Debates of Jan. 29th, 2024

Procedure and House Affairs

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

Madam Speaker, I request a recorded division.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

Pursuant to Standing Order 45, the recorded division stands deferred until Tuesday, January 30, at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions.

First Responders Tax Credit

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

Madam Speaker, it is a great honour for me to table petition e-4594, which was signed by 16,724 people from coast to coast to coast in support of Canada's volunteer firefighters and search and rescue volunteers. Petitioners are asking the government to increase the tax credit from $3,000 to $10,000 to help with recruitment and to help deal with the cost of inflation, but most importantly, to let them know they are valued. These volunteers put their lives on the line, and it works out about $450 a year with this tax credit. It would be increased to just over $1,200. This is based on them doing 200-plus volunteer hours a year.

I hope everyone in the House of Commons will join these e-petitioners in support of that, and I hope the government will acknowledge it in the upcoming budget. I have 91 certified petitions for any member in the House if they would like one to table in support of the volunteer firefighters and search and rescue volunteers of this great country.

Employment Insurance

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

Madam Speaker, I present a petition. Whereas employment insurance, maternity and parental benefits provide parents with critical financial support while they care for and bond with a new child, and having a parent at home longer in the critical first year of a child's life or placement within a family better supports healthy attachment and the well-being of a child, adoptive and intended parents are at a disadvantage under the current EI system.

All parents are deserving of equal access to parental leave benefits. Bill C-318 would deliver equitable access to parental leave for adoptive and intended parents. The Speaker of the House of Commons has ruled that the passage of Bill C-318 requires a royal recommendation. The undersigned citizens and residents of Canada call upon the Government of Canada to support adoptive and intended parents by providing a royal recommendation for Bill C-318.

The House resumed from December 15, 2023, consideration of the motion.

Finance

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is quite unusual to be here tonight debating RBC taking over HSBC because it already happened. We were in debate on this important motion in December, and there was an adjourning of the debate made by the NDP, of all parties, which supported the Liberal government. Lo and behold, during the Christmas break, the finance minister approved the merger of RBC, with the number one bank in Canada buying the number seven bank in Canada, and its 800,000 mortgages, in one big gulp. The result is going to be a disaster for Canadians. Why is that? Well, we have a monopoly problem in Canada.

Canadians pay the highest fees in the world for cell phones, with the largest cell phone bills on the entire planet. Two airlines control 80% of all the airline business in Canada. Five groceries stores, three Canadian and two American, control not only 87% of groceries but also the wholesale for groceries. Insurance companies are dominating with oligopolies in Canada. It is a travesty that 85% of Canadian beer is owned by two companies, and neither is Canadian. Six banks control 87% of the mortgage market, but now that HSBC has been bought by RBC, it means that five banks will control 90% of all Canadian mortgages.

The government, and its lacklustre Competition Act, protects monopolies and oligopolies, and we have a monopoly problem. We have an over-regulated government industry that protects them. Our banks are an oligopoly, which is a word invented in 1930 that literally comes from the word “oligarch” because it means “a few sellers”. It stays true to its name of a few sellers because it only benefits a few, such as its stock owners and the government, but not consumers. Our monopoly problem means that consumers lose with higher fees, less choice, higher mortgage rates, lower investment, lower productivity, fewer start-ups and, more importantly, really bad service, lower wages and low wealth inequality.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Madam Speaker, the NDP may want to listen to this because monopolies and oligopolies—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

There seem to be some conversations going on at the other end that are disturbing the speakers in the House. I would ask members, including the minister, to please step out to the lobby and have their conversation there.

The hon. member for Bay of Quinte.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Madam Speaker, the members may want to listen to this because we are in the worst housing crisis in the history of this country right now and the worst housing bubble in the whole world. In eight years, rent has doubled, mortgages have doubled and the amount needed for a down payment has doubled. Sixty-six percent of the average Canadian income is needed now to pay for a mortgage payment. A down payment in Toronto averages $220,000, and in Vancouver it is $237,000. It takes 25 years to save up for a down payment when it used to take 25 years to pay off a mortgage.

Tent cities are popping up all over Canada, not only in major cities, but also in rural cities like my hometown of Belleville, Ontario. In 2015, the Prime Minister made an election promise to expand the the learn to camp program, which, when he was elected, was meant to help Canadians camp. However, Canadians did not have in mind that they would not be camping in the wilderness for fun, but on public land just to survive.

This is a distinct Canadian problem. Canadian housing prices are 45% to 75% higher than our American counterparts. A lot of the time in border cities the prices are 100% higher. Canada built fewer homes than it did in 1972, which was 50 years ago.

When it comes to HSBC, it was a competitor. Most importantly, it was a competitor in the areas of Vancouver and Toronto. It held 10% of Vancouver's mortgage book and 5% of Toronto's. These are areas that are some of the most expensive and unaffordable in all of Canada. When it provided rates, if we want to talk about a scrappy competitor, a month and a half ago it provided five-year variable mortgage fixed rates at 6.4%. If we compare that to RBC at 7.15%, it means that HSBC would save a family with a half a million dollar mortgage $312 a month, and good luck having a half a million dollar mortgage in Vancouver.

When we look at the number one bank, RBC, with $1 trillion in assets under management and total assets of $2 trillion, buying the number seven bank, HSBC, with $120 billion in assets and 800,000 mortgage customers, we have taken that competitor out of the market and given it to the largest bank, making that oligopoly and monopoly larger.

However, there was a fail-safe: the regulator. How the Competition Act failed to protect consumers was that the minister, the regulator, could have rejected this deal on behalf of Canadians who are in the worst housing crisis this generation and country has ever faced. However, she approved the deal to protect HSBC from having to find another buyer or, at the very worst, having the remaining banks competing for its clients. I say that she approved it because we had a debate schedule in December. We passed a motion at the finance committee, which was approved, to reject the merger, to have real debate, and again the NDP shut down debate and stopped us from having a debate before the merger was approved by the finance minister. It will be going through in March. The NDP member for Elmwood—Transcona shut down debate in the House of Commons. At the end of the day, we have to look at why. When we look at Vancouver and B.C. mortgage holders who are having a tough time making their mortgage payments as a whole, but are really trying to find ways to keep their homes, why would the government approve a merger that would raise prices for those consumers?

This happens all the time with a monopoly. Dozens of studies now show that, every time a merger goes through, prices go up. More importantly, this is the comment I have for the NDP. More studies now are showing that, through oligopolies and mergers, wages are going down. Dozens of studies now document how monopolies and oligopolies are driving income inequality.

An OECD study of seven European nations found that oligopolies reduced wages an average of 7% overall, but 13% for the working class. A U.K. Competition and Markets Authority study published a report last week that said that there is mounting evidence of suppressed wages from labour market concentration, or oligopolies, and wages are on average 10% lower in the most concentrated markets. Economists in the U.S. found that going from a very competitive industry to an oligopoly resulted in a 15% to 25% reduction in wages for workers.

Therefore, this vote and this debate to allow an oligopoly to get bigger, and it is not just about prices, which are really important, is about wages in a country that cannot afford any more wage erosion. That is easy to see.

We can go all the way back to 1776 when Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations. For those who have never studied this, he talked about the invisible hand. If there are many buyers and sellers, price is negotiated and price goes down. It is the same thing for wages with the invisible hand. When there are many employees working for the same employer, with competition and the invisible hand, wages go up, but when the invisible hand is eliminated, it means we create monopolies and oligopolies. With the invisible hand, losing those employers and concentrating that, we not only have high prices, but low wages, and that is what the NDP supported when it adjourned this debate.

At the end of the day, monopolies and oligopolies are destroying the economy and the way of life of Canadians. Because I have the option, I am going to talk about what happened since the minister approved this merger. HSBC had variable mortgage fixed rates at 6.4%, which was pretty low compared to RBC at 7.15%. Since the merger has been approved, those rates went to 6.55%, meaning it just cost a Vancouverite $750 a year on a half-million dollar mortgage. It is not hard to see since the evidence is barely a month old that approving mergers and acquisitions, concentrating our banking industry in the hands of a few, hurts consumers. I shudder to think how this is going to affect workers going forward.

It is not just one industry, as I have indicated. The banking industry has concluded that this merger should never have gone through, but it is following another merger that is giving pains and fits to Canadians at a time when they should not be seeing increased costs. There is the cellphone industry and the merger between Rogers and Shaw. There was an announcement only about three weeks ago that Rogers is increasing its prices by 9%. The average monthly cellphone bill for Canadians is $106. Australians pay $30 a month. Canadians, who are already paying the highest cellphone bills in the world, are going to have their bills increased by Rogers and Shaw by $9 a month, which is 14.5%. At the end of the day, Canadians are going to be paying four times what Australians pay for cellphone bills. That is for 50 gigabytes a month and unlimited talk and text, the minimum that Canadians are looking for just to survive.

When we talk about cellphone bills, we need to talk to our families and friends, and talk about education, job and workplace navigation, but also safety. Cellphones are what saved Canadians when they got alerts this summer, if they could get alerts during the Rogers outage, when the wildfires were raging across this country.

At the end of the day, the RBC-HSBC report from the Competition Bureau stated that the HSBC company was a scrappy competitor and that there were high barriers for other companies to get in. It talked about low and flexible mortgage rates. Leaders in Vancouver say that in losing HSBC, they are losing a company that donated locally to many charities and organizations. They talk about a head office that is not guaranteed to be there after two years or even six months. That is going to disappear and it is a loss for Vancouver. Of course, these things are lost when we look at what oligopolies want and we are not looking after Canadians.

More importantly, we are losing start-ups. Canada has 100,000 fewer start-ups and entrepreneurs compared to 20 years ago, despite our population growing by 10 million people, and it is easy to see why. When we consolidate these industries, we block new competitors from coming in. I have a consumer-led banking bill that is coming up this Thursday that would give an option for that. Instead of protecting the oligopolies, it would allow many new entrepreneurs and financial tech organizations to compete with banking. It would do one thing: create competition in banking. In the meantime, the government held that back six years and yet it approved the HSBC-RBC merger within several months.

The Competition Bureau knows that competition is broken because it wrote a report on it. It said that from 2000 to 2020, the concentration rose in the most concentrated industries, the top firms are less and less challenged, fewer firms have entered industries and we are seeing profits and markups rise. We see that prices are up and wages are down. Nobody wins with oligopolies and monopolies. At the end of the day, Canada only wins when we have new start-ups, new entrepreneurs and many industries competing for Canadians' dollars because that is how we drive prices down, that is how we create Canadians jobs and that is how Canadians win.

The government has failed Canada by supporting our uncompetitive monopoly problem. When we say monopoly, which is what we use interchangeably, we think of the board game. We all learned young what happens when someone owns all the railroads or all the utilities, or they own one block of properties. If someone owns one block of coloured-coded properties, the rent doubles right away, and we have seen that happening in Canada.

Monopolies and oligopolies result in higher prices, less service, lower wages, greater wealth inequality, and lower productivity and innovation. We should be embracing competition. We should be ensuring that we create Canadian companies. We should be leading the world in IP commercialization, meaning we have companies that create great ideas as we have done in the past, and then commercialize that to create paycheques and great wealth.

However, the government is intent on protecting oligopolies and monopolies, and really protecting what these big companies and their shareholders want, rather than Canadians and stakeholders. The only answer is to push forward quickly with consumer-led banking to create competition in the banking sector and hopefully we are going to allow some good news for Canadians in a whole lot of hurt.

Before I finish, I want to move an amendment.

I move:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following:

“the 12th report of the Standing Committee on Finance, presented on Wednesday, November 1, 2023, be not now concurred in, but that it be recommitted to the Standing Committee on Finance for further consideration, in light of the recent decision of the Minister of Finance to approve the RBC-HSBC merger, despite the finance committee's unanimous decision, on October 23, 2023, calling for the merger to be rejected, and to allow the House an opportunity to pronounce itself on this merger before the ratification process is completed.”

The hon. member for Beauce will second it.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

The amendment is in order.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Madam Speaker, in general, I agree with the member on the issue of monopolies and oligopolies in Canada because of the lack of competition in the banking sector and the telecom sector. As the member mentioned, we are not getting a fair deal in terms of consumers. The cost of banking is high. The cellphone cost he mentioned is also high, but importantly, so are the data charges, which are becoming necessary today. Access to Internet is no longer a luxury; it is a necessity.

What can we do to increase competition so the banking sector—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

The hon. member has asked his question. We are out of time, but I will allow the hon. member to answer briefly.

The hon. member.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is great to hear from the other side that they are seeing what is happening here as being a travesty. I hope the member has a strong voice in his caucus to talk about this.

What we need to do is increase competitors and stop the mergers; it is really important. There are three mergers we could have stopped: RBC and HSBC; Rogers and Shaw; and WestJet and Sunwing.

I hope he can speak up in caucus.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

It being 7:25 p.m., pursuant to order made earlier today, all questions necessary to dispose of the motion are deemed put and recorded divisions are deemed requested.

Pursuant to Standing Order 66, the recorded divisions stand deferred until Wednesday, January 31, at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions.

The House resumed from December 1, 2023, consideration of the motion.

Public Accounts

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to a really important report that was actually tabled some time ago. I am very pleased now that the Conservatives have found time in their very busy schedules to concur in this report. It relates directly to Canada's food system. It is no secret that Canadians from coast to coast to coast right now are dealing with the reality of price-sticker shock. They are seeing that for something they would always buy, whether that is dairy products or the extra thing they get for their kid, every time they go the prices are increasing.

This is a direct consequence of our country's inability, for the many decades leading to this report, to properly plan and prepare for when an emergency strikes and how it impacts our supply chains and how Canadians can get ahead of these factors. The report is good in the sense that it directly looks at the crisis that pertained to the supply chain issues that we were experiencing due to COVID-19, but is important that this report be understood as one to better prepare Canada, not just for a pandemic but for any instance where we would see a devastation to our supply chain that directly impacts the cost of goods for Canadians.

Today, we spoke about the importance of looking at the root causes of some of this terrible price gouging that we are seeing in grocery stores. It is no secret that under the cover of inflation we have seen grocery stores directly profit from the crisis across the country. We are seeing this kind of profiteering manifest in record-breaking profits. When we see the record-breaking profits of some of these huge megacorporations like Loblaws or Empire or Metro, we often see it is those who are most vulnerable who suffer the greatest. As a matter of fact, Statistics Canada was clear that one in seven Canadians, which is almost 15%, are experiencing food insecurity as of May 2020. It is an increase of 10.5% from two years earlier.

I hope we have some kind of common goal here among ourselves as parliamentarians and we would see this issue as a non-partisan one because all of our neighbours right now are experiencing this. Whether one is a constituent of Edmonton Griesbach, a constituent of Carleton or a constituent of Kingston and the Islands, it is true that Canadians are feeling the pinch. Canadians really expect us as parliamentarians to use the time that they so desperately do not have to do the work of ensuring they have what they need to get by.

We did remark this day on the passing of Ed Broadbent, and I want to make clear my condolences to the family and to all those who served with him. However, I do also want to speak to a powerful message. So often in his time as not only a politician but also as an academic he advocated for social democracy, to increase the material benefit for Canadians to ensure that Canadians, no matter the poverty they were to experience, had a place at our democratic table. That is only possible through the important work of ensuring that our social institutions can make possible their political will.

When we start to see poverty in our communities to the extent we are seeing it and when we see our food system at a place where during the time of COVID-19 it was impacted so greatly, it is up to us now to deliver on the recommendations within this report. It is up to us to ensure that we have a stronger system of preparing, so that when an emergency strikes our food system, Canadians are ready. We do not have to wait for the next emergency to happen in order to do that. We can do this work today. As a matter of fact, I would ask that we consider doing that today, given the extreme issues we are seeing of price gouging right now. It is an emergency, certainly in my mind.

Canadian households with children are also more likely to experience food insecurity, which is a terrible reality I spoke to last year pertaining to the good people of Saskatchewan. While people in Saskatchewan right now are experiencing the highest costs for food, we are seeing a provincial government that is unwilling to support those people, especially when it comes to a national food program that was tabled here in this House. It is something that families and children need.

Let me speak to the importance of a food program. I grew up in a very poor family in a very poor community known as the Fishing Lake Métis Settlement. There, we were provided with meals at school. I remember, for example, my mom being nervous and she would sometimes sweat, wondering, as a single parent, how she was going to help her child get food today. I would see the difficult decision in her mind as to whether she should make a car payment or she should make rent, versus feeding us.

It is truly one of the most heartbreaking truths happening right now. It is one of the most heartbreaking realities families are going through as we speak. They are wondering what tomorrow is going to look like for their child and wondering if they will be in the cafeteria with their friends and be able to open a lunch or if they will spend that time in a bathroom at school because they do not have enough.

Today, in light of Mr. Ed Broadbent, I want to be able to speak to my colleagues in a way that hopefully unites us. We speak oftentimes of the things that divide us in this place, but it is true that much unites us. For example, a member just spoke about monopolies and our need to break down those monopolies, and I fully agree it is now time. Subsequent to decades of Conservative and Liberal policies that have allowed megacorporations to flourish, it is time. We have the courage and the moral will to break up those companies, to increase competition and to make possible the material enhancements for those living without.

Over the last decade, food insecurity rose twofold in my home province of Alberta. A new vital statistics report found that in 2011 just over 12% of Albertans were food insecure, and in 2022, that number rose more than 20%. It is heartbreaking to know that our friends and our families, the ones we all care about, are silently suffering in line at a food bank, knowing that these prices are going to continue to climb. These prices will be unchecked forever unless we have the ability to take control of both the vulnerabilities facing our food system and the challenges facing those small and medium-sized businesses, while also ensuring that those profiting off Canadians are held accountable.

When we hold those companies accountable, and I speak of Loblaws, we take the immense wealth they have been able to obtain from Canadians, with record-breaking profits, and use it to ensure that those who do not have the means to survive truly get the opportunity to have a full belly.

Why is that important? Why is it that in the seat of our democracy here in Canada, one of the wealthiest countries in the globe, we happen to be debating food insecurity? It is because of poor decisions. I am not here to point fingers about why we are presented with this challenge today. I hope I can find a way to unite my colleagues toward a better goal, a goal that sees the truth we all hold toward a solution we may debate. That solution will enable tens of thousands, if not millions, of Canadians to truly control their own destiny. It will allow them to participate in our democratic institutions unlike ever before.

We know that Canadians living under poor socio-economic conditions are less likely to vote and are less likely to participate. What does that say for our democracy? In a time when we cannot feed those who need it most and they cannot participate, what does that end up with? It ends up with those who would seek to protect the profits of those who win elections.

It is up to each and every one of us to steer clear and to know deep in our hearts the reasons we were sent here. It is up to us to hold accountable those who are the most powerful so that the vulnerable in our society truly have a voice. This is something that has been ingrained in me since I was born, something passed down from generations of indigenous people whose principles lie in the fact that we are only as strong as our weakest link.

Canadians across the country are really suffering and are holding on as best they can. I know the government has the best will and intentions. However, it may not have all the best ideas, and we have been very critical of those ideas, as have our other opposition colleagues. What is needed in our country today is truly a path forward, one that would see the immense food insecurity of northerners. There are particularly dramatic, terrible and sad stories we hear from our Inuit relatives in Nunavut. We have seen some of the largest price gouging in human history taking place there for things as basic as milk.

We know, for example, that there is the nutrition north food program. It is good in its intentions, and I commend the government for ensuring people have food when they can. It is a good program.

The fault with the program is the fact that we do not then check up on the companies that would absorb that subsidy. We see, in fact, companies that would take a goodwill program and abuse it by increasing the prices of those goods in order to increase their profits. These are the fine details that companies that are ruining competition in our country thrive on. They thrive on the fine print that allows them to get away with it.

That leads me to an important piece in regard to tax fairness. We know that some of these megacorporations are not paying their fair share. I know for certain that small and medium-sized businesses in our ridings are paying their fair share. They are doing hard work. They are trying as best they can to put food on the table while making sure they can give back to their communities. They do so by ensuring that the local parade, whether it is for Canada Day, Christmas or any other community event, is sponsored by the few thousand dollars they can take in as profit. We never get to see Loblaws in a parade. As a matter of fact, I have never seen that in my community, and I do not think it has been in anyone's community.

This is to say that those who are supporting our communities need our support now more than ever. I was disappointed to see that the CEBA loans were not extended, as were my Conservative colleagues and my Bloc colleagues, and, I am sure, many of my Liberal colleagues. That is something we will have to reckon with as companies continue to default and fall behind.

I want to make mention of these companies, because they are the very same companies that would end the crisis we are seeing in our food supply chain insecurities. We know that if we strengthen small and medium-sized businesses, increase competition and ensure that those who are providing for our communities truly get the benefit and the support of a government that is willing to support them and support communities, it is good policy. I really do think we can find some kind of consensus here as long as we have the political will, but we are still in a position where megacorporations continue to hide and avoid taxes.

I spoke to the CRA in the public accounts committee, where this report came from, about the reality of tax evasion in the billions of dollars. We can, in fact, if we have the courage, use the funding that is being taken out of the hands and mouths of families and that is driven into the coffers of multinational corporations and put it back in the hands of communities. That could truly end the crisis we are seeing with our food supply.

I will even go further. When we support those small and medium-sized businesses, local grocers, our farmers and the local production of goods, we support Canada's future.

Members may recall that when this report was commissioned, there were protesters from Prince Edward Island outside this place. They were good, hard-working potato farmers who showed up every day, no matter the conditions, to make sure we had food on our tables. We saw piles and truckloads of potatoes wait there because we were unable to get and to secure export to the United States.

That should not be the case. Those potatoes should be going right across this country where there are hungry families. Rather than looking for the better dollar elsewhere, we should have the courage and the moral will to ensure that Canadians, even if a dollar is not to be made, get the food they so desperately need rather than have so much of it gather in sites where it goes to waste.

We need laws in this country that protect Canadians from the time a food product is produced to the time that food product is eaten. We shall not and we should not allow companies to use their purchasing power to overcome the consumer, but we are seeing that. If we do not buy the goods that they put out front, they throw them away. What a travesty and a terrible reality it is to know that in a food crisis, in a wealthy country like Canada, we throw away tonnes of food, and we allow those corporations to get away with it.

New Democrats have been consistent in our approach that we need an understanding of both the wants and the needs of Canadians. We have to be clear about the wants and needs. The free market that my Conservative colleagues so often speak about should be the market of wants. If we want an Xbox, a PlayStation, a new skateboard or whatever goods we find our kids for Christmas, it should be on the free market. We should certainly ensure that there is fair competition, that those goods are on the market and that Canadian products are innovative and have a fair chance at hitting the shelves for Canadians to choose from.

When it comes to the needs of Canadians, we need to be certain that in order for Canadians to actually practise their democratic rights in a political democracy, we need to guarantee their social access to the things they need: housing, food, water and dignity, things that no human should ever be deprived of. When we deprive humans of these things they need, we deprive them of the very real outcome of being able to participate in our political democracy.

Political democracy is so well connected to the social outcomes of Canadians, to something as simple as food. I will warn Canadians that if we do not get a hold of the dramatically increasing prices of the things Canadians need, of water, food, housing, etc., we will begin to see a dramatic erosion of our democratic institutions. We will begin to see a great mistrust, a great apathy, a great nihilism in our future.

For me, coming from very humble beginnings in rural northeast Alberta, it is a dream to be able to stand in this place. It is a dream to be able to speak to such hon. colleagues about the solutions I think could help us. It is a dream that is still alive, a dream of a better Canada, a dream that still lives on in so many hungry hands and hungry mouths today. They pray that our democracy and the institution of which we are members will come together, not just on the problems facing the country but on the solutions.

I have tried my best to ensure that I speak to the very real realities of the people of Edmonton Griesbach, the realities they are facing in terms of the lack of housing, unaffordable groceries or the immense violence they face due to poverty. I also want to ensure that we can deliver, even in a position from which we may not politically benefit, and the Conservatives remind us every single day that we may not be politically salient as a party or politically salient enough to win government. I accept that. That is fine.

What I trust deeply is the goodwill of Canadians. I trust deeply that they will know the kind of hope that lives in my heart, that they will know that I truly desire the kind of Canada that unites us, the kind of Canada that says no one should go without, and the kind of Canada that feeds us.

This is a dream that I think all parties share. I hope they will guarantee our party the same goodwill, to know that our solutions, when we speak of dental care and ensuring there is a tax on the most wealthy banks, or when we speak of anti-scab legislation, that it comes from a place of deep respect for Canadians, a deep understanding that they, too, are hurting, and an understanding that says we will not sit idly by while conditions get worse.

We can, in fact, ensure a kind of future that is morally correct, socially correct and economically correct. We can, and I believe it, so long as we speak not only of the problems but also of the solutions.

Our report makes clear, and I sat with hon. colleagues from all parties to form a consensus on the report, that we must change and we must prepare Canadians for an economy and a system that protects them from what can be a devastating outcome. We must protect, first and foremost, the quality of food, the supply of food and its transport. This would ensure that we have a base to our economy that could make possible the truths I have spoken about today.

I believe that when we enact the policies that we have generously put forward here, Canada will come out with a plan, a plan that would secure us for the next emergency, because it is a matter of when, not if an emergency strikes, but when.

I am very honoured to stand here on behalf of the good constituents of Edmonton Griesbach in this year, 2024, and I look forward to hearing my colleagues.

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have to agree with my colleague; we do want to find common ground with regard to food security and making sure that Canadians can afford healthy, nutritious food. The key word is “afford”.

While the member talked about record profits, one thing he did not talk about was the fact that there are record input costs for our farmers and producers in order to produce that food. There are record costs for our truckers, for their fuel to truck the food to the grocery stores.

I am just wondering if my colleague could comment on why the NDP does not want to support axing the carbon tax for our farmers and producers, so that we can actually bring down the cost of food in order for Canadians to see the cost of food go down at the grocery store.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am really happy that my hon. colleague mentioned this, because it is an important question that seems simple as to its facts but is actually quite complex in terms of how the supply chain truly works. I will say this: The costs that are being borne by our farmers, the costs that are being borne by cattle producers like my family, and the costs that are being borne by the truckers who are moving the food are all increasing. That is true, and I want to thank my hon. colleague for making that clear.

However, the part I hope she can hear clearly is that it is not Canadians who are benefiting from this. It is not even the government that is benefiting from this. It is the megacorporations that, at the time of input increase, increased not only the base cost of goods but also the profit margin of those goods. That is the definition of “profiteering”. We used to be a country that, in the face of profiteering, would clamp down on it. We only need to look at World War II to see how Canadians used competition to ensure a fair price. We used government apparatus to ensure consumer fairness.

My answer to my hon. colleague is that although I agree with the premise that, of course, these things are going up, the solution to remove the carbon tax, which is about four cents on one hundred dollars' worth of groceries, will not do the dramatic reduction of the cost of goods that we need. What we need is true competition in the megacorporations. We need to break them up and limit the profit motive at some reasonable degree. It cannot be infinite.

I do appreciate the question, and the solution, of course. If four cents is something that is valuable to the member, then sure, but I am more interested in ensuring that our system of economy produces a system that is fair, to guarantee consumer power, rather than ram it over.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague, with whom I sit on the public accounts committee, gave a passionate speech. He certainly brings more passion to public accounts than normally we see, and that is greatly appreciated.

Coming back to the report itself, the Auditor General and the committee itself, we heard testimony from different government departments and so on about the concerns that the Auditor General had about securing the food system around a comprehensive plan, as well as inconsistencies in data collection and measures. Of course, it is not just the federal government that is responsible here but also the provinces and territories. It even goes down to the municipal and community level.

I would like to hear my colleague comment on what we heard.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is true that both municipalities and provincial governments do bear responsibility. Actually, part of the report's critical recommendations was to look at ways the federal government could look at provincial partners in particular, but there were some municipal examples, for big cities in particular. Members may recall that there was a national emergency facing us during the same time as we were hearing this. That was the dramatic infrastructure devastation we saw in British Columbia brought on by floods as a result of climate change.

Floods, of course, produce extreme changes, not only in the existing water table that is present in British Columbia but also in the output costs of very good products we make there, like wine products and other agricultural goods in British Columbia. That is an example in which we see a solution in asking for a framework to work with provinces so that at a time of an emergency like that, we open up corridors of transport. That is one of the recommendations I agree with, to ensure that we actually get goods from one province to the other.

If members can bear with me, I will add this. It is a true fact that at the time of the huge floods in British Columbia, which I know many families are still bearing grief for, it was actually companies that came forward to redirect the supply of goods from the northern corridor that supplied access to Alberta. My home province would have been cut off without such goodwill from CN and the people who allowed us to do that.

We need to go further than that. We cannot just wait and bet on the goodwill of our neighbours and those actors in our country. We need to be more proactive. The solution found in this report is to look at our framework, to recommend to the provinces and the federal government that we come together on such a strategy, because it is true: We do not bear all of the jurisdictional powers at the federal level that would make possible the emergency levers to relieve a situation like a supply chain crunch.

[Richard Lehoux, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to say that I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Lambton—Kent—Middlesex.

I am very honoured to rise today in the House to represent the people of my riding, Beauce, and also, more importantly, on the issue of Canada's food security and sovereignty.

After studying the 14th report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, all of my thoughts on the matter have unfortunately been confirmed.

I will take a brief moment to read the conclusion of the report:

...there was no national emergency preparedness and response plan for Canada's food system and food security, despite the government having identified food as a critical infrastructure sector long before the COVID-19 pandemic began. And although AAFC had two emergency plans in place, it acknowledged that they were insufficient to deal with a crisis of this magnitude.

When I read the recommendations in this report, I see that these are watered down recommendations to mask the current government's failures. In every recommendation, the Standing Committee on Public Accounts asks the departments concerned for status reports. However, in my opinion, it does not really go far enough.

As Conservatives, we have been defending farmers and families from the beginning. We understand that food security starts on the farm and that our government needs to be there to support those who put food on our tables.

Under this Liberal government, the price of food has skyrocketed because of the carbon tax. Farmers are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet. Canadians, too, are finding it harder and harder to put food on the table, as we have seen from the record use of food banks in our communities.

We have also seen a decline in our relationships with many countries, since the government has failed many times in the negotiation of trade agreements. Some countries do not even want to reopen negotiations with us because of the government's incompetence. That is why it is so important to have a national food system that works and that we can depend on today and in the future.

It is very simple. With grocery prices the highest they have ever been in our country, it is up to this government to find a way to reduce the cost of food. The easiest place to start is on the farm.

A great way to start would be to pass the original Bill C‑234 as soon as possible so as to exempt farmers from the carbon tax on propane and natural gas used to heat livestock buildings and dry grain.

I am appalled that the Prime Minister and his senators gutted this important bill in the Senate. The bill had the unanimous support of all parties in the House but one, the Liberal Party of Canada.

This legislation also had the backing of every ag sector stakeholder I talked to across the country. These farmers need relief from this crippling tax that is destroying their businesses and driving food prices sky-high. I talked to lots of farmers in my riding, and every one of them endorsed this bill. Winter is here, and they are very worried about how they are going to heat their henhouses and hog barns all winter long.

As the official opposition agriculture critic and as a member of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, I have personally attended every meeting since I was elected. We hear the same stories year after year.

Over the holidays, I volunteered at Moisson Beauce, a food bank in my riding. While preparing Christmas hampers for struggling families, about 2,500 in a single day, I learned that Moisson Beauce is now experiencing record usage and no longer receives enough donations to meet demand. That is not the Canada I remember. We are at a point where it is cheaper to import food than to produce it locally.

One comment I hear all too often from the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois is that the carbon tax does not apply in Quebec. That is absolutely false.

The carbon tax applies in Quebec directly and indirectly. I can show countless receipts from farmers for propane, for example, that include the federal price on pollution.

As I was saying, the carbon tax is also paid indirectly when we import goods from other provinces. Quebec is not self-sufficient; we import a lot of products from provinces that pay the entire carbon tax and that tax is passed on to us, the consumers, either through inflated prices or the cost of transportation.

Agriculture Carbon Alliance wrote to every federal member to express their full support for this bill. The alliance is 17 national agricultural groups representing more than 190,000 farms in Canada.

Canadian farmers are stewards of the land. They are very concerned about their animals and the environment. They work so hard to feed our families and support our economy. The lack of support from the Liberal government is incredible.

I must mention the rural members of the Liberal caucus. I cannot believe that only three Liberals voted in favour of this legislation. I suppose that only three of them want to keep their seat in the next election. The polls speak for themselves.

Who could forget what the Minister of Rural Economic Development said? She said that, if Canadians want relief, they should elect more Liberal members. If those rural Liberal members think they will ever get the farm vote back, they are sorely mistaken.

Another looming problem that will impact Canada's food security and food sovereignty is the Liberal plan to outlaw single-use plastics, a plan that the courts recently struck down but that the government plans to appeal at taxpayers' expense.

A study by the Canadian Produce Marketing Association makes it clear that if this ban goes through, fruit and vegetable prices will rise by up to 34%. The report also indicates that the availability of Canadian products could be reduced by half. We will also see a 50% increase in food waste.

Conservatives will always stand up for farmers and, most importantly, for common sense. Canadians are suffering. Many of them are on the verge of bankruptcy. How can the government turn its back on them when all they want is to feed their families affordably?

If the government does not take action, our farm families will keep disappearing, our country will become even more dependent on food imports, and our food system will be even more vulnerable. Right now, a vegetable grown in Mexico costs less at the grocery store than one grown locally. Does that make sense? It is contrary to their entire climate change ideology.

Canadians can count on the Conservatives to change that situation, which makes no sense. Canadians do not need departmental progress reports. They need real action to avert a disaster in our national food system.

With out-of-control inflation and interest rates that are still very high, Canadians will continue to experience financial difficulties. This report sheds light on the situation and shows that it is extremely important that we learn from the pandemic and take the appropriate action.

The Prime Minister has increased the size of the public service by 40% since he has been in office, so how is it that these departments cannot manage to do their work properly? That is incompetence.

At the end of her speech, my colleague from Lambton—Kent—Middlesex will move a motion to get our national food system back on track in order to guarantee our food security and food sovereignty in the future.

I sincerely hope that my colleagues will take this issue seriously and that we can come together to do the right thing for all Canadians by voting in favour of this motion.

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoy working with my colleague on the agriculture committee as Conservatives continue to stand up for our agriculture sector. My colleague is from Quebec, which is also another big area for growing produce. He talked in his speech about a plastics ban that the Liberal government has proposed. I am wondering whether my colleague could elaborate on how the single-use plastics ban would affect consumers at the grocery store if the ban were to go through on plastics for produce and meat in grocery stores.

[Richard Lehoux, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this new regulation on single-use plastics will indeed have a very significant and negative impact on Quebec consumers. We know that our produce growers need these products to preserve their produce, and God knows that our produce growers were very hard hit by flooding in the regions in 2023.

It is very important that we think about this issue, because right now, we do not have a solution to protect produce while still putting high-quality products on grocery shelves. We also owe that to consumers.

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk about the report from the public accounts committee entitled “Protecting Canada's Food System During the COVID-19 Pandemic”.

In this report, we learn that the NDP-Liberal government spent $515 million, more than half a billion dollars, in various funding envelopes “increased risk of food insecurity”. This is the key question: How much food security did Canadians get for more than half a billion dollars? Well, the short answer is that Canadians got less, not more, food security. They are getting less, thanks to policies of the NDP-Liberal government, which continue to increase food production costs, food transportation costs, food spoilage and food prices and reduce food supply, food variety, food freshness and food security.

First, I ask members to cast their mind back to the pandemic. During the NDP-Liberal COVID lockdowns, despite Conservatives sending a warning, along with Canadian producers, processors and suppliers, the NDP-Liberal government failed miserably to plan ahead. It had no plan for getting temporary foreign workers nor seasonal agriculture workers in and out of Canada when and where they were needed. There was no plan for bringing workers into Canada for greenhouse producers starting in January 2021 nor for field producers throughout their planting and harvesting seasons. At the end of the season, some farmers were even faced with the challenges of workers who were not able to return to their home country, for example, Trinidad and Tobago, and there was little or no diplomatic help available for those Canadian producers. That was an epic fail thanks to the NDP-Liberal governing party. Sadly, it does not end there.

For the past two years or more, food prices have increased by 8%, 9% or more year over year. Vegetables are seeing the biggest price increases. As a result, Canadian families are cutting back on purchases of vegetables and other healthy foods for their children, and about 20% of Canadians are reporting skipping a meal each day. Food banks across the country are seeing record numbers of visits by Canadians to the tune of over two million families. This is the very definition of food insecurity.

The costly coalition of NDP-Liberals has been sleeping at the wheel as Canadian families pay more and more for the necessities of life. With the carbon tax one and carbon tax two combined by April Fool's Day 2030, the Prime Minister and his NDP-Liberal government want to charge Canadian farmers and truckers 61¢ for every litre of fuel they put in their farm implements and trucks in carbon tax. It is not rocket science. It is basic math that the NDP-Liberals just do not seem to get. If it costs more to grow food and it costs more to ship food, it is going to cost Canadian families more to buy food.

The Governor of the Bank of Canada, Tiff Macklem, said that the carbon tax announcements that have it going up, that increases inflation each year. The lead author of Canada's Food Price Report 2023, Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, has pointed out that the carbon tax has made business expenses go up. Up and down the food chain, Dr. Charlebois points to a “compounding effect” as the supply chain is exposed to increased costs from the carbon tax. Again, if it costs the farmer more to grow food and truckers more to ship food, it is going to cost Canadians more to buy food.

How do we solve the problem of rising food prices and this Prime Minister's costly coalition? Well, first things first, we need to axe the carbon tax.

The leader of the opposition and those of us on this side of the House want to offer Canadian families relief from the carbon tax. We want to put an end to possibly the most out-of-touch-with-reality, regressive, punitive and unfair tax Canadians have been asked to pay.

However, there is more. The Minister of Environment and Climate Change has added plastic to the list of toxic substances. Yes, members heard that right. Plastic is a toxic substance according to the environment minister. Although the courts recently struck down the NDP-Liberal government's single-use plastics ban, the environment minister has another evil trick up his sleeve.

Last August 1, the environment minister issued a notice for his proposed ban on primary plastic packaging, meaning the packaging for produce and meats that we see in the grocery stores. At meetings of the agriculture committee on December 7 and 11, 2023, I asked the chief executive officers of Walmart Canada, Loblaw and Metro what the impact would be for them and their customers if this ban were to be implemented. The CEOs of both Loblaw and Metro said that, if the NDP-Liberal government proceeded with a ban on primary food packaging, it would increase food costs by approximately $6 billion a year, severely impair competition, threaten the availability of food and increase spoilage, meaning more food waste.

Primary plastic packaging serves as a hygienic barrier to contaminants; it delays spoilage, extends best before dates, reduces waste and optimizes perishables' nutritional value. Plastic packaging is lightweight, and it reduces the amount of fuel used in transport compared with other alternatives. What most consumers do not realize is that the job that plastic does for fresh fruit and vegetables is done long before it ever hits the grocery store shelves.

According to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, on average, Canadians spend about $1 billion per month on fruit and vegetables. Only about 12.5% of the fruits and vegetables Canadians consume are produced in Canada. Canadians consume seven times as much imported fruit and vegetables as domestically produced fruit and vegetables. I am sure part of that is because of our weather patterns here.

Imported produce can take weeks to reach us by ship. Plastic packaging plays a crucial role in keeping food from overripening and spoiling before it gets to Canada.

At this time, there is no cost-effective alternative solution to plastic packaging that is available on a global scale. If the NDP-Liberal government were really and truly concerned about food costs and food security, one might think that it would conduct a regulatory impact analysis. However, one would be wrong.

At the agriculture committee on November 30, 2023, I asked the deputy agriculture minister if a regulatory impact analysis on a primary plastic packaging ban for produce had been done. She testified that it had not. This is irresponsible.

The Canadian Produce Marketing Association, or CPMA, did a regulatory impact analysis of the proposed primary plastic packaging ban. It found that the NDP-Liberal environment minister's ban on primary plastic packaging could increase the cost of fresh produce by 34%. It could also reduce the availability of fresh produce for Canadians by more than 50%, including the near total elimination of all value-added products, reducing market value by approximately $5.6 billion.

The ban could increase fresh produce waste by more than 50%. Furthermore, it could increase the production and release of greenhouse gases from the produce supply chain by more than 50%. The environment minister should take note.

Another finding from the CPMA impact analysis suggests that increased fresh produce costs will lead to reduced availability and reduced consumption, therefore increasing health costs by over $1 billion each year. Furthermore, the ban will have a disproportionate impact on the cost and availability of fresh produce in rural and remote regions of Canada.

When presented with the consequences of the NDP-Liberal environment minister's ban, almost two-thirds of Canadian consumers expressed concern.

Finally, the Canadian Produce Marketing Association's regulatory impact analysis reported that the proposed regulations will lead to an increased risk of food safety incidents and food-borne illnesses.

In short, the NDP-Liberal environment minister is painting a target on the back of every single Canadian with the threat posed to their health and well-being by his ill-advised, non-evidence-based, irresponsible ban on primary plastic packaging.

As I conclude, I want to move:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following:

“the 14th report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, presented on Tuesday, May 17, 2022, be not now concurred in, but that it be recommitted to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts for further consideration, with a view to recommend that the agriculture sector be exempt from any federal carbon tax in order to maintain food-security and preparedness for future emergencies.”

It is always an honour to rise here on behalf of the people I represent in Lambton—Kent—Middlesex and the farmers and producers who produce the great-quality food that we feed Canadians. I want to thank them for what they do.