Finance Committee on May 27th, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

I call the meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 51 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance. Pursuant to the House order of reference of today, Thursday, May 27, 2021, the committee is meeting to study Bill C-30, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on April 19, 2021 and other measures.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format pursuant to the House order of January 25, and therefore members are attending in person in the room and remotely by using the Zoom application. The proceedings will be made available by the House of Commons website.

Today we reach the stage of dealing with clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-30 after hearing from quite a number of witnesses.

You will see on the notice of meeting that there are many officials from across quite a section of departments and agencies who are available to address questions of members as we make our way through this bill, so keep that in mind, members, if you have any questions. We also have the legislative clerk here.

I want to recognize and thank officials for their previous appearances before this committee and for being here today.

Before I turn to clause-by-clause study, members, I believe you have received a copy of a request for a project budget. If we could, we will deal with that first. It should be in your file somewhere.

Pat, you look puzzled. The project budget is for the subject matter of Bill C-30, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on April 19, 2021 and other measures. The amount requested is for the cost of the hearings, which are pretty nearly complete. The amount requested is $9,750.

Does anyone want to move approval?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I'm happy to move the motion, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Okay. It's moved by Sean.

Is there any discussion? All those in favour?

(Motion agreed to)

Good. That's carried. We'll pay for this set of hearings after all.

I think everyone has the clauses in front of them. We will go to clause-by-clause consideration. I will read it just so we're sure.

Pursuant to Standing Order 75(1), consideration of clause 1, the short title, is postponed, and therefore the chair will call for clause 2.

(On clauses 2 to 14)

We are starting to deal with part 1: “Amendments to the Income Tax Act and Other Legislation”.

There are no amendments on clauses 2 to 14. Do you want to deal with them as a group? If there's unanimous consent, we can do that.

All right. Shall clauses 2 to 14 carry on division?

Peter, were you going to say something?

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

Mr. Chair, I think it would be on division throughout.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

That's what I'm thinking.

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

Yes, if you could keep that rhythm.... Sometimes committee chairs, as you know—I know you have a ton of experience—will drop the “on division”, and then we end up getting it back on board—

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Arguing over it—

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

Yes.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Chair, might I make a comment?

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Yes.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Given that this bill has just landed on our table, I know that we have done the prestudy with witnesses, but we now have all the officials arrayed to be able to answer questions. As you know, yesterday we had the estimates at the committee of the whole, which was a wholly unsatisfactory process, with the minister not answering one question, not even one question. We now have the officials here, and I have much greater faith in the officials and their ability and willingness to provide us with real answers on the various clauses in this budget.

Here's what I was hoping you were going to do, rather than clustering or clumping these clauses together. Let's just walk through each one and do each one on division. Unless someone asks for a recorded vote, we can just walk through each one so that we are very clear about what we're voting on and we're given an opportunity to address each clause if we so wish. I just don't like the idea of bundling these clauses on this type of motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

That's not a problem. We can go through them. You do know there are 360-some clauses.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Yes, there are 363.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Okay. That's fine, Ed.

(Clauses 2 to 14 inclusive agreed to on division)

As Mr. Fast has said, if anybody has a question at any time for officials, just raise it, and hopefully we will have the right officials to come in to rule on it.

(On clause 15)

We'll go to clause 15—

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

I have my hand up. I know, I just—

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Oh, sorry, Tamara. I don't have the participants up yet on the side. Go ahead. My apologies.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

I just want to make sure I'm on the right page. When you say, “Clauses 1 to...”—whatever you said—“have passed on division”, can you tell me what the title is? What exactly am I looking at?

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

You're looking at Part 1, “Amendments to the Income Tax Act and Other Legislation”. It's in part 1, and it's clauses—

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Does it say “automobile operating expense benefit”?

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

I don't have the bill in front of me. Just look under “Clause” for the clause you're looking for. We have carried clauses 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14 on division.

As we go through them, if you have a question, just fire away.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Chair, could I ask that as we go to each clause, you could read perhaps the first part?

For example, presumably we're now at clause 15. If you would just say, “Employee Stock Options—do we go on division?”, we would say,“Yes” and off we would go to clause 16. It's just to be very clear about what we're dealing with.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

I would have to go to about three books for me to do that. I think it's easier if I just say “clause 15”, and give you a minute, Ed. It would be easier that way. I have the amendments here, and I have the clock. I have too many papers in front of me.

I'll leave it up to members—

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Okay. I have all the clauses here in front of me. If you give us a minute on each one, that's 363 minutes just there without debate, right?

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

We'll give you a little bit of time.

All right, on clause 15, we have an amendment, NDP-1.

The floor is yours, Mr. Julian.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'm pleased to present amendment NDP-1.

What this would do is eliminate the stock option deduction, essentially moving from half of the amount of the benefit to zero, which means the benefit is eliminated. It's very controversial, of course, because it goes to upper-income earners.

We have proposed other ways to support start-up companies. We have seen, of course, that it is CEO millionaires who preponderantly benefit from this particular approach. The amendment would seek to eliminate that. We, of course, would be looking to provide start-up support that is more targeted to job creation.