, “stupefying” and “unsustainable”. He is a neutral, non-partisan appointee of this place. His office was put in by this very government.

The government is dropping $90 billion in new spending on the books, which is over $5,000 for every single household in Canada. That is money being taken directly out of the pockets of Canadian families and seniors through higher taxes, inflation and interest rates.

Why should we talk about that? We already spend more on the debt than this country spends on transfers to the provinces for health care. It is every dollar that is collected in GST. This means that every dollar collected on the sales tax in this country does not go to doctors, nurses or hospital capacity, but to bankers and bondholders to pay for the Liberals' addiction to spending.

If people think Justin Trudeau's continuing gift to them and their families is fiscal responsibility, the Prime Minister should say, “Hold my beer.” We keep paying for his irresponsible spending at $5,000 a pop per household. It is only going to get worse. The Prime Minister and his finance minister continue to run debt on the taxpayers' credit card. They are effectively sinking the next generation.

I will have much more to say about the budget, because I think it is wrong and dangerous for so many reasons, but we are here today to continue the debate on affordability.

Let us talk about what the government is doing on affordability, or, rather, what the government is doing to affordability. All we have to look at is the lineups at food banks in every major city and every small town. Two million people in this country are now visiting a food bank every single month. There are four million people in Toronto going to a food bank in the span of one year alone. One in five people is now skipping meals to make their food last longer.

It is not just about numbers; it is about the people behind the numbers. It is about the kid who goes to school every single day on an empty stomach who cannot learn and grow. It is about the college-educated worker who, despite working a full-time job, still finds themselves at the end of the month with not enough to pay the bills. It is about the senior citizen who, after years of sacrificing and saving, has to make the choice between heating their home or having a hot lunch. These are the stories we hear in our neighbourhoods every single day. All this is happening in Canada. This country is supposed to be one of the richest in the world.

The Prime Minister's response is the most troubling, because it is not compassionate. For him, inflation is something that happens to other people.

The response from Ottawa has been textbook on this: It is another government program, with some form or version of central planning, that will make this problem go away. However, it is not actually solving the problem. It is more spending. This is a central bank economist who somehow missed the class that would teach him that an increase in money supply in this country leads to inflation. Whatever the Liberals want to call it, it is spending. Whether they call it investment or any other name does not matter. It is the same thing. It costs every single family more than five grand in this country for the small amount of tax cut they get. Members can believe that we are not going to stand here and oppose a tax cut, but if the government is giving somebody a small tax cut and on the other end charging them $5,000 for its irresponsible spending, Canadians are going to have a lot of questions. That is exactly why we are here.

One plus one never equals two with the government. It is keeping in place such things as the Liberal taxes on food that make life more expensive while denying they exist. Only Liberals would deny that there is an industrial carbon tax on a farmer who grows food. Only Liberals would deny that there is a fuel standard on a trucker who ships food. Only Liberals would deny that there is a packaging tax on the people who sell food. Only Liberals would stand in this House every single day and deny that the person who is buying food is now paying more for it because of their taxes.

The Liberals say they are going to cut taxes in the bill, but we have to read the fine print. The tax cut adds up to $90 a month in savings for an average Canadian, but the more than $5,000 they are going to be spending because of the irresponsible budget really wipes out that $90 a month. The question is, who really comes out on top?

When someone goes to a casino in Las Vegas, and I am sure there are some people who are watching at home who have been to a casino in Las Vegas, the house always wins. Eventually, the house wins. When one lives in Canada, it is starting to feel as though the government always wins and Canadians always lose, because the $90 it gives them a month is entirely wiped out by the irresponsible inflationary spending of the massive deficits it is running, deficits it promised it would keep down $16 billion less than what it put on the table, deficits that are bigger than Justin Trudeau's deficits, deficits that are the biggest in this country other than during COVID.

Instead of more of this, the bait and switch that we continue to see, here is what I think common sense would dictate we should do: Let us cut income taxes for real, not by $90, but by hundreds of dollars a year per Canadian, by thousands of dollars a year for every Canadian, so that families can actually get relief and get ahead. Let us cut taxes on homebuilding so that young people can finally afford a home in this country. Let us cut the carbon tax in all its forms: the industrial carbon tax, the hidden taxes on food, the plastics ban and the fuel standard, which make the growing, shipping and selling of food more expensive.

Let us cut all those taxes. Let us not say that these taxes are imaginary, because millions of families across the country know that Canadians are paying more this year than last year and paid more last year than the year before. These are Canadians who have been to a grocery store in their neighbourhood, which the Prime Minister has not. That is a shame in this country, because it is the Liberals' taxes that are increasing the price of food.

Every Canadian who cannot make ends meet right now should know that their tax dollars are being spent responsibly in Ottawa. The government does not have money. It can only tax us to get more of it. When it spends it irresponsibly, it is going to cost Canadian families more than $5,000 a year. Everybody should know that.

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Québec Centre, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with some attention to the member's speech. I wonder how someone from the Conservative Party could vote against a bill that reduces middle-income taxes for 22 million Canadians. How is that possible? In her speech, she said she wants taxes to be removed on new homes for new buyers, and that is exactly what the bill does. How is it possible that she would vote against such a bill?

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, they needed us to get to this point in the debate.

I do not know if the member is new here, but we would never, never oppose tax cuts. What we are saying, though, is that the $90 they are giving Canadians is wiped out immediately by the $5,000 they are piling on every single Canadian family. I am not sure how the member sits with the government and votes for that.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Bloc Québécois fully supports part 2 of the bill, but when it comes to measures like the GST exemption for first-time homebuyers, we think that it does not go far enough.

We know that saving for a down payment is one of the biggest barriers to accessing home ownership. Obviously, there is also the fact that rent and housing prices have skyrocketed and that it is hard to save up.

The Bloc Québécois made two specific proposals. The first proposal was to allow parents to cash out their RRSPs and to put that towards the home buyers' plan for their children. This is a zero-cost measure. The second proposal was to provide an interest-free loan for first-time homebuyers. This would cost next to nothing.

I would like to know what my hon. colleague thinks about those measures.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I just want to say it used to be that home ownership in this country was not a distant dream for many Canadians. Today, eight out of nine young people do not believe they will ever own a home in this country.

We brought forward solutions in the Conservative platform, and the Liberals made some promises on housing. They delivered one out of the three promises, and probably the one that affects homebuyers the least. Their solution to housing in this country is to build yet a fourth bureaucracy, at $13 billion, to build even fewer homes than we have had in this country.

Housing starts in every single city are down this month, and year over year, they will continue to go down because of more bureaucracy and fewer tax cuts on housing.

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure, like my colleague and friend, many of us were back in our ridings last week talking to people. Affordability comes up in almost every conversation, whether it is about the cost at the grocery store, the cost of rent or the cost of filling our tank. I wonder if the Liberals are not getting that same feedback or are just out of touch.

When I talk to people at the grocery store, they literally look at stuff on the shelf and have to put it back because they do not have enough money left at the end of the month. The paycheques are not going as far as they used to. Also, we have seen that Canada went from 7th to 25th in the world when it comes to the quality of life index. Everything has become worse over the last 10 years. This was not the case before 2015, and it will not be the case after.

Does my colleague have feedback from the constituents in her riding from this past week?

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to test this out. I was at home in my riding, and like a lot of my other colleagues, I hear the same questions about affordability and the fact that Canadians are just getting sacked with higher grocery prices and higher prices on homes and gas, so I tried an experiment.

I went to a grocery store in a riding right next door to mine that is represented by a Liberal, and lo and behold, I heard the exact same conversations. People in that grocery store came up to me and they also told me about the taxes on food, the unaffordable housing, gas, groceries and home heating. It turns out that the Liberals are hearing that from their constituents. It is just that they are not doing anything about it.

[Scott Anderson, Conservative, Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-4 and to the growing affordability crisis gripping Canadians from coast to coast. Nowhere is it felt more sharply than in my own riding of Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee. The bill fails to meet the moment, as so many introduced by the Liberal government do. It offers slogans instead of solutions and bureaucracy instead of hope.

While Ottawa debates, Canadian families are being forced to make choices that no one in a country as rich in resources as Canada should ever have to make, choices between heating their home and feeding their children. In the Okanagan, Lumby, Nakusp and the Slocan Valley, I have spoken with parents who quietly started skipping meals so that their kids can eat. Seniors who worked their entire lives are now relying on food banks. For the first time ever, food banks in our communities are reporting record numbers of working families, people with jobs needing help just to get by.

This is not the Canada they were promised. The data is as stark as it is shameful. Food inflation in Canada is rising faster than in nearly every other G7 nation. While the United States, France and Germany have all seen food price growth start to level off, Canadian families are still paying more every single month. According to Statistics Canada, grocery prices have risen more than 20% since 2020. That is hundreds of dollars a month for the average family, yet the government continues to tax the very farmers and truckers who bring food to our table. It has tripled the carbon tax, which adds cost to every stage of the food supply chain, from the fertilizer on the farm to the fuel in the trucks and the power in the grocery store. The result is higher prices on every item in the shopping cart.

With Bill C-4, the government wants to expand bureaucracy and regulatory oversight at a time when Canadians are begging for economic relief, not more red tape.

Let us be clear about what this means for real families in my riding. In Armstrong, dozens of workers at Tolko Armstrong lumber and White Valley veneer were recently laid off. These are hard-working men and women, millwrights and forklift operators, all dedicated to a proud local industry.

Tolko's statement was clear. They are not shutting down because of a lack of markets. They are shutting down because of a lack of economical fibre and because regulatory policy has made it nearly impossible to compete. The situation is made worse by the softwood lumber tariffs still imposed by the United States, tariffs that the Liberal government has utterly failed to resolve. Those illegal tariffs have cost Canadian producers more than $8 billion in duty since 2017. This money could have gone to keeping mills open, workers employed and the community stable.

Instead, it has been siphoned away by an apparently unsolvable trade dispute that the government treats as an afterthought. To make matters worse, the folks who were laid off continue to be penalized by higher prices on the food they can no longer afford, prices that are directly attributable to Liberal actions.

Canadians deserve a government that stands up for forestry families in the North Okanagan and not one that leaves them behind. They deserve a government that protects our farmers and food producers, not one that taxes them into insolvency and treats their property like its own.

Canadians deserve a government that recognizes that affordability is not just an abstract policy. It is about whether a mother can afford milk for her kids, whether a senior can keep the heat on or whether a young couple can ever hope to buy a home.

The answer is not another bill that expands government reach. The answer is to restore economic discipline, to stop wasteful spending and to remove barriers to growth in every region of the country. It means fighting to end the softwood lumber tariffs once and for all, through strong, principled diplomacy backed by a government that actually defends Canadian workers. It means repealing the hidden industrial carbon tax that drives up prices on everything every single step of the way. In the end, the debate is not about partisanship. It is about priorities.

In Lumby, one father told me that he has been working two jobs since his forestry layoff but still cannot afford groceries and rent in the same month. This is the absurd cycle of Liberal economic policy: tax more, regulate more and make life more expensive for those who can least afford it, then add insult to injury by boasting about its handouts.

Bill C-4 was presented as a step toward making life more affordable, but, buried beneath the talking points, what we actually find is yet another expansion of government control, yet another layer of Ottawa intervention that would do nothing to lower grocery bills or pay the rent.

Instead of addressing the real drivers of inflation, which are overspending, overtaxation and over-regulation, the government keeps pretending it can spend its way out of the crisis it created by overspending in the first place. Let us remember that inflation did not just happen in Canada; it was made in Canada. It was made by a government that printed and borrowed half a trillion dollars, and then denied that it would cause inflation.

While ordinary Canadians tightened their belts, the government expanded its own. It increased the size of the public service by nearly 40% since 2015, yet federal services have never been slower. Passports, veteran benefits, EI claims and everything else takes longer and costs more, and the staff back in my riding can attest to that.

Canadians deserve better than this endless cycle of spending, taxing and gaslighting. They deserve leadership that believes in the strength of our workers, the promise of our industries and the common sense of the Canadian people. Do we believe in empowering Canadians to build, grow and thrive, or do we believe that Ottawa always knows best?

My constituents have made their answer clear. They want a government that gets out of the way, lets them work and lets them keep more of what they earn. They want affordable food, secure jobs and a future worth staying here in Canada for. Bill C-4 does not deliver that.

It is time for the government to stop managing decline and start building prosperity for the forestry workers in Lumby, for the families lining up at food banks in Vernon and for every Canadian who still believes that hard work should pay off.