Finance Committee on May 2nd, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

There's a point of order.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

That is not a point of order. What Mr. Kurek raised is not a point of order. What Ms. Chatel raised in her point of order—I'm weighing in on her point of order—was a valid point of order that the Standing Orders require members to speak to the topic at hand, and Mr. Perkins is not doing that.

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

Mr. Baker would be welcome to answer the question too.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

MP Kurek, it is about the relevance of the point of order.

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

Mr. Chair, on a point of order, I don't understand why these members are wasting the time of the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

MP Lawrence, we'll get back to relevance here. I will repeat for MP Kurek that if this came to a vote, it would be a vote on having the Minister of Finance invited to appear for two hours on the bill and that the appearance would be scheduled to be on or before May 18, 2023. We have received an email from the minister that she would be willing to appear on May 16, which is next Tuesday.

We go back to MP Perkins.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate the points of order by the government members. Perhaps they missed my earlier link, which helped explain how this was relevant, so I will revisit, for the benefit of the members who raised the question, what is actually being amended in the 51 acts in this bill. In order to provide a little bit of variety, I will start at the back and work to the front.

To the most immediate question that the member asked about King Charles III—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

MP Perkins, could you stop for a second?

Members, I am getting some concern and feedback here from the interpreters about what was happening with MP Kurek and the speaking over other members. Please stop the chatter and the crosstalk between each other and allow MP Perkins to talk. Let's have one speaker at a time and no more crosstalk. It's affecting the interpreters. We would not want to affect their health and safety, I would think.

MP Perkins, please continue.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

I appreciate that, Mr. Chair. It is a valid point. I thank the interpreters for their diligent work during this time. I've tried to be very open and to help them with it by providing them with some of the documents I've gone through in respect for their jobs. I appreciate that.

To the various points of order—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

On that note, let's just be respectful of the interpreters. Let's have no more crosstalk and no more talking over or in between. Let's just allow one member to speak at a time.

Thank you.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

There were a couple of specific questions on the point of order on how King Charles III related to this bill. Let me quote from division 31.

This bill is broken up into 39 divisions, as they call them, in the act, in Bill C-47. Division 31 is on amendments to the Royal Style and Titles Act, which has to do specifically with Charles III and nothing to do with raising revenue or expending money, and it has nothing to do with borrowing, yet it's in this omnibus bill. I was speaking towards the relevance of this bill.

Perhaps it would be helpful for members if I went through all of these sections so that they understand all of the various things that are in this bill that are unrelated to financing.

If I start at the back, this bill amends the Canada Elections Act. The Canada Elections Act, last time I checked, was not part of spending, borrowing or raising revenue.

It creates a new body called the “Employment Insurance Board of Appeal”. Generally, that would be done through an act of Parliament on its own if the government wanted to seek it, remembering that this government and this Liberal Party opposed omnibus bills in the 2015 election. In fact, most of the members from the government side campaigned on that in 2015, but apparently that's here.

There are amendments to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Again, it has nothing to do with raising or spending money.

There are changes to the Criminal Code of Canada. Perhaps it would be helpful, too, for members of the government to understand that this supposed budget bill amends the Criminal Code, which I don't believe is a factor in raising revenue, spending money or borrowing money.

It creates the “Canada Growth Fund”. I can agree with you there: A commitment of somewhere between $8 billion to $15 billion—we don't quite know yet because we haven't been able to ask any minister about this—to create the Canada growth fund is in this bill. That is definitely spending: spending without actual knowledge of what the thing will be, which is a habit of this government.

If I continue to go back, I mentioned the Royal Style and Titles Act in division 31.

You're not going to believe this, but the bill amends the Canada Post Corporation Act. I don't think the government needs to go to Parliament to raise the price of a stamp, so what could they possibly be doing in putting a change to the Canada Post act in a bill that supposedly is about the budget?

I will go on, since the question was asked by government members about the relevance to these things that are obviously not apparent even to them in terms of why they would be in an act of Parliament.

Division 28 calls for changes to the Food and Drugs Act (Cosmetics Testing on Animals). We all appreciate that, if we can, we wouldn't want animals used in cosmetics testing, but again, that should be a separate act of Parliament, not in a budget.

For those members who are confused about these issues and why anyone would want to question the minister about why these are in her bill, I can understand why government members are confused, because I don't understand why they're in a budget bill either.

Division 27, just one above that, is again on the Food and Drugs Act, but no, it's not the same thing. It's another thing on natural health products. They'll need to amend the Food and Drugs Act to tax more, which I know this government likes to do, but they're making amendments to that.

We all know that Canada is lagging the world in intellectual property in terms of patenting, seeing as China filed 350,000 patents at the world trade patent organization last year while Canada filed 32,000. We're making amendments in this bill to the Patent Act.

I should say as an aside that of China's over 300,000 patents filed worldwide, 35,000 were for artificial intelligence. I guess because the Liberals are so good at math they would know how many patents were filed by Canada last year for artificial intelligence at the world trade IP organization. Unfortunately, I don't see any Liberals across from me raising their hands and saying they have the answer. Let me help you: 12. Twelve, so the Patent Act changes here, hopefully, will get us up to maybe doubling that to 24, while China continues to put in 35,000 a year.

The National Research Council Act is amended here. Again, if the government were to provide the National Research Council with more money, it would not require a change to the National Research Council Act. It just requires a ways and means motion in the House.

Division 24 changes the Customs Act. I suppose the Customs Act might be changed in here to increase taxes. That could be a legitimate purpose.

Now, I know that all the members travel a lot and that all the members have constituents who travel a lot. We know—and it's been in the news a lot—about all the transport complaints. Liberal members might say, “There he goes again, way off topic, and why isn't he sticking to the topic of holding the minister to account for her budget bill?”

In fact, the Liberals would be wrong and I would be right, because I've actually read this. It says in division 23 that there is a new portion called “Air Travel Complaints”, and the one above it has changes to the Canada Transportation Act.

Now, we appreciate that there needs to be better rules to protect consumers on air travel, but if you really believed in this, you'd give it House time on its own for parliamentarians to question that act and make sure that the best legislation to protect consumers was available. You would not put it in a budget bill that gets closure at all stages. Members on the government side don't even know that this bill is being used for that.

Moving on to the oceans protection plan, the member asked me earlier why I would ever talk about fisheries. Well, don't get me going. With 7,000 commercial fishermen in my riding, and having defeated the fisheries minister because of her performance in fishery under this government, I could talk to you for days and days on the fishery. You might say that's not relevant to this act, but it is, and I can tell you why. Division 21 in Bill C-47 amends the oceans protection act.

I'm not even sure how many government members are aware that there's an oceans protection act, but the amendments here are to do things in the oceans protection act around the protection of certain ecosystems. As valuable as that may be, that should be a bill on its own if it's so important. This is supposedly the government that is committed and at the forefront and full of virtue signalling on the environment, and yet they have buried in a bill that amends 51 acts changes to the oceans protection plan. I would think they would want to be proud of that.

Things that swim in the ocean, such as elvers, lobster, pelagic fish.... For all you landlubbers, a pelagic fish is a fish with a fin that swims—like cod, like halibut, like hake, and like any number of fish. Shrimp, which are shellfish, swim in the ocean. Do you know what also swims in the ocean? Mammals called seals—pinnipeds. Part of the oceans protection plan is to protect the biodiversity of the oceans. When the largest predator is allowed to exponentially grow in the ocean without any kind of management plan under the oceans protection act, which is amended by this bill, you have a biodiversity imbalance.

The government talks about wanting to respect biodiversity except when it comes to pinnipeds, seals and sea lions—

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

Mr. Chair, I have just a quick point of order, I guess.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Go ahead.

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

I'm just wondering how many resources we have, as we are running short of time. I know that we might be able to continue until 2 a.m. or 3 a.m., if that's possible.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Yes, well, we still have some time, so I'll let you know.

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

Oh, great.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you.

Go ahead. You can continue.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you.

So I have some time to talk a little more about what falls under the oceans protection plan, which is amended in this bill. It's a thing called a seal, as I said, or a pinniped. For those of you who don't know, it's the only thing in the Atlantic Ocean that we don't hunt commercially anymore, because they were cute and used to fund—

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

The oceans protection plan, that's the source.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Go ahead on your point of order, Madame Chatel.

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

We are discussing a motion to invite the Deputy Prime Minister to come to this committee. She is willing to come. We can go on and on and talk about seals, but that's not what Canadians want.

Can we please talk about the motion? Then we will be able to invite stakeholders and talk about section 41 and talk about fisheries with them if we want, but now there's a motion and we need to debate that motion.

[An hon. member]

On that point of order—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Chatel.

On that point of order, we are discussing, as MP Chatel said, the main motion, then the amendment and the subamendment. The amendment was that the Minister of Finance be invited to appear for two hours on the bill and that this appearance be scheduled on or before May 18, 2023.

We have received an email from the minister saying that she would like to appear this upcoming Tuesday, on May 16.

[An hon. member]

Just not for two hours.