Debates of Nov. 28th, 2023

Notice of Motion

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 83(1), I would like to table, in both official languages, a notice of a ways and means motion to implement certain provisions of the fall economic statement tabled in Parliament on November 21 and certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28.

Pursuant to Standing Order 83(2), I would ask that an order of the day be designated for the consideration of this motion.

Veterans Ombudsperson

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defence]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 32(2), it is my honour to table, in both official languages, the 2022-23 annual report of the Office of the Veterans Ombudsperson.

Taxpayers' Ombudsperson

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Revenue]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 32(2), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the 2022-23 annual report of the Office of the Taxpayers' Ombudsperson, entitled “Upholding Your Rights”.

Criminal Code

[Yves-François Blanchet, Bloc, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C‑367, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (promotion of hatred or antisemitism).

Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that a modern Parliament worthy of its name needs to address certain things that we are long overdue in addressing, things that perhaps never should have happened in the first place.

There is a cost to living together and to living in harmony in society. That cost may simply be to refrain from giving inappropriate and undue privileges to people within a society who use them to disturb the peace and harmony, especially if those privileges enable people to sow hatred or wish death upon others based on a belief in some divine power.

That is even more true in a country that claims to be secular or that claims that there is a separation between church and state. That is why it is high time that someone took action.

I would ask the House to quickly support the act to amend the Criminal Code throughout the process in order to prevent the promotion of hatred and antisemitism.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

Aquaculture

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be tabling two petitions today.

The first petition is for the Ministry of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard. It talks about the importance of wild salmon stocks, which are currently under threat. Wild salmon support first nations cultural traditions and complex ecosystems, including contributing to coastal forests, which produce the oxygen we breathe. Pacific salmon runs on the British Columbia coast are in a state of emergency.

The petitioners, from my constituency, acknowledge and express support for the closure of the Discovery Islands fish farms and urge the Ministry of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard to continue to save Pacific wild salmon by not issuing any more licences to open-net pen fish farms.

Expanded Polystyrene

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition I will be tabling today is on expanded polystyrene, commonly known as styrofoam. The impacts of it are in the marine environment and cause significant harm to marine life, seafood resources and ecosystems. We know it is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to clean up from the shorelines and that it has a high likelihood of entering the marine environment from damaged marine infrastructure, whether encased or not.

The qathet Regional District and Association of Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities have unanimously endorsed the prohibition of EPS in marine environments. My constituents agree with this and call for the Canadian government to step up and prohibit the use of expanded polystyrene.

First Responders Tax Credit

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

Madam Speaker, it is an honour and privilege to table a petition today on behalf of constituents of mine from Bowser, Dashwood, Deep Bay, Union Bay, Denman and Hornby islands, and the other 20 communities that have volunteer fire departments in my riding and three search and rescue stations.

Volunteers get a $3,000 tax credit if 200 hours of volunteer service are completed in a calendar year. The petitioners are calling on the federal government to allow that to be a $10,000 credit. Given that Canada has a climate emergency and had the worst wildfire season in the history of our country, the petitioners are calling on the government to make this increase because it would help with recruitment, soften the burden of inflation and help with retention.

I hope the House receives this petition and that all parliamentarians who are hearing this will stand in support of calling on the federal government to adopt the request made in this petition today.

Questions on the Order Paper

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

Madam Speaker, I would ask that all questions be allowed to stand.

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

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

Opposition Motion—Passage of Bill C-234 by the Senate

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

moved:

That the House call on the unelected Senate to immediately pass Bill C-234, An Act to amend the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, to remove the carbon tax on the farmers that feed Canadians, as passed by the democratically elected House.

Madam Speaker, why is it that the House of Commons is green? The answer is that the first commoners met in the fields. They were overwhelmingly farmers who harvested a living from the fields of England. They were overwhelmingly taxed, though, by a greedy Crown that took out of their pockets and out of their hands the bread they had earned. As a result, they imposed upon King John, in 1215, the Magna Carta, the great charter, which required a whole series of restrictions on the power of the Crown. Among the most important of these was that the Crown could not tax what the commoners had not approved. Thus began the tradition that only the House of Commons can pass a bill to raise spending or taxes and only the House of Commons has the power of the purse.

That principle remains in place today. I have the rule book, O'Brien and Bosc, which the Speaker follows in his chair as he administers this chamber. It says, “The Constitution Act, 1867 provided that any bill appropriating any part of the public revenue or imposing a tax or duty must originate in the House of Commons”, with the commoners. It follows that the same principle be that if the commons votes to remove a tax, that tax must be removed.

This House of Commons has voted for a common-sense Conservative bill, Bill C-234, to take the carbon tax off the farmers who feed us. The farmers who feed us, of course, need energy to do so. They need the ability to power their drying machines to transport their grains and heat and cool their barns for their animals, all of which requires energy. The more tax the government imposes on that energy, the more expensive it is for them to produce the food we eat. Thus we have the misery and poverty that have resulted today in the same way they always have whenever the Crown, or in this case the state and the Prime Minister, takes too much.

We see what has happened. The government is rich and the people are poor. After eight years of the Prime Minister and his NDP government, there is record food bank use. This week we learned that under NDP policies imposed through the Prime Minister, 800,000 people in Ontario alone visited a food bank six million times. This is a record-smashing number. Nationwide, two million Canadians are going to a food bank. This is a 32% increase from when the Prime Minister took office.

After eight years of the Prime Minister, housing costs have doubled, rent has doubled, mortgage payments have doubled, down payments have doubled and tent cities have formed in every major city in this country. In Halifax, in the province of the federal housing minister, there are now 30 homeless encampments. This is in one city. We never had this before the Prime Minister.

What is his response? He divides to distract. He turns Canadian against Canadian. He gives out taxpayer-funded opioids to medicate people out of their misery. Later next year, he intends to bring in medical assistance in dying for the mentally ill so that people who are living with the total misery and isolation that his economy has created can have their lives ended altogether. We could not even have imagined that life would be this hellish for our people eight years ago.

What is his solution now? He wants to quadruple the carbon tax. He wants to raise it to 61¢ a litre on gas and diesel. Obviously this will make it unaffordable for people to drive to work and heat their homes. However, then there are the indirect costs, because when we tax the energy of the farmer who makes the food and the trucker who ships the food, we tax all who buy the food.

Let me give an example. In my riding we have Carleton Mushroom Farms. They supply mushrooms across the Ottawa-Carleton region and into western Quebec. They are spending $150,000 a year on carbon taxes, and now the Prime Minister wants to quadruple that tax. We can presume that their tax bill would go up to $600,000 a year for one farm. How is that farm supposed to feed people? The answer is that it will become mathematically impossible to do so. As the member for Foothills will tell the House, as I am splitting my time with him, we will see more of our food produced by foreign farmers in countries with poorer environmental standards.

This is the famous story of SunTech tomatoes, another great farm in my riding where the Prime Minister taxes the C02 they release into their greenhouse even though it is absorbed by the plant life. Apparently, he missed that day in science class. The problem is that it is now more expensive to buy a Manotick tomato in Manotick than a Mexican tomato. Therefore, the price signal the Prime Minister and the NDP send to the Manotick consumers is to buy the tomato that had to be trucked and trained across North America, burning fossil fuels from a less environmentally responsible country, to feed foreign food to our people.

This policy of quadrupling the tax on our farmers will mean more expensive food for consumers and more foreign food that sends our money, our jobs and our future out of this country, at the same time as sending more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. We would be better to repatriate food production to Canada. We have the sixth biggest supply of arable land per capita in the world. We should not have to import any food, but here we are, more dependent on the rest of the world because the Prime Minister punishes the very farmers who try to feed us every day.

This tax compounds again and again. It is a tax that does not apply once like, for example, the sales tax. Sometimes on a single product, it can apply 20 or 30 times. It applies, for example, when the farmer buys the fertilizer. That fertilizer has already been carbon taxed. Then he has to bring the seeds to his field. The transportation of those seeds has to be carbon taxed. When the harvest comes out and he brings it in from the field, he has to be carbon taxed to dry those grains. Then, if it he is feeding those grains to his livestock, they might be in a barn. That barn has to be heated during the winter and so the barn is carbon taxed. Let us say they are hogs. When they are slaughtered, the slaughterhouse is carbon taxed. The trucker who ships the hogs to the slaughterhouse is carbon taxed. Then when the final cuts of pork are packaged and put in a truck to go to our grocery store, that truck is carbon taxed. Then heating that grocery store, which has a lot of space to heat, that heat is carbon taxed as well. By the time that piece of food gets onto someone's plate, it may have been carbon taxed 15 or 20 times.

People wonder why we have had the worst food inflation in 40 years after eight years of the Prime Minister. They wonder why food is so much more expensive in Canada than it is in the United States of America. They wonder why seven million people are skipping meals and not eating enough to remain healthy. They wonder why we have lineups around streets, around blocks; if the images were put in grainy black and white, they would assume they were watching something out of the dirty thirties. The answer is the Prime Minister is taxing the farmer who makes the food, the trucker who ships the food and every other person who works hard to bring that food to our table.

Common-sense Conservatives have a bill that has been passed by this House that would take the tax off. The Prime Minister has deployed his carbon tax minister to pressure senators to block that bill, in an undemocratic attack on the prerogative of the commoners to decide who pays what. The government cannot tax what the people do not approve and the people do not approve of this carbon tax. They want us to axe the tax; to bring home lower prices; to bring home our food production, our self-reliance and independence to this country; and to bring home more powerful paycheques, affordable food and decent homes to our Canadian people, the common people, the common sense of the common people, united for our common home; their home, my home and our home. Let us bring it home.

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

Madam Speaker, one of the tactics that the Conservatives have been using in order to pressure senators into moving quickly on this bill was developing something that looked like a wanted poster that was distributed by the House leader of the official opposition, the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle. One senator has received a number of threatening phone calls and emails and has been very outspoken about that aggressive tactic used by the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle.

I am wondering if the Leader of the Opposition can comment on whether he regrets his House leader's decision to employ those types of intimidating tactics.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, the senator's contact information is widely available on websites. The member is simply trying to distract.

I want to tell the member what intimidation looks like. Intimidation is when a single mother opens the fridge in the morning and there is nothing there. She looks over at the empty lunch bag that she needs to fill for her children and there is nothing to put in it. Intimidation is when, at the end of the month, she looks at the bills that have stacked up, then at her bank account and the former is way bigger than the latter. She does not know where she is going to live the next month. That is the real intimidation that the government has imposed on working-class people right across this country.

If he wants to talk about threats, it is the threat to the quality of life of the people who do the work in this country that I am most worried about.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Madam Speaker, what we are seeing again today is not only intimidation, as my colleague pointed out, but also disinformation. I have heard the leader of the official opposition tell the House that people wanted medical assistance in dying because they had nothing to eat. The leader of the official opposition has also said that the ballot issue in the next election will be the carbon tax even though he is well aware that tax does not apply in Quebec.

I have one very simple question for the leader of the official opposition. Does he even believe himself when he says things like that?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Yes, Madam Speaker, I do believe those things, and I know it.

For starters, I am not the one who said that people are asking for medical assistance in dying because they are going hungry. That was the CEO of Food Banks Mississauga. My colleague can read her comments about how people went to the food bank to request medical assistance in dying. They did so not because they were sick, but because they were hungry. The Bloc Québécois members do not know this because they spend all their time travelling around Europe to talk about sovereignist movements over there. They could not care less about the people in their own ridings.

Furthermore, the carbon tax does apply in Quebec. Food produced elsewhere in Canada is taxed when truck drivers transport it to Quebec, and there is another 17¢-per-litre carbon tax coming that will apply and that the Bloc Québécois wants to drastically increase.

Only the Conservative Party wants to eliminate those taxes and bring prices down for Quebeckers.

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

Madam Speaker, I am astounded at the sheer audacity of the Conservatives lecturing us on the Senate. After all, this is a party that has a history of appointing party bagmen and failed candidates. This is the party of Nigel Wright and Mike Duffy. This is the party that has 15 senators who still caucus with it every week, the only party, and this is a party that has their senators frequently block private members' bills in the past.

Is the member for Carleton aware of his own hypocrisy and why does he think he can stand here and lecture us on the Senate?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, I will tell the member why I think I can lecture him. It is because the member betrayed his constituents. They elected him to be a member of the opposition and, instead, he works for the Prime Minister. Every time I go to Vancouver Island, people say their MP sold them out, sold them down the river. He voted to ban their hunting rifles while allowing violent gun criminals onto the street. He voted to hand out dangerous drugs that caused crime and chaos in tent cities all over Vancouver Island. He voted to quadruple the carbon tax in order to fund the extravagances of the Prime Minister.

New Democrats, especially those from Vancouver Island, are working for the Prime Minister instead of working for the common people in their constituencies. It is not only me who should lecture the member. It is every single Canadian who should lecture New Democrats that their job is to work for the people, not for the Prime Minister.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Madam Speaker, every single Canadian wants one thing in life, or one thing among several in life, which is to have nutritious, sustainable and affordable food produced right here in Canada. However, the Prime Minister's carbon tax coalition with the NDP is making that almost impossible for Canadian farmers and for Canadian consumers.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer was very clear that Bill C-234, which we are trying to pass through the Senate, would save Canadian farmers close to $1 billion by 2030. These are not insignificant costs we are talking about that Canadian farmers are trying to absorb. We are seeing farmers struggle with higher input costs, higher interest rates and the paying of the carbon tax again and again.

This is reality, but there are consequences to this reality, which seem to be lost on the Liberal government. There are 800,000 Ontarians who made close to six million visits to the food bank last year, which is an increase of almost 40%. This is the highest single-year increase ever recorded. They cannot afford to feed their families.

The Liberals will say, every single question period, that all the Conservatives are going to do is cut. The cutting that is happening right now is Canadian families cutting meals for their kids and Canadian families cutting the heat down at night and putting on a sweater or a blanket because they cannot afford to heat their homes. These are the cuts happening every single day by Canadians, who are having to face extremely difficult choice of either feeding their family or heating their home. These are not choices that should have to be made in a country like Canada, but that is exactly what an ideological activist agenda by the Liberal-NDP government is forcing Canadians to do.

We have a common-sense Conservative bill, Bill C-234, that would help reduce costs for farmers and make food more affordable for Canadians, but the Liberal government is going out of its way to bully senators to block Bill C-234. This is disrespectful to this House of Commons, which is elected by the people to represent our constituents. This House, by a very strong majority, and in fact by every single opposition party in this House, supported Bill C-234. This is because every opposition party in this House understands the importance of Canadian agriculture. Every member of the official opposition understands the importance of ensuring Canadians have affordable food to put on their table, produced right here in Canada by Canadian farmers, ranchers and producers.

What we are seeing is the Liberals play games with the Senate, disrespecting, as I said, the decisions made by this House of Commons. My colleague from Wellington—Halton Hills has talked a great deal about the fact that this is a taxation bill that was passed by this House. The Senate does not have the jurisdiction or the authority to override a taxation bill decided upon by the House of Commons, and yet that is exactly what is happening. The Senate is playing games with the livelihoods of Canadian farmers. It is playing games with the lives of Canadian families who are struggling to put food on the table. Food should not be a luxury and it should certainly not be a plaything in the political gamesmanship of the Liberal government.

I want to take a moment to talk about the real-life consequences this is having on Canadian farmers. I had a phone call from a dairy farmer two weeks ago who was basically in tears. She has come to the conclusion that she is going to lose her farm by Christmas to bankruptcy. She has a number of loans on her farm, as every single farmer does. They have lots of assets but a lot of debt. Her interest rate on her debt went from 1.9% to 7.2%. She can no longer afford the interest payments. On top of that, her carbon tax and fuel bills have doubled over the last year, making it impossible for her to maintain her operation. This is yet another lost farm for Canadian farmers. It is lost jobs, but also lost production and lost yields.

A mushroom farmer from Ontario sent me a note. His carbon tax went up last year and he was going to be paying $173,000 in carbon taxes alone. When it goes up in 2030, his carbon tax bill will be $450,000 a year. How is that economically sustainable? I will tell us. It is not.

The government talks about environmental sustainability all the time, but it never talks about economic viability, which is the most important element. One cannot be environmentally sustainable if one no longer exists.

The note said, “It is difficult to see how our farm or any farm will remain in business if this continues. It will be unsustainable for our next generation to take on our farms, killing the food chain within Canada. This is not fair to farmers, families or the farming generations to come. It is not fair to Canadian consumers who want to eat food grown in Canada, which has a lower carbon footprint.”

Another letter from a poultry farmer in Alberta states that, last year, he paid $120,000 in carbon taxes. This year, he is paying $180,000. By 2030, his carbon tax bills will be $480,000 a year. He said, “We are a chicken business and just simply can't afford the crippling carbon tax. If this is allowed to continue and go to $170 a tonne, we will need to shut down. The tax we pay is not going to do anything to eliminate carbon emissions. Our best hope is that we increase our selling price to the consumer to recover these costs, which is the last thing you or I want to see in these inflationary times.”

We are seeing record-high food inflation in Canada as a result of farmers paying the carbon tax again and again. Not only do they pay it when they are heating and cooling their barns or drying their grain, but they are also paying it when they buy fertilizer, seed and chemicals. They are paying it again when they transport their grain or their cattle and when the rail line sends them their bill for moving their grain to port.

There are very few other industries that I can think of that pay the carbon tax more then Canadian farmers, yet they are dedicated to the job that they do and always finding better ways and new innovations to reduce their emissions. However, that is not taken into consideration whatsoever with bills that are being blocked by the Liberals.

A veteran retired from the military and moved to Saskatchewan. He said that, in 2020, his fuel bill was $7,000. In 2021, it was $9,000. In 2022, it is now $12,000. He said, “The weird part is that I drive my machinery the same amount and the same number of hours each year.”

His land is the same size, which means taxes are making up the difference in costs. “I am only farming a half-section, and I am farming organically. If I didn't, I would be broke by now.”

These are stories that we are getting in our office every single day. These are the real-life consequences of the carbon tax and the impact it is having on farmers. This is then increasing the cost of food, and Canadians are having to deal with that every single day.

When one increases the cost and carbon tax on the farmers who are growing the food, the truckers who are moving the food, the processors who are manufacturing the food and the retailers who are selling the food, do we know what happens? Food becomes unaffordable for the Canadian consumer. That is why we are seeing one in five Canadians skipping meals and record-breaking numbers at food banks.

This is not lost across Canada. We have letters from five premiers who are asking the Senate to pass this bill. Premiers across Canada understand the importance of this legislation. Saskatchewan, Alberta, Ontario, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are begging the Senate to do its job, respect the will of the House of Commons and pass this legislation.

However, we have the Prime Minister's environment minister threatening to resign if this bill is passed. He says there will be no more carbon tax carve-outs. This comes days after the Prime Minister already admitted that his carbon tax is unaffordable and had a carve-out for home heating oil.

This is clearly common-sense legislation. It will make food more affordable. The most important thing is that Canadians want nutritious, sustainable, affordable food produced by Canadian farmers. Bill C-234 will make that a reality.

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

Madam Speaker, the Conservatives say they are begging senators. That is not what they are doing. They are actually inciting violence toward senators.

I have a news report with me, titled “Canadian Senator Flees Home Amid Safety Concerns Following ‘Wanted Poster’ Incident”.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

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

Can they at least stop heckling me while I talk about something so incredibly serious, Madam Speaker? It is outrageous.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

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

Now they are laughing, Madam Speaker.

[Scot Davidson, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The member for Kingston and the Islands is—

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

The hon. member is not in his seat, so he cannot raise a point of order.

The hon. member for Chatham-Kent—Leamington.