Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Abitibi—Témiscamingue for his fine speech. I also want to say hello to his staffer who is just coming back to work. I would like to continue in the same vein as my colleague.
With respect to the motion we are studying, we can agree on the preamble, which states that Canadian businesses are in distress and need help. From the start of the crisis, we have been talking to all parliamentarians and the government about the need for targeted assistance.
However, I disagree with elements of the motion that say that we will help businesses by removing barriers to job creation, such as taxes and regulation; by postponing the increase of the Canada pension plan payroll taxes; and by postponing the increase of the carbon tax and the alcohol escalator tax planned for 2021. I will apologize right away to the interpreters but, in my opinion, with such measures we are shooting ourselves in the foot rather than helping businesses.
Not so long ago in the House, on November 3, I talked about—as does the opposition motion—the fact that businesses are having a hard time staying afloat.
On September 30, we learned from a survey by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business that 26% of businesses in the arts, recreation and information industry and 24% of businesses in the hospitality industry were actively considering bankruptcy as a result of COVID-19. It is safe to say that businesses are in trouble.
We could also talk about the aerospace industry, which was conspicuously absent from the throne speech. We are still waiting for answers. It is taking a long time for measures to be put in place. Companies are still struggling because the measures were poorly adapted to their reality during this crisis. Take, for example, the tourism industry, the hospitality industry and the arts, culture and entertainment industry. They have all basically been shut down for months.
If we want to support businesses, we first need to support those who keep them up and running, the workers. Millions of people are still out of work and are still waiting for measures to be taken. The Canada emergency response benefit had to be adapted to the situation and, still today, there are people out of work who are not getting a cheque because we are still waiting for direction and guidance to help these people properly transition from emergency benefits to either the new employment insurance benefits or the new recovery benefits. That does not make any sense at all.
If we want to support the recovery, I think we also need to support the efforts everyone is making for the public good. We are not going to revive the economy if we ask businesses to shirk their social obligations, such as contributing their share to the Canada pension plan.
Businesses have been telling us for a long time that we need to cut the excessive red tape. In order to do so, we need to support their social measures that contribute to the economy as a whole. That is where we need to act. If we do not, we will be depriving ourselves of some very important economic levers.
Seven provinces had to agree to amend and improve the Canada pension plan, and this had not happened in a long time. If we were to postpone the increase to the employers' CPP contributions, we would be taking that new pension plan away from workers. This is an important matter, and I think we need to be doing the opposite.
They are talking about postponing the carbon tax. Do they want to postpone it so that they can get rid of it? We know full well that the Conservatives are not particularly fond of the carbon tax. However, it is practically our only means of achieving the Paris targets.
Surely everyone saw the article in La Presse+ this morning about a report that just came out about climate change. The title of the article speaks volumes: “Le Canada parmi les cancres”, or Canada lags far behind. In the report, released on Monday, we learned that Canada ranks 58th out of 61 on the Climate Change Performance Index, 56th out of 61 in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and 54th out of 61 in terms of renewable energy production; when it comes to global energy consumption, Canada comes in last.
Despite all of that, they want to postpone the carbon tax? That makes no sense. I think we need to keep the tax, because it encourages good practices to address climate change.
I know that the opposition will say that it is not asking that we abolish the carbon tax on businesses, but only that we postpone it. It would be a mistake to postpone the tax in order to abolish it. We need these economic levers to support things as basic as our social programs, such as pension plans. We also need them to support our efforts, late in coming, to counter climate change. We also have other solutions for supporting businesses going through hard times.
As someone said earlier, we need to adopt a sectoral approach. As we know, some sectors have managed to do well. Others, however, are still staring into the abyss, namely the arts, culture, tourism and restaurant and hotel services. Jobs in these sectors are occupied mainly by women, and that has an effect on families.
If we want to support employment, we must first support businesses’ ability to retain their workers until the recovery. What do we need to do in the period before the end of the crisis? We need to strengthen the wage subsidy and implement measures that will help businesses improve their situation.
As my colleague said, and as we have been repeating for months now, it took time before we came up with a response that meets businesses’ needs in terms of rent. We must also provide support for fixed costs.
We need a plan. We expressed our disappointment with the fact that the government’s measures did not include a plan to deal with the crisis. In our opinion, to help businesses, we must first have the ability to protect our economy and the public good. That is why we should not ask businesses to shirk their responsibilities.