Debates of Nov. 23rd, 2023

Oral Questions

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

Colleagues, we are not doing ourselves any favours as members of Parliament in terms of the use of unparliamentary language. Especially if it is directed to an individual, it is clearly unparliamentary. To make statements which create disorder in the House is also unparliamentary.

The Speaker is going to review the tapes and return to the House on this matter.

On another point of order, I recognize the member of Parliament for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Mr. Speaker, during question period, while the member for South Shore—St. Margarets was asking a question, the Minister of International Development called him a liar. Sitting so close to the good folks from Hansard, I can tell that they captured it in Hansard.

There is an opportunity for the minister to apologize to an hon. member of the House for calling someone a liar. It is, of course, unparliamentary. It is, of course, unbecoming of a member of the King's Privy Council, a member of the government. He should not be recognized until he apologizes to the hon. member for South Shore—St. Margarets.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

The hon. minister is rising.

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I apologize and I withdraw the remark.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

I would like to thank the hon. minister for doing the appropriate thing.

The hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby is rising on a point of order.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the minister has done the right thing.

I would like to come back to your commitment to review the tapes with respect to the member for Miramichi—Grand Lake. What he said was clearly unparliamentary. You have called upon him to apologize. I believe that if he has not apologized, he should not be recognized in the House.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

I have already made my intentions clear about that, and I will come back to members.

The hon. member for Yorkton—Melville is rising on a point of order.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, my understanding is that we cannot say indirectly in the House what we cannot say directly. I am of Canadian Ukrainian heritage. My grandfather came here just before the Holodomor, and every statement today that was said against me on that side of the House, in regard to my decision on my vote, is—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

Order.

I thank the hon. member for Yorkton—Melville. I am afraid that this is moving into a matter of debate.

The hon. member for Kelowna—Lake Country is rising on a point of order.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Mr. Speaker, during question period, I heard the member of Parliament for Cambridge yell across the way, “Let's take it outside.”

This is physically threatening and unparliamentary, and he should apologize.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

I thank the hon. member for Kelowna—Lake Country. It is not considered unparliamentary language, but I will review Hansard to see what I can detect from that.

We have now come to my favourite question of the week, the Thursday question.

The hon. member for Mégantic—L'Érable.

Business of the House

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, today is dark day. Although I have made several attempts to have Bill C-56 debated in the House, considering that it has not been on the agenda since October 5, we are currently witnessing a government manoeuvre to muzzle the House and limit debate on this bill.

Given that we will be sitting until midnight tonight and voting on Bill C-56, can the government House leader tell us what is in store for us tomorrow and next week in terms of business?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his question. As the Chair said, it is the most anticipated question of the week.

We are of course expecting unanimity on Bill C-56 tonight. Perhaps we can count on Conservative votes to help Canadians at this time. That is our hope.

This afternoon, we will continue with debate on the government business motion relating to Bill C-56, the affordable housing and groceries act. Tomorrow, we will resume second reading debate of Bill C-58, relating to replacement workers. We will return to Bill C-58 debate on Monday. Tuesday will be an opposition day. On Wednesday, we will call second reading of Bill S-9, concerning chemical weapons.

I would also like to note that it is the intention of the government to commence debate next week concerning the bill relating to the fall economic statement that was tabled earlier this week by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance.

The House resumed consideration of the motion, and of the amendment.

Government Business No. 30—Proceedings on Bill C-56

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Madam Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-56, the Liberals' so-called affordable housing and groceries bill. I say “so-called” because nothing in the bill would make housing affordable or reduce grocery prices.

After eight long years of the Liberals, Canadians are facing an unprecedented affordability crisis. Let us look at the facts. After eight years of the Liberals, housing costs have doubled; rent has doubled and mortgage payments have more than doubled, up 150% compared to eight years ago. After eight years of the Liberals, Canadians have seen 40-year-high inflation. Meanwhile, interest rates are rising at the fastest rate in Canadian history and have reached a 22-year high. Interest rates are projected to be hiked even further. When it comes to essentials like groceries, prices have gone up a staggering 70%, resulting in nearly two million Canadians a month going to the food bank. What Canadians are facing after eight years of the Liberals is a dire situation in which Canadians are struggling to put food on the table and to keep a roof over their head.

This begs the question “Why is it that Canada faces an affordability crisis?” There is one person who bears primary responsibility, and that is the Prime Minister. It is the Prime Minister who has created an affordability crisis as a result of eight years of reckless spending. This is the Prime Minister who, in eight years, has run up the largest deficits and has managed to double the national debt. So reckless and so out of control is the spending on the part of the Prime Minister that he has managed to do the seemingly impossible: rack up more debt in eight years than all of his predecessors over the previous 150 years combined. This is the Prime Minister who thought it was a good idea to pay for his out-of-control reckless spending by printing, through the Bank of Canada, $600 billion. As a result, the money supply has increased eight times faster than economic growth. Is it any wonder that, in the face of that, Canadians have seen 40-year-high inflation and interest rates rising faster than ever before?

That is the record of the Liberals after eight years. That is what they have to show. They have manufactured a cost of living crisis, and everyday Canadians are hurting. In the face of that, what have the Liberals done and what are they doing to address the issue of affordability, the mess they have created? Earlier this week, Canadians got the answer, and that is based upon the finance minister's presenting the government's fall economic statement. What did we get from the finance minister? We got $20 billion in new deficit spending on top of the more than $100 billion of deficit spending that the finance minister has racked up in the three years that she has held the portfolio. There is $20 billion in new deficit spending that pours fuel on the inflationary fire and is sure to keep interest rates high. There is $20 billion in new deficit spending, notwithstanding the fact that even the Bank of Canada is calling on the Liberals to rein in their spending, and has made clear to the Liberal government that its reckless spending and money printing are contributing to inflation.

There is $20 billion in new deficit spending, notwithstanding Scotiabank's issuing a report recently that confirmed that a full 2% of interest rates is directly attributable to the government's inflationary spending. Canadians have been hit, after eight years of the Liberals, with a double whammy: high inflation and high interest rates. They are now also being hit with a third whammy by way of the Liberals' punitive carbon tax. It is a tax that the Liberals falsely sold as a means to reduce GHGs, but we know, after eight years of the Liberals, that GHGs have gone up and not down. I would remind Liberals across the way, who talk so much about climate action, that the COP27 rankings ranked Canada, after eight years of the Liberals, at 58 out of 63 countries.

However, I digress. The carbon tax is nothing more than another tax, but I qualify that because it is not quite that. It is, after all, a tax that disproportionately impacts lower- and middle-income Canadians. It is a tax that increases the cost of everything, including essentials such as food, fuel and heating. It is a tax that, according to both the Bank of Canada and the Parliamentary Budget Officer, is exacerbating inflation. Despite that and despite the fact that Canadians are facing an affordability crisis, with nearly half of Canadians $200 away from insolvency, the Liberal government's plan is to quadruple its punitive carbon tax for hard-working, everyday Canadians.

I say to the Liberals across the way that I would be keenly interested to see whether one of them can stand up in their place and explain to Canadians how the policies of the government, namely money printing, massive deficits and the quadrupling of the carbon tax, all of which are exacerbating inflation and increasing interest rates, are a policy prescription that is going to make life more affordable for Canadians. Very simply, those policies are making life less affordable. Canadians are paying a very dear price after eight years of the costly policies of the Liberal Prime Minister.

After eight long years of the Liberals, costs are up. Rent is up, taxes are up and debt is up. The government's time is up.

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

Madam Speaker, the legislation the member is debating is very substantial. I know he wanted to talk a lot about the fall economic statement, but the legislation is good legislation that would support Canadians in many different ways, especially when it comes to the issue of giving more authority and power to the Competition Bureau. It would also provide literally thousands of new homes into the future.

People are concerned about the reckless behaviour of the Conservative Party today. We listen to some speeches in which the Conservatives seem to be in support of the legislation. In other speeches, they seem to be against the legislation. Look what happened with the Ukraine legislation. At the end of the day, every one of them voted against Ukraine. That is fine; it was their prerogative, and hopefully some of them will make a flip-flop and support the Ukraine-Canada trade deal going forward. I will not hold my breath.

What is the Conservative Party collectively going to do with the legislation before us? Does it support it or not?

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am glad the hon. parliamentary secretary referred to changes that are being made to the Competition Act, because the amendments put forward in the bill pertaining to the Competition Act are copied and pasted from the private member's bill introduced by the member for Bay of Quinte. Very simply, it would remove the efficiencies defence with respect to mergers. That could, in the long term, have an impact, an increase in competition in the groceries sector, and therefore have some long-term impact upon prices, but Canadians cannot wait for five years or seven years down the road. They need relief today, and all the government has offered them is the quadrupling of the carbon tax.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is good to stand in the House today to talk about a very important bill. It is the idea that we are going to get some purpose-built rental housing built. To the member's point, it is not going to be as fast as we need, and that is why we need other measures outside of this bill. However, on this bill, there are people in my community waiting for purpose-built rentals, so I would like to see this go through, but I would like to see more than what is in this bill.

Can the member share some of the solutions they have? I believe that the Conservatives can support this bill and improve it. Let us see what they have.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Madam Speaker, with respect to the GST measure on rental housing, that is something the Liberals promised six years ago and are only now acting on it. It was provided for by the bill put forward by the leader of His Majesty's loyal opposition, the building homes not bureaucracy act. That bill is a common-sense piece of legislation aimed at getting gatekeepers out of the way by tying infrastructure dollars to the number of homes actually built.

The Liberal government has thrown around billions of dollars, yet there were fewer houses built in the past year than were built in 1972 when Canada's population was half of what it is today. The record of the Liberals is to build up bureaucracy and not houses. The plan of the Leader of the Opposition is to get homes built for Canadians.

[Mike Morrice, Green, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, the member for St. Albert—Edmonton spent a lot of his time talking about the quadrupling of the carbon tax, but absent from the conversation was the quadrupling of the rebates that go with it. I mention this because we all get emails in our inboxes from constituents who have been misled by those kinds of statements. Can the member make clear whether he believes that rebates also go back to Canadians?

Secondly, can he speak to any concern he might have with the fact that the carbon tax went up 2¢ a litre last year, and the profits of the oil and gas industry went up 18¢ a litre as it gouged Canadians at the pumps. That is what is truly driving affordability. Does he care about that at all?

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Madam Speaker, with respect, the member should get his facts straight. A good place to start would be to review the report of the Parliamentary Budget Officer. It established that more than 60% of Canadians lose out with the carbon tax. In other words, they pay more than they get back from the rebate.

What needs to happen, and what Canadians are asking for, is that we axe the tax, and that is something Conservatives are going to do to keep—

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

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Red Deer—Mountain View.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Madam Speaker, I will first say that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge.

I am honoured to speak to this programming motion, Government Business No. 30, and its amendment today.

Before I start, I would like to pay tribute to a great constituent by the name of Dot Thompson, the spouse of the late member of Parliament Myron Thompson, whose funeral I attended this past weekend. The two were inseparable and always had the community of Sundre in their hearts. Myron was an unforgettable MP who served on town council, was the high school principal and, through his athletic prowess, taught many youth how to play ball. Sundre was lucky to get him as his New York Yankees professional ball career was put on hold as he played backup to Hall of Famer Yogi Berra.

I am sure that Myron Thompson would have seen many pieces of legislation over his time with bills like Bill C-56, an act to amend the Excise Tax Act and the Competition Act, as well as motions that would have found their way to the floor of Centre Block for discussion. During his 1993 to 2005 era, there were many “suggestions” that the official opposition had lifted by the Chrétien and Martin Liberals in order to minimize the economic damage that had occurred from the era of stagflation caused by Trudeau, the elder.

Sadly, that Liberal government chose to drastically cut the transfers of health funding to provinces, which has haunted our provincial health care services for decades. Handcuffing the provinces was an easy fix to change the federal government's bottom line, but downloading the costs onto other levels of government simply took the heat off the feds and pushed it onto the provinces and their local authorities.

I am well aware of how federal neglect and financial shell games work because I was a hospital board chairman during those dark days. The federal Liberals of the 1990s artfully joined with the Friends of Medicare to back provinces into a corner when they were forced to rationalize services. There is no better example than the daily attacks on former premier Ralph Klein when he was faced with the economic reality of federal cuts to health transfers. The effects of that federal action are still evident, but, thankfully, no government has returned to the era of cuts to health care transfers since the Chrétien era.

The reason that I give this historical reference is that there are different paths governments can follow when trying to work their way through, or out of, a crisis. They can download the problems onto other levels of government; they can analyze policies of other parties in the House and, as is usually the case, claim them as their own; or they can at least acknowledge that the official opposition takes its responsibilities to Canadians seriously and that by usurping the learned advice, the government is ignoring the views of a large number of Canadians.

I will get to some of the specifics in the legislation in a minute, but, as many have stated, it is the heavy-handedness of the government and its inability and unwillingness to work with other partners, unless they are willing to rubber-stamp initiatives in exchange for propping up a minority government, that are at issue here.

What we are seized with today is the government's programming motion, Government Business No. 30. Programming motions have the effect of not only limiting debate in the House, which to many is an affront to democracy in itself, but also dictating instructions to the committee as to how it will deal with this legislation once it gets to committee. Issues related to Government Business No. 30 have to do with the expanded scope that the committee must consider. I will read from Government Business No. 30, which says:

(c) if the bill has been read a second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Finance,

(i) it be an instruction to the committee, that during its consideration of the bill, it be granted the power to expand its scope to,

(A) increase the maximum fixed penalty amounts for abuse...,

(B) allow the Competition Bureau to conduct market study inquiries...,

(C) revise the legal test for abuse of a dominant position prohibition order to be sufficiently met if the Tribunal finds that a dominant player has engaged in either a practice of anti-competitive acts or conduct....

If those points were important, perhaps they could have been in the bill in the first place.

Also, we will then start with a marathon sitting of two days, after the motion's adoption, to gather witness testimony, with amendments to be submitted within 12 hours at the end of the marathon sitting. Then, at the next meeting, once that time is up, no further debate or amendments will be entertained. Finally, after a few other points, we will have closure after the bill is reported, which will once again be guaranteed.

The Conservative amendment tries to infuse some credibility by at least ensuring that the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry and the Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities will be ordered to appear as witnesses for no less than two hours each. At least some level of accountability will be salvaged if this amendment is adopted.

By forcing Motion No. 30 to the committees through the House process, the Liberals avoid the other option, which is to force a programming motion through the committee. They always say that committees are masters of their own fate, which is true, until, as we see with Motion No. 30, it is not. Programming motions are usually enacted when the government knows it has messed things up royally.

Our responsibility as legislators is manyfold. First, we must thoroughly analyze legislation to minimize potential unintended consequences. As a country that boasts six time zones, the need to have regional voices heard is paramount in order to head off such negative consequences.

Second, it is important that Canadians get an opportunity to have input as well. Those who live in the real world understand how legislation will, good or bad, affect them.

Third, and this is so evident presently at our natural resources committee, once federal legislation has been challenged, once the regions take on their responsibilities to protect their citizens through such initiatives and once such legislation has been deemed unconstitutional, the government must stop using the challenged parts of legislation in its development of new legislation. This procedural motion, Motion No. 30, is to be determined through a vote in the House. Since the Liberal government has found various willing dance partners, that has been virtually assured.

The only time I saw this process sidetracked, ironically, was when the Liberals had a majority government. It became quite evident at the time that the Liberals never really showed up for duty on Monday mornings. The Mulcair NDP managed to create a second reading vote on a prized Liberal bill. It was quite the scramble, but the vote ended in a tie. Because it was at second reading, the Speaker voted with the government so it would live to fight another day, and, oh my, it did fight. It produced a motion that would have stripped the opposition of all tools to do its job of holding the government to account. That motion dictated how things would transpire in the House and would have been one of the most egregious motions ever moved in our Westminster system of government.

When the vote on that motion was to take place, once again, the members of the NDP were milling around and were in the path of our whip Gord Brown. There is a tradition we see all the time where the whips walk toward the mace, acknowledge each other and then, once their members are settled, take their seats to start the vote. The confusion in the aisle caused one of the most unhinged actions I have seen anywhere. The Prime Minister rushed through the crowd, grabbed our whip by the arm and told him to get the “f” in his place. As he did that, he swung around and hit a female NDP member in the chest, which forced her to leave the chamber. That bizarre action caused a question of privilege that continued for days, whereby the juvenile actions of the PM were constantly on trial by his peers. In order to prevent the continued series of questions of privilege, the government relented and withdrew the egregious motion.

Now, with voting apps being used, perhaps the Prime Minister can avoid such a conflict in the future. Of course, maybe by now the government is also aware that there is a time-out provision whereby the vote would take place whether the whips walk down the aisle or not. Hopefully this motion can be defeated without the theatrics.