Debates of June 11th, 2021

Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1

[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]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for sharing that poem with the House.

Lives do matter, and the number 215 appears now in many windows in the north end of Winnipeg. In fact, when I drive down Dufferin, I see a red dress in a window. When I drive over the Salter Bridge, I see red and orange ribbons. It reminds me almost on a daily basis of the importance of reconciliation. We all have a very important role to play in being supportive and encouraging people, in particular indigenous community members, to speak out and to lead us on the reconciliation. I would like to think that we each have a role to play, all members of Parliament.

I wonder if my friend could provide his thoughts on just how important reconciliation is for his community and indeed for all of Canada. I am thinking of the calls to action and the report on murdered—

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

The hon. member for Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the member for Winnipeg North. I think each and every one of us has a role to play in this place and in our communities; how we listen, how we react to these stories. They are quite painful in many cases, but it is how we move forward.

Reconciliation comes in many forms. As a Parliament, as a government, as members who live in each of our communities, we do have that role to play and we do need to start listening to those voices on the ground that are telling us their path forward and how they wish to proceed. That is of utmost importance.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, meegwetch to the member for his testimony.

In the context of the budget debate, one very alarming thing that we do not talk about enough in the House is the importance of affordable housing, social housing and housing full stop. We talked about it briefly this week. The need for housing for first nations is absolutely critical.

Should this budget not have made more room for housing, including first nations housing? This is a matter of dignity, quality of life and respect.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my friend could not be more right. The need for proper housing in indigenous communities should be top of mind for everyone in this place. During the pandemic we have all seen the crowded situations and the fact that the virus does spread quicker inside tight spaces with lots of people. This is where governments need to re-evaluate how they are doing business because in many cases, the first nations communities have ideas and ways to fix this problem.

I am not just blaming one government. It has been successive governments over many decades, actually 100 plus years, so that is where, rather than “Ottawa knows best” and Ottawa deciding how things are done, we start doing things differently. Let us listen to the people on the ground in the communities who know how to fix this problem. We just are not listening.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for his comments and to acknowledge how it has impacted his own heart.

However, here is the thing. Yesterday, I put forward a unanimous consent motion seeking truth, to call what happened in residential schools for what it is, a genocide. That truth was denied, leaving survivors and families and our experience up for debate.

I believe my colleague has a level of understanding. Will he honour this truth about our Canadian history, that what happened in residential schools was violent and in fact a genocide, so that we can close the debate that survivors have to go through continually?

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate the passion of my friend from the NDP. We served on many committees together over the years and she is truly a strong voice for her community. I appreciate every time I have the opportunity to work with her because I have learned a lot from her. I hope to continue doing that.

In terms of her question, I do support the Truth and Reconciliation Commission calls to action. It is a cultural genocide, there is no doubt about that. We continue to learn and try to fix mistakes of the past, but also learn so things like this never, ever happen again.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my Conservative colleague for his moving and heartfelt speech. It will be hard for me to follow that, and I will not be able to convey such a deep respect for human dignity in light of the horrific events that occurred all over the country and throughout its history. I thank my colleague for his speech and I will do my best to speak to Bill C-30, the budget implementation bill.

There are some good things in this budget, but there are also things missing from it. I will obviously get back to this, since that is part of my job as an opposition member. What worries me most about this budget is that the government still seems to be putting a band-aid on a cancer and scrambling to fill in the potholes. This budget lacks vision. It is as though the government cannot see the forest for the trees.

We have not yet emerged from the crisis we have been dealing with for the past year and a half. However, the vaccination numbers, especially in Quebec and Ontario, are reassuring. We are on track for 75% of people to get their second dose by the end of the summer. Canada is behind many other countries, but I think we are getting through this together. This crisis was a huge tragedy. Tens of thousands of our fellow citizens got sick and will get sick in the coming years. Many others died.

Over the past 18 months, we have also realized how poorly prepared we were, and I am worried that future events could catch us just as unprepared. We want to believe that we learn from our mistakes and that things will be different next time, yet we have been through SARS and other epidemics before. Each time, we were not prepared and were caught unawares.

Both our social safety net and our health care systems had flaws and weaknesses. However, instead of fixing them, at times we made them worse, including by making cuts to health transfers to the provinces, something that was started by the Conservatives and carried on by the Liberals. Outside of some one-time measures, it does not seem like the government is really enhancing our capabilities and our public services to provide high-quality services and care with the right equipment to get through a pandemic like this one.

Make no mistake, this pandemic will not be the last. Pandemics happened several times in the 20th century, they have already happened a few times in the 21st century, and they will continue to happen. Will we be prepared next time?

Will our health care system and professionals be treated well? Will we provide our orderlies and nurses with better working conditions and decent shifts? Will we collaborate to ensure that we do not let down seniors in long-term care? The death toll at the beginning of the pandemic, especially at the Herron long-term care home in Dorval, on Montreal's West Island, was appalling.

Will we change the way we work? In terms of workplace relations, will we continue to work from home, or will we go back to the office? What will we do to prepare for next time? Will we have enough medical equipment for everyone?

Will Canada have the industrial capacity to do vaccine research, but also to design, create and manufacture vaccines as well? Over the past few years, our country has lost its entire domestic vaccine production capacity, and we saw how unprepared we were for the pandemic as a result and how dependent we were on our neighbours to manufacture vaccines, medical equipment, respirators and ventilators.

Will we have enough oxygen cylinders next time? If the next virus is more aggressive, more contagious and more deadly, will we be able to overcome it and ensure that our social safety net can protect everyone and leave no one behind?

I believe that this budget addresses some but not all of the short-term needs, but unfortunately, we are not planning for the post-pandemic reality and the new society that we could collectively create if we had the resources. We could create a society that is fairer, more prosperous, more equitable, greener, and also better prepared to face these kinds of challenges, because this will not be the last time that we have to.

This will also not be the last time that climate crises could worsen because of global warming. That is another subject, but it is still related because of the public health problems it can cause, whether it be respiratory problems or the spread of certain viruses, or simply disasters that will be extremely costly to both the agricultural sector specifically and societies in general.

This budget and this budget implementation bill have flaws. The pandemic demonstrated that we had societies that were very inequitable, and these inequalities have widened considerably over the past 18 months. I have seen statistics showing that the wealth of the richest families and individuals in Canada grew by about $78 billion during the pandemic. We are talking about less than 1% of the population. While most people were suffering, losing their jobs, watching their small businesses struggle to survive or even close down, the ultrarich were lining their pockets.

The Liberal government has not included any concrete measures in this budget to attack this excessive, outrageous and indecent increase in wealth, except for a special tax on the purchase of certain boats, luxury vehicles or private planes. A super-rich person who pocketed tens of millions of dollars in profit just has to avoid buying a private plane, and this measure will change absolutely nothing in their life.

As Oxfam Canada revealed a few months ago, as a result of this rise in inequality, people from big companies, like Amazon's Jeff Bezos, made truly gargantuan profits during this pandemic. Jeff Bezos has approximately 600,000 employees around the world, which is quite a lot. If Mr. Bezos took out his cheque book and wrote 600,000 cheques for $110,000, one for each of his employees, he would still be just as rich as he was before the pandemic. Needless to say, he was already far from poor before the pandemic.

What are the Liberals presenting in this budget to reduce inequality and make the super-rich, multi-millionaires and billionaires pay their share? Not much, as I said. The budget talks about boats and planes, but that is about it.

The government could have imposed a tax on wealth. It could have imposed an additional tax of 1% on people with a fortune of over $20 million. That does not seem excessive to me. It would free up a considerable amount of revenue so we could have social programs that would take care of people and a truly public health care system that could meet the needs of the population. Why is there no tax on wealth?

I mentioned Amazon and Jeff Bezos. Why is there no special tax on excessive profits during a pandemic? In the riding of Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie and pretty much all over Montreal, small businesses have suffered and have had a hard time making ends meet. Many of them have gone out of business even as giant Internet corporations like Amazon and its ilk have raked in the cash. Not only are web giants not yet being taxed by the Liberal government on what they earn in Canada and Quebec, but they have also been reaping obscene profits during the pandemic. The Liberal government does not have the courage to do anything about this.

Why has the government not altered its approach to tax havens? Every serious assessment of the situation, including those by the Department of Finance and the Conference Board of Canada, tells us that we are losing tens of billions of dollars every year because the super-rich can squirrel their money away in the Cayman Islands or Barbados so they do not have to pay a penny in taxes in Canada or, if they do, it is a pittance. This has been going on for years, with neither Conservatives nor Liberals doing anything about it. Most of these tax havens were created by Canadian banks, which were able to make rules that suited them so they could enable their clients and KPMG clients to avoid paying tax here by using financial schemes that no federal government has made any real effort to take down.

As Professor Alain Deneault has explained, if you are injured and you have to wait in an emergency room for 10 or 20 hours to see a doctor, it is because of tax havens. When you are waiting for a bus on a street corner in the rain and the bus does not come because it is broken down, there is no one to fix it and public transit is deficient, that is because of tax havens. If our communities do not have sufficient social housing and co-operative housing, it is because the rich are not paying their fair share. It is because of tax havens.

I wish we had a government that had the courage to tackle these issues. An NDP government will do just that one day.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Canada now has $4 of debt for every dollar that our economy brings in. That is a record ratio and is double the average over the past 60 years.

The government is printing money and has created $354 billion through the Bank of Canada. This is driving up inflation, especially with respect to house prices. This inflation could drive interest rates up, which would affect the record levels of debt held by our families, businesses and governments.

Does the member agree with me that we could end up with a crisis if interest rates rise before we reduce our debt?

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we do need to be careful. We do not want to wind up with inflation that prompts extremely excessive interest rates for our economy.

However, we also need to put things in perspective. Every country in the world has increased its debt during the pandemic. We are not alone in that. The same thing happened in Europe, Japan and the United States. In this context, our debt-to-GDP ratio is still competitive compared to most other OECD countries.

I would say that it is still more important to target the wealthy and the web giants who are not paying their fair share. We must not only look at expenditures, but also look at government revenues, which the Conservatives and Liberals unfortunately do not generally do.

Some investments provide excellent returns. If we give some households access to social housing, it frees up money for these people to participate in economic activity, join in activities in their neighbourhood, village or city and contribute to economic growth. It lifts them out of poverty, and that is good for everyone. Furthermore, providing more low-cost housing, such as social housing, reduces pressure on the market and prevents house prices from rising as quickly as they are at present.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.

The Minister of National Revenue boasts about having injected $1 billion into the fight against tax evasion. Had this been done properly, perhaps she would have had more money for her fishing wharfs, which are not getting enough funding. There is one approach that would cost absolutely nothing, and that is making regulatory amendments to eliminate some tax havens.

In this context, can we agree that the government's measures to combat tax evasion and avoidance are more smoke and mirrors than anything else?

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Saint-Jean for her question, and I completely agree with her.

There are aspects of Canadian tax law that the government could change, namely a regulation or two, without even having to introduce a bill. This would eliminate all kinds of excessive tax avoidance and even tax evasion. However, the government is not doing that because its hands are tied by the people on Bay Street, for whom these arrangements are quite advantageous, because their super-rich, multi-millionaire friends profit from them.

The government said that it is going to give the Canada Revenue Agency more inspectors and more resources. The problem is that many of these schemes are legal. There is no point in setting more police officers to guard the bank if bank robbery is legal. The government needs to change the regulations and the laws because, otherwise, nothing will change. These people will continue to laugh in our faces, they will continue to use their little schemes and we, collectively, are the ones who will pay the price. It is the middle class that ends up paying for our infrastructure and public services, while the super-rich do not contribute.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his very important and powerful speech. I just want to acknowledge the member for Hamilton Mountain and his fierce work around addressing the issues that seniors face in our country. Right now, what we are seeing is a two-tier system for seniors. We have the “junior seniors” who get paid one amount, and then we have the “senior seniors” who get paid a bit more. I think that is absolutely unfair.

What are the member's thoughts on that?

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her excellent question. Indeed, we cannot understand why the Liberals are creating two classes of seniors in this country.

People aged 65 and over used to be able to count on certain rights and services. They had access to certain programs, like OAS.

Now the Liberal government says that people aged 75 and older will receive a 10% increase, and tough luck for people aged 65 to 75. Meanwhile, the circumstances of seniors who live in poverty have not really improved during the pandemic. They have even been quite catastrophic.

I agree with my colleague from Hamilton Mountain when he says that this is discrimination against our seniors, and the NDP will fight against that. I also want to commend him on the work he has accomplished over the course of his career to protect our workers' pensions and retirement plans.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today and speak to the budget. I actually did not think I would get the opportunity to do this. I did not think I would see a budget from the government, so I am pleased to speak to it today.

I want to put this into the context of COVID-19. Last March, the government shut down the economy because of the pandemic, and we Conservatives co-operated with a lot of these emergency support measures, which was important to do at the time. I want to highlight the Liberals' approach to this.

The very first thing the Liberals did was use their bills as a power grab. They wanted to have the superpower to be able to do whatever they wanted and spend however much they wanted until December of this year, which is still six months from now. That is what they had asked for. Of course, we did not allow them to do this.

The second thing they did was take the power they did have, which was to spend some money, and direct that money to their friends. We think of former Liberal MP Frank Baylis, who got a contract for respirators even though his company had no experience or specialty in that area, and of course the WE scandal, which we have heard a lot about this week, where the government found a way to funnel money to its friends the Kielburgers.

When we exposed all those things, the Liberals did a third thing, which was to prorogue Parliament. They did not want investigations. They did not want documents to come out, and they did not want people to know what was going on. That prorogation of Parliament has created where we are now, where we have this last-ditch, last-hour effort to get this budget passed.

While all of that was going on, Canada was in a significant recession. Our GDP was negative 11.5% last summer. We had record double-digit unemployment, and many small businesses were shut down, including many in Saskatoon, particularly in the tourism sector. Then finally, in the fall, we got an economic statement. Finally, there was some acknowledgement that the government needed to provide some numbers, and yet even that understated the depth of the economic calamity that was hitting Canada.

While all that was going on, the solution to the problem, which was the acquisition of vaccines, was a failure by the government. The first thing the Liberals did was bet the farm on the Chinese dictatorship supplying all the vaccines Canada would need. Of course, that failed and the partnership with CanSino was a failure.

Once that failed, the Liberals talked a big game about ordering vaccines. They like to highlight all the vaccines they ordered. I was in charge of a manufacturing plant, and my boss was not overly concerned with what I ordered. He wanted output. He wanted me to produce products. When I told him I could not, he did not want to hear excuses; he just wanted the products produced. It is one thing to talk about excuses, about ordering this and that, but the real deal is landing those products in the country, in this case in Canada, and getting the vaccines into the arms of people.

Canada has consistently been at the bottom of OECD countries when it comes to getting people fully vaccinated. Why is that? It is because of this difference between ordering and actually landing products in the country. After all these months, we are still at less than 10% of Canadians fully vaccinated with two doses. The Liberals are very good at talking and not so good at actually doing.

On this budget, it is a major letdown. Unemployed Canadians feel let down, workers feel let down and families feel let down. It is not a growth budget. There is no plan to encourage Canada's long-term prosperity, and even the Parliamentary Budget Officer has said it will not stimulate jobs or create economic growth. This is a budget about Liberal partisan priorities. It is an election budget. There is not even a plan to return to a balanced budget in the forward-looking years.

For Saskatoon West, there was money for Meewasin Trail and for VIDO-InterVac, our vaccine-producing organization associated with the University of Saskatchewan. Both are projects I have been advocating for since my election. I have asked numerous question period questions, raised it at committee, written to ministers and brought media attention to it, and I think the Liberals finally just got tired and provided some funding there.

Was there money in Saskatoon for housing projects? No. Was there money for palliative care? No. Was there money for fighting the opioid crisis? No. Was there money for mental health resources? No. Did the people of Saskatoon West get slapped with the largest deficit and debt in the history of this country? Yes, they did. Let us talk about that deficit and debt.

This past year's debt is $354 billion, and next year's is going to be $154 billion. The deficit control plan of the government is getting the deficit down to $30 billion a year in five years' time. Now, 18 months ago, $30 billion would have been viewed as a massive deficit, and today it is seen as nothing. It is not nothing.

This document is projecting a $1.4-trillion debt. That is $37,000 of debt for every man, woman and child, every Canadian; $150,000 for a family of four. That is a small mortgage. It is like the government stole the identity of every Canadian, took their credit cards and racked up $37,000 in charges that they would have to pay. Not only that, in the background, the government is still taxing Canadians.

Some people would say, “So what? Who cares? Just print more money.” Basic market principles in economics care. Every time in history when a government prints money to pay off its debts, record inflation follows. Inflation means higher prices and the money Canadians earn is worth less and less.

I want to remind Canadians of events that occurred 30 years ago. The government, at that time, had racked up unprecedented debts, and by 1995, the government was unable to borrow money. Former Liberal finance minister Paul Martin was forced to raise taxes and reduce spending. A period of hardship and pain for all Canadians followed those decisions. The government was forced to get its debt in order by the markets.

I want to personalize this a bit, because decisions that we make here in this House affect individuals. My wife and I bought our first house in 1989, right in the middle of this period. Our interest rate on our first mortgage was 13%. To put that in perspective, if someone has a $1,000 mortgage payment today because of a 2% interest rate, and that interest rate were to go to 13%, like my first one, that $1,000 payment becomes a $2,700 a month payment, almost triple. Even if interest rates only went to 5%, that $1,000 becomes a $1,500 payment. It is a 50% higher payment.

With this budget, the Liberal government has made a trillion dollar bet that interest rates are going to stay low forever. Of course history says otherwise. From 1965 to now, the average five-year mortgage rate was about 9%. There was a 20-year period from 1975 to 1995 where the average mortgage rate was about 12%. It is only in the last decade that it has been consistently below 5%, and that is not sustainable.

The government is repeating the same mistakes of 30 years ago. At best, we are mortgaging our children's future. At worst, we are going to face another debt crisis, like Paul Martin did. The Liberals are spending money now, knowing that inflation is going to cost our younger generations.

What did we get for all this spending? We got $52 million for Liberal pet project A, and $300 million for Liberal pet project B, and hundreds of billions more split up against other Liberal pet projects. Will some of these benefit Canadians? Time will tell. Will the cost of Liberals buying votes for the next election burden generations of Canadians to come? Absolutely.

I want to turn to my home riding of Saskatoon West. Our Saskatchewan economy is built on agriculture, mining, forestry and energy. Saskatoon West is the centre of many of these industries. Our downtown houses many head offices. We have industrial parks, and we have a large railway switching hub and an airport that services all of Saskatchewan, especially the north.

I want to talk specifically about the energy sector. I sit on the environment committee, so I have a unique perspective. The budget was a missed opportunity to grow Canada's largest economic sector. In fact, the Liberals are failing our energy sector. Energy East, of course, cancelled. Teck Resources, Kitimat LNG cancelled. Keystone XL cancelled just this week. The Trans Mountain pipeline is in limbo. Also in limbo is Enbridge Line 5, which delivers much of western Canadian oil to Ontario and Quebec via the U.S.A.

What about small businesses in Saskatoon West? I have been a consistent advocate. The Liberal COVID-19 programs failed small businesses. The initial rent program was horribly designed, and left most tenants without help. The wage subsidy was initially written to exclude most workers, and we had to push the government for the rules to be changed. Then, of course, the CRA began auditing small businesses. We had to put forward a motion to end those unnecessary audits. I have spoken about these issues. Conservatives will continue to be there for small business.

I graduated from university as an accountant, and I worked for many years in business management. I worked in different companies, from large multinational businesses to owning and operating my own small business. The reason I ran for office here stemmed from my desire to bring some business acumen to the federal government. I believe we need a good cross-section of skills. We need drama teachers and journalists, but we also need financially minded people who understand economics and monetary policy. I think this budget proves my point very well.

This is an election budget. The foundational question was not what is in the best interests of Canadians. It was, what is the surefire way to get re-elected. Canadians can see right through this. That is why the people of Saskatoon West elected a Conservative MP in 2019, and that is why we need to elect more Conservative MPs next time. Only a Conservative government could secure our economy and secure our future.

[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]

Mr. Speaker, my concern with the Conservatives' approach to this is that, on the one hand, they say that we could have done more in terms of providing financial support and then, on the other hand, they are critical because we have borrowed as much money as we have. We have consistently provided support packages for seniors, students, workers and businesses to enable us to build back better once we get through the pandemic.

I wonder if my colleague could provide his thoughts on the importance of being consistent in what one says in the chamber.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Mr. Speaker, there is a phrase that I live by: Work smarter, not harder. Many of the things that we have seen from the government are the opposite of that. Money was given to dead people. If we look at the cross-section of who got the most money, it was the wealthier families that got it. It was not the lower-income families. There were many things, in the way these programs were set up, that were inefficient and poorly designed.

I truly believe that had Conservatives been in power, we could have achieved better results for less money, because that is the way we Conservatives do things and that is the way we think.

[Scott Duvall, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my friend from Saskatoon West was talking about financial support. What I am hearing in Hamilton Mountain and across the country is that many seniors have complained about the latest budget having a two-tiered pension system for those over the age of 65. They feel it is wrong and they have high costs like everybody else.

I want to know if the member is hearing the same thing in his riding and if he supports the Liberal way or would he support making sure all people aged 65 and up are treated the same?

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I am hearing the same thing. I have talked to many seniors who are upset with many different aspects of what the government is doing.

I believe that seniors built our country, seniors are the foundation upon which we live and it is because of seniors that I am standing here today. We all stand on the shoulders of our seniors, so they are very important.

We need to provide for seniors. We need to be fair to seniors. No, I do not think it is right to have the two-tiered system for seniors. The government needs to do what it can to take care of them. That is something Conservatives are committed to and I certainly am.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member talked about debt. Canada has $4 of debt for $1 of GDP, a record ratio. There is $8.6 trillion of debt. The government is printing money to pay for all this debt, which is driving up inflation that will lead to higher interest rates and cause a debt crisis.

Does the member worry that when the government's policy of printing money to drive up inflation and interest rates fully plays out, we will have a debt crisis?

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I absolutely think we will. I can speak to that because I lived through that. I lived through the 1990s. Like I said, my first mortgage had a 13% interest rate and I worry that my children and my future grandchildren, if I have any, will have to deal with this. They will have high interest rates that they simply will not be able to afford. When we talk about housing affordability being out of reach right now, it is going to be impossible if interest rates go to those kinds of levels. That is the future we are heading into with budgets like this.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to the budget implementation bill and give some overall thoughts about the budget. The document itself, as tabled by the Minister of Finance, was 725 pages long. It is the largest budget document in federal history. Unfortunately, quantity does not necessarily mean quality.

In terms of quantity, we have record spending and deficits. This fiscal year and the last fiscal year are ranked one and two, and both contain the largest amount of spending and the largest deficits in recorded Canadian history. It is not even close to the third-highest deficit. The current deficit that will have to be paid by Canadians will total over half a trillion dollars. That is just for the last two years. There is surely more to come. If we write on a piece of paper the number 5 followed by 11 zeros, that is nearly the amount of accumulated deficit incurred since Confederation. We are far from where we were when the Prime Minister promised “a modest short-term deficit” six years ago.

Canadians will be paying for this spending for decades. Since all of the spending comes from borrowed money, we will also be paying interest. We are not paying off the debt today, but its effects will drag on our economy like an anchor weighing down a swimmer in the ocean.

Right now, interest rates are being held low. The Bank of Canada is purchasing government debt off the open market, which puts downward pressure on interest rates. This allows the government to borrow and spend, but this is impacting the lives of everyday people in my riding of Richmond Centre.

Consequently, the price of everything is increasing. Indeed, with easy credit due to low interest rates, the prices of real estate have skyrocketed. Young constituents of mine cannot afford a place to live, while older folks are sitting on a windfall. Rents are getting higher because landlords must afford to finance and pay back higher and higher levels of debt. Unaffordability of places to live is one consequence of huge government deficits.

Higher prices are also seen in everything else, ranging from food to gasoline, services, and the list goes on. Disruptions in supply chains due to COVID-19 are not helping. Everybody at street level can see this happening. Prices were bound to rise, but the government's fiscal policy is making things a lot worse than they should be.

I do concede the point that last year in March, we knew a lot less about COVID-19 than we do today. Governments around the world reacted in different manners, but most were consistent in providing emergency supports to the population while we figured things out.

Beyond that, there was no excuse for what we have seen out of the government over the past half-year or so. The Liberal government has been very slow to bring us back on the path to recovery. Nothing illustrates this more than the snail pace of COVID-19 vaccinations that we have seen. Hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars were wasted in this initial effort.

We should be a first-world nation with first-world results, but instead the Liberal government has been lagging badly. Most Canadians at this point, including me, are in the category of having received a partial vaccination. Compared to our fully vaccinated friends down south in the U.S. and compared to countries like Israel, we have underperformed. This will cost us, and we see it in the budget today.

We see plenty of media out there showing obvious evidence that things are heading back to normal in places outside of Canada. People are attending sporting events, socializing and exercising without having to wear masks. Indeed, we are seeing hints of that occurring today from our provincial governments. However, people remember the initial promise of the federal Liberals when they said it would take two weeks to flatten the curve, which did not turn out as expected at all.

With this uncertainty, why would anybody want to make preparations for a recovery that may or may not occur? The rug has already been pulled from the floors of the restaurant industry in British Columbia, twice, with incredibly short notice.

My point is that the government's failed response with COVID-19 vaccinations has directly resulted in the necessity of additional emergency spending support. Tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars would not have had to be spent had we been one of the leaders rather than a laggard in our COVID-19 response.

However, the current Liberal government has made so many missteps that will slow down this road map. The slowness of our government's COVID response has also caused distortion in the labour market. I speak to businesses that cannot find employees because government benefits are competing with them, competing with businesses that want to hire. Going back to my original point about costs, it means the cost of labour is rising and this results in increased prices for everything. The volatile economic climate caused by the government's missteps is stalling our recovery.

At least before COVID-19, Richmond was home to a vibrant tourism sector. Today, we have travel centres and tourism-sensitive areas of the economy that are completely shut down. We need to create an environment that will get this sector back to where it was. We support tourism, but not birth tourism. This is what I have been telling people here in Richmond.

While nearly every industry from coast to coast to coast has felt the negative effects of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the hospitality and tourism industries have been especially hard hit. From international border closures to provincial border regulations and stay-at-home orders, the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of Canadians, either directly in the tourism and hospitality industry or in an adjacent field, have been hammered by COVID-19.

I have heard from countless constituents who work for airlines and in the travel infrastructure, hospitality and tourism industries, and they have all told me the same thing: “We need help.”

I want to take this opportunity to express my thanks to my colleagues from Niagara Falls, Abbotsford and Durham for their efforts in bringing the voices of those in the tourism industry to parliamentarians and to this place to be heard, and indeed, they were heard.

Richmond Centre is also home to the YVR airport and to many great aerospace firms that operate and maintain our airlines, airplanes and helicopters. The budget funding needs to be implemented in conjunction with an aerospace strategy that allows us to compete in the global marketplace.

The final area I want to touch on is one which is extremely close to my heart. For a number of years, I was very fortunate to be able to serve not just Richmond, but Canadians from coast to coast—

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

We have finished the time allocated for Government Orders for this afternoon. The hon. member for Richmond Centre will have two minutes remaining in her time and then the usual five minutes for questions and comments when the House gets back to debate on the motion.

It being 1:30 p.m., the House will proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business as listed on today's Order Paper.

The House resumed from April 26 consideration of the motion that Bill C-271, An Act to amend the Governor General’s Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Governor General's Act

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin my speech, I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge and hold up the Muslim community across Canada. This past week has been an extremely painful one for all of the beautiful Muslim people in our communities, who are now afraid of what Canada has become. I pray that we are tireless in our work to make this country an even safer country. Everyone should feel safe to walk in their neighbourhoods in our country.

I am here to debate Bill C-271, an act to amend the Governor General’s Act. This proposed act would reduce the Governor General's salary to one dollar a year, remove the right to retirement annuity and amend other acts in consequence.

When I read just the title of the proposed act, I was actually interested in having a meaningful review of and discussion about the next steps Canada has to take to look at this and the realities we have seen over the last while. Sadly, the content of the bill is not a serious attempt to reform how the Governor General is selected, and it would, obviously, limit potential candidates to those who are independently wealthy. For me, having more wealthy people in seats of power is simply not a priority.

It is obvious that we need some changes. In the most recent situation with Julie Payette, there is no doubt that the Prime Minister failed to undertake basic due diligence in the vetting process. If this were a piece of legislation that spoke to creating clearer rules and guidelines around vetting, I would be very interested in the content.

While it is true that I personally feel that Ms. Payette does not merit the pension or perks because she really did fail in her duties, there should be a much better vetting process and a clearer pathway around consequences when a person does not serve this important role appropriately.

I believe the member and I agree that, instead of paying her for the rest of her life, the Prime Minister needs to send the message that Canada's public institutions will not be a safe haven for those who abuse their employees. I think that this is an important factor and needs meaningful action. However, this bill is not that.

Canadians know that the Governor General plays a role in the constitutional arrangement of our democracy. Our democracy is not perfect, but it is something that I will always fight for. There is no doubt that Canadians want the Prime Minister to take responsibility for the flawed process of appointing Ms. Payette. This flawed process has left taxpayers holding the bag, and I am not okay with that. I also believe that, for this specific case, we want an independent investigation into the allegations of harassment at Rideau Hall. In the long term, there needs to be a better plan to keep all of our workplaces safe.

The Prime Minister has been heavily criticized for making key appointments, such as the Governor General and other House officers, based on politics rather than merit. This is concerning for Canadians, and I have heard that from my constituents. When we look at key roles, I believe that Canadians want people who we can all have faith in. When politics and key roles of leadership in our country get mixed up, it makes it harder for Canadians to feel trust in these roles.

Now, because of a poor system, we are in a situation where the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada is currently assuming the duties of the Governor General. Having the chief justice give royal assent on legislation that may one day come before the court does present a potential conflict, so this needs to be addressed. However, the solution offered in Bill C-271 does not provide the constructive criticism to get us to the next level, which obviously, this conversation needs to have.

Now, the Liberals have announced that they will have an advisory panel to help select the new Governor General. This approach for appointing a governor general was used by the previous Conservative government but was dropped by the Liberals after they were elected in 2015. While the Conservative panel was non-partisan, the Liberals have decided to appoint Liberal co-chairs, and this is clearly partisan.

Again, how do Canadians trust in a process if it is not fair, if they are not taken out of the partisanship realm and placed, as they should be, in the non-partisan one? This is a lot of taxpayer money being spent and, quite frankly, Canadians deserve better.

Some constituents tell me that they do not want a governor general anymore and that ties with the Queen of England just do not fit what Canada has become. This is a very worthy and important debate to have. However, again, the bill does not provide any meaningful space for this dialogue.

It is time for the Prime Minister to show Canadians that there are consequences for employers who create toxic workplaces and abuse their employees. Our former governor general should be disqualified from receiving a gold-plated pension and a lifetime expense account.

I hope in the future we have bills that provide information to address these key factors. When we debate in the House, we have to talk about solutions that will be long term and will not undermine our democratic process.