Thank you, Madam Chair.
I would like to take this opportunity to say hello to all of my colleagues and welcome them back to what we've been told will be a new era of all-party collaboration and a new economy in the new reality of a changed world.
With that, welcome to Parliament, everyone.
I wish to move the following motion. We have just sent the text of the motion to the clerk.
That, considering Standing Orders 83.1 of the House, which authorizes the Standing Committee on Finance to examine proposals concerning the government's budgetary policies as early as September in anticipation of the budget for the coming fiscal year; considering that it is customary for the committee to conduct pre-budget studies and to table a report of its observations and recommendations to the House in accordance with the rules established by the Standing Orders; considering that the fiscal year ends on March 31 of each year and that a new fiscal year begins on April 1 of each year; considering that the last budget was tabled in April 2024 and that the new government has not tabled a budget for the year 2025; considering that the government has announced that it will table its budget on November 4, 2025, and that no public consultation has been held in anticipation of this budget; considering that the Minister of Finance has not yet announced whether his government will table a budget for the year 2026; considering that, as a result, the committee is unable to carry out its parliamentary work and that citizens and organizations participating in this pre-budget exercise do not have the opportunity to comment on and make recommendations regarding the government's budgetary policies; the committee request that the Minister of Finance appear no later than Wednesday, September 24, to answer the committee's questions so that the committee can then carry out its work properly and effectively and fulfill its mandate; and That the committee report to the House.
It brings us no joy to have to do this today. We had an election last spring under what we were told were emergency circumstances, perhaps rightly so in some respects. As a result, there was no budget in March or April, which is an unusual situation that generally occurs during major crises such as COVID-19 or in wartime.
When an election is called against a backdrop of economic emergency, the government must table a budget without delay and follow normal budgetary rules and cycles. It did not do so. Several opposition parties rightfully pressured the minister to table a budget. That pressure may be the reason we're getting a budget this fall rather than an economic statement or update. This is a deeply troubling situation.
The normal budget cycle is a long-standing tradition that involves the Standing Committee on Finance, whose agenda is dictated by the budget cycle. Normally, we return to Parliament in the fall and begin pre-budget consultations after asking hundreds of groups over the summer to go to the trouble of submitting their recommendations, which deserve at least minimal, if not significant, attention. These are community groups and business groups, people whose time and resources are scarce and precious, so Parliament, parliamentarians and the committee must respect that time. It shouldn't be just the minister holding consultations in private, behind closed doors, in his office. The committee needs to do its job, too.
So, normally, we meet in the fall and take the time to meet with these groups. I'll talk about what the government has said or implied. We meet with these different groups and keep meeting with them after the holidays, because it is a huge job, as you know, Madam Chair. There are analysts and people here who work very hard for the committee, for the House of Commons, and they deserve to be recognized for their work, to be allowed to work diligently, and to be provided with the necessary resources. Normally, as part of this cycle, we leave for the holidays, we let the analysts work, and we come back in late January or early February with a substantive report on pre-budget recommendations worthy of study and debate by all parliamentarians so that we can be ready to present our recommendations to the Minister of Finance, who can consider them before the budget is finalized.
That's what the budget cycle is. But the government has broken the cycle. The government can't tell us that it didn't have the opportunity to respect the budget cycle.
During the election campaign, the Minister of Finance travelled all over the place. Judging from his comments, it seemed he thought his party had already won the election. He said he was busy drafting a budget, but he didn't table a budget this spring.
We can't just hold “a few” consultations. I have a habit of calling Mr. Leitão “the member for Robert-Baldwin” because I can't remember the name of his federal riding. I'll have to break that habit.
As I said, we can't just hold a few consultations. We have to hold comprehensive consultations over a period of two, three or four weeks. We can't rush it and make people come to us out of expediency just to make them think the committee heard them and the minister will consider their recommendations in a timely member when that won't be the case. Nor can we say we'll have the time to bring in representatives of our biggest industries—forestry, aerospace and steel—over a period of two weeks or over the course of four, eight or 12 meetings. That's impossible.
Let me just count the number of groups that have submitted recommendations to the committee. I have 11 pages of groups from Quebec alone, and that's in small print. In what they're calling a spirit of co-operation, the government members are suggesting that we can rush through this in two or three weeks even though the budget is pretty much a done deal. We know the minister has already written it. There may be some details to iron out, but we know the budget will go to print in two to four weeks. Even if it we had six weeks, that wouldn't change anything.
The way the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance are behaving renders parliamentarians' work irrelevant. They may all of a sudden think of themselves as the CEOs of Canada, but they need to remember that they are minority shareholders.
I am not questioning their motives, but we should keep one fact in mind. Until the committee knows the minister's plan for how the budget process will unfold, it won't be able to move forward with its work. There's not enough transparency on the part of the Minister of Finance, the Prime Minister or the government, nor is there enough dialogue.
I know the parliamentary secretary will keep telling us that he spoke to the minister two days before Parliament resumed, but that's not what we mean by dialogue.
Pre-budget submissions have been showing up in our inboxes over the past month. Now we're being told that they don't even know if there will be a budget next March. The minister announced that he'll release his budget in November. If the Liberals don't know whether the November 4 budget will cover a six-month period or an 18-month period, if they don't know whether it will be for 2025-26 and 2026-27, that's very troubling. They're not taking this seriously enough, and that's very troubling. If they do know but aren't telling the committee, they're taking away the one and only tool the committee needs to schedule its work.
We are unable to draw up a schedule. They need to tell us if there will be a budget in the spring and what time period the November 4 budget will cover. We simply can't work unless we have that information.
I'm sure the parliamentary secretary will tell us that the committee has enough time if it hurries up and if the opposition parties stop doing what they're doing. He's predictable.
I worked on Bill C‑27 with the parliamentary secretary for 10 months, but made no progress because of this type of behaviour. He'll tell us that we have time to get the job done, but if he rejects any schedule that would allow the committee to hold any pre-budget consultations whatsoever, there's no way we can complete a report before the budget implementation bill goes before the House.
What does that mean? It means we'll invite people here and tell them that nobody's going to listen to them or hear them, that they'll have wasted their time and be laughed at, but that they can come and say their piece if it makes them feel better. We'll pretend to be psychologists. Then, when it's time for the clause-by-clause study of the budget implementation bill, maybe the government will change a comma if it feels like being nice. That's exactly how the minister, the department, and the Prime Minister are treating Quebeckers who have sent in very useful pre-budget submissions.
What this means is that the minister is not giving us a choice, and he knows it. Either transparency is lacking or competence is. Either way, that's a problem. The minister needs to come here and make a public announcement, because closed-door discussions with ministers have no public value. The minister needs to come here as soon as possible and give us the information we need to set up a pre-budget schedule and demonstrate a modicum of respect for the people who made submissions. He needs to come and tell us if he is going to table a budget in the spring, which is what almost all normal governments of all stripes have done for years, except in times of national emergency or war.
We're asking the minister for the bare minimum, and he knows that his way of doing business is wrong. He'll tell us—