Debates of April 21st, 2021

Income Tax Act

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs and to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to my colleague's bill. I can appreciate that he has put in a great deal of effort to get it to this particular point.

There are some very serious concerns in regard to the bill and the impact it will have. I am not 100% convinced that this is the best direction to go. I find it interesting that the member says, for example, that this is all about the family farm and that the family farm needs this particular break. My understanding is that parents can already sell a family business directly to their child, while claiming the lifetime capital gains exemption on the resulting capital gain. I would be interested in hearing my colleague's comments in regard to that aspect.

The issue at hand, in the eyes of many, is not about passing on the family business; rather, it is about corporations. There are all sorts of other issues that come to mind when we talk about corporations.

I am not as familiar with the farming community as the member would be, given his background versus mine. However, what I can say is that I have had the opportunity to visit many farms over the years. Growing up, I can remember being out in Saskatchewan and doing some cultivating on the big John Deere four-wheel tractors on a family farm. There was a belief that the farmers running the farms had them handed down and that they intended to hand them down to their children.

Even though I have some personal, first-hand experience, I do not want to say that I have a complete understanding of all aspects of farming. However, I do support family farms, and I would like to see us enhance them and give them strength.

A lot of family farms are like small businesses, and I think the Government of Canada has very clearly shown its support for small businesses. We have seen that in a variety of ways. A lot of them have been highlighted during the pandemic. We often talk about some of the benefits the government has brought forward, and I suspect that rural communities and even farmers would have been afforded the opportunity to participate in some of the programs. This highlighted the need that is there. It is very real.

Bill C-208 proposes amendments that could easily be misused by corporations, which could look for tax planning opportunities. I do not believe that the member has addressed that issue head on and provided the types of changes necessary to provide assurances.

My New Democratic friends in particular talk a lot about tax avoidance. I would be very interested in hearing them provide their thoughts on that specific issue. Have they looked into that aspect of the legislation? Are we creating opportunities, by passing this legislation, that could provide for tax avoidance?

This is a legitimate question, and it is an area of concern that was not addressed to the degree it could have and should have been addressed at the committee stage. It is a legitimate concern. I would be very interested in hearing what the New Democrats have to say about it.

The former small business minister, who I got to know well because she was the House leader of the government, often talked about the importance of small businesses. I have said in the past that they are the backbone of the economy. We can further add to that to show how important our farmers are. They are the ones putting food on our tables and contributing to Canada's overall GDP and exports. They feed the world. The crops we are able to provide around the world are very impressive. The growth in the Province of Manitoba of the canola industry has been very impressive. It has gone from virtually nowhere years ago to a major crop recognized around the world. We often hear about the importance of prairie wheat and that it is feeding people around the world. We can take a sense of pride in that and look at ways to support it.

In the budget, we heard about a number of initiatives. One that comes to mind right offhand is in the area of drying grains. The budget attempts to deal with that particular issue by supporting farmers.

We could talk about how we supported small businesses through the development of programs during the pandemic, such as the Canada emergency wage subsidy program, which has been very helpful to small businesses in general. We came up with the Canada emergency business account too. Another one I often reference for small businesses in particular is the Canada emergency rent subsidy program. These things are very real and tangible.

We know that many businesses continue to face stress and uncertainty as a direct result of COVID-19. That is why in many ways the government has stepped up to the plate to make sure there is support during these unprecedented times. I referenced the Canada emergency business account, which helped somewhere in the neighbourhood of three-quarters of a million small businesses. We are talking about tens of billions of dollars in loans. The Canada emergency wage subsidy program affected several million people, and, again, tens of billions of dollars were spent on it. There is the additional lockdown support. There was support for the agriculture and agri-food sector. The government recognized it as an essential service and provided support to it. We are committed to supporting producers and businesses so they can continue to provide for Canadians.

We have taken unprecedented action to support farmers, ranchers, food businesses and food processors across the value chain, and have provided support for vulnerable populations. For example, we quickly unlocked the $5 billion in additional Farm Credit Canada lending capacity and launched $100 million for a new agriculture and food business solutions fund to ensure that businesses in the sector have the support they need. We also increased the Canadian Dairy Commission's borrowing capacity by a couple of hundred million dollars. That was to allow us to support costs associated with the temporary storage of things like cheese and butter to avoid food waste.

A number of programs were put into place to support our producers. Programs provided dollars to foreign workers—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

We have to leave it at that.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Berthier—Maskinongé.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-208, which would significantly help businesses in Quebec and Canada with succession planning.

I once again want to congratulate my colleague from Brandon—Souris for introducing this bill. The Bloc Québécois considers succession planning to be essential to agriculture and all other sectors. We have supported this sector for a very long time. In fact, we started advocating for this idea back in 2005, after the Union des producteurs agricoles and the Fédération de la relève agricole du Québec issued a joint report that talked about the survival of our fishing businesses and farms.

We are talking about taxation, exemptions and various other topics, but what we are really talking about are small and medium-sized businesses, which are the backbone of our economy. We need to keep these businesses alive and make sure they survive. We need to make sure that these small businesses can keep going and that they are not put at a disadvantage where they will end up being bought out by big corporations. The survival of these small businesses is directly connected to the survival of our regions. This is why I am appealing to all of my colleagues.

I will never get used to it, but unfortunately, I once again sense that there is partisanship at play. It does not matter which party introduced the bill. What matters is that members look at the bill and ask themselves whether it is good for people. If it is good for people, then they should vote in favour of it. We need to correct this serious injustice. By protecting our small businesses, we are protecting our economic vitality. This is about sustainability, saving jobs and keeping knowledge in the community. As I just mentioned, it is about stopping the exodus of young people to urban centres. If they are able to take over the family business, then they will stay in the region.

Before I go on, I would like to give a nod to my colleague from Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, who introduced a similar bill in a previous Parliament. I commend him for that.

The Bloc Québécois defends the human-scale business model. I talk a lot about agriculture because I am very biased in favour of the farming community, but this is about all kinds of businesses. Human-scale businesses are the ones that keep regions vibrant and schools filled with children because there are families living in the community. We are not talking about a mega-farm that bought the land from eight of its neighbours, leaving only one family. Instead, there are eight families. That is the model we want to promote. In order to defend that model, we need to pass this bill. That is imperative. We have already been talking about it for too long.

Our SMEs are what keep us alive. It is a sector that has not received enough encouragement. I talk a lot about agriculture, but we want to protect innovative SMEs that could also sell their products abroad.

According to a 2018 estimate, between 30,000 and 60,000 Quebec businesses will not find new owners in the years to come. If they do not find new owners, they will die. If they die, 150,000 jobs and $8 billion to $10 billion in revenue will disappear.

In agriculture, it has long been said that every day, a farm disappears. That has not been the case this past year because there has been a slight increase in the number of businesses, which is great. We are happy about that, but it was no thanks to the government. It was because dynamic people started from scratch and created micro-farms. That is a good thing. We are happy about that, but we still see farms disappearing when they should be staying in business. We could do better. We can do better. Why are we not doing better?

I want us to take that step and move forward. Many of my colleagues have talked about numbers and statistics. I have lots of numbers too, but I am once again not sticking to my notes, which is just fine by me.

I want to talk about real people, real cases like the certified organic, 23,000-tap maple syrup operation owned by parents who are paying accountants a fortune to figure out how they can set up the transfer. Does another business have to buy the business? This is the parents' pension fund, and they want to pass it on to their children. They have to make a cruel choice. It makes no sense. That is the kind of example people keep sharing with me to this very day.

The dairy farm in Lac-Saint-Jean is another example. They keep postponing transferring the farm because they cannot come up with a solution, because there is no solution.

I would like to correct something my Liberal colleague said a moment ago. It is not true that the capital gains exemption can be used, otherwise we would not be voting on Bill C-208. I really hope my colleague will have a closer look at this file because in the cases brought to my attention, people are racking their brains for days, weeks and months, even paying a fortune to accountants.

On the other hand, the Liberal government likes to make people fill out complicated paperwork, to the point where they are forced to hire others to fill it out; that is how complicated it is. This seems to make the Liberals happy.

The Bloc Québécois does not think like that. We want to simplify people's lives and support the next generation, our youth and the people who want to live in our regions.

I want to share another example, and this is a true story.

A young person was nearing the end of negotiations to take over the family farm when he left on a trip. While he was away, his parents received an offer from someone outside the family that they could not refuse. The person offered ten times as much. The parents ended up selling the farm to the stranger. That type of situation destroys families and leaves permanent scars.

There are other examples of parents who hand over their business to their children out of a sense of obligation because they would lose sleep if they did not allow their son to take over the farm. As a result, they end up bitter and living in poverty. This also leaves scars. There are inn owners who resign themselves to paying a fortune in taxes. The father resigns himself to living on half of what he anticipated for his retirement. If that is not disgusting then what is?

Come on. We are the government. We have no right not to change this. Bill C-208 is very simple. It amends the Income Tax Act to give people who hand over their business to a relative the same privileges as someone who sells their business to a stranger. That is the right thing to do. Where is the problem? Where is the tax evasion?

Seriously, I sometimes find it difficult to remain calm when I hear the Liberals tell us that this could lead to tax evasion. We have been talking to them forever about tax havens and nothing has happened. Are they kidding me? Are they talking about tax evasion and SMEs? It does not happen often, but I am pretty much speechless. I could not even speak earlier. I told myself that it was not true, that my colleague did not say that, but he just did. We are talking about millions of dollars in tax havens. What about the web giants? How long have the Liberals been waffling to avoid taxing them? The idea is to ensure the survival of other smaller companies, such as our regional media, but they prefer it big and complicated. They favour their friends.

I am tired of a system that goes after and punishes the little guy. Small businesses are forced to fill out 28 forms, which stifles any economic momentum. Let us talk about the money. The Liberals have said that this will cost more than $1 billion, but that is not true. If I recall correctly, in 2017, the cost was estimated at $256 million. This really gets to me.

People thinking in terms of microeconomics see this issue only as a business that ceases to exist. Say the farm is sold to someone outside the family and is merged with a larger company. There is much more at stake here because the suppliers, the employees and the creditors are losing a business partner.

Family transfers are good because they allow for stability and familiarity. People know the business they have been dealing with for 25 or 35 years. When the son takes over the business, it is still the same business. He will keep it going.

Quebec changed its tax laws in 2016, yet another example of how Quebec is ahead. This week, the example was day care. This is good news, as long as we get the money.

I would like the House to come to that realization in this case too. Once again, the federal government is trying to catch up with Quebec laws. I am not saying that in a derogatory way. It is the truth.

Independent studies have shown that 47% of SME owners intend to exit their business within the next five years and 72% of them plan to exit within the next decade. In the fishing industry, a very high percentage of business owners are over the age of 50. Some might say that 50 is the prime of life. It is for me. However, that also means that the next generation needs to take over.

I am making a heartfelt plea and I want to send another message. To the government members who use doublespeak and make promises in private or during meetings by saying that this cause is important and that they are going to work on it, I want to say that now is the time to prove it. This is a good bill, and I am asking members to pass it.

Young people in Quebec and Canada are watching us. Business owners, those who support us and pay taxes are watching the government and waiting for results.

This is the first time that this bill has made it this far. Let us pass it.

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

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-208 on the transfer of small businesses, family farms and fishing corporations between family members.

It is no secret to members in the House that the New Democrats definitely believe that the ultra-rich and wealthy ought to be paying their fair share, and we have done a very good job of making a case for that in this Parliament. We have proposed some concrete measures for how that might be done.

We have also been champions for small businesses in Canada. We know they are the backbone of the Canadian economy, with 80% of the jobs in our economy created by small business owners. We appreciate farmers and fishers and what they contribute to the Canadian economy and to the world, with all the food they export outside of Canada the world over.

These are important industries. The businesses within them, whether it is a farm or business, are developed by families and become part of the family. Those families are known in their communities. As the former member said, they have relations with suppliers and others within their communities. Being able to pass that family business on to their children is important. It is important for the family from an identity point of view and from the family's economic point of view. However, it can also be important to communities as well, that sense of stability and to ensure that the people who are employed at those businesses and people who do business with those businesses continue to enjoy those relationships and the economic benefits of them. This is why I am quite pleased to stand in support of the bill before us.

Earlier, the member for Winnipeg North talked about the NDP's concern for tax evasion, and he is absolutely right. We can talk about tax havens. New Democratic members have had private members' bills before the House, members who are serious about taking action on the biggest tax evaders. However, some of the small businesses in our communities, and I think of a small business I know, a sign company that a husband and wife developed over 30 or 40 years, want to pass the business to their children. They are not the people who are shunting money out to the Barbados, Cayman Islands and other such places.

The fact is that if business owners choose to sell to their children, under the current tax rules, they will pay considerably more than if they sell to a complete stranger, so there is a principle of fairness here. It just does not make sense that by selling a business that is the life's work of a family within the family that it would be penalized and have to pay more. That is what we are trying to address here.

I think the member for Winnipeg North misunderstands the bill, frankly, when he mentions the capital gains exemption. Of course, the very point of the bill is that if people are selling to immediate family members, they do not benefit from the capital gains exemption. That sale is not taxed as a capital gain; it is taxed as a dividend. The whole point of the legislation is to allow those family members to benefit from the very capital gain lifetime exemption to which the member for Winnipeg North was speaking.

I think some members do not necessarily expect that when the member for Winnipeg North gets up to speak, that he will have a very detailed knowledge of what he is speaking about, but that is no excuse for his government, or the ministry or other members of his party for that matter. They should hold themselves to a higher standard and really come to have an appreciation of what is in the legislation.

Why, when the New Democrats are so concerned about tax evasion, do we support the bill? There are a couple of things.

One of measures in the bill is that to get this different tax treatment under capital gains as opposed to dividends, the family member who receives or purchases the business has to continue to be the owner of that business for five years as opposed to the current two years. That is my understanding. It is meant to promote the idea that if the sale is happening, it is happening because someone within the family genuinely wants to take over the business, not just flip it for sale. Therefore, if within those five years, the business is sold again, then it is retroactively treated as a dividend sale and taxed appropriately, taxed as it is under the current legislation. At that point, it is not about successorship within a family, it has become something else.

One of the things that gives me comfort is that the bill is not the product of one political party that might have a particular agenda. A former NDP member of Parliament, Guy Caron, developed this private member's bill. He put a lot of work into it. As the NDP finance critic, he was someone who did excellent work on tax evasion and was very concerned about it. It was one of the things that motivated him to get into politics. He did that not just as an amateur within politics who was assigned the finance portfolio, but he did it as somebody who worked as an economist his whole life prior to getting into politics.

He understood very well not just the issue of tax evasion but also the particular dynamics of the bill. He sought to craft a bill that really would honour the idea of being able to pass a business down within generations of a family and to do that in the right way, so it did not just become a loophole or an excuse to evade taxes, something the New Democrats fiercely oppose.

Those are some of the elements, both concretely within the bill with respect to what the legislation would do but also where the legislation comes from, that give me confidence that this is not about introducing another means for tax evasion into the tax code. It really is about settling a fundamental unfairness, where people who spend their lives pouring their heart and soul into a business and make it a success, whose children have oftentimes been part of that success, and then want to ensure it gets passed on within the family and can do so without paying a large financial penalty. This also helps to ensure that these assets for our communities stay in local hands.

Sometimes the only people with the capital to buy a business are foreign investors, which sometimes happens, whether it is with small businesses or with farms. Either large corporations or foreign investors purchase these things. It makes more sense for the family, if the differential is $400,000 or $500,000 as we have heard in some cases, to come to the decision that it is in fact better off not doing what its heart wants to do, which is to keep that business or that farm within the family, but to make a more hard-nosed financial decision about the family's best interests. This would allow families to take off the table the factor that makes it far more profitable for them to sell to a stranger than to keep it within the family.

Those are some of the issues at play. As I said, this is something that New Democrats believe in, but it is also part of a package of advocacy that New Democrats have brought forward for a long time, and particularly within this Parliament. I have been really impressed with our small business critic, the member of Parliament for Courtenay—Alberni, a former small business owner himself, He was right out of the gate when the pandemic began, advocating for a 75% wage subsidy when the government said it would only be 10%. He knew how important it was to get beyond just covering payroll costs and providing wage replacement. He was the loudest voice out of the gate for the need for a commercial rent subsidy. He has been advocating for an extension of the Canada emergency business account loan program. We saw a small extension in the most recent budget. We are glad to see that, but there is more work to do.

The New Democrats believe in small business. We are advocating for small business. We see this as part of a package that is important for small business and farmers, so they can keep all the hard work of their families with in their families when the time comes to pass that business on.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Madam Speaker, if there is one group of Canadians that has been hard hit during the pandemic, it is small business owners, men and women who risked everything to build a dream, maybe a small boutique grocery store on main street, a specialty bakery featuring grandma's secret apple pie recipe, the butcher who was taught by his father how to make sausage like they did in the old country or a unique restaurant featuring a mix of Italian pasta and Lebanese kebabs. They all have one thing in common: They have all been holding on by a thread, trying to keep the business afloat long enough to make it to the other side of these restrictions.

Moms and dads work tirelessly besides sons and daughters, aunts and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers, all leaning on each other to keep that dream alive. Even before COVID, these hard-working entrepreneurs laid it all on the line, hustling endless hours, with no sick leave, vacation pay, maternity benefits or RRSPs. They put every penny they made back into the business, investing in the future, building a legacy, something that made their community a better, more dynamic place to live.

A huge majority of these brave job creators and risk-takers work side by side with their families, guiding son or daughter in the art of providing services within their community. These are fathers showing sons how to grind the pork, beef and spices just so to create the perfect kielbasa coil; or a mother demonstrating the art of making fluffy pastry crusts for the next day's batch of fresh fruit apple pies, recipes and skills handed down by word of mouth, with a keen determination to pass on skills to the next generation, quietly passing on knowledge that would otherwise be lost. Shoulder to shoulder, the generations tend to customers and suppliers, making deals and creating jobs in their local neighbourhoods.

It is in this organic-style school of business that big government just cannot help but cause havoc by way of unfair taxes, taxes that disadvantage a father when selling the family farm to his son or a mother selling the French bakery to her daughter. After years of giving everything they had to build their dream, late nights washing dishes, early mornings mucking stalls, long hot summers sitting in the combine or cold hard winters packing tomatoes into crates, they finally are ready to lay down their tools and pass the business on to the next generation.

What do these owners find when they go to sell their firm? That the government considers them a tax cheat simply for wanting to sell to their children rather than a third party stranger. It has to be said that passing a business on from one generation to the next is no easy feat at the best of times. Many family businesses have had a hard time surviving the challenge, so the very last thing the government should be doing is making this more difficult by disadvantaging the transaction.

There are 1.1 million small businesses and farms across Canada looking, hopefully, to the passage of this bill, which would ensure they have a level playing field when it comes to transition of ownership between parents and children. In our own family, I know the many years of hard work that went into the planning for transition, and yes, we incorporated early on. That did not make us terrible, awful people.

First, owners need to ensure their bankers are confident that their children will be able to succeed going forward. They need to earn the trust of their customers and suppliers that the generation will be able to skilfully man the helm when they one step away. They need to negotiate the rough waters of family dynamics that play a huge role in family business succession. Quite honestly, passing a business on to our kids is far more difficult than just selling to a third party.

Selling to a stranger does not disrupt the harmony of family Christmas dinners. It will not damage people's ability to see their grandkids when bitterness creeps in between their kids. It will not cause rifts between fathers or brothers like a family business succession can do, yet government treats those who are willing to walk that hard road like uber-wealthy tax evaders who are only in it for the quick buck. Nothing can be further from the truth.

Family business succession is not for the faint of heart and takes years to accomplish, so why do we keep punishing families for wanting to pass on a legacy? Not only that, but the current system is totally disrespectful to the hard-working Canadians whose entire retirement savings are wrapped up in their small business. Currently, these savings are seriously impacted if they choose to try to keep the business in the family.

This bill appears to be very timely from the perspective of a COVID recovery plan, since we know our small businesses will be paramount in helping us get our economy back on track when we finally reopen.

We all know that family businesses are the lifeblood of our economy and our communities. Honestly, I cannot wrap my mind around why the government would punish parents and children for being willing to put their blood, sweat and tears into a small enterprise only to be considered tax cheats for the simple desire to pass it on to the next generation.

Consider the story of a couple who owns a business in a small town, wants to retire and relies on the sale as their retirement fund. This sort of thing happens all the time. Now imagine the couple was hoping to retire and sell the business to one of their daughters who has been working with them for years. She is excited to take over from her parents and continue building on their legacy.

In the meantime, they are approached by a much larger, non-related company that has no local ties. This larger corporation would want to produce the goods in the bigger urban centre where it is based, possibly even overseas. Ultimately, this would mean completely shifting jobs and economic activity out of the local community.

As happens often, when they did the math with their accountant, they discovered it would cost up to 67% more in taxes for their daughter to buy their business than for a stranger, simply because she was their daughter. It makes no sense that we do not have a level playing field here, especially considering how much communities gain from family farms and businesses run by successive generations. It is clear that a robust COVID-19 recovery will need healthy small businesses that are owned and operated by passionate local entrepreneurs, and that this bill would make a huge difference for local family-run businesses that want to keep their work in the family.

Because this bill is critical for small, family-owned businesses, how many people have actually opposed the bill? As we can imagine, it has overwhelming support across the country including from the Chicken Farmers of Canada, Grain Growers of Canada, Canadian Taxpayers Federation, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and chambers of commerce, just to name a few, not to mention every Canadian small business owner who seeks to keep their business in the family.

For too long this situation has continued unabated, but why is that? Looking at similar bills that have come before Parliament in recent years, it seems that a significant reason they have never made it through Parliament is the advice that tax analysts give to the government of the day. The complexity of the Tax Act, which creates these disadvantages for family-owned businesses, was meant as an anti-avoidance measure.

I understand the need to safeguard against tax avoidance. That is why there are safeguarding measures built into the bill. However, the way the laws are currently set up, all business owners who seek to keep their businesses in the family are being punished because of the few who might try to game the system and avoid paying taxes. In typical fashion, we are punishing the wrong people. There will always be a chance that someone is trying to cheat, but contrary to the Prime Minister 's belief, most small business owners are not tax cheats. Most small businesses are not simply shell companies created for wealthy Canadians to avoid taxes. Only the wealthy elite who have never had to sweep the floor in their father's grocery store or sling bales on their uncle's farm would believe something like that.

Over 50% of Canadian small business owners wish to pass their businesses on to family members. Nobody in their right mind thinks that 50% of small business owners are looking to cheat on their taxes. I think we all agree that they deserve a level playing field. They do not deserve to be forced to choose between being hammered with extra taxes, which put their retirement in jeopardy, and selling their farms outside of the family and outside of the community.

Whoever is suggesting that we oppose this bill needs to remember that it is our job to serve the public, not the other way around. It is important for the government to remember it is time to show some political leadership and say, “Look, Canadians are being treated unfairly and we are going to fix it.”

If the government will refuse to show leadership on this, thankfully I am confident that Parliament will. We are, after all, the voice of the people. We need the bill to pass to ensure that our most valuable asset, the job creators and risk takers who make our communities strong and resilient even in the face of a devastating pandemic, are able to thrive. I call on all my colleagues to support this bill and bring fairness back for the little guy.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

The hon. member for Malpeque has about 30 seconds for a short intervention.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Madam Speaker, the finance committee held a very intensive hearing into this. We passed it back to Parliament. We looked at the tax implications.

The bottom line is what this bill means for the community. The backbone of the community is small businesses, farmers and fishermen, and especially those who can pass a business down from generation to generation. This is an issue of tax fairness and should be supported fully.

If officials have a problem with this, then they should put their corrections forward in a ways and means bill in the future, but they should pass this necessary bill now and support farmers, fishermen and small business.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

The time provided for the consideration of Private Members' Business has now expired and the order is dropped to the bottom of the order of precedence on the Order Paper.

Government Response to COVID-19 Pandemic

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

The House will now proceed to the consideration of a motion to adjourn the House for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter requiring urgent consideration, namely the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

moved:

That this House do now adjourn.

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Madam Speaker, on a point of order, I would like to indicate under Standing Order 42(2)(a) that all Conservatives' speaking slots are divided into two for this evening's important debate.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the Speaker's Ruling earlier today that allows me to bring to the floor of this place an urgent matter. It is an emergency that is on the minds and hearts of every single Canadian.

I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith, my colleague and friend. I remember we were still sitting in the House together when he was the first member of Parliament to suggest that people ought to be wearing masks, drawing on the experience of what was working in other countries.

When we were all together until Friday, March 13 of last year, I would not have imagined that I would be speaking in the House virtually tonight during the third wave of COVID. We are speaking of things like variants of concern. We are no longer dealing with COVID-19 alone. We are dealing, as we know now, with variants of concern emerging from other countries. We have had them from South Africa, B.1.1.7 from the U.K. and P.1 from Brazil. There will be more.

We are learning as we go that the longer the pandemic stalks us as a human population, the longer we will be susceptible as the virus mutates into new forms and variants. We now know some of these variants are far more transmissible than COVID-19. Can members imagine that we could be nostalgic about an earlier form of COVID-19? I would not have imagined it.

The “wash your hands, do not touch your face” rules do not seem to apply with variants that appear to be transmitted far more easily, including as aerosols.

I realize that I failed to turn on my interpretation device. That is not helping our interpreters. I am sorry.

The situation we are now in requires us to do something different. It is frequently described as a race between the vaccines and the variants, but I do not think even this particular description serves us well because we are a fragmented federation with far too many tendencies to blame somebody for the situation in which we find ourselves.

I gravely fear that partisanship and federal-provincial tensions will make matters worse. We need to figure out how to offer our constituents solutions they want, and not cast blame upon one another. None of us in this place is an expert on pandemics, except potentially one. There is a scientist among us who is a medical geographer and studied the Spanish flu outbreak: the member for Etobicoke North.

However, this is a place full of people who have been elected to serve the public of this country, and we have to be of service. At this time, I think that means blowing the whistle on saying that what we are doing now is not working.

In Mark Carney's new book, Values: Building a Better World for All, he discusses many things. One of them is COVID-19 and the different responses to it from governments around the world. The terminology he uses is very apt and understandable. He says that some governments used the hammer and others chose the dance. Can members guess which one we are?

It reminds me of World Health Organization officer Mike Ryan who, more than a year ago, said that it was time we recognized that we have to be fast and not wait to be correct. It was important to have no regrets and just move.

We are still in the dance. I do not blame any politician or party for this. A lot of it is cultural. A lot of it is relying on a fragmented federation, and no one wanting to step on anybody else's toes. The dance is not working.

A very important point comes from Dr. Yaneer Bar-Yam, an expert in complex systems. He is at the New England Complex Systems Institute. He said:

Vaccinations shouldn’t be expected to be a get-out-of-jail-free card in ending the pandemic.

If we are in a debate and one group of people wants to blame the federal government for not buying enough vaccines because vaccines are a way out, it is important to keep vaccines in perspective. They are not our get-out-of-jail-free card. More must be done, and that often falls under provincial jurisdiction.

Why are we not learning the lessons from what worked and did not work in the first and second waves? Can we not successfully share that some provinces and territories have been spectacular in going to zero COVID? Can the rest of us not learn from that? Can we not ask our institutions and public health experts to say that bending the curve is not the thing, that they thought it was the thing and we do not blame them for thinking it was the thing, but now we have to go to zero COVID. If we are bending and flattening the curve, we are allowing COVID to last among us longer. We will have more variants because we will have more mutations because that is what viruses do.

There are many examples around the world. Some were able to go to zero COVID fast because the public in those countries was used to being bossed around. That is a theory that we read in many of the articles and journals that are fashionable now. What do we do with a society like Canada that has a population that is used to having its liberties and is not good at being told where people can and cannot go? I contrast that with Australia. I think Australia is our best example. It is also a federation. It also has a federal government and eight states that have their own rules and jurisdictions.

What Australia did at the beginning was figure out that it needed a new structure. I think Canada needs new structures. Australia decided to put together two different committees. One was chaired by its equivalent of Dr. Theresa Tam with all the people around the table. Whether the equivalent of Rob Strang from Nova Scotia or Bonnie Henry from British Columbia, they sat at the same table and tried to figure out what they were going to do based on the best science. Our approach has been a bit more chaotic, a bit more differentiated and we do not have a single structure that says how we learn, who is doing it right and who is getting the best results.

Can we not ask our public health experts now to please work together and inform politicians at all orders of government what going to zero looks like for Canada? We should not be second-guessing Canadians' attitudes and saying we cannot tell people to stay home because they are sick of it. If our public believes, if our citizenry accepts that we actually have a formula that works based on experiences elsewhere and that if we do it hard, we get it right, we go to zero, then we can be like New Zealand and Australia and be greeting our families with open arms in the airports that just opened.

Right now, I think we need to stop more of the flights coming in from other countries. We do not want people flying in from India, bringing new variants, bringing new disease. We do not even want interprovincial transport. Newfoundland and Labrador was really doing well in the Atlantic bubble until workers flying in from their jobs in Alberta brought COVID into the communities. We have to be serious about locking down and going to zero.

Lastly, I want to read from an article and I want to credit journalist Andrew Nikiforuk for his 2008 book on pandemics called Pandemonium. It gave him a lot of knowledge as a journalist, which he has been sharing. If we had followed the advice he gave in a January article in The Tyee, COVID could be over in Canada by now. I want to read from his most recent article, which states:

Get on with it.

Canada needs to put this pandemic behind us.

To do that we need a more aggressive and proactive public health approach, with intensive testing...and better targeted, quicker and stricter lockdowns. We need to do what it takes to get to zero to protect the greater public health. And the sooner we do that, the healthier our nation will be.

I talk to parents throughout my riding and all over Canada who do not want to send their kids to school because they are not masked. They wonder why it is that teachers are not being vaccinated up front. They want to know why different provinces have different rules. They want to know how come Nova Scotia was so smart. They want to know why our governments made mistakes. However, it is not with a spirit of blame. We must not blame, particularly individual politicians. Everyone is doing their best. Let us just take that as written. Everyone is doing their best, but collectively, as a country, we are not doing what Canadians want and what Canadians deserve.

I ask all of my colleagues tonight in this debate to please set aside blame and finger pointing, think about what our constituents want of us and is it not time to say that we should learn from what Canadian provinces and territories succeeded, apply that to where we are not doing so well and, with no blame and no shame, form a new committee, as Green Party leader Annamie Paul has been calling for consistently, an interprovincial task force that decides as a country what we do to get through this together.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands for asking for this emergency debate this evening. I think that it is very important to have this discussion. Certainly, I think there is a lot to be learned, and I really appreciate her approach to this.

I want to go back to the examples that the member continually used throughout her speech. She compared Canada quite a bit to New Zealand and Australia. New Zealand and Australia are quite unique. They are both island nations. The only way to really get in and out is by plane. However, Canada has the longest land border in the world and has a lot of first responders and frontline workers crossing that border every single day. Literally, people live on one side and work on the other side and are going back and forth every single day. Is it not a little unfair to use Australia and New Zealand as comparators in this case?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, we could use New Brunswick. We could talk about Nova Scotia. These are not separate countries surrounded by water. They are our neighbours and our friends, and they did better. I think we need to learn.

The hon. member is absolutely right, people are going back and forth across borders, such as the hon. member for New Brunswick Southwest raised in his S.O. 31 today. People in Southwest New Brunswick are related to people in Campobello, and they have to go back and forth.

We have a lot of geographical situations that require specific solutions, such as better testing and better tracing. Testing and tracing are very inconsistently applied across the country. It is also being sure that we know what essential work is going on. Is it really essential that Site C continued to be built at a time when there were outbreaks there that were a threat to indigenous communities? That is the question—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

We have to give an opportunity for more questions.

The hon. member for Vancouver Kingsway.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for her initiative in causing this debate tonight. I think it is very valuable and I thank her for her leadership on this.

The member mentioned the word “emergency” many times, and I have in front of me the Emergencies Act of Canada. It is the only flagship legislation that we have from 1988. It says that “...a national emergency is an urgent and critical situation of a temporary nature that... seriously endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians and is of such proportions or nature as to exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it”. It also says that a public welfare emergency is “...caused by a real or imminent...disease in human beings...that results or may result in a danger to life or property, social disruption or a breakdown in the flow of essential goods”.

Would my hon. colleague not agree that if this legislation is not enacted now, in a once-in-a-century global pandemic, that there is no time that it would be invoked? I specifically refer to Ontario. Would she agree with me that, clearly, the ability of Ontario to handle this pandemic—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

I have to give the hon. member an opportunity to answer.

The hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I think it was back in March when I pulled that out, because people kept saying that they did not want to use draconian legislation. I read the Emergencies Act and thought, “Oh, this is not the War Measures Act. There is no suspension of civil liberties here. There is parliamentary and democratic oversight”.

In fact, that piece of legislation, which was written in 1988, shows what happens when parliamentarians turn their minds to what a sensible country would do in a public health emergency, and they drafted it when they were not in an emergency. I think it is very worthwhile looking at it.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech and especially for requesting this important debate on the third wave. We are all tired of the pandemic.

I want to look back in time. The member talked a lot about the importance of learning from other countries, and I know some countries have done a better of job of controlling their borders.

Let me give a concrete example. Before the first wave, my husband returned from Egypt, landing at the Montreal airport on March 6, right before Parliament was prorogued. There was already talk about closing the borders, and there was pressure from the Quebec government and the mayor of Montreal.

My husband was returning from Egypt, where there were cases of COVID, and he managed to get through the airport with no problem, without any screening whatsoever.

This kind of situation is really troubling, and I would like my colleague to comment on the importance of controlling our borders.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Shefford.

I completely agree about the importance of protecting our borders during an emergency situation. That is a lesson the pandemic taught us. As she said, we are in the third wave, and we need to learn from what we have experienced over the past year.

[Paul Manly, Green, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to start by recognizing the personal and economic sacrifices Canadians have made during this pandemic. They did everything that was within their control to do. They stayed home, they followed public health orders and they suffered hardships. Families across this country are grieving the 23,756 people who have died.

Since the first weeks of the pandemic, I have advocated for the approach that Taiwan took. At the beginning, Taiwan was one of the top 10 countries affected. Now, it is ranked 191. Taiwan applied what it learned from the SARS outbreak. It had a mask mandate and it gave every resident three masks per week. It installed hand sanitizer at the entrance to every building. The army worked with manufacturers to expedite the production of personal protective equipment and it had huge fines for PPE hoarding and profiteering. It had testing and temperature checks for inter-regional travel. It had tight controls on its border and travellers returning home faced mandatory quarantining. Those actions protected its economy. It never had a lockdown like the ones that we have had here.

Earlier in the pandemic, the Green Party caucus advocated for the government to invoke the Emergencies Act using the provisions of a public welfare emergency. It is a very well-written piece of legislation that replaced the old War Measures Act. Invoking it would have allowed the government to create a federally coordinated response with the provinces; close the border; mandate quarantines for people returning to Canada; control interprovincial and inter-regional travel; create green zones for opening the economy and red zones to control areas where there was community spread with lockdowns; all things that were done in New Zealand and Australia and other countries that successfully fought the pandemic.

Our calls to invoke the Emergencies Act were ignored. Whether the Emergencies Act was the right tool for the job or not, it is clear that stronger national coordination has been sorely missing in Canada's approach to dealing with the pandemic. We need a federal-provincial task force to create better coordination.

Just last month, during an adjournment debate, I pointed out that the one thing that all countries that went to zero had in common was a coordinated national strategy. I argued that it was not too late for a national strategy. In fact, we need it more than ever. In response, I was scolded by the parliamentary secretary and told that I did not understand the Constitution and that the government did not want to cause a constitutional crisis. I was floored by the weakness of that argument.

Almost 24,000 people have died. The economy is struggling. We have the largest deficit in Canadian history and 180,000 small and medium-sized enterprises across this country are on the verge of closing permanently. Millions of Canadians are financially stressed. We have a mental health crisis. The suicide rate is up and we have a shadow pandemic of intimate partner violence. Drug overdoses have increased. We are in the third wave of the pandemic with variants spreading rapidly and more cases than ever before. We have another series of lockdowns in Canada in its biggest provinces and Canadians are angry, scared and fed up. Our governments have done a poor job of coordinating the fight to end this pandemic, but at least we managed to avoid a constitutional crisis.

Canadians are looking at what is happening in other countries and it is not lost on them that our strategy in Canada is not working. Inadequate coordination between the federal, provincial and territorial responses has failed to stop the spread of the virus. We are using a yo-yo method of lockdown, opening up and lockdown again to try to limit the pandemic, rather than employing a get-to-zero strategy. In countries such as New Zealand, Australia, Taiwan and South Korea, the spread of COVID-19 has been arrested: case levels are down, the death toll is lower, the economies are up and running and people are going about their lives.

What can Canada learn? Where did we go wrong and how can we move forward in a way that will result in less hardship for Canadians?

Countries that have eliminated the spread of the disease share these key aspects. They had a national strategy. They closed borders. They required quarantines for citizens returning from international locations. They limited international travel within the country. They created red zones to lock down and green zones where the economy could stay open. They mandated masks for indoor public spaces. They tested widely and used contact tracing. They continued to use circuit breaker lockdowns to quickly stop new outbreaks in specific areas. The key to success was to isolate outbreaks and use multiple tools to limit the spread of the virus. These are actions that the Green Party MPs advocated for in the early days of the pandemic.

Instead of a well-coordinated national strategy, Canadians had a patchwork of provincial health orders that were often contradictory and confusing. In some cases, COVID-19-related decisions appear to be driven by politics instead of science.

In B.C., during the lockdowns, when the rest of us had to remain at home, workers continued to travel in and out of camps to construct the Coastal GasLink and Trans Mountain expansion pipelines and the Site C dam. This led to the spread of COVID in remote northern communities. When Newfoundland thought it had the spread of COVID under control, workers from the camps in the oil sands brought COVID home with them and contributed to the spread there. The border to the U.S. has been technically closed for a year, but there is a real lack of control over travel.

Since April 6, more than 100 international flights landing in Canada have carried at least one positive COVID-19 case on board. The deputy chief public health officer stated, “We know that, with viruses, it’s practically impossible to prevent new variants from arriving here in Canada.” However, other countries have been successful in stopping the spread of new variants by travellers. It may not make sense to target specific countries anymore, but we can control air travel the same way New Zealand and Australia have.

I appreciate the fact that the government organized an intergovernmental coordinating committee with medical health officers from across the country, but we needed more than a committee. We needed more than a patchwork of confusing protocols and mandates that change from province to province.

Canada is a federation, and it is true that the provinces have jurisdiction over health care. I understand that the federal government is reluctant to use the emergency powers to create and enforce a national strategy. Some provincial governments have at times politicized this pandemic. Such actions have been detrimental for Canadians. The Emergencies Act may not be the right tool, but we have to stop letting the dysfunction in our federalist system get in the way of a more coordinated response.

Australia is also a federation, with jurisdictional and political differences between the national and state governments, but they worked together successfully to stop the spread of COVID-19, and the population there is much better off for that co-operation.

The vaccines are finally starting to roll out across the country, but with the spread of new variants, it is not yet certain how effective the vaccines will prove to be. We need to be prepared to stop the spread of variants that may be vaccine-resistant. We are not out of the woods yet, and a lack of national co-ordination can still have dire consequences.

There has been a lack of political courage to do what is necessary at the federal level in Canada. On both sides of the House, there is little appetite to do anything that might upset a provincial premier. The lack of a unified national COVID-19 strategy continues to have poor outcomes and hurts Canadians in a myriad of ways. We need stronger national co-ordination, and the sooner we start, the better results we will achieve.

Pandemics do not respect jurisdiction. Let us stand together as a nation, get to zero and beat COVID-19.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am a bit perplexed at the interventions I have heard so far in this debate from both members of the Green Party.

I think this is going to be a healthy discussion, and we need to have it, but I really think we need to set the context right to do that. What I am hearing is Green Party members trying to compare Canada to non-comparables. If we look at Canada versus what has been going on in Europe, Europe has a lot of land borders, and Canada has the largest land border. If we look at Canada compared to the United States, for example, we have fared better when we look at those more realistic comparables like the G7 countries. We have the second-lowest death rate per capita.

There is going to be good value in this discussion, but I really think it is necessary to frame it properly so we do not go off the rails right at the beginning. Would the member not agree that it would be better to compare us to our G7 counterparts, as opposed to New Zealand or Australia, which are quite different in geographic makeup, which gives them an advantage?

[Paul Manly, Green, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, New Zealand and Australia stopped flights that had people with COVID from coming into their country. They have a definite plan on how that happens. We have not managed to do that with flights into Canada, let alone our long border. I understand we have a long border with the United States, which is a serious challenge for us, but on flights coming into Canada, there have been 100 flights with COVID cases since April 6.

We heard other members get up and say they know people who came in from other countries where COVID was spreading and there were no controls. There are controls we could have and things we need to do.

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

Mr. Speaker, I very much agree with my colleague from the neighbouring riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith about the comparison with Australia. My in-laws all live in Tasmania, and when we are on Zoom calls with them we look with envy as they are able to travel to restaurants and enjoy a semi-normal life.

I very much agree with him about the application of the Emergencies Act. I think the times call for us to look at that piece of legislation, and I think it was very unfair for the Prime Minister today during question period to make a comparison to the War Measures Act, because we all know they are two very different pieces of legislation.

My question has to do with the very vulnerable set of workers: racialized workers and those who work in tourism and arts and entertainment. Would the member not agree that the budget's announcement of having the CRB reduced by $200 in July is precisely the wrong approach at this point? We do not yet know how this pandemic is going to play out, and I think we need to give those workers all the support they need, for the near future at least.

Would he not agree that we should be keeping that at the current level it is at?

[Paul Manly, Green, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I agree. We need to continue to protect workers. One of the things we have seen is a reluctance on the part of the Ontario government to have sick leave, so vulnerable people whom we rely on to keep grocery stores open are going to work sick, because they do not have any other choice economically. We need to stand up for workers, and we need to protect workers. It is really important that we help them get through this, and I cannot understand how workers who are flying in for these man camps got in line for COVID vaccines before our teachers or grocery store workers did.

Where are our priorities? Our priorities are on resource extraction. Coastal GasLink does not matter right now; what matters is getting through the pandemic.