Debates of Nov. 3rd, 2022

Fall Economic Statement

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

Madam Speaker, when an election comes, we will be campaigning on our own terms, just as we work here on our own terms every day to advance in this place the things we committed to advance for the people who voted for us. We are doing that to the best of our ability, and rather effectively on a number of items, I would say.

When it comes to inflationary spending, we should look at the GST rebate. It is targeted at the people who have the least amount of money in the country and who have seen extraordinary increases in the price of groceries and rent. That money is not going to chase more goods. That money is going to try to keep their boat afloat to buy the things they used to buy. Therefore, the idea that somehow doubling the GST rebate is inflationary is simply false. The poor are not driving inflation in Canada, and if the goal of government policy is to help them get through these difficult and trying times, it will not be contributing to inflation.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the member for Elmwood—Transcona on his whole speech. I would like to pick up on the first part of his speech, in which he talked about respect.

That is an important concept because we are here to debate ideas. We all have our convictions. We are moved by an ideology, but we have convictions. The thing about convictions, raw convictions, is that they do not bother to consider the consequences. The resulting debate tends to be fruitless.

The next level up is responsibility, which is concerned with the consequences of convictions.

What the member did earlier was take the next step and engage in discourse ethics, which means laying down arms, demonstrating mutual respect and advocating for our ideas in a civilized manner. That is what I heard in the first part of his speech.

Here is my question for him. What are the risks of failing to promote respect and veering increasingly toward incivility?

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

Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his question.

I think we are seeing those consequences here in Canada to some extent. We see them elsewhere too, especially in the United States, where there was an attack on the capital itself and on their national legislature. It is a very serious problem.

I think democracy is a real achievement. It is something that we must always work on ourselves. It is not like a box or a pencil you can have, an object that will remain the same over time. It is something one must do for oneself.

If we abandon our democratic culture, which emphasizes respect when we come across a difference of opinion, we will lose our democracy. Public figures who are very successful in undemocratic conditions will have more and more power.

[Mike Morrice, Green, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, I want to start by thanking the member for Elmwood—Transcona for showing members in this place that it is possible to vigorously and passionately disagree while still being respectful of other people. If we had more of that here, Canadians would be better served by members in this place, so I thank him for his contribution in that way.

He was able to also point out both areas where money can be saved and revenue could be generated for government if we were to properly tax real estate investment trust, for example. He also spoke to the important needs Canadians have. For example, there are the needs of Canadians with disabilities, who are crying out for emergency supports while living in legislated poverty.

Can he speak more about the important connection between the dollars that need to be raised to fund the investments required to meet these important needs?

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

Madam Speaker, I am certainly happy to do that. In this time when we are seeing companies making extraordinary profits well beyond what they were making prepandemic, in a time of massive need, that is a lost opportunity to ensure people who are struggling, and who do not have the extra money in their bank accounts, can continue to do well. That is important from a moral point of view, but it is also important from a financial point of view.

Allowing large corporations to accrue larger and larger surpluses to pay out to their already rich shareholders means that people do not get the help and support they need. They are the people who end up homeless or who do not get access to health care, so they end up in emergency rooms, on the streets, in the justice system and in difficult circumstances that are themselves very costly to remediate. Everyone ends up worse off. That is why having a fairer tax system with proper investments in people who need that investment is a smarter way financially over the long-term too.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Madam Speaker, the member raised the issue of housing. He is exactly right, in the sense that housing costs went up over 70% under the Harper government and by another $300,000 under the Liberals.

With respect to urban indigenous housing in my own riding, we are the third-largest urban indigenous community in the country. The $300 million that has been committed will not even address the housing crisis in my own riding. The PBO actually said that we are short over $600 million to meet that gap.

How could it possibly be that the Liberals refuse to see reality? Why are indigenous people's lives always put on the back burner?

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

Madam Speaker, the member for Vancouver East makes an excellent point. I cannot speak to why this continues to be such a blind spot of the government, and “blind spot” is putting it too lightly, because it is a desperate need. It is an issue of justice for indigenous people in Canada that they should have the right, just as everyone in Canada should have, to a decent home. That is going to require investment. We can tell that $300 million, if we do some quick math, is not going to build enough units to get the job done.

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

Madam Speaker, I thank all my colleagues in the House. I thank the Liberals, the Conservatives, the Bloc members and the New Democrats for giving the Green Party of Canada the opportunity to make some comments. I appreciate that.

We have reviewed the 2022 fall economic statement. It is not a budget. We have yet to see the 2023 budget and the decisions that will be made in the spring.

Still, the Minister of Finance has made a few decisions. She has taken a certain approach and given some indication of where the government is heading.

What we see here is an honest assessment, more honest than that of many finance ministers, in saying that things are not going to be great very soon.

It is important to be honest, to face the economic reality. Canadians are not the only ones facing it. We are faced with a global problem, the increase in the cost of almost everything we use on a daily basis. In my opinion, that is not inflation.

The Minister of Finance was honest about what we are facing, as was the Department of Finance, in saying that we are not looking at economic growth in the next couple of quarters. We are looking at a slowdown. Yes, the minister has said we have a good house and we have a good roof, which are good things, but we are facing unprecedented global challenges. In looking at this statement, I am going to be as non-partisan as I can possibly be in saying that we have some new indications that suggest a growing awareness of something that I am going to say probably more boldly or baldly than other politicians will say.

First, let me say there are some good-news pieces to this budget and some missed opportunities. I really hoped to see a tax on the windfall profits of enormous oil and gas and other fossil fuel enterprises, which have been clearing billions of dollars every quarter. It has been described by others, not just the Secretary-General of the United Nations, that these windfall profits are not due to the economic wisdom or the genius of those in the fossil fuel industry who know how to ready their industry for great success. Let us be clear that this is because of Putin's war in Ukraine. This is war profiteering. No sector or CEO should be proud to return profits to shareholders because of war profiteering. They should not be proud to do that when they are raking in unprecedented levels of profit and Canadians are suffering. That is something of which no business's CEO should be proud.

I am from the Maritimes and I am friends with the Irving family, so forgive me if I mention the Irvings. They own the only refinery in Canada that imports Saudi Arabian oil and has also experienced windfall profits. However, it turns out from today's news, they also figured out a way to avoid paying taxes in Canada through a bit of a shell game with its own insurance company offshore. Canadian corporate leadership needs to look themselves in the mirror and ask what they are doing for Canadians, all of them.

The Minister of Finance missed the opportunity today to set a course for companies that are experiencing windfall profits, be they in the fossil fuel sector, banking or insurance. Banking and insurance have had some increase, but not sufficient to really deal with the excess profit problem. If a handful of Canadian families hold a great percentage of Canadians' wealth, should we not be looking at a wealth tax? When a government says it sees that rough weather is ahead, it sees that Canadians are going to be facing increasing costs for many things, should we not, right now, be saying we need additional revenue to be able to ensure that those who are suffering the most from this can pay their rent, can cover their mortgages and can take their kids to the grocery store and not the food bank?

How do we make that possible? It is not from trickle-down economics that the economy is going to do so well in a year or two or three that it is going to lift everybody up. We know that story. The rising tide, it was said, will lift all boats and trick-down economics will work. We know how it works. The rising tide lifts all yachts. It does not lift all boats, and we know that people are going to need help with their own little boats very soon.

Another way to have more revenue is to stop spending money hand over fist, handing billions of dollars over to a sector that we know is responsible for our having to spend hand over fist other billions of dollars in a climate crisis. We have promised in this country since Stephen Harper was prime minister in 2009, at a G20 summit—

[Fraser Tolmie, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would point out that there is not a quorum.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

We do not have a quorum. We are going to ring the bells to get a quorum into the House.

And the bells having rung:

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

We now have quorum, and I would ask the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands to continue with her speech.

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

Madam Speaker, I thank all my hon. colleagues for their keen interest in ensuring we have quorum. I want to particularly thank the hon. member for Whitby, who I know had to interrupt a very important meeting on climate finance.

I want to recognize that one of the pieces of this fall economic statement will be much improved when we move ahead with climate finance reforms. I particularly want to mention that, from the other place, we will eventually, I hope, be seeing Bill S-243, which would ensure that the climate and the financial sector line up and align with climate goals.

I will go back to what I was saying before. When we look at the situation in which we find ourselves, Canadians do need help in the short term. The source for that help must be going after the excess profits of large sectors, such as the fossil fuels sector, the financial sector, the banking and insurance sectors, and the grocery store chains, if it can be established that those are indeed excess profits, as has been alleged so very effectively by colleagues in the New Democratic Party.

We do know that there are things we can do to weather storms by taking care of each other. Looking at this financial update, it is very notable.

I believe this is the first time I have read a document prepared by Finance Canada that does not treat the climate crisis as an environmental issue that we must spend money on.

For the first time, in this fall economic statement, in the government's explanation of the current problems, crises and challenges, it is clear that the climate crisis is not just one of the problems, it is one of the causes of our economic situation.

For the first time, in reading this fall economic statement, it appears that, increasingly, Finance Canada recognizes a threat to our economic health, and a cause of the instability globally that we face, is the climate crisis. References in this fall economic statement are not just for having a fund, but I am pleased to see investment tax credits to more clean-tech development. I will flag that small modular reactors should not be on that list, but rather for solar, wind, low-flow hydro, geothermal and other technologies that allow us to avoid waste of energy, all of this is really good stuff, but that is not what I am talking about.

I am talking about where Finance Canada notes that the disruption of supply chains are caused, at least in part, by climate crisis events, such as the disruption of supply chains when goods could not get to market when the water was so low in the Mississippi River that Canadian bitumen could not reach refineries in the U.S. There were interruptions to supply chains created by things such as atmospheric rivers that wiped out the roads to the Lower Mainland of Vancouver, and we are still paying.

This fall economic statement points to the costs that will continue to be experienced, and the need to help Atlantic Canada and eastern Quebec, which have ongoing costs and need help to recover from hurricane Fiona. We still have billions of dollars from last year's fall economic statement to help British Columbia recover. After that set of atmospheric river events we had last fall, members should recall that every single land connection route to Vancouver, the largest city in western Canada, was disabled for a period of time, and that had an effect on supply chains.

Supply chains are affected by the climate crisis, and so too are the large economic events created by the climate crisis. In real terms, droughts in other countries around the world drive up food prices for what Canadians pay in the stores. The climate crisis is not a separate environmental issue that requires spending, but it has actually become, and has begun to be seen in Finance Canada, as part of the fabric of the economic situation in which we find ourselves.

I will go further. I said earlier that this is not our classic demand-driven inflation. Largely, what we are experiencing now is a supply-driven increase in costs because of Putin's invasion of Ukraine and the climate crisis events, which are, in real terms, making things cost more. When things really cost more, the tools we have in monetary policy and the Bank of Canada raising the rates will not have the same salutary effect as when we were dealing with an inflation crisis in the early seventies and then prime minister Pierre Trudeau brought in emergency wage and price controls. That is not what we are experiencing now. We have real cost increases because of a real war and because of a climate emergency. The costs and prices are uneven and all over the map.

Therefore, when we look at the threats to our economy of the climate emergency, we have to realize we need to do much more. This is clear from the way this document is prepared, whether or not it is being said out loud yet in Finance Canada. I have never read a document from Finance Canada, ever, that had so many references to the multiple ways in which the climate crisis is impacting our economy, all of them negative.

I look to one point, though, and I think we are ignoring an opportunity we need to seize. The hon. Minister of Finance's introductory remarks point to a moment back in 1903 when then prime minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier told the House we could not wait and it was the time for action. He was referring to the challenge of building a transcontinental railway. For the moment, I will skip over the cost in human lives and the impact of seizing indigenous lands in building that railway, but let us just say right now that we have a similar challenge, and we are ignoring it: How do we link our electricity grids together?

The essence is a 100% carbon-free, not carbon-neutral but carbon-free, electricity grid, with electricity moving through it from, for example, solar power. Alberta will be the big winner in solar power. Cheaper electricity can be produced by solar in Alberta than anywhere else in the country. There is our existing hydro in B.C., and I wish to goodness we were not talking about Site C, but we can do much more with renewable energy across Canada, and the storage system we mostly need is that our grid should work. It should work east to west and north to south.

We are not talking about that in this fall economic statement. We are not really addressing it anywhere, because we run up against the perennial problem of federation. We cannot ship beer across Canada, and we cannot ship electricity. We cannot get electricity from Manitoba Hydro across from eastern Manitoba to western Ontario, because we do not have interties, and that area, I happen to know well, is important boreal forest. We should have interties, but that is indigenous land. If we honour UNDRIP, which we must, it requires free, prior and informed consent before we even start drawing lines on the map for the electricity grid.

We know there are private sector entrepreneurs already who see the way they can get electricity from Hydro-Québec to Nunavut. We have to think big, and we have to recognize that, just as in 1903 the challenge was building a trans-Canadian railway, we need, as a modern industrialized country, to have a trans-Canadian electricity grid, because the grid is the battery.

I will just give one short example. In Europe, with separate nation states within the European Union, they actually coordinate and work better together than our provinces and territories work with the federal government. It is appalling, but true. Denmark produces so much excess wind energy that it sells its excess wind energy to Norway. Norway buys the cheap, green wind energy from Denmark, and if Norway does not need the energy that day, it pumps that energy up into existing reservoirs, which is called pump storage and is one of the technologies mentioned here. It stays there until Norway needs it. They open up the sluices; the water follows gravity and it drives the turbines, and then, when the cheap wind energy comes over from Denmark they pump it back up.

It is elegant. It is simple. It is an international exchange of electricity that we cannot do in Canada because we do not have the interties, and it is a big project. It needs to be mentioned and it needs to be thought through.

I will close on these points. This increase in costs that Canadians are feeling is not from our normal inflation. It is not demand-driven. It is not normal inflation in the sense that it is not demand-driven primarily, although it is partly. It is largely being driven by a war in Ukraine.

We Canadians support Ukraine. We believe that President Zelenskyy's bravery and that of the Ukrainian people must be reflected in our solidarity with them. However, in that solidarity, we must do much, much more to achieve peace and push for it. This is relevant to the fall economic statement because so much of the increased prices we are experiencing here are because of Putin's brutal, illegal, immoral war on Ukraine.

We must use every lever as a soft power to push for peace talks and push for ceasefires. It is not good enough to say “We stand with Ukraine” and “Slava Ukraini”. We have to do more for peace because we are a country that can do that. We may have to say to our NATO allies that if belonging to NATO means we really cannot help Ukraine, maybe we do not belong in NATO. If NATO cannot work for peace and work for nuclear disarmament, maybe it is time to ask our NATO allies this: What good is an alliance that cannot protect Ukraine because of nuclear weapons inside NATO and inside Russia that threaten us all?

We have to face the real costs that are going up. We have to face multiple crises at the same time to avoid a global food crisis and avoid a global water crisis. We must do more in this country as global leaders on climate change.

That means stopping the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and converting that Crown corporation into other uses that are actually beneficial for Canadians, such as building resiliency across this country and building the infrastructure we need. We do not need the Trans Mountain expansion. In the words of António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, it represents “moral and economic madness”. So too does expanding the drilling off the coast of Newfoundland in Bay du Nord. So too does continuing fracking across Canada while pretending that Canadian liquefied natural gas is somehow better than coal.

We must face the economic reality, the reality of the war and the reality of climate change. We must face all these realities.

We can actually avoid the worst of climate change by changing course quickly. We can follow the indicators that the Minister of Finance has given us in this budget and say that by spring 2023, let the budget stand for Canada laying down the marker that we move according to science. Let us move off fossil fuels, protect the workers in that sector and make sure that Canadians are in a house that can stand the coming storms.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Madam Speaker, before the pandemic, one of our big concerns was the gig economy. A lot of people were looking at two or maybe even three very low-paying jobs to make a go of it. Now that sector seems to be short of people, as the people who used to be in the gig economy moved up to take the place of guys my age who retired. Some of us have not gotten the memo yet, but we have a lot of older Canadians who have backed out of the labour market.

We have an immigration plan that will bring more people into the country to fill those jobs. I wonder if the hon. member could reflect on whether we should make an extra effort to avoid a new class and new generation of low-paid gig workers in Canada.

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

Madam Speaker, a couple of years ago, the Canadian Labour Congress published a piece on the new world of work.

What does our economy look like for workers when we look at artificial intelligence? We have a gig economy that has already made many people insecure in the jobs they have. I completely agree with my hon. friend. What we are seeing is that as people retire, we have a demographic bubble of boomers who are leaving the workforce and we do not have enough people coming up behind us. That is why we are looking in this fall economic statement at increases in immigration and hoping that those people are trained professionals in the workforce. Construction workers particularly are mentioned in the statement.

We could do far more to prepare for artificial intelligence by moving to a guaranteed livable income as quickly as possible to protect our economy from the coming shocks. Then people could choose, knowing that they have just enough income to be above the poverty line, to maybe work a bit in the gig economy, maybe have a garden at home and maybe spend more time volunteering in the community. We would be a healthier society and better able to withstand any shocks that are coming once we adopt a guaranteed livable income.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and to the President of the Treasury Board]

Madam Speaker, every time I listen to my hon. colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands, I learn a lot. I would like to thank her for her excellent speech and her analysis of the fall economic statement.

The member mentioned that inflation was not typical this time. The Minister of Finance and her department also recognized that fact.

I listen to my colleague quite often, and I have a very honest question for her. We know that even if we stop all economic activity, there is a time lag between our activities and the greenhouse gas emissions. That means there will be some modifications and changes in our climate regardless of what we do now.

Is my colleague also telling us that she believes that there will always be inflationary pressure from now on because of climate change and that it will persist until we resolve the climate crisis?

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

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Hull—Aylmer for his excellent question.

We are now in a long emergency, as a book title called it.

Madam Speaker, about a decade ago, there was a book by James Kunstler called The Long Emergency, which predicted that we were going to see our economy significantly rocked by what will happen as fossil fuels become more expensive as we move away from fossil fuels. The Long Emergency was about where we are now: real costs are increasing, a real dislocation.

That does not mean ongoing inflationary trends. It does mean thinking about how a society flourishes despite these very unusual headwinds. They are unusual now because they are new, but they are not going away. We have to think about that and make sure that we design our economy and our economic signals of what makes us better off. The GDP is not a good measurement to help us chart a course through an ongoing climate emergency. We need to chart our course.

I think this is a global challenge. At the end of the Second World War nations met at Bretton Woods to figure out what are the global and shared financial institutions to help us get through that. We need new institutions and a review, a new Bretton Woods, that would help us with both the post-COVID impacts on our economies and the current climate impacts on our economies.

We cannot rewrite the laws of atmospheric physics and chemistry. We can easily rewrite the way we want our economy to work if all the economies and central banks of the world get together and say, “This is what we are looking at. How do we protect the citizens and the communities of all, and, I would hope, the non-human species of Mother Earth?”

[Mike Morrice, Green, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, in a previous question, the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands spoke about a guaranteed basic income. In the House, there is legislation put forward, Bill C-22, that would provide that for Canadians with disabilities who are living in legislated poverty. However, in this fall economic statement, we did not see anything with respect to funding the benefit, nor did we see anything with respect to emergency supports, like what was done with CERB, to address the conditions of those living in poverty and those living with disabilities across the country.

Can she speak more about this opportunity? If it is not in this fall economic statement, how can all parliamentarians work together to continue to advocate to ensure that, if not now, then perhaps by budget 2023 these critical supports can be put in place?

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

Madam Speaker, this is one of the big disappointments in the fall economic statement. With work being done on Bill C-22 in this place and with the unanimous support that Bill C-22 received at second reading, I would have hoped to see something of an emergency short-term fund to ensure that no Canadian in the disability community is living below the poverty line. We know that all too often people living with disabilities are, in fact, disproportionately part of the community of the lowest-income Canadians.

Yes, we need an emergency short-term support. We do not have to wait for the next budget. It can be brought forward at any time. We know we are going to see a budget implementation act at some point. A budget implementation act would be a good place to see an emergency short-term payment for people living with disabilities until Bill C-22 can come through, be enacted and be fully funded.

[Mike Morrice, Green, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to follow up with another item. What is mentioned in words in the fall economic statement, but no so much in actions, is addressing the housing crisis that we find ourselves in. It is in the preamble, but when it comes to actual measures, there is only one mention of moving forward on a flipping measure on assignment sales for homes, but nothing when it comes to, for example, ensuring homes should be places for people to live and not simply a commodity for investors to trade.

Can she comment on the measures she would have wanted to see that would have more directly addressed the housing crisis, not just the rhetoric but actual measures?

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

Madam Speaker, the minister, in her speech, talked about “tackling housing speculation”, but the flipping piece, which is the only measure in there, was already announced. We need to do much more.

I would recommend addressing how much of our housing is not accessible for people to live in as dwellings and has become part of an Airbnb market that is global, unaccountable and pays very little tax in Canada.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

It being 7:05 p.m., pursuant to an order made Friday, October 28, the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m. pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).

(The House adjourned at 7:05 p.m.)