House of Commons Hansard #308 of the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was budget.
Jim Carr LiberalMinister of Natural Resources
Mr. Speaker, the hon. member knows that these projects are, by their very nature, divisive. They are even divisive within political parties. Are you sowing dissent between the premiers of Alberta and British Columbia?
The Speaker Liberal Geoff Regan
Order. I have to remind the hon. Minister of Natural Resources that when you say “you” in this place, normally you are referring to the Speaker. I hope he was not meaning to do that. At any rate, I would ask him to direct his comments to the Chair.
The hon. Minister of Natural Resources.
Jim Carr Liberal Winnipeg South Centre, MB
Mr. Speaker, I was not intending to do that. However, the hon. member knows that there will be different views within communities.
May I ask the hon. member if he has consulted with the 43 communities up and down the line, including 33 communities in British Columbia who stand to benefit from this project?
Luc Berthold Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC
Mr. Speaker, when the Prime Minister and his ministers are in Quebec, they tell anyone who will listen that they are going to protect supply management.
In Saguenay, the Prime Minister said, “We will not make any concessions when it comes to supply management.”
However, the Prime Minister said on NBC that he had suggested concessions around giving Americans access to the dairy market. In his words, “We were moving towards flexibility in those areas that I thought was very, very promising.”
Can the Prime Minister tell us just how flexible he was? Did he give up 2%, 3%, 4%, or even 10% to the Americans at the expense of our dairy, egg, and poultry producers?
Marie-Claude Bibeau LiberalMinister of International Development and La Francophonie
Mr. Speaker, our government is firmly committed to defending supply management.
The Prime Minister, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Agriculture, and our entire caucus are staunch defenders of supply management. Unlike the Conservative Party's innovation critic, we believe in it.
We will continue to protect the interests of our rural communities.
Luc Berthold Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC
Mr. Speaker, last week's talking points are old news. Claiming to want to protect supply management is one thing. Committing to not opening new loopholes is another.
In Saguenay, the Prime Minister said, “The Liberal Party created supply management and it will always unanimously defend it”.
Why say one thing to voters in Saguenay and another thing to the Americans?
My question is simple. Did the Liberal government abandon Canada's dairy producers and break its promise to fully support supply management, yes or no?
Marie-Claude Bibeau LiberalMinister of International Development and La Francophonie
Mr. Speaker, our government remains fully committed to defending supply management.
The Minister of Agriculture, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Prime Minister, and our entire team are staunch defenders of supply management.
I urge my colleague from Mégantic—L'Érable to have a long chat with his colleague from Beauce on supply management. Whether the Conservatives believe in it or not, we believe in it and will continue to stand up for it.
Candice Bergen Conservative Portage—Lisgar, MB
Mr. Speaker, agricultural producers in Canada have spoken up loud and clear to tell the Liberals that they do not support their carbon tax. In fact, the President of the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan said that a carbon tax adds a huge cost to producers who are already facing tight margins. The agriculture minister's failure to recognize farmers' opposition to this carbon tax is troubling and is undermining his already diminished credibility.
Why can the minister not admit that he is wrong? Farmers do not want your Liberal carbon tax.
The Speaker Liberal Geoff Regan
The opposition House leader, I think, is acknowledging that she is supposed to direct her comments to the Chair. I appreciate that.
The hon. Minister of Agriculture.
Lawrence MacAulay LiberalMinister of Agriculture and Agri-Food
Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague is well aware that farmers are great stewards of the land. In fact, farmers have always been protecting the environment and have played a vital role in the fight against climate change. That is why gasoline and diesel fuel for on-farm use is exempt under the federal backstop. Unlike the previous Conservative government, the Harper government, which cut over $700 million from agriculture, our government has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in agriculture and agricultural research.
Candice Bergen Conservative Portage—Lisgar, MB
Mr. Speaker, every time I talk to farmers they are telling me how much they miss Gerry Ritz.
Let us face the facts. Farmers do not want a carbon tax because it is going to hurt them and their families. It is going to add a cost to everything, and the minister does not seem to understand that. From the price of seed and input supplies, to simply driving into town to pick up groceries, or taking their kids to the dentist, the family farm is going to hurt. Therefore, will the minister tell farmers how much the carbon tax is going to cost their families?
Jonathan Wilkinson LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change
Mr. Speaker, farmers and ranchers are responsible stewards of the land, developing best management practices and innovative technologies, such as zero-till farming to reduce carbon pollution. They are on the front line of seeing and dealing with the effects of climate change.
Under our plan to price pollution, provinces and territories can establish a system and use the revenues in the ways that work for them. In British Columbia, primary producers have exemptions from a direct price on pollution for farm fuel and vehicles that transport the food we buy and that farmers sell on international markets. The same is true with respect to the federal backstop. Our government is working hard to address the issues of climate change in thoughtful and substantive ways.
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Mr. Speaker, Trump tariffs will hurt Canadian workers, and so will Liberal tax increases. Those tax increases will apply to companies that employ people here, but if those companies move south of the border, we will lose those jobs and they will not have to pay the taxes over there.
With this trade war now waging, will the government announce a full and complete moratorium on Liberal tax increases on workers affected by American protectionism?
Bill Morneau LiberalMinister of Finance
Mr. Speaker, maybe we should start with the idea that small businesses in Canada actually have the lowest tax rate among G7 countries, including the United States. Then there is the fact that corporations in this country have roughly comparable tax rates to those in the United States, rates that are competitive with G7 countries. What we know is that as international norms change, we need to listen and understand these changes, so we are listening to Canadian corporations to make sure that we consider those U.S. tax changes and that our tax system remains competitive.
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Mr. Speaker, the finance minister is imposing higher payroll taxes on employers and workers. He is imposing a carbon tax on Canadian factories, a tax that companies will not have to pay in competitor jurisdictions south of the border. Of course, we know he has raised taxes on 80% of middle-class Canadians, and that is coming right at a time when we are facing new attacks on our workers from south of the border.
My question once again is this: Will he cancel all planned Liberal tax increases on Canadian workers affected by this trade war?
Bill Morneau LiberalMinister of Finance
Mr. Speaker, when a fictional question is asked with fictional information, we need to actually react with the facts. The facts are that nine out of 10 families are better off because of the middle-class tax breaks that we introduced together with the Canada child benefit. These are important facts. On average, that is $2,300 more in after-tax income for Canadian families. This is an important change. It is actually what brought us to a situation where we had significant growth in 2017, unlike the growth experienced through the Harper Conservative years. Canadians are doing better, with more jobs and better growth. It is working.
Alistair MacGregor NDP Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Mr. Speaker, the Liberals continually claim that they fully support our supply managed sectors, but Canadians are having a hard time believing it. First, the Liberals signed CETA, which created a breach. Then they signed the CPTPP, which threatens to blow the sector wide open, and on Sunday the Prime Minister said he is flexible to making concessions in these sectors as a part of NAFTA renegotiations. Which is it, because they cannot have it both ways? When will the Liberals stop compromising our supply managed system and actually support Canadian farmers?
Lawrence MacAulay LiberalMinister of Agriculture and Agri-Food
Mr. Speaker, we have been very clear on this. We have continued to support and are committed to maintaining the supply management system in this country. The Prime Minister, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and many cabinet ministers have indicated this. The negotiators at the NAFTA table have indicated this. It is important to note that it is the Liberal government that put supply management in place, and it is the Liberal government that will support supply management.
Karine Trudel NDP Jonquière, QC
Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister stated in an interview that he is flexible on the subject of dairy products, one of our supply managed sectors, in the NAFTA negotiations. The Canadian dairy product market would therefore be on the table in order to reach a deal.
The government cannot say it supports preserving supply management in its entirety here in the House and then enter into agreements that have negative effects on our communities, especially our dairy producers.
Can the government explain to our farmers what exactly this flexibility is all about?
Marie-Claude Bibeau LiberalMinister of International Development and La Francophonie
Mr. Speaker, once again, our government is firmly committed to defending supply management. We are the ones who created it, we believe in it, and we will protect it. In addition, to support our rural communities, we have invested $250 million for dairy producers and $100 million for dairy processors, funding that has already begun to be distributed throughout the regions.
We believe in supply management and we will continue to stand up for it.
Shannon Stubbs Conservative Lakeland, AB
Mr. Speaker, Kinder Morgan did not need any taxpayer money for the Trans Mountain expansion, just stability and certainty, but the Liberals funded anti-energy activists to stop it and did nothing for a year and a half while opponents attacked relentlessly. Now they have paid $4.5 billion tax dollars to buy the old pipeline. Kinder Morgan is taking its planned $7.4 billion out of Canada. The Liberals are making Canadians pay for the mess the Liberals made.
How can the Prime Minister justify using tax dollars to give executives millions in bonuses for his own failures?
Bill Morneau LiberalMinister of Finance
Mr. Speaker, the only failure on this file was the failure of the Harper Conservatives to get any way for our resources to get to international markets. What we have moved forward with is dealing with political uncertainty that the private sector cannot deal with. We have purchased these assets so we can actually create the jobs, create the advantage for our economy, so that we can move forward in a better situation. We will eventually move it back to the private sector after we de-risk the project, a way the previous government was not willing to do.
Shannon Stubbs Conservative Lakeland, AB
Mr. Speaker, in actual reality-land, Kinder Morgan is the latest in a long list of energy companies divesting from Canada because of the Liberals. They attack Canada's regulatory track record and add red tape and costs to Canadian oil and gas. They have killed more than $100 billion in private sector energy investments, and hundreds of thousands of Canadians have lost their jobs.
Now the Liberals are putting taxpayers on the hook for their utter and predictable failure. Why is the Prime Minister risking Canada's energy sector and giving money to millionaires, while Canadian energy workers and their families struggle to make ends meet?