Debates of April 18th, 2023

Federal Electoral Boundaries Commission

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

It is my duty to lay upon the table, pursuant to subsection 23(2) of the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, a certified copy of the report of the Federal Electoral Boundaries Commission for the Province of New Brunswick.

Pursuant to Standing Order 32(5), this report is deemed to have been permanently referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

Official Languages

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the first report of the Standing Committee on Official Languages on Bill C-13, an act to amend the Official Languages Act, to enact the use of French in federally regulated private businesses act and to make related amendments to other acts.

The committee has studied the bill and has decided to report the bill back to the House with amendments.

Transport, Infrastructure and Communities

[Peter Schiefke, Liberal, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 10th report of the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, entitled “Strengthening Air Passenger Rights in Canada”.

Pursuant to Standing Order 109, the committee requests that the government table a comprehensive response to this report.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Mr. Speaker, while Conservative members support the general direction of the report, we believe it does not go far enough in advancing the principle of shared accountability in the aviation ecosystem. Further, the report does not hold the Minister of Transport accountable for his complete absence in the face of significant failures in Canada's air travel system during the Christmas travel season of 2022. Conservative members believe that ministerial accountability required the minister to play a more active and visible role in addressing this crisis and to address why, despite his promises that the system was fixed, Canadians were subjected to consecutive disastrous travel seasons.

Conservative members believe that the recommendation for establishing transparent service standards for all members of the aviation sector is a good start but does not go far enough. We agree with witness testimony in the committee report calling for a reimbursement regime for all groups that provide a service that can result in delay or cancellation. We believe that ensuring federally regulated entities responsible for delays and cancelled flights are held responsible will incentivize all entities in the aviation ecosystem to ensure a better travel experience for air passengers.

Fisheries and Oceans

[Ken McDonald, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour of presenting, in both official languages, the 10th report of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, entitled “Protection and Coexistence of the North Atlantic Right Whale in Canada”. Pursuant to Standing Order 109, the committee requests that the government table a comprehensive response to this report.

While I am on my feet, I thank all members of the committee for their work on this report, as well as the clerk, analyst, translation team and all the support staff who make our meetings possible.

Agriculture and Agri-Food

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

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the eighth report of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, entitled “Feeding the World: Strengthening Canada's Capacity to Respond to Global Food Insecurity”.

The committee requests that the government table a comprehensive report.

Like my hon. colleague for Avalon, I thank all members on our committee for their tremendous work, the witnesses who appeared before us, and indeed our administrative staff and translation team for their continued excellent service.

Citizenship and Immigration

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour of presenting, in both official languages, the following two reports of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

In relation to Bill S-245, an act to amend the Citizenship Act, granting citizenship to certain Canadians, I have the honour of presenting the 14th report. The committee has studied the bill and, pursuant to Standing Order 97.1(1), requests a 30-day extension to consider it.

I also have the honour of presenting the 15th report. The committee has studied the bill and recommends to the House that it be granted the power during its consideration of Bill S-245, an act to amend the Citizenship Act, granting citizenship to certain Canadians, to expand the scope of the bill such that the provisions of the bill be not limited to an application to retain his or her citizenship under section 8 as it is read before April 17, 2009.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

Pursuant to Standing Order 97.1(3)(a), a motion to concur in the report is deemed moved, the question deemed put and a recorded division deemed demanded and deferred. Pursuant to order made on Thursday, June 23, 2022, the recorded division stands deferred until Wednesday, April 19, at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions.

Businesses in Lytton

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to table a petition signed by residents of Lytton, British Columbia. On June 30, 2021, wildfires engulfed the village of Lytton and surrounding areas, destroying the town and displacing hundreds of residents. With building yet to begin, the businesses in Lytton that accepted CEBA loans have no means of reopening and of repaying those loans.

Residents of Lytton are calling on the Government of Canada to recognize these extraordinary circumstances and forgive any amounts owed by Lytton area businesses on Canada emergency bank account loans. This is an exceptional circumstance and these petitioners are calling on the Government of Canada in good faith to forgive these loans. They really do not have the ability to pay them back. They want to pay them back but they cannot.

I present this petition on behalf of my constituents.

Lake Simcoe

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Madam Speaker, I have two petitions today. The first concerns Lake Simcoe.

I am very proud to present a petition that was brought to me by the organization Youth for Lake Simcoe, spearheaded by Zoe Bystrov, who was driven to launch the petition after paddleboarding on the lake and seeing waste floating and accumulating along the shoreline. In 2021, Zoe was awarded the Ernie Crossland Young Conservationist Award by the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority.

Petition e-4278 was signed by 835 residents, many of whom live within the Lake Simcoe watershed. It calls on the government to follow through on the promises made by the Liberals in the 2019 and 2021 election campaigns to provide new, direct funding for the Lake Simcoe cleanup fund. I support this petition and thank Zoe and Youth for Lake Simcoe for their tireless efforts in their campaign to gather signatures for this petition.

It is my hope that the government does finally keep its promise to support the work of many organizations, stakeholders and those who generally love Lake Simcoe to maintain it for sustainability and health for generations to come.

Firearms

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am proud to stand to present petition e-4221 from Barrie—Innisfil resident Bob Dowdell, which asks the government to withdraw the amendment tabled at committee in November 2022. The petition was signed by 13,964 Canadians who agree the amendment and the evergreen definition were an overreach, unfairly made law-abiding firearm owners and sport shooters criminals, and infringed on the treaty rights of indigenous firearm owners.

Mr. Dowdell was very concerned about the prohibited firearm definition, as it is an item currently contained within a federal court case concerning the order in council of May 2020. The amendment could directly affect the outcome of the federal court case.

I support this petition. I thank Bob and the close to 14,000 Canadians who are residents of Barrie—Innisfil and signed and supported petition e-4221.

Opioids

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

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to table this petition mere days after the seventh anniversary of British Columbia's announcement of a public health emergency regarding the toxic drug crisis.

This petition was led by Moms Stop the Harm. I want to thank the moms. I want to thank the dads, aunts, uncles, grandparents, children and community members of those who have lost loved ones due to the toxic drug crisis. They are calling on the government to act, to join British Columbia in taking action in what is one of the most deadly public health emergencies in our lifetime and which is claiming approximately 21 deaths and lives every day.

The undersigned call upon the Government of Canada to declare the toxic drug crisis a national public health emergency. They want the government to take steps to end the toxic drug deaths and overdose injuries immediately and collaborate with provinces and territories to develop a comprehensive pan-Canadian overdose action plan, including treatment on demand, decriminalization, provision of a safer supply of substances and investments in education recovery. They want to ensure this emergency is taken seriously with adequately funded programming and supports.

Justice

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to table two petitions in the House today.

The first comes from hundreds of people who are very concerned by the lack of civic participation in the admissibility and consideration of complaints from the public regarding federally appointed judges. The Canadian Judicial Council is made up exclusively of judges. A number of studies question whether their professional ties prevent the judges from being completely impartial when they review complaints.

These citizens are calling for a joint committee composed of citizen representatives and judicial representatives to be created to study the admissibility of any complaints filed and follow up on them. They also want us to ensure that the appointment process for citizen representatives on the various committees of the Canadian Judicial Council is transparent and to create an appeal procedure for the complaints review committee.

Human Rights

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Madam Speaker, the second petition is related to extremely concerning events happening abroad. On September 2021, Azerbaijani forces initiated an invasion and attacked the Republic of Armenia. Several hundred people have died, thousands of civilians have been displaced and prisoners of war have been captured. There have been constant human rights violations and attacks on Armenia's national sovereignty. An area covering 130 square kilometres of Armenian territory is occupied at the moment.

Thousands of people are calling on Canada to assume a leadership role in defending the victims of human rights violations, urgently impose economic and military sanctions against Azerbaijan to pressure it to withdraw from the Republic of Armenia and demand that Azerbaijan return all prisoners of war, detainees, and the remains of fallen Armenians.

Businesses in Lytton

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Madam Speaker, I rise this morning to present a petition on behalf of the village of Lytton and the businesses in Lytton, British Columbia.

As has been mentioned previously, the village of Lytton was decimated by fire on June 30, 2021. The village remains under an evacuation order, with construction not yet started on homes and buildings. Since rebuilding has yet to begin, doors cannot open and businesses have had no revenue for nearly two years. Already incurring large deficits due to the pandemic, businesses destroyed by the fire will not be in a position to repay the CEBA loans when due on December 31 of this year.

Almost 100 business owners in the village of Lytton signed this petition, calling upon the Government of Canada to recognize the extraordinary circumstances of the businesses of Lytton and to forgive their amounts owing on the Canada emergency business account loans. Due to the magnitude of the disaster and consequential bureaucratic delays, businesses have been unable to rebuild for nearly two years. Forgiveness of the CEBA loans for Lytton businesses would help them to empower economic development and restore the destroyed community. This impacts both first nations and non-first nations.

I know what they are speaking of, because in my riding of Cariboo—Prince George, many businesses and farms are still waiting, since the 2017 wildfires, to rebuild, and they are in the same boat.

The petitioners are pleading with the government to forgive these loans.

National Building Code

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I rise in this place, on the territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people, with the following petition.

The petitioners identify that, in the effort to address the climate crisis, our built infrastructure plays a large role. Seventeen per cent of all energy used in Canada is used in various forms of energy for our homes, and the result of wasteful consumption of energy is a barrier to climate action.

The petitioners are calling on the Government of Canada to work with the provinces and territories to develop a new national building code to reduce overall energy demand by 15%. This is doable, but, as we all know, the national building code takes a long time to develop, and the petitioners are asking that the government address the energy efficiency issues in our homes with urgency.

Fraud Protection for Seniors

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, it is with pleasure that I table a petition today.

I want people to imagine working 30 or 40 years of their lives, accumulating perhaps $300,000, $400,000 or $500,000 in savings, and those savings being taken away. Retirees are increasingly becoming targets of fraud, given that they have built up wealth over their lifetimes to help support their retirement years, and they are vulnerable due to the lack of controls and protections in the transmission of money within the Canadian banking system. Seniors are seeing the savings they have built up over the years removed due to sophistication, deceit and trickery foisted on them by professional fraudsters to exploit them and the current Canadian banking system.

Petitioners are calling upon the House of Commons to undertake a serious and comprehensive review of the current transit system of Canadian citizens' money, with the aim of putting more stringent procedures, protocols and safeguards in place to protect seniors, in particular, from losing their life savings.

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 at this time, please.

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

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

The House resumed from April 17 consideration of the motion that this House approve in general the budgetary policy of the government, and of the amendment.

Financial Statement of Minister of Finance

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise in this place, the House Commons, and particularly to speak to budget 2023 today.

Before I start talking about the budget, I would like to first bring some good news to the House. Some of our very good friends, Carl Brown and Veronica Dubak recently had a little baby boy, Sterling Vesely Dubak Brown, on March 17. I look forward to spending lots of time with him. He is happy and healthy, and we could not be happier for them and their family. I note the applause for Hansard.

On a more sombre note, this is the first time I have been able to rise in the House since the tragedy that hit Edmonton more recently, where we have now lost three frontline police officials. First it was Constable Travis Jordan and Constable Brett Ryan, and more recently Constable Harvinder Dhami. I cannot imagine the amount of grief their families are feeling right now, and I wanted to make sure to send my condolences out to them. It certainly has gripped our town of Edmonton very strongly as we come to terms with the loss of three lives in our community, of those who put their lives in the way of fire every single day.

I do want to get to the budget. First of all, I want to address three or four items that I found to be of particular interest to me, mental health being the key one. In the lead-up to the budget, we heard a lot of talk about mental health and the supports that may or may not be in the budget. Unfortunately, it was the latter. A number of mental health committees I have spoken to over the last number of weeks talked about how disappointing this budget has been to them. It is unfortunate. We are going through an incredible mental health crisis right now. It is something I know every member of this House ends up supporting. However, it did not seem to make it to that final step and get into the budget.

These are not just my thoughts. I will give a quick rundown of what the Canadian Mental Health Association stated. The headline of its press release the day of the budget says it all: “Budget 2023 out of touch with mental health crisis”. The press release goes on to say:

The Canadian Mental Health Association...is profoundly concerned that Budget 2023 did not include the promised Canada Mental Health Transfer.

Failing to establish the Transfer is an abdication of responsibility on a long-awaited policy and mandate priority.... The promise of federal funding starting in 2021 with an initial investment of $4.5 billion over 5 years never materialized.

The press release then quotes the CEO: “The budget is out of touch with the reality of Canadians’ well-being and their ability to afford mental health services. I believe that the government has missed the mark, and that there will be deep human and economic costs to pay.”

Mental health is something I know a number of these organizations have spent a lot of time coordinating, and they have been reaching out to the government about trying to get that support.

This is an opportunity to highlight some of these serious mental health aspects. There is an awareness event that I do each year with members of this House. With the Liberal member for Richmond Hill and the NDP member for Courtenay—Alberni, we do an event called Father's Day on the Hill every year. It raises awareness of men's mental health, because 75% of suicides in this country are of men. We have even seen some more statistics come out that an average of 50 men are dying by suicide per week and that 81% of the drug overdose deaths are also of men.

I am always pleased to raise awareness of this event. We are now in our seventh year of doing this, but the numbers continue to climb and it is something that I know most members of the House are concerned about. To drive this home, in terms of just how important the support for mental health is, not seeing that tied into the budget has been disappointing to see.

Before I move on to the next topic, on men's mental health, we have even seen, this year, the Bloc Québécois join us in putting together this event. We started a foundation through it last year, which is going to promote research and programs throughout the year. Ultimately, what I would love to see in this budget, and going forward in future budgets, is not just support for mental health as a broad budget number and a lump sum of money, but for a lot of that to be dedicated to the people and the issues that need it most, whether it be the overdose deaths or the mental health of men struggling with suicide. Those sorts of supports are what Canadians are asking for and what Canadians need right now.

I want to move on to the other topic that jumped out at me in the budget, the supply chains. It is something that I take on in this caucus, as our shadow minister of supply chains. There was a lot of reaching out and advocating for supply chain issues in the lead-up to this budget. However, unfortunately, we saw even more movement in the opposite direction.

I will just read a quick quote from the Railway Association of Canada, which was not pleased with what happened in this budget: “The Railway Association of Canada...calls the federal government’s move to resurrect the failed policy of extended regulated interswitching misguided and harmful to Canada’s supply chains.” Its CEO goes on to state, “The measures announced today will not improve the efficiency, capacity or reliability of Canada’s supply chains. They will do the exact opposite, as we saw under extended regulated interswitching that was in place from 2014 to 2016.”

The supply chain issue is something that I know has gripped many Canadians, particularly in my community. Since the pandemic, I have been hearing a lot about what supply chains have meant to this country, and I think that more and more people are paying attention to the supply chains now too. In downtown Vancouver, if people see a barge out on English Bay, they might be wondering if maybe that is their Amazon package delivery or the IKEA bench they were hoping to purchase over the weekend. I think that more Canadians are looking at what governments are doing when it comes to supply chains.

It touches each ministry over there, yet there is not a lot of coordination between the ministries. I think this is partly why it was astute of our leader to put that focus on supply chains. If we can get a coordinated approach where we can bring forward those solutions, whether it is reducing red tape or providing efficiencies, I think we will see a lot more success at the federal, provincial and municipal levels when it comes to supply chain management.

There is one last topic I want to briefly touch on. I sit on the parliamentary aerospace caucus, and I co-chair that with a member of each party in the House. I have been on it for five or six years now. What we do is raise awareness for the aerospace industry and the aerospace sector. They were also disappointed in this particular budget.

For example, immediately following the budget, they said, “This budget was a missed opportunity for the federal government to support the development of a national aerospace strategy, increase resourcing in Transport Canada's certification capabilities and exclude aircraft from the Select Luxury Items Tax Act to mitigate the significant negative impacts we are currently seeing on Canadian manufacturers and workers.”

The reason why that is important is that the aerospace sector has been advocating for a national aerospace strategy since I got here, since 2015. It is too bad to see that it keeps getting pushed down the aisle.

These are just three items that I got to talk about, but I do not think I have seen, in my time here, a budget that has been criticized by so many different associations and organizations. I think that should be a wake-up call for the government on the other side to think about when it is looking at future budgets or future legislation in this place.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member across the way cited in his speech several media references. I wonder if any of those media references were from the CBC, and whether the CBC reporting on our budget gives us the critical input we need to see the benefits and downfalls of the current budget.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Madam Speaker, I think my good friend across the aisle is trying to set up a trap on the CBC side, but he is mistaken. I did not actually quote from any media articles. I quoted from the association's press releases. It came out and sent out its own responses. I am certain there is a lot of CBC criticism of the budget. I am happy to find that for him and send it his way.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Madam Speaker, the budget has several important elements. However, the fact remains that it meddles in the jurisdictions of Quebec and the Canadian provinces.

I would like to hear my colleague's opinion on this. Does he have any concerns about the fact that part of the budget does not respect the jurisdictions set out in the Constitution?