Finance Committee on Feb. 5th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

No worries.

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

You are absolutely right; that is a priority in my mandate letter. I had the privilege of becoming more acquainted with the legislation, which was revised in the last session of Parliament. I’ll be working closely with Minister Bains on the regulations for the new act. Right now, I can’t tell you that everything has already been decided, but I can say that the regulations should be put in place during this mandate. They will follow the implementation of the new act. In conjunction with that, the literacy program—which I believe has an annual budget of around $5 million—will be reviewed.

I’m going to turn to the officials for an update on that file. They may have some helpful information.

[Paul Rochon]

I can confirm that we’ve had a number of discussions and good co-operation with our counterparts at Quebec’s department of finance and financial market authority, the Autorité des marchés financiers, or AMF. We are sure we have a good way to integrate the two regimes in a manner that’s compatible and ensures that much of the AMF’s work continues.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you.

On behalf of all those I’ve spoken to in Quebec, I sincerely hope Quebec’s Civil Code and Consumer Protection Act will continue to apply to Quebec’s banking sector after the passing of the budget implementation bill.

Minister, your mandate letter points out that you are also the minister responsible for Statistics Canada. The finance minister’s mandate letter contains a number of priorities that deal with tax avoidance. Still today, however, we have little in the way of relevant statistics. Could you task Statistics Canada with gathering better information on the issue of tax avoidance?

I’ll give you an example. Until a decade or so ago, Canada’s banks still had to report how much they were saving in taxes on their profits by using offshore shell companies and such in tax havens such as the Bahamas and Barbados. That requirement disappeared after the last financial crisis.

Do you think Statistics Canada could research and document this type of practice so we have a better understanding of tax avoidance?

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Thank you for your question.

I want to start by saying that I am not responsible for Statistics Canada. That’s actually my colleague, the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry. He is the minister responsible for Statistics Canada. I’ll be working with him to better incorporate quality of life measurements into government decision-making and budgeting, drawing on lessons from other jurisdictions such as New Zealand and Scotland.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Yes, fine.

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

You could ask the minister, though.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Yes, I could ask him. Since the sentence was five or six lines long, I didn’t catch everything.

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

You’re right that, as part of my mandate, I will have an opportunity to work with the minister on indicators, quality of life, affordability and even financial security. I have no doubt that if you were to ask the minister, he could give you a better answer.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you.

If I might, I’d like to ask one very quick, final, question. It's about the funding for plug-in electric vehicles.

Can you tell me what percentage of the funding has been used to date? Recently, we saw some figures reported in the media. If the fund were depleted and if demand were greater than anticipated, would the government renew or enhance the funding?

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

I know the government was looking into that very issue and put forward measures in the last budget of 2019. Transport Canada is the lead on that initiative. It would be important to check how much was invested in it, but I don’t think the officials here today have that information.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Very good. I will try again.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Finance can get back to us with that information on Mr. Ste-Marie's questions.

We'll have Mr. Julian, for roughly six minutes, and then back to Mr. Poilievre.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Congratulations, Minister, and thank you for being here this evening. We are pleased to have the opportunity to ask you about budget priorities.

You gave a very upbeat presentation and it's perplexing to me because it seems out of touch with the reality that so many Canadians are facing.

Canadian families are facing record levels of family debt. It's the worst in our history and it's the worst among all industrialized countries. Half of Canadian families are $200 from insolvency at the end of any month. We're seeing an affordable housing crisis in this country. The food bank lineups are growing. That's the reality that so many of us are seeing. People are not saying that $1.73 a week is going to make a huge difference to these various crises. That's the figure that the PBO did say was the impact this year in terms of the small tax cut. What they are saying is that massive investments in affordable housing need to be made, and that's what we've heard from the witnesses who have been coming forward since Monday, and the briefs that we've been receiving. We need significant investments there.

People have been talking, and our witnesses have been talking about the whole issue of pharmacare, As you came up here tonight, Madam Minister, you would have passed Jim. Jim begs every day on the bridge between the Chateau Laurier and the East Block, and he begs because on social assistance he can't afford to pay for his medication. He needs $500 a month to pay for the medication that keeps him alive.

I have constituents, including the family of a good friend of mine, Cole. The father is facing $1,000 a month in heart medication costs and the family is now having to choose between whether they can stay in their home or pay for heart medication. We need universal public pharmacare.

We heard as well about the number of Canadians—four and a half million—who don't have access to basic dental care, which has an impact on our health care system and an impact on their quality of life. The NDP submitted to the Minister of Finance and to the government the proposal that if we cap the tax cut at $90,000, we can actually afford basic dental care for all Canadians.

Those are the needs we're hearing about, and you referenced in your remarks that child care is costing the average family $2,000 a month, but the government is finding money. There's $25 billion a year that leaves this country in what should be tax revenues for overseas tax havens. The government has done very little to address that. In 24 hours, the government came up with $4.5 billion for the money-losing Trans Mountain pipeline, and that was a billion dollars over market value. There is a lot of money that's being invested, I think, in the wrong place. Many people have raised concerns about the construction costs for Trans Mountain, which could be up to $15 billion.

My questions are these. Given the size and scope of the affordability crisis that so many Canadian families are facing, is the government seriously looking at putting in place, through the budget, universal pharmacare that would help millions of Canadians? Is the government looking at that basic dental care plan that the NDP put on the table and that would help four and a half million Canadians? Is the government, and as Associate Minister of Finance, you'd be directly involved, and your mandate letter references this—

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Peter, are you going to leave the minister a little time to answer? You're up to four minutes.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Yes, I am, Mr. Chair, of course.

Are you going to crack down on these tax havens that cost Canadians billions and are you really going to halt fossil fuel subsidies, including up to $15 billion in construction costs for Trans Mountain?

Those are the questions that many Canadians are asking, and we're hoping to get answers tonight.

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Thank you for your question and context.

Again, I'm going to start by saying that in 2015, when we started the government, we knew that Canadians were feeling the squeeze at that time. We started by cutting their taxes. Then we also added the Canada child benefit and lifted 900,000 Canadians out of poverty, and 300,000 of them were kids. We also amended the workers benefit. That helped Canadians enormously. We also worked toward helping seniors. Many of those measures did relieve Canadians, while we were continuing to make sure that we grew the economy.

As for other measures, and for pharmacare as you said, in the last election Canadians gave us a mandate to move forward with pharmacare, but before that, I want to say that we have already done more than any government in a generation to lower drug prices. Now it's time to take that final step, sitting down with provinces and territories to implement pharmacare, and that is guided by the Hoskins' report.

We understand that no Canadian should have to choose between paying for prescriptions and putting food on the table. We will not rest until all Canadians get and can afford the medications they need. We will continue to work with provinces and territories to develop a plan that works.

For pharmacare, we are moving forward and we will support Canadians to make sure that they don't have to choose between food and prescriptions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you, both.

Turning to five-minute rounds, we'll have Mr. Poilievre first and then go over to Mr. Fragiskatos.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Thank you very much, Minister and Deputy Minister. It's good to have you here today, and congratulations on your appointment, Minister.

Your responsibility is for middle-class prosperity. Can you tell us, this year, what the median income of Canadians is?

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Pardon me.

Sorry, I missed the question.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

The question is what the median income is of Canadians today.

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Again, when we talk about Canadians and middle-class Canadians, we know that, depending on where they live or depending on their realities, they'll have different incomes across the country. I would say that Canadians are focused on wanting good, well-paying jobs, and also they want to have the income necessary to pay the costs of living, to put money aside for retirement and also to pay for a good education for their kids.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

All right. Can the minister tell us what the federal government's deficit is this year?

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Here’s the information I have on the deficit.

As shown in the December 2019 economic and fiscal update statement, the deficit is projected to decline from $26.6 billion in 2020 to $11.6 billion in 2024-25.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Did the debt-to-GDP ratio rise or fall this fiscal year?