Finance Committee on May 2nd, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Okay. I was just saying we are back.

I hope you can hear me okay.

Interpreters, I hope the sound is coming through all right.

I hope everybody had a good break, with time to stretch and relax a bit.

Now we're back, and MP Perkins is on.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair—

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

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

There are two items that I'd like to bring on a point of order.

First, I would appreciate an update from you, possibly with consultations from the clerk, about whether or not the PMO has indicated that the finance minister would, in fact, be available for what I think has been demonstrated very specifically as two hours to come to this committee. Certainly, it would be nice for all to be able to move forward.

However, the very reasonable request of having the finance minister coming for two hours.... My question through this point of order, Mr. Chair.... After, I will have one further comment to make on a further point of order, but I'm wondering if you could—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

MP Kurek, thank you for that.

Let me update you right now. We are debating the amendment and the subamendment to the amendment to the main motion. That was “That the Minister of Finance be invited to appears for two hours on the bill and that this appearance be scheduled on or before May 18th, 2023.”

We received an email from the minister. She has said that she would like to appear here next Tuesday, which is May 16.

That is where we are, MP Kurek.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

To qualify the response that you received from the minister, is there a commitment to ensure that she will, in fact, appear for two hours, assuming that the motion passes? We're questioning that.

Is there confirmation that she will, in fact, appear for those two hours?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

MP Kurek, the minister has said that she will appear on May 16.

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

Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

The lack of certainty in that is certainly troubling. I imagine that Mr. Perkins in his follow-up will expand more fulsomely on that. I have no doubt.

However, further on a point of order, Mr. Chair, there was a recent PROC report that was tabled that made the unanimous recommendation that chairs chair committee proceedings from the room. I want to ask you, Mr. Chair, to make sure that procedurally, we are following the direction of the very capable PROC committee in all of the work it is undertaking—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

We are.

I'm sorry to interrupt, MP Kurek, but we are, yes. We are.

The MP who has the floor now is MP Perkins.

Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, committee members, and thank you, Mr. Chair, for summarizing where we are on the subamendment to the amendment for our effort to find Freeland. I hope it's not free Freeland, as we talked about earlier...that the PMO has given her the latitude to appear before us. We would like the free Freeland.

We assume that she can make up her own mind, but we are still curious, as to the finding Freeland effort, about the six appearances in the House since January and her lack of willingness to accept previous very polite and well-worded invitations by this committee to appear in the last six months. It's very curious that the minister has chosen not to.

Before I get back into the ministerial accountability document of Treasury Board, I spoke earlier in terms of accountability and about the spending that this budget Bill C-47, which amends 51 acts of Parliament, imposes on Canadians and their wallets over the next five years. I spoke about the paycheque deterioration that we've seen as a result of the fiscal program of this Minister of Finance. Her willingness, obviously, to be questioned for two hours is very important. We think that is a small amount of time, given that this is a $490-billion budget and a$3.1 trillion spending plan over the next five years.

Quite frankly, in two hours, it will be extremely difficult to question her on the 51 acts of the Government of Canada that this bill intends to amend. In fact, without that I'm not sure that we could get to the creation of a new corporation—the CIC—in that timeframe.

I'm not sure that we could get to the creation of yet another global investment fund. It seems like every six years we have a growth fund, a global investment fund or a fund of some sort that gets $15 billion.

I'm sure we're not going to get to the $14 billion Volkswagen contract. I think it was mentioned earlier. It seems awfully embarrassing for me and it actually almost brings a tear to my eye that the only thing in this five-year fiscal framework for that $14-billion dollar VW contract is the mere $778 million dollars that the federal government is going to subsidize Volkswagen for to built a plant. The $13 billion that the minister announced so proudly both in Ontario and also in the House.... He is very proud of it and very effervescent when he talks about it. He is very proud of the fact that the $13 billion is not actually even in the fiscal framework. That spending actually happens further beyond this fiscal framework.

I suspect that the current minister of industry is hoping that, as prime minister, he will be able to cut the ribbon on this plant five years from now and actually be responsible for then providing $13 billion of subsidy.

Did I mention that Volkswagen last year had the same revenue as the Government of Canada? Volkswagen's revenue last year was $413 billion. Guess what. The federal government's revenue was, I believe, $412 billion or $413 billion. The difference is that Volkswagen actually made a $200-billion profit last year, I believe it was. The federal government, having the same revenue, actually made a $40-billion deficit. They lost $40 billion.

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

Why are we subsidizing?

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

Apparently the company with the same amount of revenue as the Government of Canada needs taxpayers to help them out. They need them to help them out in order to build a battery factory.

The minister has not been forthcoming on the jobs and we will actually get access this week to the contract to be able to know.

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

Will he actually come to speak?

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

He has agreed to speak in camera for two hours.

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

Why in camera?

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

He says it's commercial confidentiality, but I think the reason the minister wants to be in camera is that he's actually going to be embarrassed by the fact that he claimed in the House.... This goes to the issue of ministerial accountability, which is what this subamendment is about. It's about ministerial accountability. Even the minister of industry has said in the House that this enormous, unprecedented Volkswagen taxpayer subsidy by the Government of Canada has an ROI—a return on investment, as it's known—of five years.

I'm curious about that. I did spend 20 some years in the private sector and I know that a return on investment is when you make the investment and then you actually make a profit on that investment.

Now, in order for the government to even get that basic return of that money in five years, the plant would actually have to be open. Until the plant is open, the plant is not producing revenue. I don't see how, on a plant that the minister by his own words said will take five years to build, it can have a five-year return on investment.

This is the kind of question we need to ask the Minister of Finance—whether she agrees with the Minister of Industry that there is a five-year return on investment on a $14-billion contract subsidizing a company that has the same revenue as the Government of Canada while at the same time producing no revenue and no batteries for the next five years; that somehow it magically produces it. Maybe that's why we know that the Minister of Industry was actually a corporate lawyer and not a person delivering a P and L statement, or profit and loss, for companies. I think he missed his math there.

At the industry committee last week, we asked the minister for a copy of that ROI report that he so proudly claimed in the House of Commons existed—that there was an ROI report and that the bureaucrats and department had done this amazing work to say that we will get this money paid back within five years. Do you know what the minister's answer was there? He actually came to committee. We invited the minister to come to committee, and he came to committee. When we posed that question to him of whether or not there was an actual report, as he claimed, he said, well, it's the Trillium report.

Now, if you had a computer in front of you, I could give you the URL for the Trillium report. It's a report by a think tank in Ontario, as they're called, to the Ontario government about what the electric vehicle manufacturing industry could be worth in Ontario on theoretical grounds. If the fairy dust got spread here, and the fairy dust got spread there, and we had this part of the manufacturing process here, and we had this assembly of the process there, and if the stars lined up, and if all things worked out, somehow there would be this massive job creation between now and 2050 in Ontario.

Do you know what? I read that report again last night in preparing for this committee, and do you know what I found in that report? The report is called, “Electric Vehicles: a $48 billion opportunity for Canada”. It sounds like something this government would write, because the bigger the number, the more impressive the announcement is. I read though this report twice. I did a word search, which you can do on a PDF, and I didn't find the word “Volkswagen” once in that report. I don't understand how the minister says this is the report that is publicly available that supports his contention that there is a five-year return on investment on this $14-billion investment in Volkswagen for a plant that won't even open for five years. He says it's right there in that report. I searched it. I guess that's why we're going to have the minister back. We will have the minister back for two hours to talk about this contract.

I would like to ask the Minister of Finance if she knows of a different way to calculate a return on investment. Perhaps it's not the one they teach in business school. Perhaps it's not the one that every company uses in trying to figure out whether they should make a capital investment. Perhaps this Minister of Finance from her journalistic career—not business career, because she didn't have one—has a different definition of what a return on investment is. Perhaps she learned it from the Prime Minister, who said that budgets balance themselves. As we know, apparently they don't.

When you look at this very large Bill C-47—I'll hold it up for people to see—this budget implementation bill that implements 51 act changes, including the symbol of the crown for the King—

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

Mr. Chair, on a point of order, could we just have a quorum call?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Clerk, do we have quorum?

[The Clerk]

Yes, there's quorum at the moment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

There's quorum.

Continue please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm happy there's quorum because I know that when I've moved motions to adjourn and my colleagues on the Conservative side have agreed to adjourn, I've been really quite entertained by the fact that the government continues to vote against adjourning so that I can continue explaining to them all the intricacies of ministerial accountability, and so that I can explain to them why we need to have the minister here, like her colleague the Minister of Industry has done in trying to be held accountable for a $14 billion unbooked expenditure. I certainly would like to ask the Minister of Finance.... Besides the fact that she clearly has a different definition of return on investment—and if she doesn't, maybe she should explain to the industry minister what return on investment is.... But if she does have a different explanation, I would like to know that.

I would also like to ask her, if she would show up for the two hours in our "finding Freeland" effort, if we could find a way to understand what in the Financial Administration Act allows the minister to commit the government to $13 billion of spending for this Volkswagen thing beyond the fiscal framework. The minister does not have parliamentary authority to do that because the parliamentary authority that the minister seeks with Bill C-47 is just to amend some financial acts and many acts that have nothing to do with the budget that the minister is....

Perhaps in "finding Freeland" maybe the minister is actually reading the act, Bill C-47, which amends these 51 acts and doing her cross-referencing to the 51 acts to make sure that she understands and prepares herself well for the incredibly insightful questions that I think all parties will ask the minister if and when she shows up on the 16th. We'll be thrilled to have her next week on the 16th for two hours, but for some reason she's unwilling to commit to two hours, which is a small amount of time given the fact that she has that much—

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

How many minutes is that?

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

It's 60 minutes. It's 60 minutes for the first hour and it's 60 minutes for the second hour. She had 60 minutes to share on election readiness with Senator Hillary Clinton on the weekend, but didn't have an additional 60 minutes.

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

How many minutes do you think she spent with Liberal donors?

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

When conventions happen we know that there are a lot of people who belong to the Laurier Club who get to have special access. The Laurier Club consists of people who essentially give the maximum donation under law to the Liberal Party personally, and they get special access to ministers of the Crown just by being there. In fact, because they have paid the maximum donation under law, they don't even have to pay delegate fees like normal people.

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

Really?