Citizenship and Immigration Committee on June 12th, 2024

[Marc Dalton, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

No.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

You are replacing Mr. Maguire. Welcome.

We are discussing the subamendment of Mr. Kmiec to the motion by Mr. Chiang. At the time of suspension on Monday, September 16, MP Kayabaga was the next person on the speaking list to debate the subamendment. After MP Kayabaga, I have MP Zahid and then MP Kmiec.

Mr. Dalton, do you want to be on that list? Okay. That's good.

Jennifer O'Connell has the floor if she wishes to speak. Otherwise, I'm going to go to Ms. Zahid.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, but I'll pass on my time since I'm just filling in and getting caught up. You can move to the next speaker.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you.

We were doing the same thing previously. I knew that she would not want to go ahead, but I wanted to follow the chair's past deliberations.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Was Ms. O'Connell on the speakers list?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Ms. Kayabaga was there, and so the person replacing her will be on the list. That has always been the practice on all sides. That's why I gave her a chance, even though I knew she was going to pass it on to Ms. Zahid. I wanted to follow protocol.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Chair, that's the first time I've seen that practice. Can I ask the clerk if that's the common practice of committees?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

This is the common practice in this committee. I'm sure the other members will be fine with it, because you never know when we will have to replace someone. There's always something going on. It's not on one side; it's on all sides. That is the protocol I was following, and that's what I will continue to do unless I have unanimous consent.

Ms. Zahid, you have the floor.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I ask for your patience, as I have to raise a very important issue.

As you will recall, in our last meeting, I had an exchange with Mr. Redekopp regarding my community of Scarborough. I'm a passionate defender of my community, as he is of his own community in Saskatoon. I've had the pleasure of visiting Saskatoon several times and meeting many local residents. Sometimes my passion gets the best of me, but I will certainly never apologize for being a champion of and for my community and its residents.

Mr. Redekopp posted a video mocking our exchange, which I felt was in poor taste, but that's certainly his choice. What I'm concerned about, Mr. Chair, is the racist, xenophobic and Islamophobic commentary that his post has attracted, which remains on his Facebook page. I will share some examples with the committee.

One commentator said, “She should not be a member of Parliament...neither should anyone else not born here [to] Canadian parents.”

Another, referring to former immigration minister Ahmed Hussen replied in part, “I've been saying it for years. Since that Somalian was immigration minister.... He's openly stated, he's here to make money, send money to his homeland and he will go back. I guess when he's stolen enough money.”

One other commentator said, “She needs to be removed and banned.” Another, “It is concerning when our politicians have accents.”

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Zahid, I'm sorry.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Go ahead, Mr. McLean.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Politicians are responsible for what they post, but responsibility for what people—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Mr. McLean, I will go to Ms. Zahid.

Ms. Zahid, go ahead.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you.

One said, “Massive deportation now is the only answer”.

In a blatant example of Islamophobia, one commentator on Mr. Redekopp's post, referring to my hijab, said, “Who the phack is this thing with the table cloth on”.

Scarborough is a community where people from around the world have chosen to make their homes and build a better life for their families. Canadians from Bangladesh, from the Philippines, from Sri Lanka, from India, from Arab countries and, yes, from Pakistan, helped make Scarborough a great place to live. I am proud to raise my family there. They would be very upset by the anti-Scarborough comments that Mr. Redekopp has attracted as well.

Now, Mr. Chair, I am sure these are comments that all my colleagues across the way—some of whom I have enjoyed a productive and collegial working relationship with for several years—will want to distance themselves from. At least, I certainly hope so. However, we have seen too often that as we amp up our rhetoric, it can give unfortunate licence to hatred and vitriol that is making it more dangerous for all elected officials. I hope we can be cognizant of that in the future.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you, Madam Zahid.

If you're done your spot, I will go to Mr. Kmiec.

The floor is yours.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Before I speak to the subamendment, I'm just going to say that all of the comments that were racist, prejudiced, mean-hearted and evil—those aren't Conservatives. I reject them wholeheartedly. I know my colleagues do as well.

I think we all find it really difficult to go through our comments and try to delete every single rude, obnoxious, racist, sexist and prejudiced comment that people make. We're not all perfect. You can't always get it right. We are responsible for the comments that we make.

I hope people will find that I've always been judicious in the commentary I make. I joke that I'm a minority in my own family because my kids are part Jewish and part Chinese, so I'm very sensitive to that type of aggressive commentary. My partner is from Iran, so I see that people even post nasty commentary as well on her comments that she sometimes makes publicly.

We reject them wholeheartedly. They don't represent the Conservative Party of Canada. They don't represent the Conservative movement either. That's easy to say.

On the subamendment that I moved at the last meeting, now we have a development. A beautiful, 12-word non-confidence motion is now available to the House to consider. It's that the House has lost confidence in this government—I'd move so—and that we finally have that carbon tax election this motion calls for now.

If it passes with my subamendment, and I hope we'll find agreement from all parties to do so, I really hope that we can get to the point where we can pass this subamendment to have a carbon tax election.

To prepare for this meeting, I looked up as many supporting documents as I could from different parliamentarians and legislators at the provincial level to try to persuade my colleagues that my subamendment is what the Canadian population wants.

We have three provincial elections coming up. In all of them, either the carbon tax will feature prominently as the main issue or it'll be a carbon tax election. When Premier David Eby is agreeing and now saying that basically he wants to abandon their own retail carbon tax in British Columbia, that's a carbon tax election.

I think it's incumbent upon us as parliamentarians to accept my subamendment, which will go along with the main motion to basically tell the House that we want a carbon tax election.

I've now heard rumblings that perhaps this non-confidence motion that's being moved in the House will get support from one of the other opposition parties. That's regrettable. I hope they change their minds. They have many more days to be persuaded of that, but in the interim, we could approve my subamendment and we could still report it back to the House. I've asked the clerks at the table, since I sit so close to them, and it would be a novel way of inducing perhaps another non-confidence vote in the government through this report that we would table after the motion is passed.

There was some commentary from the B.C. premier and NDP leader David Eby to scrap the carbon tax in British Columbia. This appeared in the Vancouver Sun on September 12. I'm going to quote him here.

He said, “A lot of British Columbians are struggling with affordability.... The political consensus we had in British Columbia has been badly damaged by the approach of the federal government”, so if it “decides to remove the legal backstop requiring us to have a consumer carbon tax in B.C., we will end the consumer carbon tax in B.C.”

The article goes on to say, “Eby argued that large increases to the federal tax”—

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

I have a point of order, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Go ahead on a point of order, Mr. Chiang.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Chair, I don't understand the relevance of Mr. Kmiec's comment about the carbon tax. It has no relevance to Bill C-71. That's the matter before us that we're debating. What he's talking about is completely not connected to the matter before us.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Mr. Chiang, Mr. Kmiec had the floor.

Mr. Kmiec, please continue.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

The relevance, to my colleague across the way, is that my subamendment to the main motion is exactly on the carbon tax election. I'm quoting back to him a seasoned politician on the NDP side who is saying that he's facing a carbon tax election in British Columbia, and that's what the public wants. I'm trying to remind my colleague across the way through you, Chair, that we need a carbon tax election, and that's why I have a subamendment on this exact subject before this committee: It's so that we can have a carbon tax election and submit ourselves to accountability from Canadian citizens, who will get to pick who will represent them in the 45th Parliament, in our next Parliament, and I'm more than happy to do that right away.

My residents back home are enthusiastic about having a carbon tax election, and I'll go back to quoting now Premier Eby, who is less enthusiastic about facing the electorate in his home province. That's because they're upset at the carbon tax, and they're specifically, I'd say, more angry at the federal government for forcing British Columbia to keep a carbon tax because of the federal backstop legislation that forces every single province that doesn't have a carbon tax to have a price imposed directly upon them.

Premier Eby has clearly said that should there not be a federal backstop, British Columbia would abandon the punishing carbon tax. It's really convenient for him to say this so late in his term and so close to the provincial election day. I think it's of interest to the committee, and especially, I think, to our chair, who happens to be from the beautiful province of British Columbia through which I backpacked for two weeks over the summer with my kids. That's why this is important.

This is the last quote I have from Premier Eby before I move to other provinces. Premier Eby argued that large increases to the federal tax, now $80 a tonne as of April 1, are, to use another quotation, unsustainable. “Unsustainable” is what I heard at doors when I was door knocking in communities in North Vancouver, in Burnaby, in Delta, Vancouver Granville and Vancouver proper—but not Surrey.

Don't worry, Chair, I didn't make it out to Surrey to door knock, but I did door knock in New Westminster and I visited a lot of different groups as well. I door knocked also in a few spots in Seymour and North Burnaby, just to make sure that I heard directly from British Columbians, and what they were saying at the doors was that many of them wanted just what this subamendment has: a carbon tax election.

Moving on to my home province of Alberta, it's an unusual day, I think my colleagues from Alberta will agree, when we're quoting NDP MLAs, but I'm going to quote some NDP MLAs now.

Alberta NDP MLA and former leadership candidate Rakhi Pancholi spoke against the carbon tax, and this was reported earlier this year, before my subamendment even came to grace this committee to have a carbon tax election. On February 9, 2024, as reported in the Calgary Herald, she said the following: “It may be time to move beyond a consumer carbon price and focus more on the things that do work”, which again is an implication a carbon tax does not work and that we should abandon it.

This is another quote: “I’ve been having many conversations with leading climate activists in our province, experts in this area, and we need to continue those conversations to say, what would that climate plan look like without a consumer carbon price.”

It sounds to me like she was shying away from a retail carbon tax being imposed, which is exactly the point of my subamendment, which is to have a carbon tax election. I think it's perfectly reasonable that we time it for this report going back and its impact on Bill C-71 legislation before it comes to this committee.

I'll note that the government obviously finds no urgency in passing Bill C-71, because it's not up for debate today, as far as I can tell. It wasn't up for debate yesterday. I don't see it on notice for tomorrow's business. In fact, I don't think it's on the business for several more days, and the government saw no great urgency from the moment it tabled it in May to have it debated at any time in May or June before it came here.

I'll also remind members here that this committee was in public in a multi-meeting filibuster from the Liberal side, and I heard many people comment yesterday that the bad Conservatives were delaying Bill C-71. There's no delay happening. Members are debating the merits of the bill and the contents of the bill in the House. Then I also heard the other side of the argument, which is that Conservatives take too much time at committee to do their work. I will continue to do the work the residents of Calgary Shepard expect me to do, which is to represent them.

The content of my subamendment is exactly what residents in my riding want to see. That's every single word in my email inbox. They want to have a non-confidence vote and they want a carbon tax election, which is what my subamendment would deliver for them.

I am going to go back this weekend. I'm going to go to my veterans walk in Glenmore Park. I'm going to go to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for the Calgary food drive that they do for the whole city. When I meet my residents, my constituents and my voters, they're going to ask me, "What did you do for us this week?" I'm going to tell them I moved at committee that we report back to the House that we have a carbon tax election. They'll be like, "Tom, that's great. That's exactly what we sent you to Ottawa for. That's what we sent you to Parliament for. That's what we want. We're tired of the government. We want to see it replaced. We want to have a say."

That's what reporting this back would give them. It places conditions on the main motion. That's exactly what my residents want to see.

I have another quote I want to read you. It's from a different Alberta NDP MLA, one whom I actually met briefly at the Alberta legislature when we were waiting in a line to greet the President of the Republic of Poland. I got a chance to meet, I think, one of her kids. She got a chance to meet my kids, and we were just talking family issues.

Alberta NDP MLA and leadership candidate Sarah Hoffman spoke out against the carbon tax. According to CTV Edmonton, on February 11, 2024, Hoffman said, “I think the consumer carbon tax is dead”, and later, “So we need to find new tools that are successful.”

She went on to say, “Nobody is on board with what [the Prime Minister] did with the federal carbon tax. He absolutely broke trust and broke confidence when he looked at the polls in eastern Canada and decided to exempt them.”

Finally, she said, “There's no way people can be on board with the federal plan when even the prime minister isn't on board, when he's playing games with it.”

Even the Alberta NDP agrees, I think, with my subamendment. The purpose is to have a carbon tax election federally. Let's get this resolved. Let the voting public pick. They can make a decision.

I believe in the wisdom of crowds. I believe that voters always have the best say. They get to choose who represents them. I hope that I can continue to earn their trust, just as we all hope we can continue to earn their trust and continue to represent them in our national Parliament. It is a great privilege to do so.

I think that's exactly what Sarah Hoffman was speaking to here. She was speaking to the fact that even the Prime Minister had abandoned the federal carbon tax. Premier Eby had talked about the fact that if there hadn't been a backstop in law, he would have abandoned it as well. That's what the subamendment proposes to do: move it up to the House and have the House confirm the committee's report to say, “not before a carbon tax election happens,” because that's what the public wants to see. I think it's critically important.

With that, Chair, I'm going to stop my comments. I have more comments. I also want to note that I have a letter from the Public School Boards' Association of Alberta, which represents all the public school boards who wrote to me and other Conservative members of Parliament specifically about the impact of the carbon tax on schools in my home province, but I'll leave it at that, Chair, and I'll cede the floor.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Dalton, go ahead, please.

[Marc Dalton, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you to the committee for the opportunity to speak to MP Chiang's Bill C-71 amendment, but more specifically to the subamendment by Conservative member of Parliament Tom Kmiec, which adds, after "temporary foreign workers", the following words: "and after a carbon tax election is held so that Canadians and Québécois can vote out this tired and out-of-touch NDP coalition government".

That is the subamendment. It has been ruled in order several times by the chair, and he did need to admonish different members for being disruptive. I'm glad to see there was no disruption to MP Kmiec's comments and I'm looking forward to being able to get through my comments here.

My remarks focus on the carbon tax and how out of touch the Liberals—and I would add the NDP and the Bloc—are with Canadians from coast to coast, and why we need a carbon tax election.

I represent Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge. That is a suburb of greater Vancouver, on the north side of MP Dhaliwal's riding, near to the south, in Surrey. It's a beautiful area. My perspective will be as a British Columbian MP, though comments I share are in line with how Canadians feel across this country.

I've never seen residents in my riding as stressed out as they are now. I've been an MP since 2019, and prior to that I was an MLA for eight years, representing the same region. I'm talking about seniors living on fixed incomes, single parents, couples with and without children, new immigrants and students, who are feeling very stretched with costs of living. I talked to one worker recently, and he told me that he's working from 10:00 in the morning until 10:00 at night, seven days a week. He says he can't give his body a break: He's exhausted, but if he does that, he's going to lose his home.

These are comments that I'm hearing throughout British Columbia and in my riding. People are maxing out on their line of credit, credit card debt, feeling anxious and frustrated. I'm sure that this is in sync with what members here at this committee may be hearing also. Consumer debt continues to rise, and it's especially impacting those who are new to the country and Generation Z, but it's being felt across the board. According to an August 27, 2024, market pulse consumer credit trends and insights report from Equifax, we have $2.5 trillion in consumer debt. It's increased from the past year by 4.5%, which is very significant.

Millions of Canadians are tapped out and struggling to make ends meet. They're going deeper into debt, which means higher interest payments. That only puts on more pressure, because the same expenses that they had to pay for—whether it's food, gas or shelter—are not just staying the same but increasing. It's what we call a “debt trap”. It is terrible. It's a very difficult place for people to be.

In the Lower Mainland and the greater Vancouver area, housing costs are more than a million dollars to own a home and have a mortgage. People are having mortgages of $600,000. Then there's the increase in payments.

I just want to step back here for a second. I know that I'm mentioning different costs of living, but it all relates to the real challenge and burden that Canadians are feeling. The carbon tax, which I'll get into more, really highlights it and is an unnecessary cost that is being added to Canadians.

The increase in mortgage rates is making it tough for residents to pay for kids—to clothe them with new clothes, to pay for their sports or just to put food on the table. It is not just people who own houses; it's also people who are renting. Someone very dear to me has just rented an older one-bedroom apartment. It costs her $2,800 before utilities. You pretty much need $80,000 to $100,000 just to be able to make ends meet nowadays. It is so hard. That is one of the reasons that so many people—new residents, students and others—are cramming into apartments and other places. It's just to try to share the cost of living. They're sleeping on couches and sharing bedrooms. It's really hard.

As a government, as legislators, that's not the direction that we want to see our nation go in. We want to see things getting better. I know that's the feeling of all the members here at this committee and all the representatives. We don't want to see things getting worse for people. We don't want to be adding to the misery index. We want to see things getting better. I know we share that wish, but the thing is that there are policies that are doing the exact opposite. It's time to wake up. The government seems to be like a train going off a bridge that has been blown up and going right off the edge. It's like they're not changing.

As a matter of fact, though, they are changing. They're making things more expensive: Oh, we'll just spend hundreds of millions more dollars here and billions of dollars there. We'll throw money around willy-nilly, with no real consideration of the finances and what the policies are doing to impact everyday Canadians.

In British Columbia, we pay the highest gas prices in Canada and in North America. Right now it's $1.75 a litre. Last summer it was up to $2.50 a litre. It's expensive. The carbon tax is a significant portion of this price. Before summer, Conservatives put forward a motion that the government—the Liberals, backed by the NDP and the Bloc—remove the GST from the carbon tax. We have the carbon tax. Then there's the GST, which only augments or elevates the price on gas. That was defeated.

People can say, “Well, just take public transportation.” I suppose that's possible in the downtown city core in Vancouver and maybe Toronto and Montreal, but for those living in the suburbs and those living in rural communities all over, it's not as simple as that. Quite often the bus systems don't operate throughout the night. A lot of times it's not direct.

Using the bus lines means it takes a lot longer to get to work, which only puts more stress on a person's life and means less time at home.

It's important to have a good public transportation system, and in Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, we have a bus system. West Coast Express goes one direction, with five trains in the morning going one way and five trains coming back from the downtown core. That just doesn't do it. People need to get their kids to sports or need to go shopping, so they need to use their vehicles. It seems as if the government is just trying to get people out of their cars, to make them walk, to take us back to the Middle Ages, the dark ages.

B.C. used to be a net exporter of electricity. The direction of the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc seems to be to just use more electricity. The fact of the matter is that British Columbia used to be an exporter, and now it's importing electricity. Saying that we need to have more and more EV vehicles.... EVs are a good option for many people, but it doesn't work when you consider all the demands on our electricity grids. It's very challenging. How can I say it politely? It is kind of foolish to say, “Well, no more—”

[An hon. member]

That's polite.

[Marc Dalton, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

That's very polite. I was being very polite.