Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Well, I have five minutes. I started to say déjà vu all over again. I think it's where I started, and we seem to have picked up where we were on Friday, which I think is unfortunate.
My colleague Nathan Cullen, who served in this place for quite a long time, used to say that the currency of Parliament is time. I think that was a really astute observation. We all come here from various parts of the country. We all have important issues and constituencies. We're here to do important business, and there never seems to be enough time to hear from enough people to get enough feedback and study bills in the detail that we need, so I think it's really vital that we use the time we have in as intelligent and useful a way as possible.
I'm new to this committee. I've only been on this committee for about a month. This is my first budget, and I am really looking forward to hearing from stakeholders about it. I think I said on Friday that budgets are unique pieces of legislation. I'm reminded of a quote that I think was attributed to Joe Biden. He said, “Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget—and I’ll tell you what you value.”
It's the document that sets the course for the governance, the stewardship, of our country for the next year. I think this is my 16th budget. There are always things in there that I vehemently disagree with, things that I vehemently agree with and everything in between, but what is really important, I think, is to hear from Canadians. I want to hear from farmers. I want to hear from small and medium-sized businesses. I want to hear from the tech industry. I want to hear from NGOs. I want to hear from your average Canadian. I want to hear from as full a panoply of people as we can to get their feedback on the budget. However, we're not able to do that. Instead, we are engaged in what is clearly and obviously delay. I have great respect for my Conservative colleagues, but I have to name it. It's the Conservatives who are delaying and preventing that feedback from happening.
I put in an amendment the week before last that would have seen dedicating six hours to hearing from witnesses today and another six hours on Thursday. That's 12 hours, the equivalent of six meetings, and of course, we had two meetings the week before scheduled for this, one with officials for two hours and one with the minister for what was supposed to be two hours. We only had an hour because that's where the breakdown occurred, and I'm certainly prepared to have more meetings for witnesses next week.
Instead, we had to listen to the reading of a podcast interview of Mark Carney on The Herle Burly. That's what we've spent most of the last two hours doing. I don't think that's a good use of our currency. I don't think Canadians think that's a good use of our currency.
Now, there may be a good reason for it. I've been in opposition my entire career. I respect that there are tools at our disposal, and sometimes oppositions have to slow down government for good reason, because government with majorities can act oppressively. They can act with undue haste, and they need to be slowed down, so tools can be used. However, there's a reason I'm doubtful that that's the case here. First of all, the Conservatives insisted on delaying the budget of this nation, the pre-eminent document, because they wanted to hear from Mark Carney. I heard today that this wasn't the reason. Now the reason is that the clause-by-clause, which is the final stage of dealing with this bill, was on a date not to their liking. Frankly, neither of those two issues, in my view, is sufficient to hold up a budget of the nation, but the fact that they've changed their position tells me that there's a lack of commitment to those reasons.
I've said before, and I think Canadians have to understand, that each party at this table is allowed to submit the names of witnesses they want to hear from on the budget, and there was nothing stopping the Conservatives from making Mark Carney their first witness to be called on this budget if they wanted to. I don't know why they're holding up the budget when they could do that, unless they are afraid or worried that Mr. Carney won't come. It's the prerogative of every witness to not come to committee if they don't want to. Sometimes they can't because their schedule doesn't allow them to, but sometimes they just don't want to.
I said this on Friday and I'll say it again. In this case, the Conservatives have been very blatant about why they want to call Mr. Carney. It's not because they're interested in hearing his views on the budget. They're interested in giving him a grilling and a good once-over because they think he might want to run for Liberal leader. As I said on Friday, that's what I think is inappropriate.
Parliament has a lot of power. We can call people to the bar. I've seen twice in my time here that someone has been called to the bar in the House of Commons. It's unusual. It happens a handful of times a century. That's the power Parliament has. We can summon someone to come to this committee.
Imagine this Parliament using our power to force someone to come here to answer questions about their political beliefs. That's not the action of a modern responsible democracy. That's the action of a tinpot dictatorship. That's what banana republics do. They misuse their power to attack private citizens who are simply exercising their civic rights. That's what's wrong.
That's why I will not agree to call Mark Carney. If we wanted to call him to hear his views on the budget, maybe, but even in that case, it's a weak case to be made. Mr. Carney is no longer the Bank of Canada governor. He's no longer the U.K. bank governor. He's a private citizen. While I'm interested in his views, I'm not any more interested in his views than I am in those of another 10,000 Canadians.
I think Canadians have to be aware that's what we're doing here today. We're wasting the valuable too-short time that Parliament has in what is, to me, a political witch hunt to go after a person who has political ambitions that one party here doesn't like, and they're prepared to hold up the nation's finances to do that. That, to me, is not appropriate. That's not a partisan shot. I would say that to any party that does that, including my own.
I want to mention a few things that are in the budget.
There's a school nutrition program in this budget. I think every person around this table has children, is an aunt or uncle or has children in their lives. We could pass this budget and have 400,000 kids receive a nutritious school meal in September, this at a time when one in four kids is suffering from food deprivation. That's 25% of kids, and it's probably higher. There are kids in school at 10:30 in the morning trying to concentrate on their math lesson whose stomachs are empty, and the Conservatives are holding up this bill for political purposes.
Never mind their families' budgets. My first concern is that child, but there are a lot of families struggling with high prices. The Conservatives have prosecuted an excellent case in the House and on the hustings about the difficult situation Canadians are in. They're right about that. This budget would do something about it. Five days a week, it would help a family know that their child is getting a nutritious meal. If they have more than one child, it might be two or three kids. This could save hundreds of dollars per family per month. If you think of who those families are, it's probably the families who need it the most: low-income Canadians and single-parent families. They're the ones who are probably struggling with food insecurity the most. That's who's affected by the Conservatives holding up this budget.
This budget has pharmacare funding in it to ensure that people living with diabetes can get their medication and their devices. I was a health critic for eight years. I've talked to many people living with diabetes who have to pay thousands of dollars out-of-pocket every year. I talked to one person who told me that he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when he was 20 years old. He's 50 now and he figures he has spent over $100,000 out of his own pocket for syringes, needles, test strips and his medication. These are people who didn't choose to have diabetes. It was no choice of their own. They have it. This budget would provide not only health but also fiscal relief for them. That's being held up.
There are tax credits for businesses that want to invest in clean technology. Isn't that something we all want? Don't we want to create Canadian champions in our economy? We want to give businesses that are at the cutting edge of technology in this century's sustainable energy economy a leap forward and some assistance by giving them tax credits so they can make investments. We've heard them at this committee say they're waiting to make those investments.
I worked for a union for 16 years before I came here, and we had 275 private sector employers in the union I represented. I sat at many tables dealing with businesses from mom-and-pop trucking operations to Purolator, UPS, Jazz and B.C. rail—small operations to big. Every one of them is operating in an extremely competitive environment where every day counts. Their competitors are not waiting.
American competitors, who are getting buckets of money from the Biden administration, are making investments that our Canadian businesses are hampered from making. Why? It's because the Conservatives are holding up the business of this nation at this committee. Again, I could understand if there was an important issue of principle, if the government were acting oppressively or if there was an extremely important issue in the budget. However, to hold up this budget because the Conservatives insist on calling who they think is the next Liberal leader is untenable. It's unjustifiable. It's unparliamentary. It's wrong. I think people need to know this.
We're going to be coming back after question period today, and sitting from 3:30 to midnight today and probably 3:30 to midnight tomorrow, while the Conservatives read from Mark Carney's autobiography. Every one of those hours could have been devoted to hearing from witnesses. It's funny, because my wonderful colleague Mr. Chambers said that they want to hear from witnesses. How Orwellian. It's the Conservatives' filibuster that's preventing us from hearing from the witnesses they claim to want to hear from. That's just not right.
This is my first budget, and I don't know what the previous practice was, but I have to believe there's a better way. I have to believe that we need to find a way together. We can express our different policy positions. We can grill witnesses. We can express our different economic views, and we should. Frankly, no party has a monopoly on good ideas. I'm looking forward to hearing some of the suggestions from my Conservative colleagues on the budget. However, what is not right is holding up the debate itself. It's May 21. We only sit for five more weeks. What is that, 20-something days left to pass the budget?
We're past one. Are we still going? I'm happy to—