House of Commons Hansard #95 of the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was vaccines.

Topics

Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1Government Orders

4:30 p.m.

Conservative

Gérard Deltell Conservative Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC

Madam Speaker, we do accept that, but we want to raise the point that it is very important, especially for this specific debate where we are talking about billions of dollars, to be sure that everything is said. I want to remind everyone that the best place to talk is here in the House of Commons.

Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1Government Orders

4:30 p.m.

Conservative

Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC

Madam Speaker, I am seeking unanimous consent to split my time with the member for Wellington—Halton Hills.

Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1Government Orders

4:30 p.m.

Liberal

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

Does the hon. member for Abbotsford have the unanimous consent of the House to split his time?

Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1Government Orders

4:30 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1Government Orders

4:30 p.m.

Liberal

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

The hon. member for Abbotsford.

Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1Government Orders

4:30 p.m.

Conservative

Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC

Madam Speaker, it has been well over two years since the last budget was tabled in the House. After all this time, one would have expected that our Liberal friends would have gotten it right. Instead, budget 2021 is a massive letdown. Instead of building back better, as the Prime Minister had so vacuously promised, and focusing on job creation and long-term growth, this budget has left us with bigger debt, bigger deficits, an avalanche of unfocused spending and a much bigger and more intrusive government.

Our Conservatives have repeatedly supported emergency programs for struggling Canadians to make it through the pandemic. What we cannot support is the Liberal government's failure to address the most urgent health and economic issues facing our country.

The virus has inflicted untold damage and put intense pressure on our health care system. Health care workers and hospitals are under siege. Even today, only 3% of Canadians have received their second dose of vaccine, while in the U.S., 32% of Americans have been fully vaccinated. How can that be?

The Prime Minister has failed to put forward strategic investments to ramp up vaccinations and provide the help the provinces and territories have asked for, as they struggle to contain the virus and treat the thousands of sick and dying patients. In fact, he has refused to sit down with those provinces to discuss health care support. Instead, the Prime Minister has said that he will get around to discussing this once the COVID pandemic is over. The premiers had asked for one thing, and that was a reliable federal partner to help them in the fight against COVID-19. They did not get one.

The budget also fails to live up to the Liberal government's own financial commitments. For example, the finance minister had originally signalled that $100 billion of additional spending would be used to stimulate the economy, but only if absolutely necessary.

Today, the parliamentary budget officer noted that in fact a good portion of the spending was not used to stimulate the economy at all. In classic Liberal fashion, much of the so-called stimulus was instead spent on measures intended to further the political interests of the Liberal government. The PBO even noted that the Liberals could have reduced Canada's massive deficits by more than $100 billion over the next six years. Instead, they chose to spend that money on an avalanche of election goodies to buy the votes of Canadians.

The minister's own mandate letter from the Prime Minister instructed her to present a new fiscal anchor, in other words, rules and safeguards, to guide her management of the massive debt and deficits that the Liberals had created. Yet, the best she could do was to recycle the old debt-to-GDP ratio, but this time without any firm targets. What is very clear is that the government has no intention of ever returning to balance, even in the longer term.

The PBO's newly released report for parliamentarians highlights a number of other things. First, the finance minister's stimulus has been miscalibrated. That is his term. In other words, it missed the mark. Second, the finance minister failed to distinguish between stimulus spending and COVID spending. I would suggest that she may have conflated the two to hide the fact that much of the spending was, indeed, election related. The PBO also said that the Liberals had overstated the economic impact of the stimulus. In other words, they misrepresented and oversold the value of the stimulus.

We also found out that the Liberal government had left itself no fiscal room. In other words, the Prime Minister has maxed out our country's credit card and ability to make future investments.

Finally, the PBO confirms that the government is not on course to return our debt and deficits to pre-pandemic levels, another big fail.

However, to be sure, there are some measures in the budget that Conservatives support, for example, the extension of the emergency support measures like the wage subsidy, the rent subsidy and other recovery benefits as well as the hiring and training program for employers to maintain a level playing field and allow them to transition from the wage subsidy program. There is an improved tax treatment for capital investment over a two-year time frame and there is some support for hospitality, tourism and culture, although not the support required to reflect that these sectors were the hardest hit, the first to be shut down and will likely be the last to reopen.

Quite frankly, what I heard from tourism stakeholders is that they do not want handouts. What they want is for the government to come up with a plan to safely reopen the economy and let them do what they do best, which is to sustain and create good-paying jobs. Sadly, they did not get that plan.

In the lead up to the budget, we had sent the Prime Minister and his finance minister letters outlining the measures we believed were critical to fuelling our post-pandemic recovery. Unsurprisingly, almost all our advice was ignored, including on child care. Instead of building on existing family support measures that would deliver immediate relief to parents wanting to enter the labour force, the Liberals recycled an old promise to create an Ottawa-knows-best one-size-fits-all regulated day care program, one that will leave millions of Canadian parents behind.

The minister herself acknowledged just now that it would take at least five years to get this program in place to negotiate child care agreements with the provinces. Meanwhile, parents wishing to enter the labour force right now will be left hanging. Liberal leaders have made the very same child care promise in almost every election since 1993 and have never, ever delivered. Canadians have a right to skeptical.

Remember, this was supposed to be a growth budget. That is what the Prime Minister promised. Therefore, will this budget actually grow the economy and position us for long-term prosperity? Not at all. In fact, high profile Liberals like the Prime Minister's former economic adviser, Robert Asselin, have acknowledged this budget is not about long-term growth.

Today's PBO report confirms that significant elements of this budget were misrepresented by the Liberal government and overstate the stimulus and growth effects on our economy. As other countries provide their citizens with faster access to vaccines, they are also beating us to the punch by giving their economies a shot in the arm.

The U.K. has launched an infrastructure revolution. Italy has introduced what its Prime Minister has called “the mother of all reforms” to slash red tape. France and Germany are cutting taxes. Japan is helping its firms reduce their reliance on China with a shift toward more reliable and ethical trading partners. What did the Liberal budget do? It sprayed billions of dollars around without a clear strategy to position Canada for long-term prosperity.

The budget has no investments to address the structural problems that have plagued productivity and our ability to compete on the global stage. There is no plan to address the unprecedented level of investment that is fleeing Canada. There is no plan for regulatory and tax reform to help us win on the global stage. There is no comprehensive innovation strategy to ensure Canadian tech start-ups keep their job-creating investments here at home.

The budget is largely silent on our world-leading natural resource sector, one of the most significant contributors to our national prosperity. The Liberal government has again turned its back on our oil and gas producing provinces by expressly excluding the sector from the new carbon capture tax credit.

The Liberal government also missed a golden opportunity to substantively address the skyrocketing cost of housing in Canada. The budget introduces a 1% tax on foreign owners of vacant housing, which, quite frankly, will be considered an inconvenience to wealthy foreigners who will simply treat this as a cost of doing business, especially when we see the appreciation property values year over year.

Meanwhile, millions of Canadians are seeing their dream of home ownership slip through their fingers. That is a major failure.

I believe Canadians are looking for hope that things will soon get better and that we still have a bright future to look forward to. They want their jobs and small businesses back. They want their lives and communities back. Simply put, they want a return to normal and to live the Canadian dream.

This budget fails to deliver. There is no growth plan, only spending on an unprecedented scale, and spending is not an economic plan.

Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1Government Orders

4:40 p.m.

Central Nova Nova Scotia

Liberal

Sean Fraser LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance and to the Minister of Middle Class Prosperity and Associate Minister of Finance

Madam Speaker, while I quite like and respect the member personally, I am disappointed with the number of falsehoods that characterize his remarks today.

In particular, he criticized our plan for growth. I would point him to Scotiabank Economics that has said our measures were well-targeted to raise potential output by focusing on economic inclusion, the green transition and measures to encourage business investment. He criticized our fiscal sustainability, when the major credit rating agencies, post-budget, have reaffirmed our AAA rating.

My question relates to one very specific point. He has said that he supports the continuation of emergency measures, despite the fact that his leader opposes CERB and has opposed our investments on long-term care. If the member supports the continuation of the Canada emergency wage subsidy into the summer, why did he and his colleagues vote against that very specific measure on Friday of last week?

Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1Government Orders

4:40 p.m.

Conservative

Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC

Madam Speaker, the member should know that many economists across Canada have lambasted the government for this failure to deliver a growth budget.

I already mentioned one of the Prime Minister's former top advisers, saying that this was not a growth budget. I would note that Mark Carney, a really close friend of the Liberals, basically damned the budget with faint praise.

It is very clear the budget does not position our country and our economy for long-term growth. Canadians were looking for a plan that would reopen the economy, get Canadians back to work, get small businesses back on their feet and then provide our business sector with the confidence of knowing that—

Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1Government Orders

4:40 p.m.

Liberal

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

The hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby.

Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1Government Orders

4:40 p.m.

NDP

Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC

Madam Speaker, my colleague is a student of history. He knows that during the Second World War, the last big crisis this country lived through, we put in place an excess profits tax, which led to the unparalleled growth that came after we had vanquished Nazism and fascism.

Today, we see a government that is absolutely refusing to put in place a pandemic profits tax or wealth tax, despite the fact that Canada's billionaires have increased their wealth by over $78 billion during this pandemic. These measures were supported by over 80% of Canadians, including two-thirds of Conservative voters.

Do the Conservatives believe that the Liberals have acted inappropriately by giving a free ride to the ultra-rich?

Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1Government Orders

4:40 p.m.

Conservative

Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC

Madam Speaker, it seems every time I give a speech in the House, the member asks me the same question. I will give him the same answer that I have given in the past.

Coming out of the pandemic, coming out of an economic crisis is the worst time to raise taxes. Now I know that given the fact that the Liberal government has run up huge debts and huge deficits and has no plan to go to balance in the future, it is very clear that it will have to raise taxes in the future. It maybe an inheritance tax, maybe a home equity tax, maybe an increase in the GST or the carbon tax, we do not know.

However, I am pretty certain, under the Prime Minister, eventually there will be significant increases in the tax burden on Canadians, which is the worst thing a government can do. The best thing it can do is put in place the strategies, programs and investments that will position the country for long-term prosperity—

Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1Government Orders

4:45 p.m.

Liberal

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

The hon. member for Berthier—Maskinongé.

Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1Government Orders

4:45 p.m.

Bloc

Yves Perron Bloc Berthier—Maskinongé, QC

Madam Speaker, I would like to hear what my colleague has to say about health transfers.

The government is announcing a one-time transfer rather than the annual steady increase the entire country is asking for. This is what all the provinces, not just Quebec, are calling for. I get the feeling that the government is implementing mini-measures to try to keep people dependent.

Consider, for example, the renewal of the tax deferral for agricultural co-operatives. The deferral has been renewed several times for five years. Why not make this credit permanent, since it works so well?

My answer is that the government wants to keep people dependent so that it can make election promises. By renewing these measures in five years, it is making sure that the people who politely come begging remain dependent on Ottawa.

What does my colleague think?

Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1Government Orders

4:45 p.m.

Conservative

Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC

Madam Speaker, my impression is that we have a Prime Minister who is unwilling to work with the provinces. He has made it very clear that he has no intention of talking to the provinces until the COVID pandemic is over.

Quite frankly, right now, in the middle of this pandemic, with the pressure on our health care systems, on our hospitals, on our health care workers, the Prime Minister should be sitting down with our provincial leaders, with our premiers, and working something out. He has shown an unwillingness to do that.

We are willing to sit down—

Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1Government Orders

4:45 p.m.

Liberal

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

Before we resume debate, the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands is rising on a point of order.

Business of the HouseGovernment Orders

4:45 p.m.

Liberal

Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON

Madam Speaker, I believe if you seek it you will find unanimous consent for the following motion. I move:

That, notwithstanding any Standing Order, special order or usual practice of the House, during the debates tonight and tomorrow, pursuant to Standing Order 52, no quorum calls, dilatory motions or requests for unanimous consent shall be received by the Chair.

Business of the HouseGovernment Orders

4:45 p.m.

Liberal

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

All those opposed to the hon. member moving the motion will please say nay.

The House has heard the terms of the motion. All those opposed to the motion will please say nay.

There being no dissenting voice, I declare the motion carried.

(Motion agreed to)

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-30, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on April 19, 2021 and other measures, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1Government Orders

4:45 p.m.

Conservative

Michael Chong Conservative Wellington—Halton Hills, ON

Madam Speaker, this is the longest budget in Canadian history. As Andrew Coyne pointed out in The Globe and Mail, this budget comes in at 739 pages and 232,903 words. Paul Martin's landmark budget of 1995 was fewer than 200 pages. Michael Wilson's budgets of the late1980s, which put Canada back on fiscal track and had operational surpluses, averaged less than 120 pages.

The longest budget in Canadian history is the biggest disappointment. Never has a budget proposed so little with so many words. There is no plan to tackle the immediate problem Canadians are facing, which is the lack of vaccines. There can be no economic recovery without vaccines.

In Halton region, for example, where part of my riding is, only half the people who could have been vaccinated have been. This is because the federal government has failed to secure vaccines. Last month, in places such as Burlington, Oakville, Milton, Georgetown and Acton, Halton region was only able to vaccinate 90,000 residents. It could have vaccinated 216,000 residents, or 7,200 residents a day, more than double the number of people it actually vaccinated. The reason only half the number of people were vaccinated was because of a lack of vaccines.

I will quote Halton region directly, which stated, “While we have the capacity to book approximately 7,200 appointments per day through our clinics, the availability of consistent vaccine supply continues to constrain the Vaccination Program rollout.”

The budget does nothing to fix this lack of vaccines. As a result, we are experiencing a third wave, unlike countries who were able to secure an adequate supply of vaccines like the United States and the United Kingdom.

This budget has no plan to build back better. It has no plan to create jobs and growth. Instead, it leaves us with a bigger debt, bigger deficits and an avalanche of unfocused spending.

The budget has no plan for regulatory and tax reform to help us in a fiercely competitive global economy. It has no plan to address Canada's chronically low levels of productivity, the only long-term determinant of prosperity. It has no plan for Canada's natural resources sector, which is so important to the race for critical minerals as the energy transition heats up.

There is no plan to address the overheated housing market, which has put the dream of affordable home ownership out of the reach of millions of Canadian families and saddled them with sky-high levels of indebtedness. There is no plan to achieve budget balance and rein in the skyrocketing debt and deficits that are threatening our children's future.

Members do not need to take it from me. They can take it from the experts. This is what David Dodge, the deputy minister of finance during the Chrétien government of the 1990s and former governor of the Bank of Canada, had to say about the budget in The Globe and Mail. He stated, “My policy criticism of the budget is that it really does not focus on growth”.

Referring to growth and the finance minister, he continues, “over the longer haul, we face a very real challenge. And I don’t think she tried to seriously address that in the budget”.

He went on to say that the vast majority of the extra $100 billion in spending is consumption not investment. He also said the budget does not have a prudent fiscal plan. He stated, “To me, it wouldn’t accord with something that is a reasonably prudent fiscal plan, let me put it that way”.

According to the International Monetary Fund, Canada has incurred the largest deficit among major economies in the last year at 20% of our GDP, yet the IMF estimates that, compared to our economic peers, Canada's economy has contracted more and will recover more slowly. Despite this, the budget does nothing to create jobs and growth.

There is no plan in the budget to balance public finances. The budget itself indicates that in the next five years alone, interest charges on the national debt will double, increasing from about 20 billion dollars a year to about 40 billion dollars a year.

Other experts have also been critical of the budget, as my colleague just said in his most recent remarks in the House. Here is what the finance minister's former policy and budget director, Robert Asselin, had to say about the budget in The Hub.

He said, “The federal budget has no answers on the question of growth”. He went on to say, “it was clear for some time that the government’s decision to spend more than $100 billion in so-called short-term stimulus was a political solution in search of an economic problem.” He concluded by saying, “After doubling our federal debt in only six years, and spending close to a trillion dollars, not moving the needle on long-term growth would be the worst possible legacy of this budget.”

This budget has no plan for growth, no plan to make Canada more competitive on the global stage and no plan to deal with Canada's aging labour force and chronically low levels of business investment. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has noted that a significant amount of the spending in the budget would neither stimulate jobs nor create economic growth. Like many others, he has concluded that a good portion of the spending is not stimulus at all.

Much of the spending in the budget is designed to help get Liberals re-elected. It is clearly a pre-election budget with a shotgun approach to spending. For example, the budget promises a national child care program. They do not mind the fact that it is provincial jurisdiction and some provinces have already set up universal child care programs. They do not mind the fact that the social union framework agreement, which was negotiated in 1999 by a previous Liberal government, requires the government to get the support of the majority of provincial governments to proceed. They do not mind the fact that provinces are rightfully skeptical about a federal government setting up new shared-cost programs in provincial areas of jurisdiction, only to have the federal government reduce funding at a later date, leaving the provinces on the hook to make up the deficit.

This promise of a national child care program is one Canadians have every right to be skeptical about. The Liberals first made this promise in the infamous red book of 1993, some 28 years ago. Over the last 28 years, they have continued to trot it out, and they keep failing to deliver. The government had two years to prepare for this budget. The fact that after two years all they could come out with is a budget soaring in rhetoric, but lacking in substance, is not surprising.

This is a government with an unprecedented gap between its rhetoric and reality. It is a government that said it was about gender equality, yet forced out of its cabinet and caucus the first indigenous female minister of justice and forced out of its caucus Jane Philpott, someone whose medical expertise we could have desperately used as minister of health during the last year of this pandemic. It is a government that said it was feminist, yet ignored the specific allegation of sexual harassment against the head of the armed forces

It is a government that said it would introduce electoral reform. It is a government headed by a Prime Minister who arrogantly proclaimed to the world in 2015 that Canada was back, and who made it a centrepiece of his foreign policy to secure a seat for Canada on the UN Security Council. However, Canada lost the vote for the Security Council seat with six fewer votes than it received a decade earlier. It is a government that came to office promising to do more for the world's poor, but that has spent 10% less on official development assistance than the previous government. It is a government that came to office promising to do better on climate change, but emissions have risen each and every year it has been in office.

In 2016, the first full year the current government was in office, emissions were 708 megatonnes. Just last month, the government announced emissions for the latest year, 2019, at 730 megatonnes. This is a 22-megatonne increase from its first full year in office, when it stood at 708 megatonnes, and so, too, it is with this budget.

This is a government that says it is focused on the middle class. It says it is focused on jobs and growth and focused on fiscal prudence, yet it presents a budget that is focused on anything but. For all those reasons, I cannot support this budget.

Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1Government Orders

4:55 p.m.

Liberal

Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON

Madam Speaker, for starters, this member and I are both of Dutch heritage, being half Dutch, and I want to wish him a happy Dutch Heritage Day. I know that we both spoke passionately in favour of Motion No. 207 just a couple of years ago, which established Dutch Heritage Day. Perhaps our only regret is that, being Dutch, we are too modest to insist on a whole month.

I would like to go back to the member's comments about the vaccines. He referenced the Halton region. I think it is fair to be critical and to assess the job of vaccine delivery. Yes, there were a couple of weeks in February when there were some disruptions to the delivery, but by the end of the first quarter we had had more vaccines delivered to Canada than had been scheduled.

More important, the provinces knew what the schedule was well in advance, and the provinces were also getting forecasts with respect to where the pandemic was going and what to expect. Would the member not at least agree that, yes, there may have been some disruptions, but vaccines did get delivered as per the schedule just as the provinces were expecting?

Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1Government Orders

4:55 p.m.

Conservative

Michael Chong Conservative Wellington—Halton Hills, ON

Madam Speaker, I wish a happy Dutch Heritage Day to my colleague across the aisle as well. I appreciate the sentiment.

Let me respond to my colleague's question by saying that Canada has done nothing well in response to this pandemic. It is clear that both the United States and the United Kingdom botched the early response to the pandemic a year ago. That is clear. Their cases skyrocketed. They had many more cases than we did. However, they eventually pulled up their bootstraps and they have led the world, not just the free world, in vaccinating significant numbers of their own citizens to the point now where over 50% of Britons now have been vaccinated and almost 50% of Americans have been vaccinated.

We have not done anything well during this pandemic. The fact that we are now going through a third wave with a third set of restrictions is reflective of that. The government needs to do a much better job in managing the pandemic and in coordinating the response. At the end of the day, peace, order and good government—

Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1Government Orders

5 p.m.

Liberal

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

The hon. member for Windsor West.

Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1Government Orders

5 p.m.

NDP

Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON

Madam Speaker, with respect to Dutch Heritage Day, the NDP is partial to orange, and we would not mind it being extended to a month. I know we could certainly live with that.

One of the things that took place at the start of the pandemic was that pressured credit card companies went on a campaign to lower interest rates for borrowing. The member mentioned families. I am curious about where he and his party are with the credit card agencies right now, when most of them are moving back to interest rates of 20% or more.

Does the member and his party think there should be some regulatory reform, either in the short term or the long term, as Canada's borrowing rate is so low right now and these predatory prices are accumulating a lot of debt for Canadians. I am curious about where his party is on that, because we believe that there should be some regulatory oversight, especially right now, given the circumstances Canadians find themselves in.

Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1Government Orders

5 p.m.

Conservative

Michael Chong Conservative Wellington—Halton Hills, ON

Madam Speaker, the member represents a portion of Windsor, the place of my birth and a part of southwestern Ontario that, I know, he and I are quite proud of.

In answer to the member's question, we believe that the government should have introduced, in this budget, measures to help cool the housing market, which is the single biggest factor driving household indebtedness and household challenges in this country. Household mortgage debt in this country stands at over $1.5 trillion. It is by far and away the largest portion, about three-quarters, of all household debt. The fact that the government did not introduce measures to help cool the housing market is only going to further add to that overall debt burden that Canadian families are facing.

Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1Government Orders

5 p.m.

Liberal

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

Resuming debate, we have the hon. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance for the five and a half minutes she has remaining for her speech.