Evidence of meeting #87 for Finance in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was ministers.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Philip Lawrence Conservative Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON
That's not a point of order, Mr. Chair. I respect the member. The budget is—
Liberal
Conservative
Philip Lawrence Conservative Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON
My comments are relevant to the amendment. The budget is a very lengthy document, and Mr. Perkins is talking about finances, fisheries and seniors. It covers a lot of topics.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Fonseca
I would say just do a refocus there, MP Perkins, and maybe with a little time this evening you'll have an opportunity to think about that refocusing.
Members, we'll be suspended until Thursday.
Thank you.
[The meeting was suspended at 21:59 p.m., Tuesday, May 9]
[The meeting resumed at 11:04 a.m., Thursday, May 11]
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Fonseca
I call this meeting to order.
We're resuming meeting number 87 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance and the debate on motion by PS Beech, the amendment by MP Blaikie and the subamendment by MP Morantz in relation to the study of Bill C-47.
Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format pursuant to the House order of June 23, 2022. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.
I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of members. Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mike, and please mute yourself when you are not speaking. There is interpretation for those on Zoom. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of either the floor, English or French. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel. I remind everyone that all comments should be addressed through the chair. For the members in the room, if you wish to speak, please raise your hand. For members on Zoom, please use the “raise hand” function. The clerk and I will manage the speaking order as well as we can. We appreciate your patience and understanding in this regard.
I do see a hand up with MP Baker, but I do have the speaking order right now. I have MP Perkins, MP Lawrence, MP Baker and then MP Blaikie.
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
Can I ask you to read the amendment we're dealing with? We're still speaking to the amendment, are we not?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Fonseca
You're speaking to the amendment and the subamendment by MP Morantz. If you would like to read it into the record or speak to it, go ahead for those watching.
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
I won't perhaps bore those watching with the thing. It does feel to some members as though I have been speaking for all 87 meetings of the finance committee, but it hasn't been that many.
Just to sort of summarize, for those watching, what I've been speaking about is the desire to have, under this subamendment and amendment to the main motion by Mr. Beech, what we believe to be an important discussion about ministerial accountability to Parliament. We, as the official opposition, have been requesting that the Minister of Finance come in on her Bill C-47, which is the budget implementation act. It's an omnibus bill that amends 51 acts of Canada, some of which have to do with finance and some of which don't. We've been seeking two hours for the minister to speak on a fiscal plan that was presented to Parliament, which plans to spend $3.1 trillion in the next five years.
I understand that the minister has agreed to appear—which is heartening, because we have been in search of Freeland—but will commit to only one hour instead of two. This whole discussion about ministerial accountability could be solved right now if the minister agreed to appear for two hours, which we've been unable to get confirmation of. Perhaps some of the members of the government or the chair could confirm whether we've received an update from the minister as to whether she's agreed to come for two hours as opposed to what she said in her last email, which I understand—
Liberal
Terry Beech Liberal Burnaby North—Seymour, BC
I just want to clarify for my friend across the way, because I don't want him to be confused, that the Deputy Prime Minister responded to the invitation that was part of the motion that we all passed, which had no specified time. The will of the committee to invite the minister to appear for two hours is in fact the amendment that you've been actively filibustering for 23 hours or so. If we can vote, then we can send the invitation and then we can see what the response is.
Conservative
Philip Lawrence Conservative Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON
Perhaps the chair could confirm whether any amount of time has been committed to by the finance minister with respect to her invitation.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Fonseca
What I can tell the member is that the minister has emailed the committee and has accepted the invitation to come in on May 16, which would be next Tuesday.
Conservative
Philip Lawrence Conservative Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON
So no time has been committed to. I have respect for the parliamentary secretary, and I believe he's in the same party as the finance minister. I would suspect they communicate on a regular basis, or I would hope so, for the functioning of our government. If he is willing to guarantee today on record that she will be here for two hours, we can move forward.
Liberal
Terry Beech Liberal Burnaby North—Seymour, BC
Mr. Chair, obviously committees are independent. It would be improper for a parliamentary secretary to go against the will of the committee, so once we have the vote of all members and we understand the will of the committee, we'd be able to act.
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
It sounds as though we are in a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario. I personally asked a question to the government in the House on Tuesday, a simple question, “Would the minister be willing to appear for two hours?” and unfortunately, the minister was unable to answer that question, not because she said something else but because the government had the Minister of Tourism stand up and answer the question.
I was quite happy that the Minister of Tourism had clearly read some of my interventions and mentioned the important issue of the lack of policing of elvers as one of the things we had discussed, which is going on. By the way, the Minister of Fisheries got another email this morning, 25 days after the shutdown of the fishery, after 24 emails on the rules on the elver fishery not being enforced. In fact, the RCMP is refusing to take calls now across my riding in the detachments. The media is even calling them, and the RCMP is saying no.
Maybe I'll come back to that, because I want to make sure those who are watching understand what this is about and the importance of this. We are skeptical and we wonder if the reason we can't get a two-hour commitment from the minister when she wants to spend $0.5 trillion per year—$3.1 trillion over the next three years—is perhaps that she is embarrassed at such a bad budget. In the fiscal plan outlined only six months ago—we haven't seen her in six months—the minister projected we would have a balanced budget within the five-year fiscal framework. That is now not actually projected.
I guess that at the Liberal Party convention she had advance notice of the resolution, which was defeated. Perhaps she played a role in defeating it. It asked for the government—their own party asked for the government—to present a plan to balance the budget, and in the wisdom of the Liberal Party of Canada, they thought that was an unreasonable request from their own members and defeated it. Perhaps that's why the minister won't come to defend this bad budget for two hours.
I mentioned she hadn't been here in six months, so I just want people who are watching to understand what that means. Three times over the last six months the committee very pleasantly invited the minister to appear. As I said in the House, she blew off every invitation, so what were those invitations for ministerial accountability about? That is what the subamendment and the amendment are about, to try to put some accountability into MP Beech's motion.
On February 2 this committee invited the minister to appear in the same meeting as the Governor of the Bank of Canada, Tiff Macklem, to discuss inflation, probably the most important issue to Canadians right now. Without a doubt, it is the most important issue to Canadians. People are suffering under the food inflation caused by the spending in this fiscal plan. Food price inflation of 10% has been normalized, which is causing people to have to choose—and we all get calls every day from people—between heating their home—or even having a home—and eating. They are having to put water in their children's milk—a terrible thing they are facing now with regard to what this government, which purports to care about Canada's less fortunate people, is actually imposing: The greatest burden of financial harm in this country because of their lack of recognition of what the spending is. Perhaps that's the reason we're having trouble finding Freeland in this committee, because maybe she does not agree with the budget that she had to present. Maybe it was the issue that was raised a few meetings ago, that this is really about freeing Freeland—to do what she thinks is right—from what the PMO dictates.
As we know from the Treasury Board document I read earlier, absences have to be approved by the Prime Minister's Office, and clearly they've been approving a lot.
The second invitation was made on March 7, when the committee invited the minister to appear to defend her main estimates. For those who don't understand what those are, the main estimates are the actual spending plan. The budget is a budget. It's a broad, big document that sets out what the government expects revenue to be; where they plan to spend money, and what they think the economic projection for the economy is that will result in this supposed performance.
By the way, the government has missed every single target in every single budget that was set out. You can remember this fine document that I think about 130 Liberals were elected on in 2015. Remember when they used to talk about working for those who are in the middle class and those who are aspiring to get there? I think they've adopted a new slogan: They're trying to deal with the middle class and those trying to stay in it, which is more and more difficult these days because of this bad budget.
The minister clearly didn't want to come here to actually defend the actual spending plan. It's like your chequebook. Where did you write your cheques? The estimates say that “here is where we're going to actually write the cheques”, and in micro detail by department. Every minister usually gets called before their respective committee to defend estimates A, B and C a few times a year. Incredibly, unbelievably and against what “Open and Accountable Government” of 2015 says on page 2, as produced by this government in the sunny ways days of the government:
Ministers are accountable to Parliament for the exercise of the powers, duties and functions vested in them by statute.... Ministers must be present in Parliament to respond to questions on the discharge of their responsibilities, including the manner in which public monies [are] spent, as well as to account for [their] use.
The budget is the plan of how they want to spend it. The estimates are how they account for the use.
Those are things that this government and this Prime Minister have said that all ministers had to do. In fact, if you read the mandate letters of each minister, including this minister, on page 2 of the mandate letter, it actually refers to this document, because the world all ties together, I guess. It says:
Open and Accountable Government sets out [the] core principles and...standards of conduct [which are] expected of you and your office.
If the minister didn't read this document, I hope the minister read the letter from the Prime Minister to her, dated December 16, 2021, setting out what her mandate is as Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister of Canada. It says that “you have to live by these rules”, and these rules say that you've got to show up to work, you can't be truant and you can't blow off an invitation to talk about inflation and be a credible finance minister.
You can't blow off an invitation from this committee to come here and defend your estimates—one of the most fundamental parts of every minister's job—and be a credible minister of finance. You can't blow off the April 20 invitation in relation to the prestudy of this budget bill, but yet the minister blew off all of those invitations in her five...wait, I'm sorry, six appearances.... The calendar flipped to May, so we've had the monthly appearance this week of the minister in QP. I'll correct some of my earlier statements. When I made them, she had been in the House five times. Now it's six. We were living in much hope that the “finding Freeland” exercise was over, but apparently the “finding Freeland” exercise continues.
We respect that the minister has a busy schedule. We all have busy schedules as members of Parliament and, certainly, I would think that anyone with the important position of Deputy Prime Minister has that. We know that the minister has had a lot of time for travel. Only a few weeks ago, the minister was in Washington. Perhaps she flew commercial. Perhaps she flew on a government jet. We don't know. Maybe we should ask, but we can't, because she's not here.
When she flew to Washington, she was commenting in a big public policy forum and a panel. She likes to be on panels. She did two this past weekend in Ottawa, but apparently the 10-minute walk from the Hill to the Shaw Centre was too much to ask. I know that she doesn't have to walk, because she does have a taxpayer-paid car and driver. She could have driven here and spared us a few minutes to talk about the budget, but her time was allocated to how to win elections and Hillary Clinton on a panel.
She has that busy schedule, but the minister hasn't been here. The minister has made herself available to answer in QP on only 11% of the sitting days. Perhaps her pay should match that, but no, I think she's receiving a full paycheque of almost $300,000 a year, plus expenses, and showing up to work 11% of the time. As Mr. Blaikie often reminds me, Jack Layton once said to Michael Ignatieff that Canadians pay you to show up at work, so maybe you should.
Just to reiterate—because I know that sometimes it's hard to count for some people in Parliament, so I'll make it easy— for the number of appearances in question period, I can give you the dates, and you only need one hand: January 30, February 13—this year, by the way—March 10, April 25, May 1 and this past Monday. I suspect the minister was here this past Monday because she couldn't get a flight out of town yet with all the Liberals leaving town from the convention, so she had to stay an extra day.
Otherwise, I'm sure she would have been somewhere else and she wouldn't have graced us with her presence then, but she did, yet still, in the “finding Freeland” exercise for this flawed and failed budget, she is unable to attend this committee.
I don't know; maybe somebody on the government side could let us know, perhaps, where the minister is today. We'd be more than willing to have her come today. I'm sure she doesn't need to spend weeks preparing with her deputy minister. I'm sure she understands every aspect of the 51 acts of Parliament that she is proposing. I know she has an in-depth knowledge of the changes to the oceans protection act, which this budget bill changes. I know she has an in-depth knowledge of the new bureaucracy being proposed for the employment insurance proposal. I'm sure she will be more than willing to explain why a snowflake should be on the crown of the....
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
The Prime Minister...?
I would ask the minister, if she is in town, to come and do this. I will come back later to this issue of the Treasury Board document that I know everyone was on the edge of their seat to hear the continuation of today. I can understand why the minister may not want to be here, because she did promise us restraint. Her economic policies are driving up inflation. They are driving up groceries.
We understand that there are now 1.5 million Canadians needing to use food banks. That's a record. I know that people want to get a world record when they're in the Olympics, but I'm not sure this is a record that one would want to seek, to have record levels of food bank usage. I believe she owes it to the 20% of Canadian families who are skipping meals because of this high cost of food to come here and help us understand how pouring gas on the inflation fire will actually lower food costs so that they don't have to make those choices. I believe she owes it to the nine out of 10 young people who believe they will never own a house because of the housing crisis that we have.
I think it's time for the minister to stop hiding. I think it's time for the minister to come here and defend her failed budget. I think it's time for Canadians to perhaps go on social media, use the finding Freeland hashtag and take pictures so that we can find out exactly where she is.
I will stop there for now, Mr. Chair. If you could put me on the bottom of the speaking list, I would appreciate it.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Fonseca
Thank you, MP Perkins.
We have MP Lawrence, MP Baker, MP Blaikie, MP Chambers and then MP Perkins again.
Conservative
Philip Lawrence Conservative Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON
If it's agreeable to the chair, I'd like to give my slot to Mr. Chambers.
Liberal
Liberal
Yvan Baker Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
Mr. Chair, I've been waiting to move an amendment to the motion over the course of the filibuster. Given that I haven't had the opportunity yet, and it's relevant to the discussion occurring right now, I want to advise members of the committee that I intend to move the following amendment when we've had a vote on Mr. Blaikie's amendment.
Here's what I would move. I would move that the motion be amended by adding after section (b)(ii) the following: "(iii) if the Committee has not completed the clause-by-clause consideration of the bill by 4:30 p.m. on Friday, May 26th, 2023 all remaining amendments submitted to the Committee shall be deemed moved; the Chair shall put the question, forthwith and successively"—
Conservative
