Debates of Feb. 23rd, 2017

Public Sector Integrity Commissioner

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Pursuant to section 38 of the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act, I have the honour to lay upon the table the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner's case report in the matter of an investigation into allegations of wrongdoing.

This report is deemed permanently referred to the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates.

A message from His Excellency the Governor General transmitting the main estimates for the financial year ending March 31, 2018, was presented by the President of the Treasury Board and read by the Speaker to the House.

Report on Federal Tax Expenditures

[Scott Brison, Liberal, President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 32(2), I have the honour to table a document on behalf of the Minister of Finance, in both official languages, entitled “Report on Federal Tax Expenditures”.

Government Response to Petitions

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8) I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to four petitions.

Finance

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 13th report of the Standing Committee on Finance in relation to Bill C-240, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act (tax credit — first aid). The committee has studied the bill and recommends that the House of Commons not proceed further with this bill.

Judicial Accountability through Sexual Assault Law Training Act

[Rona Ambrose, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-337, An Act to amend the Judges Act and the Criminal Code (sexual assault).

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to stand in the House to introduce a bill to address the need to build more confidence in our judicial system when it comes to the handling of cases involving sexual assault and sexual violence. Too often, those involved in these cases come away with the feeling they have experienced not just a judgment on their case but a judgment on their character.

I believe we must address this situation by starting with the people responsible for overseeing Canada's justice system.

There is a definite lack of transparency in the federal justice system with respect to how and how often judges get training and education around handling cases that involve sexual violence.

This is about making our legal system fairer for everyone involved in these difficult cases. I hope my colleagues from all parties will take the time to consider the steps we propose here and support my legislation, the judicial accountability through sexual assault law training act or, what we like to call it, the just act.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

Business of Supply

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I believe if you seek it you would find unanimous consent for the following motion. I move:

That, at the conclusion of today's debate on the opposition motion in the name of the Member for Carleton, all questions necessary to dispose of the motion be deemed put and a recorded division deemed requested and deferred until Tuesday, March 7th, 2017, at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Does the hon. member have the unanimous consent of the House to propose the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

The House has heard the terms of the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

(Motion agreed to)

Taxation

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, income splitting is a basic tax fairness measure because it ensures that families making the same income pay the same rate of tax and the same amount of tax. That is why I am pleased to table a petition today signed by people from my constituency calling for the reinstatement of the family tax credit, which was, unfortunately, cancelled by the government when it took office.

Homelessness

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

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to rise this morning to present two petitions.

The first addresses the crisis of homelessness. It is from constituents within Saanich—Gulf Islands, who are asking the House to consider the national homelessness strategy as proposed by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities as a model for dealing nationally with homelessness.

Insecticides

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

Mr. Speaker, the second petition, again from residents within my constituency but also a goodly number from Ontario, is calling for action to protect Canada's pollinators by banning, as other jurisdictions have done, the use of neonicotinoid insecticides.

Democratic Reform

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to present a petition signed by residents of the metropolitan region, including the riding of Mount Royal, who are asking for something pretty far-fetched: they want the percentage of seats occupied by parties in the House to reflect and represent the percentage of votes those parties obtain in an election.

I am pleased to join them in asking this of Canada's Parliament.

Questions on the Order Paper

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

Opposition Motion—Impact of Carbon Taxes

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

moved:

That, given: (a) the Liberal election platform states that “government and its information should be open by default” and “data paid for by Canadians belongs to Canadians”; (b) the Department of Finance has indicated that a federally-mandated carbon tax will cause higher prices to “cascade through the economy in the form of higher prices”; (c) such regressive taxes cause low-income people to bear a larger burden as heat, gas, and groceries form a larger portion of their family budgets; and (d) the Department of Finance has produced numerous calculations of the impact of these taxes on low and middle-income families, and their effect on the gap between rich and poor; an Order of the House do issue for a copy of the Department of Finance’s documents titled “Impact of a carbon price on households' consumption costs across the income distribution” and “Estimating economic impacts from various mitigation options for greenhouse gas emissions,” and any other documents that calculate the cost of carbon taxes on Canadian workers, businesses, and families.

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Brantford—Brant.

This week we learned the story of an Ottawa-area senior who said he could no longer afford to heat his home or fuel his car, so he is giving up both. Rick Russell even put up a sign on his house declaring, “Another senior loses home due to high energy costs”, telling reporters he can only afford a home without heat or heat without a home.

He is not alone. Disabled grandmother Kathy Katula broke down into tears at the Prime Minister's recent town hall meeting, demanding to know how she would pay his new carbon tax on her home heating when she is already struggling with $1,000 a month electricity bills imposed by the provincial Liberal Government of Ontario. The Prime Minister gave her a warm hug, but unfortunately not warm enough to heat her home.

These are not isolated cases. The 2016 Ontario Association of Food Banks report entitled, “Hunger Report” said, “Since 2006, hydro rates have increased at a rate of 3.5 times inflation for peak hours, and at a rate of 8 times inflation for off-peak hours.”

Sixty thousand Ontarians have had their electricity cut off for failing to pay their bills, the report noted, adding that many food bank clients struggle with electricity bills of $300 to $700 a month. The food banks themselves say they are struggling to afford the electricity for their massive refrigerator systems.

Ron Dunn, executive director of Windsor's Downtown Mission, has had people come to him and plead, “If you can help me with food, then I can pay for some of this hydro bill before it gets cut off.”

These increases are the direct result of the Liberal Green Energy Act, which forces consumers to subsidize millionaire turbine and solar investors who sell overpriced, unneeded, and unreliable electricity to the government. While millionaires have prospered, Ontario has the worst poverty record of any province in Canada since the McGuinty-Wynne Liberals took power.

Between 2003 and 2014, the poverty rate dropped by one third in British Columbia, the Prairies, Atlantic Canada, and Quebec. It did not budge in Ontario.

Over the same time period, Ontario had the largest increase in the percentage of the population earning less than half the median income. It also has the worst record for middle-income growth across the country. Ontario's auditor general calculated that the government subsidies of wind and solar power companies will cost consumers like Kathy and Rick $170 billion, making the Ontario Liberal Green Energy Act likely the single-largest wealth transfer from the poor and middle class to the super rich in Canadian history.

The national carbon tax will do to gas, groceries, and heating costs exactly what the Green Energy Act has done to electricity. A Statistics Canada official recently testified at the House of Commons human resources committee that increases in fuel, food, and other basic necessities necessarily increased the number of people living below the poverty line.

Even carbon tax supporter Nicholas Rivers admitted that the tax will raise the price of gasoline by 11 cents a litre, electricity by another 10%, and natural gas by over 15%.

Annually, it will cost $1,028 per person, or $4,100 per family of four, according to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

This month, the Fraser Institute released proof that British Columbia, which has the least damaging carbon tax in the country, will still take a $870-million net tax increase from British Columbian taxpayers. That is to say, the average family of four in British Columbia will pay $728 more in carbon taxes than they get back in offsetting tax relief. That is the least damaging carbon tax in the country.

We know that the burdens of these taxes fall disproportionately on the backs of those with the least, for a number of reasons. First, we know that Stats Canada data shows that poor households spend roughly one-third more of household income on the basic necessities that will be taxed, like gas, groceries, and heat. While wealthy households still buy these goods, they constitute a much smaller share of a wealthy household's income. Therefore, the percentage tax increase is actually higher on those who are poor, which is the very definition of a regressive tax.

Second, the carbon tax will generate billions of dollars in new revenue for the government, but who will get that money? It is those who can afford to lobby for grants, rebates, and corporate welfare under the guise, of course, of saving the environment. I turn to the rebate that people can now receive if they can afford to buy a $150,000 Tesla car. I guess Rick Russell has now had to give up his truck, but if he wants to get back any of the money he is paying in the carbon tax, he will have to find $150,000 to buy one of these fancy Teslas or Mercedes-Benz electric vehicles, and then he can get $15,000 back. In reality, those wealthy enough to lobby for these rebates will get all the money back, as is so often the case with the theory of trickle-down government. Those at the top end up with the most.

That is why I filed an access to information request to find out how much poor and middle-class taxpayers will pay under the new Liberal carbon tax. I asked for the government to provide documents such as briefing notes, analyses, projections, and emails regarding the impact of a $50-a-tonne price on carbon or a carbon tax on the Canadian economy and include any analysis on the price of carbon on the impact on the consumer price index, median incomes, low-income household incomes, the poverty rate, the employment rate, and the unemployment rate.

The response was ominous. Imposing a carbon tax will lead to costs that will “cascade through the economy” said the finance department document, referring to two tables that would tell how much households would pay, but those tables are blacked out. These tables would break down the costs of the carbon tax by income quintile for the very poor, the poor, the middle class, the upper income, and the rich. The government says it wants to reduce the gap between rich and poor. Should it not then jump at the opportunity to release data on the tax's impact on income inequality, unless it has something to hide?

Could it be that, after running an entire election campaign on the supposed promise of taking more from the rich so that it could give back to the poor, the government is doing precisely the opposite and, worse, trying to cover it up? The most basic principle of parliamentary democracy is that people must consent for the taxes that they pay, through the assembled Parliament.

The Bill of Rights of 1689, which established the parliamentary system that we know today, through the mother Parliament in Britain, had as one of its basic principles what would become no taxation without representation. “Levying money for or to the use of the Crown...without grant of Parliament...is illegal.” Simply put, government cannot tax what Parliament has not approved, but we cannot approve what we do not know, and therefore, there cannot be taxation without information.

This motion calls for the immediate release of that information. These may seem like abstract concepts, but they are real to people like Kathy Katula, Rick Russell, and others who have no money to influence government or pull its levers, two people seeking no program or wealth but merely asking for government to get off their backs and out of their pockets. They pay the bills. They have the right to see those bills. This motion would give them the chance. Anyone voting against the motion would take that right away from them.

I ask the House to vote for this motion, to bring the light of day. To pass this motion in the House of Commons is to stand for our duty to represent the common people here in the house of the commoners.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, if there is any policy issue for which the Conservatives can clearly demonstrate they have lost touch with Canadians, this has to be it. Even Patrick Brown, the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party in Ontario, has recognized that we need to have a price on carbon. Provincial governments across Canada, with one exception, and governments around the world have recognized the need for a price on carbon. Only the Conservative Party of Canada inside the House of Commons has lost touch with reality on this issue.

My question to the member is this. Why does he believe that the Conservative Party is the only party in North America, it seems, that tends to want to say no to a price on carbon? Do its members not care about the environment? Why will they not listen to what Canadians have to say on the importance of the environment?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, even many of the supporters of carbon pricing that the member refers to have said that their plan would return to taxpayers everything collected through that price on carbon, in the form of rebates and income tax cuts. The only way to test that proposition is to know what people are paying in the first place. The government has that data. It has tables that demonstrate the costs to each family, broken down by income quintile. If it is so confident that Canadians will get back in corresponding tax relief and other measures what they pay in new taxes, then it will release that data. However, it will not release it because it knows that this is a net generator of money for politicians and government, which will be disproportionately flowed down to the richest people who are able to purchase the influence in order to get their hands on the money, and they know that money will disproportionately come out of the pockets of those with the least. This is another Liberal wealth transfer from the poorest to the richest. If I am wrong, then the government should release the data and prove me wrong.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for bringing this motion forward. I have a question for the member for Carleton. I have noticed that the request for documents from the government had a rather narrow scope. The member is wanting information on what the impacts of imposing a carbon tax to Canadian families might be. Would he also consider amending his call and asking for information on the costing of the failure to take action to address or mitigate climate change, as well as the costs in delaying that action?

It is important that we look at this in a holistic way. I am sure the member is aware that most nations around the world have committed at Paris to take action to reduce. The International Energy Agency has called upon the current government, and all governments, to move toward investments in clean energy and reducing greenhouse gases. Therefore, I wonder if the member would give consideration to broadening his request for information from the government to also include the other side of the costs, those of not taking action on addressing climate change.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the premise of the member's question is that the carbon tax is about the environment. The government could try to make the case that it is about the environment if it would release data to show whether the tax is revenue neutral. A revenue generator brings in more money to government coffers than it returns through corresponding tax relief elsewhere. If it does not do that, then it is merely another tax grab. It has nothing to do with the environment; it is just meant to fund more bloated bureaucracy and more handouts to the wealthy and well connected.

One way to elucidate that question for all members of the House of Commons is to release the data. The government has detailed tables containing the real costs by income quintile; that is, the real costs to the very poor, the poor, the middle class, and everyone else. This motion today merely asks it to remove the black ink from those tables and release the data so Canadians know what this tax costs them. I ask for the member's support for the motion.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to get up and speak today.

What we are calling for today is pretty simple. As my colleague just articulated, we are asking for transparency, and I will quote from the motion itself:

...the Liberal election platform states that “government and its information should be open by default”....

Therefore, if there were no reason not to provide the data, then the data would be provided by default.

The question the government is facing is why. Why are the tables blacked out and redacted from the report that we are requesting? We simply want to show the effect of the carbon tax on various income levels of individuals in our society and also on business in terms of the effect it will have on competitiveness.

In that regard, I would like to talk about some of my constituents who employ a lot of the people in the manufacturing sector within my community. I will talk about some of the meetings I have been having with constituent business owners about the rising energy costs, and what the carbon tax will mean from their own rudimentary calculations based on the percentages that the federal government has dictated to the provinces and has said that will be phased in over time.

One such company manufactures very large pieces of stainless steel product that go into large installations, such as dam gates and things that are very unusual. These are one-off projects around the world. It employs just more than 400 people in good, well-paying jobs. On the production floor it has six enormous furnaces. These furnaces heat and shape the metal to make it into the final product.

Back in the 2008 election, we had been threatened with a carbon tax by the Liberals. In that election, they campaigned that they would bring in a carbon tax. The owner of that business came to me at the time and calculated the effects of what that carbon tax would mean, and it was at basically the same rates that exist today. The way he explained it to me was—because of the amount of natural gas he uses in heating the product to shape it, which is an enormous amount of money—that if a carbon tax like this came into existence, it would mean $9,000 per employee per year in extra overhead costs.

This company happens to own two other manufacturing facilities, one in Michigan and one in Ohio. Some 400 well-paying jobs in my community are at threat over a carbon tax, if we just do the basic thinking on this and use common sense. Therefore, I am talking about the impact that this tax will have on business, and already businesses are facing the prospect of competitive rates that will start to come into effect in the United States. They will start to look at their options, because basically they have to compete on an international level.

We do not know what the effect of the carbon tax will be on the Canadian population at large and on businesses. It is absolutely wrong that we cannot get that information when it is available in writing from the finance department in terms of what it will do.

This is probably the most damning quote that, again, forms part of what we are asking for today. The Department of Finance indicated that the federally mandated carbon tax will cause higher prices to “cascade through the economy in the form of higher prices” for everything.

This means exactly what my colleague was driving at with the examples of individuals who are disproportionately affected because they are at the lower end of the income scale. There are many people right now in Ontario, and my friend said 60,000, who have had their hydro cut off by Hydro One.

Over the last week, we witnessed in the legislature of Ontario people trying to get answers to questions like why the CEO of that corporation makes $4 million a year while in the same type of corporation in Quebec the CEO makes $400,000. There is no answer to those questions, because the government does not know why.

The other part of that equation is that all the people who work at Hydro One in Ontario have been taken off the sunshine list. In other words, there is no transparency with respect to the incomes they are earning as employees. Again, it is Liberals hiding transparency. This is another huge broken promise. It is exactly what they promised Canadians they would not do during the campaign in the last election.

We found out early on that the $10-billion deficit was just thrown out the window, because they had a majority and could do whatever they wanted, so it is $30 billion. Electoral reform is the same; promise made, promise broken. We can go on about the types of promises the Liberals made and how they were broken.

I will talk a little bit about the projected effect on seniors. It would be $1,208 per person from a carbon tax. This is the statistic that was given to us by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. It estimates that it will be$1,028 per person, or $4,102 per family of four, when fully implemented in 2020. Does the government agree with this figure? Is it higher? Is it lower? Why will it not say? Why will it not release the data it has that should be open and transparent, by default, for all Canadian to see? What is being hidden? That is what we are driving at today in the motion. We are driving at being transparent, exactly what the Liberals said they would be, and now they have had a change of heart and are doing it differently.

When we look at this in every community, people will actually have to decide whether they can afford to even have an automobile or afford groceries to eat over paying their hydro bills. Another example of this was asked, again, in the legislature of Ontario. It was about an individual whose hydro bill had arrived, and he had consumed $4 worth of hydro in the period measured in the hydro bill, which is generally 30 days, yet there was a charge of $100 for all the other charges, including the global adjustment fund and the delivery charge. How was this individual charged $4 for consuming a certain amount of hydro and $100 that was not. The Wynne Liberal government will not answer that question.

We are in a crisis situation in the province I come from, a crisis situation that is real for the people who are at the lower end of the economic scale. What we are striving to do today in opposition is ask the Liberals to be transparent, to do what they said they would do and provide us with the data, because we believe that the data is being covered up and hidden by the government. We are asking today for the support of all parliamentarians to live up to that promise.