Debates of Sept. 27th, 2017

Taxation

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Again, Mr. Speaker, we see that the Conservative Party has one approach: personal attacks. We are not going to engage in that. We are going to focus on helping Canadians—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

Order. I would ask members to try to control themselves and their colleagues, and ask them to calm down. Otherwise, there is a danger of losing questions.

The right hon. Prime Minister has the floor.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we are going to stay focused on what Canadians asked us to do: fix the system, so it is fairer; make the changes to the system that the Conservatives refused to make; and help the middle class and those working hard to join it. That is our focus.

We are going to be supporting small businesses. We are going to be supporting hard-working Canadians. Let the Conservatives continue to fight for wealthy Canadians. We know that we grow the economy from the centre out.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Mr. Speaker, these Conservatives will always call out rank hypocrisy when we see it.

We know that under the current Liberal government, the middle class is paying higher taxes. Farmers, tradespeople, and small business owners across Canada are worried, and crippling new tax proposals from the government could see them paying even more. They pay more while the Prime Minister, the finance minister, and their family fortunes will remain untouched.

Why should hard-working farm families see their taxes increase, when the wealthy elites, like this Prime Minister, will continue to have their family fortunes sheltered?

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives cannot help themselves, they keep talking about me.

I am going to stay focused on Canadians. I am going to stay focused on the fact that 80% of the money in passive investment in private corporations across this country is held by less than 2% of those private corporations.

We know, Canadians all know, that the system gives advantages to wealthy Canadians. It encourages wealthy Canadians to use private corporations to pay lower tax rates than middle-class Canadians. That is not fair, and that is what we are staying focused on.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Mr. Speaker, these Liberal tax proposals were carefully crafted to protect those who matter most to the Liberals, themselves. Under the current Liberal government, wealthy insiders are always taken care of. The finance minister's billion-dollar family business, Morneau Shepell, is protected. The Prime Minister's family fortune and taxpayer-paid nannies will be sheltered while small businesses are forced to pay more.

Can the Prime Minister confirm he will not lose a single cent of his family fortune because of these Liberal tax changes?

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, what we see from these Conservatives are the politics of fear, anxiety, insecurity, and scaremongering.

We stand here to commit to Canadians that we will support the middle class and those working hard to join it, that hard-working small business owners will get benefits, and that the wealthiest will pay their fair share. That is what Canadians asked us to do. That is what we are staying focused on, despite the tactics of the opposition.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in 2015, Canadian companies hid nearly $40 billion in tax havens, which cost Canadian taxpayers between $5 billion and $8 billion in unpaid taxes. The Liberals claim to want a tax system in which everyone pays their fair share.

When are they going to crack down on companies that take advantage of tax havens?

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, this government takes tax evasion and tax avoidance very seriously. In the past two budgets, we invested nearly $1 billion to help the Canada Revenue Agency counter tax evasion and tax avoidance.

We recognize that there is still work to be done, but we are working on it. We take this very seriously. Like all Canadians, we want our tax system to be fair and equitable for everyone.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, here is what the Liberal platform promised: “an overdue and wide-ranging review of the over $100 billion in increasingly complex tax expenditures that now exist”. That is precisely what we in the NDP are calling for, to widen the consultations and go after tax havens and stock option loopholes like the Liberals promised, but the government refuses. The Minister of Finance said that “that issue is not something that we've backed away from. It's just not something we've moved forward on.”

Will the Liberals respect their own platform and finally go after tax scams for the rich?

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, I can understand the NDP members' impatience. They always seem to be impatient about everything.

We are working very, very hard to get just that. We have put close to one billion dollars to address tax avoidance and tax evasion by giving the Canada Revenue Agency the tools to be able to counter that. We continue to work hard on making our tax system fairer. That is why we put forward proposals that will ask wealthy Canadians to stop using the advantages that the system currently gives them. That is why we are changing the system. I would love to hear the NDP supporting us in that measure.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has gone across the country accusing our small businesses of avoiding paying their fair share, attacking them as “wealthy cheats”. Those are the words of the Prime Minister. Now he wants us to cry crocodile tears for him because people are asking questions about the bills that he is going to have to pay under these proposals.

Under the proposals, a small business owner will pay as much as 73% of his passive income, whereas the Prime Minister will pay almost one-third less on his public pension. How is that fair?

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a question whether the Conservatives actually believe what they are saying or they just choose to make it up as they go along, because the numbers they put forward have absolutely no basis in reality.

We are focused on the fact that the system we inherited from the Conservatives encourages wealthy Canadians to use private corporations to pay lower tax rates than middle-class Canadians, and that is not fair. We are going to fix that because that is what Canadians expect of this government. That is what we are going to stay focused on.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, if he has a problem with our numbers, this is a Prime Minister who said he would raise $3 billion in additional taxes from the wealthy, but just last week his own finance department produced a report showing that revenues from the wealthiest taxpayers actually went down by $1 billion. In a report this week, the Fraser Institute showed that taxes actually went up by $800 for the average middle-class family. Why is everything that should be going down going up, and everything that should be going up going down?

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, if the members opposite want to talk about how Canadian families are doing, they need to acknowledge the Canada child benefit, which the Fraser Institute completely overlooked. The Canada child benefit delivers more money to nine out of 10 Canadian families, and it has been doing so for over a year now. Not only is it lifting hundreds of thousands of kids out of poverty across this country, reducing child poverty by 40%, but it is also creating growth in our economy by putting more money in the pockets of the middle-class families who need it. These are the things we are doing that the Conservatives never did, and that they opposed.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, nobody saw their child care benefit increase more than the Prime Minister, who now has two taxpayer funded nannies, despite the fact that he has a massive, multi-million dollar family fortune. A small business person earning just $50,000 a year would, under the proposed plan, pay a tax rate of 60% on his passive income. The Prime Minister would pay 53% on his passive income. Why is a small business person paying so much more than this millionaire Prime Minister?

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, one should not be able to stand in the House and just make things up.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker—

[An hon. member]

Every time you stand up you get stood up.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

I guess we are going to have to go on.

The hon. member for Outremont.

The Environment

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, no one talks a better game than the Prime Minister when it comes to climate change, at the UN and during NAFTA negotiations, name it. The Liberal Party promises that Canada will respect its commitments, but there is a problem. In order to meet our obligations under the Paris accord, our greenhouse gas emissions actually have to start going down at some point.

After increasing greenhouse gas emissions during his first two years in office, can the Prime Minister promise Canadians that these will decrease over the next two years, yes or no?

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, what Canadians understand is that in order to grow a strong economy we need to protect the environment, and in order to protect the environment we need to grow the economy. We need to do them both together.

Members on the opposite side of the House have picked one or the other. They do not understand that we need to do them both together. That is why at the same time we are moving forward on an economic plan that creates good jobs and gets our resources to new markets, we are bringing in a national carbon pricing framework. We are creating a world-class oceans protections plan. We are incentivizing the creation of renewable energy—

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

The hon. member for Outremont.