Debates of Nov. 29th, 2018

Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 2

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

The hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I get what my colleague is doing; I do. This is a massive omnibus bill. I have illustrated that myself in the House.

The reality is that the government's steamroller approach will give very few MPs the chance to speak to this bill. I know that NDP members have a lot to say on its flaws.

I question the point of turning pages for six minutes when there are so many other things to talk about in this bill.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

It is a point of order and may even be a matter of debate, but I will allow the hon. member to continue his speech. I would like to hear what he has to say.

I imagine that after a while the document he is using might be considered a prop, which may pose a problem. I am sure that the hon. member is not here to win an academy award for his show.

I will allow the hon. member for Mégantic—L'Érable to continue.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for allowing me to continue. Common sense often means silence, that silence is golden and that deep pain is silent. Musicians understand the value of silence as do certain religious orders. Silence is a form of expression.

I would say that this government has been so silent on agriculture and agri-food that, 120 pages in, I have yet to find anything about agriculture and agri-food in this bill.

I would like to look a bit further to see if there is anything for farmers or ranchers. Maybe we will manage to make some sense of this 854-page budget for farmers and ranchers.

I will go a bit faster by taking more pages at a time. I will go by division, which might make things easier.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

The member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue on a point of order.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

As agriculture is also an important matter for my riding, I can tell my colleague that I have looked at the entire budget and it contains no measures for agriculture. He can stop looking and get on with his speech. That will be simpler.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague very much for doing some research for me. I, too, did some research beforehand to see if there were any. I even searched the electronic document using the French words “agriculture” and “agroalimentaire” and their corresponding English terms “agriculture” and “agri-food”, but to no avail. However, technology can sometimes let us down, and so, for the benefit of my constituents, I wanted to check to see if this important document, Bill C-86, a second act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 27, 2018 and other measures, mentioned agriculture and agri-food.

I take my NDP colleague at her word. I do not do so often, but, today, I will. I agree with her. There is absolutely nothing about agriculture and agri-food in this document. That is what I was implying with my silence. It is sometimes worth taking a moment of silence to think and reflect. I would have liked the government opposite to do just that before introducing a 854-page bill, which does not mention or have any measures for agriculture and the agri-food sector.

I will obviously be voting against this bill and I promise to do so in silence.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I resist rising but I will anyway. I want to talk about that massive void of a speech.

Nevertheless, I have been here for 14 years and have witnessed many budget implementation acts come and go, some good and some bad. I would like to take a moment to reflect on all of the positive commitments over the years that the Conservatives made in their budgets, promised and fulfilled through their budget implementation acts. I would like to reflect on those for a moment.

There was a bridge in my riding. No, it was not in the implementation act. The gazebo was somewhere else. It was very expensive.

I am good. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Silence is golden in his case, Mr. Speaker, and words do not mean much.

Since I was unable to talk about the measures pertaining to agriculture in this 854-page omnibus bill, I will talk about the deficit that we spoke about when we debated the Liberal government's most recent economic update. The Liberals were supposed to balance the budget by next year, but instead they are racking up deficits. Let us remember the promise that they made in 2015. They said they would run small deficits and balance the budget in 2019. Unfortunately, when the Liberals talk, it costs a lot of money. I would therefore be happy if they talked a little less.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know whether I should commend my colleague on his speech because he used the House's time to say nothing. Many of my colleagues on this side of the House would have liked to have had that time to talk about the bill.

I am wondering whether the people of Mégantic—L'Érable were proud to see their MP rise in the House to rifle through the bill and say nothing about such an imposing bill. Perhaps when he returns to his riding, he can ask his constituents what they thought about such a hollow speech. The people of Mégantic—L'Érable would surely be very pleased to have a voice in the House and have their opinions made known, something that my colleague unfortunately did not do today.

My question is simple. Why did the member not read the bill before coming to the House? That would have saved some time.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member had listened to my speech he would have known that I did indeed take the time to ready the bill, as I said.

I searched the electronic document. I did everything I could to try to find something about agriculture and agri-food, but I found nothing.

I am very proud of what I did because it shows that the government is doing absolutely nothing for the 300 dairy farmers, or the farmers and ranchers in my riding.

As for speaking time and the number of times I have spoken in the House to talk about the people of Mégantic—L'Érable, I would be curious to know how much speaking time I have been granted compared to the hon. member for Sherbrooke. I have talked a lot more for the people of Mégantic—L'Érable than he has for the people of Sherbrooke.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, when my colleague was going through this enormous budget document, did he find anything about the year the Liberals will balance the budget?

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, if you gave me a bit of time and allowed me to do so, we could go through this 854-page document together to try to find the date and year when the budget will balance itself. However, as I have already made my argument and since my silence was worth 1,000 words, I will not start over.

That said, I would like the Liberals to remember one thing: agriculture and agri-food are important and when the time comes to adopt measures for farmers it is too bad that the Liberals choose silence over action.

Business of the House

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

Mr. Speaker, there have been discussions among the parties and if you seek it, I believe you would find unanimous consent for the following motion. I move:

That, notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice of the House: (a) when proceedings are interrupted pursuant to Standing Order 81(17) on Tuesday, December 4, 2018, all questions necessary to dispose of the opposition motion be deemed put and a recorded division be deemed requested and deferred until Wednesday, December 5, 2018, at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions; (b) immediately after the opposition motion is disposed of, the Speaker shall put, without debate or amendment, every question necessary to dispose of any motion in relation to Supplementary Estimates (A) and for the passage at all stages of any supply bill based thereon; (c) any recorded division already deferred or which would ordinarily be deferred to Wednesday, December 5, 2018, immediately before the time provided for Private Members' Business, shall be taken up immediately after the proceedings on the supply bill; and (d) if all deferred recorded divisions are concluded before 7 p.m., the House proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business, otherwise the House proceed directly to adjournment proceedings.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

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

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

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 Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

(Motion agreed to)

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-86, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 27, 2018 and other measures be read the third time and passed, and of the amendment.

Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 2

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as the federal member of Parliament for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, I welcome this opportunity to inform Canadians about the deteriorating state of the nation's finances. It is clear, as evidenced by the fall economic update, just how out of touch the member for Toronto Centre as finance minister is with the concerns of ordinary, hard-working, middle-class Canadians.

A Conservative government believes in clean air, low taxes and a healthy economy. A clean environment and well-paying jobs are only possible when taxpayers are treated with respect. The out-of-control deficit policies of the Liberal Party stifle competitiveness and job-creating investment. A sustainable environment and a sustainable economy are only possible with a sustainable government.

The deficit budgets of this government are not sustainable. The government is not sustainable. We cannot spend more than we take in. This Liberal obsession with running huge budgetary deficits will only end badly. They always do.

The last time Canadians heard rhetoric about modest deficits was when the prime minister's father was on his throne. There is a reason Trudeau senior is known as the king of deficits. He started the cycle of spending more than what is collected in taxes. It was only supposed to be a temporary measure. He was the one who brought in the hated Liberal NEP, the national energy policy. Just like his father, the current Prime Minister was greeted by protesters when he visited Alberta.

The NEP was the first policy to load a carbon tax onto fossil fuels. Energy in the form of hydroelectricity was exempted from the NEP taxes that were collected to pay for Liberal bad spending. Today, the headline in the Financial Post reads “...we're facing a made-in-Canada energy crisis”. There is no doubt about it. This crisis was planned.

There is hope. At the end of senior Trudeau's reign, in the process of kicking the Liberals out of office, Canadians elected the most Conservatives to Parliament since Confederation in 1867. That led to the new Conservative government of the day starting the hard work of bringing the nation's finances back into order by balancing the current account deficit left from the previous government. That still was not enough.

Jean Chrétien, who at least understood that we could not spend more than we have forever, took the drastic measures known as the “decade of darkness”. In the process of slashing 60,000 public service jobs, programs and services were cut. Cuts in health care transfers meant hospital wait times increased. People in my riding were forced to go without a family doctor, thanks to the Liberal budget cuts. The budget was eventually balanced by the Liberals on the backs of ordinary Canadians. Deficit budgets do have consequences.

While the Conservatives took the political heat to bring in a consumption tax, the Chrétien Liberals campaigned against it before embracing it. During the Conservative government of Stephen Harper, they voted against our lowering the GST; the Liberals liked it so much as a revenue source. A carbon tax is a consumption tax.

My riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke is home to Garrison Petawawa, which is now Canada's largest army base. Before I was elected as the local member of Parliament, the future of the base was uncertain. That changed when the Conservatives were in government. Rather than balance the budget on the backs of our soldiers, Conservatives took a balanced approach, lowering taxes to increase revenues, putting more people back to work while using any surpluses to pay down the deficit and stabilize services to Canadians. The decade of darkness of the Liberal budget cuts was particularly harsh for women and men in uniform. Running continual budget deficits does have consequences.

The decision by the Liberal Party to play politics with military procurement is similar to what is happening today with the naval frigate replacement and the jet replacement programs, which would result in the unnecessary loss of lives in Afghanistan a decade later. The decision by the Liberal Party to cancel the EH101 helicopter to replace the then 40-year-plus-old Sea King helicopter meant Canadians would be forced to travel on roads in Afghanistan mined with improvised explosive devices. Those same terrorist bomb-makers, like Omar Khadr, are rewarded with multi-million dollar payoffs while our veterans, who were injured by those bombs, wait for justice.

Without strategic lifts, soldiers died on the bomb-laden roads. It was not until the Harper Conservative government purchased new Chinook helicopters that the death count dropped. I pray for the soldiers and their families that the decision to put off buying the proper equipment for our soldiers will not result in the unnecessary loss of life again.

We owe it to our soldier to provide them with the proper equipment when we ask them to go into harm's way. Budget deficits have consequences.

The bad news contained in Bill C-86 and the budget deficit increases contained in that legislation is the Liberal policy to load today's economy with future tax increases that will burden our children.

The debt burden for our children will be our burden first, as the federal carbon tax starts in a little more than a month. Every Canadian who understands anything about running a household knows that good times do not last. Our parents and our grandparents saved during the good times because they had lived through bad times.

Why does the federal government insist on huge deficits, spending dollars we do not have, by borrowing billions of dollars? The answer is “carb-a-geddon”.

Canadians may have heard of Apocalypse Now or the term Armageddon and understand what is meant by carb-a-geddon. Carb-a-geddon, the meltdown of the Canadian economy through carbon taxation, will reveal itself as the federal government begins to collect these new consumption taxes. These taxes are set to increase automatically every year.

The finance minister was forced to admit, after he delivered his economic statement, the budget would never be balanced as long as his party held power. Secret documents prepared by the finance department confirmed the truth about carbon taxes. They hurt Canadian families. The Liberals refusal to release these documents to the Canadian public confirms they have something to hide. Carb-a-geddon is real.

The worst part about carbon taxes is that taxing carbon dioxide in Canada does not help the environment whatsoever. The environment is a cloak the government wears for every bad policy. Adopting carbon taxes in Canada actually raises global carbon emissions by offshoring economic activity from relatively environmentally-friendly places like Canada to places with lax environmental laws.

Data from the World Bank reveals that China and other developing countries produce far more carbon dioxide than do western nations. China is currently building hundreds of new coal-fired plants, which will ensure its C0₂ emissions continue to rise for decades to come.

Every factory like GM, pushed out of Canada because of the Liberal carbon tax, will actually increase global emissions dramatically, and this will continue to be the case for decades to come.

The lntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has declared that for a carbon tax to be effective in saving the climate from its apocalyptic warming, the carbon tax would have to start at least at $135 a tonne and rise to $5,500 a tonne by 2030. The Liberals' carbon tax currently starts at $20 and rises to $50. Projections now show that Liberal commitments in 2016's Paris climate agreement will not be met unless the carbon tax is at least $200 a tonne to start.

Under the Liberals' carbon tax pricing scheme, additional taxes will be charged to fuel up our autos or heat our homes, with a charge on non-renewable fuels for fuel producers, distributors and importers. Large industrial emitters of pollution, big business, are exempted from the new carbon tax scheme.

A carbon price of 4.42¢ per litre will apply to gasoline as of April 2019 and will rise by 11¢ per litre by April 2022. While the Liberal Party intends to provide an election bribe in some form of rebate, the rebates represent about 30% of the carbon tax the federal government will collect, as far as we know today.

Pretending this new carbon tax grab has anything to do with "fighting climate change" is just a gimmick to raise taxes.

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

Mr. Speaker, I give the member across the way full marks. She is probably the most consistent member in the Conservative caucus. She does not let the facts get in the way of what she believes is a good speech.

She started off by talking about the deficit. Everything is negative; every aspect of the House, every aspect of the Liberal fibre is negative in the member's opinion. Over the years, that is what I have heard from the member across the way.

Let me just shine a little sunlight. There is reason to feel good. We could talk about tax breaks for Canada's middle class. We could talk about that special tax on Canada's wealthiest. We could talk about the enhancement of the guaranteed income supplement. We could talk about the enhancement of the Canada child benefit. What about pensions, the CPP? There are so many wonderful things that have taken place in the last three years. The sky is not falling.

Let me ask the member a specific question. The member was so concerned about the deficit. Canada is 151 years old, and 38% of that time the Conservatives have been in government. During that time, almost 75% of the debt was because of Conservatives. For Stephen Harper, the member's idol, the amount was $150 billion.

Why should Liberals listen to what Conservatives have to say about deficits?

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, by definition, a deficit or a debt is a minus sign in the books, on the balance sheet.

Insofar as sunshine goes, I do not know how we are going to spread sunshine to the 160 people at Sandvik who are losing their jobs in the spring, or the 2,500 people who are losing their jobs at GM and do not know how they are going to pay their bills.

Perhaps after we are done tonight, after he has spoken volumes and asked questions, I will show my fan across the way what he can do with his sunshine.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think if Canadians needed any evidence at all of just how the government is sticking its head in the sand, there it was in the comments of the parliamentary secretary before he asked his question.

We have an economy that is dealing with strict competitiveness issues. We have aluminum tariffs, steel tariffs. We have people losing their jobs. We have this country going in a different direction than our competitors when it comes to regulatory and tax regimes. It is not all sunny in the land.

The hon. member just spoke about a company in her riding where 160 jobs are going to be lost. How is that sunny?

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal carbon tax is built on the assumption that most Canadians are sufficiently gullible or easily fooled to let a few dollars in carbon tax bribes deceive them into accepting this big government planned assault on their lives, their jobs and their prosperity.

As a result of reckless borrowing, last year alone the Liberals spent $23 billion on interest payments to wealthy bond holders. That is what this is really all about. The Liberals are creating a crisis. Interest rates are going to increase. However, their friends, the one percenters who hold all the debt, are going to be sitting very pretty. Meanwhile, everyday Canadians are going to pay more, owe more, and will never see the sunlight themselves.