Finance Committee on May 1st, 2019

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Thank you.

You are correct, we have done a lot for seniors throughout the country, but we know there is more to do. This is an important challenge. It's difficult for seniors to live their retirement in dignity if they don't have enough money.

We had already taken several steps three years ago, but this year we did something important: we made sure that anyone who is eligible for CPP would automatically receive their benefits. We discovered 40,000 Canadians who are eligible for those benefits. This measure will help several seniors, particularly women, who did not stay on the labour market for long during their career.

In addition, we established a new approach for people who have already retired, who can continue to work without having their guaranteed income supplement reduced. Those retirees will have more money in their pockets, which will allow them to experience a more dignified retirement. In my opinion, that measure will also play a very important role in future in our economy.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

This is very important for our seniors who contributed to building our country.

Minister, for people entering the workforce who are looking to buy their first home, in Hull—Aylmer a lot of homes have become unaffordable to a young couple or family trying to purchase their first home. This budget contained many measures to help first-time homebuyers.

Could you talk a bit more about the measures contained in the budget that could help a young couple afford their first home in my riding of Hull—Aylmer?

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

There are two important measures in this budget. First would have applicability for some people who have savings in their registered retirement savings plan. We increased the ability for people to take money out of their RRSPs to put toward their first home from $25,000 to $35,000. That will obviously not help everyone, because many people won't have that amount of money in an RRSP, but for some people it will enable them to have more money to put toward their first home.

Second, importantly, we looked at how we could find a way to target first-time homebuyers and make the possibility of a home more feasible for them. We've come up with a first-time homebuyers incentive. This incentive is targeted, obviously, to first-time homebuyers, but also to people who are just not quite able to get into the market.

Families with up to $120,000 in annual income will be able to buy a home of up to four times that income, so up to $480,000. They'll be able to take part of their mortgage, either 5% for an existing home or 10% for a new home, and put that to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation in the form of what we call a shared equity mortgage. This would effectively reduce the amount of their monthly mortgage payments by 5% or 10%, which would give them the ability to get into a home more rapidly and do so in a way that would allow them to have more income to raise their families, which is the situation for many people.

There are about 500,000 homes purchased each year in Canada, but 100,000 of them are by first-time homebuyers. This will increase by maybe 30% in each of three years, so there will possibly be up to 100,000 new families over a three-year period who will be able to get into a first home who wouldn't have otherwise. It's a significant change.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you, both.

We'll go to Mr. Dusseault and then back to Mr. Ruimy.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My intervention will be brief.

Minister, I'd like to go back to my previous topic, since I haven't finished asking my questions. I'm trying to understand why, after four years, you have not yet found a solution with regard to deductions for stock options. You, yourself, have already received stock options from Morneau Shepell, did you not?

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

No.

I once received stock options.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Did you receive them or not?

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

No, I have never received stock options.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Fine.

When can we expect measures to be announced? In the 2019 budget document, you said that it would be this summer. I imagine that “this summer” meant before the election campaign. Can we realistically expect you to meet that promise before the election?

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

We are studying the approach we will take.

Mr. Marsland, could you provide more details?

[Andrew Marsland]

As the budget said, the objective is to align the Canadian regime in a similar way with the U.S. regime, which limits the amount of options an individual can obtain.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Will these changes require legislative amendments?

If so, we can't expect those changes to take place before the election, because once summer has begun, Parliament will adjourn its work and will not sit again before the vote.

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

We are studying the matter. Over the next few months, we will explain in greater detail how our growing businesses will be able to keep their advantage, and how people who really earn a lot in their jobs will pay tax as they would if they were subject to the American regime. We are looking for a fair balance among various possibilities so that our companies may benefit from our system while we ensure that people aren't earning too much.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

You have been saying for four years that you are looking for a solution.

My other question concerns another broken promise. Since 1997, the Liberal Party has been promising universal pharmacare. You reiterated that promise in 2015 but today you are announcing that you will once again postpone its execution. If you manage to fulfil your promise—you've been talking about it for 23 years—can you commit today to making that drug plan universal and public? Those two components are essential if the system is to function well.

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

We think it's a very important issue. We think our current system does not work as it has two problems. First, it costs too much since it is the third most expensive in the world after Switzerland and the United States. Secondly, our system does not provide universal access.

We set out two initial measures in our budget to guarantee that every Canadian would have access to a national and affordable drug plan. The first measure is the creation of the Canada Drug Agency, which will see to it that the price of our drugs is competitive. The second measure is a national form that will guarantee that our system will be more effective and cost less.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Will the plan be public?

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

We are also proposing a strategy regarding expensive medication for the treatment of rare diseases. Our budget sets out an approach that would see the federal government help Canadians with rare diseases access the drugs they need.

Those are two important elements and we are going to continue in that direction.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

So, the regime will be public.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you, Mr. Dusseault and Mr. Minister.

We'll go to Mr. Ruimy and then to Mr. Richards.

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Thank you very much for having me here today and for your being here today.

It's been very interesting listening to all the testimony we've had. The thing that stands out to me is that every budget since 2015 has specifically been focused on benefiting people in this country, whether it's through the Canada child benefit—my community of Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge gets on average about $5.5 million per month being applied to about 18,000 children—or the national housing strategy, which I really like because it's over a 10-year period and it brings certainty to developers and projects and non-profits who can actually access those and who plan to access those.

When we look at everything we've been doing, what I like about this budget, and maybe you can expand on it.... In my riding we have a food bank called Friends in Need Food Bank. I've volunteered there a few times. When I go there, it's heartbreaking to see young families standing in line to try to feed their kids. It's a challenge, and they raise a lot of money on their own. They do a lot of volunteer work to make sure the programs work for them. Then we hear about many young people across our country who are in the position that their kids go to school hungry. In fact we heard recently about the Ontario government dialling back on school breakfast programs. I struggle with this, because if we want our kids to succeed, we need to be able to take care of them.

Moving forward, are the initiatives in budget 2019, such as the national school food program and the local food infrastructure fund, going to help support students and food banks in communities such as my own of Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge?

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

First of all, thank you for the question. I think you identify the challenge we all face in trying to make sure that everyone has equal opportunity. If children don't have enough access to food, clearly being successful in school is virtually an insurmountable challenge. We saw that the most important way we could start to get at this was, as we did in budget 2016, by ensuring that families, as they're raising their children at what is a very expensive time in their lives, have more money to raise their children. That's going to make an enormous difference.

Just to put numbers on that, the typical family of four in 2019 at a median income will be about $2,000 better off than they would have been in 2015. That's including everything. That's including all of the measures we took. That's really important.

We also realize that we need to do more. The idea around thinking about a food program for children is taking a federal leadership role in a place where all the provinces may not be yet. That's what we're trying to achieve by coming to some sort of national standard. We see that as critically important as people are going through their years. We're not responsible for the education system—that's a provincial responsibility—but we can certainly help people to be successful as they're going through education.

We've seen that in other measures in our budget as well, because we've thought not only about families being successful and kids being successful in school but also about how we ensure that they continue to be successful afterwards. It's putting in place, as we've done, the ability of students, as they get past primary and secondary school, to have work-integrated learning so they can get the kinds of skills they need to be successful at work afterwards. This budget made a really important commitment to ensuring that we'll have 150,000 spaces for co-ops or work-integrated learning over the next few years, working together with business and government, so that pretty well every single student who wants to have a work-integrated learning position after school will be able to have one.

We're trying to make sure that we think about the families and that we think about the kids as they're in early years, and that we then create opportunities later on in a way that's not all going to be federal. In the case of, in particular, as I said, the work-integrated learning, much of it's coming through business commitments and we see that as important because we're all facing up to this challenge together.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you, both.

Mr. Richards.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

You've been asked a number of times today about the TMX pipeline. You keep saying that you want to be clear, but unfortunately I don't think you could have been more unclear. Can you give a commitment today that there will be a decision about that pipeline and whether it's going to proceed before the next election, yes or no?

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

I actually think it's really clear what I've said.

We have a court decision on the pipeline.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Yes or no?