Finance Committee on June 10th, 2026

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Sure. Thank you very much.

I have Mr. Lawrence on the same point of order.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Clarke, ON]

On the same point of order, I agree completely with Mr. Turnbull. Depending on where we are and where the discussion is, as we did last time, we might be agreeable—we'll see how the night goes—to dismiss them early so they don't have to stay the full time as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Thank you very much.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Madam Chair, just on that point of order, does that mean Mr. Lawrence won't have questions for officials later on?

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Clarke, ON]

I want to see where the evening takes us, but thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

We're devolving into debate there. There was a nice united moment of support for our public servants.

Just so that it is very clear for our public servants, certainly when the committee is suspended, you do not need to be in the room. When we suspend for votes in future, I will make sure to let you know how long that suspension will take. When we're suspended for translation, it's a little bit harder, but you can assume that there will be at least a five- to 10-minute break, and we'll do our best to let you know.

When the committee is suspended, you certainly do not need to stay here and, of course, if you need to take a health break even while committee is on, you can do that. We can always come back to you if needed.

With that, we're still on subamendment eight to CPC-13.

Mr. Kelly, you're next on the list.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Crowfoot, AB]

Thank you.

This is another amendment that would add some relatability as well as transparency and clarity for Canadians if, in the report, we had the effects of the reduction in contribution rates on employees at different levels of pensionable earnings. Getting specific to a couple of different levels of earnings makes it easier for people to relate to how this will affect them. If somebody makes maybe not bang on $50,000 in pensionable earnings but some number close to that, they can get some approximation to see what the effect would be on that salary of $50,000 to $70,000. I think the maximum pensionable earnings for the year is a little higher than that. Just under $75,000 is the current maximum this year. If somebody had $50,000 and $70,000 as a guideline in the report, it would make it much easier for them.

Relative to other subamendments that have sadly been rejected on this amendment, the arguments have been made over how important it is to add relatability. When the reduction contribution rate happens.... In fact, I'm not sure when the last time there was a reduction. I don't know if there's ever been a reduction before now. The reduction, though, comes on the heels of a significant increase that was passed in the previous Parliament, which my Conservative colleagues and I objected to. We said that it was a tax on employment.

It's a mandatory payroll deduction. It's a payroll tax, which, in and of itself, certainly doesn't make it wrong. It's an incredibly important plan, and the payroll taxes go to dedicated purposes that are very important and fill important functions for Canadians. Nevertheless, they must be paid. At the time, we cautioned the government that this significant increase was actually a tax on employment, a tax on jobs, and would reduce the spending power of Canadians because they would simply have more deducted from their paycheques. With the fact that it's coming down now, shortly after it was increased, I hate to have to point it out to the members, but it would seem that Conservatives were correct that the increase they brought in during the previous Parliament was unwarranted and unnecessary.

We are seeing a reduction in this bill that applies to both employers and employees and the self-employed, if they are participants in the plan. If they could see a report that's prepared under the amendment to this act that would differentiate between the effect on their earnings at different levels of income, it would be very helpful. I am thinking particularly about self-employed Canadians. All self-employed people who employ other people must deduct for the Canada pension plan. It's a legal requirement on their part, and the accounting of this can be quite onerous. Self-employed people need to know what the effect on their cash flow will be for different employees at different income levels. It would be very helpful for the small business operator who has a very small number of employees, where a change of one employee or a couple of employees would make a significant change to their month-to-month cash flows. It would be important that they have this information in a way that's readily understandable.

When you're self-employed—and I was self-employed from the time I finished university until I became a member of Parliament—and when you're operating a small business with fewer than 20 employees or contractors, when you're managing a small operation like that, the owner and manager of that business has to figure out everything on their own. They don't have an HR department to turn to because they are the HR department. They don't have a staff. They might have a bookkeeper, but a particularly small business doesn't. You're either turning to professionals for advice, which is expensive.... The meter's running when you call up your accountant and say that you just need advice from them.

Most very small business operators have to rely on information they can quickly find for themselves with probably no more resources than an Internet connection and a search engine to find the government reports and the appropriate reports to get the information they need to make decisions about the operation of their business. These self-employed Canadians are paying both sides of it. They have to pay their employee and then their employee has to pay from what they get paid, but there is also the employer contribution. Knowing if there is a reduction, which in this case there is, and how much that will affect, say, a person with $50,000 in pensionable earnings is important. That's a $25-an-hour job.

During my years in the mortgage business, I'd be working hourly into annual without too much calculating, but anyway, knowing out of that how much on top of that hourly rate you're paying into this plan as required under law, in addition to that which must be deducted and remitted is very important. That's why we believe that these annual reports should exist. They add transparency to the government, transparency for Canadians, and specifically breaks it down into language that is easily relatable to those within the system, both the workers and the employees.

Given the sort of on-again, off-again war against small business this government has waged.... It reached its peak when Bill Morneau and Justin Trudeau both called owners of small corporations tax cheats. I think it was Justin Trudeau who called small businesses a vehicle for tax avoidance by wealthy Canadians with sophisticated corporate structures.

Then we found out how many different limited companies Bill Morneau had. I thought maybe they were talking about themselves when they said that private corporations were just a tax vehicle for wealthy people to avoid taxes, but for real people who operate a small business, if it's done through a corporation, the employees of the corporation must still pay into CPP. If the owner chooses to pay themselves a salary, then they, of course, also pay the employer and the employee portion of the Canada pension plan deduction that is required by law.

Many self-employed Canadians were advised by their accountants for generations to pay their own compensation in dividends as opposed to salaried employment, which would have triggered the Canada pension plan deductions. That was one of the material reasons why accountants gave that advice.

I don't know if Mr. Lawrence will be able to weigh in on this later on, because I know that he, as a tax accountant.... I'm sorry. He's a tax lawyer. I misspoke. I know the difference, and I know which one applies to Mr. Lawrence. Mr. Lawrence is a tax lawyer.

It's interesting that the lawyer at the table was upset when I misspoke and called him an accountant. In the esteem in which professions are held, I wasn't sure whether he thought the lawyer placed higher than the accountant. I didn't think that would normally or ordinarily be the case, but in any event, he would be well positioned to provide expert testimony on these structures.

As we're discussing the Canada pension plan and disclosing and articulating the amount of the deduction that is taken from these employees, I am reminded of the extent to which the government disincentivized those who had private Canadian corporations. It was very discouraging at the time. They seemed to think it was wrong that so many self-employed entrepreneurial Canadians would be disincentivized in so many ways under the tax reforms they proposed in 2017. Today, I'm sure many more self-employed people are probably not compensating themselves with dividends but are going with the salaried option and incurring the CPP deduction. They would need to know that if they take $70,000 out of their company, it's going to be more than $70,000, because they are also paying the employer's portion, and then, of course, deducting from themselves the amount that would be due as an employee.

We think it's very important that we give clarity to self-employed Canadians, and to all Canadians—workers as well.

I often zero in on the self-employed Canadians, because it's what I knew best in my pre-political career. This is the problem too, and one of the challenges and one of the reasons I think self-employed Canadians deserve so much respect from the broader public and deserve better from their government. Self-employed Canadians are the ones who may not even be able to pay themselves consistently enough to, say, hit the maximum pensionable earning for CPP.

If they are, as so many self-employed Canadians do, simply paying dividends as investors in their businesses as opposed to employees, they have an obligation then to make up the savings, because the Canada pension plan would not be there for those self-employed Canadians. As a young entrepreneur, you have a real dilemma on your hands, because you're choosing whether to go the route of compensating yourself for risk by paying a dividend or paying yourself a salary as a worker in the business. That is more attractive on a month-to-month cash flow basis as a person trying to get by, get started in life and get a company off the ground, but you will wake up one day and realize that you did not pay into CPP at all, and you'd better have made up for that with personal savings.

I spoke earlier in regard to one of the failed amendments about how important this information is to young Canadians because of the march of time and the compounding effect of return on investment. As the years go by, you have fewer years ahead to reverse a decision or a choice made earlier in life. When you're young, choosing well and choosing to—

[Jake Sawatzky, Liberal, New Westminster—Burnaby—Maillardville, BC]

I have a point of order, Chair.

I'm hearing a lot of repetition. I know we're talking about the march of time and things diminishing, and I'm feeling my own time on this world diminishing as we continue this filibuster. I just ask that we stick to the clause at hand.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Thank you, Mr. Sawatzky.

Mr. Kelly, could I remind you to stick to the subamendment that we're dealing with, please?

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Crowfoot, AB]

Thank you for the reminder. I'm not sure what part of discussing the importance of, as the subamendment says, measuring the impact of the reduced contribution rates on employees who might make $50,000 or $70,000 was not relevant, but I will continue. I think it was pretty clearly relevant.

I'm talking about young Canadians who need the clarity that this subamendment offers to the amendment, which itself is a reporting mechanism that would compel the government to add additional transparency and accountability to Canadians, which we hope is the goal of all parliamentarians, including the government caucus members.

If I might get back to that, before I got sidetracked, I was talking about how important the choices of young Canadians are to their financial futures and why they need access to information that is relatable to them. This was exactly the point that I was making prior to Mr. Sawatzky's point of order.

In the absence of information, and if young Canadians aren't fully aware of the impact a reduction in contribution rates might have, perhaps especially if they were an entrepreneur or a young Canadian who was deciding how to set up their own compensation as they're trying to get a business off the ground.... I don't know how many young Canadians are trying to start a business. I hope there are many of them, but no one could blame them if they were concerned about the business environment in which we find ourselves. For those ambitious young Canadians trying to get a business off the ground, I think it's very important that they be able to easily see the effect of these changes.

I know that I can't move any further amendments, and I don't think you can move a sub-subamendment, but maybe in the future, if we wanted to really get more detail here, we could even add categories other than $50,000 and $70,000. However, let's not let perfection be the enemy of the good here, and maybe we'll leave it to other members if they want to make other changes.

It is my view, anyway, on this subamendment, that it is important that we have relatable information on both the deduction that's paid at source by the employer and by the employee. I don't want to catch Mr. Lawrence off guard if he has some thoughts on this, but if he does, I'd be happy to yield the floor at this time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Unfortunately, he's not next on the list. Mr. Turnbull is.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Crowfoot, AB]

He could get on the list, though, I imagine.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

He is on the list, but Mr. Turnbull is next.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Be careful what you wish for.

We're 22 hours into this FINA committee, if I'm not mistaken; that's how long we've been sitting. We've spent, I think, about 12 or 13 hours just on amendment CPC-13. This is a proposed new clause to the spring economic update 2026 implementation act, which lowers CPP contributions for Canadian workers because the Canada pension plan has been deemed by the chief actuary to be solvent for 75 years. It's healthy. It's in good shape.

This is a measure the government has taken with full confidence and information at their fingertips and that provinces and territories agreed to in a first ministers' meeting, where they were on board with this. It saves the average Canadian worker and employer contributions of about $108 per year. It's 40 basis points lower, leaving a 30-basis-point buffer in the pension plan contributions. It's at a time when we're looking to save Canadians money and leave more of their hard-earned paycheques in their pockets.

That's where we're at after 22 hours. Officials have been here for many of those hours. What strikes me as kind of challenging to stomach is that we're now on the eighth subamendment to a Conservative amendment. Technically, if the Conservatives were serious about these reporting requirements that they're throwing up as reasons to hold up this committee and this bill, they would have done their homework and included these supposed subamendments in the actual amendment that they tabled first. This is clearly an attempt to slow down and hold up this committee, to filibuster this bill and to hold this committee ransom in order to get something else that they want.

We've seen not every one but almost every amendment that has been suggested by the Conservatives increase reporting requirements, which have been duplicative. In other words, there are already statutory requirements that the government is following. In almost all cases, the government is already required to table very specific data and information that relates to the things that the Conservatives are supposedly asking for.

What's interesting is that the Conservatives have often said that they would downsize and optimize government, that they want the government to get out of the way and that they want government efficiency, yet here they are, over and over again, advocating for more red tape, for less efficiency and for more reporting requirements that are redundant and that do not add value or transparency, because they're already in place.

This is where we're at. I'm just wondering how long the Conservatives are planning to filibuster Bill C-30 and waste taxpayer resources on the proceedings of this committee, which they don't seem to be concerned about at all or they wouldn't have wasted 22 hours. We all know this bill could have been done in about two hours in this committee—maybe three, maximum.

We had conversations about this previously. We actually agreed to a Conservative programming motion on the study of this bill. We agreed with every aspect of it, I think, with one small exception. We achieved unanimous consent to support that. They essentially dictated how we were going to study Bill C-30, and we agreed to it. As the governing party, we didn't have to do that, but we did, in an effort to collaborate and work together.

This is not a good use of our time. It is a waste of time and resources. I'm not saying that there aren't some good-faith points that members make from time to time. I will grant that, but if you were serious about actually getting work done, you would allow these things to come to a vote.

We've also seen an effort at this committee, over and over again during the past 22 hours, to move subamendments on the fly, which is a sort of wordsmithing exercise based on somebody's thoughts in the moment. Technically, it's okay in Parliament. It's the members' prerogative to do so, but it seems as though it's an attempt to tie up committee resources by having our committee suspend for half an hour at a time to get the translation and then reconvening, at which time, members on the opposite side essentially speak ad infinitum to their many reasons, without allowing things to come to a vote.

This is where we are. I just want to make it clear for anyone who happens to be paying attention, for the media, for people at home, for people in my riding of Whitby, and for them to take note of the obstruction that happens in Parliament. It's based on our official opposition's not really caring about reducing red tape and not allowing us to get key tax deductions and measures implemented so that we can actually do the things that Canadians are asking us to do here in Parliament.

I want to ask members to sober up, to actually get down to work and to stop obstructing this Parliament.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Mr. Turnbull, Mr. Kelly has a point of order.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Crowfoot, AB]

I understand that he was given the floor because we are debating the subamendment. This doesn't sound like debate on the subamendment. I wonder if you could return him to the subamendment. If he has a point of order, that's different, but this is debate on the subamendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Thank you, Mr. Kelly.

Mr. Turnbull, go ahead.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

So—

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

I'm sorry, Mr. Turnbull, but Mr. Lawrence has a point of order.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Clarke, ON]

Madam Chair, you've asked our members, and they've done it accordingly, to withdraw them when comments are inappropriate. I think that telling the official opposition to “sober up” is inappropriate, and he should withdraw it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Thank you, Mr. Lawrence.

Mr. Turnbull, could you withdraw that comment, please?

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Sure, I can withdraw that.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Chair, is there any chance I can make a comment?

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

You're not a regular member of the committee, so is there unanimous consent to allow Elizabeth May to make a comment?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.