Debates of June 8th, 2022

Budget Implementation Act, 2022, No. 1

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

I am sure you could, but your time is up.

The hon. member for Kings—Hants.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague mentioned the importance of agriculture. I share that too in my riding. I am trying to get to the bottom of what the Conservatives' position might be on fertilizer tariffs. Yesterday they had an opposition day motion that said the 35% tariff we are imposing on fertilizer imported from Russia and Belarus should be eliminated completely.

At the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food on Monday, we heard from Yulia Klymenko, a member of Parliament from Ukraine, who said that this is a really important measure to not be supporting Russia and for trying to dissuade buying products from there.

The Conservatives have made clear they feel that farmers who purchased prior to March 2 should be exempt, and I share that view, but moving forward the tariff is in place. We think it is a reasonable and responsible thing to do to support Ukraine. Conservatives have been calling on that since day one of this war.

What is the member's position on this and can he explain what the Conservative position might actually be?

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Madam Speaker, we often hear that we cannot do indirectly what we cannot do directly. Nevertheless, the government has all the options in front of it to help the agricultural sector and farmers through this crisis.

The Conservative Party fully supports the idea of Canada imposing tariffs on Russia as a result of the situation in Ukraine. That is not the issue. Farmers agree with that decision, but the government has to find a way to compensate farmers for these higher costs, and it is not doing that.

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

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup for his speech.

I would like to remind him that he also cannot do indirectly what he cannot do directly. He referred to someone who was not in the House, and I should have risen on a point of order.

I was disappointed with certain aspects of my colleague's speech. He was going to talk about tourism and solutions. I thought that he was about to share something meaningful, but then he moved on to the next page. It left me wanting to hear more.

I would like to hear his ideas on how to save tourism in his region.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague.

I did not say my colleague's name. I did say the name of her riding, which I am entitled to do.

One solution is to give people a break on the cost of gas. We need to have a tax rebate or cut taxes right before the construction holidays. We will be on summer vacation soon. The weather is really nice here tonight in Ottawa. We are starting to see tourists in the nation's capital, but we would love to see them back home, too. Would people be able to come visit us?

They would stand a better chance if we reduced the taxes on the price of gas, except for the carbon tax, because that does not really apply in Quebec. We could have a GST rebate, for example, on the price of gas. That would be an incentive for people. That way, they could vacation in our beautiful ridings, in Abitibi or the Lower St. Lawrence.

[Marc Dalton, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his remarks. He is passionate about his riding and invited us to go there to learn French. I am actually learning French myself. I look forward to seeing his region.

A few days ago, I had the opportunity to ask the Liberal member for Whitby a question. I talked about the rising cost of living and of gas, and I told him how hard this is for people. He replied that we should get used to it because of climate change and the war. I thought he was very out of touch.

I would like my colleague's thoughts on that.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for that excellent question.

Grocery bills for an average family of four are out of control because of food prices. I saw the same thing when I was young. That was 40 years ago, and the fact that young families are going through this again is outrageous.

Government revenue is growing exponentially. The government is in a position to give all Canadian families a break so that they can not only buy groceries, but also take vacations and visit our wonderful regions.

[Tony Baldinelli, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise in this place today to debate Bill C-19, an act to implement certain provisions of budget 2022.

I will say from the outset that I will be voting against this high-spending federal budget, which proposes to dig Canada deeper into debt and drive our deficits ever higher. It simply hurts and squeezes middle-class Canadians even more through the Liberals' inflationary policies, which have created a cost-of-living crisis for Canadians in this country and a competitiveness crisis for Canadian businesses.

The Liberals and NDP often rise in this chamber to claim that they have the backs of Canadians, but their actions, as demonstrated by this reckless budget, prove otherwise. They will argue that it helps Canadians, when in fact it does the exact opposite.

If people were hoping for a return to some form of fiscal responsibility in this most recent federal budget, I am sure they were as disappointed as I was when the Liberal government revealed its $452-billion spending plan on April 7. If there was any cut in this budget, it was in the size of the document itself, which went from 725 pages in last year's budget to 304 pages in budget 2022. Perhaps that is progress, but only for a Liberal, I would presume.

Let us think about this for a moment. Federal government spending is now 25% higher than it was prepandemic. According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, each Canadian’s share of the national debt is now $31,700, and it is growing quickly.

It is clear throughout budget 2022 that the Prime Minister, his Minister of Finance and his NDP friends have failed to deliver on a plan that is fiscally responsible. Instead, they have added another $50 billion in uncontrolled borrowed spending. This will only fuel inflation and result in higher taxes, because one day these costs will have to be paid.

Despite all this new spending, there was very little support announced for our hardest-hit tourism sector. There is no mention of repayment extensions for CEBA or RRRF, and there was no extension to the tourism and hospitality recovery program, which ended already last month. These were key requests made to the government by the tourism industry to assist in its recovery, yet they were all rebuffed by a government committed to the talking point that it invested $1 billion in tourism. They fail to mention that this was in last year's budget, and it was still grossly insufficient given the economic toll the pandemic raged against this industry.

At a time when tourism recovery is still very much an aspiration for many and not yet a reality or certainty, the Liberal-NDP government, through this budget, has pulled the rug from under the feet of the tourism sector by not listening to its concerns and input on these important federal business support programs.

My riding of Niagara Falls, which includes the beautiful towns of Fort Erie and Niagara-on-the-Lake, is Canada's top leisure tourism destination. Before the pandemic, Canada’s national tourism industry generated $105 billion, which is 2% of our country’s GDP, and it employed one in 10 Canadians. Meanwhile, Niagara Falls alone contributed $2.4 billion in tourism receipts, and it employs nearly 40,000 workers in Niagara in our local tourism sector.

For tourism businesses in Niagara, the 2022 summer tourism season is its first real chance at recovery in two years. The sector, which will generate 75% of its income in the next four months, will be challenged to achieve recovery in 2022, specifically as a result of the government’s policies. By not listening to the concerns of the tourism sector, the government has essentially tied one hand behind the sector’s back by ending important relief programs, all while continuing to have in place restrictive travel mandates, which serve to depress visitors from travelling to Canada for business, to visit family or for vacation.

Instead of allowing tourism to do what it does best, which is to welcome visitors from throughout the world, the Liberal-NDP government has decided to double down on its efforts to hurt the Canadian tourism and travel sector. In fact, through budget 2022, the government is allocating an additional $25 million to support the disastrous ArriveCAN app at our international border crossings and ports of entry for travellers coming into Canada.

From a tourism perspective, which is so important to Niagara, it makes no sense that this is a funding priority of the government in this budget. Instead, the Conservatives are calling on the government to scrap this app. We did not need this app to travel or welcome tourists before the pandemic. Surely, we will not need it to travel or welcome tourists after the pandemic. As the world reopens from COVID, these questions and criticisms of ArriveCAN are important and necessary to highlight and press the government about.

It was astonishing to hear the recent testimony of the Parliamentary Budget Officer in the Senate yesterday. When asked if the finance minister's long-term deficit reduction plan was believable, he said it was not. To quote media reports from the Senate hearing, the Parliamentary Budget Officer stated, “I personally don’t believe it’s credible that there will be that level of spending restraint in the period from 2024 to 2027, given all the expenditures that remain to be implemented by the government over that period of time.” Well, I have a suggestion for the government. Perhaps it can save the $25 million it has allocated to the ArriveCAN app in this year’s budget, which will do nothing to help our tourism sector recover.

Another issue that is hampering the recovery of the Canadian tourism and travel sector is the massive backlogs at our local passport offices. Simply put, constituents of mine are experiencing nightmare conditions of service that are completely unacceptable. Obtaining a passport and renewing a passport are basic services that Canadians can rightly expect from their federal government as citizens and taxpayers, but the incompetence of the Liberal-NDP government has been laid bare by this example of mismanagement. This strong demand for Canadian passports and passport renewals as this pandemic ends was completely predictable, yet the government is clearly unprepared to deal with it, which again proves it does not have a plan to actually help Canadians or our travel and tourism sector, which my riding depends on.

Budget 2022 also raises far more questions than it provides answers for regarding businesses and workers in Canada’s wine industry, which is so important to Niagara and Niagara-on-the-Lake in my riding. First, this budget provides zero details about what the important trade legal excise exemption replacement program will look like. The expensive new excise tax will be hitting Canadian wineries on July 1, which is about three weeks away, just 22 days from now. Wineries across the country badly need to learn these program details so they can prepare and brace against the impact of this new tax.

Interestingly, while no program details have yet been revealed, the federal government does show it expects a revenue windfall, forecasted at $390 million over the next five years, after the excise exemption is repealed. How they arrived at this forecast is unexplained, and it does not indicate whether they expect the industry to grow, remain stable or contract as a result of this new expensive excise tax.

Then there is the question of the $34-million difference between the $101 million of federal support over two years promised in budget 2021 and the $135 million of departmental revenue forecasted for the first two years after the excise exemption is repealed. We know that the wine industry said the $101-million commitment in budget 2021 fell way short of what was needed to offset the costs of repealing the excise exemption in order to keep the industry whole as it is.

Will the federal government commit to returning to the wine industry the $34 million that it expects to generate in tax from the wine industry? Again, we do not know. The expensive new excise tax and all these unanswered questions risk future prosperity in Canada’s wine sector, which is so important to Niagara’s identity and economy.

Budget 2022 fails Canadians and fails Niagara. It proposes to grow the federal government even bigger, when the most basic of federal services, such as passport offices, are already failing and dysfunctional. More importantly, it fails to support our important tourism and wine sectors. For all these reasons and more, I will be opposing budget 2022.

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

Madam Speaker, it is unfortunate that the member does not recognize many of the things that were done to enhance and protect our tourism industry. It amazes me. It is as if he is not listening to what is happening in the community.

We can talk about the tens of millions of dollars, about $100 million, going to support our wine industry in the last year or more.

[An hon. member]

Did you listen to the speech?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, I did, which is why I am pointing this out. At the end of the day, talk to hoteliers. Ask them about the government support through programs like the wage subsidy program. Those programs supported our tourism industry when it needed the support, unlike the Conservatives, who said that we spent too much to support small businesses.

We have been there to support the tourism industry in the past and we continue to support it today in the 2022-23 budget, because it is an industry that is critical to our economy. We know that. It would be nice to hear the member recognize some of the facts regarding how that is being done.

[Tony Baldinelli, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Madam Speaker, to my colleague's point, during the pre-budget consultation period, all the tourism stakeholders came forward to the government and indicated some of the programs they needed to continue moving forward going into the 2022 tourism year, including the extension of CEBA and the tourism and hospitality relief fund. However, what happened was they all ended. The government committed $1 billion to the tourism sector, but that was in the last budget for the tourism sector. That was last year.

This year, it has all ended. If the government is going to tie the hands of the tourism sector behind its back, it should allow them to do what it is they do best, and that is to welcome tourists from throughout the world. One way it could that is by getting rid of the disastrous ArriveCAN app. That is one thing the government could do, and it could do it right now.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Madam Speaker, my colleague just gave an excellent presentation on one of the top tourist areas of Canada.

Could the hon. member inform us what concerns the duty-free shops have in his area? If they are anything similar to mine, they have been undermined by the fact that they have had to turn in a lot of their inventory, which they had to carry themselves, and they could not even carry it because of expiry dates.

Could the member expand on what he has heard? Maybe he could even expand on the relief that he was speaking about.

[Tony Baldinelli, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Madam Speaker, yesterday we had an opportunity to meet with representatives from the Frontier Duty Free Association. Two of the three representatives at that meeting were from my riding.

They told us that during the pandemic the revenues generated by these duty-free operations were down 90% to 95%. They approached governments for support, and at every turn they were rebuffed in trying to get support to continue their operations. Now that things are beginning to open, after the first two long weekends in both Canada and the United States, they are still 50% down.

Again, we are tying the hands of our tourism sector behind its back. We need to allow them to do what they do best and let them welcome visitors from throughout the world. In my community alone, 23% of the visitor base is American, but they generate over 50% of the revenues. When they go home, they have an opportunity to visit a duty-free store, make purchases and then export that back into the United States. We are not allowing them to do that. It is time we make changes so we improve the tourism and hospitality sector.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Madam Speaker, I listened carefully to the speech by the member for Niagara Falls.

I have always believed that in opposition, we should also be parties of proposition. That is why I am proud the NDP has brought forward tangible programs that would improve the lives of Canadians, things like a public dental care program that would help millions of people.

I wonder if the member could talk a little about what tangible gains he hopes the Conservatives would be able to leverage in this minority Parliament that would help real Canadians who are struggling with the cost of living and all of the pressures we have been hearing so much about. I heard a lot of complaints but not a lot of solutions.

[Tony Baldinelli, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Madam Speaker, one of the things I have been doing in my role, for example, is to bring forward the concerns of those residents in my community of Niagara Falls.

They are telling me that they need us to scrap the ArriveCAN app. I have 40,000 people who work in the tourism sector in Niagara alone, and they need to go back to work. One way we could help them is to get rid of the ArriveCAN app.

For my grape and wine sector, the government proposed last year to provide $101 million when the excise exemption is repealed on July 1. The government forecast is showing $135 million. What is it going to do—

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

Resuming debate, we have the hon. member for Yukon.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Madam Speaker, first, I would like to say that I am sharing my time with the hon. member for Kings—Hants. I am pleased to add my perspective on the budget implementation act and discuss some of what this budget would achieve for the Yukon while having something for all Canadians.

According to the 2021 census, the Yukon is Canada's fastest-growing territory or province. It is a wonderful place to call home as a steady influx of new residents will attest, yet like everywhere in Canada, we are experiencing an acute housing crisis. This is felt keenly in Whitehorse, Dawson City and communities across the territory.

I recently spoke to constituents from the village of Mayo who expressed alarm that the lack of housing was a key part of their inability to keep health care workers in the community, particularly those trained to address the opioid crisis we are facing. Our government is taking action to address this national issue through budget 2022 by making a historic $10-billion investment in housing in Canada, including $30 million to the Yukon specifically, for housing. Yukoners will be able to benefit from the measures we are introducing to make housing more affordable and accessible for all Canadians, including expanding the first-time homebuyer incentive and making property flippers pay their fair share.

Housing measures in this budget also include an expansion of the rapid housing initiative by $1.5 billion. This fund has already made a positive mark in Whitehorse and Yukon communities. Already, 149 units are being created in the Yukon, and I look forward to that number continuing to grow.

These are just a few examples of the investments we are making to ensure Canadians have a safe place to live and feel at home. While the housing crisis affects people from all walks of life, we know that first nations communities face unique obstacles.

Adequate housing and infrastructure are both critical determinants of community health and well-being. We will not achieve our goals in reconciliation without ensuring first nation citizens have access to adequate, safe and affordable housing.

In the last Parliament, the human resources committee conducted a study on rural, urban and remote indigenous housing. Its report, “Indigenous Housing: The Direction Home”, included several recommendations to address this crisis. One was to establish a distinct urban, rural and northern indigenous housing strategy, co-developed with CMHC, created for, created by, and led by indigenous peoples. Budget 2022 commits $300 million to create this very important program.

It also commits $565 million to support housing for self-governing first nations and modern treaty holders. Eleven of the 14 first nations in the Yukon are self-governing. They are nations such as Little Salmon Carmacks First Nation, Teslin Tlingit Council or Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation.

These are important investments for Yukoners and Canadians in their journey toward reconciliation. It is a journey that is well under way but with much yet to accomplish.

Providing access to affordable housing is not the only mission we are embarking on today. We must also take bold, decisive action to mitigate and adapt to the impact of climate change on our living environments.

Canada's homes and buildings account for 13% of our GHG emissions. It is imperative that we work to support retrofitting our homes and places of work and adjusting our building standards so that Canada's buildings can be as energy efficient as possible. Greening our homes not only reduces impacts on the environment, but also has substantial savings for Canadians through reductions in heating and other costs.

The government has long been committed to greening our homes and communities. This year, we are providing $150 million to Natural Resources Canada to develop the Canada green buildings strategy.

We are also investing $458.5 million in the Canada greener homes loan program through CMHC to provide low-interest loans and grants to low-income housing providers to support a green retrofit.

Greening our homes and buildings goes a long way toward reducing our emissions and fighting climate change, and it is also a way of dealing with the housing crisis. However, we still have a lot of work to do if we want to succeed in bending the curve of emissions.

The recent IPCC report was clear: We have not been doing enough to combat catastrophic climate change. We are not taking big enough steps to avert a worst-case scenario. If we do not expedite and expand our efforts, we will not be leaving a livable planet for our children.

I look around the House and see a welcome array of ages, but by 2050, when we should have reached net-zero emissions and when we are supposed to have kept global temperatures below a 1.5°C increase, many, even most, of the members making decisions for Canada now may no longer be here.

The decisions we make now will determine the options our successors in the chamber have at their disposal, and it is critical that we do not shortchange them simply because the timelines we are keeping are 30 years into the future.

As a father of two teenagers, I cannot stand by. We are seeing the effects of climate change daily, from severe flooding and devastating fires to dramatic declines in biodiversity and an Arctic warming at two to three times the global rate. Our land, our people, our economies risk devastation across Canada.

We can hope. Although we are behind, we have momentum. What is more, we have an ambitious plan to reduce emissions complete with objectives, timelines and especially obligations that are set out in the legislation.

Since January, I have been pleased to take part in announcements totalling more than $1.5 million to expand zero-emission charging stations across Yukon. Transportation is another key source of emissions, and with $400 million announced in budget 2022 to further expand ZEV infrastructure in suburban or remote communities, I look forward to taking part in more of these announcements, which will support making all road-accessed communities in our territory accessible by ZEVs by 2027.

Our government has committed $9.1 billion in new investments in our emissions reduction plan to build upon the investments we have already made with a road map for economy-wide measures to drive reductions while creating new job opportunities for Canadian workers and businesses as we work to achieve our climate goals.

In doing so, we will be working closely with indigenous communities, utilizing and applying their leadership, their deep understanding of the land and their traditional knowledge to help us move forward together. That is why part of our plan includes almost $30 million to co-develop an indigenous climate leadership agenda to support indigenous climate priorities.

It is a long haul, but essential. With this plan as a guide, the government does not plan to compromise on the means to build a cleaner, greener future.

To return to Yukon specifics, budget 2022 also commits $32.2 million to the Atlin hydro expansion program, which will literally help power Yukon into the future. Our investment in the Atlin expansion will bring power from an expanded hydro power facility in northern B.C. to further build a reliable and diverse supply of renewable winter energy for the north.

Mining has been a part of Yukon since before the Klondike gold rush. We had to learn the hard way, though, that a mine's impact on a fragile Arctic environment can be permanent and profound and prohibitively expensive to rectify, yet we can literally reap the riches of the earth to fuel a green and revitalized economy with modern regulation, technology and processes to mitigate mining impacts.

The world is watching, and Yukon is full of opportunity for investments and responsible, sustainable mining of critical minerals. More than $1.5 billion has been committed to developing critical mineral supply chains over five years, and we are introducing a new 30% critical mineral exploration tax credit.

While I am pleased to support this budget, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge that there is much more work that needs to be done on many of these files, particularly on creating a pan-Canadian mental health strategy and an aggressive and comprehensive response to the toxic drug crisis, as well as putting necessary investments toward our struggling health care workforce.

Nevertheless, this budget, part one of a series of four progressive and ambitious yet prudent budgets, is great news for Canada and for Yukon.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Yukon. I visited his area of the world, and it truly is one of the most beautiful places that I have ever visited.

He mentioned zero emission vehicles. Coming from Oshawa, I know that it is extremely important that we support the industry as we transition. One of the challenges I have with this budget is a lack of investment for charging stations. According to the European Union, we would need about one charging station for every 10 electric vehicles, which means we would need about four million charging stations for 40 million vehicles, and this budget really does not put any plan forward to fulfill that necessity.

I am wondering if my colleague could comment on the lack of investment for charging stations as well as the lack of investment for the provinces and territories to upgrade their grid in order to handle the huge influx of zero emission vehicles by 2035.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Oshawa for his comments, particularly with regard to the Yukon.

Certainly there are challenges ahead of us to pave the way for the infrastructure needed for zero-emission vehicles, including expansions to the grid. Our budget announced a further $400 million to expand ZEV infrastructure in suburban and remote communities.

In the Yukon context, I am very pleased to see the investments made to the Atlin hydro expansion project, which will provide the equivalent power for almost 4,000 homes in Yukon once it is operational. We are well on the way, but there will undoubtedly be more that we need to invest in and coordinate, particularly with grid harmonization across the country.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Madam Speaker, I salute my colleague and thank him for his speech, especially for his extraordinary use of French. I also salute Yukon's francophone community.

In Bill C‑19, there is a part about the luxury tax that targets boats and aircraft, including planes, small planes and helicopters.

I would like to know whether my colleague has been contacted by any of his constituents about this and whether he is concerned that this may have a negative impact on the economic activity in some parts of his territory.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Madam Speaker, I often hear people in my riding talk about access to health care, mental health, their housing needs, and investments to fight climate change. Those are Yukon's priorities. I am very pleased to see investments in these areas in budget 2022.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Madam Speaker, throughout this debate on the budget we have been talking a lot about the affordability crisis and people being able to make ends meet. Throughout the member's speech he was talking about his constituents, meeting a lot of targets and helping indigenous people in his riding.

One of the proposals the New Democrats have put forward is for a guaranteed livable basic income, which meets the requirements of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I wonder if the member would be supportive of our colleague's bill, Bill C-223, which would support a guaranteed livable basic income.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member's question is an interesting one. I think there has been a lot of discourse and I know there is interest in my own riding about exploring this option. I am looking forward to learning more about the particulars of that bill and what the pros and cons are of such an approach.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Madam Speaker, we are debating this evening, it is late, and I have the utmost respect for my other colleagues here in the House. I commend their dedication to democracy.

We are here to debate the 2022 budget implementation bill. I would like to begin by thanking the interpreters for their service, especially when I am giving a speech in broken French.

This is the second or third time I have spoken about the budget initiatives. As is typically the case when I rise in the House, I have chosen to focus my speech on certain topics. Tonight, those topics are Ukraine, affordability and the energy transition, new technologies and the importance of modernizing our regulatory system.

First, though, I want to say that I am a member of the House of Commons soccer team, which was started by my hon. colleague from Parkdale—High Park. This evening, we played a game against the British High Commission. Unfortunately, our team lost, but I think it is very important to put the match on the record. We lost by a score of three to one, with our only goal scored by the member for Lac-Saint-Jean. The Bloc Québécois members were very proud of their member, who got an assist from a Liberal, the hon. member for Parkdale—High Park. Future historians will understand what happened on the grounds of the Supreme Court during that game, a little break from the serious activities taking place here.

There have been many conversations here in the days and weeks following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. In this bill, I am very proud of the assistance our government is providing in the form of an estimated $1‑billion loan. This is an important loan, of course, but so is military equipment and humanitarian aid. I think that it is very important for this government and all parliamentarians to continue supporting Ukraine, because Ukraine is fighting for us right now and for international order based on respect for western values. I am very proud of this reality.

The Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri‑Food studied the issue of global food insecurity. I think it is very important for all parliamentarians and all Canadians to understand that Russian soldiers targeted infrastructure in Ukraine that is crucial for the agricultural system. The consequences of this destruction represent a threat for many people around the world, whether in Canada, in countries with weak systems such as Egypt, or various countries in Africa and Asia.

With respect to our diplomatic efforts around the world and our capabilities and expertise in the agriculture and agri-food sector, I had the idea that the Minister of Foreign Affairs could appoint a special envoy to work with our allies and coordinate efforts in this area.

With respect to affordability, we currently have a strong economy, our GDP growth is impressive and, with the current economic recovery, the hardships we faced during the pandemic are well behind us.

I believe that this budget strikes a good balance between the importance of bringing forward different projects and measures to meet the needs of Canadians and the importance of keeping the fiscal framework intact. The budget looks solid.

Of course, inflation is a problem. Yesterday, on opposition day, the Conservatives proposed various measures to address inflation. However, inflation has multiple causes and is a global problem.

First, there are supply chain issues. Second, there are major demographic changes across Canada and in other western countries. Baby boomers will soon retire. Some already retired during the pandemic. According to a Statistics Canada survey, there are approximately one million job vacancies. It is therefore important to facilitate immigration. Temporary foreign worker programs are also very important.

The war in Ukraine, rising food prices and disruptions in trade exchanges have also exacerbated inflation. There are also problems with liquidity. At the height of the pandemic, governments around the world responded in a reasonable way to help their citizens. Naturally, injecting liquidity also drove up inflation.

On some of the Conservative proposals we saw yesterday, it is important to raise the question of affordability but they were not very targeted. The Conservative Party certainly brands itself as being very fiscally mindful of the situation. What it proposed yesterday on the GST really was going to be rewarding individuals who do not need it. It would be rewarding individuals in this House who make, in some cases, four times the average Canadian salary. Why should we be eligible for that? Why should high-income Canadians be eligible? They are not the ones who need help right now.

The government needs to look at addressing affordability as we move forward. Of course, the budget was introduced a number of months ago. We need to address situations as they evolve, but we need to be mindful of balancing the fiscal framework and being targeted at Canadians who really need the help and not have these broad tax relief measures for Canadians who do not necessarily need them.

It is important we understand the Bank of Canada is responsible for helping control inflation. We will see increased interest rates in the days ahead. It is something we should all be mindful of, and frankly, be bracing for. There are some Canadians who hold a lot of private debt and that will be a challenge in the days ahead.

The government should focus on the supply side. Part of the challenge right now is the fact that there is not enough supply for certain demand, which is also driving some of these different prices higher.

I did not get much of a chance to talk about it, but let me just say how important the Atlantic Loop is. As a Nova Scotian MP, this is crucial for our energy future. It is great to see initiatives in the budget that will focus on grid transmission and upgrades. I am going to continue to talk about small modular reactors. We need to continue to drive that. I was pleased to see some initiative in the budget for it.

Hydrogen, biofuels and natural gas are all going to be important elements as transition fuels and in the longer term to 2050.

I am going to leave it at that. I cannot wait to hear from all of colleagues. I know they have been captivated by my remarks.