Debates of Nov. 23rd, 2023

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

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

Madam Speaker, truly, we cannot make this stuff up. At the end of the day, the Conservatives will whine and cry about wanting to have more debate time, but in reality, what do they do? They behave like a bunch of juveniles.

At some point, the members will stand up and move, seconded by so and so, that a person be heard, which will cause the bells to ring for half an hour, instead of voting. Sometimes they will adjourn debate in an attempt to prevent debate from taking place. Most common more recently, it is concurrence motion after concurrence motion.

Why all these games? It is because they do not want to debate legislation. They want to filibuster. They want to prevent. This is the far right wing of the Conservative Party pushing the Conservative Party to be destructive, and the members are very successful.

We are looking at a very extreme right-wing Conservative Party today. Why is the Conservative Party neglecting the vast majority of Canadians in favour of the far right?

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

Madam Speaker, the member can continue to insult. Nothing in what I said indicates in any way, shape or form that I approve of any of his far right allegations. It is something the Liberals chose to talk about today, as they felt this was one of the good things they could do during question period. We have heard it all day. It is just as ridiculous now as it was earlier in the day. Quite frankly, perhaps the member should consider the role and actions of his Prime Minister, because, believe me, everything I said was accurate.

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

Madam Speaker, I want to ask a serious question of the member. I was here in the House when, under the Harper regime, we saw housing prices double over nine years. They doubled again under the Liberals, but the Conservatives were just as bad.

They have been worse. The Conservative record is far worse when it comes to affordable housing units. Between the two parties, the corporate coalition of Liberals and Conservatives, over a million affordable housing units have been lost over the past 17 years. Some 800,000 of them, or 80%, were lost under the Conservatives' watch.

Conservatives say that finally the Liberals are interested in housing, so I do not understand why they would block a bill to create more housing units and why they would block it so ferociously, in the same way they blocked dental care and the same way they blocked all of the NDP efforts, including to ensure a doubling of the GST credit to put more food on the table. Every single affordability measure the NDP fights for and succeeds in getting, Conservatives block.

Has the member spoken to the constituents in his riding who want to see these measures, including dental care?

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

Madam Speaker, have I spoken to them? Yes, I absolutely have. As a matter of fact, this morning people from FCM, from my riding, were visiting with me and we were talking about all of these issues. We were talking about homelessness issues. We were talking about affordability in housing. We were talking about all of the different initiatives that have been part of governments for years. I speak to constituents constantly about the issues of affordability. I am not sure exactly where the member was going, but, believe me, that is always uppermost in our minds.

[Stéphane Lauzon, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizens' Services]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for his speech. He has identified himself as an MP who is not on the far right like his leader.

He talked a lot about inflation. In Canada, the drop in inflation over the record high of 8.1% in June 2022 must be good news for him. However, more needs to be done, without filibustering committees, to get bills passed. Having more affordable housing would be good for his riding. We were able to meet the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. He met different people.

How is the member for Red Deer—Mountain View going to face these organizations that are going to receive the GST rebate and tell them that he is voting against the measure?

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

Madam Speaker, that was one of the discussions I had when a number of members of the FCM were with me this morning, and I know how important it is. Communities have some very good initiatives that they are already incorporating. It is more a case of how we take the good ideas we see from our municipalities and help incorporate them into major ideas that help the provinces and then help the federal government. Believe me, thinking that—

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

I have been very generous with the time.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge.

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

Madam Speaker, after eight long years of the Liberal Prime Minister, costs have shot up and millions of Canadians are struggling to make ends meet. Housing costs have doubled, rent has doubled, mortgage rates have doubled, grocery prices are soaring and the lineups for food banks are shocking.

I received an email from Tyler, who bought a home a couple of years ago. His mortgage has gone up from $1,600 to $4,000 a month. He says he has no other choice but to sell his home and downgrade to make his life livable.

Candis is from Maple Ridge, and she has seen her payments double also. She can no longer afford new clothes for her children and needs to take them out of sports to try to make ends meet.

Then there is Shaffy. I met him at Seaspan Shipyards in North Vancouver. He is a welder. He showed me on an app that his mortgage is $7,528 a month. He told me that he is not living in a palace. It is a 40-year-old four-bedroom home in one of Vancouver's suburbs. He is being forced to work 10-hour shifts seven days a week and has no freedom. He said he cannot give his body a rest or he is going to lose his home.

These are not just stories. These are real lives, and the same thing is happening across Canada.

The blame rests fully on the members of the Liberal-NDP coalition for their incompetence and ultimately, I would say, their lack of concern for Canadians. They have shown they lack a basic understanding of economics or how to run a country. I will take that back. They are good at running a country into the ground.

It was not that long ago that our nation was one of the richest in the world, but under the Prime Minister, our rankings have been dropping. Country after country is passing us in GDP and per capita ranking.

I met a tourist on the way to Vancouver Island about a month or so ago. He has come to Canada numerous times over the past 40 years. He asked me what has happened to Canada. From his perspective, it just seems to be in decline. Unfortunately, he is right. What has happened to Canada is eight years of being run by an incompetent Liberal government that is joined at the hip with the socialist NDP and Bloc.

Why has everything become so unaffordable? The Liberals went on a crazy spending orgy, doling out hundreds of billions of dollars. The definition of that word is “excessive and indiscriminate indulgence in a specified activity”. We will call that spending.

The Prime Minister has added more debt to Canada than all the prime ministers before him, for 150 years. The Liberals have been absolutely careless with finances and have been racking up, for all intents and purposes, the credit card debt. This has caused great problems and chaos, but they have made sure that their friends, buddies and insiders have gotten their share.

I think of the ArriveCAN app scam, where millions of dollars were spent, essentially given to a two-person company in the basement of a house for no work, other than sending a few emails out. Something that should have cost a few thousand dollars has cost millions of dollars. There has been scandal after scandal. It has almost become part of the narrative.

Last week, we heard about the billion-dollar green slush fund. The chair of Sustainable Development Technology Canada had to resign and is under investigation by the RCMP because money was going directly to her company and to her.

These are some of the buddies we are seeing. This is happening, and I do not have time to talk about all the different situations and the people who have become rich off the Liberals. The Conservatives will turn over these stones. That is our objective here in Parliament, as it will be if we are elected to government.

The message from the Liberals for a long time was essentially that interest rates were low so what was the danger of borrowing. With this borrow and borrow and spend and spend, what has happened? For one thing, interest costs have escalated. We are now spending $51 billion on interest payments alone this year. That is more than we spend in health transfers. It is twice as much as we are spending on the Canadian military. One of the very few things the Liberals decided to cut back on is the Canadian military, at a time of great danger. Look at what happened with Russia attacking Ukraine and the situation with China. With all sorts of threats, the Liberals decided to cut the one important piece they should be increasing, but that is typical for them.

Canadians are suffering by the Liberals' indulgence in spending, their addiction. We keep hearing the word “investing” and that the Liberals are investing in this and that. It is not their money; it is taxpayers' money. Their actions have led not just to increased interest charges but to a significant rise in inflation. Anybody who goes to the grocery store can attest to that. People are not eating as nutritiously as before because of this.

I met with a number of university students last week, and they said they are having a hard time making ends meet. They are using food banks. I talked to the president of a university, who said there are lineups and that the use of food banks has gone up dramatically. Two million Canadians a month are going to food banks. This is not good, and the Liberals and the NDP need to be accountable for this. They can try to blame Harper from eight years ago, but it rests fully square on their shoulders.

What is happening here? The Liberal brain trust, as we see in the bill, has begun to panic. To the Liberals, this is about politics, power and money. As inflation has gone up and costs have gone up, guess what has gone down. It is their poll numbers, and that is causing a bit of panic on the government benches.

What have they been forced to do? They have raised interest rates, which is a time-tested way to lower inflation. However, what they have succeeded in doing is escalating the cost of carrying a mortgage. Half of mortgage owners will be renewing their mortgages in the next two years, 70,000 per month, and it is hitting them hard. This is happening everywhere in Canada, especially in areas with the biggest mortgages, such as metropolitan Vancouver, Toronto, Victoria and other large centres. People are losing their homes and losing their quality of life. This is real and it is painful.

One of the Liberals' solutions is to extend mortgages to 90 years or 100 years so their great-great-great-grandchildren can pay off the mortgage and people can keep their homes. That is not a solution.

The Liberals have realized the big mess they have created and the political urgency, and what they have done is taken a piece of Conservative Party policy, put on their superhero outfits and told people not to fear because they are here to help with solutions. They took one of our solutions, which was to take away the GST from purpose-built rental housing, but there is a lot more they need to do.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, the one thing I did not hear the member talk about was a carbon tax. I know he is a really big fan of the carbon tax, because when he was in the provincial legislature in B.C., he not only voted in favour of it, but he also spoke very highly of it. He said:

It means that every dollar collected from B.C. carbon tax is given back to the taxpayers in the form of tax credits or tax cuts. Our carbon tax appears to be working.

He said:

We view this tax as a tool to change behaviour and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

If a Liberal had said that, he would have been heckling.

[An hon. member]

Maybe he was a Liberal back then.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, maybe he was a Liberal back then. I do not know. Maybe he could inform me why he is against the carbon tax. Why is he hypocritical?

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

Madam Speaker, I am proof that there can be redemption. If I can see the light, there is hope for the Liberal Party. It is absolutely clear from one end of Canada to the other that it is a disaster. I totally endorse the removal of the carbon tax from coast to coast to coast.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Madam Speaker, the member for Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge and his Conservative colleagues are asking Canadians to believe in a fairy tale. They want people to believe that all these problems with housing magically started over the last several years or at least since 2015. In fact, it goes on a lot longer, with the current government, the Harper government before it, the Chrétien government and the Mulroney government. What we are seeing today is the natural conclusion of 40 years of neo-liberal economic policy. This did not happen overnight.

Similarly, when the Conservatives go after the carbon tax but completely ignore the fact that corporate profits are at the highest level ever, which is a key driver of inflation, it is a shame to their constituents and a shame to the political discourse in this chamber.

I have a question on Bill C-56. Does the member at least agree that these measures strengthen the Competition Act and remove the GST? Will he support them? Will he agree that the motion today is thanks to the hard work of the NDP driving the Liberal government to do better, and in fact that the Conservatives have been, again, sitting on the sidelines doing nothing?

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

Madam Speaker, one of our Conservative members introduced a private member's bill on competition, because we need to have competition in the airline industry, in the banking industry, in telecommunications, in every industry.

Canadians are suffering. We support competition. We need to have competition.

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

Madam Speaker, the hon. member is a colleague from British Columbia, and we know that in British Columbia we have some of the highest housing prices in the country. We know that rent has doubled, and housing costs have doubled.

In this legislation that we are debating today, two of the biggest issues that we are dealing with are inflation and the cost of housing. Inflation has caused interest rates to increase which has then caused interest rate payments to be higher for people.

Could the member tell us if this legislation would address inflation or interest rates?

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

Madam Speaker, no. This is just a bill of part measures.

It has a couple of pieces that are good, but it does not really address inflation. One of the causes of inflation is that the Liberals have not changed their reckless spending. They have a $15-billion plant that is costing every Canadian family $1,000 to employ 1,600 temporary foreign workers.

The Liberals are still out of control with their spending, and things are only going to get worse, even if they take little pieces here and there. Rather than Canadians having little pieces of what the Liberals are bringing out of Conservative bills, what they need to do is actually vote for the real deal, and see lives positively changed.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, before I get started, I really want to thank the member for Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge for answering my question. He could have tried to skate around it, but he hit it right on. I question the sincerity in his answer, but at least he answered my question. He did not skate around it. I appreciate that, and I just wanted to put that on the record.

Here we are talking about this very important piece of legislation that has to do with affordable housing and the groceries act and how we can amend other acts in order to improve those two challenges that Canadians are facing right now. However, I have heard at least two Conservatives in this debate. Just moments ago, the member for Red Deer—Mountain View was talking about time allocation and concerned about limiting debate on this, but then he never even talked about the bill. The member for Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge never even talked about the bill. My original question for him, had I not been waiting to ask him this question on the carbon tax in B.C., was going to be whether he had actually read the bill because what he was talking about had nothing to do with the bill. He did not even reference all the measures that are in the bill. An NDP member asked him a question, and he still did not answer it.

I find it very fascinating that here we have the Conservatives with their full outrage jumping up and saying, “You're not letting us debate” and “You're allocating time.” Meanwhile, with the time that is allocated to discuss this bill, they are not even talking about it. I can only imagine it is not all that important to them if they are not even using the allocated time to actually discuss it.

I am noticing a trend. When we introduced the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement a few weeks ago, the Conservatives were taking a very similar approach. They talked nothing about the bill and did not seem to have a position on it. However, after it had been tabled for quite a while and there had been a prestudy in committee and it had been going on for quite a while, all of a sudden they decided, “Oh, I think we found something that we could use to justify why we are going to vote against this. It mentions a carbon tax in the preamble. Yes, this is exactly how we will vote against this.” Suddenly, the next week, they focused on this narrative and then they voted against it, but they did not mention it once before that.

I wonder who the award goes to in the Conservative Party for finding that red herring for them. It is absolutely shameful. I say this in the context that this is what is happening with the bill before us. I would love to know if they are going to vote in favour of it or if they are still in the process in the backrooms over there trying to figure out what words they can find in it to justify voting against it.

In this debate, I will try to focus a little bit on what I have heard. I have heard the member for Red Deer—Mountain View and a couple of members earlier talk about the price on pollution, or the carbon tax, and I will take the opportunity to set the record straight on some of that stuff.

Eight out of 10 Canadians are better off with the rebate they get back after the price on pollution. Now, I should clarify, in all honesty, that the two out of 10 Canadians who do not are probably the most well off and probably the base that the Conservatives are banking on and so they spread this misinformation to try to suggest that this is not the case. However, I will give members the facts. This has just recently been published.

The average family of four in Alberta gets $1,544 back per year. The average family of four in Manitoba gets $1,056 back. In Saskatchewan, it is $1,360. In Nova Scotia, it is $992. In P.E.I., it is $960. In Newfoundland, it is $1,312. In New Brunswick, it is $368. In Ontario, my home province, it is $976. As a matter of fact, when we look at the four provinces that are fully under the federal backstop because they have not implemented their own program, the average family spends about $500 on the price on pollution and gets back $804. Eight out of 10 Canadians are better off as a result of what they are getting back.

The parliamentary secretary to the government House leader raised this in a question earlier. Why do they never talk about the rebate? The rebate is such a fundamental core part of this.

Conservatives are more interested in spreading misinformation by suggesting that this is a tax, by suggesting that it contributes to inflation, which we know it does not, and then, most recently, by suggesting that it somehow impacts the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement.

That was probably the biggest mistake they made. What they did was make a concerted effort to obviously find this little bit in the agreement and say, “Aha, we found it. In the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement, we found it. It says 'carbon tax' in the preamble. Let us use it.”

The genius who discovered that probably did not take the time to look. Had they done that, they would have discovered that Ukraine has had a price on pollution, a carbon tax, since 2011. Ukraine needed to do that because as part of its efforts—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

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

This is not a conversation. When the hon. member finishes speaking, hon. members can ask questions.

The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, the reason Ukraine has had that price on pollution since 2011 is that in order to get into the European market, which it had been trying to do for so long, the European market required that it have a price on pollution in order to stay competitive. That is why Ukraine had it. This incredible red herring that we are hearing recently from the Conservatives is nothing more than just that, a red herring.

The reality is that there is a faction within the Conservative Party of Canada. Some of the MPs over there have gone down the rabbit hole of alt-right-wing American politics. Now we are seeing that come out. I kind of always suspected it, because we have been seeing it happen over the last number of years, but I did not realize that this faction actually had a stranglehold on the party.

It is very likely that the Leader of the Opposition is part of that, given everything that he has done. Let us go back to the YouTube meta tags.

If members want to understand the Leader of the Opposition's support for Ukraine, they should just look at his social media posts from when President Zelenskyy visited us in September. He did not tweet about it. He did not put anything on Facebook about it. He did not put anything on Instagram about it. He was completely silent. He never said a word about Zelenskyy's visit.

The irony is that he did say a word about Zelenskyy appearing before this Parliament when he came a year earlier, when he came by video conference. He actually tweeted, at that time, in 2022, how proud he was to see President Zelenskyy appear before Parliament.

Do members know what the member for Calgary Nose Hill did? I do not know if a lot of people caught this, but it was almost a little subtle act of defiance. Do members know what she did? When he came this year in 2023, she quote tweeted his tweet from a year ago, congratulating him on coming. That was clearly a dig at the Leader of the Opposition because she recognized how silent he was on it.

The member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman and all Conservatives can stand up and preach to me all they want about how much they support Ukraine, but their actions speak louder than words. They are silent when the president comes here. They are silent when it came to determining what they were going to say on the Ukraine free trade deal, and then they voted against it.

This is a deal that President Zelenskyy asked us to vote in favour of—

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

The hon. member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands is rising on a point of order.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Madam Speaker, I would like to ask you to remind the member of the bill we are talking about today. It is Bill C-56. I believe he is talking about Bill C-57, which was passed—

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

We are actually talking about Motion No. 30, but I would like to remind the hon. member of that being the subject we are discussing.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, I do not know if the member was sitting in the chamber when his two colleagues just spoke, but neither of them spoke about the bill at all.

The reality is that the Conservative Party of Canada does not support Ukraine. The Conservatives can say all they want about what they do, but their actions speak louder than words. We have seen that, and Canadians have seen that. It is coming to light now, and everybody is becoming aware of it.

It is not supporting Ukraine for the same reason that Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene are not supporting Ukraine, which is that far right influence, and it is in the Conservative Party of Canada. They know it. For those who are still wondering, the real reason the Leader of the Opposition is so petrified to show support for Ukraine is that he would lose votes to Maxime Bernier. It is that simple. He is trying to hold on to a base.

When it comes to this particular piece of legislation, we are talking about increasing competition and, by default, increasing trade. We know that, to ensure we put the right measures in place when we are looking internally within our own country, we have to recognize that there are anti-competitive practices going on. When Loblaw has nearly 40% of the market share of groceries between Loblaw's and Shoppers Drug Mart and every other entity it owns, we quickly start to see that it would be extremely difficult for competition to exist.

In comparison, Walmart in the United States, which is the retailer with the largest grocery share, has about 18% of the marketplace. We know that, in Canada, there is a problem with this. That is why this bill seeks to strengthen the rules around competition. It seeks to empower the Competition Bureau further, providing it with more resources and the money it would need to effectively operate and giving it the tools to make advances and make moves, when it needs to, to ensure that competition exists.

Competition is great, and we need to encourage competition, but sometimes government, or government-charged agencies, have to get involved because we do run into situations where that competition starts to get limited, and then we see price-fixing, as we saw with the Canada Bread Company and its bread price-fixing. That is why this is so incredibly important.

Conservatives are going to tell people that inflation is driven by a price on pollution, when it has virtually no effect on it. They are going to tell people that a price on pollution is why the price of gas and oil has skyrocketed over the last year, and it is simply not true. The reality is that, in the oil and gas sector specifically, the carbon tax added two cents per litre. It is two cents and people get more than that back.

Meanwhile, wholesale profit margins for the large oil distributors rose by 18¢ per litre. I do not hear the outrage about the profits. The profits of Loblaw were announced just yesterday for its third quarter, and it was, again, a double-digit increase in profits over the previous quarter. It is extremely important that we put the right measures in place to assist with this.

I can understand why Conservatives are reluctant to do this. They never seem to fall on the side of those who are struggling, of those who need these supports and tools in place, or of those who need the benefit of healthy competition. This government will do that. I have said this many times in the House before, and I will say it again: I am very glad there is another party in the room who are acting like adults, which is the NDP. It sees this need as well, and it sees the need to push this legislation through for the betterment of all Canadians.

We all know that, if we had not put closure on this today, the bill would be here forever. That is what Conservatives have done with so many other pieces of legislation.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Madam Speaker, the member got to the point towards the end, under your guidance.

I would like to stay on the topic of the bill and talk about one of the main things this bill would do, which is that it would take the GST off of purpose-built rentals to promote the building of new rental accommodations. In my riding of South Okanagan—West Kootenay, it is almost impossible to find rental accommodation. When I talk to the city planners, they say that every day they are building more housing units than they have ever built before, but every day there are fewer affordable housing units because they are being lost to Airbnbs, people buying holiday homes, etc. The people buying the new housing units are the people who can afford them, and they already have houses.

What is the member's government doing to actually build affordable, non-market housing that would really make a difference for Canadians? Getting out of the way and taking the tax off will build more units, but it will not help people who need affordable housing.