Debates of May 26th, 2021

Finance—Main Estimates, 2021-22

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Madam Chair, I will continue on the theme of a free ride for the ultrarich. The federal government, within four days of the pandemic hitting, as the finance minister well knows, offered an unprecedented $750 billion in liquidity supports to the banking industry. That was within just a few days. The profits so far, and we will see further profits announced this week, have been over $50 billion for Canada's big banks. Why were there no requirements in the banking industry at all for Canada's big banks to access these massive amounts of liquidity supports?

In the last few weeks, we have seen Canada's big banks sharply increase their fees mainly on lower-income Canadians. Why has the government not used the tools that it has to crack down on those gouging practices and these fees that are hitting Canadians?

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, University—Rosedale, ON]

Madam Chair, as I said, I actually agree with the member opposite about a lot. He has a very sincere and many years' worth of commitment to supporting working people in Canada, and I strongly share that commitment. That is why one of the budget measures that are most important to me personally is the Canada workers benefit.

However, I part ways with the member opposite when it comes to what seems to me embedded in his question, which is a lack of concern about the stability of the financial sector in a once-in-a-generation economic crisis. When COVID first hit Canada and the world, we were plunged into the greatest depression since the Great Depression. The government and the Bank of Canada and OSFI acted with urgency to maintain the stability of our financial sector. That was the right thing to do.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Madam Chair, we are far more concerned about the stability of regular Canadian families, seniors, students, people who have been hard hit by this pandemic. As we see the government cutting back on supports, they will be the most impacted.

Let us look at people with disabilities. The banks got $750 billion in liquidity supports within four days. People with disabilities get a three-year consultation with absolutely nothing in the budget. This is a contrast that all Canadians can see.

I wrote to the finance minister on January 5 to ask her to release the amounts that large corporations have used from the Canada emergency wage subsidy when they laid off workers and paid dividends or paid big executive bonuses. How much was misused in this way? When are the companies going to pay that misused money back?

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, University—Rosedale, ON]

Madam Chair, there are a lot of questions there, so let me go through them quickly.

I know the member opposite sincerely cares about workers, seniors and students. So do I, and I know that a collapse of the financial sector would hurt each one of those groups. That is why, in a once-in-a-generation crisis, the government, the Bank of Canada and OSFI acted as they ought to do and as they needed to do.

Let me point out that when it comes to disabilities, the budget includes important measures to provide additional support to students with serious but temporary disabilities. I am really glad that it is there.

When it comes to the wage subsidy, the most important thing for us to bear in mind is that it has supported 5.3 million jobs across the country.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Madam Chair, we are seeing that the ultrarich are getting a free ride with the government, and yet Canadians are suffering incredibly. Of course, the fact that people with disabilities are getting no supports except a three-year consultation while Canada's big banks got an unprecedented $750 billion in liquidity supports within days of the pandemic hitting, that contrast is clear to all Canadians to see.

Why does the government put banks and billionaires before regular people?

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, University—Rosedale, ON]

Madam Chair, briefly, it is simply not correct to overlook the very significant support that Canadian students with disabilities are getting in this budget. That is going to transform lives, and I am glad that it will.

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Minister of Middle Class Prosperity and Associate Minister of Finance]

Madam Chair, I am pleased to contribute to this debate. Our government is working hard to improve the quality of life of all Canadians.

As members know, part of my mandate is to work with the whole of the federal government to better incorporate quality of life measurements into government decision-making and budgeting. This important work began before the COVID-19 pandemic started disrupting our lives, prompting many Canadians to reflect on what they value most.

The pandemic has affected many dimensions of Canadians' quality of life, from health impacts and job losses to mental health and social isolation. It has also shone a light on the long-standing inequalities that Canadians continue to face, such as the gender imbalance in caregiving responsibilities, systemic racism, and the gaps in Canada's social safety net.

It is clearer than ever that traditional economic indicators such as gross domestic product alone cannot measure Canadians' overall well-being. Recognizing the importance of factors beyond GDP does not imply a reduced focus on investing in a strong economy or prudent fiscal management. In fact, these investments are critical to achieving and sustaining a better quality of life.

Increasing Canada's GDP through productivity growth, labour market participation and investment is crucial for raising Canada's national standard of living now and into the future. However, our government strongly believes that the quality of life of all Canadians should be a key component of policy-making and budget decisions.

Quite frankly, Canadians agree. A study commissioned by the government last summer found that while one in two Canadians feels that stronger growth in Canada's GDP is important to day-to-day life, nearly three-quarters of respondents felt that it is important to move past solely considering traditional economic measurements, such as levels of economic growth, and also consider other factors like health, safety and the environment when we make decisions.

The recent budget that our government tabled on April 19 reflects this belief. It is as much about finishing the fight against COVID and jump-starting our economy as it is about investing in measures that will increase the quality of life for Canadians, initiatives such as child care, mental health support, protecting the environment, affordable housing and public infrastructure. Through the development of a quality-of-life framework, introduced as part of our recent budget, our government is putting Canadians' quality of life at the centre of our policy and investment decisions.

Budget 2021 uses our quality of life framework, which is based on evidence about the factors that matter most to Canadians: economic prosperity, health, environment, social cohesion and good governance. This will give us a way to measure progress beyond simply relying on GDP growth.

Economic growth and prosperity are still critical to us. They sustain Canadians' standard of living. However, we need a broader understanding of what constitutes progress, one that encourages us to think about the big picture and consider the distribution of outcomes across the population and the long-term sustainability of outcomes. Our work has been guided by conversations with experts, stakeholders, and nations that are advanced in their thinking about well-being, and by feedback from Canadians themselves. The result was a made-in-Canada approach.

By using a broader suite of indicators and measuring factors such as mental health, environmental impacts, employment, social trust and post-secondary education, our government will be able to better measure and assess the impact of key measures on Canadians' quality of life. This includes looking at the distribution of outcomes, opportunities across demographics and in places, and whether today's prosperity could potentially undermine tomorrow's living standards.

This integrated approach can serve as a major benchmark, like a north star for our government's policy development and budgeting, articulating priorities based on what matters most for Canadians' quality of life and underpinning how we monitor progress in building back better after the pandemic.

Our government has already started using the framework to consider how each proposal for our recent budget could affect these various dimensions and indicators, in order to help us achieve the right mix of measures to ensure a strong, inclusive and sustainable recovery.

Take, for example, our government's historic commitment to establish a Canada-wide early learning and child care system. The pandemic has emphasized that it is not just a social issue, but an urgent economic one as well. It is a cornerstone of our jobs and growth plan, and it would provide jobs for workers, the majority of whom are women, while enabling parents to reach their full economic potential and creating a generation of engaged and well-prepared young learners.

As the members of this House would agree, while this measure would advance GDP growth, measuring its impact in terms of GDP growth alone would surely understate the benefits of this investment. As someone who literally had to start a day care in my basement because I had no other options as an entrepreneur and small business owner, I can tell members how transformative this would be for so many people with families.

We also considered systemic racism, which can have devastating consequences on the well-being of Canadians.

New support measures should have positive impacts on a wide range of areas that are important for quality of life, including discrimination and unfair treatment, self-reported mental health, skills development and its effect on job opportunities, and a sense of belonging to the community.

Those were a few examples of how the framework helped guide decision-making in this budget. I am proud to say that members can pick any measure from our recent budget and check annex 4 to see what impact it is expected to have on quality of life. It sets out the indicators that the government will use to measure the success of these initiatives and how well they support Canadians' quality of life.

Our government understands that key to the success of this framework is enhancing the data we collect and improving our measurement of program outcomes, in order to be able to better incorporate quality-of-life measurements into decision-making and budgeting in the future. Evidence-based decision-making is foundational to good governance and to Canadians' trust in their institutions.

To help us get there, our recent budget announced proposed investments of $13.8 million over five years and $2.2 million ongoing to enable Statistics Canada to improve quality-of-life measurements and address key data gaps while bringing together key economic, social and environmental datasets into a user-friendly format that would better support decision-making and budgeting.

What is more, the budget proposed over $285 million in funding over five years and over $40 million ongoing to collect better disaggregated data that will enable the government, researchers and others to better understand the experiences of people in Canada and environmental changes.

I am proud of the work that we have accomplished to date in developing and implementing the quality of life framework. All of the framework's indicators will continue to be refined so that the framework stays relevant in an ever-changing landscape.

I believe that the detailed analysis presented in budget 2021 and the projected impacts and advantages of each investment proposed by the government speak for themselves.

Ensuring gender equality, diversity and the quality of life of Canadians is at the centre of decision-making, and it is fundamental to creating a thriving and successful country that reflects Canadian values and achieves potential. Whenever a Canadian has the opportunity to succeed and benefit, the well-being and quality of life of all Canadians will flourish.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance and to the Minister of Middle Class Prosperity and Associate Minister of Finance]

Madam Chair, if it is our collective hope as parliamentarians to not only see GDP growth but to actually enhance the quality of life for the Canadians who live in our communities, in my view, it is essential that we become more effective at measuring the things that matter. To me, it is important that we understand there is value in a forest before we cut it down, that the time we spend at home is every bit as valuable as the time we spend at work and that the people in our lives are every bit as important and certainly more important than the money in our bank accounts.

On the issue of quality-of-life indicators, I want to acknowledge the leadership of a group in my province of Nova Scotia, Engage Nova Scotia, and the head of that organization, Danny Graham, in particular, for his groundbreaking work on establishing quality-of-life indicators.

To illustrate the importance of this point, when people call my constituency office, they are not calling about Canada's GDP growth the month prior. They are calling about whether they have access to mental health services and whether they can manage to put food on the table for their families. Though they might be watching the monthly job statistics in the abstract, they are very concerned whether they and their kids have an opportunity to find a job in the community where they grew up.

In this recent federal budget, we have taken a major step to implement indicators where we can track the impact that the measures are going to have on the quality of our constituents' lives and not only on the macroeconomic indicators we traditionally rely on, like unemployment rates or GDP. Certainly, those traditional economic indicators are extremely important.

Could the minister highlight some of the investments made in budget 2021 as a result of these indicators and what are the next steps to implement a quality-of-life framework to ensure that, going forward, governments make decisions based on how they will improve the quality of life for Canadians rather than simply GDP?

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Madam Chair, I want to thank the parliamentary secretary, especially for his engagement with this file and his hard work. He and I have spoken often about the quality-of-life framework and the need to move beyond GDP to fully measure economic growth.

As Canadians, we know that we are going through an incredibly tough time. This pandemic has made it abundantly clear that our country's GDP and the amount of money in our bank accounts at the end of each month are not the only indicators of our quality of life.

Our ability to thrive is related to our health, our safety, adequate housing, good jobs, the opportunity to be active outdoors, access to clean drinking water, education, recreation, social ties and many other factors.

We are also aware that the pandemic has put a strain on all those aspects of our lives.

With this in mind, through budget 2021, we have brought forward Canada's first-ever quality-of-life framework, and it is located in annex 4. The framework was developed after consultations with experts and stakeholders, as my hon. colleague mentioned, Engage Nova Scotia being one of them, with international engagement and with input from Canadians.

We know the framework is a living document, and we continue to consult our indigenous partners, the provinces and territories and other important stakeholders. The framework will evolve as we gather more data thanks to budget 2021's recent investments in Statistics Canada.

It is evergreen, as we continue to consult with indigenous partners, provinces and territories and other important stakeholders. We will be using a broad suite of indicators and our government will be able to better measure and evaluate the impacts of key initiatives on Canadians' quality of life. This is a made-in-Canada approach that highlights Canada as a global leader.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Madam Chair, I will be splitting my time with the member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon.

Nearly 700,000 students will receive the Canada student loan this year, and the program administers about $24 billion of student loans. This year, the program is in fact projected to grow about 32%. To administer this massive program, the Liberal government signed an eight-year contract with a private software company called Finastra, which gets money for each loan user.

Could the minister provide the total fee paid by her government to Finastra for operating the student loan program last year and the projected fee for this year?

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance]

Madam Chair, I am delighted the member opposite is drawing attention to student loans, because support for students is one of our government's priorities. This budget commits $5.7 billion to Canadian students. That includes doubling the Canada student grant for two more years. It includes extending the moratorium on federal interest and ensuring that 450,000 low-income student borrowers will have access to more generous repayment assistance.

I trust the member opposite supports that.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Madam Chair, the minister unfortunately did not answer my question of how much the private company that administers the student loan was paid. Again, it manages $24 billion of student loans.

We do know that in 2017 and 2018 Finastra was paid over $77 million to run the student loan program. In fact, the taxpayer paid the company over $410 million over a five-year period to administer the program.

We also know that Finastra most recently had nearly $2 billion in revenues, and its customers include 90 of the top 100 banks globally. Therefore, in sum, Finastra is very successful and making a lot of money.

My question is this. Why did Finastra receive the wage subsidy from the Canadian taxpayer and how much did it receive?

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, University—Rosedale, ON]

Madam Chair, I struggle to understand the sincere intent behind the member's question. Is she implying that somehow we should not be making student loans available to young Canadians? If that is her implication, I could not more strongly disagree. Student loans are essential to our young people. They are an essential investment in our future.

I am so proud that this budget strengthens the student loan program and that, thanks to this budget, young Canadians earning less than $40,000 do not have to start repaying their student loans.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Madam Chair, I am not sure why the minister would be proud of providing a billionaire company with the wage subsidy when it is making a lot of money. That is my question.

Ultimately, I would like to know this as well. Robert Smith, the CEO of Vista Equity Partners, which owns Finastra, the parent company, recently paid $139 million in tax fines to the American government, which is among the largest tax fraud scandal in American history. The Canadian taxpayer has subsidized one of his companies. Was the minister aware of this?

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, University—Rosedale, ON]

Madam Chair, again, I would like to probe a bit the intent behind the member's question. She has been asking about the wage subsidy. That is a program that has supported 5.3 million Canadian jobs. In her native province of Manitoba, it has supported 175,000 jobs alone.

Our priority is Canadian students and Canadian workers, and we will do whatever it takes to support them.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Madam Chair, the minister keeps quoting that stat, but quite honestly, it sounds like some of these companies could have saved these jobs on their own and had billions of dollars to spare.

The finance minister wrote a book about guys like Mr. Smith, where she argued the super-rich became rich because they were at the right place at the right time. Maybe she is right. A billionaire American tax cheat got richer off students and Canadian taxpayers during the pandemic as a result of the Liberal government's poorly designed wage subsidy program in this regard. Now Canadians with federal student loans will know that every time they make a payment, an American tax cheat will get richer. I guess that is okay by the Minister of Finance's standards. I am not sure, but it sounds like it is.

Ultimately, we know Finastra is worth billions, yet it received the wage subsidy. We know that 32 companies that went bankrupt before the pandemic was declared took millions from the wage subsidy, some of which no longer had any employees at all. Some of the best performing Canadian hedge funds also received the wage subsidy despite making hundreds of millions of dollars of profits last year.

Will the finance minister commit to ensuring no more profitable billionaire companies receive the taxpayer-funded wage subsidy?

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, University—Rosedale, ON]

Madam Chair, what I will commit to is an important measure in Bill C-30 and I hope the member opposite will support. This measure applies to publicly listed corporations that received the wage subsidy for any qualifying period after June 5. These corporations would be required to pay the amount by which the remuneration of their top executives in 2021 exceeded their remuneration in 2019 up to the amount of wage subsidy received for active employees for this period. That is an important measure and I look forward to support from the other side of the House for it.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Madam Chair, the Conservatives and Canadians supported pandemic relief efforts and programs, because they were sold to us as supports for Canadian families and Canadian businesses that were deeply hurt or at the risk of closing due to government shutdowns. They were not designed, at least from our perspective and what we were told, for profitable billionaire companies.

At the same time, the federal deficit is the largest in Canadian history, over $354 billion, and now we are slowly beginning to learn and uncover the mountain of financial mismanagement by the Liberal government. Canadians really will be the ones on the hook to pay for it, whether through high taxes or reduced public services or both. Try as they may to explain away the Liberal government's disrespect or disregard, I am not quite sure what it is, for Canadian taxpayers and fiscal responsibility generally, Canadians are growing tired of the Liberal government's mismanagement and uncertainty.

The Conservatives successfully led us through the last economic recession and we can do it again. It is time for a responsible Conservative government that will secure Canada's future—

[The Deputy Chair, NDP, Carol Hughes]

The hon. minister for a brief answer. There is 30 seconds left.

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, University—Rosedale, ON]

Madam Chair, to answer a collection of flaccid talking points is a bit tough, but let me simply point out that it took a full decade before labour force participation in Canada recovered to its previous levels after the 2008-09 recession. We are not going to repeat that mistake. We are going to support Canadians, we are going to support Canadian workers, and Canada is going to come roaring back.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Madam Chair, the finance minister has acknowledged that Canada's housing affordability crisis is fundamentally tied to increasing supply, yet the budget breezed past this critical issue.

Housing hopelessness is top of mind for Canadians. Why is the government failing to act?

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, University—Rosedale, ON]

Madam Chair, I absolutely see housing as a key economic issue for our country. It is an issue for the federal government, it is an issue for provinces and it is an issue for municipalities. In fact, the member is a B.C. MP, and I had a great conversation with Kennedy Stewart, the mayor of Vancouver, just last week about this.

We have done a lot of work, and we need to keep on working on this essential issue.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Madam Chair, nobody can deny in Canada that the cost of housing has increased substantially since the pandemic began. What would the minister advise a young family trying to enter the market today?

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, University—Rosedale, ON]

Madam Chair, the government is here to support that young family. We are working hard with provinces and municipalities to build more homes for young Canadian families. For a young family, early learning and child care is going to help it a lot.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Madam Chair, we know that Canada's economic recovery from COVID-19 must include infrastructure investment. Groups like the Canadian Home Builders' Association have long been calling for the government to open its eyes and recognize housing as a critical component of Canadian infrastructure.

However, the PBO and the Auditor General have found that the Liberals cannot account for their infrastructure spending. Is the reason there is no action on supply because Liberals screwed up on infrastructure?