Finance Committee on Nov. 20th, 2023

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Don't kid yourself, Mr. Chair. What's going on in here....

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

[Inaudible—Editor]

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

I'm following the lead of my colleague, Julie. I want to know if there is any relevance to what Mr. Blaikie is saying to the topic.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

MP Blaikie, be relevant to the motion and the amendment, please.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Sure, but I'm talking about the report that Danielle Smith commissioned about the CPP. I'm right on topic. I would love it if any Canadian listening today would lay out Mr. Kurek's remarks at committee beside mine, and see who's more relevant to the topic at hand.

I thank Mr. Hallan for his intervention, but I hope he will take my reassurances to heart that I am, indeed, very relevant.

It was an interesting point for him to intervene, because he helped make my point. My point is that Canadians here shouldn't kid themselves about what's going on with the Conservative Party at this table. It's nothing but a defence of Danielle Smith. They have said that they apparently—the federal Conservatives—support Alberta's staying in the plan. They say the only thing they find objectionable in the motion is the mention of Danielle Smith. So what's going on here?

Well, if it's not on the substance of the issue, then it must be the politics of the issue. They've identified that for us by saying that they would gladly pass this motion if it didn't mention Danielle Smith. So what's happening here is a defence of Danielle Smith—and perhaps they're taking their cues from Preston Manning, who in a recent email encouraged the federal Conservatives to have a closer practical relationship. A news article says that Manning “encouraged a 'closer practical relationship' between Premier Danielle Smith's United Conservatives and the federal Conservatives to promote shared interest, adding 'Everybody benefits, especially Alberta.'”

Now, surprise, surprise, the email was sent out by one of the pillars of the Canadian Conservative movement—I think it's fair to call Preston Manning that. What we see here are Conservatives saying that they agree with the substance of the issue, but they just don't think anyone should be allowed to criticize Danielle Smith; and they're going to tie up the whole finance committee, which is studying the housing crisis. They're going to put an end to that study effectively in order to run political defence for Danielle Smith.

I think that is pretty interesting. As I was saying, Danielle Smith hired a former Liberal finance minister's company, Morneau Shepell, to run the numbers for her. They came up with quite an impressive number, which is testament to what consultants are prepared to do for the right fee. We know a lot about that in Ottawa. The Liberals love to hire consultants. This was a Conservative government hiring a Liberal consultant to get a number they wanted that says Alberta would be entitled to over 50% of what's currently in the Canada pension plan.

There are lots of other people, who aren't random Liberals, who have said that Alberta's entitlement would be a lot less. We'll leave it to the Conservatives to decide whether they want to take the advice of a paid random Liberal, or the advice of the CPPIB, for instance, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, or some of the other economists who have come and said that, in fact, Alberta wouldn't be entitled to 55% or 60% of what's in the Canada pension plan fund, but would probably be entitled to somewhere between 12% and 18%, which is a considerable difference. It's considerable in terms of percentages, but when you think that we're dealing in hundreds of billions of dollars, the absolute difference becomes quite impressive indeed.

As I say, they hired a random Liberal, got a number that they wanted. It's reminiscent of the Brexit campaign. You may recall Boris Johnson, a Conservative, came up with the number of £350 million a day, he said, that could be reinvested in the National Health Service in Britain. People in the U.K. would get the best health service ever. Now doesn't that start to sound like somebody else? Donald Trump. I'll come back to him in a minute.

Just vote for Brexit and get the best health care ever, with £350 million pounds a day. Well, people in the U.K. did. It would be interesting to ask them how they feel about their health care.

I read an article recently that says that U.K. health care is really not much better at all since Brexit, but even we as Canadian parliamentarians have spent a lot of time talking about the consequences of Brexit. It's had a terrible economic impact on the United Kingdom, and it's had a terrible political impact, if we think about the conflict between Ireland and Northern Ireland and what it has done on the border and the potential for violence that has started up again. All of that was predicated in part on a lie—a lie about what it would mean for the United Kingdom's economic performance if they did what the Conservatives there encouraged them to do, a lie about what it would mean for their health care if they were to go in that direction.

The other thing that the National Health Service and Brexit debate have in common with the CPP is that the decision is irrevocable. There is no path back for the United Kingdom into the European Union, just as there will be no path back into the Canada pension plan for Alberta if this decision is made. I find it very reassuring to know that the majority of Albertans aren't interested in that, because it would do damage not only to Alberta workers but to workers across the country—except in Quebec, of course—because it would have a significant impact on their pensions.

Why is this plan dangerous? Well, it's dangerous because of the impact that it would have, but Alberta doesn't have to decide to leave the Canada pension plan in order for it to be dangerous now. What's being talked about is a potential referendum in 2025, and people say, “Okay, well, that's a ways away.” Even if Alberta did decide to leave, it would be another two or three years before they were out of the plan, so now we're into 2027 and 2028. “Well, maybe this isn't such a bad thing and we should let the process roll out,” they say, hence Conservative voices here saying: “Don't criticize Danielle Smith. Let her go out to consult.”

Folks who have talked to the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, which knows a bit about investing, would know that when you're managing a $580-billion portfolio that also includes a lot of hard assets, investment decisions have to be made years in advance in order to have enough liquidity to pay out someone who's demanding 12%, 18% or 50% of your holdings. You need to start arranging your investments in such a way as to be able to pay that out. Those investment decisions are not four or five years away. Those investment decisions are coming soon.

That's why what Danielle Smith is doing in Alberta is not innocent, and it's not harmless. It is dangerous, and it's dangerous now, because for the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board to take the Government of Alberta seriously, it means it has to start lining up its investment decisions now. This organization, which has been successful in delivering a 10% return over the last 10 years for Canadians through very difficult economic times, has to contemplate changing its investment behaviour in the near future in order to have enough liquid assets to pay out Alberta if Alberta decides to leave, and if that happens on a 2027, 2028 or 2029 timeline. It's coming.

It's coming and they have to be ready for that, so it is a dangerous plan. As I said, I think it's predicated on some bad numbers by some random Liberal, but it's also important to note the idea that somehow Alberta is paying more into the CPP than it's getting out assumes that because people happen to be working in Alberta from other parts of the country—and, I would add, at Alberta's invitation—means that, yes, it was paid into in Alberta, but I don't think there's anything wrong with people retiring to their home province and collecting their pension there. Effectively, what Danielle Smith is saying is that she wants to control where people take their retirement, and that if they worked in Alberta, they should retire in Alberta, because that's the only way to have fairness.

I think people should have the financial freedom within Canada to retire wherever they like. If they did the work, they receive those payments made into the CPP. Alberta never received those payments. Those workers received those payments. Yes, from an Alberta employer, but an Alberta employer who recruited them, hired them and asked them to stay and to work for them in that province. It's up to Canadian workers to decide where they take their retirement and where that money goes in their retirement.

I would add also that there's a liability the provinces where they retire are assuming, which is their health care liability, among others. Those folks who have retired to their home provinces are living on a much lower income and paying their taxes with a lower income in their home province and need to access health care services there. To say it's unfair because when their employer paid what the worker earned on their labour into the Canada pension plan they were working in Alberta and now they've retired to New Brunswick.... To say that somehow that's unfair to Alberta I think is to misunderstand the nature of those contributions. Those are contributions for the worker. They're not contributions for any one province.

Alberta wouldn't have been able to generate that wealth without having people come to do the work to extract barrels of oil from the ground. They did that at Alberta's invitation and, more particularly, the invitation of employers within Alberta. That's not a bad thing. That's actually how we say we want it to work. Conservatives who promote agreements on internal labour mobility...that's all so people can work in one province and retire in another or work in different provinces at different times.

They're not just fans of international labour mobility within Canada; they've been fans of international labour mobility internationally. You wouldn't know it, to listen to them talking in the House of Commons today, but the trade agreements that they've supported consistently over the last 30 years have all included labour mobility chapters in order to make it easier for companies to take workers from outside of Canada and bring them here.

Now they say they're offended that there are going to be some South Korean workers coming to set up battery plants. I share their concern. I don't think that this public investment was made in order to create jobs for people outside of Canada. I do think that the government should have gotten some guarantees on that, but I also recognize that Canada currently—and I'm glad that it will in the future—doesn't have expertise in battery manufacturing.

What the Conservatives say when they defend international labour mobility clauses in trade agreements is that sometimes you need expertise that doesn't exist and that we shouldn't make it hard on businesses to secure the expertise they need to set up shop in Canada and have successful investments. Now, all of a sudden when that's happening, under the very clauses that they bragged they negotiated, it's a crime. It's a crime, and we're all supposed to be really upset about it. I think they need to get their house in order and decide what they're in favour of or not.

As a New Democrat, I say this with some great comfort because we've often been very critical of the labour mobility chapters in trade agreements. I think of the CPTPP, and the Canada-European Union Trade Agreement, CETA. If you go back and look at the record, what were we talking about? Among other things it was the international labour mobility provisions and how they're sometimes abused in order to import workers to keep wages in Canada artificially low. Yes, I'm quite familiar with this debate.

What they're doing in terms of calling those workers “replacement workers” so that they can get out of taking a position on anti-scab legislation I think is sad and pathetic. I think it does a disservice to the debate in the House of Commons and a disservice to Canadian workers who have their jobs taken while they're out on the picket line. Let's not pretend like somehow this is a new concern, that we don't know about how this works, where these workers are coming from or how they're getting into the country. We know they're coming because they're coming under the auspices of the very agreements that Conservatives like to brag they negotiated, so give me a break on that one.

All that is to say that Conservatives support labour mobility, but when it doesn't suit them, they're happy to turn around and complain about it. They're complaining about it right now in the context of these battery plants. I think there are some important concerns there that have to be addressed, but we're not going to get to the bottom of it if we're not honest about the mechanisms by which they're coming. Now, the Alberta government wants to say that even though it's supported labour mobility for workers to come and work in Alberta, when they decide to take their retirement back home close to their family, somehow there's some kind of financial inequity. That's not true if you look at it and realize that the money belongs to the workers and that they should be free to take their retirement incomes wherever they want. Governments should not dictate where people are allowed to take their retirements. If we believe in full mobility within Canada as a right of Canadian citizenship and the right of a Canadian worker, that therefore should not be used as an argument for fiscal inequity when we're talking about the Canada pension plan.

Is this motion divisive? No, I think it's reasonable to criticize the Danielle Smith government, for all of the reasons that I've just laid out. We need to be able to have a frank conversation about the one reliable pillar of Canadians' retirement incomes. It's okay to name names in that debate. Danielle Smith doesn't hesitate to mention the names of people she disagrees with. The Conservatives don't hesitate to mention the names of the people they disagree with. I've certainly heard Conservatives criticize Rachel Notley—if we want to talk about federal politicians criticizing provincial politicians. They certainly didn't hesitate from criticizing the Notley government. The idea that somehow it's automatically divisive or out of bounds for people to criticize folks in provincial politics is an argument that I might accept from my Bloc colleague, but I'm not going to accept it from the Conservatives, who have made a trade of attacking provincial governments that they disagree with.

I was interested in this question. I went back and thought it was quite interesting to see that Pierre Poilievre, the now leader of the Conservative Party, in 2018 said—I believe it was at this very committee—“Madam Chair, the finance minister is now commenting on the provincial policies in the various jurisdictions. That is just fine. In Ontario....” Then he went on to attack the Wynne government.

We've heard directly from the Conservative leader that he thinks it's totally fair game. We've not only heard him saying that it was fine for Bill Morneau at the time, who incidentally went on to write that—well, he's the owner of the company that wrote the report for the Alberta government, but never mind—he's done it himself. He's done it many times. On October 30 of this year my colleague Jenny Kwan got up in the House of Commons to ask him a question about social and co-op housing, and he got up and talked about what the B.C. NDP were doing and he described social housing is a “Soviet-style takeover of housing.” Well, you can think what you want about the comment. I personally think it's patently absurd.

That was just a totally ridiculous comment, but he made it, and that was a criticism of a provincial government. But now they're saying, “Oh, wow, we can't name a provincial government. That would be really divisive.” To call the B.C. government a Soviet government isn't using language that I would characterize as designed to encourage national unity, Mr. Chair, so let's just take a pause on that and reflect on that.

Let's also reflect on the fact that the Conservative leader has hardly any meaningful policies to address the housing crisis. The one thing he hangs his hat on is going after municipal politicians outside of federal jurisdiction—municipal jurisdiction is not federal jurisdiction—and he's been making a career of going around the country attacking municipal jurisdictions and attacking municipal politicians. That's not a great move from a national unity point of view, and it's clearly not a move that says we can't talk about what other levels of government are doing here. Kind of his whole thing on housing is talking about other levels of government so he doesn't have to talk about the absence of federal housing policy in his own bill—

[An hon. member]

Should I donate to your campaign?

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

—which is really about giving land away to developers in a similar fashion we saw take place in Ontario.

Now we have an amendment to this motion because the Conservatives, more than anything, want to take out reference to Danielle Smith, because they're taking their cues from Preston Manning. The amendment is to take out reference to Alberta's plan to leave and to replace it with a bunch of stuff about energy policy so that they have something they'd prefer to talk about.

That's consistent with a strategy we've seen now for a while, which is that the Conservatives don't want to talk about any of the things that are politically inconvenient for them. We saw that right when we came back to the House, the Prime Minister made some serious allegations. We've seen now that the U.S. is similarly concerned about an assassination attempt by a Sikh nationalist on its own soil. We saw the Prime Minister make what was a very serious accusation at that time, and we had a debate about it for an entire evening in the House of Commons, and in the course of that debate we saw one Conservative speaker speak for five minutes and they took a pass on the rest of the debate because we know Stephen Harper—

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

On a point of order, I'm sorry, Chair, but what is the relevance of this to the motion?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I would ask that MP Blaikie be relevant to the motion and the amendment.

I would also ask you, MP Tochor—I know there has been a lot of chatter—if you could just keep it down while MP Blaikie is making his comments.

MP Blaikie, go ahead.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

I'm happy to establish the relevance. My argument is that this amendment is designed to give them an excuse to talk about something other than what is uncomfortable for them to talk about, which is the Canada pension plan generally and Danielle Smith specifically, and I'm establishing that it's part of a pattern of behaviour that we've seen with Conservatives—

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

On a point of order, Chair, this has nothing to do with the motion on the floor. It's not relevant. It has nothing to do with the amendment.

I do not think Danielle Smith is in the amendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

It is on the amendment. Yes, it is.

Continue, MP Blaikie.

MP Tochor, I have ruled.

MP Blaikie, please—

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

I have a point of order, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Go ahead on a point of order.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

The subamendment that we're supposed to be talking about is very clear, and I would challenge what you're saying. It says, "This Liberal government's policies, such as the carbon tax and Bill C-69, are leading to greater division in our country." I don't see Danielle Smith's name in there. I don't see the pension plan in there. I don't see anything like that in there, and after all, we're on the subject—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Hallan. We're speaking to the motion and the amendment.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

We are speaking to the subamendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

We are speaking to both.

[An hon. member]

There is no subamendment. There is just the Conservative amendment

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

MP Blaikie, you have the floor.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

And, the part you didn't read, is that it removed clause 3 from the original motion, which is the clause that makes reference to Danielle Smith.Give me a break, guys.

This is not unlike what we witnessed in the House last night where we saw two Conservative members get up to speak to anti-scab legislation and they never once spoke to the bill, never once mentioned the term “strike”, never once mentioned the term “lockout”, never once talked about replacement workers in any relevant sense. This is my point. When it's politically uncomfortable for them to talk about something, they don't. They then make up other things to talk about or they insert other things—

[An hon. member]

It's not something uncomfortable at all—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Allow the member who has the floor to continue.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

They insert other things into the debate. It's not an accident that they started interrupting me when I started talking about India, because part of their silence was designed to protect Modi, someone Stephen Harper has a very close personal relationship with and has even tweeted about positively. The Conservatives took a pass on that debate because Stephen Harper has a close relationship with Modi in India and they want to look past some of the serious human rights violations the Government of India is responsible for. They don't want to talk about it.

Then when I start talking about it, we start getting disruptive points of order because it's uncomfortable for them. Their strategy is to silence people, just as they've been trying to silence this committee because they don't like the fact that some of us don't agree with Danielle Smith and are willing to name it, so they haven't allowed us to have a vote. That's really what all of this is about. It's about avoiding a vote because they know that a number of us on this committee are critical of Danielle Smith and they don't accept that anyone could be.

They are the ones who like to talk a lot about democracy and its importance, but you see in their behaviour that when you don't agree with their position, they seek to silence you. They seek to stop decisions being made when they know they're not going to get the outcome they want. That is the most undemocratic that you can be.