Debates of May 31st, 2018

Report Stage

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I know the hon. member remembers that our very first priority when we were elected was to cut taxes for the middle class and raise them on the highest 1%. That was the priority of our government, and it was the very first bill we did. It is something that benefits many tens of thousands of Canadians across our great country.

All we have to do is look at the results in the economy. We have the lowest unemployment rate in 40 years. Our country has created over 640,000 jobs since we became government. The economy is very strong.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am really glad to be able to take part in the debate on Bill C-74, because I am getting an opportunity that unfortunately many of my colleagues will not get, because as all my colleagues know, we are now debating a bill under time allocation yet again.

Notice was given last night in the late hours of the night, when a few of us were still here maintaining our presence until midnight. Then, of course, the government moved the motion on time allocation earlier today. This is, I think, the 40th time the government has done this, in spite of its election promises to work with parliamentarians and to show more respect for this place. Promising something and then doing the complete opposite is the kind of action that breeds a lot of cynicism for politics. I would dare say that a lot of people who voted for the Liberals in the last election were expecting a lot better than they are currently getting. However, we will revisit that issue in 2019. I will be very happy to talk to my constituents about it.

Bill C-74 is the government's budget implementation bill for 2018. It clocks in at a hefty 556 pages. I do not have a copy of the bill before me, but members can be assured that it also serves well as a giant doorstop. It amends 44 separate acts. One of them includes a measure to establish a new greenhouse gas pricing act. We in the NDP believe that because of how big the bill is and how much debate there is over carbon pricing right now, that particular aspect of the bill could have existed as a standalone bill to give it the comprehensive debate it deserves.

There is a problem with introducing bills of this size and trying to ram them through the legislative process in a quick manner. The reason is that one can sometimes lose the fine little details. For example, it was discovered a couple of weeks ago that there is a measure buried in Bill C-74 under part 6, division 20, that appears to allow prosecutors to suspend criminal charges against companies in certain cases of corporate wrongdoing. We might legitimately ask in the House why a criminal justice matter is appearing in a budget bill.

I asked that question. I had the honour of serving as the NDP's justice critic last year, and I would expect such a measure to be in a criminal justice bill and to be studied at the appropriate committee, the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.

Members need not take my word for it. We have quotes from the Liberal MP for Hull—Aylmer, who was a member of the finance committee. He said that the government seems to be “letting those with means have an easier time of it than those who don't have the means.”

The Liberal MP for Malpeque, who is the finance committee chair, also said that “...there is a huge question of whether this should be in a budget bill.”

Two Liberal MPs having discovered this and raised legitimate questions, but what did the Liberal-dominated finance committee do? It left that provision in and sent the bill right to the House, and here is where it is at.

That is one of the big problems with omnibus bills when they start throwing in all these different acts. Someone who thinks they are pretty clever in the PMO says,“We can just slip this in and I don't think it will get noticed.” They got caught this time. I do not know the merits of this particular part, but it deserved to go to the justice committee so that the justice committee, in its expertise, could call for the appropriate witnesses to deliberate as to whether this is really a good provision. It is not a measure that the finance committee is equipped to deal with, not when we are dealing with a 556-page bill.

I want to turn in the next part of my speech to the greenhouse gas pollution pricing. We believe this measure should have been put into a separate bill. I am among the people who believe we do need to have a price on carbon, since the evidence of climate change is there for all to see and we need to take some leadership. However, there is still a big debate going on in the country.

I believe it would have been to the government's advantage to split this off into a separate bill and to study it on its own merits. That way we could have called forth witnesses with expertise in this area who could have offered the appropriate testimony as to why carbon pricing schemes work and to deal with my Conservative colleagues' concerns about carbon pricing. They could have maybe offered some suggestions on how the government could mitigate the costs to low-income families and the costs to industries that are very fossil fuel reliant.

Speaking as the NDP's critic for agriculture, one of those sectors is agriculture. The Canadian Produce Marketing Association and the Canadian Horticultural Society have a problem with one aspect of Bill C-74 under part 5. They would like to see the definitions in the bill relating to farming encompass all primary agricultural activities and ensure that qualifying farming fuel would include natural gas and propane, which are increasingly common in the agricultural sector. They believe that after their consultations and research, the definitions in that part of the bill are incomplete and do not capture all of the primary agricultural activity. Agriculture is one of those sectors where farmers have to drive their tractors. They have to use natural gas to heat their greenhouses and it is a sector that, under current models, is very reliant on fossil fuels. We know there is a lot of innovation, research, and effort being made to transition off that, but the case as it stands now is that it is still heavily reliant on those fuels.

Given that so many farmers live so close to the margins and that the government has an ambitious agenda of reaching $75 billion worth of exports by 2025, I believe this is part of the bill that could have been studied as a stand-alone bill. I know as the agriculture critic that I would loved to have given some notice on behalf of my party and interested stakeholders.

I also want to talk about a few of the missed opportunities. I covered this in an exchange earlier today about the fact that there are no real measures in the bill to deal with tax evasion and avoidance. This is an issue that we have seen time and time again in Canada, where the wealthy and well connected are able to use tools at their disposal that ordinary Canadians just do not have, and are not paying their fair share. The Liberals failed to live up to a promise to get rid of tax loopholes associated with the stock options of rich CEOs.

Again, we see a failure to effectively deal with the corporate tax rate. As I mentioned before, corporations benefit from tax dollars being spent here. Our tax dollars build infrastructure like bridges, like roadways, and the railways that help corporations move their products. Our tax dollars pay for the administration of a legal system that ensures that corporations live under the rule of law and that if they ever have a conflict with a customer or a regulatory agency, the rule of law is there for them.

Our tax dollars also pay for social services that many workers require because they are not being paid a living wage. That is another issue that needs to be addressed. I know many of my colleagues in the House have constituents who are working full-time jobs, but still struggling to get by. They are having to make those hard choices between paying the rent and putting good quality food on the table.

I will end by talking about the government's recent purchase of the Kinder Morgan pipeline for $4.5 billion. That was certainly not a part of its election platform and was not mentioned in the 2018 budget, so the government is going to have to explain to the House and to Canadians where that money is coming from. Are the Liberals going to raise it from the Canada pension plan? Are they going to raise it from tax dollars? We would like to see where that money is coming from.

When we look at gaping holes in our infrastructure, especially rural broadband, the situation with drinking water quality on first nation reserves, the fact that the government can pony up $4.5 billion for a piece of infrastructure that belongs in the twentieth century, but ignore all of these other problems that are so prevalent in the rest of the country really goes to the heart of where the Liberal government's priorities are.

In conclusion, I appreciate this opportunity to speak to Bill C-74.

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

Mr. Speaker, I listened very closely as the member commented on tax policies.

The member did not make reference to the hundreds of millions of additional dollars the government has included in two budgets to go after tax evaders. The member did not make mention of the tax that was put on Canada's wealthiest 1%. I will remind the member opposite that he voted against that tax on Canada's wealthiest 1%. The member did not make mention of the tax cut given to the middle class. The member did not mention the hundreds of millions of dollars going through the Canada child benefit, and what about the GIS? Again, it is hundreds of millions of dollars. Those programs have lifted thousands of seniors and children out of poverty.

The NDP consistently vote against these types of measures. Does the member have any regrets about not supporting some of those tax cuts for our middle class, or some of the programs that have lifted thousands of children and seniors out of poverty?

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I did not mention those because that debate is now two years old. I can revisit if, if the member for Winnipeg North wants me to.

Speaking of seniors, the government is still failing to live up to its promise to establish a seniors price index. That was a clear promise that the government has broken.

With respect to the tax cuts for the middle class, the government keeps talking about them but has failed to define who the middle class is. This was not a middle class tax cut; this was a middle tax bracket cut. It started with people earning $45,000 and went up to people who earn $90,000. Every Liberal member of Parliament gave themselves the maximum tax cut. With the median income in Canada being under $45,000, people in my constituency got zero.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to hear more of the views of my colleague, the member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford.

Is the member hearing in his riding, as I am in mine, people's absolute astonishment at the Liberal government when it, for example, said to veterans that they were asking for more than it can give? What confidence should we have in a Liberal government that somehow found $4.5 billion to buy the discredited 65-year-old Kinder Morgan pipeline, which was valued in 2007 at just $550 million? Does the government really believe the pipeline has increased in value so much in the 10 years since Kinder Morgan bought that asset? What does that say about the government's priorities?

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Nanaimo—Ladysmith, my fantastic neighbour to the north, for that question. I am sure she will join me in recognizing the amazing work of the member for Courtenay—Alberni, who serves as our new veterans affairs critic.

We have spent many years working with veterans in our communities. When we hear talk about our veterans asking for too much, we think it is very shameful. I am sure the Prime Minister regrets making those comments.

The fact is that I believe we have a social, moral, and economic covenant with people who wear the uniform. When we ask them to serve on our behalf, we owe it to them to be with them every step of the way when they retire, when they need help, whether it is due mental or physical pain or trauma. That should be part of the full costing of any kind of military engagement. There should be continuous care from the moment people sign up until the moment they leave and the moment they are in old age. We have look after our veterans. It is the least we can do after asking them to do so much for us.

[Yvonne Jones, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, for many reasons, I am pleased to rise today to speak to the budget implementation bill. The first is that I really believe this budget is responding to Canadians across the country. We came in as a government with a commitment to consult with Canadians. That is what we have been doing and what we will continue to do. Throughout the consultations, all of us travelled through many communities, towns, provinces, and territories right across the country. We sat at tables in many community centres and listened to what people had to say, because we want to get this right. We want to make sure we are doing the right thing for Canadians.

When we came into office, we made a commitment to the middle class that we would do what is right and bring a better balance to middle-class Canadians, those who work hard and try to support their families, but who always feel they are at an unfair disadvantage. We have been very focused on that in every single decision and measure we have taken as a government.

We also made a commitment to indigenous people that we would right the wrongs of history by entering into a new relationship with them, a relationship based on reconciliation, respect, and that responds to needs and solutions, as we prepare them together. I know a lot of people have been impatient in and outside the chamber as the Government of Canada has taken on the unique and necessary mandate of moving forward in this country, but it is a commitment that we are acting on, and it is making a difference.

We also made a commitment to children in this country that we would do what we have to in order to raise them up out of poverty. That is why we implemented programs like the new child tax benefit, which will help thousands of children in this country get out of poverty.

We also made a commitment to workers in this country that we would continue to grow the economy. When we came into office, Alberta's economy was stagnant and declining. No pipelines were being built and no deals were even being made. We were not seeing economic growth in regions of Canada. In fact, if we go back just a few years, many of my colleagues will remember that we were in a very tough situation in this country in terms of employment, but the Government of Canada did not falter. It stepped up and worked with industry to create jobs and a sustainable future for Canadians.

We diversified not only our populations but our industries. We welcomed many new companies to Canada to establish their bases of operation, companies like Amazon, who today employs hundreds of people across Canada, with the intention of employing hundreds more. We have signed trade deals and we are in the process of renegotiating the NAFTA deal, but in all of the deals, there were benefits for Canadians, for farmers, fishers, those in the auto sector, those creating jobs and trying to get goods to market.

I would never stand here and say that everything is perfect and that all of the problems have been fixed, as very well know that is not true, but I would say this. It is easy to be critical and hard to be positive, but once people make a good case on issues, it is much more effective than dwelling on all of the things they feel are not right. I will provide an example.

I represent a riding in eastern Canada, the riding of Labrador. It is nearly 300,000 square kilometres and much of it is isolated. I fly in and out of a lot of communities in my riding to visit my constituents. When I ran for election some years ago on the southern coast of Labrador, there was no highway connection. Every community was isolated. Today, it not only has highways, but they are being paved. In the last two years, we have invested more than $60 million just to bring those highways to standard, to allow people access to that rural region of Canada, something that nobody ever did before. No governments before were interested in investing in that type of infrastructure.

Today in this country, we have the largest infrastructure program we have ever seen, and what is that program doing? It is helping all Canadians. It is not just investing in larger towns and cities, but all over the country, in indigenous, rural, northern, and urban communities. That is the way it should be, not the minority always being left behind, which is how I have felt for a very long time in the region I serve today.

Today, I look at the budget we are implementing in this country, and I look at how far my riding has progressed in just a few short years. It is absolutely astonishing. In my riding, we are doing more in the fishery today, in terms of job creation and new technology and advancement, than we have ever done before.

I hear people talk about the sharing of quotas and being upset because indigenous people are now being included in fishery allocations. I will be the first one to stand in the House of Commons and say that there need to be more indigenous Canadians involved in fishery allocations, because in many cases those fisheries are on the doorsteps of indigenous people. However, in many cases, a lot of these quotas went to other companies for 30 or 40 years, putting revenues in the pockets of single-based owners and not necessarily seeing benefits come to regions, communities, or populations of people. Is it a bad thing that people want to redistribute wealth in this country? I do not think so, as long as it is fair, balanced, and done in a reasonable way.

I want to speak a bit today about people in the employment sectors. I represent the region that is the largest exporter of iron ore in Canada: Labrador City and Wabush. We went through some really tough times in these communities. We saw a mine close down and hundreds of people who had given their life's work to this company lose up to 25% of their pension benefits, and there was no mechanism under law in this country to protect those benefits for workers.

The Minister of Finance stood in the House and said that, with this budget, we are going to make amendments to the Pension Act and ensure that there is protection of benefits for workers. That is what needs to be done. That is the right thing to do. Who would want to vote against that? After what we have seen happen in this country with Sears workers, steel workers, and other workers, why would one not want to step up and look at ways to protect the pension benefits of workers? That is what is in this budget implementation plan.

In addition to addressing the issues for children, indigenous people, and working people, the budget also makes significant investments in health care, housing, and social programs. We cannot overlook that fact. In Newfoundland and Labrador, we increased the transfers for health care this year. We added $112 million in extra investments for mental health services. I was really proud to be with the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, the area mental health and addiction services are run out of, and hear that we are going to see mental health beds opening in the hospital and new psychiatrists added in Labrador.

These are things that are valuable to citizens in our country. These are things people in my riding and across Canada have asked for, and we are delivering on them. As long as I am a member here, I will keep listening to what my constituents are saying and keep pushing in the right direction to ensure that, as citizens of this country, they get what is fair and balanced, and are not left behind because they happen to be removed from Ottawa or an urban centre. Just because someone is northern, rural, or indigenous, that does not mean he or she should not get the same benefits in this country.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Mr. Speaker, before the parliamentary secretary pats herself on the back too much over the lack of investment in the energy sector, I want to remind her that the $4.5-billion commitment by the finance minister was not a commitment to build a pipeline; the money is merely going to shareholders down south, who can now do what they want with it in the United States. Before she congratulates herself too much on that, I wanted to point that out.

She mentioned that there were certain things she found that were not necessarily perfect. I am curious to know what exactly she meant by that statement. Perhaps there were certain things she found that she did not agree with. I will list a few, and she can choose which one she likes: the clam scam, the India trip, the Bahamas trip, the cancelling of energy east, the finance minister's tax changes, the electoral reform, the jobs leaving to the U.S., the illegal border crossings, or the infrastructure minister's $800,000 office in Edmonton. Which one of those does she find was not that perfect?

[Yvonne Jones, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite is talking about the acquisition of the Trans Mountain pipeline. I will say this to him. The Government of Canada stepped up when workers in Alberta and people in all of Canada needed it to step up, to ensure that we get a pipeline to tidewater, build up the oil industry in this country, and create an industry that will be sustainable going forward. That was something the government opposite could not, would not, and did not do.

If the Government of Canada was not going to stand up to support economic development and investment in this country to ensure the sustainability of workers in Canada, in my opinion it would not be doing service to the people of this country. However, we did not falter on our responsibility. We know this is in the best interests of Canadians. We know it is the right thing to do. We also know that we are balancing the economy and the environment, something the Conservatives know very little about, but we are doing it, while ensuring that we have the best interests of both the environment and working Canadians at heart in making that happen.

[Karine Trudel, NDP, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague spoke about fair and equitable treatment. I would also like to talk about fair and equitable treatment for people like the Sears employees and our retirees. We spoke a lot about that in the House. My colleague from Hamilton introduced a bill that is ready to be passed here in the House. In the last budget, the government only announced that it would conduct consultations and study the possibility of introducing certain elements of my colleague's bill.

On the topic of inequality, we have the opportunity to pass a bill that will eliminate it. I am referring to pensioners and Sears employees. There are also a number of other companies whose employees are worried about what will happen to their pensions.

What does my colleague think about this inequality and why will the government not pass the bill to protect pensions and all Canadian workers right now, here in the House?

[Yvonne Jones, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Mr. Speaker, one thing I can say for certain is that I have lived the terrible tragedy of what happened to so many steelworkers in my riding when Cliffs Natural Resources pulled out and left many of them losing up to 25% of their pension and health care benefits. That is wrong and should not be happening in our country. I have worked very hard in this caucus, with my colleagues from many different regions of Canada, along with members of other parties, to ensure that this issue is being dealt with.

I was pleased when the Minister of Finance announced in this budget that there would be a review of the pensions legislation and that it would be looked at in the context of protecting workers. The minister also announced and made a commitment to Canadians that we want to have a strong, stable, and secure retirement for everyone in this country. He also made assurances that we would be strengthening the Canada pension plan to provide greater benefits to parents and those Canadians who are impacted and need those benefits.

That is the road we are on. I would ask my colleagues to work with us to make sure we realize those goals.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as the health critic for the New Democratic Party, it is a pleasure to rise in the House and speak to Bill C-74, the budget implementation bill, on behalf of our party. I am going to focus my remarks on a particular part of the budget bill that I believe is very much misconceived and in fact would do a lot of harm to Canadians across the country. I hope that the government will listen to these remarks and take them seriously, and be willing to make changes to the bill that is before us.

The issue on which I want to focus the attention of my colleagues in the House today is the proposal in this budget for the federal government to levy an excise tax on medical cannabis. Currently, the situation in Canada is that we do not tax medicine. Pharmaceuticals go through a process and get something called a “drug identification number”, or DIN. When that happens, the drugs are sold and purchased by Canadians tax-free, as they should be.

On the other hand, medical cannabis, which has been recognized as a medicine by the Supreme Court of Canada, and the medical cannabis industry is currently operating in every province of this country, does not currently enjoy that status. The result is that patients across the country who rely on medical cannabis for a variety of conditions and ailments are forced to pay sales tax on that medicine, whether that is the federal GST or an HST in the province, which is anywhere from 5% upward. In addition to that, most health insurance plans in this country do not reimburse patients for the cost of cannabis, so it is a double-edged sword for patients who rely on cannabis for relief of their conditions.

On top of that, in this budget the government is proposing to add an additional tax on medical cannabis, an excise tax, which would further increase the costs of this medicine for patients.

I want to speak for a few moments about the patients in this country: what patient groups think and why medical cannabis is such an important part of health treatment for so many Canadians.

CBD and THC are two of the prime operative molecules in cannabis, and it is now well known and established in the literature and in Canadians' anecdotal experience that these two substances have incredible medicinal properties. Among them, interchangeably, are the following: they are anti-inflammatories; they are antispasmodics; they help control nausea and provide nausea relief; they are ocular pressure reducers; they are very effective in helping to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD; they are proving to be very effective in helping people who are addicted to opioids to get off opioids and replace that with cannabis therapy; and they are very important in seizure control.

That is just a sample of the documented, experienced attributes of cannabis, when used medicinally and under the care of physicians and other medical practitioners. It is a medicine. Again, we do not tax medicine in this country.

I want to talk about what an excise tax is. The Liberals want to add an excise tax on medical cannabis, and this is particularly inappropriate. An excise tax is colloquially known as a “sin tax”. That is, it is a tax specifically designed to discourage the use of something or to encourage the more responsible use of something. Typically, we see excise tax levied on things like tobacco, alcohol, and gasoline. This tax, though, would actually work to discourage the use of a medicine.

I want to talk for a moment about my exchange with the Prime Minister when I raised this issue directly with him last Wednesday and asked him to reconsider the excise tax on medical cannabis. After refusing to commit to withdrawing the excise tax, the Prime Minister, somewhat shockingly, went on to impugn the entire motive of the medical community by saying that he thought that medical cannabis was being misdirected and misused as a recreational substance. That is a shocking thing for any prime minister to say. He impugned the motives of every single physician in this country by suggesting that doctors are mis-prescribing cannabis to their patients, who are then misusing it for recreational purposes.

He impugned the motives of the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who use cannabis on a daily basis in a variety of forms: tinctures, creams, sublingual tablets, concentrates in edible form, and tea. He suggested that those people are not using cannabis to relieve the conditions of their illnesses but rather to get high.

What does that say to the thousands of veterans in this country who are using cannabis to help them deal with their PTSD? Is the Prime Minister saying that they are simply misusing that substance to get high? If that is the case, why is Veterans Affairs paying for it? That was shocking.

I cannot get any better than to quote from something a doctor said after this was posted online. Dr. Michael Verbora, who is on the faculty of McMaster University and is a physician who also holds an MBA, said:

Not sure why @JustinTrudeau thinks my children patients are faking seizures (to use CBD oil which has no recreational value) and my adult patients are faking their cancers, MS, and chronic pain! Completely clueless and uneducated. Spend a day in my clinic so you can see & learn.

That is what a physician said to the Prime Minister when he suggested that medical cannabis is actually some sort of front, some sort of excuse, for people to access recreational cannabis.

New Democrats have done what New Democrats do in the House. We do our homework. We work hard to make good policy. We listen to witnesses. We do evidence-based policy-making.

Every single patient group that appeared before the committee that studied the bill, every single patient group in this country that knows anything about cannabis, has stated that this excise tax is wrong and should be withdrawn.

My colleague moved nine amendments at committee, four of which dealt with withdrawing the damaging provisions of this excise tax on cannabis, and all four of those amendments were opposed and shot down by Liberal members on that committee.

Instead of listening to Canadians, listening to patients, listening to the opposition, and listening to the evidence, the Liberals are doubling down on a bad policy that is going to damage public health and patient health in this country.

The very first concept in medicine physicians learn in medical school is do no harm. That is the first principle of care. What the government is doing by taxing cannabis, by taxing a medicine and making it harder for people to access their medicine, is actually harming the health of patients in this country, and it is doing it deliberately and in full knowledge of the evidence that it is wrong.

I want to talk for a moment about children. There are children in this country who are using medicinal cannabis now, particularly for things like epilepsy control. Why would any government want to put a damaging excise tax on top of a sales tax on a substance that probably is not covered by that family's health care insurance plan, making it more difficult for children in this country to get medicine they need to control their seizures? That is what the Liberal government is doing. That is bad policy. It is bad health care. It is bad tax policy.

I urge the government to listen carefully to the evidence it is hearing from everyone who is knowledgeable about this issue and withdraw this ill-conceived, poorly-conceived, damaging, and harmful tax on medicine.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am not 100% certain where the member is getting the entirety of his information, but the fact of the matter is that the budget, in particular the cannabis excise framework, specifically says that to help those who rely on pharmaceutical cannabis products to relieve pain or treat illness, the government will exempt these products from the excise duties, so long as they are acquired through a prescription. It goes on to say, similarly, “pharmaceutical products derived from cannabis will also be exempt, provided that the cannabis product has a Drug Identification Number and can only be acquired through a prescription.”

I recognize the fact that from time to time, things change and new drugs are brought on and therefore are given identification numbers. Some take a bit longer. Perhaps everything the member is trying to encompass in his argument is not included.

Could he at least acknowledge that there is an effort to try to make sure that these particular products, when received through a prescription, will actually be exempt from the tax?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, there is an absolutely clear answer to that.

It is correct that in this country right now, almost no medical cannabis products, which have been operating in this country for years now, have a drug identification number, a DIN. Probably some of them do. The government knows that, but what does it do? It goes ahead and levies a tax on medical cannabis, knowing that 99% of the products do not have a drug identification number, knowing that these products are going to be taxed. It then says, “Well, they could just get a drug identification number.”

The problem with getting a drug identification number is that it takes years. It is extremely expensive. It has to go through clinical trials. This means that Canadians, for a number of years into the future, until these products get drug identification numbers, which they may or may not get, will have to pay this excise tax.

I would turn it around and ask the member why the government does not just withdraw the excise tax on medical cannabis now and spare Canadians those years of excise tax that will have the absolutely predictable impact of keeping medicine out of the hands of the people who need it. Why does the government not just withdraw that?

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Salaberry—Suroît, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague's speech was admirable. I am appalled by the government's response to limit today's debate.

We have just five hours to analyze a bill with a massive scope. The bill is 550 pages long and amends 44 acts, including Bill C-47, which would impose a tax on people who use prescription medical marijuana. We are talking about children with cancer or children who suffer excruciating pain. This could have a negative impact on their quality of life.

The Prime Minister responded that this was for people who abuse marijuana and use it recreationally and who go see their doctors. He is indirectly accusing doctors of not doing due diligence and accusing people of abusing the system to avoid paying their fair share. Meanwhile, he is making patients suffer.

How could a government think this is responsible?

In terms of our democracy, if no members raise these issues, as my colleague from Vancouver Kingsway did, and if the government limits debate, we will lose this information since we do not have enough time to raise these issues in the House of Commons.

I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on my comments and I would particularly like him to tell us whether Bill C-47 should be withdrawn from the list of 44 acts being amended by Bill C-74.

Does he think that the government should withdraw Bill C-47 from the 44 acts amended by this bill?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I was in the House in the last Parliament when the previous government employed time allocation to curtail debate about 100 times. We objected to it on behalf of the New Democratic Party then, and I think many of my colleagues in the Liberal Party did as well. Therefore, it is somewhat hypocritical to see the Liberal government now employing the same tactic they railed against when they were in opposition.

This is a democratic chamber. People send us here to the House to debate issues. I have been told, from the very beginning, that our prime function here as members of Parliament is to scrutinize government spending. That is what we are here to do. To limit debate on a budget bill that is many hundreds of pages long offends some of the most basic precepts of democracy.

I would urge the government to withdraw that time allocation motion and allow us to do our job and represent the constituents who sent us here to do that job.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this is the big piece of legislation the government brings forward every year that outlines how much of taxpayers' money it is going to spend and where it is going to spend it. My comments are going to be focused on one piece, which is part 5, the greenhouse gas pollution pricing act.

When members hear “pollution pricing act”, they may think we are going to spend money on reducing pollution. Actually, we are not talking about pollution writ large. There is nothing here that actually deals with things such as NOx, SOx, volatile organic compounds, and the fine particulate matter that sticks in our lungs that can reduce one's lifespan. It does not deal with the issue of methane.

The former Conservative government had great success in regulating those compounds to make sure that we steadily improved air quality across Canada. We achieved significant success. Canada has arguably the cleanest air in the world. I think we rank number three. We are right up there among those countries with the cleanest air. That is significantly due to the fact that the former Conservative government invested heavily in regulating those noxious substances.

However, this act is actually not about pollution writ large. It is about greenhouse gas emissions and the government trying to force through its right to impose a massive carbon tax on Canadians. All Canadians are going to have to pay this tax. The Prime Minister has said that there are some provinces that already levy a tax. He has said that they will have to increase that tax, and the provinces and territories that do not have the tax are going to be forced by the federal government to actually levy a carbon tax of $50 per tonne. That will be expensive for Canadians, because it will affect everything Canadians use, whether it is groceries, whether it is home heating oil, whether it is natural gas, or whether it is gasoline at the pumps. Virtually nothing we consume here in Canada that we use on a daily basis will not be taxed under the Liberal carbon tax that is proposed in this bill.

Of course, the Prime Minister, when asked about carbon taxes, says that carbon taxes are good. He actually said that carbon taxes are good. The Prime Minister has made this carbon tax a foundational element of his climate change plan.

We, as Conservatives, believe that taxing Canadians is not the way forward if we want to address Canada's greenhouse gas emissions. There are many other ways we can address those. There are other tools that can be used to address greenhouse gas emissions, but simply taxing Canadians is not the way to do it.

The federal government has said that the carbon tax is going to be revenue neutral. In other words, it is not going to cost the taxpayer one cent. However, what the Prime Minister failed to say was that it is revenue neutral to the federal government, because it will transfer the revenues to the provinces. He wants Canadians to believe that the provinces and territories are going to refund that money back to their residents. In fact, there is not a province in Canada that has a carbon tax that is actually revenue neutral. What is happening is that the government sucks money out of one pocket of the taxpayer and dumps it into general revenue. Governments receive this money and spend it on their own political priorities, not on the priorities of Canadians.

Where we have seen this is in my home province of British Columbia. It was held up as a paragon of virtue carbon tax. It was a revenue neutral carbon tax brought in by former premier Gordon Campbell, a man I know well. He brought it in with the most sincere motives. Originally, that tax was, for the most part, revenue neutral. The government collected the tax and then returned it to taxpayers in the form of corporate and personal income tax reductions.

We recently had an election in B.C., and the NDP formed government. The first act of that government was to remove the revenue neutrality of that tax, which means that tax now goes into general revenues and is spent on the political priorities of that NDP government. We have seen this across the country, promises that this money will be invested in environmental initiatives, that the money will be given back, but that it will be invested in environmental initiatives. The governments pick winners and losers as to who will benefit from the money and who will not. We know that governments are woefully inadequate at picking winners and losers. They usually get it wrong.

The sad thing is that the Liberal government has been asked hundreds of times how much the carbon tax, which originally was supposed to be $50 per tonne, will cost the average Canadian family. My colleagues in the House have asked the question of the minister. We have had different ministers at committee and we asked them all how much they expect this will cost the average Canadian family. We have heard no answer. In fact, in one now infamous exchange, I asked the Minister of Environment to tell us what the carbon tax would mean for the average Canadian family. She refused to answer. I asked again and again. Finally, she said that she would let her deputy minister answer the question and he proceeded not to answer the question at all. The Liberals have the information, but they are afraid to let Canadians know how badly this will harm them.

There is a hidden agenda at play. What Canadians do not know is that in the backrooms of the Liberal government, the Liberals are starting to talk about moving that carbon tax from $50 per tonne in 2022 to $100 to $300 per tonne. Why? Because they have been told by economists that for a carbon tax to be effective, in other words for it to actually change the behaviour of Canadians, it will have to be $200 to $300 per tonne of greenhouse emissions. Imagine how expensive life in Canada will be with that kind of a tax. That is the secret plan.

The Liberals will not tell us that today, but there are indications in government documents that there are discussions on how they can hammer Canadians with a carbon tax sufficient to change the behaviour of Canadians, without regard for the impact this will have on individual Canadians and on the average Canadian family, on how much more expensive life will be.

I will go back to the British Columbia example where the so-called revenue neutral carbon tax was eventually replaced by a non-revenue neutral carbon tax where all the money would go to the government to spend on whatever it wanted. When that carbon tax was first implemented, the stated goal of that tax was to change behaviour to ensure greenhouse gas emissions would go down by 33%. That is a laudable goal. How did things work out? That tax has now been in place for some 10 years and to date carbon emissions are down by not 33%, not 30%, not 20%, not 10%, but by 2%. A decade of carbon taxes and all British Columbia got out of it was a 2% reduction. This tax will be harmful to Canadians and will have virtually no impact on greenhouse gas emissions.

We have asked the Minister of Environment to appear before committee to defend her estimates and this gas tax so we can find out what this will cost Canadians. She has yet to answer us and to publicly state whether she is prepared to come to committee and be accountable under the Westminister parliamentary system, as all ministers should be.

I am very disappointed with the Liberal government for bringing forward a tax policy that is going to harm Canadians without any benefit to our environment.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my riding is very close to the hon. member's, so I know the sky is not a different colour out our way.

I want to set a few things straight. I want talk about the wonderful record of the previous Harper government on emissions. Emissions go down, especially when an economy is in the tank. Canada's economy was in the tank from about 2007 right up to the summer of 2015, when we were technically in a recession. Interestingly enough, in that same period, British Columbia, with a price on carbon, had Canada's best economy, and it has continued to be one of the best.

One other thing is this. I do not know if my hon. friend had the opportunities I had, but as soon as that carbon tax came in, I started to use transit a lot more, and I ended up ahead. You want the average impact on Canadian families? If my family is average, then we are doing okay. Does he have any comments on that?

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

I want to remind hon. members to put their questions through the Speaker, not directly to each other.

The hon. member for Abbotsford.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think the member is average. He earns somewhere in the order of $175,000 per year. That does not make him a member of the middle class that the Prime Minister wants to have others join.

I will go back to the question, which he avoided. How much did greenhouse gas emissions go down in British Columbia over nearly a decade by implementing the highest carbon tax in British Columbia of $30 per tonne? It was 2% when it was supposed to go down by 33%. By any standard, that is failure.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.

As we saw in committee, the Conservatives are very quick to criticize measures, but they have a hard time coming up with alternatives. That is exactly what we saw when Jason Kenney testified before the committee. He did his level best to discredit the carbon tax, just as the Conservatives are doing now. When my colleagues asked him what he would suggest doing instead, he had nothing to offer. The Conservatives certainly know how to oppose things, but they do not know how to come up with other options. That is what my colleague is doing too.

What does my colleague think we should do instead of taxing carbon if we want to meet our greenhouse gas reduction targets? I would hope members of all parties actually want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

What would the member do to meet those targets?

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am not going to comment on what Mr. Kenney may or may not have said at committee. However, there is a very significant tool kit available to the government to address greenhouse gas emissions. I will start by talking about smart regulation.

Our Conservative government began the move toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions by regulating the light and heavy vehicle industry. We were the ones who regulated the traditional coal-fired electricity sector. We started the move toward phasing out methane across Canada. All initiatives can be done using smart regulation rather than taxation.

Another thing is smart, significant investments in technology. In fact, if we look at the Conference Board of Canada report on this issue, it has said that the most significant tool kit that any government has to move forward is using technology development. By looking at the trajectory of technology development, we will be able to use technology to address many of those environmental challenges.

There are other things, like investing in smart infrastructure, in natural sequestration, at which the government has not looked. It has done no science on it. There is also carbon capture and storage, which Saskatchewan has done so well. This technology is working today in Canada and it can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

On the smart use of electricity grids, if we could combine electricity grids across the country, we could interconnect them so British Columbia, Manitoba, and Quebec could share electricity with other jurisdictions in a smart and environmentally responsible way. There is much that can be done. We have some answers.

[Alex Nuttall, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to stand to speak about the budget implementation act.

I would like to start with some facts, which may appear at first glance, to be astounding. The Department of Finance and the Parliamentary Budget Officer have predicted that the budget will not be balanced until 2045.

My kids will not see a balanced budget until they are older than I am right now, and that is unacceptable. During that time frame, there will be an estimated $450 billion in additional debt racked up, for a total of roughly $1.1 trillion. It is our youth who will have to pay all of this back. The future our youth inherit is not the one that we inherited. Our youth are being left behind. We are currently sitting at 11.1% unemployment, while in the United States, the youth unemployment rate sits at only 8.4%. Now our youth will have to live with the shackles of this increased debt.

GDP is up 0.1% in two years. Eighty per cent of middle-class Canadians are feeling the tax increases since the government came into office. There was a $60-billion increase in spending in the last two and a half years, up roughly 20%.

There is no doubt there that a spending problem exists within the Liberal government. Quite frankly, we can look almost anywhere to see it.

Corporate welfare is something I have spoken about over and over again. Why are we taxing Canadians who can barely make ends meet and giving those dollars to millionaires and billionaires so they can make more money? It seems to be done without a strategy or understanding the effects. It seems to be done without a clear measurement as to what is a success or a failure. I have examples: the Bombardier bailout just under a year ago; the superclusters, which were in the last budget and continued in this budget, $900 million going to superclusters, mainly into urban areas, that were recommended by a committee, struck by the industry minister, that included people in charge of superclusters, like the MaRS in Toronto.

A few weeks ago, the Conservatives started saying no to corporate welfare when it came to Kinder Morgan. We did not want government dollars used to prop up the private sector in this circumstance. Not in our wildest dreams did the Conservatives believe we would see corporate welfare enacted when it came to Kinder Morgan, in fact, an outright nationalization of the entire program.

I would like to congratulate some people in the House, such as the member for Vancouver Quadra, the member for Pontiac, and the member for Burnaby North—Seymour, on owning one of the largest oil transportation companies in Canada. I thought they were environmental activists. Usually I would say, “If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.” What the Liberal government has done is first beat the oil industry and then it has joined it. Ironically, growth in the oil and gas sector last year was what drove our economy. Without the oil and gas sector, we would have had exactly zero growth.

This is not because of the Liberals, this is not because of the federal government; it is despite them. In the oil and gas sector, they have caused a lot of instability, because they have continued to attack it. When I look at Kinder Morgan, it makes me think the government has neglected what lies beneath our feet and has opted to rely on what is between the Prime Minister's ears. It is a failing strategy.

The Prime Minister created a carbon tax of $50 per tonne to put in through 2023. After he did that, creating instability in the oil and gas sector, and in fact across our entire economy, threatening the way those who earn the least in our society actually make ends meet, he realized the ramifications of that decision. The ramifications are that projects like Kinder Morgan can no longer make it. They are no longer viable. The private sector has realized that, and then the Prime Minister realized it, and at the last second, he said he was going to step in, take money from people who earn almost nothing and invest it in this project the private sector is abandoning.

It is very interesting when we break down the carbon tax and look at the effect it is going to have on the average family. With fuel costs, there is the cost of actually producing that gasoline. It is about 50% of what we pay at the pump. Then there are provincial and federal excise taxes. Those taxes were originally put in place to deal with the ramifications of pulling out of that original resource. Then we have our new carbon tax that is being put in place on top of that. The government does not stop reaching into our pockets at the fuel pump, but says that it will charge HST on top of that. That is another 13%.

The carbon tax is going to cost average families $2,500 per year. What does that mean? It means higher food costs, higher gas costs, and higher costs of everything Canadians consume. That is the three-year legacy of the Liberal government. The fact that middle-class Canadians do not have trust funds seems to be lost on the Prime Minister and the finance minister. The legacy that we see over and over again, in budget after budget, is that the government can take and take from Canada's middle class, that it can take and take from the economy, and it can put that money wherever it sees fit. Then when it realizes that is not working, the government will take and take to buy a failing project whose failure, by the way, the government was responsible for in the beginning by introducing more and more taxes.

It is more taxes on payrolls; more taxes on gasoline as a result of the carbon tax; more taxes on Canadians across this country. That does not even begin to deal with the fact of red tape and environmental assessment after environmental assessment, the issues and regulations that constantly hold down the Canadian economy. The Liberal government constantly holds down Canada's poorest people who are looking for jobs, who are searching for that next job, who are looking for growth, and who want to create a new life for their families.

Those are the effects of the Liberal budget. Those are the effects we have seen from three years of Liberal government. The family tax cut is gone. The arts and fitness tax credits have disappeared. The education and textbook tax credit is nowhere to be seen. The life vision of young Canadians is not the one we inherited, the one in which we believed that if we went out to work day in and day out, it would be easy. Manufacturing is not creating more jobs in Canada. The oil and gas sector, while it is moving forward, has seen incredible setbacks. The housing sector, while on fire, is preventing our young people from being able to actually access a home and own it for the first time.

These are the issues that we are seeing in the Canadian economy. It is these budgets that are driving this ship.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I just want to drill down into one particular aspect of the budget.

Subclause 20(1) deals with the small business deduction from the general corporate tax rate, a commitment that all the parties have advocated. Yesterday, when the Speaker grouped the 409 amendments, primarily by the Conservatives, the member for Carleton, seconded by the member for Portage—Lisgar, put forward a motion to delete clause 20, essentially deleting that reduction in the corporate tax rate.

I am just curious if the member plans to support that amendment when we vote on it.

[Alex Nuttall, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think the point of the 400 amendments is that the budget should be deleted. When we look at it, we have had nothing but issue after issue with it. We want the government to go back to the drawing board, not to go back to the taxpayer and take from those who have the least in our society and give to millionaires and billionaires, but to help those people whom it keeps taking from to find a better life for themselves. If the member wants to focus on a single amendment, he can. However, the reality is that your government first said it would do it, then ran away from that promise, and then realized that it had to do it. Quite frankly, it should go back to the drawing board—