Finance Committee on Nov. 20th, 2023

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Absolutely, Chair.

Once again, I find—

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Chair, on a point of order, if the member doesn't have a copy of the motion at hand, do you think we can give it to him?

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

I have a copy, Mr. Chair.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Through you, Mr. Chair, could you ask the member whether he has a copy of the motion?

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

That's not a point of order.

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

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, with all due respect, your role as chair is to mitigate the interruptions caused by unfounded points of order. I'm surprised by what I'm witnessing here at the committee.

As much as I'm subbing in today—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Tochor.

The point of order was on relevance, and that is an allowable point of order.

We are going back to relevance, MP Kurek, on the motion.

On a point of order, I see MP Hallan.

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

A point of order for relevance can be brought up. The issue is that you have to make the decision on whether he is preambling to get back to that motion or not.

In my opinion, this is what he's doing. He's laying out the pain that Canadians are feeling, and you have to consider that—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Hallan.

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

—when you're making your decision.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

We are going back to MP Kurek. I'm asking you to be relevant to the amendment to the motion.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I've been so rudely interrupted a couple of times now in making that very clear connection between the amendment we are discussing and the larger conversation around Ms. Bendayan's motion that is so specifically designed to not bring our country together but rather divide Canadians against each other. In this case, it's to divide Albertans against the rest of the country, to divide in every way possible.

I do find it really funny—and maybe this is because Justin Trudeau believes that Canada is a post-national state—that they don't believe in the idea of Canada. I find it really concerning, Mr. Chair, that you would have members of the Liberal Party who would be so offended by the fact that my story—as would be the case, I would expect, with every person around this table, every member of Parliament in the unique journey they take to be a part of Canada's House of Commons—speaks to what we are as Canadians.

Now the members opposite.... Why this is so directly relevant to the issue at hand is that members opposite are making this a concern for our country, which is a fair comment to make. The fact that they would deny the stories of Canadians to be a part of this conversation truly is an astounding revelation of the attitude with which the Liberals approach the governing of our country.

Mr. Chair, whether it's my family and my late Grandfather Kurek, who I spoke very, very briefly about, or whether it be other members, I know quite well that my Conservative team members here, all of them, have incredible stories that lend to the idea that has built Canada, specifically the infrastructure associated with that.

Mr. Chair, when we are talking about the divisions being brought to our country by a government that is so bent on ensuring that it push forward on policies like the carbon tax that have a direct impact on the livelihoods of Canadians.... Mr. Chair, I would venture back, if I could, to 2015. The conversation surrounding the carbon tax directly relates to this motion here because it's the consequences of the policies of this Liberal government and its attitude toward how it governs this country that have led to an untenable situation.

In 2015, in the conversation around the carbon tax, the then leader of the Liberal Party and now Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, time and time again, when asked about some of the intricacies about how the carbon tax would be applied, Mr. Chair, made it clear throughout the course of that campaign, for example, that he would not impose his will, the federal government's will, on Canadians and that he would not be overstepping his bounds as Prime Minister.

Yet, we saw how, even in the early days of the Liberals' mandate post-2015, provincial governments no longer mattered. We saw that the Liberals would do anything and everything they could to trample upon provinces, to trample upon any person, any group or any jurisdiction that did not fulfill their political objective. We see that very, very clearly with the carbon tax.

Mr. Chair, if I could, I'll take you back to one of the first meetings that the then environment minister, Catherine McKenna, had with her provincial counterparts. The press release, the invitation to that meeting, very clearly said that they wanted to come together to discuss climate action and actions on the environment.

However, Mr. Chair, what was interesting.... It was actually Scott Moe, who was the environment minister for the Province of Saskatchewan at the time, who attended that meeting. When he walked into that meeting, he found something, and it was not a collaborative environment, not a minister who was willing to listen, not a government that was looking out for the best interests of the country and willing to collaborate with its jurisdictional partners.

For the sake of brevity, Chair, I won't go into it, although there are members here who are different from those who were here Monday night. I talked a little about some of our history. It is relevant to dive back into the history of what led to the formation of how Canada is meant to operate as country. When Premier Scott Moe, who was the then Saskatchewan environment minister, walked into that meeting, he learned quickly that it was not meant to be one of collaboration. It was not meant to be one of discussion. He walked into that meeting and found that the Liberal minister, led by the Prime Minister and those activists who seem to control the Prime Minister's Office, had been handed instructions as to what they would and would not accept. At the time, it made quite a bit of news. The then environment minister of the Province of Saskatchewan, Scott Moe, actually walked out of the meeting. When asked by the media, he ironically said something that echoes throughout our history: “Just watch me.”

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

I remember that.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

It was quite a moment.

Chair, it was interesting that with the then environment minister—and I know the former Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall quite well—there was a willingness to develop those relationships to work together for the good of our country. Although they might have disagreed on the politics—and I can assure you that Brad Wall and Justin Trudeau do not agree on very much when it comes to politics—there was a willingness and an understanding, with Justin Trudeau having just won the election, that there was a need to work together. However, that only went in one direction.

Chair, what is so disgusting, quite frankly, is that we have seen an erosion of national unity that has taken place over the last eight or so years that Justin Trudeau has been Prime Minister. There has been an erosion of national unity, Chair, because we have seen, continually, how the Prime Minister does not care about our nation's unity, does not care about ensuring a prosperous Canada for all, but rather he's quick to hold some back so that he can pick winners and losers. The result, Mr. Chair, is a divided country.

The reason I talk about the carbon tax, and specifically the way the then leader of the Liberal Party—the third party at the time—talked about the carbon tax, is that he promised it would be a collaborative process. Yet, we saw that, the moment he was elected, it was nothing more than talk. If I could give credit to the Liberals for one thing—I apologize to my Conservative colleagues—it is that they are good at politics. They are good at the rhetoric, good at saying the right things at the right time and good at the strategy associated with that.

Chair, the ultimate reason that is not a compliment is they are so good at politics for the purposes of attaining power that they are leaving our country divided and weaker as a result. To my friends across the table in the Liberal Party, being good at politics is not enough to be good at governing the country. You have to be willing to work together. We've seen time and time again that they are simply incapable of doing that.

Mr. Chair, the carbon tax is a good example. We had a number of provincial governments elected throughout the last eight years that specifically opposed the carbon tax. You would think that would be a valid question that a provincial government could run on, especially after I read the Supreme Court ruling on that. If I could sum it up in the fact that—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

We're going to suspend as the bells are ringing. As we usually do, we ask if we could continue straight through until close to the vote. Do we have unanimous consent?

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

We need UC to continue and then just vote, and then come back after the vote.

[A voice]

There's no UC.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I heard no UC for that. Okay, there's no UC.

We're suspended until after the vote.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

We're back. We've all voted, everybody. We voted the right way. We have more good news here. We have our hard-working clerk Alexandre Roger's birthday is this week.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Happy Birthday, Alexandre.

There's another opportunity for us to thank all of those who travelled to the east and west and the many cities for the PBC. We have thank Alexandre and his team and everybody who coordinated all of the logistics that made that happen, thank you.

Now we're back with MP Kurek.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Of course, it is good to be able to continue this conversation. I was a little surprised actually that the Liberals denied consent to allow this meeting to continue because I was happy to continue talking about the divisions that Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has inflicted upon our country. Chair, let me just highlight a couple of examples of this.

On the very human level, when I speak with constituents an increasingly common sentiment that I hear, and this is tragic, is that my constituents feel that Canada is broken. In many cases, Chair, they will share things with me like they're simply not sure about whether our country has a future. In fact, there are some who feel like there's no option but to see that the consequences of disunity could be absolutely devastating to the future of our country.

Chair, the reason why that's so tragic is that it could have been avoided and should be the priority of any leader and any member of a governing party. Their first priority in government should be national unity. Yet we have seen over the last eight years an intention of dividing Canadians for narrow political gain. In fact, we saw that just this past week in how the Liberals intentionally included in a free trade agreement with Ukraine a carbon tax mechanism. It's shameful that they would be so intent on division that they do this even with a country at war. To play that sort of politics is absolutely shameful. Chair, I have the court ruling here on the Impact Assessment Act, and we see that it was found to be largely unconstitutional, Bill C-69.

This should be no surprise to anybody who has listened to commentary on this subject over the last six or so years since this was introduced. Every province—in fact the only thing we see provinces united in these days it seems is that they're united against the actions of Justin Trudeau, and that's certainly not a record that one should be proud of. I talked about the carbon tax. It has intentionally divided Canadians, including I mentioned the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement. It was the Conservatives who initially negotiated that back in 2013. In fact, it was Stephen Harper who looked Vladimir Putin in the face and told him to get out of Ukraine. That's leadership, not like what we have seen by this division perpetrated by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

We've see the carbon tax and this recent carve-out that benefits 3% of Canadians. It continues to punish the other 97% of Canadians, including those who are struggling to pay their heating bills for propane, natural gas and other forms of energy that are still subject to that. We see that intention to divide. In conversations around equalization where there should be the willingness to have real conversations with provinces, we have not seen that under Justin Trudeau. He may talk big about a photo op, but then when it comes to what happens behind closed doors, it's division and pitting region against region. We see that with the continued conversation around the emissions cap.

Chair, I could only imagine if the Prime Minister was to pick any other part of the country and tell them that they cannot do what they are good at. Could you imagine any other sector, whether it be manufacturing or whatever the case may be, pick a part of the country and if the federal government was to swoop in and say you can't do what you're good at.... Mr. Chair, it is absolutely shameful the division that is being perpetrated on this country by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberals.

We see that with the Keystone XL. This is the tragic irony, Chair, especially with the Keystone XL pipeline. The Alberta portion of that pipeline is in my constituency, and I saw about 2,000 jobs lost because our Liberal Prime Minister refused to work with his American counterpart because they were so blinded by ideology around the future of energy security in North America that they cancelled the pipeline at a time when Conservatives were vocally saying the entire time that energy security would be key to our world's security future. Yet, we see that the Liberals capitulated. We see that with the just transition, a policy that is designed to divide Canadians for narrow political gain. We see this with LNG.

Again, there were, I think, 18 projects on the books when Justin Trudeau took office. Never before in Canadian history.... Whether it be Canada's fiscal situation, whether it be with the economic opportunities, Justin Trudeau was handed a circumstance that any world leader would be jealous of, yet he squandered it away for narrow political gain.

Chair, the reason that this is so applicable to the conversation we are having today around this amendment and the motion is because the Liberals, throughout the last eight years, have led our country to a point where Canadians are pitted against one another and where there is division layered upon division. The result is that we have seen less prosperity.

The result is that we have seen political divisions that are incredibly harmful. In fact, just this past week, you had Liberals who were almost incoherent because Canadians would dare question that they were concerned about the activist environment minister—the same environment minister who was criminally charged for environmental activism—who would try to influence so-called independent senators, although they certainly showed their hand in the last week. Members of that Liberal party were so outraged that Canadians would dare to share an opinion that contradicted their official narrative. It is truly unbelievable and shameful.

Chair, many of my constituents, as I shared at the last meeting, remember Pierre Elliott Trudeau and the divisions perpetrated upon our country. In fact, I often still hear—Rick would probably remember some of those days, as I wasn't born yet—that many are not surprised that the son of Pierre Elliott Trudeau would continue along that path where he—you've heard of the Trudeau salute—would continue to divide this country for political gain.

It is unbelievable. It is unacceptable, and Canadians deserve better.

Chair, I hope for this committee that Liberal, NDP and Bloc members will take seriously this common-sense amendment to try to take some of the language of division, the politics of division, out of this motion, which has been brought forward for no other reason than to continue perpetrating that division upon Canadians, east versus west, north versus south, urban versus rural and, in this case, the rest of the country against Alberta.

I look forward to continuing the discussion on this. I hope that this committee will see that better is possible, that we can bring home a country that is once again unified. However, the history of the last eight years certainly does not give me and my constituents optimism in that regard. That is why we so desperately need a change. We need a government that is willing to put the unity of our country ahead of personal partisan political goals, and as we increasingly see with the number of scandals that seem to be making Liberal insiders rich, their personal financial interests.

Thank you very much, Chair, for this opportunity. Certainly I'd be happy to expand further on the connection between this amendment and the history that has led to the point we're at today, and I certainly will do so. As I cede my time to the next person on the list, I would ask to be put back on the list so that we can continue this conversation.

Thanks, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Kurek.

I've got MP Blaikie, please.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'm certainly glad to have the opportunity to weigh in on the question of the Canada pension plan. I will start by talking a little bit about the plan. There has been a lot of discussion around the table so far, particularly by Conservative members, but there hasn't actually been a lot of talk about the Canada pension plan.

I think the Canada pension plan has been an excellent thing for Canadians. The only deficiency in the plan, as far as I'm concerned, is that we're not paying enough into it to get a larger benefit out of it. When the Canada pension plan was designed, it was meant to be only a third of Canadians' retirement income. It has been an incredible success in terms of what it was designed to be, which is just a third of what people would need to get by in retirement.

The other third was to be a company pension. The final third was to come from Canadians' own personal savings and investments.

We live in a Canada today where over 70% of people working at a job don't have a company pension plan of any kind, whether it's a defined contribution plan or a defined benefit plan. Right there, when we're talking about the Canada pension plan and what it was designed to be—to work in concert with a company pension and personal savings—we know that the Canada pension plan won't get people through their retirement because they don't have that other leg of the three-legged stool that was supposed to be the foundation of Canadians' retirement income.

I think that's a problem. Employers should be exhorted and pushed to bring back company pensions or we need to recognize that the CPP now is meant to provide at least two-thirds of Canadians' retirement income. We don't have a Canada pension plan that is built to provide two-thirds of Canadians' retirement income.

I would say that the CPP was designed for a system that no longer pertains. We either need to considerably expand the Canada pension plan or develop a strategy for pushing more employers to offer their own pension plans to employees.

When we look at the third leg of the stool and at the affordability crisis we are facing today.... Frankly, from the early 1990s on, real wages have not kept pace with the pace of inflation. Even when inflation was at target, wages did not grow as quickly as the price that people were paying for housing. For as much as the housing crisis has accelerated over the past two or three years, it's a 30-year trajectory that has led us to where we are. It's on an exponential curve.

For those at home who aren't familiar with exponential curves, the further you go on the curve, the more quickly things rise. As we continue on this exponential crisis curve, it's not a surprise to see that prices are increasing more and more every year.

Canada still isn't addressing some of the fundamental causes of the housing crisis. What that means for Canadians' personal savings and their ability to buy RRSPs, to invest or to just sock away cash, is that it diminishes as the cost of groceries, food, prescription drugs and everything else goes up. That means the third leg of that stool is also in bad shape.

The good thing about the CPP is that the premiums are taken from employers. They're taken off the cheques of Canadian workers before that money enters into their accounts, so Canadians aren't forced to bid that money to increase the price of a home to get it over that of either the other Canadians' or the investor they are competing against to get a home. The money people make as part of their wage package has not contributed to inflation in housing because it's already getting socked away in a pension plan and is not available to bid on the cost of the home. That's also been a great benefit to Canadians.

The only solid leg of the retirement savings three-legged stool that's supposed to get Canadians through retirement that is in any kind of good shape is the Canadian pension plan. It is in very good shape. They are required to have regular actuarial reports that pronounce on the state of the Canada pension plan. That plan is in good shape for the next 75 years-plus.

Over the last 10 years, it's seen an average return of 10%. Many Canadians who have private investments through mutual funds and other things like that would be very happy to see a 10% return over the last 10 years.

That return is partly because of the size of the Canada pension plan. It means that it can play in investment space that smaller mutual funds can't, and it's also able to spread the risk over all of the Canadians who work in the labour market, which is millions of them. I don't have the exact number, but if you think of the 40 million Canadians, most of them are going to participate in the workforce at some time in their life, and they are going to pay into the CPP. That means spreading the risk across everyone in Canada, whereas normally, if you invest in a fund, you don't have that big a fund. This is going to be relevant too when we talk about Alberta deciding to have its own pension plan if, indeed, that's where the Conservative government in Alberta wants to go.

The CPP is the only part of the Canadian retirement savings edifice that's in good shape. It does that in part by sharing risk over a larger group of people. Say, you ask someone this: Would you like to be in a pension plan with 10,000 members, would you like to be in a pension plan with 100,000 members, would you like to be in a pension plan with a million members, or 40 million members? I think most Canadians are going to say, “I'd like to be in the plan with 40 million members, because, wow, is that ever going to allow me to spread the risk across lots more people.” It's going to allow their pension fund to make investments that are more likely to get a return and to spread risk across the portfolio. That's one of the great benefits.

Moreover, there's another great benefit of the Canada pension plan. Because it applies to all workers no matter where they live and work in the country—with the exception of Quebec, of course, which has its own plan—it's fully portable. Now, that has been an advantage to Canadian workers, who have had to go to other provinces to secure work, but ultimately want to retire in their home province. It has also been an incredible advantage to employers who have wanted to secure labour from other parts of the country when their own province hasn't been able to meet the labour need. It has meant that people don't have to compromise on their pension in order to go to work in another part of the country.

I think the portability of the CPP as well as its ability to spread risk are two very important advantages.

There's another advantage to having the Canada pension plan that I'm going to highlight today. I talked earlier about how over 70% of Canadians working today don't have any pension plan at all, but for those who do, often and more and more as time goes on, there are defined contribution plans.

What that means is the whole risk of the pension lies on the worker. If the investments don't turn out, that means a reduced benefit for the worker, whereas in a defined benefit plan the workers are guaranteed a certain benefit that they can bank on, that they can budget with.

We know when it comes to the CPP that that defined benefits have not been growing quickly enough to make up for rising costs, and Canadians, who are depending only on their CPP.... Again, that would be true for a larger and larger share of workers who haven't had a company pension as they retire. They've struggled to be able to put money away, while they're trying to pay the rent and the groceries. But their CPP amount will be the same amount, and even though it doesn't grow fast enough, it will grow by predictable measures. That is an incredible benefit to Canadians and another reason why, in my view, we should be talking about expanding the Canada pension plan. I think it's really unfortunate that the major debate we're having about the Canada pension plan right now is about shrinking it by having the Province of Alberta exit.

I disagree strongly with Premier Smith in Alberta, who has been driving this. I think there's a lot of public opinion polling showing that this isn't actually something Albertans are calling for. This is something that the government is trying to create a desire for in the province of Alberta. I don't believe that will be good for Albertans, and I don't believe it will be good for Canadians in the rest of the country, because the CPP is an excellent plan for all the reasons I have just mentioned.

So, what are the problems with Danielle Smith's plan, or what she's proposing? Well, there's a LifeWorks report that the Alberta government commissioned a couple of years ago, but didn't release until after the election—presumably because they knew what we know, which is that the overwhelming majority of Albertans aren't interested in leaving the Canada pension plan, and for good reason. Apparently they understand something that Danielle Smith does not.

They hired LifeWorks. We know LifeWorks by another name. They reinvented themselves. It used to be Morneau Shepell. In other words, Danielle Smith hired some random Liberal to run the numbers for her. It's odd to see Conservatives, who usually really get in a tizzy any time you quote a Liberal source, unless it happens to agree with the position they have already taken.... It would be very interesting to go back and see all of the things that Conservatives have had to say about Morneau Shepell, particularly those who would seek to defend Danielle Smith.