Debates of April 29th, 2019

Opposition Motion—Government Policies

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Families]

Mr. Speaker, I listened again to another New Democrat talk about the support for the greening of the refrigeration system at Loblaws. They refer to it as some sort of cheque that was being handed off to someone who lived in Florida in a gated community.

The member opposite is probably not aware that the technology, servicing and product being sourced is coming from a firm in Mississauga. In other words, there is a supply chain. While Loblaws is purchasing this technology and this upgrade, it is coming from a firm which has its headquarters in Mississauga.

Would the member opposite like to explain to the workers at the Mississauga firm why he thinks they should not get an investment and why their contribution to new technology, their innovation and their skills, should not be employed by programs that help to benefit the economy?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, oh dear Lord, how do we deal with the member for Spadina—Fort York who is now saying that giving $12 million to a billionaire who lives in a gated community is really about defending the workers? That is the disconnect of the Liberal Party. It is this belief that it is trickled down, and that if we give to the insider, to the powerful, somehow it is creating jobs. Well, we can create jobs in many ways. We can create jobs with a coherent energy strategy. We can create jobs with a national retrofit program. We can do a lot more than giving $12 million to Galen Weston. Then again, my hon. colleague is the one who told us about the million homes he said that the Liberals built that were never built. I mean, if we are going to talk fiction in the House, we could talk about a million mysterious houses that were never built or about how Galen Weston is helping the working class in Canada by us giving him money.

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

Mr. Speaker, I was interested in the member's speech. I would like to give him more of an opportunity to talk about how hopelessly and helplessly disconnected from the reality of regular everyday Canadian families these Liberals are.

I am sure that the member is aware of a well-known study that has been mentioned many times in the House of how some 47% of Canadian families are roughly about $200 away from financial catastrophe. The kind of financial catastrophe that such a family might worry about could be what would happen if they needed to buy a new refrigerator. Here we have a government that sees fit to hand over $12 million to a well-capitalized corporation for it to buy refrigerators. I would like him to comment on that further.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think one of the really shocking things about Galen Weston's attitude was that when he was told he had to pay $15 an hour, which is barely a living wage in any urban centre right now, that he would respond by automating more of his shops so that he did not have to hire people. This is about taking away the jobs that people have. This is about putting people on contract work. This is about the growth of precarious work.

We know that the Prime Minister was against the $15 minimum wage in the federal work sector because he said it would not help anyone. Well it would not help anyone he hangs out with, because he grew up in a different middle class than where my family grew up in as the kids of miners. I know a lot of people who do not make minimum wage back home. I know a lot of people who work three jobs and still cannot make ends meet. The Prime Minister did not think it would help anyone. That is his problem. He is the Prime Minister of the 1%, and he does not have a clue what it is like to be working class or middle class. He thinks, like the member for Spadina—Fort York, that giving money to Galen Weston is somehow going to help workers, rather than just helping the uber-rich.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to rise in the House to speak to the opposition motion moved by my colleague from Elmwood—Transcona. I would like to approach this issue from a slightly different angle. I will begin by reading the preamble to the motion:

That, in the opinion of the House, corporate executives and their lobbyists have had too much access to and influence over the Government of Canada, setting working Canadians and their families back...

The preamble is crucial. The rest of the motion lists examples of how that influence is exerted, but the fact that there is undue and excessive influence on the part of corporate executives and their lobbyists is a growing problem here in Canada.

This is interesting because we started the day off with a debate on my colleague from New Westminster—Burnaby's Bill C-331, which is about giving Canadian courts the power to hold Canadian mining companies responsible for things they do in other countries. That makes perfect sense to me because they are Canadian companies. How interesting that the government was besieged by lobbyists representing the Mining Association of Canada and its members, who did not want the new ombudsperson for responsible enterprise to have more power over them. Although we still do not know exactly what the ombudsperson's duties are, we do know the position is vital to holding mining companies accountable, which explains why, even before the mandate was defined, there was a barrage of lobbying aimed at neutralizing the position.

There are many more examples. We have heard a lot about SNC-Lavalin, so I will not spend much time on that. Instead, let me talk about the web giants, also known as GAFA. In 2016, 2017 and 2018, while we were talking about them being given unfair advantages in Canada compared to Canadian companies, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Netflix were unrelentingly lobbying the Liberal government.

Amazon lobbyists and executives had 99 meetings with the Canadian government in 2016-17. Google had 337 registered contacts. Microsoft, for its part, had 35 registered contacts. Netflix had 16. While all this was going on, we were debating whether companies like Google, Netflix, Facebook and Twitter should collect sales tax on their products and advertisements and pay income tax on their revenues. I did not include Amazon in this list, because Amazon Canada collects sales taxes.

This goes beyond lobbying. These companies have had privileged access to members of the government. For example, Google hired former Liberal chief of staff John Brodhead to run a program. Leslie Church, who worked as director of communications at Google, became the chief of staff to the then heritage minister.

As for Microsoft, its national director of corporate affairs used to be the director of operations and outreach for the then Liberal leader, who is now the Prime Minister. There are really a lot of ties between these people. Ultimately, the upshot of all this is that the status quo continues for telecommunications companies and American web giants. Nothing changes. Why? Because this lobbying is highly effective, and these companies can afford it.

My Conservative friends should not feel too smug, because they have some questions to answer about their own history with lobbying. The examples of Arthur Porter and KPMG have been raised in the House.

While CPA Canada, the organization that represents Canadian accounting firms, was seeking to intercede on behalf of its KPMG members, it signed a deal with the federal government to have a say in potential changes to CRA programs and services. This happened under the Conservative government.

Does anyone believe for one second that the whole SNC-Lavalin affair would not have happened under a Conservative government? We know that SNC-Lavalin secured a meeting with the Leader of the Opposition and several other MPs. That meeting was specifically about issues related to law and order and the administration of justice. It was clearly about the situation that has been making headlines for the past few months.

In 2012, I stumbled upon a CBC article published online under the following headline:

“Enbridge lobbying of Harper government a 'success story'.”

At that time, everyone was talking about the northern gateway pipeline. Apparently, there were dozens of meetings between the government and Enbridge lobbyists. In fact, in 2011-12 alone, meetings were held with 12 different lobbyists. In 2006 and in 2010, 27 different lobbyists lobbied the Conservative government to try to make northern gateway a done deal.

I find that interesting, because one of the groups that lobbied the government is called the Clean Air Renewable Energy Coalition, made up of groups as diverse as Enbridge, Shell and ConocoPhillips Canada.

I am not trying to blame anyone in particular, but rather point out the undue influence of the corporate sector in Canada. It is undue influence because it is not transparent and because these companies usually get whatever they want. If we really want to ensure transparency, we need to go further than just the registry of lobbyists. It is estimated that Canadian companies spend about $300 million a year on lobbying activities. Since this is considered to be part of their business activities, they are given tax credits worth about $100 million. This means that we are paying companies so that they can engage in lobbying in the hopes of influencing the government.

Perhaps that does not seem like a lot of money. Every year in the United States, roughly $2.6 billion are spent on lobbying. I want to illustrate just how much that is. That is more money spent on lobbying than is spent on funding the United States House of Representatives and Senate combined. American companies spend more money to appeal to and influence U.S. Congress than U.S. Congress budgets for its own operations. That shows just how powerful a force lobbying is in North America. That is true in the United States and it is true in Canada. Yes, we have the lobbyist registry, but no one knows exactly how much is spent. No one knows exactly how much money has been invested.

Our saving grace is probably the fact that we have a limit on contributions. Companies and corporations cannot contribute directly to campaigns, which makes our system different from the U.S. However, our lobbying system is not better than the U.S. There is more accountability and more transparency with respect to the lobbying that is done in the U.S. than there is in this country.

I will be voting in favour of the motion and I invite other members of the House to do likewise. The reason is simple. We need to be able to examine for ourselves the impact that lobbying has on the life of Parliament and the impact it has on the balance of forces in Canadian society. We do not talk about this enough, and we take for granted that the current reality cannot be changed. It is our responsibility to change that reality, to restore the balance that no longer exists, and to ensure that Parliament, the House of Commons, represents what it is supposed to represent, namely all of the ridings across Canada, not just the economic interests of corporations that are only looking out for number one.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am always interested in what my colleague has to say. He has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the subject.

I would like to take this a bit further. When we talk about lobbying, we are talking about a legal activity. I do not want to put words in his mouth and I have my own thoughts on this. When we talk about lobbying, of course there is lobbying by all the major corporations, but there are also interest groups that organize to lobby the government.

How is it that groups that have demonstrated for major changes to employment insurance, for instance, have never won?

When different points are raised about bringing in a pharmacare program, why do the pharmaceutical companies win and not the interest groups?

There are examples of this when it comes to the environment, but I am running out of time. I want to hear from my colleague.

Why is it always the major corporations who win?

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Trois-Rivières for his very relevant question.

I am not trying to say that those meetings should not happen. I think that society's interest groups have to be able to meet with members to let them know where they stand and make them aware of certain issues. We are aware of many issues because we need to stay informed for our jobs, but it never hurts to have additional information.

I meet regularly with those types of groups. I also meet with companies, industry representatives and business people to find out more about what is going on.

The big difference is that, when a group is calling for improvements to EI or improvements relating to important social issues, they will meet with us once or maybe twice a year. The group meets with a limited number of MPs.

However, in less than two years, Google met with the government, which has the power to act, 99 times. Lobbyists for SNC-Lavalin and other companies have the ability to meet with MPs, ministers, cabinet members and senior Liberal officials dozens or even hundreds of times. They have the ability to exert pressure. They present economic arguments that scare the government. That is how we end up with governments that refuse to take action for the collective good. Instead, they act for the good of those companies.

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

Mr. Speaker, whether it is the legislation that was put in the 2018 budget bill that helped out SNC-Lavalin or whether it is Bill C-27 that the Minister of Finance introduced but did not advance any further, we see concrete examples of legislation being changed to suit corporate interests.

One bill that passed three years ago now was Bill C-10, direct lobbying from Air Canada, to amend the Air Canada Public Participation Act so it had the freedom to move its maintenance facilities offshore. Lo and behold, Liberal MPs from ridings where those maintenance workers lived supported that legislation.

I would like my colleague to comment on that bill. Memories are short in this place and it would serve us all well to remind Canadians of that particularly egregious example back in 2016 and what the Liberal government was prepared to do for its corporate friends in Air Canada to the detriment of the maintenance workers.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

The hon. member for Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques has no more than 60 seconds left.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, that means I will not have enough time to talk about the bill as a whole. My colleague is quite right.

I remember that bill well. Before being elected, I used to work as an economist with the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada. It was not the same union, but we were keeping a close eye on that issue, especially because at the time, it was represented by the Canadian Auto Workers, or CAW.

During the last Parliament, when protests were being staged by workers from Aveos, the company contracted to do the work, Liberal members would join the protests in solidarity. Once they took office, however, they went along with what Air Canada wanted, and their first bill did exactly the opposite of what their own members, including the Prime Minister, had been calling for.

I certainly remember seeing him at the protests. He said he fully supported the workers, but he let them down the first chance he got.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to add some thoughts to the debate. It has been interesting. I am convinced there is no one better at distorting reality than the collective minds of the New Democrats. The member for Timmins—James Bay tried to contrast some of the things he said to reality. There is a fairly wide gap, so I would like to try to close that gap and take down some of the nonsensical rhetoric that comes almost on a daily basis from my New Democratic friends.

If we listen to the speeches from New Democrats, we would be of the opinion that all Canadians once they are born will be given a house. They never have to worry about the health care system. They will not have to worry about the environment because there will not be economic development that will affect the environment in any fashion whatsoever. It is truly amazing to listen to what they say and how wonderful it would be.

We might go back to the wilderness days, with no concrete, no asphalt or no real living conditions that we see as normal in modern society. When we add up all of the expenses, we would find over and above what we currently spend, not $1 billion or $2 billion of additional expenses, it would be billions and billions getting closer to half a trillion dollars in new expenses. That is what we would be talking about.

Put that in the context of the last federal election. When NDP members were knocking on doors, what did they say? They said that they were going to have a balanced budget. To get a snapshot of it, we should listen to what the member for Churchill—Keewatinook Aski had to say earlier today. She tried to give the impression that the government was doing absolutely nothing in regard to northern Manitoba, nothing with respect to indigenous people. We can look at the hundreds of millions of dollars invested over the last few years under this administration. I would challenge members to find any previous government that has ever invested the type of financial resources this government has in the last three years. That commitment is there, it is real and it is tangible.

The government understands the importance of establishing a healthier relationship with indigenous people. We have made that a top priority. However, we need to listen to what the member for Churchill—Keewatinook Aski is talking about, even though her riding is probably receiving more federal assistance in different areas than any other riding in the country. This government, by working with people on the ground, has been able to accomplish so much, including potentially the saving of Churchill as a community with our investments. The provincial government completely surrendered it.

We have taken many different actions on a wide variety of social policies. The only thing that is consistent with the New Democrats is that they vote against them. They continue to say that we are never doing enough, that we have to spend billions more. However, they have voted against many of the measures we have taken.

We can talk about pharmacare. It was not an issue of great debate when I was sitting in opposition. When the NDP was the official opposition in the House of Commons, how often did it raise the issue of pharmacare? It was not raising this issue in any way. It was not until this government, in particular the Prime Minister, started to talk about pharmacare that the NDP started to panic. It did not want the Liberals to get any sort of credit for such a progressive measure. The New Democrats then started to talk about how important it was, and they have been talking about it considerably ever since the Prime Minister and the Government of Canada, specifically the standing committee, raised the issue.

It should be no surprise. We have a government that continuously tells its members to go into the constituencies, listen to what Canadians have to say and bring it back to Ottawa. It wants the ideas that are coming from our communities, in all regions, brought back to Ottawa.

Hopefully I am not unveiling a caucus secret, but I can tell members that pharmacare is an important issue in all regions of this country, as virtually every Liberal member of Parliament continues to raise that particular issue. This is not a New Democratic Party issue. I would suggest that it is not even a Liberal Party issue. This is an issue that Canadians have been bringing forward to this government, and this government has been responding to it. For the first time in 40 years, four decades, we finally have a government that is responding to what Canadians see as something of great value, a national pharmacare program. In three years, this government has done more toward a national pharmacare program than the previous series of governments in the last 30 years or 40 years.

We understand the importance of a senior living on a fixed income in a community who wants to have the medications required to have a healthier lifestyle. Unfortunately, what happens far too often is that, because of the costs of food and shelter, some of the costs of pharmaceuticals are too prohibitive, so prescribed medications are put at a lower priority and that senior is not taking that medication. That is at a huge cost to society, because quite often many of these individuals end up in our health care system, such as hospitals and other facilities. They visit doctors' offices and are told, “Here is your medication. Take this medication and you will be healthier.” Unfortunately, many of these individuals are not able to take it because of the issue of affordability. Because it is an issue of affordability, it is an issue individuals have brought forward.

It is not just citizens. I have met with labour councils, unions and other stakeholders to talk about the benefits of pharmacare. This is not about one individual or political party. I believe that it is, in good part, because this government has been so good at progressive policy changes that we have finally seen a real opportunity to make a change. That is the reason why we are getting a lot more lobbying today from the pharmaceutical industry. The NDP members are saying that these big pharmaceutical companies and stakeholders are lobbying twice as much today as they were before. Because we are looking at making major changes, of course they are going to be lobbying. There is no surprise there.

This government is reflecting on what it is that Canadians want us to be doing. That is what we have seen in our budgets and in our planning virtually from day one, when we had a standing committee made up of all political parties, and I understand there was a unanimous report moving us forward on this issue. However, if we listen to the New Democrats, we would think that, were it not for them, this would not be debated. Nothing could be further from the truth.

This is being debated because Canadians want it debated. They want to see a government that is going to move on this plan. I believe the government will move forward on this issue, because we have demonstrated that in very tangible ways, whether it is the creation of buying groups, or the creation of a commitment in the last budget that will see billions of dollars being saved on the purchasing of health care, or a final report that will be coming out in a couple of months. Those are the types of things that have been happening.

Let us move on to this distortion of reality. The Conservatives like to pile in on this issue as well. We are talking about the environment. The New Democrats say they care about the environment. What is interesting is that when we talked about the price on pollution today, for the first time I think the poorest answer I have ever received with respect to that was from the leader of the New Democratic Party.

I am beginning to think that the NDP might be somewhat waffling on a price on pollution. I hope that the New Democrats will give more concrete responses as to what their position is on a price on pollution.

Here we have a national program that other institutions and stakeholders decide to participate in. What is the program? The federal government says that we want to reduce emissions. We are putting aside a pot of money, and we are looking for the private sector, non-profits and governments to come forward to have access to a portion of that money, whether it is municipalities, universities or even the private sector, which has a role to play. There were 50-plus applications received, and yes, Loblaws was one of them. Loblaws committed to invest $48 million to make changes in terms of its refrigeration, of which the federal government would contribute 25%.

In exchange for that, I would note two things. One is that once that investment is done, it will be the equivalent of 50,000 vehicles being taken off the road. To me, that is a good thing. I suspect that most environmentalists would agree that this is a good thing, but not the New Democrats, because they would rather twist and turn to try to make it seem as if this is some sort of elitist policy. That is absolute hogwash.

That is just one aspect of it. In Canada, we have some of the most proactive companies on the green file of any companies in the world. A company in Mississauga, for example, is one of the companies that is going to be providing that modernized refrigeration. It is going to have access to that $48 million, and that is going to employ many Canadians as a direct result.

The New Democrats will mock that. Who cares about those jobs? Whether they are union or not, who cares? They want to focus on that $12 million and the so-called fridge. At the end of the day, this $48-million project, which is the equivalent of taking the emissions of 50,000 cars annually off the road through this technology, would in fact have an impact on jobs. More important, it will advance the technology that is so badly needed to improve the conditions of refrigeration into the future. That is what I would suggest is forward thinking, something that has been lacking among New Democrats in recent years.

The New Democrats have caught on to what the Conservatives love doing. They would rather focus their attention on attacking the government. It does not matter what the Government of Canada actually does. It does not matter what kind of policies we bring in. They want to try to personalize it. They want to ramp it up. They want to twist reality.

When he talked about the policy I just enunciated, the member from Timmins—James Bay said that we are going to give $12 million to some rich dude who is living in the United States. That is how he has encapsulated that whole story. I suspect that if I were to have an intelligent discussion with the member from James Bay at a local university here in Ottawa, a vast majority of those students who participated would recognize that this is a smart thing to be doing by providing incentives to companies, governments and non-profit agencies that are going to move us forward on the issue of climate change.

I would have thought the NDP would recognize that and be supportive of it. The Conservatives do not surprise me on the issue. After all, let us remember, I think it has been 365 days and we are still waiting for a Conservative plan.

I think we will find that many Conservatives actually like the Liberal plan, even some of the former policy individuals in the Harper government like the idea of a price on pollution. In fact, I believe the original idea in North America can ultimately be rooted in the Province of Alberta. It had the idea of a price on pollution and then implemented it.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

I am just going to interrupt the hon. member for a couple of moments. I am trying to hear his speech and I am starting to hear some help for him. I do not know what it is, but when he gets up, the other side wants to coach him along. I am going to encourage the other side to maybe calm down a bit and maybe not coach him. I am sure he is very capable of doing it all on his own.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, if they gave me leave to finish all of my comments, I would not mind having as many heckles. However, I suspect they will not give me the leave. It would take a great deal of time to go over the many different initiatives. Maybe that is something I should do.

Let us think about the last three and a half years and the types of things the government has been able to accomplish. There is a list. It starts off with the tax increase on Canada's wealthiest 1%. When we listen to the member for Timmins—James Bay, he says that the Government of Canada and the Prime Minister are all corrupted by the 1%. We put a tax on Canada's wealthiest 1%, something the member for Timmins—James Bay and his New Democratic colleagues voted against. Maybe they are the ones who have been corrupted by the ultimate wealthy, because they voted in that fashion.

What about the tax decrease?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order. I know my hon. colleague has been viciously attacking me all afternoon, but I am okay with that.

However, I was not sure if he was suggesting it was me or the people of Timmins—James Bay who were somehow corrupted by the 1%. I would just ask him, out of parliamentary respect for the personal attacks he has made all day against me, to retract that one comment. I am fine with the rest.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

I believe that was more debate than a point of order.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would never pass judgment on any member's constituents. I will say that much.

Having said that, there are so many initiatives, and hopefully I will have the time to go through a good portion of them here.

I made reference already to the tax on Canada's wealthiest 1%. One of the most important pieces happened right at the beginning of the mandate. This was the tax decrease for Canada's middle class. We have put hundreds of millions of dollars, which is a lot of money, into the pockets of Canadians, increasing their disposable income.

That is one of the reasons that over 900,000 jobs have been created since the government was put into office, which has put money into the pockets of Canada's middle class. That is the group who deserves the credit for moving our economy along and growing it. By investing in Canada's middle class, we are investing in a much healthier and stronger Canada.

I will mention quickly that we have improved tax fairness, income sprinkling and passive income rules. We cut the small business tax rate from 12% to 9%. We have invested close to $1 billion in two budgets to go after tax evaders. We enhanced the working income tax benefit by an additional $500 million per year starting in 2019.

We introduced the Canada child benefit program, enhanced the guaranteed income supplement and moved the age for OAS from 67 to 65. We also enhanced the summer student program. In my riding, this more than doubled summer student employment in the program.

We have invested in infrastructure, providing billions of dollars to it, which is historical.

I made reference to trade as a very important issue. We have trade agreements, whether the European Union, Ukraine, the World Trade Organization, countries in Asia and Latin America, the United States and Mexico.

I also talked a lot about pharmacare. What about the health care accord and the Canada pension plan agreements?

There is also our national housing strategy and immigration changes related to wait times. We ordered a public inquiry into murdered and missing indigenous women. This is not to mention the many different wonderful gender initiatives.

With this budget, equalization is up by $3.3 billion. There are also the health transfers and social transfers. The rate of interest for student loans has gone down.

There is so much good that the government has done in the last three and a half years that I look forward to the election in October. I believe that Canadians are going to see the value of what this government has done and will allow us to return for another four years.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to zero in on what my friend across the way referred to as the “so-called fridges”. I am pretty sure that they were fridges, not just “so-called fridges”. At least I hope they worked after all the money that was put into them.

Anytime that the government is talking about environmental policy, it means punitive approaches for those who are struggling economically and “incentives” for those who are already doing very well. Those in the middle class who are struggling have to pay the carbon tax, while the largest emitters get a break. For Loblaws, this means financial support from taxpayers for fridges. When it comes to small businesses that are struggling to get ahead under the burden of the government, paying higher taxes because of it, there are no incentives. For them, a more punitive approach is taken when it comes to increased taxation.

Why is it that the Liberals always find an incentive for their well-connected, wealthy friends and those who donate to their party; whereas when it comes to Canadians who cannot afford to adapt, the Liberals take a punitive approach? Why is there a different approach for the wealthy and well-connected than there is for everyone else?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would suggest that we take a holistic approach. Through tax breaks, we are giving money to millions of Canadians. We are giving millions of families money with respect to the enhanced Canada child benefit.

When we take a holistic approach to governance, we have to recognize, at least in part, that the private sector and other government agencies and non-profit agencies should also have a way to contribute to the betterment of society, by using the public purse to make enhancements. This will ensure that we are moving forward in a very progressive fashion. This is a positive thing, and it is progressive.

The Conservatives and the NDP members want to concentrate their efforts on Loblaws. Maybe they do not want government to work with the private sector. Maybe that is exactly what they are trying to say. If that is what they are trying to say, then they should say it. They should say that they do not want the Government of Canada to work with the private sector or provide any incentives.

The particular program mentioned is supporting not only the private sector but non-profits and governments as well, all with the goal of reducing emissions. That is exactly what is happening with this government.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Mr. Speaker, once again I sat through another incredible speech by the member for Winnipeg North. I have a couple of comments, and then I want to ask him a very specific question.

The first is on this question of fridges. He knows and everyone in this House knows that we have to make changes. We need more efficient appliances and we need to tackle climate change. However, if there is $12 million to spend and we want to get people to adopt better and new technology made in Canada, who are we going to give the money to? Do we give it to a big corporation that has $400 million sitting in an offshore tax haven and could clearly afford to buy these fridges all by itself, or do we give it to the mom-and-pop corner stores, the independent grocery stores? Do we give that help to the small businesses that would have trouble making that transition?

That is where the NDP disagrees with the government. It gives the money to its big corporate friends and not to the small businesses and independent businesses that might have trouble making the transition we all know they need to make.

When the member talks about pharmacare, I do not really care if the government wants to eat the NDP's lunch. It just has to deliver the main course.

If we look at housing in my riding, a bunch of people on social media were asking why I was saying that the Liberals had not done anything on housing. I challenged them to name one project in my riding that has actually been funded. There are not any. There are all kinds of promises about what will be done in the future and about all kinds of money that will be spent after the next election.

What did the government do? Last fall, it gave more than $14 billion in tax cuts to big corporations, and now it is running a deficit. That is a choice it made. The government made a choice to reward its corporate friends rather than to have the revenues it needs to do things for ordinary Canadians.

Let me ask a specific question on pharmacare. Are you going to put forward a pharmacare program that keeps the big business interests in place, big pharmacare and big insurance companies, or will the government support universal, comprehensive public pharmacare?

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

Before the parliamentary secretary answers, I want to remind hon. members to place their questions through the Chair over to the member and not directly across. I want to assure the hon. member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke that the Speaker will not be making any of those decisions.

The hon. parliamentary secretary.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, there is just too much there for me to be able to respond. I am going to pick up on what the member started off with, the refrigerator issue, which is an issue I believe NDP members are trying to exploit, because they believe that it is going to be a vote-getter. Does the NDP support the government using public resources to access additional funds to move us forward on the road to reducing emissions? If the answer to that is yes, then that 25% contribution by the federal government is exceptionally effective, because it is going to take away the emissions of 50,000 vehicles on an annual basis.

When I talk about the private sector or the company, which happens to be Loblaws, we need to remember that Loblaws is not the only company. It is just the one the Conservative-NDP unholy alliance wants to focus on. There are civic governments, non-profits and others that have participated in the same program. Over 50 applicants were approved. The question the NDP and its friends in the Conservative Party need to answer is whether they believe that the private sector should be subsidized in any fashion.

The Conservatives say no. What does the NDP say? I must say to the Conservatives that I wish Harper did not believe that. However, let us wait and see. Maybe that is their new policy. They just made it very clear that the Government of Canada should not. I wonder what would have happened to GM, Chrysler and many other companies with that sort of attitude.

[Robert-Falcon Ouellette, Liberal, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I was wondering if the hon. member for Winnipeg North knew that the Conservative leader refused to apologize for participating in a day-long election strategy session with very wealthy oil executives at a luxury resort in Alberta. We only discovered this because of good work done by some journalists. This was a closed-door meeting with a group called the Modern Miracle Network. It included leaders of oil companies, Conservative election organizers and the president of one of the largest oil patch lobby groups.

Is this true transparency? When we talk about transparency, is this the transparency we want for our country? Is this what we want happening in our election? I would like to hear comments from the member for Winnipeg North, because I certainly know that it is not what we want in Winnipeg Centre. I spent my time today meeting with people who are local community people, people who came to Ottawa to talk about MS and came to talk and lobby about real community issues. That is what I spent my time doing. I know that we do not want from our government the type of transparency we are seeing from the Conservative leader.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, in the days I sat in the far corner over there in the third party, the leader of the Liberal Party indicated that we needed more proactive disclosure. We had to get the Conservatives and the New Democrats to support that.

Proactive disclosure means sharing with Canadians how we are spending tax dollars. Whether it was when the Prime Minister was the leader of the third party or today, the he has consistently ensured more transparency and accountability through legislation and very tangible, positive actions.

We can contrast that with the very closed-door attitude of the Conservatives. We had to force the Conservative Party by law to make changes to ensure there would be more transparency for taxpayers. I am not surprised the Conservative leader would have a think tank of sorts on how to manipulate the next federal election. However, I will leave that issue until I have a bit more knowledge of the content of it.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford. I will point out that the hon. member has 12 minutes.

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

Mr. Speaker, after listening to the member for Winnipeg North's speech, I would just like to remind my colleagues that this is only day one of the remaining seven weeks, so we should all pace ourselves.

As always, in these dying days of the 42nd Parliament, it is a great honour to stand in this place. It is a real privilege to be the voice of the amazing constituents of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford. I appreciated, as I am sure all members did, the previous two weeks, when I got to go to my riding on beautiful Vancouver Island, where spring actually arrived when it was supposed to. I enjoyed the sunshine, speaking with constituents and going to many community events.

I was really excited when I saw the notice of the motion we had picked to debate today. I think it goes to the heart of the kind of message that we, as a party, want to put out there to differentiate ourselves from the other parties in this place.

Before I got into politics as an elected member, I used to work for a former member of Parliament, Jean Crowder. I can remember going to an event at someone's house and seeing an old poster by the CCF. The tag of the poster was “People Before Profits”. That is one of the principles that has always guided me personally, that the people of our great country are key.

We can look at the staggering amount of wealth that corporations have. Some people may see a corporation's wealth by how big its bank account is, how well its executives are paid and how well its shareholders do with dividends. However, in this corner of the House, we prefer to see the wealth of a company in the workers, the services they provide and the things they build. It is ultimately the workers of the company who are on the front line, providing those services to people and giving the company its reputation. In all of our efforts, by all parties, it would serve us well to remember that.

The main thrust of this motion today is that given the experiences over the last three and a half years of this Parliament, we feel there have been some demonstrations quite clearly that corporate executives and their lobbyists have had far too much access to and influence on the Government of Canada.

The most recent example of this, which I think many Canadians still quite clearly remember, is the SNC-Lavalin affair. When that news story broke in the The Globe and Mail on February 7, it very much altered the political landscape. I remember the Liberals first reaction to that story was to deny it, to say that it was not true, that there was no pressure. However, their narrative kept on changing as more facts kept coming out. Ultimately, what it resulted in was the loss of two of their most capable ministers, the member for Vancouver Granville and the member for Markham—Stouffville, the loss of the Prime Minister's principal secretary and the loss of the former clerk of the Privy Council.

Why is that whole affair relevant to the motion today? Last year, unbeknown to parliamentarians and even the Canadian public, a small section was hidden in one of the budget omnibus bills, which even the Liberal backbenchers found out about, with surprise, when they were studying the bill at the standing committee on finance. Of course that was the provision in the budget bill to bring in an amendment to the Criminal Code that would allow for deferred prosecution agreements. I am not against deferred prosecution agreements per se. They can in some cases be a very legitimate tool. The important thing, though, is that it is not up to me to decide that. It is not up to anyone in this chamber to decide that. That role falls squarely on the shoulders of the director of the Public Prosecution Service of Canada.

That brings me to the next step in this whole sordid affair. We found out that it was SNC-Lavalin that lobbied hard to get such an amendment into the Criminal Code and it succeeded with that. Then it started this coordinated orchestrated campaign with the Prime Minister's Office to get the former attorney general, the member for Vancouver Granville, to basically overrule the director of public prosecutions.

When I sat on the justice committee, I was at Ms. Kathleen Roussel's confirmation hearing. She is a very accomplished lady who has immense qualifications for the job. However, when she was looking at the request for a deferred prosecution agreement, she had all the relevant facts of the case before her, she knew what the provisions of the law were and in her capacity, she made the decision that the company was not eligible for a DPA. Of course, she referenced this to the former attorney general of Canada who agreed with that assessment.

The lobbying of the Prime Minister's Office to get the independence of that decision overturned is very worrying. Yes, no laws were broken, but the irony is that no laws were broken because of the efforts of the former attorney general of Canada, who very much stood on her principles and decided she would stand against that pressure and not overrule the director of public prosecutions. Ultimately, she was shuffled out of her cabinet post and then had to resign, followed by her colleague, the member for Markham—Stouffville. The two of them could no longer in good conscience sit in the cabinet and defend the government day to day when they knew the truth of what had really happened behind the scene.

That is item number one of the most clear and recent examples of the awesome power of corporate lobbying and what it was able to achieve with the current government.

I will take members back to 2016 to another example. The government introduced Bill C-10, an amendment to the Air Canada Public Participation Act. This was in spite of the fact that many Liberal MPs represented ridings where aircraft maintenance workers lived and worked and in spite of the fact that in the 2015 election campaign, the Prime Minister was right there with Avios workers, saying that he was there in solidarity with them and that he supported them. However, what did that government bill do? It basically amended the act so that Air Canada, which had done extensive lobbying of the government, would now be free to move its aircraft maintenance work offshore. It would no longer be constrained by the provisions in the act where it had to have maintenance facilities in places like Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec. Again, this goes to the heart of where corporate lobbying led to a change in the law, which ultimately will and has hurt workers.

Of course, we have the Minister of Finance who brought in Bill C-27, which I am very happy to see remains in purgatory, stuck at first reading. The government has been far too timid to bring it forward for debate, because it knows the uproar that would happen. The Minister of Finance own company, Morneau Shepell, used to specialize in this kind of work of changing pension plans. The Liberals finally became aware of the uproar that would happen, and that bill has not proceeded any further, which I am glad to see. However, it did not stop the Minister of Finance who, in a clear conflict of interest, introduced that bill in the first place, showing what the Liberals' intent was all along.

Then, of course, I move to pharmacare. I was listening to the member for Winnipeg North as his volume got steadily higher and higher. We have short memories in this place. It was back in 1997, 22 years ago, when the old Liberal empire of the 1990s was at the height of its power. Members will remember that the Liberals won a majority in 1993, again in 1997 and again in 2000. This was a clear promise they made in 1997. They did not follow through with it then, they did not follow through with it in the 2000 government and here we are, three and a half years into the term of the current majority government, and what do we have? We have a paragraph in the budget, which is an intention to do more consultation. However, we can look at the lobbying records and the coordinated campaign that was brought about by the pharmaceutical industry. On average, pharmaceutical companies and their associations lobbied the government approximately 49 times, which is about the average over 11 years. However, in 2018 alone, it was 104 times.

The report by the Standing Committee on Health recommended a universal pharmacare plan, one that all Canadians can get behind, one that would save Canadian families $4.5 billion. On average, Canadian families would save about $550 and some families would save far more.

The proof is in the pudding, because instead of us being at a point where we could implement a national universal pharmacare plan, the lobbying has had its desired effect. What we are probably going to get from the Liberals, these masters of the long promise, the ones who like to tell people to re-elect them and they might get what they want, is that the lion's share of the national housing strategy is going to come after 2019, and the pharmacare plan is probably going to be some kind of a patchwork system. In other words, the pharmaceutical industry was able, through its lobbying efforts, to get what it wanted all along. It wanted to have a patchwork system where it still had that key role to play.

Finally, there is the Loblaws example. My friend from Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke had it perfectly in his intervention earlier when he asked why a company as wealthy as Loblaws is able to access $12 million, when it commands so much wealth and would have been able to do that itself, headed by a man who is worth more than $13 billion. For Mr. Weston, $12 million is pocket change. That is something he could lose in the blink of an eye, a rounding error for a billionaire.

The question is legitimate. Why is this money not being made available to the corner stores, to small businesses, which would use that $12 million to make significant upgrades to their bottom line to be energy-efficient. No one is arguing the fact that we need to take these steps. What we are trying to underline is the power of big corporations, the lobbying efforts they can employ with the government to get those kinds of corporate handouts, when small businesses, the ones that really need them, are being left behind far too often.

I appreciate this time to speak on behalf of the constituents of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford.