Debates of May 31st, 2018

Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 1

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

Madam Speaker, I listened closely to the member's speech, in particular, the portions on trade. Given the realities of today and where we find ourselves, I am wondering why more provisions were not in place in the budget to assure that Canada would be in a strong position. Given the tariffs we were facing, and now the new auto tariffs that are coming forward at us, and certainly the lack of a softwood lumber agreement, there are a lot of Liberal failures on the trade file.

Today I hope the Conservatives and my colleague will agree with the NDP that we need this permanent exemption. It is critical to this sector to ensure its viability, and also the protection of jobs in our country.

I am wondering if he could speak a little further to the reflection that there were no plans B, C, D, E or F, which is quite necessary, given our current relationship with the U.S., and that is not reflected because there is absolutely no money in the budget to ensure those industries are protected.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the intervention from the NDP's trade critic. I have enjoyed appearing on the odd panel with her over time as we both try and speak on the issue. She knows that both parties have tried to work as team Canada, where the time permits and where we can. It is troubling. She is right. There was no plan B contained in the budget. For a budget that mentions investing and spending 456 times, there was zero allocated for risks associated to steel, aluminum, or NAFTA in general. That was not a prudent plan when we knew there were risks associated with large swaths of the economy.

As the member will know, the other parties have been trying to also supplement the government's efforts. In February, I was with the member for Prince Albert down in Washington talking about trade, security, and North American defence. All of these things are linked in the United States. Therefore, I hope we can use this setback today as a time to really leverage the strength of the team, leverage the ability to talk about that security partnership with people who have been a part of it, and to talk about the NAFTA trade agreement with the party that created it.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to stand in the House today and debate Bill C-74, the budget implementation act. We see yet again that the government really cannot help itself.

I am concerned, like many other Canadians, about the direction the government is taking our country. Another year goes by of mismanagement of taxpayer money. The Liberals' fiscal policy is complete disregard for the businesses and hard-working families across the country. This budget represents big government and little incentive for businessmen and women to set up a shop or continue operating in Canada. I cannot believe how the Liberals expect our economy to grow when they are creating less competition and scaring businesses out of our country.

I would like to focus on a few key points.

The first is that the economy is slowing down. This is a result of the cost of doing business in the country continuing to rise. There is no plan for Canada to become competitive again. Never has the government spent so much and achieved so little.

Second, the government does not, by any stretch of the imagination, have a revenue problem; it has a a spending problem. The Liberals just cannot seem to put the taxpayer credit card away, and it is getting out of control.

Third, there is no focus on the debt. The government continues to run a massive deficit and we are stuck in the same cycle of growing debt and deficit. Canadians know this is irresponsible.

The government is failing Canadians. Let us look at the facts.

Canada started the new fiscal year on April 1 with a trillion dollars of market debt. This is the total debt upon which the Government of Canada pays interest. The net debt is $669 billion. This debt continues to grow by the hour, leaving future generations to foot the bill. Canada is hurting right now. Each Canadian's share in the national debt is over $17,000 and growing by the minute. This is not sustainable. We need to get Canada back on track. The Liberals have broken their deficit promise. The Prime Minister now claims the debt will keep growing but more slowly than the economy. The Prime Minister says the debt to GDP ratio will fall, but the record shows otherwise. In his first three years in power, the Prime Minister will add $60 billion to the national debt.

We cannot believe the government. To meet its new fiscal promise, the 2018 budget claimed that direct program spending would only grow by 1.6% per year for the next five years, when the record so far has been showing 5.6% per year, which is three times higher than the Prime Minister now promises. It seems like every week the Liberals have new spending ideas. I cannot stress this enough. This cycle is not sustainable.

On top of that, the government's current fiscal promise requires that there be no additional spending in next year's pre-election budget. However, dollar signs are already dancing in the Liberals' heads. They have set up a panel to design a new national pharmacare program, which the PBO costed out at $19 billion per year, enough to double the deficit.

The same taxpayers, who will pay these costs on their regular taxes, have their own bills to pay, their own financial needs and stresses. In 2017, Canadian households had a record $1.74 of debt for every dollar of disposable income.

As interest rates rise over the next three years, debt payments will consume a larger share of household income. This will be a higher rate than at any time in the last three decades, costing a family with a net income $100,000 about $2,000 more than they were paying last year.

The PBO report on the subject last year said, “we are projecting that the household sector will become increasingly vulnerable to negative shocks.” The government is deepening the problem. As households are shocked with higher interest on their credits cards and mortgages, their taxes will need to rise to pay a one-third or $8 billion increase in federal government debt interest. Canadians need a government that can provide them with tax cuts, not hikes, that feed their out-of-control spending.

Canadians know how to spend their own hard-earned money better than the Liberal government does. Last year, Canada's net debt reached an all-time high of $670 billion or $47,612 per Canadian family. Where will the Liberals draw the line?

We have seen increases in taxes on businesses, the ending of income sprinkling, the ending of incoming splitting, and young professionals leaving our country to operate their businesses anywhere else but in Canada. The natural resources industry is facing major regulations and discouragement. Businesses are really feeling the pinch, and that is just the tip of the iceberg.

The higher taxes that hit the middle class since the Liberals came to power affect 81% of middle-income Canadians. The average income tax increase for middle-income families is $840 since the liberal government came into power.

We have seen higher Canada pension plan premiums, up to $2,200 per household, as well as a national carbon price, up to $2,500 per household. The Liberal government cancelled the family tax cut, up to $2,000 per household. On top of that, it cancelled the arts and fitness tax credit, up to $225 per child. It also cancelled the education and textbook tax credit, which was up to $560 per student. It has also created higher employment Insurance premiums, up to $85 per worker.

According to the Statistics Canada, the government's spending has been increasing at an annual rate of about 6.5% to 7% per year. This is three times the combined rate of inflation and population growth. This has to stop. The Canadian government is supported by taxpayers. The Liberals need to respect the taxpayers and think about putting the credit card away.

The long and the short of the issue is simple. The government has failed on the economy and the massive debt with nothing to show for it. We continue to see plummeting investment, with businesses and jobs leaving Canada. There is a continuation of higher taxes and rising cost of living for Canadian middle class. Canadians are uncertain about what these changes mean for them. Businesses are struggling to compete. The United States wants to take our jobs and the Prime Minister is allowing it.

The government needs to get its spending under control and do what is right for the taxpayers who foot the bill.

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

Madam Speaker, I want to bring up an issue, although the member did not bring up in his speech, that I think is of concern to a lot of us in the House, and that is the lack of any investment to protect good media jobs and local news in our communities. I represent five small municipalities that all have small papers. They work very hard to keep those papers going.

We are seeing a crisis in the media sector across the country where jobs are being threatened. However, there really does not seem to be any relief on the horizon from the Liberal government. That is certainly reflected in the budget bill. There is absolutely nothing in it to represent the imminent danger these workers are facing across our country.

Jerry Dias, the national president of Unifor, said “I’m disappointed that this budget provides no aid for local news, which is in imminent danger.” He also said, “Canadian newsrooms have shrunk by at least 30% in the last four years, with more newspaper closures and journalist layoffs expected to come, so solutions are needed now.”

I wonder if the member agrees with me that local media is critical for all our constituents, certainly for the communities we represent, and that there should be a reflection of that in the budget.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Madam Speaker, this is just the beginning of the job-cutting situation. The government just keeps spending.

Government spending is out of control. Taxes are going higher. Middle-class families are hurting. On top of that, what is going on south of the country, with 25% tax on steel and 10% tax on other products, is going to affect them even more.

We have been talking, back and forth, about the government needing to do something. The last six months or a year, we knew where it was going with NAFTA. The government showed no interest in it. In the last budget, there was nothing to protect jobs, and there was nothing for tax relief for middle-class families.

I absolutely agree with the hon. member that the government shows no incentive to work on this issue.

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

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for the work he does in his riding and here in this place. We certainly appreciate his very significant contribution as a member of Parliament.

I want to ask for his perspective on this whole issue of the government buying out pipelines. We have seen the failure of pipeline projects under the current government. There were a number of projects pursued and proposed by the private sector. First, we had the failure of the northern gateway project, which was the intention of the government. It is legislating to prevent that pipeline from going forward in the future, unless someone repeals that legislation, which of course we will do. Then it piled on all sorts of additional conditions to prevent energy east from going forward. Now it is using taxpayers' money to buy another pipeline.

Does the member think there is any logic or consistency to, on the one hand, trying to kill pipelines and, on the other hand, trying to exclude the private sector while effectively putting taxpayers on the hook for something the private sector, under any other conditions, would have been prepared to invest in?

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Madam Speaker, absolutely, energy east and northern gateway were the two pipelines that were killed by the Prime Minister.

We did not have to put any money toward the Kinder Morgan pipeline. The government effort was spent to negotiate for a 65-year-old pipeline, and we will need to put another $10 billion or $11 billion or $15 billion on top of that. Will we get a return on this pipeline? Absolutely not. This is simply an abuse of taxpayers' money.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-74, the budget implementation bill. It is a hulking 556-page piece of legislation that promises nothing at all to Canadians except higher taxes and lower economic opportunities for hard-working Canadians across this great country.

There are many significant flaws in this bill, which are far from the sunny ways promised to Canadians during the last election, in 2015. From a carbon tax to great debt and broken promises, this bill inflicts severe costs upon Canadians without giving them anywhere near the equivalent benefits in return. Day in and day out, Canadians work hard for the money they earn, and they expect the government to support them, rather than work against them, when they pay for things like groceries, electricity, and even heating for their homes.

The Liberals are planning to implement a carbon tax, which will raise the cost of all these essential amenities and, in doing so, make life more expensive and thus more unaffordable for Canadians across the country. Rather than supporting the middle class, as they claim, the Liberals are putting the government before people.

How much more will Canadian families pay in taxes each year as a result of this carbon tax? Like all Canadians, we would like to know, but the government does not want to share what the cost is, because it wants to hide it from Canadians. It is hiding this information, and it is demonstrating that it does not trust Canadians to have a say in what they do with their own money. This is simply not fair to Canadian taxpayers.

The Liberals have shown, through their broken promises and complete lack of interest in reducing the federal deficit, that they never cared much about the taxpayer anyway. While Canadians expect members of Parliament to debate bills on their behalf, members are negatively impacted in their ability to do so when the Liberals simply cover up critical information that is relevant in our conversation here tonight.

There is no question that the carbon tax would hit Canadians hard. The Parliamentary Budget Officer reports that the carbon tax would cause $10 billion to vanish from the Canadian economy by 2022. That means fewer jobs and fewer economic opportunities for people here at home. We are already seeing that. Unfortunately, we do not know how much this carbon tax will cost everyday Canadian families. The Liberals have this information, but they have decided that they know best and will not release it.

These actions severely harm the quality of debate in this chamber on behalf of all Canadians, and therefore one of the key mechanisms by which the government is held to account. These actions do nothing to improve transparency, which, by the way, is what the Liberals ran on during the election cycle in 2015.

The Liberal government has repeatedly demonstrated that when it comes to strategies to combat climate change, the only plan it will accept is a carbon tax. It is a narrow view. No alternatives exist, other than those that punish taxpayers and raise costs for people across this fine country.

Of course, the government cannot even tell us what benefits this carbon tax will bring Canadians. The Ecofiscal Commission estimates that carbon taxes will need to be as high as $200 a tonne or more in order to reach the Liberal government's goal of reducing carbon emissions to 30% of 2005 levels by 2030. As the policy currently stands, the carbon tax will not come anywhere close to reaching that goal. What the carbon tax will do, though, is increase the financial burden on Canadian families from coast to coast. They will have to bear the brunt of this tax through high consumer costs; reduced competitiveness, which we saw today in the aluminum and steel industry; and falling foreign direct investment in Canada's economy. We do not have to talk about that, when the government just recently bought an existing pipeline for $4.5 billion.

These are families whom the Liberal government promised the world to. These are the same families who were told by the Liberal government that their taxes would be lower and that the federal deficit would be erased by 2019. That is only next year. Instead of receiving the results they were promised, these families got something else. They got large government deficits, in fact vague government deficits. We do not even know when the budget will ever be balanced again. They got extra federal debt, a Liberal government with no plans to balance the books at any time in the foreseeable future, and now a carbon tax that would raise their daily living costs and do little to reduce carbon emissions.

Let us look at my province, Saskatchewan. The provincial environment minister estimates that the implementation of the Liberal carbon tax would cost the Saskatchewan economy $4 billion over just five years. No wonder the Government of Saskatchewan is determined to challenge this carbon tax all the way to the Supreme Court. I am proud to stand here and represent the people of Saskatchewan, and in particular Saskatoon—Grasswood, because right now we are the only jurisdiction, provincial or territorial, that has not signed on to this massive Liberal carbon tax.

Communities in Saskatchewan recognize that the carbon tax is nothing but high costs for little or no benefit. There is no Houdini in the province of Saskatchewan. We know the Liberal government is up to no good. It just cannot fool prairie people, and tonight I am proud to say that Saskatchewan is the only jurisdiction in this country that has not signed and will not sign on to the Liberal carbon tax. It is a debt now. We have talked about this debt being passed on to future generations of Canadians, who have no say whatsoever but nonetheless will be born into a situation where they inherit the costs incurred by the Liberals.

During the election of 2015, I was fortunate that my daughter gave birth to my first granddaughter. I was very happy. However, today, when I look at the debt of the current government, which has no plans at all of balancing the budget, I really feel for Avery Thornhill, my two-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter. She will be paying for this for the rest of her life. She is only two and a half years old, and we hope that she lives many years, into her eighties or nineties.

Liberals have reckless spending, and they continue to have reckless spending with the carbon tax. Avery Thornhill will never get a chance to have the budget everyone wants, which is an equal budget. Assuming that no external events occur, such as another recession, Canadians will be living with federal deficits at least until 2051. Is that fair to all our grandchildren, when we tell them in 2018 that we have no hope at all of balancing the budget? Maybe it will be balanced by 2051, but as the current government continues to spend recklessly, it could be 2060 or 2070. What a burden we are putting, not only on our own children but on our grandchildren. We are very disappointed.

Canadians deserve many things from the Liberal government. They deserve respect, transparency, fairness, and prosperity, which we all know we have not seen and will not see in the future from the Liberal government.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate the hon. member on his first grandchild. My daughter is expecting a child in two months, which will be the first grandchild on my side.

I am so proud and happy about the Canada that my granddaughter or grandson is going to inherit. They will inherit a Canada that is competitive. Why is it competitive? It is because we are finally making sure that the environment and the economy go hand in hand, and are finally going to put a price on pollution, to make sure that there can be a greener Canada, a better Canada. We also know that we are making Canada a more innovative place, because of the policies of the government.

I am so delighted that the next generations of Canadians will come into a more competitive, greener, more secure, more prosperous, and inclusive Canada. It is going to be great news for all grandchildren and future generations of this country.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Madam Speaker, I want to congratulate our colleague. Two and a half or three months from now he will have the same joy that I had in 2015.

I will say this, why does the Liberal government not show us the numbers? Show us the numbers, instead of blacking out what the carbon tax will cost Canadians. That is all we have asked for here for the last two or three months. Show us the numbers. If the government wants Saskatchewan to come on board and join the other provinces and the territories that have been hooped into this agreement on carbon tax, why would the government not show Canadians, and people in Saskatchewan in particular, what the carbon tax will cost? That is all we are asking for. Show me the cost of this.

I know that the debt is not going to level out until at least 2051. By not showing us the carbon tax costs, it may be decades or even a century later by the time we have a level budget.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Madam Speaker, speaking of children and grandchildren, I wonder whether my colleagues, especially the one who gave the speech, realize that 1.15 million children in Canada live in food insecurity.

In the meantime, the Liberal government is spending $4.4 billion of our tax dollars to buy a pipeline that will end up costing even more. There are also the deductions for stock options that cost the federal government roughly $800 million a year.

I have a question for my colleague. Does he agree that the federal government should have kept its promise to limit the stock option deductions, which are costing us so much?

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Madam Speaker, first of all, Kinder Morgan did not ask for the government to buy them out.

Back in 2016, the government should have started the process of getting this pipeline built, moving it out to British Columbia, so that Saskatchewan and Alberta could share the wealth with the other provinces and territories in this country.

The Kinder Morgan sale of $4.5 billion is just a start. We are only buying the existing pipeline, plus some permits. The costs of this are going to escalate, without question. Will they double to $9 billion? I have heard those numbers.

This is another form of taxing Canadians. Will the government even attempt to get this pipeline built to tidewater? That is the other question.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Madam Speaker, I have a quick question for the member.

For young Avery, how do we get the message out to her that we have the lowest debt to GDP ratio since 1977, the best economic outlook, including 600,000 jobs that have been created, and are leading growth in the G7, yet the former government added $160 billion in debt with nothing to show for it, not even a pipeline to tidewater.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Madam Speaker, that member from Alberta should also know about the billions of dollars that have left that province in the last year alone. It is probably close to $80 billion.

As companies leave every single day, heading south, I wonder if the member could go to his constituents to ask them how they feel about the investment that has gone from Canada to other parts of this world.

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

Madam Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to rise on behalf of the people of Barrie—Innisfil at report stage of Bill C-74.

As I rise in the House, it is not lost on me that I am in the people's House, the people who elected all 338 of us to come here.

Imagine if the Liberals ran their household the way they are running the government, with debt and deficits piling up. I will go through some statistics later on to show just how dire the situation is for the future of the economy and the future of our children, who will have to pay for Liberal debt and deficits. Today's debt and deficits are certainly tomorrow's tax increases and service cuts.

As somebody who has lived through that in Ontario, fortunately we have an election coming up and I believe strongly that we are going to see a change in government. I am actually fearful for whoever forms the Government of Ontario, whether the Conservatives or the NDP, because often when governments are elected, they go in and say that the cupboards are bare. However, I believe there are no cupboards left in Ontario, to be quite frank.

Certainly, the federal government is utilizing the same strategy and playbook, which I have spoken about many times in the House, as the current Liberal government in Ontario. I believe that our cupboards will soon be bare at the federal level. I have said many times before that the current government has access to a bigger piggy bank of Canadians, but it is on the same path as that Ontario Liberal government.

Of course, we found out yesterday that we will be $4.5 billion further in the hole because, all of a sudden, the Prime Minister who painted himself into a corner with the Trans Mountain pipeline and is spending $4.5 billion of Canadian tax dollars to buy his way out of a political problem he created.

As we debate the budget and look into it, there are signs that Canada's economy is slowing down, and the government has and is doing little to improve it. There was a growth in the economy in 2017, but it was not really due to Liberal policy. It was in spite of Liberal policy.

I learned long ago that government does not create jobs. Government creates the environment for jobs and job growth. When we look at what is happening, particularly down in the United States with its regulatory process and a tax regime that are completely contrary to where we are here in Canada, there are some significant fears for our future prospects from an economic standpoint.

The growth that we have seen has largely been due to the oil and gas sector, as well as a very strong housing market right across the country. That housing market had record-high price increases in 2016, followed by another 9% in 2017. Oil and gas for that matter soared 40% in 2017 because of higher prices in the oil sands. Therefore, our exports grew. However, the Liberals did not create this economic growth. It was caused in large part by our natural resource sector, the same natural resource sector that the Prime Minister and operatives within his office have so much disdain for, and certainly the housing market contributed to it as well. Unfortunately, the government has neglected what lies beneath our feet and has opted to rely only upon what is between the Prime Minister's ears.

The Prime Minister promised that GDP in 2016-17 would increase by 0.5% and in 2017-18 by 1%. The government believes its reckless, out-of-control spending has actually helped the GDP figures. In fact, we just heard the on the other side from Edmonton stand up and espouse the greatness of the GDP. However, in reality, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has estimated that for all of the spending in the last few years, GDP has only increased by 0.1% in those two years, which is next to nothing. All that money has been spent for what?

The Liberals, with their reckless spending, claim to help, but the government has spent $60 billion in the past three years. Spending has increased by 20%. Taxes have increased for over 80% of Canadians, and the GDP has actually only gone up by 0.1%. Let that sink in for a second.

Why is this such an issue? With an underperforming Canadian economy, budget 2018 needed to be better. It has negatively impacted Canadians. I believe there is a serious impact on young Canadians, especially young Canadians who are living with disabilities. Since the Liberals have come to power, 81% of middle-income families are seeing higher taxes. So much for helping the middle class and those working hard to join it.

The fact and the reality is that life is much harder under the government. I will stand here and look into that lens and ask people to think about this. In the past two and a half years, has their life become better? I think the overwhelming answer to that would be “no”. I am certainly hearing it in my riding of Barrie—Innisfil. The average family is paying $840 more in taxes than they used to. The carbon tax is another way for the Liberals to make life harder for Canadians.

According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, the carbon tax is going to cost the average Canadian family approximately $2,500 or more a year. We would love to find out what the government is charging on this carbon tax and what Canadian families are going to make, but that number that we have asked for has been redacted. The government knows how much it is going to cost the average Canadian family, but it refuses to give us the answer. Yet, here it is asking Canadians to buy into a carbon tax, but buy into what? That is legitimate question. More money will be needed for higher gas prices because everything cascades down in the economy to food and just about everything else, and that is unacceptable. Certainly life will become harder as the carbon tax kicks in.

What is that money used for? What can the average Canadian family use it for? It can be used for putting kids into hockey. It can make things more accessible for day programs, camps, etc., but unfortunately the Liberals just do not get it. Budget 2018 is hard evidence that the Liberal government does not understand that everyday people, the average Canadian family, is not rich enough to afford $2,500 dollars a year in additional carbon taxes. That may be easy for the Prime Minister and the environment minister and the finance minister to afford, but the reality is that the average Canadian family cannot afford that.

Look at the debt. As I mentioned, the Prime Minister has added $60 billion in debt in just three years. In total, each family in this country owes the government $47,612. Budget 2018 has no plan to return to a balanced budget, yet the Prime Minister stood in the last election with his hand over his heart and said that the budget would be balanced by 2019. We know that is not the case because this year it is $19 billion.

The Department of Finance has said and predicted that we will not return to a balanced budget until the year 2045. Think about that for our kids. My 14-year-old will be 41 years old by the time we return to a balanced budget in this country. He is the one who will be paying for the irresponsible spending of the government. During that time frame it is expected that $450 billion will be added to the debt for a total of $1.1 trillion. It is our youth who will pay this debt. Every time I have a school tour, and I have had many of them this week, they asked me about issues. I talk about that debt and deficit because, again, the deficits and debt of today are the tax increases and spending cuts of tomorrow.

Look at the tax credits that have been cut. Budget 2018 takes them right away from families and, I would argue, disproportionately from the people who can least afford it, namely, lower-income and vulnerable Canadians. The budget is a failure of epic proportions for the future of our kids, the future of this country, and there is no way I can support it.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

It being 7:33 p.m., pursuant to order made earlier today, it is my duty to interrupt proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the report stage of the bill now before the House.

The question is on Motion No. 1. A vote on this motion also applies to Motions Nos. 2 to 46.

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

In my opinion, the nays have it.

And five or more members having risen:

The recorded division stands deferred. The recorded division will also apply to Motions Nos. 2 to 46.

The question is on Motion No. 47. A vote on this motion also applies to Motions Nos. 48 to 67.

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.