Finance Committee on Nov. 17th, 2023

[Bridgitte Anderson]

One of the things our members have been telling us for many months is that the affordability crisis that individuals and families are feeling, businesses are very much feeling as well. It's an overhaul of the tax and the regulatory systems.

It comes as no surprise to many of you that many industries say the regulations are very complicated, permitting.... All of that costs time and money for businesses. Also, when it comes to taxes, we are calling for a recommendation around an overhaul of the tax system to simplify it.

When we look at the additional cost imposed by governments, it has been incredibly large in the last two years. There's been $6.5 billion of additional government-imposed tax. What we're talking about is not necessarily tax loopholes. What we're talking about is taking a look at affordability measures, particularly for small and medium-sized businesses, and recognizing the layering on of taxes that has happened on running their businesses.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Julian.

Now we're getting into our second round of questions. The timing is a bit different in this round.

We're starting with MP Morantz.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Hi. I'm Marty Morantz. I'm the member of Parliament for Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley in Winnipeg.

I want to start with you, Ms. Watson.

Did I hear you correctly that there's been a 78% increase in food bank usage?

[Treska Watson]

It's 78.5%.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

It's 78.5%. Over what period of time?

[Treska Watson]

That's since 2019.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

We've had quite a bit of testimony from food bank executives at this committee over the past year. One of the things they talked about, unprompted, had to do with the grocery rebate. All of them basically said it was useless, to put it bluntly. They didn't think it would help at all.

I'm wondering what you thought about the grocery rebate as a federal government initiative.

[Treska Watson]

I'm not sure I have any thoughts, other than that it's probably not something that would be immediately useful to most of our users.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

We find that all too often with this government, they'll say, “Look at what we're doing for you. We're doing this program. We're doing that program.” They like to pat themselves on the back and talk about all the great things they're doing for Canadians. At the same time that they're doing these things, we see two million people in a single month going to a food bank—a 78% increase. I certainly question their record, given the affordability crisis that we're currently in.

I have an idea that I want to ask you about. I read about this some time ago and I thought it was an interesting idea. In 2016, France passed a law that stopped grocery stores from throwing away food approaching its “best before” date and required them to give the food to charities and food banks.

Are you familiar with that concept?

[Treska Watson]

We are familiar with that concept. We work a great deal on changing people's perspectives on what are called “best before” dates. It is a huge problem and it's something that we benefit from in the rescued food program that we implement.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Do you have any policy research on it?

[Treska Watson]

No. We don't have any policy research.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

You like the idea, though.

[Treska Watson]

It's a great idea, and it's something we benefit from. The 2.6 million pounds of food that we rescued last year—and we're on track to rescue more this year; hopefully, it will be 2.9 million pounds—is all food that is very close to or at its “best before” date. This is excellent food and nutritionally dense food that is very useful.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Anderson, I want to talk to you about the carbon tax for a bit.

Since I was elected in 2019—and certainly since 2015—the mantra has been, “Canadians get back more than they pay.” We know that's not true. For example, business people don't get anything back really. They pay the carbon tax, but there's no climate action incentive that comes back directly to businesses.

Now we have a situation where the federal government created a carve-out for the carbon tax on home heating oil in Atlantic Canada, but didn't give the same benefit to the rest of the country. I'm from Manitoba. I've never met a single person who heats their house with home heating oil in Manitoba, but Winnipeg in the winter is one of the coldest cities on the planet and it's very expensive to heat your home.

By the way, we had one of the Liberal ministers actually say that, if people from Winnipeg want a break, they should “elect more Liberals”. I guess she didn't realize that we have four of them right in Winnipeg, but we didn't get the same carve-out.

I'm wondering if you think it's fair that only Atlantic Canadians got this break.

[Bridgitte Anderson]

When it comes to affordability measures for businesses—and that's really who I represent—again, it is about the layering on of taxes and affordability for small and medium-sized businesses. The carbon tax continues to increase, and our position is that it should be revenue-neutral, as it was when it was first designed here in British Columbia back in about 2008. The carbon tax is one of many taxes that we're seeing layering on, and these are becoming the affordability measures that we're speaking about.

When I look at it from a business perspective, there needs to be fairness overall for businesses across the country so that they can operate in a much better environment.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

We have Bill C-234 in the Senate right now. It's being held up in the Senate by Liberal-appointed senators.

Are you familiar with that bill? It's the bill that would call for a break on heating for grain drying and things like that for agriculture.

[Bridgitte Anderson]

I'm not particularly familiar with that.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Okay.

You talked in your presentation about how you'd like to see some tax changes, I believe. Could you elaborate on the types of things you'd like to see changed?

[Bridgitte Anderson]

In a time when we're facing such significant economic headwinds, I would encourage the federal government to think about how to incentivize economic growth. I would say that there has been a less than robust approach around an economic vision and economic growth agenda for this province.

In looking at the tax system, how do you incentivize? Whether it's investments into software or into R and D, those kinds of things can really make a difference from a business point of view. It's also to incentivize hiring skilled trade workers. There are a number of things that can be done around interprovincial trade barriers. All of it needs to be taken with the lens around economic growth when we're in a particularly difficult time with high inflation and high costs.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

We're well over the time, but thank you, MP Morantz.

Now we'll go to MP Dzerowicz, please.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank all the participants for being here today. It's really lovely to be in Vancouver. I was very blessed to go to UBC for a year to start my MBA, and I applied to finish it off at the London Business School when we had an exchange with them. It no longer exists right now, but it was excellent at the time.

I'm the member of Parliament for Davenport. It's a downtown west riding. I've spent four years on this committee, and it's been a true privilege to do this.

I will say to you that one of the only negative things that has crept into our finance committee meetings is that there tends to be some misinformation or disinformation, and I just want to correct something. There are no Liberal senators, because we stopped associating as a party with any senator, so that actually stopped in 2015.

Eight out of 10 Canadians do get back climate rebates—more than what they pay in. Small businesses are different. We do a carve-out of an additional 10%. There has been an issue with businesses saying that they've not been able to access it. We do have to look into it. It's different also for rural Canada.

I was going to ask this question, Ms. Watson, and I'm going to start off with you. I have two food banks in my riding. They're wonderful groups of people. I go quite often to meet with people who are in the lineup to figure out what are the changes are in who they are. I will say to you that when I ask them about whether they have appreciated the grocery rebate or the GST rebate or any additional dollars the government has given, they have been profusely thankful.

There was a response back to one of my colleagues that it wasn't particularly useful to I guess your constituents or the people you represent. Can I just have you on record? Were you saying that the grocery rebate was not helpful to people who are using the Mustard Seed organization?

[Treska Watson]

Perhaps I misunderstood the question, because the GST rebate is talked about a lot. I'm not sure if those are synonymous with one another.

The GST rebate does help incrementally, but it doesn't actually help the overall crisis that folks are finding themselves in.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

For sure, and I think longer term we want to be able to do that...not longer term but now. Moving forward, we have to urgently address this, so thank you for that. I do appreciate it.

Mr. Armstrong, I'm going to start with you. I really appreciated hearing about the rental protection fund. One of the things we're learning is that some of the ways we're losing some of the affordable housing stock are when there are not proper things like rental protections or rent control. In Ontario, I think we have rent control only if you stay in your apartment, but if you move, with vacancy, the rate on average goes up by about 29%. We're also hearing things like how our Ontario landlord and tenant tribunal doesn't work very well and how a lot of people are actually disincentivized from actually offering spaces in their own homes.

I guess my question to you is this: Are there some elements, such as the two I've mentioned—and probably others—that if we addressed them right away we could actually protect more spaces and indeed maybe create more spaces right away?

[Thom Armstrong]

I think you've pointed out one of the central dilemmas of how the rental housing market operates in the context of what we call the financialization of housing.

If you have a rent control system in place but not a vacancy control system, then what you've created in the housing system is a built-in incentive to displace tenants. That's what happens when real estate investment trusts or other institutional investors buy up purpose-built rental properties. The only way to deliver returns to the investors in those properties is to displace tenants and increase rents.

That was the primary motivation behind the rental protection fund: to get to those properties, move them out of the private sector into the community housing sector and preserve security of tenure and affordability over the long term. We see it working here. We see it working in the city of Montreal. There are some very encouraging precedents across the country, and we need to do more about it.