Finance Committee on June 10th, 2026

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Go ahead.

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

I'm not a member of this committee. I'm here because of a motion the committee passed when it began its work after the election. I deeply regret that the motion was made because I could make my amendments on the floor of the House, otherwise, at report stage.

My only point here is that since my friend Ryan Turnbull is making a point for people watching, I'd like people watching to know that I've been here most of those hours, with amendments to try to protect health and the environment from division 8 of Bill C-30. That's all I have to say.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Thank you, Ms. May.

Mr. Turnbull, you continue to have the floor.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I thank my colleague, whom I know always operates in good faith in the House and is deeply concerned about some issues that she has with...and I look forward to eventually getting to those clauses.

We would have already been there if we hadn't been subjected to the Conservative filibuster on this bill, which we didn't anticipate because we were working quite well together on this committee. It certainly felt like we had unanimous consent on the motion that programmed our time. We heard from all the ministers. We considered all the clauses and all the testimony. We're really debating a.... Well, we're not debating the bill. It's the minutia of a subamendment to the Conservative amendment that we're really debating here.

I want to point out one last thing, which is, as we heard from officials at the very onset of this particular amendment, CPC-13, that the chief actuary is already required to produce a very detailed report on the health of the Canada pension plan. It has been tabled. The Minister of Finance referred it to the House yesterday...or on June 8. I'm forgetting what day of the week it is because we've been here for so many hours, but that has taken place. That includes the impacts on the pension plan of the measures that have been put forward. Again, the government would never jeopardize the sustainability of the Canada pension plan. We're only lowering contributions by 40 basis points, because the chief actuary and all provinces and territories unanimously agreed to lower those pension contributions.

It's something the Conservatives advocated for without having the information that they're now requesting, which is interesting because it's inconsistent with the very argument that they're making. We see often the hypocrisy that the Conservatives display in Parliament. In fact, we see that every day in the House of Commons, but in this particular case, it's pretty rich for them to now be asking for additional data and information when they themselves advocated for lowering pension plan contributions for Canadian workers. We're actually aligned for once, and here they are sticking arbitrary things in the way to prevent this bill from getting through Parliament before the House rises for the summer.

That's what I have to say. I'll be quiet now for a little while. I'm sure members opposite will appreciate that, because they don't like it when I speak the truth in this committee. I'm sure that they will continue to filibuster this committee, although we hope that they'll come to their senses and allow this to move forward. That's what Canadians expect us to be doing right now, not sitting here listening to an endless filibuster.

Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Thank you, Mr. Turnbull.

Do you have a point of order, Mr. Kelly?

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Crowfoot, AB]

I wonder if this might fall under the Simms protocol. He is sort of—

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

No, it has to....

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Crowfoot, AB]

Okay, then—

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Mr. Lawrence, you have the floor.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Crowfoot, AB]

I do have a point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Get to it, then.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Crowfoot, AB]

In the practice of the committee, there are some unusual points that would not normally be part of the routine function of the committee. I would note that Mr. Turnbull, who had the floor, made no relevant contribution to the debate on the subamendment but merely—

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

I disagree with that. There were many points that were related to the subamendment.

Thank you, Mr. Kelly.

Mr. Lawrence, you have the floor.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Crowfoot, AB]

I'd like to be on the speakers list, then.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Sure.

Go ahead, Mr. Lawrence.

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

Thank you, Chair. I appreciate it.

I wanted to respond to a couple of points.

Mr. Turnbull, to be reasonable and fair, may not have been aware of that. I believe him to be a little bit younger than me. He said that the government would never allow CPP to run into a funding issue, but actually the government has.

It was originally launched as a pay-as-you-go program, meaning that there was no buffer and no investment portion to it. Younger folks contributed to it, and older folks received it. That's how it worked. That worked great when it was originally created in 1966, because there were a lot of workers for every retiree. Of course, then, as the baby boomers started to get older—

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I have a point of order, Madam Chair.

I appreciate the history lesson, but this is not relevant to the current subamendment, as far as I can tell.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Thank you.

[An hon. member]

Neither was his—

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Excuse me, but Mr. Lawrence has the floor.

Please continue.

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

Thank you, Chair. I appreciate it.

I will, to my colleague's point, bring this up to our modern day, but I think it's important because it gets to a point that I think needs to be said. I promise you that in relatively quick order, I will get there.

By the mid-1990s, of course, we started to see a reversal of those demographics, and the vast outnumbering of workers to retirees started to shrink. The demographic pyramid in the 1960s was something like this and then started to go like this—I hope this isn't a prop—during the 1970s, 1980s and then into the 1990s. What the chief actuary officer said, in 1995, was that the CPP fund would be out by 2015. The point is that, actually, the government has allowed the CPP to become precarious at points in history. With the chair's and the other members' indulgence, this is something I referred to before.

Quite frankly, when I was door-knocking during the last election, I got to talk to thousands of my residents in a relatively short period of time. It was amazing how many of them still believed that the conditions of the 1990s CPP were still in place. Of course, to be honest, it wasn't helped by some individuals, some groups that tried to put out the disinformation—it wasn't misinformation—that a Conservative government would somehow reduce or eliminate the CPP and OAS. Quite frankly, that's a terrible thing to do because, for folks who are or will be completely dependent on CPP, this was absolutely terrifying for them. That's what gets us back to the subamendment.

Also, with respect to the member's saying that, perhaps, we're not going as fast as we could, I agree with him. However, I also strongly argue that it is not because of this side of the table. He's quite right. We have put up numerous subamendments. Those subamendments have been put out there as a good-faith effort to improve the reporting so that those individuals.... Literally, I've seen seniors in tears because they believe that they may not get CPP going forward, and that is the only difference between their being able to pay their rent or being able to eat, which, even at that, they're barely doing because of the high rates of inflation. This extra information, this extra reporting....

As I said, we're not in the early 1900s anymore, when the government just needed to create a report and put it in a stack somewhere. I believe that government can do better than that, in this digital age, to actually get information out to people. I asked some of the representatives from the Department of Finance not just the question, “Are you completing these reports?”, but also, “To what extent do you know, if at all, whether this information is actually being read by Canadians?” My anecdotal evidence is that it's not, and that there's a good portion of Canadians who are unaware that the CPP is currently solvent for the next 75 years.

I might also add that the contribution increase to the CPP recently has also created some trepidation amongst the people of Northumberland—Clarke, particularly among seniors. They took that to mean that there was a challenge to the funding or the solvency. Going back now to reduce the CPP contribution could very well make people nervous. I've been, throughout most of this discussion, convinced that CPP is still on solid ground, even at 9.5%. I think that we need to make sure that this is communicated to Canadians.

I believe we're up to, I don't know, six, seven or eight different subamendments on that. The government has yet to vote in favour of any of them. In fact, the member opposite criticized me. It was I who did this, so I'll take full responsibility for making changes on the fly.

The reason I was making those changes was that I was trying to extend an olive branch. I was trying to get agreement on even a watered-down solution that would be agreeable to the government. Unfortunately, I couldn't get there, nor have they proposed any compromises. With the number of amendments and subamendments that we have put out there on the floor, you would think that just once they would step up and say, “Do you know what? We're not always the smartest gal or guy in the room, and the Conservatives actually have a good idea on this. Maybe a little bit more disclosure or maybe getting that information out to the people of Canada would be a good thing. Maybe we can work with them. Perhaps this amount of information isn't workable, but let's see if we can find some common ground here.”

Conservatives have once again put out our hand. We realize that through the floor crossings, the Liberal government has a majority and they can wield that power as they wish, but I received some great acclaim for using the metaphor of a tree falling in the forest, and I have another one here. The members opposite might want to get ready and maybe write this down.

This one comes from that deeply profound and important cultural icon, Spider-Man—

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

It's “With great power comes great responsibility.”

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

Thank you, Chair. Yes, I continue to have a very high opinion of our chair.

With great power comes great responsibility. In 22 hours or whatever, there have been multiple amendments and multiple votes, and not once have the Liberals voted with us on an amendment—not once. Not once have they put a compromise forward. I'm trying.

The last time I had the floor, I looked aside and I thought, “I don't think they're going to be convinced by my arguments”, so I moved for a vote. In my naïveté, I thought that maybe the members aside were saying, “Mr. Lawrence is working—

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

I'm sorry. Did you just move for a vote?

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

No, not yet. Give me another little bit here.