Finance Committee on Aug. 11th, 2023

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Could I request a suspension so that we have a chance to consider what Mr. Lawrence has said?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Jasraj Singh Hallan]

Sure. In the meantime, the clerks can send that amendment around to everybody.

We'll suspend.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Jasraj Singh Hallan]

All right, everybody. I call the meeting back to order.

Everyone should have received the amendment in their inboxes by now. Thank you to the clerks for getting that out to everybody.

Ms. Dzerowicz, you had your hand up before the amendment was moved. Did you want to speak to the amendment at all?

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

I could talk to both of them. I could talk to anything, Mr. Chair.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Jasraj Singh Hallan]

Sure. We're on the amendment, so we'll open the floor to debate on the amendment.

Go ahead, Ms. Dzerowicz.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much, and you say my last name very well, Mr. Chair, so thank you.

I see a couple of other colleagues after me and I would stop talking, just for the record, if we were going to go for a vote, but I do see Mr. Redekopp and Mr. Chambers who would like to speak as well. I'm just going to repeat something. I just want to reiterate to everyone around the table that there's no victory lap that is happening on this side. Again, as I said, I don't think there's one member of Parliament, no matter of what political stripe, who doesn't understand how difficult these times are right now.

I think there was a question from Mr. Chambers that asked whether the government will want to be held accountable, and what I wanted to say is that we have shown that we want to always be accountable. Our deputy prime minister has been before our committee five times now, I believe. I think she will absolutely be coming before the committee a number of other times in the coming days, weeks or months, as is appropriate.

The other thing I was going to indicate is that I felt that Mr. Blaikie made a very good suggestion. He said that we don't do very well at committee in discussing amendments. If we felt we needed some more time to discuss this amendment off-line and come to an agreement outside of this meeting, I think that is also an option.

With that, I'll just pass the floor along. I always have more to say, but again I think we're all trying to look for some sort of resolution, and I will say to you that there is nobody on this side who thinks that Canadians are not struggling. I want to reiterate that we have put a number of measures in place to try to alleviate some of the stress, to provide some additional dollars and put them into the pockets of Canadians to provide some relief and provide some support. We're always open to the best ideas that are out there. I think it should always be the case that we should always get together as many times as possible to discuss the best ideas about what more we can do to support Canadians.

With that, Mr. Chair, I will take down my hand and pass the floor to the next speaker.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Jasraj Singh Hallan]

Thank you, Ms. Dzerowicz.

I have Mr. Chambers up next.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Mr. Chair, just as a matter of procedure, I would accept the amendment as a friendly amendment just to make it cleaner and make it easier for the committee so that it's just one vote, up or down, on the 90 minutes.

I would just add that I'm not really sure what else we would need to discuss. It's either the minister is interested in appearing before the committee outside of a regular appearance with respect to legislation or she is not.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Jasraj Singh Hallan]

We still have a speaking list before we get to any vote on the amendment. Next I have Mr. Redekopp.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Everybody knows that I'm not a regular member of this committee. I thought it was kind of interesting that what I'm hearing from everybody is that they want to work together and they want to see the minister appear and they want to all work together for the benefit of Canadians and everybody's on the same page on that, yet it's interesting that there doesn't seem to be the will to do that. I just hope that the committee will actually begin to talk about functioning better as a committee. This is the place to start, from what I can see.

Of course, as I said, as an outsider, I'm new to this committee. It seems like this is a pretty simple motion. The amendments, I think, are reasonable. I think a good way to start the new fall session would be with some good progress on that motion. I think it's very reasonable for the minister to appear before this committee as well.

I want to also mention that people are struggling in my city of Saskatoon, as has been mentioned before. Many people with modest incomes live in my riding. I was speaking with one particular woman in the summer, a single mom who can't buy meat for her family, so she's feeding her children cereal. That's not an isolated story; I've heard that kind of thing many times. Our food bank usage in Saskatoon is up 35%. According to the CEO, 18% of the users are working people and 43% of the users are children, so this is a big issue that's affecting all of us, regardless of party, regardless of where you are in the country. I would really put my pitch in to have the minister appear to talk about some of these things and see what the plans of the government are to solve these problems, to fix things for the benefit of Canadians.

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Jasraj Singh Hallan]

Thank you, Mr. Redekopp.

I don't see anyone else on the speaking list.

Oh, it's Mr. Baker. Go ahead.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thanks, Chair.

I just wanted to say, on the issue.... We're speaking to the amendments, correct?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Jasraj Singh Hallan]

That's correct. We're on the amendments.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

I appreciate the effort made to make these changes. I think the motion as amended is still not reasonable and I don't know that it helps to advance a more productive approach to covering these issues at committee, whether it's the cost of living or anything else.

I do think that the committee's time is.... When I think about some of the priorities before us, I think about pre-budget consultations. I think about where we can hear from folks about how they believe government and all of us as MPs can address the cost of living and other issues that are important to people. There are other things that members of the committee may want to study, but I do think that this is the path forward, rather than a sudden emergency call for the minister to appear, especially given that the minister did appear near the end of our last session. That's my position.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Jasraj Singh Hallan]

Thank you, Mr. Baker.

Next I see Mr. Blaikie with his hand up.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I suppose I find myself in a position of pleasing nobody on the committee, perhaps, but I would say this: It still strikes me that even with the amendment, this is a motion that's designed to fail.

One of the ongoing frustrations at this committee, and rightly so, has been that the minister has been invited to appear on very many things and hasn't appeared on anything but her own legislation. That's the crux of the matter. There have been a lot of issues that go beyond the scope of the minister's legislation that this committee has wanted to examine and has wanted to interview the minister about, both to glean more insight into the government's approach to these matters and to appropriately challenge the government on its response to a number of things. That is the job, after all, of the parliamentary committee, but I think when we have a long-standing issue, running at least a year and a half now, of the minister not responding to invitations, I just don't think it's very realistic to expect her to suddenly change her long-standing position of snubbing committee invitations, whether it's a seven-day or a 14-day turnaround.

I think coming back into session is a more likely timetable. I don't know what time the minister has spoken for or not, but presumably she plans to be in Ottawa around the time of the opening of the session. I think that would speak to the committee in preparing its work for the fall in a way that the amendment doesn't do.

I share the exasperation of other opposition members over the minister's unwillingness to come and talk about inflation and interest rates except in the context of her own legislation, but I have to ask....

The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and over again, and this play of trying to issue new invitations just frankly hasn't been effective. What could be effective is for the committee to spend even half the time that we've spent over the last two years talking about ministerial invitations in talking about the issues that we all say we want to talk to the minister about and talking to other people in Canadian society who are experts, whether they're economists or advocates in the housing space or in the grocery space or whatever. As Mr. Redekopp mentioned, the folks who are running food banks around the country are becoming experts on the economy and really have their fingers on the pulse of what's going on and what's wrong with the current state of affairs. Those are people who are also worth hearing from.

The minister can come any time she wants. I think that's pretty clear. The issue isn't whether the committee has issued enough invitations: The issue is whether the minister is going to come. I think our time could be better used. If we want to issue another invitation for when we come back in the fall, fine, but I don't think that's going to break the logjam here. Instead of waiting on the minister and spending all of our meetings talking about when the minister is going to come, when I think a lot of us already know the answer to that after a year and a half of waiting, we should be talking to other folks who have that expertise so that we can be issuing reports back to the House that talk about what the government should be doing and what its shortcomings are. I'm sure there are many of us who would like to point out some of those shortcomings; I'm sure there are others on the committee who'd like to point out areas where they feel the government has done a bang-up job.

That's the meat of the work of a committee, and after spending two years on this committee, I'm concerned that we haven't been doing enough of that work. We've been waiting for a minister who isn't coming, except when it's about her legislation, and I think it's time that we started.... What I'm hearing from opposition members is that they want to put pressure on the government to act otherwise. I think it's time for us as a committee to come up with some real recommendations for what government ought to be doing that it's not doing or things that it is doing that it shouldn't be doing. That's another legitimate way of building political pressure and holding a government to account.

Spending more time talking about the length of time a minister is going to appear or setting deadlines we know are not going to be met, like the 14-day turnaround on an invitation when there have been invitations open for 18 months that she hasn't taken us up on—or, as Mr. Chambers pointed out, in some cases hasn't even responded to, either in the affirmative or in the negative—is just not the best use of our time.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Jasraj Singh Hallan]

Thank you, Mr. Blaikie.

Mrs. Dzerowicz, you're up next.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Chair, I think you said “Mrs.” Dzerowicz. I'm not married, so you can call me “Ms.”

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Jasraj Singh Hallan]

I'm sorry.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

That's okay; just call me “Ms.”

Speaking to the motion, and I'll reiterate this again, I believe our government very much believes in accountability. Our Deputy Prime Minister has come before this committee five times since we were last elected. Just to refresh everybody's memory, on December 9, 2021, on Bill C-2, she came for two hours and 20 minutes; on May 2, 2022, she was here for one hour and 10 minutes on Bill C-19; on October 3, 2022, she was here for an hour on Bill C-30; on November 28, on Bill C-32, she was here for an hour; and then on May 16, she was here for an hour and 30 minutes on Bill C-47.

I'll also indicate to you, to put this on the record, Mr. Chair, that between 2006 and 2015, when the Conservatives were in the big boss seat, the finance minister came 15 times in 10 years, and only for a maximum, by the way, of one hour each time. I would like to put that on the record in case people need a bit of extra history.

I'm going to agree with Mr. Blaikie on two things, and I have already mentioned one. It's been hard for our committee to reach a decision on the different amendments when we're in committee and in session. I think we can take this off-line and come to an agreement on what we need to be doing moving forward. There have been different ideas put forward, such as moving right into pre-budget consultations and starting to tap into some of the really excellent ideas that Canadians have in terms of addressing issues, whether it's the cost of living issues we have right now or whether we start looking at how we can create a more resilient and prosperous Canadian economy moving forward. As Mr. Blaikie has also suggested, we could continue with the inflation study, which is something that is very front and centre and top of mind for all Canadians right now. I'm open to all of those options.

I also do not believe that we are going to be resolving all the issues if we have the Minister of Finance, our Deputy Prime Minister, come before us. I would rather be hearing from a number of people in terms of some of the creative things that are actually happening in the world. I would rather be hearing about what we could be doing to increase productivity and increase growth here in our nation.

There are a lot of excellent ideas that don't cost money. Some have been mentioned already, whether it is relaxing our interprovincial trade barriers or reducing regulations. A lot of our businesses, whether small, medium or large, are saying there are far too many regulations and too much red tape, and maybe we could focus on eliminating some of those.

I'm not sure if we can look into supply chain issues, but I know there are some issues there. There are a number of ideas that we could be looking at that would actually improve the internal economy within Canada and make Canada more efficient. We could look more closely at why business investment has been so low and why productivity has been low. It's been mentioned by my Conservative colleagues that this has been the case, but it's been the case for a lot longer than the last eight years; we've had very low productivity rates for 20 or 30 years. Many have suggested that it has to do with our competition policy, and maybe that's something we need to look at.

In terms of Canadians struggling, believe me, every day you cannot help but be moved by how difficult the current economic climate is, and the current cost of living, and the impact it's having on our constituents and on Canadians. I think we're all moved by it and all troubled by it.

We're starting to see some of the data, as my colleague Mr. Ste-Marie mentioned, in terms of the bankruptcy rates. That's why it was very important for me to indicate that...it's awful. It's also important for us to remind ourselves what happened in terms of the economic impact of the pandemic, which has been literally unheard of. The reason I mention that aspect is that it's taking a long time not only for Canada to recover but also for the global economy to recover as well. It's important for us to understand that.

I don't know what you guys do during the summer, but other than meeting constituents, I do a lot of reading. I was reading Adam Tooze, who is a Columbia University historian, who said that within the first six months of the pandemic, 95% of the world's economy suffered a simultaneous contraction. That has never happened before. Three billion adults were furloughed from their jobs and had to work from home. That had never happened before. More than a billion and a half young people had their schooling interrupted. The sum of lost earnings in just the first six months of the pandemic was $10 trillion U.S., more than a tenth of the global GDP.

Why do I say that, you guys? It is to let you know that we had a massive heart attack, a global economic heart attack, and it takes years to recover from that. That doesn't make our jobs easier, and you know what? Nobody wants to hear about it when they're on the streets and they're just trying to put food on the table and pay the rent and get to where they need to go or get to their jobs, but it's important for us to understand the context.

I just want to remind everyone that our government has not stood still. We have at every moment tried to find ways and provide targeted support to Canadians. We have introduced the grocery rebate. We have increased the Canada child benefit, and on the seventh anniversary, which happened this year, we increased it by 6.3%. We have done a number of things for students. I was thinking about all the students who are going back to school now; we have now forgiven forever any interest on any Canada student loans, starting from August 1 and moving forward. We've increased grants up to $4,000, and we have increased the amount of loans that students can take.

We've introduced the dental benefit and we're about to introduce the national dental care plan. We've introduced national child care. We've increased the Canada worker benefit. There are so many measures that we've put into place.

I going to mention one more thing, because it's been mentioned a number of times: I'm looking for ideas. If there's more that we need to be doing, without negatively impacting the economy from an inflationary perspective, I'm open to those ideas.

One of the things I've been hearing at this meeting has been about what you call the “carbon tax”, or the price on pollution. I'm going to say to all of us that this is a very dangerous road to go down. If we have not noticed the impact on all Canadians of all the forest fires—and I just wrote this down—this wildfire season is on track to destroy four times more land than in any previous year. Disaster assistance by the federal government has been at a cost of $2.9 billion this year alone. We need to move faster to move to a low-carbon future and we need to move faster to a low-carbon economy.

I know there was an announcement by Minister Wilkinson the other day around a clean electricity grid. If we move forward with that as expeditiously as we are proposing, all the clean-energy experts are actually saying that electricity costs will actually go down for Canadians, so we want to move faster in tackling climate change and reducing emissions. That is the responsible thing to do for our kids, for our grandkids, for our future and for our world. It's also the responsible thing to do if we actually want to reduce our energy costs, both now and moving forward into the future.

Mr. Chair, it's a pleasure. Thank you for letting me speak for a few moments. I'll pass the baton on to someone else. Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Jasraj Singh Hallan]

Thank you, Ms. Dzerowicz.

Next I have Mr. Lawrence on the speaking list.

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

Thanks very much.

The fact that the Minister of Finance will not appear goes very much to the role of Parliament. The role of Parliament since the time of the Magna Carta has been to hold the government responsible, and those in the opposition parties have a sacrosanct responsibility. Even when their attempts are ignored, just brazenly sloughed off as if the voice of the people were not important, it doesn't mean that Parliament should go away. In fact, it's just the opposite: Parliament should double its efforts when the government is being non-transparent and refusing to be held accountable.

I will say that NDP leaders of the past, such as Tommy Douglas and Jack Layton, would never have allowed the government to simply be unaccountable. They would never have just given up and gone home. In fact, I might even say to the member from the NDP, “Why not make it part of the supply and confidence agreement that the Minister of Finance should actually respond to committee invitations?”

The NDP has made a large deal in the press in saying that committees will operate independently, irrespective of the supply and confidence agreement. Why not prove that this is the truth? Act independently. Let's all do our duties. The Bloc Québécois, the Conservative Party—we're doing our duty. We are attempting to hold the government in power to account. We are trying to speak truth to power; in fact, we are speaking truth to power.

We have had a very non-partisan, very vanilla motion for the Minister of Finance to come for 90 minutes, at a time when we just heard the Liberal member saying that we're in extremely difficult, perilous economic times and that Canadians are struggling. We're asking for the Minister of Finance to come, and I might say that it's in the background of a recent cabinet shuffle. On that note, I don't believe we even have a parliamentary secretary for finance as of yet. Not only do we have a Minister of Finance who's unwilling to speak to us, but we also don't even have a parliamentary secretary yet.

By the way, my congratulations go to Mr. Beech in joining cabinet.

Despite disagreeing on many ideological grounds, I would expect that the party of Jack Layton and the party of Tommy Douglas would stand with the Conservatives, and in this case with the Bloc Québécois as well, in holding the government to account and asking the Minister of Finance to appear, rather than simply throwing up their hands and saying, “Well, it didn't work before.” Let's not give up. Let's hold the Minister of Finance accountable. Let's hold the Deputy Prime Minister to account.

Unless other colleagues have other comments they'd like to make, I would like to see this go to a vote so that we can see which parties believe in accountability and, quite frankly, which parties want this committee to be functional as we put forward a very reasonable motion and are even willing to amend it and water it down for the benefit of the committee, and see as well which parties don't believe in accountability.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Jasraj Singh Hallan]

Thank you, Mr. Lawrence.

I have Mr. Blaikie next.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'm glad that I get a few moments to say a few things after that. It seems to me that perhaps Mr. Lawrence and I have a different view on what's involved in holding a government to account.

I've been sitting around this table for quite some time now, and as he well knows, I've voted many times with the Conservatives and the Bloc on a number of things, including ministerial invitations. I've helped to amend government legislation in a number of areas where I didn't agree with the government, so I do act independently on this committee. I've never done anything but that, and today is no different.

What I'm suggesting to Mr. Lawrence is that his so-called strategy to hold the government to account actually hasn't been very effective, because what is happening by continuing to do the same old thing, which isn't working, is that the government gets to derail the good work of the finance committee by simply having the minister refuse to appear. We spend all our time talking about whether she's going to appear, when at this point we know full well that appearing is not her preference and we also know full well that we don't have a way of compelling her to appear.

I'm not talking about giving up; what I'm talking about is doing other things that might actually compel her to come here—not because we can coerce her, because we know we can't do that, but because this committee, instead of just navel-gazing all the time and whining about the fact that she's not going to show up, could actually do some work for a change to generate some interesting policy ideas that the minister would feel required to respond to.

I do think that not showing up is reprehensible. I think that ministers owe it to parliamentary committees to show up. I have said as much. There are extant invitations that she continues to ignore.

This isn't about whether or not people are willing to hold the government to account. This isn't about whether or not people believe in the role of Parliament. The member will know that I believe very strongly in the role of Parliament. This is about whether the opposition strategy on committee to get the minister here and to hold the government to account has so far been successful. I put it to the committee that it hasn't. Do you want the evidence of that? When have we successfully managed to get the minister to appear, outside of appearing for her own legislation?

What we have today is another attempt to do the same thing that hasn't worked. What I'm saying is that it would be nice to try something different. It would be nice to try to have the committee actually focus on a study. What studies, outside of legislation, has this committee reported back to the House in two years? None come to mind. It may be that there was one and I missed it, or it's just not occurring to me at the moment, but there haven't been very many.

We have an open study on inflation. We have an open study on fiscal federalism. We have an open study on green finance. It's not for lack of studies; it's for lack of time, because we spend most of our time talking about whether or not the minister is going to come and about the wording of a particular invitation, when I think all of us—on the opposition side, anyway—are pretty sure she's going to ignore it anyway.

When we call extraordinary meetings, it would be nice to do it in order to get some work done and in order to highlight issues for Canadians that might cause the government to feel that they need to respond to those issues.

Again, I absolutely think the minister should be coming. That's why I have supported invitations in the past. Those previous invitations for the minister to appear didn't pass on the steam from the Liberal bench; they passed because I supported them. I'm still waiting for an answer on some of those things. I think we have more work to do, of a different order, to get the minister into a place where she feels that she had better respond.

I would prefer that she had a more deeply ingrained respect for Parliament. I think that's important, but I don't see any evidence that this is the case, so I think we should spend our time talking about those issues that matter to Canadians and consulting with experts in order to get those things done. I think that's very much in the tradition of the NDP on Parliament Hill.

If we want to talk about the politics of it, I think it's convenient for the official opposition to be able to talk about the fact that the minister won't come instead of talking about what they share in common with the Liberals, which was that Pierre Poilievre initially said, when the mandate for the Bank of Canada was up for review, that it should remain narrowly focused on targeting inflation, which is why interest rates continue to go up and up and up.

New Democrats were talking about building into the mandate of the Bank of Canada a concern for full employment. We've heard from the Governor of the Bank of Canada at this very committee—because he does respond to our invitations, which is a good thing—that he's going to continue to raise the interest rate until unemployment goes up. That was the very thing that we were talking about when it was the appropriate time to talk about it, when we could have made a difference by actually building full employment into the mandate—not the preamble, which is what the Liberals did, but substantially into the mandate. Instead, they took Pierre Poilievre's advice.

He admitted as much. We were on a panel together in the fall of 2021, after the election, and I said so on that panel. He threatened legal action and said he'd have to talk to his lawyers about maybe getting a gag order because that hurt his feelings. He knew it was true, and incidentally, I don't think anyone who supports freedom of speech and expression should be talking that way as a response to a legitimate political criticism anyway.

Also, when we talk about inflation, New Democrats are the only ones talking about the role of corporate greed in driving inflation, so I think it's kind of convenient for Conservatives to want to keep talking about how the minister never shows up as if somehow she's magically going to change her mind instead of talking about the substance of the issue.

I'm still open to issuing some kind of invitation to the minister, but I'm done trying to fix everything at the table. I think we have an appropriate invitation for the minister, and in the meantime, instead of convening to continue to talk about how she continues to ignore our invitations and how maybe if we get the wording right on this one, it'll change her mind, we should start examining some of the issues that are really affecting Canadians and coming up with ideas and statements as a committee that she feels compelled to respond to, because I'm tired of doing the same thing and getting the same results. While I get that this approach is great for cheap political point-scoring for the official opposition, I don't think it actually does much for Canadians.

That's my point, and that's got nothing to do with not doing my job as a parliamentarian. It's got everything to do with honouring the role of Parliament and beseeching us to do it better around here instead of just doing the same old thing that hasn't been working.

Just before I conclude, I know that in her remarks Ms. Dzerowicz alluded to agreeing with me on a number of things. I had said that I thought it would be very helpful if the minister would show up in the context of our inflation study to help us wrap that up this fall. I just wonder if that was one of the things that I said that she agreed with.