Debates of Dec. 16th, 2021

Government Business No. 4—An Act to Provide Further Support in Response to COVID-19

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague was urging people to get vaccinated and get the third dose. However, if we want to get people vaccinated, we need to hire nurses, and to hire nurses the government needs to provide health transfers. Does my colleague agree with her government's plan to wait until 2027 to provide financial support to the provinces?

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, that is a very important question, but I want to correct something my colleague said. We will continue to make health transfers to the provinces and territories. That is what we have always done and that is what we will continue to do. That is how Canada's health care system works.

We procured all of the vaccines, we bought the tools and equipment required to administer these vaccines and we sent all of that to the provinces and territories. The booster shots will be no different.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her holiday greetings. I also hope that she has a wonderful holiday season.

She talked about how proud she is of the Canadian government's response with regard to vaccines and also said she hopes this is the final pivot we need to make as we deal with the omicron variant. What I will ask her about, though, is our response globally.

What we know about the omicron variant is that it is happening because we did not allow populations around the world to get the vaccines they need. Is it not smart to not only vaccinate Canadians, as important as that is, but protect Canadians? For an actual global recovery, we will need to vaccinate everyone, but unfortunately the government still refuses to support the TRIPS waiver.

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I feel quite strongly about this. I was the parliamentary secretary for international trade and worked first-hand on this issue.

Canada was a leader at the WTO when we were discussing the TRIPS waiver. Many countries in the WTO did not want to have that discussion. We were actually a convening power to bring everybody to the table. Many other issues are causing countries around the world to have difficulty in providing vaccines to their populations. It is not just access; it is also about vaccine hesitancy and manufacturing capability.

It is a complex issue, but I fully agree with my colleague that this pandemic is not over anywhere until it is over everywhere.

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

Mr. Speaker, in the government's fiscal update, the government proposes to provide $37.4 million over three years, starting in 2021-22, to Transport Canada to support the implementation and oversight of this vaccine mandate for federally regulated air, rail and marine employees and passengers. The government is saying that it is going to provide this funding over a three-year period.

How long does the government plan on leaving in place a vaccine mandate for interprovincial travel? Is the government contemplating doing it for three years, beyond three years or even permanently? What is the government's intention with respect to this?

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the sentiment from which the question comes, but, very respectfully, I would point out that three months ago we had never heard of omicron. Therefore, to ask what our plan is with respect to vaccine mandates for federal workers over a period of the next three years is fooling ourselves into thinking we can plan three years in advance.

What the government is doing, and I believe what all members of the House are doing, is reacting to circumstances as we have information and as we understand how COVID-19 continues to mutate and evolve. We will take whatever actions are necessary to keep Canadians safe. As I have said before, we have to be vigilant and we have to take the appropriate steps at the appropriate time.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague just mentioned that we had not heard of the omicron variant three months ago. That is true, but for over a year, epidemiologists, infectious disease specialists and the WHO have been warning Canada and all countries that if we do not vaccinate the developing world, a variant of concern will eventually develop and it will come to our country. The fact that Canada and other countries have stood by while only 10% of Africa is vaccinated has helped contribute to the omicron variant.

Will the member stand in the House and state clearly for Canadians that she supports the waiver of the patent rules at the WTO to enable countries like South Africa, India and others to start producing vaccines? Does she support that waiver, because the Canadian government has not said that directly yet?

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, what I support is everybody in this world getting vaccinated. How we get there is very complex. It involves working with pharmaceutical companies. It involves educating populations as to the importance of vaccines. It also involves ensuring that the manufacturing capacity of these developing countries is going to produce vaccines that are safe for our populations.

I fully support the sentiment that my colleague brings to the House about the importance of vaccinating the entire world, but we need to ensure that it is done well and it is done in a smart way. That is the conversation Canada is engaged in at the WTO.

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

Mr. Speaker, back on October 21, the Prime Minister and the government announced that, as a priority, they would be coming out with ongoing support programs. That is the essence of this bill.

Could my colleague provide her thoughts on why Bill C-2 is so important, as we want to continue to support people and businesses?

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we came forward with Bill C-2 in response to what we heard on the ground. I have been speaking to businesses and workers. The tourism industry needs the support that is found in Bill C-2. I have been speaking to caregivers, as I am sure others in the House have, and they need the supports that are also found in Bill C-2. We are also extending sick leave benefits through this bill. I do not need to remind the House how incredibly important that is with this new wave of omicron.

Before the House adjourns for the holiday season, we must pass Bill C-2 so we can be prepared to support Canadians in their time of need.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday we learned that Canada's inflation rate is at its highest point in 30 years and that the 4.7% inflation rate is growing about 2% faster than Canadians' wages. For the average Canadian, that is equivalent to a pay cut.

We talked about “Justinflation” and said the government was behind this inflation rate. What the Liberals said in their own defence was worse than the allegation. Let me explain. They said that the inflation rate was the result of global supply chains being disrupted by COVID-19, leading to higher prices. That is a bizarre explanation, since it is the prices for Canadian products that are rising the most. For example, the cost of home heating has gone up 26%.

In Canada, we have 1.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. That domestic energy supply provides heating for Canadian families. It has nothing to do with global supply chains.

In addition, gas prices have gone up 43%. What do we have right here in Canada? We have the second-largest oil and gas reserves in the world. In that case, why are we relying on global supply chains?

Yesterday, the Prime Minister said that we are relying on foreign oil in order to save the planet. He even mocked the Conservative Party by saying that those who want to produce oil here simply want to “drill, baby, drill”. However, he is the one who wants to “drill, baby, drill”, just anywhere else in the world besides Canada.

The other day, I was in Saint John, New Brunswick. As I gazed out over the ocean, I saw a big ship that was carrying oil from the Middle East to Canada, oil coming from Egypt. Oil from the Red Sea was loaded onto that ship on Egypt's north coast, on the Mediterranean. How did the Egyptians get that oil from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean? They did so with the help of a pipeline.

The government is in favour of the pipelines that Egypt built to carry oil from the Middle East to a ship that has to cross the entire Atlantic Ocean. Ironically, that ship burns diesel fuel and increases the risk of oil spills in the ocean in order to bring that oil to eastern Canada at a higher price. Eastern Canadians are paying more for gas and other oil products. Why? It is because the Government of Canada blocked the extension of a pipeline from western Canada to Saint John, New Brunswick.

The Prime Minister says that the cost of gas is too high because of problems in the global supply chain. This policy is even more reprehensible when we know that if he had allowed a pipeline to be built and increased production of western oil, which is green, instead of importing more from the Middle East, our oil could have been delivered to Canadians in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and elsewhere in eastern Canada.

Thirdly, according to the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, the cost of food for a middle-class family will increase by $1,000 next year. A single mother will have to pay $1,000 more to feed her children.

Canada ranks third in the world for the amount of farmland per capita. Why is the government saying that global supply chains are responsible for the rising cost of food in Canada when we have the capacity to produce our own food? We have enough farmers and land to produce our own food, so let us take advantage of that.

In fact, if every Canadian had an equal share of that land, we would each have the equivalent of 33 football fields. Canada clearly has enough land to produce its own food and should be able to manage that, but it cannot because carbon taxes, red tape and other regulations prevent our farmers from producing more food more affordably.

Yesterday, the Canadian Real Estate Association announced that housing prices have gone up 20% to 25% since last year, despite Canada being second only to Russia in sheer size. Canada also has enough lumber to build more houses, so the Liberals cannot blame global supply chains for the rising cost of land in Canada, because the Earth was created thousands of years ago, long before we got here. That land is already here and is not dependent on global supply chains, so the problem is here.

Canada is not producing enough energy to heat our homes and put gas in our cars. We are not producing enough food to feed our people, and we are not building enough houses to shelter them. About 85% of young Canadians say they want to buy a house, but they cannot afford to. As the very wealthy owners of big cottages and palatial homes watch their property values rise, people who have to rent are getting poorer and poorer because the value of the dollar is shrinking by the day.

What are we producing here in Canada? We are producing money. We are printing more money. Perhaps the only way the government has found to support the forestry sector is to produce more paper money. The reality is that when there are 400 billion more dollars chasing the same number of goods, prices go up.

There is another way to go. For example, Switzerland has a 1.5% inflation rate. That is one-third of our inflation rate. Why is inflation lower in Switzerland? It is because they are not printing any money. In Switzerland, the money supply went up 6%, compared to 23% in Canada. Canada is printing four times more money, which is why our inflation rate is four times higher than Switzerland's.

People will say we cannot consume everything Canada produces. It is true that we could not possibly consume all the oil and gas, natural gas, food and all the other products we make. However, one way to fight inflation is to sell more products around the world in order to bring up the value of our dollar. If we export more of our high-value products, that has to increase the value of our dollar, and it means we can buy more on the world markets.

We are seeing this in Switzerland. Since the Swiss franc is worth 8% more than the U.S. dollar, Switzerland has a competitive advantage when purchasing products on the international market. The Swiss franc has far more power, because it is worth more. The Canadian dollar is worth 20% less than the U.S. dollar, so we have less purchasing power in international markets.

Using and producing more of our own resources is not only about providing products to our own population. It also serves to increase the value and purchasing power of our dollar internationally.

Before anyone rushes to say that a stronger dollar is bad for our exports, I would point out that that is not what happened in Switzerland. In fact, the Swiss enjoy a trade surplus in terms of international trade, meaning they sell more to the rest of the world than they purchase. Why? Because they give their businesses the freedom to produce more. The Swiss create products, while Canada prints money. That is what needs to change.

The Conservative Party's policy is about supporting the construction of new pipelines in order to provide clean, affordable energy to our own population and to export it to the rest of the world. It is about allowing our energy companies to produce natural gas to provide Canadians with more affordable heating options. It is about allowing our farmers to sell more of the food they produce at a more reasonable cost. It is about selling 15% of the 37,000 federally owned buildings that are underutilized, especially since the onset of COVID-19 and the increase in teleworking, and converting them into affordable housing.

Rather than printing money, we will create more products, which can be purchased with money. That is our approach: purchase more and spend less. Let us do this with paycheques, not debt.

Statistics Canada reported a 30-year high in inflation. Inflation rising 2% faster than wages means a real pay cut for Canadians, and the government's defence against the allegation that it was to blame was worse than the charge. It claimed that the cause is COVID disruptions to international supply chains. The question is this: Why would we need international supply chains for the products that are rising most quickly in price, when those same products are made here in Canada?

Energy, food and real estate have increased more than almost any other product in the basket of goods Canadians buy. What do we have? We have energy, we have farmland and we have land and lumber for housing, so why is our country so dependent on the rest of the world for the goods that we have beneath our feet right here at home?

Let us go through them.

Home heating has gone up 26% in one year. Canada has 1,300 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Why are we depending on the rest of the world to heat our homes, when we have the energy to do it right under our feet here in Canada?

Gas is up 43%. What we do have here? We have the second-biggest supply of oil on planet earth, and yet the Prime Minister says we should not produce it here. He even tried to mock others by accusing them of them “Drill, baby, drill!”, but “Drill, baby, drill!” is his policy. He wants to drill oil wells all around the world; he just does not want any of the wages from those drilling projects to go to Canadian workers.

I stood at the Bay of Fundy, looking out at the Atlantic Ocean two weeks ago, watching a tanker that had travelled from the northern coast of Egypt through the Mediterranean and all the way to Saint John, where it will have been processed at the Irving refinery. Do members know how they got the oil onto that tanker? It was by a pipeline that went from the Red Sea across northern Egypt to the Mediterranean. Do not tell me this Prime Minister is against pipelines. He is in favour of every pipeline that one could build anywhere outside of Canada, as long as it does not use Canadian steel, pay Canadian wages, hire Canadian energy workers or provide jobs to refinery workers in eastern Canada. As long as the paycheques go to other countries, he is 100% in favour of pipelines.

Now, to go back to inflation, the question is this: Why are we paying a premium for Saudi, middle eastern, African and American oil when we have the second-biggest supply here in Canada? That should not be a question of international supply chains; it should be a question of domestic self-sufficiency.

The next issue is food, which is up $1,000 next year, according to Dalhousie University's food institute. It expects that the average family will spend an extra grand feeding itself next year. Why? We have the third-largest area of farmland per capita in the world, and we have the best farmers, so why can we not supply our own nutritious food? The answer is that our foreign competitors do not apply carbon taxes at our rate to the farmers who are producing their food, nor do they face the same kind of regulatory and red-tape obstacles that drive up food production. Therefore, our farmers have to pass those costs on to consumers in the form of inflation, and our consumers then have to rely, embarrassingly and humiliatingly, on foreign supply chains to feed ourselves, even while we have been blessed with the best and the third-largest area of farmland on planet earth.

Then we come to housing. Just yesterday, the Canadian Real Estate Association reported that Canada has seen a 20% to 25% increase in real prices, which is the single biggest increase on record ever. Not adjusted for seasonal variation, the average house now costs $720,000 and it is over a million bucks to buy the average house, not a mansion, in Canada's biggest city, Toronto.

We are developing in this country a landed aristocracy of extremely wealthy people who make more money through the appreciation of their real estate than they do from the wages of their labour, while we have a growing class of working millennials who now have no hope of ever owning a home.

According to an Ipsos survey, 85% of millennials say they want to own a home but cannot afford to. Who would be surprised about that when one has to pay a million dollars. One would have to save up $100,000 in order to make a down payment on the average home in Toronto today at 10% down. If a person is saving $500 a month, that is 200 months to save up for a down payment to have the privilege of then bearing a mortgage of $900,000.

We have the second-biggest housing bubble in the world, according to Bloomberg. Again, how does one blame that on foreign supply chains? By definition, land does not have supply chains. It is already here under our feet, and we have the second-biggest land mass on earth. If we spread Canadians out evenly, each and every one of them would have 33 CFL-sized football fields to themselves. We would not actually be able to see another person in Canada if we were spread out evenly. We have more places in Canada where there is no one than we have places where there is anyone, yet we cannot find room to house our own people. This is ridiculous.

Vancouver and Toronto are the second and fifth most unaffordable housing markets in the world when we compare median income to median house prices, more unaffordable than Manhattan; San Francisco; London, England; Singapore and countless other places with less land, more money and more people. Why? One cannot blame international supply chains or COVID for that. In fact, all the land and almost all the housing on the market today was built before the first case of COVID even hit our shores. As a result, one cannot blame any of those things. This is, by definition, a homemade problem, pun intended.

The government's defence for its 30-year high in inflation is ironically worse than the allegation itself. It has created an economy where we cannot supply ourselves with the very things God blessed this land with before we even arrived here. We have more land, yet we cannot grow our own food. We have more lumber, yet we cannot build our own homes. We have more energy, yet we cannot heat or power our lives. We are hopelessly dependent on the rest of the world, and that is why, when prices go up, we are so weak in trying to pay the price for it.

Some will say it is not that simple and we cannot simply supply every Canadian with domestically generated goods. What we can do, where we have to buy on an international level, is have more purchasing power with a stronger dollar. When we compete for scarce global goods, we do so against countries that have real purchasing power.

I give the example of Switzerland. It has increased its money supply by 6% since COVID struck. We increased ours by 23%. What is the result? Its inflation is 1.5% and our inflation is more than three times higher, at 4.7%.

Part of that is because the Swiss franc has real purchasing power. The Swiss can go out into the world market and buy things with their money that we cannot. Their franc is worth 8% more than the U.S. dollar and ours is worth 20% less. Therefore, when there is a widget that a Canadian needs and a Swiss citizen needs and we both walk up and we have the loonie and they have the franc, let us be frank about who is getting that widget. They are getting it, because they have good, sound money. They produce things while we produce cash, and as a result, they have more valuable money.

Before we hear Liberals whine on about how we could not export goods if we had a powerful dollar on the international markets, the Swiss are running a trade surplus, because they do not rely on cheap cash to sell their goods. They rely on a productive economy that generates value to sell their goods.

That is how to increase the well-being of a population. It is how to lift people out of poverty and give them an opportunity. It is not by producing cash, but by producing more of what cash buys.

Let us unleash the free enterprise system to grow more affordable and nutritious food, to supply more affordable homes to our people and to bring the prodigious energy with which our land has been blessed to our consumers. In other words, let us make more and cost less, with paycheques, not debt.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his comprehensive look a this. It was a refreshing, revisionist review of neo-conservative economics.

I am really glad to hear that he has awakened to the housing crisis in this country. Those of us in the NDP have been pointing this out for decades. I come from the Lower Mainland of B.C., and I can assure him that the housing crisis did not occur today and did not occur in the last three or four years. It has been building for the last 20 years. He was a member of the government that was in power in this country from 2006 to 2015, when the housing crisis was developing in the Lower Mainland.

There is another thing I want to mention. Of course, he has been a big proponent of free trade. However, what does free trade do, which we have been warning about for years? When all the tariffs are reduced at the borders, capital flees to wherever it is cheapest to produce. This reduces Canada's ability to compete.

Does the member now agree with the NDP that the neo-liberal free trade policy was wrong and made Canada dependent on other countries for primary goods? What responsibility does he take for the housing crisis in this country?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will take responsibility for the fact that someone could buy an average house in Canada for $450,000 when our party was in power. I will take full responsibility for that. Right now, that price is $720,000. It is 58% higher today than it was when the Conservatives were in office.

The member is quite right that in his province, the problem is the worst. There is an NDP mayor in Vancouver, and we cannot get anything built. It is great for the rich. Do not get me wrong, it is not bad for everybody. Those who have a mansion in Vancouver are getting richer every day. They do not have to do a lick of work. They can sit back on their big, fat assets and get richer every day. There is also an NDP premier who is equally antidevelopment and is preventing people from building houses for more affordable living. The snobs who like to keep poor people and minorities out of their neighbourhoods are doing just fine in that NDP city, because they will not allow any construction to happen in those ritzy, trendy, champagne, socialist neighbourhoods.

As for the issue of wages, the places that are beating us have high wages. Free-enterprise Ireland, free-enterprise Switzerland and free-enterprise Singapore have significantly higher wages than there are here in Canada, and they are beating us all around. High wages are good for competitiveness. High cost of government is not.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I was elected to the House of Commons about two years ago. I just have to laugh every time I hear the Conservatives complain that the Liberals are not doing enough for the oil industry. The Liberals are doing more than the Conservatives. They bought a pipeline and, for the past two years, they have invested $14 billion a year in the oil industry.

In Canada, greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise ever since the Liberals came to power in 2015. They promised to plant two billion trees, but only 0.5% have been planted. The Liberals are better than the Conservatives for the industry. There are even some environmentalists who miss the Conservatives, and that is saying something.

I have some advice for my Conservative friends. They should take a page from the Liberals' playbook and add the words “green” and “sustainable” to the end of every sentence. That way, they will get elected.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to point out that it is not the Liberals who are doing the most for oil consumption, it is the Bloc.

The Bloc Québécois wants us to subsidize Bombardier. What fuels Bombardier aircraft? Is it oil? Are these aircraft fuelled by solar energy? What do we find at the refineries in Montreal and Quebec City? Oil, but oil from the United States. We need to pay attention to that.

The Bloc supports only foreign oil companies. No one in the world does more for foreign oil than the Bloc Québécois. In my opinion, it is important to point that out.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate)]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the intervention by the member for Carleton today and I certainly heard a lot. Every time he addresses housing, he seems to talk about building new housing and what I imagine, based on his comments, would be more subdivisions and single detached houses. This is important and we definitely always need to focus on it at all levels of government, but what I never hear the Conservatives speak about, particularly the member, is affordable housing for folks who need their rent geared to their income. This is not just about housing affordability but affordable housing.

Can the member speak to his position, and perhaps the position of the Conservative Party, when it comes to people who need housing that is more geared to their incomes, folks who are really struggling out there, not just people who are looking to own a new single detached home?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, let me correct the member. Every single Canadian needs housing that is geared to their income. By definition, people cannot pay their mortgage on a house that is out of line with their income. However, that is exactly the problem the government has created.

When the government started printing cash in the spring of 2020, housing prices were dropping. Then suddenly it reversed course and went on a rampage that we have not seen at any time in this country's history, according to the top economists for The Canadian Real Estate Association just yesterday. What has that meant? It has meant that not only are the very poor unable to afford housing now, but when they calculate how many months it would take to save up for a future down payment, they realize they do not have enough living years to get there. There is now a class of people in this country who have made the mathematical calculation that they will never own a home.

I want the member, before he and his government start printing more cash and inflating the assets of their rich friends, to think carefully about the very dangerous societal impacts of a country where millions of people believe they will be dispossessed of home ownership forever.

[Clifford Small, Conservative, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Mr. Speaker, back in 2008 and 2009, Canada was the envy of the world when we sailed through the financial crisis. Why was that, and what policy differences are needed to put us at number one in the G7 again in terms of the economy?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I can say objectively that was the best question we have had so far. There is no doubt about it.

The member is absolutely right. We were the last to go into the 2008 recession and we were the first to come out of it. Why? It was because our spending was timely, targeted and temporary, because we cut red tape and taxes to stimulate investment and growth, and we did so while balancing the budget only four years later. We managed to keep our debt-to-GDP ratio the lowest in the entire G7, a great fortune that the government inherited from the Conservatives but unfortunately is quickly squandering.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am quite fond of my colleague from Carleton, so I will tell him up front that I do not agree with my colleague from Longueuil—Saint-Hubert.

I believe that the Conservatives are really good when it comes to oil. Just look at the previous session when they moved a motion that said that oil was irreplaceable and it was better than air and water.

I will nevertheless remind my colleague from Carleton, who often tells me that the top-selling vehicle is the F-150, and that there will soon be an electric version, that repeating a lie over and over does not make it true.

The majority of the oil that Quebec consumes comes from Canada. Would my colleague agree that if we want to create wealth we may have to look at transitioning to cleaner energies, which would involve limiting our use of oil? I would like to hear his thoughts on that.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, because of the Bloc, foreign oil companies are able to sell more oil in eastern Canada. That is a fact. All of the oil coming from the Atlantic Ocean, in eastern Canada, comes from foreign oil companies, and the Bloc supports—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

I apologize for interrupting the member, but there seems to be a problem with the interpretation.

The problem is now fixed.

The hon. member for Carleton.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, because there is no pipeline to carry oil from western Canada, eastern Canada has to get its oil from the Middle East.

Given how much they support Saudi Arabian oil, they should be called the Saudi Arabian Bloc instead of the Bloc Québécois. I do not know why. Maybe they can explain it.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague and friend, the member for Shefford.

Bill C-2 came back to the House after being examined and even improved in committee. I want to explain to the House why the Bloc Québécois supported the principle of the bill and voted in favour of it. As the omicron variant has unfortunately reminded us, we are still in the midst of a pandemic and many sectors are still struggling. From the outset, we collectively decided to support those sectors, knowing that we would need those workers and businesses when the pandemic was over.

Bill C-2 extends the Canada emergency wage subsidy and the Canada emergency rent subsidy, but in a more targeted way, in order to help sectors that are struggling, such as the tourism and hospitality industry. I am thinking here about the challenges facing large hotel groups, since international conferences and other such events have been put on pause. The bill also targets another sector that is very important to us, the arts and culture industry, and it contains measures for businesses in other struggling industries. The bill also proposes support for individuals who have to care for a sick person quarantined at home because of COVID-19, as well as support measures for provinces or regions if they have to go back into lockdown. We are in favour of all of that.

When we read the first version of the bill, we and many of our colleagues in the House noticed that self-employed workers had been overlooked, since the bill did not set anything aside for them after CERB ended. We wanted to ensure that self-employed workers in these struggling sectors would be supported.

The first question I asked the Minister of Finance was about the absence of support measures for these individuals in the targeted sectors. She replied and repeated publicly that the program, the government and the department were not in a position to provide targeted support in those sectors, and officials appeared before the Standing Committee on Finance to confirm this. My colleague from Elmwood—Transcona also raised that issue at committee, as did my colleague from Shefford.

This is all very disappointing. After nearly two years of the pandemic, the government and its departments have not been able to evolve, move in new directions, be more flexible and better adapt the existing tools, especially by targeting certain sectors. This was done for the wage subsidy, but not for self-employed workers in the same sectors. It makes no sense.

Nevertheless, we negotiated and were guaranteed that there would be a support program for self-employed workers in the arts and culture sector. The Minister of Finance came to committee to tell us that, and the Minister of Canadian Heritage went into great detail explaining what it would look like, referring to the Quebec model in particular. In Quebec, the government supports foundations, which in turn support the self-employed workers in the sector. Since we found it unacceptable to leave out self-employed arts and culture workers, the guarantees we got suit us fine, and we are okay with things on that front.

The Bloc Québécois asked the government and the Minister of Finance for something else. The original version of the bill gave the minister and the Governor in Council sweeping power, in legal jargon, to change all of the terms of the bill and meet any new needs that might arise. According to the criteria, a businesses had to have lost 50% of its sales, or 40% for businesses in a targeted sector, during the qualifying periods in order to be eligible. Are those good percentages? Unfortunately, we did not have time to explore these issues in depth due to the short timeframe we were given.

The Minister of Finance and government officials confirmed that Bill C‑2, as written, gave the minister the power to make changes by way of regulation and to adjust support levels for targeted sectors.

That is a crucial element for the Bloc Québécois. During a pandemic, the situation and the circumstances can change fast. Some sectors that we feel need support because they play a crucial and strategic role in our economy may find themselves struggling. We need to do something about that. We actually got confirmation on that from the Minister of Finance.

The Bloc Québécois will be there to remind her. Quebec's manufacturing sector has approached us about this. Because of the pandemic, there is a huge shortage of semiconductors, and major Quebec companies that use semiconductors have seen very uneven or slowed production. The Minister of Finance told us that the numbers show the situation is not as bad as we feared, and she promised to give us those numbers. I would like to remind her that we are still waiting for those numbers. It has been a week, and we have not received anything. She could certainly do better on that front.

What the Bloc Québécois likes about Bill C‑2 is that, if the Minister of Finance needed to better support this sector, she would have the power to do so through regulations. This could be done quickly. The same goes for the aerospace industry. We are committed to talking about this at length when we come back to the House to see where things stand and how the needs have evolved. Again, the Bloc Québécois will be there to remind the Minister of Finance of the power she has and to remind her to use it for the good of the economy.

I will address another issue that is missing from Bill C‑2. It is an incredible injustice that has to do with a serious crisis. I am talking about the situation with seniors who had to rely on various forms of emergency benefits during the pandemic and who are now getting part of their guaranteed income supplement taken away, because the Canada emergency response benefit is not considered working income; their file was processed by Service Canada, which prevented them from proceeding with a new calculation for the current year; or they were required to make a repayment in the same year instead of in installments over a few years.

I am sure that my colleague from Shefford will speak to this in detail in her speech. The Bloc Québécois considers this a serious problem. We contacted the Minister of Finance and the respective ministers in Quebec about this both during and after the election campaign, urging them to act because this was important. We asked again in relation to Bill C‑2. The Minister of Finance promised to deal with the situation in the days to follow. We were led to believe that it would be in the economic update. We finally got $742 million. That is not what we were looking for, but it seems promising. We are waiting for the details before we make up our minds.

The big problem, however, is that the money would not be available until May 2022. Seniors have been living with reduced incomes for months now. The poorest seniors, the ones who receive the guaranteed income supplement, already have limited purchasing power. We are now struggling with inflation, but the fix would not come until next May. That is unacceptable. The Bloc Québécois will keep reminding the government that it needs to speed up the process.

We needed more time in committee. We were rushed, and it took the government two months to recall the House after an unnecessary election. Thus, we were unable to improve the bill as much as we could have.

However, I would like to remind members that we adopted an amendment proposed by my colleague from Elmwood—Transcona. That amendment does improve Bill C-2. I imagine that my colleague will speak more about it during his speech. An amendment moved by the member for Carleton was also adopted. However, the study of a bill requires more time.

In closing, I want to thank my colleagues who supported me at the Standing Committee on Finance. I am thinking of the member for Drummond concerning arts and culture, the member for Terrebonne, who is interested in pandemic-related assistance programs, my colleague from Shefford, who is interested in seniors, and my colleague from Abitibi—Témiscamingue, who also supported me.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, one of the things that surprises me about the Liberals' solution to the GIS issue is that it is only one payment that may not even be made until May. We already know that seniors are in crisis and need help now.

In the early days of the pandemic, in March 2020, hundreds of billions of dollars went to the banks. At this moment, real people are grappling with a real problem that urgently needs a solution. However, the government is telling them that they will have to wait another few months, even though they have already been waiting for a solution for several months. These people are living in their cars or on the streets. It is wholly unacceptable that they will not receive help until May.

What are my colleague's thoughts on that?