Finance Committee on May 29th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 94 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance. Pursuant to the order of reference of Tuesday, May 2, 2023, and the motion adopted on May 16, 2023, the committee is meeting to discuss Bill C-47, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, 2023.

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'd like to make a few comments for the benefit of the witnesses and 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. Please mute yourself when you are not speaking. For interpretation, for those on Zoom, you have the choice at the bottom of your screen of English or French. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel.

Just as a reminder, all comments should be addressed through the chair. For 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 best we can. We appreciate your patience and understanding in this regard.

Members, I'd like to bring your attention to paragraph (b)(iii) of the motion adopted on May 16:

(iii) if the Committee has not completed the clause-by-clause consideration of the Bill by 4:30 PM on Monday, May 29th, 2023, all remaining amendments submitted to the Committee shall be deemed moved, the Chair shall put the question, forthwith and successively, without further debate on all remaining clauses and proposed amendments, as well as each and every question necessary to dispose of clause-by-clause consideration of the Bill, as well as questions necessary to report the Bill to the House and to order the Chair to report the Bill to the House as soon as possible.

I'd like to welcome our witnesses. They are all virtual. With us today, for the first hour, is a multitude of senior officials from various departments to answer any questions from the members.

Where we last left off.... Actually, I see that MP Blaikie's hand is up and MP Dzerowicz's hand is up.

I don't know if anybody else's hand is up.

No. There is nobody on the screen.

I will go to MP Blaikie just before we get started here on an annotated agenda.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I believe the slate is clear, as it were, of motions. I'd like to start by moving and then motivating a motion.

The motion reads as follows:

That notwithstanding the May 16th motion passed by the Committee, if the Committee has not completed the clause-by-clause consideration of the Bill C-47 by 4:30 PM on Monday May 29th, 2023, (i) all remaining amendments submitted to the Committee as of Friday, May 26, 2023 shall be deemed moved, (ii) the Chair shall put the question, forthwith and successively, without further debate on all remaining clauses and proposed amendments, except that not more than 20 minutes shall be allotted for debate on each proposed amendment, to be divided to a maximum of five minutes per recognized party, unless unanimous consent is granted to extend debate on a specific amendment, (iii) no subamendments or motions may be moved during debate, (iv) at the expiry of the time provided for debate on a specific amendment, the Chair shall put every question to dispose of the amendment, forthwith and successively without further debate, (v) the Chair shall be empowered to group clauses for which no amendment has been proposed, subject to the unanimous consent of the committee, (vi) once all questions necessary to dispose of all remaining clauses and proposed amendments have been decided, the Chair shall put, forthwith and successively, every question necessary to dispose of clause-by-clause of the bill, as well as questions necessary to report the Bill to the House and to order the Chair to report the Bill to the House as soon as possible.

This motion is really just meant to address the problem that I highlighted last day. Due to the choices of folks around the table, we've now exhausted most of the time we have to debate proposed amendments to the bill. How that works is that, until we get to the clause, the amendments that have been proposed so far aren't moved. At 4:30 they're all deemed moved. Then you could talk about them, except that the motion, which was agreed to by everyone around this table, including the Conservatives, by unanimous consent, prohibits debate.

We end up in an awkward position where prior to 4:30 we can't talk about the amendments. After 4:30 we have to vote on them. I think that means we end up not being accountable for the decisions we're making around the table.

I would say, because I notice we have some substitutions here today, that unfortunately we've come to a place where there's just no trust around the committee table. On trying to extend this process, I think many of us feel that any goodwill we might show in order to extend the process for appropriate reasons won't be honoured, and that it will be abused in order to do more of what we have seen around the table so far. It makes it really difficult in that kind of context, where you just don't have a lot of trust around the table, where the goalposts have often shifted and where you thought you had an understanding about how to proceed and then the time isn't used for the purposes we thought we had agreed to.

As I've said earlier too, I don't think it's just one side that's been difficult in this whole process. I think the minister ought to have told the committee if she was going to come for more than an hour, whether that was an hour and 20 minutes, an hour and 40 minutes or the two hours that I would have liked for us to express as a committee that we wanted her here for, but we never did get to a vote on the invitation for the two hours. There has been a lot of dysfunction.

I think the minister should show more respect to the committee than to refuse to come for a reasonable amount of time. I think she clearly had time in her schedule to stay longer. I think she should have indicated that to the committee beforehand. I think that's a very easy, respectful thing to do. That means that people can prepare for a longer appearance. It's nice of her to stay longer, but in a properly functioning professional work environment, people would have a heads-up. It's not like she can claim she didn't know that this was a matter of contention.

That doesn't mean I endorse the way everyone around this table handled it. I think they actually wasted all the time we had to hear from witnesses, then agreed to a really quick turnaround on clause-by-clause, and then kind of went back on that and decided to complain that, even though the text of the motion they agreed to was honoured, it wasn't good enough for them.

You know, I can hear them wanting to have heard more witnesses. There was some time for that early last week. Instead of raising it on the Sunday or the Monday, they chose to raise it on the Wednesday. They chose to raise it publicly before they raised it anywhere else.

We can all point fingers at each other around here. This has not been a good process. I think it's pretty pathetic, frankly. I hope nobody here is feeling good about what we've been doing over the last four or five weeks for any reason. I don't think there's anything we can point to in order to say to Canadians that we've done our job the way it should have been done. Some of us may be able to say we were prepared to do our job. I certainly undertook to do all the things one has to do to prepare for these meetings. Then I wasn't given the opportunity to do the work required.

This motion is just to allow five minutes to each party on each amendment that has already been proposed, to put some reasons on the record for why we're either supporting that amendment or not supporting that amendment. If folks here want to spend the next hour debating it and not have a vote, then what we'll end up doing is just going and voting on everything successively. It's just that Canadians won't get to know the reasons why we're voting. There will be nothing to hold us to account on that. I don't think that's value added to the process, regardless of the reasons somebody might feel it hasn't been a good process to date or of where they lay the blame. The one thing we can do now in the situation we find ourselves, where nobody really trusts anybody around the table, is to at least do the minimum to make sure that Canadians have an opportunity to hear why certain parliamentarians on this committee are voting one way on amendments or why they're voting the other way.

As I said, we can talk it out, but that's not going to do much except ensure that we have less accountability around this table. We don't all have to agree on it. All we have to do is let it come to a vote. Then the majority of the committee can decide if this is the way they want to proceed or not.

I've said my piece on that, Mr. Chair. I hope this is something that, at a minimum, we can agree to in order to meet our responsibilities to Canadians and to make ourselves accountable for the decisions we're going to make around the table. We don't have the power to compel a minister to appear, but we're here. We do have the power to allow ourselves to put comments on the record and then be held to account for those. I hope that at least we will hold ourselves to that standard of accountability. That remains to be seen.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I look forward to hearing debate on this motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Blaikie. The clerk has received your motion and has distributed it to members.

In terms of what you said about timing, MP Blaikie, we have 16 minutes before we go to clause-by-clause with no debate on anything after that.

I have a speakers list on your motion. I have MP Dzerowicz, MP Baker, MP Beech, MP Chambers, MP Lawrence and MP Morantz, in that order.

MP Dzerowicz.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank Mr. Blaikie for putting forward this proposed motion. I do support it. I hope everyone around the table will support it as well.

I want to say that I'm also very sad that we are where we're at right now. I agree with something Mr. Blaikie said in our last session—that what is happening right here at committee is a disservice to Canadians. I think it truly makes a mockery of the committee and the important work that we have been elected to do. I think that moving forward we need to do much better.

I will also say that I very much honour the comments. I would like to ask for unanimous consent on Mr. Blaikie's motion.

Can we ask for that, Mr. Chair, and see whether or not we have that? Maybe a miracle has happened and everyone has seen the light and we're able to have unanimous consent and approval for Mr. Blaikie's motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you.

I see MP Ste-Marie with a thumbs-up—

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

No.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I hear a no.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

I wanted to make sure of that, just in case something happened.

Anyway, thank you, Mr. Chair. I will say to you that I also want to acknowledge and honour the comments that Mr. Beech and you made at our last committee meeting. I think you both did an outstanding job of explaining how we got to where we are.

I also would like to say—just because I know the people in my riding and I have to be accountable to them—that there has been in no way any desire not to be accountable for this very important budget 2023 and the budget implementation act. I think there are a number of issues, concerns and questions that we could have had an opportunity to raise last week. Unfortunately, there was a filibuster that was led by our Conservative colleagues.

I will also say to you that I'm very glad our Deputy Prime Minister has come to committee. It's important for us to reiterate that our Deputy Prime Minister has been to this committee four times. There's no minister who ever comes every time they are invited to committees in general. I do want to say that our Deputy Prime Minister has, indeed, been here before this committee on a number of different bills. Before this bill, the budget implementation act, she actually came for almost two hours. It was just over an hour and 40 minutes.

Mr. Chair, I know that there are a number of other people who want to speak. I'll say to you just in ending that I think it's very important for us to move forward with this budget implementation act. I think there are a number of targeted inflation relief measures for Canadians who need it the most. We do know that there are a lot of Canadians who are having a hard time making ends meet. There are a number of measures in the budget implementation act that will be very supportive to them. I think it's important for us to move forward with haste on this bill.

I think there are stronger public health care dollars, including millions of dollars for dental care. We currently have a dental care benefit, but the passage of budget 2023 will allow us to actually transition that dental care benefit into a dental care plan.

There are also significant investments to build Canada's clean economy, which will not only continue to create really great middle-class jobs but also ensure a prosperous economy moving forward. I'll tell you, in my riding there's a very strong belief that we need to move as quickly as possible to decarbonize and get to net zero by 2050. I know that this part of the budget is particularly important for those people in my riding.

Mr. Chair, I think that my colleague Mr. Blaikie is very right. I think we need to do much better. I think we have to come together after this budget implementation act to say how we can rebuild trust amongst ourselves and find a way to move forward on the important work that we've been elected to do on this very important committee.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Dzerowicz.

It's now over to MP Baker.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to start by thanking Mr. Blaikie for moving the motion that he moved. I think what he has tried to do is give members a chance to explain their decisions as they vote through the budget bill. I think that's really important. Our role here in Parliament, as members of committee or in the House of Commons, is not just to vote on stuff. It's to make sure that we're listening to Canadians, hearing their points of view and then sharing with them why we've made the decisions we've made in voting or why we're advocating for what we're advocating for.

Unfortunately the Conservatives didn't give unanimous consent to Mr. Blaikie's motion. I think if we could pass Mr. Blaikie's motion, it would allow us to convey to our constituents why it is we're voting the way we are. I think that's a really important mechanism. I'm disappointed. I'm not looking to place blame, but I do think....

Let's be frank. The Conservatives just spent 27 hours or so filibustering this committee, which prevented us from hearing from witnesses. It prevented us from working on the bill to make it better. It prevented us from working on a bill that has tremendous implications for a lot of Canadians, especially on issues of affordability.

The fact that those 27 hours were spent filibustering by the Conservatives, who now won't give us five minutes per MP to speak to the amendments that are before us because they've declined Mr. Blaikie's motion, is really disappointing and goes counter to the spirit of how this place is supposed to work.

It's not just that it's not in Mr. Blaikie's interest or that it's not in our interest. It's not in the interest of any of the members here at this table not to be able to at least communicate for a few minutes about why we're voting the way we're voting or why certain amendments have been brought forward, or under what circumstances we would support certain amendments that have been brought forward. I'm disappointed in that.

More broadly, I would like to say that, as a member of this finance committee, this is the piece of legislation that I look forward to working on the most. I would argue that it's the most impactful part of what we do as a finance committee.

When I think about the challenges that all of our constituents are facing—especially when it comes to affordability, when it comes to challenges like growing our economy, when it comes to challenges like providing the most vulnerable with the support that they need—I think it's important that we take the opportunity and take the time we can to make this budget bill as strong as possible. Because of what has happened over the past number of weeks and the filibuster, we're not going to be able to do that. All we're going to be able to do is vote on the amendments as they are before us, and I think that's really unfortunate.

The intent of the budget bill is to supplement the budget that was introduced by the finance minister at the end of March. When I think about what the budget was designed to do, it was designed to, first of all, help people with the cost of living. As inflation has hit Canadians hard, as they struggle to pay their bills, the budget was meant to help address some of those challenges.

An example of that is the grocery rebate to help folks with the rising cost of food. Whether it's cracking down on junk fees, credit card interchange fees or predatory lending, whether its the tax-free first home savings account, which would allow homebuyers to save $40,000 tax free, or whether it's freezing the excise tax for a year on beer, wine and alcohol at 2%, these are some of the measures, in addition to many others that have been taken in the past several years, to help folks with the cost of living.

The budget had significant investments in health care, with conditions attached, which is really important because we need to make sure that not only are we getting value for taxpayer dollars as they get provided to provinces, in this case for health care, but that they actually deliver results for patients. We know there's a lot of improvement but also a lot more results that Canadians expect from their health care systems, and that's why we've not only provided a record amount of money but also attached conditions to that funding.

There's $13 billion for the new Canadian dental plan, which will provide dental coverage to families earning less than $90,000. I think that's transformational.

Then there are investments to build a clean economy and a number of other things to make sure that our economy grows so that the pie grows for everyone, and so that the quality of life in this country is growing and people's prosperity is growing.

All this is to say that I think there's a lot in this budget implementation act, an awful lot, designed to make Canadians' lives better. I look forward to voting on these amendments. It really would have been nice to be able to debate them, hear from more Canadians and communicate why we're voting the way we are.

I thank you, Mr. Chair, for the time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Baker.

I have PS Beech and then MP Chambers, MP Lawrence and MP Morantz, although we have only five or six minutes left.

[Terry Beech, Liberal, Burnaby North—Seymour, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think I'd like to take this opportunity, first of all, to thank Daniel for his attempts, since the last time we met and over the weekend, to find consensus on this important mechanism so that individual members of Parliament can talk about the amendments.

I, too, find it unfortunate that we're in the current position. I want to make sure that there is some time for the Conservatives to say something before the 4:30 deadline. I think that's the least that we can do given that we only have five minutes left, so I'll keep this relatively short.

I did want to say that I've been in this role for about a year and a half, give or take, worked with three or four finance critics and a large number of Conservatives on the finance committee, and I think I've been a reliable and predictable, if not friendly, partner in working through these differences of opinion.

I understand that, in some cases, external factors such as leaders' offices or other factors can weigh into how we actually get things done here. I think we all see where this is going, and it's unfortunate that it's going there, but I do want to say to my partners that this will be over in a relatively short period and we still have some good work that we can do. I hope that all members around this table will come together after our voting today and try to return to this table in good faith so that we can schedule some good work, both for the rest of the year and proceeding into next fall. Perhaps we can all work together to avoid this particular situation.

I will once again ask if there's unanimous consent to pass Daniel's motion, and if there's not, I will yield the floor.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, PS Beech.

Do we have unanimous consent on this?

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

No.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I heard a no.

I do still have a few minutes left for MP Chambers, MP Lawrence and MP Morantz.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Mr. Chair, what I would provide unanimous consent for is to deem all amendments moved and then allow each party to put on the record for 15 minutes their reasons for how they're voting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Chambers.

Now we're moving to MP Lawrence and then MP Morantz.

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

Did Mr. Chambers not move a motion for unanimous consent?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Yes, we're on Daniel's motion.

[An hon. member]

Could you repeat that one more time?

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Yes. It's that we deem all amendments moved, and that each party will have 15 minutes to put forth one person to put forth the party's recommendations on how they're voting.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Then, do we vote after that?

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Then we start the clock at 4:30.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Can we suspend for two minutes, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

We have two minutes, and then we're done. That's it.