COVID-19 Pandemic Committee on June 4th, 2020

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Chair, at the height of a pandemic, do the Minister of Natural Resources and his colleagues want to deregulate as they see fit, and do so just because the oil and gas lobby asks? Does the government intend to restart the economy by making the oil and gas industry a priority? Will our recovery be green or brown?

[Jonathan Wilkinson, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

Mr. Chair, we have always said that environmental processes must be efficient, while still ensuring strong protections. We have been open and transparent all through these initiatives and we undertook a rigorous consultation process that goes back to 2019—

[The Acting Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

We go back to Ms. Pauzé again.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Chair, how does approving 100 oil and gas exploration projects help the government to keep its promises to reduce greenhouse gases?

[Jonathan Wilkinson, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

Mr. Chair, we have established a process that guarantees very strong environmental protections. The process is efficient, as Canadians want. It is good for the country, for the environment, and for the economy.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Chair, how does approving 100 oil and gas exploration projects without an environmental assessment make for a green recovery? Is the recovery green or brown?

[Jonathan Wilkinson, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

Mr. Chair, as I have said, the ministerial regulation establishes a clear and efficient process that will be subject to regulatory requirements meeting the strictest environmental standards and protecting the marine life and the oceans. That is very important and we are going to establish an efficient process that provides very strong environmental protection.

[The Acting Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

We will now go to the next round of questioning—the last round, actually—with Mr. Vidal from Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River.

Mr. Vidal, go ahead.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, it's been a while since I've been here in Ottawa, and I must say that both I and the constituents who elected me to be here would much prefer you to be sitting in your Speaker's chair and that the mace be on top of the Clerk's table instead of underneath it. This would signify that we are in an actual session of Parliament.

However, with what little time I have today, I want to ask a number of questions that represent concerns raised by my constituents over the last several months.

First of all, we have received many calls and emails from constituents concerned about people either mistakenly receiving CERB or about fraudulent claims for CERB.

Through you, Mr. Chair, can I ask what precisely the government's plan is to recoup these funds?

[Carla Qualtrough, Liberal, Delta, BC]

Mr. Chair, I can assure the member that we have not compromised the integrity of this program whatsoever. Both CRA and ESDC have a number of data tools, analytical tools and other tools at their disposal to make sure, based on both the SIN numbers we receive and other measures, that anyone who received a payment that they should not have received will be followed up and will be expected to pay it back.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Mr. Chair, yesterday in response to a question from my colleague Mr. Albas, the minister identified moving some integrity measures to the back end of this process. I have, on numerous occasions, heard this identified as tax time.

Mr. Chair, with all due respect to the minister, as an accountant who has prepared tax returns for over 30 years, I can say that we do not have a system in our tax system that allows us to measure the period of income that would be required to determine whether somebody fraudulently claimed CERB or not. The system just does not do that.

Is it the government's plan to revamp our whole tax system, or what exactly are these back-end measures that she refers to? Is it possible that they have no intention of recouping these funds?

[Carla Qualtrough, Liberal, Delta, BC]

Mr. Chair, we have every intention of following up on every red flag that has been identified in our system. I have referred to tax time as a marker that I've put down to ensure Canadians that this is a time by which we will have gone through all of this.

We are doing this on an ongoing basis. I can provide the member with more details. I wish I had the technical knowledge to dive into the technicalities, but rest assured that we're following up today, tomorrow, next week, next month, on every single red flag in the system.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Mr. Chair, two weeks ago, in response to my question, Minister Blair confirmed that some of the firearms he has banned are in fact used for hunting and thus to provide food for my constituents and their families in northern Saskatchewan.

Mr. Chair, why, then, in the middle of a pandemic, did this government decide to attack food security in northern Saskatchewan by banning the tools that we use to feed our families?

[Bill Blair, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, for an important opportunity to provide clarification.

The weapons that we prohibited are not weapons that were designed or intended to be used either in hunting or for sport shooting.

Mr. Chair, these are weapons that were designed for soldiers to use in combat to kill other soldiers. They have no place in civil society. Notwithstanding some of the confusion that we've heard from the members opposite, we did not prohibit hunting weapons such as the 10-gauge shotgun and the 12-gauge shotgun. We prohibited weapons designed to kill people.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Mr. Chair, last week I had the opportunity to speak to Robert. He's a bison and grain farmer in my riding. He recently discovered that he is facing a 50% reduction in slaughter capacity for his bison due to the pandemic. In addition to the revenue reduction, he is now facing increased costs—along with a carbon tax, I might add—to feed his family for a much longer period of time.

It's unbelievable to Robert that Minister Bibeau put the blame on farmers for not using AgriStability and the other business risk management programs when she knows full well these programs need drastic changes.

Mr. Chair, when will she make the changes to these programs so that they work for farmers like Robert and his future generations?

[Marie-Claude Bibeau, Liberal, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will never put blame on farmers. I would encourage them to use the business risk management programs because there are monies in these programs. We are talking about $1.6 billion for an average year, and it could be much more this year.

Specifically for the meat sector, we have put $50 million on the table for the beef farmers and $77.5 million for food processing so they can have a higher capacity to process.

[The Acting Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

There's time for a very short question, Mr. Vidal.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I believe one of the primary functions of a member of Parliament is to provide financial oversight. We are now being provided only four hours to review $87 billion of government spending since April 1. Frankly, this is unacceptable. Does this government really think it's appropriate for members of Parliament to have only four hours to scrutinize $87 billion of spending on behalf of Canadians?

[The Acting Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

The honourable minister may respond.

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, President of the Treasury Board]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for this important question. We look forward to doing this.

We look forward also to reminding the member that a large portion of that has already been studied, approved and voted on by members of this Parliament, which is absolutely the essential thing to do, because as we work on the urgency of actions by this government, we also need to maintain transparency.

[The Acting Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

That concludes today's meeting.

As a result, the committee stands adjourned until Monday, June 8, 2020, at noon.

Meeting adjourned.