Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to stand today and speak to Bill C-9, an act to amend the Income Tax Act.
The legislation has three main components to it. The first is to create the Canada emergency rent subsidy, which would provide rent relief for qualifying businesses until June 2021. The second is to provide some lockdown supports, providing a top-up from the Canada emergency rent subsidy. The third is to extend the Canada wage subsidy until June 2021. All these pieces have been called for by the business community, as a whole, due to the conditions they are facing during this pandemic.
I will talk about some of the concerns the opposition had with the legislation. These things could have been dealt with had Parliament been sitting, as the opposition was calling for. Members may recall that the Conservatives were the only party consistently calling for the return of the House to deal with the hundreds of billions of dollars that were literally going out the door with little to no debate. Of course this caused some problems.
In the last rent program, in order for businesses to qualify, they to prove that had a 30% drop in revenue. That caused a number of problems. Obviously, a great number of businesses, mostly small business, had that hurt.
In part, this was due to provincial restrictions as they were told to lockdown. I will not even go into the side of the debate where the big box stores were allowed to stay open, many of which provided the same service small businesses provided. However, the mom and pop shops and stores on main street were told to lockdown and their employees were told to stay home. However, the big box stores continued to operate, most likely stealing some market share on top of what they already had and increasing their profits as a result, while almost breaking the backs of small business.
In order to qualify, businesses had to show that they had a 30% revenue drop during this pandemic. Obviously, some sectors are doing very well during this pandemic. Some sectors are hurting. What it did is it caused some businesses to watch that 30% line that had been drawn by the government. If a business earned $1 more, it would not qualify for that subsidy.
The other problems we had were that the initial rent subsidy only covered about 10% of businesses across the country, which left 90% of businesses without that coverage. If anyone needed more proof that this was a complete disaster, the Prime Minister initially gave control of this program to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, which does residential mortgage insurance and not commercial rent. Incapable of running that program, the Crown corporation subcontracted that to a company whose vice- president was married to the Prime Minister 's chief of staff.
We have businesses that are hurting, trying to get by and figuring out a way through. They are being hampered because of problems with government legislation. As I have mentioned before, the House was not back in a meaningful fashion to debate these pieces of legislation.
Early on, we saw problems with the CERB. We had problems with the wage subsidy. When it first was announced, the government said someone would only get 10% of the initial wage subsidy. Thankfully, through opposition parties, business communities and stakeholders alike, they were able to raise that level. Other countries such as Germany already had upward of 70%.
These key pieces in the legislation should have been debated. However, Parliament was then prorogued. The Liberals said that they were so focused on looking at the programs and developing them. This was done basically in a silo because Parliament was not sitting and legislators were not allowed to debate in this place.
As we move forward, we need to talk about recovery and how we do that. Rapid testing is a key part. Rapid testing has been approved in numerous countries around the world. There are products available in the European Union and the United States, but not approved here in Canada. If we want to return our economy and give it the firepower it needs, without a cure, vaccine or treatment, tools like rapid testing are our path forward.
We can imagine tourism, which has been massively impacted. We can talk about local marathons or running events. Any event and any kind of travel has been severely impacted. Hotels are feeling it. Restaurants are feeling it. However, if people can get on an airplane knowing they can take a test and in a few minutes have their result, it is our path forward. They can know the results with confidence because a number of these tests have a higher accuracy rate than the swabs that are being done now. Anyone who has had a swab knows it is not the most pleasant feeling in the world. This is our path forward. If people want to go on a cruise ship, they could go with confidence, knowing that everyone was tested and everyone had a clean result, yet the government continues to drag its feet on this.
Yes, we are in a pandemic and yes, Canadians were told to stay at home, lock down and stay safe and we continue to do that. However, we also need to talk about those businesses that are able to reopen in a safe manner because, at the end of the day, outside of all the printing the government is doing of hundreds of billions of dollars out of thin air, we still need the tax revenue coming in to continue to spend into the future. If the businesses shut down, where is the government getting the money from? If people who are working in these businesses are unemployed, where does this money come from?
The simple truth through all of this is that if we want to ensure economic expansion as we move forward, and we talk about it all the time, we need to ensure that we are prepared for this.
A number of anchors within our economy, such as the oil and gas industry and the mining industry, have taken a hit because of the current government's policies. I can name a few: Bill C-69 and the tanker ban. I could go on and on. We have, coming up, the clean fuel standard, which would significantly increase the price of food that is produced in our country. Of course, I am sure the government will come up with yet another program to solve the problem it caused in the first place, and around and around we go.
When the economy is firing on all cylinders, more people are able to keep more of their money, and that means more spending outside their necessities of housing, clothing and food. They have more discretionary spending. With discretionary spending, people are able to make purchases beyond those needs that I just listed. There are some people who believe it is just frivolous. Why would anybody want anything extra? It is because we like it. It gives us joy in our lives.
If our factories are shut down, people are not able to go back to work because we have seen uncompetitive advantages that the government has brought in through the tax code, that are forcing jobs elsewhere. I can give an example. Here in the province of Ontario, where there are some of the highest electricity prices of anywhere in North America, manufacturing is running out the door. During the Ontario Liberal rule, we lost 300,000 jobs in manufacturing.
As we go on, we need to ensure that businesses remain strong, that these programs are debated in legislatures such as this, and that the provinces work with the federal government within their own jurisdictions to manage this pandemic. Also, we need to work to ensure that we are able to safely reopen the economy. Rapid testing is one way, but so is ensuring that the programs, as in Bill C-9, are implemented in the best fashion possible. We do that through debate back and forth in chambers like this.
I appreciate the time and I look forward to the questions.