Debates of Sept. 29th, 2022

Opposition Motion—Moratorium on New Taxes

[Leah Taylor Roy, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Madam Speaker, I have more of a comment than a question. I was very encouraged by the speech the member opposite just gave. I only wish that some of the members opposite me had been listening and that perhaps a few more of them were in the House to support the motion they have put forward because—

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

The hon. member knows that she cannot mention the presence or absence of members in the House.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I wish her members were in the House.

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

It goes for both sides. We do not mention presences or absences in the House.

[Leah Taylor Roy, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Madam Speaker, the points the member made were very good. I am very glad to hear her call out the populism and the approaches being taken by the members opposite.

I would like to understand and get your thoughts on this. The new leader of the opposition has worked in the House since he was 24. He has never worked outside of the House. He has built his studies on the teachings of Milton Friedman. You spoke about his lack of consideration and lack of concern for monopolistic behaviour, as well as his emphasizing shareholder values and not worrying about Canadians. I am wondering whether you could comment on that and what influence that might have had.

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

I would remind the hon. member that she has to ask questions through the Chair.

The hon. member for Terrebonne.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her comments and question.

I think that, unfortunately, this motion is a bad start. There are many problems we need to address, but where are the solutions? I would like to remind our Conservative Party colleagues that real solutions do exist. Maybe we should be working together a bit more to help Canadians and especially Quebeckers.

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

Madam Speaker, I thank my Bloc colleague for her comments.

She talked about populism, but I would like to give her another definition of that term. I believe that populism also means being sensitive to people's needs and anxieties. The government and even experts should be very careful about taking the attitude that they know more than the average person. It is an important consideration.

She talked about the price of carbon. In Vancouver, where I live, the price of gas is almost $2.50 a litre, while in Alberta, it is roughly $1.50 a litre. That is a big difference that is attributable to taxes.

My question is on employment insurance. Premiums are going up by 9% this year, which is not insignificant, especially when there is a multi-billion dollar surplus in the fund. Can the member say a few words about that?

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Madam Speaker, we can all agree on one thing: Alberta should be paying much more.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Madam Speaker, we are here on the eve of the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation. I think the House's time could have been better used to talk about the pressing issues facing indigenous peoples, but instead, this is a rerun of the Conservative opposition day we had on Tuesday.

I met with the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association this week. Members from her province were in my office, calling for the creation of a national housing authority designed by and for indigenous people. We know indigenous people have been asking for an urban, rural and northern indigenous housing strategy with sufficient funds to develop it. I am hearing from indigenous elders in my riding. My friend, Nora, is an indigenous elder from Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations. She is living in her car. That is unacceptable.

Does my colleague believe we should be focusing our attention here today on addressing those very important issues?

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

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

These issues are definitely very important. We are concerned about what is happening with first nations too.

In my speech, I talked about how climate change affects homes on first nations reserves that are built on thawing permafrost, on thawing soil.

We should also address other issues, such as building social housing. We have shared our ideas about that. We just want to point out that Quebec has programs like AccèsLogis, which are paid for by the Government of Quebec. The federal government did not provide compensation for those programs for two years, so we had to build social and community housing ourselves. That meant fewer resources available to other people who need them because we did not get critical funding or support from the federal government.

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

Madam Speaker, I will start by saying I intend to split my time with the member for Edmonton Strathcona.

This is the first time I have had occasion to speak in the House since my father, Bill Blaikie, passed away on Saturday. I am hoping there will be time at some point for a more proper and fulsome tribute, but for now I would be remiss if I did not give a big thanks to all of my colleagues, the people in the parliamentary precinct and those beyond.

Canadians across the country have reached out with some really lovely messages about the ways my father's life and work inspired them in their own work. I am very grateful for those messages, as are my mother, Brenda; my sisters, Rebecca, Jessica, and Tessa; and our entire family. I want to thank everyone who has been a part of that.

Of course, it means a lot to us, and it would mean a lot to my dad because he really did love Parliament, with all of its shortcomings, disappointments and faults. That love was borne of a very real belief that it can be a place for positive and constructive dialogue that can bring our country to a better place, if we do it well while we are in this place.

It is in that spirit that I would like to offer some remarks today on the Conservative opposition day motion. There are two things about it that I think need to be called out.

The first has to do with the very proposal in the motion, which is that the emphasis of government right now should be on broad-based tax cuts as a way to fight inflation. Even if the Conservatives are putting this forward in the best of faith, they have it wrong. They have been out there saying for a long time that more money chasing fewer goods leads to more inflation. The fact of the matter is that broad-based tax cuts, as opposed to targeted income support for people who really are on the margins, are not targeted. People on the margins are struggling with choosing whether they are going to put some food item back on the shelf or not, or struggling with homelessness because they lost their place to live or are on the cusp of that, as opposed to some of us who are experiencing discomfort as a result of inflation and maybe having to pass up some things we would really rather like, but that are, at the end of the day, not vital. Providing income support to those people who really are at financial risk is the way to bring Canada through this extraordinary moment of inflationary pressure, which everyone is feeling in some way, shape or form. We have to bring Canada through this in the best possible way, doing the least possible damage to the smallest number of Canadian families.

That is why the NDP believes in doubling the GST rebate. That is why we fought for an increase in payments on the Canada housing benefit. It is why we believe looking to structurally change the cost of things that Canadians cannot do without, such as child care, dental care and prescription drugs, is a better way to combat inflation exactly because it is not doing what the Conservatives say they are concerned about.

We heard at the finance committee yesterday that even the IMF, the International Monetary Fund, of which it is fair to say is by no means understood as a progressive organization, as it has been the chief deregulator and tax-cutter, defunding and cutting the public service for decades, has said that broad-based tax cuts right now are going to fuel inflationary pressures in exactly the way the Conservatives say we must not do. The reason for that is because broad-based tax cuts put more money back into the pockets of the people who need it the least. The more wealthy one is, the more money one already has, and the more one will benefit from broad-based tax relief.

Earlier, a Conservative member talked about students who are living in homeless shelters and single mothers who are worried about ending up homeless. They are not going to benefit in the same way from broad-based tax relief as people living in far richer neighbourhoods, nor will seniors living on low fixed incomes. If those are the people who we want to help, then we need to do that with targeted income supports. That is the way to do it, not only to get more help to the people who need it most, but also to avoid delivering more money into the pockets of people who will use that as disposable income because they already have a fair bit of income.

That is why there is a real difference of approach between the New Democrats on the one hand and the Conservatives on the other. One can tell that I sometimes think the Liberal government feels caught in between, and its recipe would be to do nothing, just watch the debate happen between Conservatives and New Democrats and stand back.

This is why it is important to push, and why I am grateful to Canadians for having elected 25 New Democrats to this Parliament to do that work of pushing. When we first proposed the doubling of the GST rebate, the Liberals said no. That was well over six months ago, and in time and with persistent advocacy by New Democrats in the chamber, and many, many voices in civil society outside the chamber, we were able to get the government to change course.

That is a story of success for Parliament. That is a story of the Parliament Canadians elected doing the work they want us to do. Sometimes it is messy, and it is not always pretty or fun to watch, but there is a job getting done here, and it is because of the wisdom of Canadians in electing a minority Parliament with strong voices on many sides of the House that we are able to move forward.

The second thing I want to call out about this motion, which is a pet peeve of mine, and we heard it a bit before already today, is talking about increases in EI premiums and the CPP as though they were a payroll tax. If it were just a matter of arguing about words, then it would not matter. I do not care that accountants call EI premiums and CPP payroll taxes. If that is what they want to do within their profession for ease of accounting, that is fine by me.

When politicians start to talk about fighting payroll tax increases as a euphemism for fighting against properly funding our employment insurance system, I have a problem with it. When politicians use lowering payroll taxes as a euphemism for fighting against Canadians' pensions and denying increases in Canadians' pensions, especially when they are talking out the other side of their mouths about how much they care about seniors on fixed incomes, I have a problem with it. That is a major problem with this motion and what we have been hearing from the Conservatives today.

People are experiencing homelessness now who were not a couple of years ago and who are continuing to struggle with the difficulties of the economy we are in. There are a lot of jobs available in certain sectors of the economy, but it is still a difficult employment situation for other parts of the economy. There are people who are trained for those parts and have experience in parts of the economy that are still struggling, including tourism and hospitality, for instance. Those are industries struggling in various ways.

The hospitality sector is coming back, but if the employer is only willing to offer three three-hour shifts, the help-wanted sign in the window does not mean what a lot of Canadians think it means. It does not mean a full-time, well-paying, family-supporting job on the other end of that help-wanted sign.

Yes, we need to rebuild the EI system. We know that. We knew that before we went into the pandemic. All the more is the shame on the government for having reverted to the prepandemic employment insurance rules on September 24 without having a solve and without revealing the details of these consultations it has been doing, or having a better system in place in the first place. Employment insurance was leaving far too many people behind before the pandemic. We all know that.

We all know it needed to change, yet here we are moving away from the temporary rules of the pandemic, which were not perfect but were certainly better than what we had before, and we have gone back. Yes, EI premiums, after having been frozen during the pandemic, are eventually going to go up. That is part and parcel of providing insurance so people do not lose their homes when they lose their jobs in difficult economic circumstances.

A party that really had the backs of working people would understand that and not try to cover over its opposition to a proper EI system with euphemisms such as lower payroll taxes. The same is true of the Canada pension plan. We are at a point where the Canada pension plan finally is going to have another tranche for workers down the road. They are going to start to have to pay into that, as will employers. That is part of building better public pensions, so fewer Conservative politicians and others in the future will stand up to say how sad they are that seniors do not have a proper income. That is what is wrong with what is going on here.

[Rechie Valdez, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Madam Speaker, our government is working to put money back in the pockets of Canadians, as the member mentioned, by doubling the GST tax credit. Our government has supported businesses and Canadians through the pandemic and has helped Canadian families with affordable child care.

Does my colleague believe that this motion demonstrates a concrete plan to make life more affordable for Canadians?

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

Madam Speaker, the short answer is no, I do not think it does, for many of the reasons I highlighted in my remarks. I am glad that the Liberal government has moved forward on many initiatives proposed by the NDP to try to reduce the cost burden that Canadians are facing.

I will take this opportunity to pitch another one. I invite the government to take us up on the idea of ensuring that the old age security increase does not just apply to seniors 75 and over, but applies to all seniors who receive the OAS payment. All seniors, regardless of their age, are experiencing the same cost pressures that seniors 75 and over are, and they should be entitled to the same increase in benefits. It does not make sense to have a two-tier system for seniors in Canada with respect to the OAS or any other income support benefit.

I encourage the government to take us up on that one too. We would be happy to get that done.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Madam Speaker, I want to express my personal condolences to the member on the passing of his father, Bill Blaikie, who was the dean of the House of Commons when he was here and someone respected on all sides. As a Canadian Armed Forces veteran, I know he had a passion for our country and those who serve it. As someone who was inspired into politics through a parent who served, I know he can be very proud of the son he inspired into public service as well.

I know, having lived in Winnipeg, that families there are struggling. Grocery prices have gone up 10% to 30% in the last few years. We have seen gas and rent go up. People at the margins are particularly struggling. The government has the ability to either pause or reduce all input costs, whether they are taxes or changes to plans that run over decades.

Would the member not agree with the Conservative intent here? With record inflation, at the highest point in the member's lifetime because he is a young member, is this not the time to take a pause and give Canadian families in Durham or in Elmwood—Transcona a break?

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

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for Durham for his kind words. Those are very much appreciated.

I think there is a tension in the Conservative position that manifests even in his question. He is asking about how we can try to reduce input costs, recognizing that part of what has been going on in the economy and with inflation right now has much to do with supply-side pressures, not demand-side pressures. However, what we hear most often from the Conservatives is that this is demand-driven and is about spending. It is all about the government spending too much money, and that is what is driving up prices. There are many factors driving inflation, so I am very glad to hear an acknowledgement of some of the other pressures that are creating inflation outside of government spending.

As the member knows, I think the best way to deal with those is targeted relief with income support for people who really need it, because simply cutting taxes for everyone will allow those who are wealthier to drive inflationary costs with increased demand at a time when we do not need that extra pressure.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would also like to take this opportunity to express my deepest condolences to my colleague on behalf of the Bloc Québécois.

I was very pleased to hear him talk about increasing old age security starting at 65 in response to an earlier question. I was also happy to hear him talk about employment insurance in his speech.

I have a question for him.

We are talking about collaboration in a minority government, but his political party chose to focus on a dental care plan when the provinces and Quebec are the ones best placed to take care of that. There should have simply been an increase in health transfers.

I would like to know whether he thinks that health transfers should be increased. Moreover, why did his party not bring up EI reform at the negotiating table, such as a reform of the existing structures, instead of rushing ahead with a flawed system like the one being proposed for dental care?

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

Madam Speaker, I do not think my colleague will be surprised to learn that negotiating with a Liberal government can sometimes be very disappointing.

In a negotiation, there are two sides. We did our best to make sure that we could move forward wherever there was some common ground.

It is disappointing that the Liberals are not New Democrats and that they do not want to do all the things we want to do. However, we fully understand that Canadians have the right to elect a Parliament and that it is up to us to fight for everything we can accomplish. It is disappointing—

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

My apologies, but we will have to leave it at that.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am going to start today by expressing my disappointment that what we are doing here today is talking about this motion, on the eve of the second annual National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, at a time when indigenous people in this country do not have clean water, do not have adequate housing and do not have their basic human rights met, and at a time in this country when indigenous people are finding the graves of their children. On the eve of that day, this is what the Conservative Party has brought forward.

I am shocked by this, but I want to start by telling a story. Something happened yesterday. Yesterday, I was talking to a Conservative member, and no, we were not on screen and it was not in public. She asked me why we got into the supply and confidence agreement with the Liberals. She asked me what was in it for us. That is how she put it. I sort of laughed and said that maybe she needed to sit with that for a minute and think about it. Then all last night, I thought about it. Does she really not get why we did that? Was that really not something she could comprehend?

What it comes down to for me is that we did it because we were trying to get help for Canadians. We did it because we were trying to get dental care, pharmacare, environmental care and support for workers. It was for Canadians. We did not do it to win. We did not do it to get points off the Liberals. We did not do it to increase our power. We did it for Canadians.

As we stand in the House and debate this motion, which I will get to, I want us all to remember that every member of the Conservative Party of Canada has access to a dental care program that is gold-plated. Every member has access to a dental care program for themselves and their children, and the Conservatives are voting against just the bare minimum for other Canadian families in the country. For me, that shows what we are dealing with; that shows who we are talking about.

As members of this place, we all have such privilege. We have such voice. We have such opportunity. We all have access to benefits and wages that regular Canadians do not have, and we have an obligation, when we stand in this place, to think of those people and make sure that all Canadians have access to those things, the same things we have and our families have.

With this motion, the Conservatives are trying to mislead Canadians. They are trying to turn “tax” into a four-letter word. I know and members know that “tax” is not a four-letter word. It is, in fact, a three-letter word, but we will get to that.

They are trying to convince Canadians that they are on their side with this motion, but we are not fooled. Canadians are not fooled. The Conservatives continue to side with big business and are throwing Canadians under the bus with this motion.

One thing I do like about the motion is that it gives us an opportunity to talk about taxation. We do not talk about taxation often enough in this place. However, this motion avoids the most important questions: Who is paying and what are they getting for that money?

Right now, the tax burden in Canada is on Canadian families. It is on the shoulders of working families. That is not fair. It means that even if they have two incomes, it is hard to make ends meet. It has resulted in an imbalance in our country. We have a housing crisis that is forcing more and more people onto the streets, rental costs are skyrocketing and young people have no hope of owning their own home.

This was not always the case. There was a time in this country when corporations and the wealthy were shouldering their fair share of the tax burden, and our economy was booming. Workers were able to support their families, and the government was able to provide services because it was raising revenue from sources other than working families. However, successive Conservative and Liberal governments changed that. They have lowered corporate tax rates. They have created tax loopholes. They flipped the tax system on its head.

The last time people and corporations paid the same amount in income tax was 1952. Since then, the corporate tax contribution to our society has gone down steadily. Today, Canadians are paying four dollars for every dollar corporations pay in tax, but not all Canadian are paying that.

While Conservatives and Liberals were cutting tax rates for corporations and handing out corporate subsidies and tax credits, they were also cutting taxes for the richest Canadians and relying instead on regressive forms of taxation like the GST. It is not a secret. Everyone in this House knows that. We all know this, yet here we are debating a simple-minded motion that is designed to trick Canadians into believing that Conservatives have Canadians' best interests in mind. It is a motion that relies on making tax a four-letter word without addressing the most fundamental questions: Who is paying the tax, how much are they paying and why?

Which people governments tax, whom they take money from, whom they take revenue from and what governments spend it on indicate the governments' priorities. Over the past four or five decades, from Liberal governments to Conservative governments to Liberal governments to Conservative governments, on and on, we have seen a distinct pattern and an unbroken history of shuffling the tax burden to working Canadians and cutting taxes for the wealthy and for corporations.

Over and over again, Conservative and Liberal governments have demonstrated who they are and who they care about, and it is not ordinary Canadians. It is not workers. It is not students. It is not seniors. It is not indigenous peoples. It is not people living with disabilities. It is not people who are houseless.

We do not need to look back 50 years to see what is happening in this country. Within three days of the global health pandemic being declared, $754 billion went out to support financial markets, the big banks and the largest corporations. It took the government weeks and then months to get the support to regular Canadians who were actually paying for that $754 billion to big banks. Conservatives are not interested in talking about that.

While I welcome the opportunity to talk about taxation today and while I am disappointed in the simple-mindedness of this motion, I also think we need to talk about how we could reform our tax system. New Democrats have proposed an entire range of reforms, all of which the Conservatives have voted against: a steady return to reasonable corporate tax rates, a pandemic profits tax to recover some of the hundreds of billions that Canadians provided to these corporations, a wealth tax, closing tax loopholes that allow the wealthy to escape Canadian taxes and going after tax cheats.

If we enacted these reforms, we could provide dental care for all Canadians. We could have pharmacare. Canadians would not have to worry any longer about whether they can afford their prescription medicines. We could pay for a housing strategy. We could invest in our future. We could build a better Canada. Tax is not a four-letter word. It just becomes that when politicians are trying to pull the wool over people's eyes.

Finally, I will finish by talking a bit about EI and CPP. Despite what the Conservatives may think, Canadians are not fooled by their conversation and nonsense about whether this is a tax. Canadians see what the Conservatives are doing. I am from Alberta. Albertans see what is happening. We see our provincial government attacking our CPP. It is something I hear about more often from my constituents than anything else. I know how Conservatives are working to destroy the safety net that workers rely on. Workers need their pensions. They need an EI system that works. This is not government money; this is workers' money.

Last week, the EI system reverted back to its broken prepandemic status. The changes that I and my fellow New Democrats fought for so that Canadian workers were not left out in the cold in the pandemic are gone. Instead of pretending that EI and CPP are a burden on working Canadians, I invite the Conservatives to join us to make sure that 100% of workers are able to get the support they need from EI and that 100% of workers can afford to retire with dignity with adequate pension benefits.

Now is not the time for this motion. This political nonsense is designed to get the new leader of the official opposition some airtime and some retweets. Canadians do not want this nonsense. Canadians want all parties in this place to work together to make their lives better.

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

Madam Speaker, I want to pick up on the member's comments in regard to CPP, because CPP, for many years under Stephen Harper, just sat idle. As the prime minister at the time, Stephen Harper refused to meet and work with the premiers to look at ways we could enhance retirement. One of the initiatives that was taken a number of years ago by this government was to work with the provinces to achieve an agreement on CPP.

However, Conservative members often refer to CPP as a tax. In fact, it is not a tax, as the member so rightly said. It is an investment by those individuals who are working today so that they will be able to have a healthier pension tomorrow when they retire.

I wonder if the member could provide her thoughts in regard to how the Conservatives want to label an investment in a future retirement simply as a tax in order to try to stir an emotional pot, which is so misleading.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Madam Speaker, I do not always find myself agreeing with the member, but today I do—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I will let my colleagues finish their little rage fit over there.

I do not know if the member is aware as he is not from Alberta, but in Alberta, our UCP government is actually talking about taking our Alberta pensions away from the CPP, which is very dangerous. This is something that so many Canadians depend on for a dignified retirement. I do not think it is near sufficient the way it is, but the immorality and dangerous things that are being put forward by the Conservative Party with regard to our pensions are very disturbing.

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Madam Speaker, I am honoured to stand on my feet to ask a question on behalf of the constituents of Regina.

However, just to correct the record, the NDP literally signed an agreement with the Liberals, so those members are usually in agreement. There is a hard copy of their signature agreeing to prop up this government until 2025, so that is one falsehood.

I listened to the member's speech and she constantly talked about how Canadians are paying too much and how everyday, ordinary Canadians are taxed too high, yet she is going to vote against a motion that has tax cuts in it for everyday Canadians.

Secondly, she tried to make the agreement they signed with the Liberals a relevant agreement and she talked about why they signed it, but relevance is an issue for the NDP right now. The NDP are so irrelevant in Canada that the Saskatchewan NDP will not even let its leader come and speak at the Saskatchewan NDP convention. He was uninvited to the home of Tommy Douglas. What they—