House of Commons Hansard #398 of the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was company.

Topics

Financial Statement of Minister of FinanceThe BudgetGovernment Orders

4:50 p.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON

Mr. Speaker, this is one of the great popular misconceptions. A lot of people think big business does not like regulation. Actually, a lot of big corporate business likes to use excessive regulation in order to keep out competition, and it is often in the sectors where we have the heaviest regulation that we have the least competition. The lobbyists for those powerful corporate interests then influence the regulators and the politicians to make it more and more difficult for anyone to break in. Why should we be surprised by that?

Powerful big incumbents have the resources to lobby. Entrepreneurial upstarts do not. They are scrambling just to get by. That is why we always see these powerful corporations stepping up with more and more recommendations for government intervention. It is designed to protect their ability to stay on top. We believe in opening up the free market to true competition so the entrepreneurial upstarts can get ahead, can do as Benjamin Franklin said, and that is “Do well by doing good”.

Financial Statement of Minister of FinanceThe BudgetGovernment Orders

4:50 p.m.

Liberal

Francesco Sorbara Liberal Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate having the privilege of asking the member for Carleton a question, also a member whom I sit with on the finance committee. I listened attentively over the last couple of days to his comments on the budget. I just have to throw some facts out there.

I know facts are inconvenient to the party on the opposite side, but these are the facts: our economy has generated over 900,000 jobs since we were elected; over 800,000 Canadians have been lifted out of poverty since we were elected; in 2017, we led the G7 in economic growth at almost a 3% clip; Canadians are over $2,000 better off today than they were three years ago; our debt to GDP ratio is on a declining trend; Moody's, S&P and other rating agencies reaffirmed and confirmed our AAA credit rating. We are the envy of the world and people are lining up to immigrate to Canada.

What does the member opposite think of those facts?

Financial Statement of Minister of FinanceThe BudgetGovernment Orders

4:55 p.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON

Mr. Speaker, many of them are not facts.

The member has said that the average Canadian is $2,000 better off. That is just not true. In fact, Statistics Canada has released the data on median income and it has barely budged in three years. At various times, it has actually gone down. In the previous 40 years, there was growth in median income under only one prime minister, and that was Stephen Harper. People do not have to take my word for it. That data comes right out of the Liberal budget in 2016. It showed that there was a massive drop in median incomes under the father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, that it took about 20 years just to begin to recover those losses and then we had the single biggest and best period of median income growth on record under the previous Conservative government.

Under the next Conservative government, we are going to beat that record.

Financial Statement of Minister of FinanceThe BudgetGovernment Orders

4:55 p.m.

NDP

Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC

Mr. Speaker, I will start with the foundation of this budget, which goes back to what the member for Carleton just cited: the years of Stephen Harper. Under the Conservatives, we saw successive and horrible deficits crippling the country and billions of dollars handed out to corporate CEOs. Middle-class, regular Canadians across the country paid the price of all those policies of the Conservative government.

Coming up to the Liberal government, which took office in 2015, one would have thought it was the time to think first about regular folks across the length and breadth of this land, to actually make a difference in the lives of regular Canadians. I am sad to say, quoting the famous words of Charles Dickens, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times". It is the best times for a very small elite in Canadian society and it is the worst of times for everyone else.

Let us look at the size and scope of the way regular Canadian families from coast to coast are living. This is not a situation that developed only under the Liberals; the Conservatives are equally guilty. In fact, we have to go back a number of decades when we saw the cutting of part of our social safety net to see why we have come to the state that we are in. The statistics speak for themselves. Forty-six per cent of Canadians say that on any given month, they are $200 away from not being able to cover all their bills. Nearly half of Canadian families, 46%, are basically living hand to mouth. On any given month, a $200 shock, like a car breakdown, a medical emergency, medication they have to buy or some emergency at school, can make the difference as to whether they can pay their bills that month.

Canadian families are struggling under the worst debt load of any industrialized country. It is not only the worst debt load in Canadian history. It is the worst debt load that any industrialized country is living under.

The set-up of the budget should give pause for thought. One would think the government would actually want to do something when half the Canadian population is living hand to mouth, basically $200 away from being able to cover their expenses in any given month.

When Canadian families, as a whole, are massively in debt because of government cutbacks over the last two or three decades, we would think there would be an understanding on the Liberal side of what is at stake and that the Liberals would show some imagination and leadership to bring forward a budget that would make a difference in the lives of Canadian families.

Sadly, that is not the case. Sadly, this budget, which dropped like a stone in the middle of the lake, with just a few ripples after it was presented two weeks ago, has really very little impact on the lives of regular families and does not in any way address some of the most egregious challenges we face as a country.

As I mentioned, Canadian families are really struggling. They are struggling to pay for their medications, to keep a roof over their heads or to ensure their sons or daughters can go on to post-secondary education. Those are all fundamental problems that Canadian families face. I am not even talking about the crisis that indigenous families are experiencing across the length and breadth of the land.

Anyone who has gone to indigenous communities has seen the sad betrayal of the government's lack of commitment on achieving reconciliation. We can look at some of the budget figures, which I will come back to in just a moment.

At the same time, we are seeing a situation where the government wants to do the same thing as the Conservatives and maintain a system of tax havens and tax loopholes. Tens of billions of dollars are given to large corporations and the wealthiest Canadians every year. That money is given to them with no questions asked and with no consideration for how it might benefit Canadians.

It is estimated that the tax system and our collective investments are losing between $15 billion and $20 billion a year to tax havens. As we know, the Parliamentary Budget Officer is currently looking into that. The Parliamentary Budget Office began that work six years ago under the Conservatives and simply asked the Canada Revenue Agency to give it all of the information related to tax havens and tax loopholes.

The Conservatives refused to do that. The Harper government said that it did not want to give that information to the Parliamentary Budget Officer. The Conservatives refused to give him that information for three years.

Then, along came the new Liberal government, which claimed it would take a new, transparent approach and tell Canadians what was going wrong with the tax system. However, the Liberals also refused to give that information to the Parliamentary Budget Officer for three years.

For nearly six years, the former Conservative government and the current Liberal government refused to give the Parliamentary Budget Officer those statistics and that information, even though they were required to do so. Last year, as we know, the Parliamentary Budget Officer threatened to take the government to court. It was only then that the Liberals agreed to give him that information, because they were well aware that it would be embarrassing for them if they did not.

For the past year, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has been collecting all this information and data, and in a few weeks, probably in May, we will know how much money is not flowing into our collective investments.

As I mentioned at the beginning, when a government asks seniors, students and families to make sacrifices and to go into debt because we do not have the resources to help them, yet it gives tens of billions of dollars to big corporations and wealthy citizens, there must at least be transparency. The Parliamentary Budget Officer will provide us with that transparency.

We will finally know exactly how much money is being lost to tax havens and loopholes and going up in smoke because our governments acted irresponsibly.

The Liberals say they know that we are losing $1 billion every year because of stock options, a loophole that benefits millionaires. Even if they only received a small portion of this money, it means we have the most unfair tax system of all industrialized countries. The Liberals said that they would look at stock options, but at some point in the future.

When we look at the budget, we see nothing to address the unfair tax treatment that is epidemic in our tax system. However, next month, Canadians will be able to judge for themselves, because the Parliamentary Budget Officer will finally table his report. That will be extremely important.

We have a tax system that is the most unequal, the most inequitable of all industrialized countries. We have an effective tax rate for large corporations of 9%, which is unbelievable, yet the Liberals refuse to take any sort of action.

That is why when I say, “It was the best of times”, as Charles Dickens mentioned, it really is the best of times for the top 1% of Canadians. They get tax gifts, left, right and centre. They did under the former Conservative government and that continues under the current Liberal government. None of them stops to think for just a moment about the impact that has on seniors and students, or the impact that has on regular families, right across the country.

I mentioned earlier that it is also the worst of times. I will mention two people I know very well who really illustrate how far we have fallen in the Ottawa bubble from dealing with the problems and challenges that regular families live with every single day.

I will come back to my friend Jim, whom I mentioned earlier in the House, because it is so egregious to me that although the Liberal government is aware of Jim, it is not doing anything to address his situation.

Jim sits right outside Parliament Hill on the bridge between Parliament Hill and the Château Laurier. He is there every day. In -33°C temperature, he is out there. He is out there in the boiling sun. If it is pouring rain or a blizzard, he has to be out there. Jim lives on a disability pension that barely pays for his rent and his food, but he needs medication that costs him $580 a month. He sits out there with the hope that strangers will do what the government refuses to do and that is to provide enough support so that he can get through that month. His medication is not optional. He has to take it.

Every day Liberal MPs walk by him. Every day Liberal cabinet ministers drive by in their limousines. The Prime Minister drives by in his limousine. Not once over the four years has any Liberal stood up to say that this is wrong, that Jim should not be begging to try to get enough money for medication for the month and that they need to put pharmacare in place now.

I can assure members that an NDP government will do that. It has to be a priority. Our leader, the member for Burnaby South, said just this week that we will put pharmacare in place immediately for early 2020. Jim will finally get relief, if the NDP is elected on October 21. Jim's situation is not uncommon. There are hundreds of thousands of Canadians who are forced into the most difficult situations imaginable to try to find enough money for medication for the month.

When Tommy Douglas, the first leader of the NDP, founded medicare, he had to fight for it. Lobbyists were pushing back and saying no to medicare. Liberals were criticizing Tommy Douglas, but he stuck to it and he got it done. All Canadians benefit from having in place the universal single-payer medicare system that we have today.

Tommy Douglas always envisioned that we would move rapidly toward pharmacare, yet decades later people like Jim are still begging, borrowing and trying to find a way to get enough money for their medication, and this is in a wealthy country like Canada. There is nothing in the budget that addresses Jim's difficulties. The Liberals just promise, like they do so often, to study it a bit more.

Here is another Canadian whose needs are not being met in any way by the budget and that is my friend Heather. Heather lives with her daughter and her mother in a one-bedroom apartment and they are struggling to keep that apartment over their heads. Heather told me that she wishes we had affordable housing in this country, and she is not alone.

There are so many families, hundreds of thousands of families, struggling just to keep a roof over their heads. They have to make tough choices as to whether to pay for the heat, pay the rent or pay for medication this month. In the budget, instead of providing money to build affordable housing, which the Liberals do not seem to want to do, they just promise to lend a bit more money. That is their way of solving what is a conscious decision made by the former Liberal government to eliminate the national housing program.

Forty years ago, about 16% of the housing that was built in Canada was affordable housing, co-operative housing, social housing. The Liberals eliminated the national housing program. They destroyed it. Now, 40 years later, that 16% has fallen to 3%, and that is the nut and the crux of the crisis that we are living today.

Because the Liberals destroyed the national housing program, because they ripped up any possibility of continuing to build that co-operative housing, that social housing so that all Canadians would be able to access affordable housing, because they did that, people like Heather and her family are now wondering, on a week-to-week basis, whether they will still have a roof over their heads.

In a country as wealthy as Canada, a country that the Liberals feel is wealthy enough to send tens of billions of dollars to overseas tax havens, Heather, indicative of so many Canadian families, is wondering whether, next month, she will still have a roof over the heads of her family. What is a wrong with a government that does not understand this situation?

When I mention indigenous communities and we talk about national reconciliation, it starts with putting in place a housing program to ensure that in indigenous communities, housing is available. It has to be done in conjunction with and working with first nations, and working with indigenous communities. That is what the leader of the NDP, the member for Burnaby South and I pitched when we went public, just a few days before the budget, to say, “Here is what needs to be in this 2019 budget”. The government, the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister completely ignored that.

This budget should have contained significant provisions to build affordable housing now, right across the length and breadth of this country. This budget should have contained, rather than just paying lip service, a real, meaningful, true and lasting national reconciliation policy that included housing and working with indigenous communities to make those investments, and it does not.

This budget should have said, very clearly, that we need universal single-payer pharmacare in this country now, not 10 years from now, not 20 years from now, not another 30 years of broken promises, but pharmacare in place now. None of those things are in the budget.

This budget should have contained and could have contained real action to build a fair tax system in our country. We ask people to pay their taxes. I have done hundreds of disability town halls, talking about the tax system, and nobody has ever said to me that they do not want to pay taxes. People want to make sure that within the tax system they are not paying more than they should, but people understand, Canadians understand, that putting money in common makes sure we are all taken care of.

However, we have a government system in place that has allowed, over time, the wealthiest and most privileged of us to get by without paying those taxes. The burden has fallen on seniors struggling with limited pensions. It has fallen on students who are crippled by post-secondary debt, unbelievable amounts of debt. It has fallen on families struggling to keep a roof over their heads, like Heather. It has fallen on families and individuals like Jim, who are struggling to pay for their medications. All of those people, all of those Canadians, are suffering because of the lack of priorities of the government.

Before I finish, I move:

That the amendment be amended by deleting all the words after the words “tens of billions” and substituting the following:

“of dollars in election-year promises that continue the government's track record of decision-making that benefits Canada's most wealthy and well-connected, instead of everyday Canadians, by:

(a) failing to implement a universal, public, national pharmacare program;

(b) ignoring the scale and scope of catastrophic climate change on the future of the planet;

(c) failing to tackle the housing crisis head on; and

(d) continuing to give billions from the public purse to highly profitable corporations.”

Financial Statement of Minister of FinanceThe BudgetGovernment Orders

5:15 p.m.

Conservative

The Deputy Speaker Conservative Bruce Stanton

It being 5:15 p.m., it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the ways and means Motion No. 27.

The question is on the amendment to the amendment. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the amendment to the amendment?

Financial Statement of Minister of FinanceThe BudgetGovernment Orders

5:15 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

No.

Financial Statement of Minister of FinanceThe BudgetGovernment Orders

5:15 p.m.

Conservative

The Deputy Speaker Conservative Bruce Stanton

All those in favour of the amendment to the amendment will please say yea.

Financial Statement of Minister of FinanceThe BudgetGovernment Orders

5:15 p.m.

Some hon. members

Yea.

Financial Statement of Minister of FinanceThe BudgetGovernment Orders

5:15 p.m.

Conservative

The Deputy Speaker Conservative Bruce Stanton

All those opposed will please say nay.

Financial Statement of Minister of FinanceThe BudgetGovernment Orders

5:15 p.m.

Some hon. members

Nay.

Financial Statement of Minister of FinanceThe BudgetGovernment Orders

5:15 p.m.

Conservative

The Deputy Speaker Conservative Bruce Stanton

In my opinion the nays have it.

And five or more members having risen:

Call in the members.

Financial Statement of Minister of FinanceThe BudgetGovernment Orders

5:50 p.m.

Liberal

The Speaker Liberal Geoff Regan

The question is on the amendment to the amendment. Shall I dispense?

Financial Statement of Minister of FinanceThe BudgetGovernment Orders

5:50 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

No.

Financial Statement of Minister of FinanceThe BudgetGovernment Orders

5:50 p.m.

Liberal

The Speaker Liberal Geoff Regan

[Chair read text of amendment to the amendment to House]

(The House divided on the amendment to the amendment, which was negatived on the following division:)

Vote #1281

The BudgetGovernment Orders

5:55 p.m.

Liberal

The Speaker Liberal Geoff Regan

I declare the amendment to the amendment defeated.

The next question is on the amendment. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the amendment?

The BudgetGovernment Orders

5:55 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

No.

The BudgetGovernment Orders

5:55 p.m.

Liberal

The Speaker Liberal Geoff Regan

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

The BudgetGovernment Orders

5:55 p.m.

Some hon. members

Yea.

The BudgetGovernment Orders

5:55 p.m.

Liberal

The Speaker Liberal Geoff Regan

All those opposed will please say nay.

The BudgetGovernment Orders

5:55 p.m.

Some hon. members

Nay.

The BudgetGovernment Orders

5:55 p.m.

Liberal

The Speaker Liberal Geoff Regan

In my opinion the nays have it.

And five or more members having risen:

(The House divided on the amendment, which was negatived on the following division:)

Vote #1282

The BudgetGovernment Orders

6:05 p.m.

Liberal

The Speaker Liberal Geoff Regan

I declare the amendment lost.

The next question is on the main motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

The BudgetGovernment Orders

6:05 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

No.