Debates of March 31st, 2022

Starred Questions

[The Speaker]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

*Question No.332—

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

With regard to the government’s broadband internet strategy: (a) what is the timeline for providing complete broadband internet availability to Pelee Island; (b) will the deadline be adjusted for lost time due to slow rollout after the announcement; (c) what is the total amount of funding to date to complete broadband internet availability on Pelee Island; and (d) what are the details of how the funding in (c) will be provided?

[Stéphane Lauzon, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Rural Economic Development]

Mr. Speaker, the universal broadband fund, or UBF, is the single largest federal investment in broadband in Canada’s history. With budget 2021, the government has brought the total funding for the UBF to $2.75 billion to help ensure that 98% of Canadians will be connected by 2026, and all Canadians by 2030, including those living on Pelee Island.

The UBF launched in November 2020, and received more than 1,900 applications. The first announcement under the rapid response stream of the UBF was made in December 2021. Since then, the Government of Canada has announced projects and partnerships that will connect over 900,000 households with $2 billion in funding. More announcements under the UBF are made regularly.

The Government of Ontario is making significant efforts to expand high-speed Internet and mobile wireless infrastructure under Ontario Connects, with the goal of connecting all Ontarians by the end of 2025. On July 29, 2021, a federal-provincial co-funding agreement was announced to bring high-speed Internet to nearly 280,000 rural Ontario households in hundreds of communities across the province. This agreement is made possible by an equal federal-provincial investment totalling more than $1.2 billion.

In the coming months, additional project details will be announced about funding recipients, communities served and the number of households that will benefit from each of the projects under the Canada-Ontario broadband partnership. Negotiations are well under way with all selected project recipients and will be made public when finalized.

Funding under the Canada-Ontario broadband partnership will be provided by both levels of government directly to the funding recipient.

Questions Passed as Orders for Returns

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, furthermore, if the government's responses to Question Nos. 323, 325, 329 and 331 could be made orders for return, these returns would be tabled immediately.

[The Speaker]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon members]

Agreed.

Question No.323—

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

With regard to losses of public money and property as listed in Volume Ill of the 2021 Public Account of Canada: what are the details of each instance where the loss involved an item with a value in excess of $1,000, including for each (i) the item description, (ii) the item value, (iii) whether the item is considered lost, damaged, or stolen, (iv) the government department or agency which owned the item, (v) the incident description or summary?

(Return tabled)

Question No.325—

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

With regard to the mandate letter of the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development and the commitment in the letter to create 3,300 new child care spaces for Indigenous children: (a) how many new child care spaces have been created for Indigenous children since the letter was received by the minister on December 16, 2021, broken down by province or territory; and (b) how many new spaces for Indigenous children will be created by the end of (i) 2022, (ii) 2023?

(Return tabled)

Question No.329—

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

With regard to the Chief Electoral Officer's Report on the 44th General Election of September 20, 2021, and the National Register of Electors: (a) in respect of the 92.3% accuracy of registered electors' addresses, as mentioned on page 41 of the report, (i) how many electors are represented by the remaining 7.7%, in total and broken down by electoral district, (ii) how many of the electors referred to in (i) were sent a voter information card; and (b) in respect of Elections Canada's registration letter campaign targeted to "select regions with lower youth coverage", which electoral districts were selected?

(Return tabled)

Question No.331—

[Leslyn Lewis, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

With regard to all federal COVID-19 related mandates and restrictions, and broken down by each measure: (a) what was the scientific justification or study for each mandate or restriction; (b) what is the specific website address where the study's details, including the findings, can be found; (c) on what date will each restriction end; and (d) for each mandate or restriction that does not have a set end-date, what criteria or metric has to be achieved in order for it to be rescinded?

(Return tabled)

Questions Passed as Orders for Returns

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all remaining questions be allowed to stand.

[The Speaker]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon members]

Agreed.

Opposition Motion—Federal Budget

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

moved:

That, given that,

(i) excessive government spending has increased the deficit, the national debt, and fuelled inflation to its highest level in 31 years,

(ii) taxes on Canadians continue to increase, from the carbon tax to escalator taxes to Canada Pension Plan premiums,

(iii) the government refuses to provide relief to Canadians by temporarily reducing the Goods and Services Tax on gasoline and diesel,

the House call on the government to present a federal budget rooted in fiscal responsibility, with no new taxes, a path to balance, and a meaningful fiscal anchor.

Mr. Speaker, I want to let you know that I am splitting my time with the member for Mégantic—L'Érable.

Excessive government spending; deficits as far as the eye can see; the largest national debt this country has ever seen, in fact doubled in a short six years; inflation running rampant; skyrocketing housing prices; seven years littered with broken promises: that is the record of the failed Liberal government.

The motion before us today is hoping to right the ship somewhat. As members know, next week on April 7, the Minister of Finance is going to be tabling in the House a budget that is intended to chart the pathway forward for this country when it comes to our finances and how we spend taxpayers' money. Given the fact that the last six years of the Liberal government has been such an unmitigated financial disaster, we would like to make some suggestions for what it could do to actually restore some sanity and probity into our fiscal situation here in our country.

Let me begin by talking about what Canadians have come to expect. Over the last two and a half years we have been fighting the COVID pandemic. Rightfully Canadians have been concerned about their health and the health of their neighbours, so we were asked to be vaccinated. Remember that? We were told if we were vaccinated we would not pick up the COVID virus. Of course, now we find out that is not true. I am triple vaccinated and I have not had the COVID virus. My wife is triple vaccinated. After she was triple vaccinated, she got the COVID virus and we live together, so the health authorities had that wrong.

I support vaccination, but the Liberals told us if Canadians got vaccinated we will have life return to normal. Lockdowns will be gone, mandates will be lifted and life will be back to normal. What happened? It was quite the opposite. We are still under lockdowns. We are still under vaccine mandates at the federal level, which is the Prime Minister's responsibility. Now we are faced with an even greater challenge and that is inflation. Today, our inflation rate is somewhere in the order of 5.7%.

House prices are up a whopping 30% in just this year alone, so how does the government expect young Canadian families who have this dream of home ownership to ever fulfill that dream? Millions of Canadians have lost that dream of home ownership.

We have seen gas prices at the pump go up 32% since February of this past year, 2021. Of course, those gas prices continue to climb in my region of Abbotsford and the greater Vancouver area. Some gas stations were charging $2.09 per litre of gas and right now there is no prospect of that going down at all. In fact, the prospect is that those prices will keep going up.

In order to address that issue, we as Conservatives, presented solutions. One of those solutions was tabled in the House a week ago, which was to, temporarily at least, lift the GST on gasoline purchases. Give Canadians a break. We had a debate in the House and guess what. Our NDP-Liberal friends voted against relief at the gas pumps. We brought forward another proposal, which was, why do we not lift the carbon tax? Let us get rid of the carbon tax and give motorists a break. We know the NDP-Liberal coalition is opposed to that. In fact, it is the government of high taxes.

Inflation is being driven by a number of factors. I have already mentioned taxes. Every time the current government raises taxes, whether it is carbon taxes or the rising GST revenues that it gets because of the rising gas prices, every time it imposes an escalator tax like it did for alcohol and every time it raises CPP premiums, that is a burden on Canadians and it is driving inflationary pressures in Canada.

However, it gets worse. Less than a year ago, the Minister of Finance was given a mandate letter from the Prime Minister in which she was instructed to engage in no more new permanent spending. Do members remember that? It was a directive to the finance minister for no new permanent spending. Guess what happened. Today, we are looking at pharmacare. That is new permanent spending. We are looking at dental care. That is new permanent spending. We are looking at transit. We are looking at numerous new spending programs, including child care for example. It goes on and on with broken promises.

By the way, in the most recent mandate letter, less than a year after the original one that prohibited new permanent spending, suddenly the mandate letter had no reference at all to new permanent spending. It is a government that loves to virtue signal on finances, on deficits, on debt and on spending, but it never delivers.

It gets worse. April 1, tomorrow, is April Fool's Day, and of course the Liberals are going to treat Canadians like fools. What are the Liberals going to do? They are going to increase the carbon tax by another $10 per tonne. Do members know what that means? For those provinces that have the carbon tax backstop it means another 11¢ at the pump. That is on the current Liberal government. They cannot blame that on anyone else.

It gets worse. Do people remember the last budget, a year ago, when the Minister of Finance talked about the stimulus that she was going to pump into the economy to get the economy going? The economy was already starting to grow and bounce back, but she insisted that she needed over $100 billion of additional money to pump into the economy. Guess what happened. There was so much money pumped into the economy that it has caused inflation, especially in the housing market. As I already mentioned, in one year alone, there was a 30% increase in housing prices. How are Canadians supposed to cope with that? How are Canadians supposed to cope?

We are facing an inflation crisis. We are facing a tax crisis crisis in this country. We are facing a spending crisis in this country. That is why today we are calling upon this finance minister, this Prime Minister and the NDP-Liberal government to do the right thing, which is to rein in spending. In this coming budget next week, we are calling on the government to make sure that there is a clear pathway toward balanced budgets, where we return to living within our means. That is what responsible governments do. We have not seen that for the last six years.

We are solution-oriented. We are asking the government to come up with a defensible, firm fiscal anchor that has a clear pathway to a balanced budget in the medium term. In the motion before them, members see that we are asking the government to address inflationary pressures, to address taxation that is going through the roof and to address the needs of Canadians.

Canadians are really struggling. They have lost their dream of home ownership. They cannot pay for gas for their cars to take their kids to hockey lessons, to school and to music lessons. They cannot afford life anymore. They cannot buy groceries. My goodness, we are living in one of the richest countries in the world and the current government has made it virtually impossible for many families to even afford groceries.

I am asking the government to do the right thing in its upcoming budget. I am asking it to find a pathway to balance, restrain spending and control the urge to spend. I know Liberal tax-and-spend is the way of this country whenever we have a Liberal government. However, I ask the Liberals to listen to us. We are solution-oriented.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, how quickly my friend has forgotten. It was not that long ago when we had a national election and the leader of the Conservative Party was going to actually keep a carbon tax. He supported a carbon tax. What the Conservative Party of Canada supported was a price on pollution. Not only did the Conservatives promise that, but in part of their platform they were actually going to spend more money than what we were proposing to spend.

Does my friend opposite not realize that, if we are saying one thing during a national campaign, there is a certain expectation that Canadians might believe what we are saying during the election? Now they are taking a flip-flop not on one or two issues but even on a basic understanding of COVID, as the member said regarding getting vaccinated once or twice and getting a booster. It does not mean that we cannot get infected, but what it does is it minimizes the effects. I am wondering if the member could maybe provide his thoughts on being consistent.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we are entirely consistent. The Parliamentary Budget Officer recently issued a report that showed that the carbon tax revenues the Liberal government raises far exceed the rebates it sends back. Virtually every Canadian in this country pays more in carbon tax than they get back. Our plan in the last election was a carbon savings account, not a carbon tax. The member obviously did not read the platform document. We, of course, did, and it was a carbon savings account in which every single dollar Canadians paid would come back to them by way of a formal investment in their carbon savings account.

The least I would expect from our Liberal friends is the truth.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague began his speech by misinforming the public, when he implied that the vaccine is not effective because booster doses are required.

I would suspect that my colleague has been vaccinated against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, polio, influenza, hepatitis B, pneumococcus, meningitis, measles, rubella and mumps. All of these vaccines require booster doses.

Does my colleague understand what a booster dose is, and does he intend to stop pushing misinformation to Quebeckers and Canadians?

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I did not even mention boosters in my speech. What I did say was that I support vaccines. I am triple vaccinated. I have no problem being vaccinated, but I do respect those in Canada, unlike our NDP, Liberal and Bloc colleagues, who differ in their opinions on that. However, I believe vaccines can dramatically reduce mortality and serious illness, and I encourage Canadians to get vaccinated, but it is time to lift the vaccine mandates. We have had them for a long time. A lot of Canadians feel they have lost their freedom as a result, so on top of all of that, we now have the problem of inflationary pressures created by the Liberal government. It is time to get inflation under control. It is time to get spending under control.

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

Uqaqtittiji, I understand that is the Inuktitut word for “Speaker” on this National Indigenous Languages Day.

I wanted to go back to some remarks of the member. During his speech he talked about the Conservatives' previous motion to lift the GST at the pumps, and he would know, from listening to debate on that day, that New Democrats were prepared to entertain the idea of some temporary tax relief for Canadians. We moved an amendment to say that, instead of providing that relief at the pumps, we ought to provide it on home heating. I presented some arguments as to why we thought that was a good idea. It was an opportunity to build a broader consensus here in the House on their motion. Conservatives declined, but I did not hear in that debate the reasons why.

I wonder if the member might like to offer the reasons they declined to consider tax relief on home heating that day.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we are the party of lower taxes; that is why we brought this forward. One of our colleagues today introduced a bill in the House to eliminate the escalator on excise taxes on alcohol. We are the party of lower taxes. I can tell the member that, when we had the debate on the GST, we were so disappointed that the NDP refused to support us on that. It was a simple measure that would have lifted the GST on gasoline purchases, because GST, unlike many other taxes, is a tax upon a tax. Can members imagine that? Canadians have to pay that. That is why life is getting more and more unaffordable.