Debates of Jan. 31st, 2024

Fall Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2023

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

Madam Speaker, I want to reinforce that the Conservatives used to say “triple, triple, triple”, and now they have the “four priorities” they are trying to sell Canadians on. It is the government expenditure one that really worries me. That is the hidden agenda item. We know one of the hidden agenda items is—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I am going to stop the hon. member. There seem to be conversations going back and forth, and I actually heard somebody yelling as well. I ask members to please be respectful. If they want to have conversations, they should take them outside. If they want to make a comment, they should wait for questions and comments.

The hon. parliamentary secretary.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, one of the things we do know is that the Conservative Party is going to get rid of the Canada Infrastructure Bank. Imagine; that is $10 billion of government money, along with—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I am sorry; I just indicated that if individuals want to ask questions or make comments, they need to wait until the appropriate time. I am sure that if they were the ones who had the opportunity to ask a question right now, they would ask for that respect to be afforded to them.

The hon. parliamentary secretary.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, I am talking about the hidden Conservative agenda. One of the things that was leaked was to get rid of the Canada Infrastructure Bank. We are talking about billions of dollars across this country, and it would have a devastating impact in many communities. For example, in rural Manitoba, Internet hookup is actually being enhanced through the Canada Infrastructure Bank.

Could the member tell us why the Conservative Party is so determined to get rid of the Canada Infrastructure Bank?

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

Madam Speaker, I think Canadians were sold a bill of goods with the Canada Infrastructure Bank. I do not believe it is $10 billion; I believe it is much more than that, $35 billion in fact. If the member wants the answer, I can give him the answer. It is $35 billion, and I would question how many of those projects have actually been built and how much has gone towards executive bonuses.

It is no secret. The hon. parliamentary secretary makes it out to be some dark secret that we are going to cancel the Canada Infrastructure Bank. Maybe we will put in a better program, or, worse yet, maybe we will balance the budget, as the hon. Leader of the Opposition has said, with a dollar-for-dollar scenario. Every household does that. If I am going to spend a dollar here, I am going to find a dollar of savings there.

After all the consultants, all of the wasted spending and all of the corruption that has gone on with the government, I am sure we are going to be able to find many dollars to help fix the budget.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Madam Speaker, I respect my colleague who just made a speech, so I am going to appeal to his intelligence.

Quebec already has its cap and trade system, and it works. We know that, by 2015, Quebec had reduced its emissions by 8.8% over 1990 levels. That means it is working.

If my colleague believes, first, that climate change exists—which is not a given in his party—second, that climate change must be fought, and third, that there are economic tools that work to lower carbon emissions, as demonstrated in Quebec, then why is he so opposed to economic tools that we know work?

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

Madam Speaker, we are going to strongly disagree on this issue. There is no question that there will be strong disagreement between the way the Bloc feels and the ideology of the government. We happen to believe that clean Canadian energy and clean Canadian technology are the answer to reducing climate change, not just here at home but also around the world.

I happened to meet with a European Union representative whose primary focus is to source clean sources of energy. What they said to me was that Canada has become an unreliable partner in that because of ideology. We have the best environmental standards, the best human rights standards, the best labour standards and the best technology in the world to supply the world with clean Canadian energy. If we are not doing that, ideological attacks on our energy sector aside, if we are not supplying the world with clean energy, then who is supplying it? Russia, Iran, Venezuela and others are.

We are going to disagree on this. It may be an ideological thing, but the fact is that we have clean Canadian energy that could help reduce emissions not just here at home but also around the world.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Madam Speaker, one thing I never hear from the Conservatives is the importance of ensuring that the rich and CEOs are paying their fair share of taxes. This is something my NDP colleagues and I have been—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

There seems to be some microphone feedback. We will try that again.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am wondering whether the member could clarify why we are not hearing from the Conservatives on the subject of CEOs and the rich paying their fair share. Ultimately, I am not hearing a strong plan from the Conservatives. Specifically, I am wondering with the—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

There is some feedback again, with an echo. Let us try that again.

I will allow the hon. member to restart, and then I will allow the hon. member for Barrie—Innisfil to answer.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Madam Speaker, what are the Conservatives going to cut if they go forward with their proposed plan? What services, at a time when people are struggling, are they going to be cutting? Why are they not getting rich CEOs to pay their fair share?

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

Madam Speaker, I think I made it very clear in a previous answer, and Conservatives have made it clear, that we are going to do what every household does: If it looks to spend a dollar, it is going to find a dollar of savings. Think about single moms and families. What about those moms who are going to bed worried every night about keeping a roof over their head? What do people think they are doing? There is no reason the government should not be living in the same manner.

The Leader of the Opposition has made it very clear what our plan is. We know there is wastage. We are seeing it with the $54-million arrive scam app. We are seeing it with billions of dollars being spent on consultants. Our focus is going to be on ensuring that working families have hope and opportunity for the future, not just for the next generation but also for generations to come. That is our focus. As I said earlier, we are determined and we are extremely focused on that task.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-59, the fall economic statement implementation act, 2023.

This legislation, which would deliver on key measures from our fall economic statement, would advance our plan to make life more affordable, build more homes faster and develop a cleaner economy that works for everyone.

This is the next step in our economic plan that, since 2015, has supported people in Halifax West and across the country through the Canada child benefit, enhanced benefits and pensions for seniors, stronger public health care and a Canada-wide system of affordable early learning and child care. These investments have helped bring us to today, when we have seen a strong recovery with a million more jobs in Canada than before the pandemic, a record number of working-age women in our labour force and, just last month, wages growing at the fastest pace in three years. In fact, wage growth has outpaced inflation for 11 consecutive months now, but we are not out of the economic woods yet.

Inflation is still high, higher than where we would like it to be. Elevated prices continue to put pressure on Canadian families. I hear about that every day from my constituents.

Over the past year, the federal government has taken more steps to make life more affordable for people in this country who need it.

It is no secret that we need to do much more.

This bill is part of that work.

There are a number of things I can talk about that Bill C-59 would do for Canadians. It would remove the GST and HST on counselling and psychotherapy services to make mental health care more affordable. It would extend employment insurance benefits to parents who adopt, better supporting those families.

Right now, adoptive parents are entitled to EI parental benefits, but not to the 15 weeks of maternity benefits.

It would create new, paid leave for federally regulated workers to support families who experience pregnancy loss.

A truly strong economy and labour force are built upon compassion and an understanding of the difficult situations some families encounter.

Bill C-59 would also introduce new measures to further our economic plan and continue supporting a strong middle class. It would achieve that by enshrining our suite of clean investment tax credits in law, all while providing businesses with an incentive to pay a prevailing union wage. That is huge.

This is the first time in Canada's history that investment tax credits are contingent upon such labour requirements.

Let us bring this back to my own community in Halifax West. The two things I hear about most these days, especially since we signed our transformative health care deal with Nova Scotia, are affordability at the grocery store and the need for more housing. This bill would introduce both.

On housing, Bill C-59 would remove the GST on new rental home construction for co-op housing, complementing the action we took in the fall and spurring new construction. Let us recall just how much we have done to increase housing supply over the last several months, because it is major. We are investing $1 billion more in affordable units like non-profit, co-op and public housing. We are helping build 30,000 more rental units by extending $15 billion in additional low-cost financing to builders. We are reforming the apartment construction loan program to offer low-cost loans to build more student housing on and off campus, a move that I know Dalhousie, Mount Saint Vincent and St. Mary's universities are all looking at closely.

We are launching a home design catalogue so pre-approved designs, including modulars, that can benefit Atlantic Canada specifically can be used to build more homes faster. We are funding 222 new units of public housing in Nova Scotia, the first expansion to our public housing stock in decades. We are unlocking 9,000 more units in HRM over the next decade by funding Halifax's housing action plan through our housing accelerator.

While Conservatives pick fights with elected mayors and councils, we work with them, providing the right incentives and getting major changes made so we can build homes faster in Canada. That is the way forward: collaboration.

We are going to get more homes built for Canadians, and we are also tackling the problem of high grocery prices head-on through a generational change to competition law in Canada. Bill C-59 is part of that. How is it? By amending the Competition Act and the Competition Tribunal Act, building on changes we have proposed in Bill C-56, we would help stabilize prices and improve consumer choice. This includes supporting Canadians' right to repair; further modernizing merger reviews; enhancing protections for consumers, workers and the environment, including improving the focus on worker impacts and competition analysis; empowering the commissioner of competition to review and crack down on a wide selection of anti-competitive collaborations; and broadening the reach of the law by enabling more private parties to bring cases before the Competition Tribunal and receive payment if they are successful.

I know I welcomed this week's news that the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry is calling on the Competition Bureau to use its new powers to take another look at the cost of groceries in Canada. This is how we crack down on tactics that big corporations use to raise costs for Canadians.

Is there more we need to do to act on these two top voter priorities? The answer is yes, absolutely.

On this side of the aisle, we are going to stay focused on them both, fully in solution mode.

All members will have the opportunity to take part in this work, and that starts by supporting Bill C‑59.

Let us support the swift passage of Bill C-59, and let us keep working together on solutions to the challenges Canadians are facing at this time.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

Madam Speaker, the member across talked about the government's investments in housing, and I am proud of the NDP's work to fight for significant investments in housing and, in particular, a focus on urban and northern housing for indigenous peoples. However, we know that the current Liberal government is failing first nations when it comes to housing, and I am talking about on-reserve housing. Some of the most acute housing crises in our country are on first nations with what many in the communities I represent refer to as third world living conditions.

If we go beyond housing, we know there is an estimated$350-billion infrastructure gap in first nations, including the needs first nations have because of the disproportionate impacts they are facing with respect to climate change. Unfortunately, yet again, this fall economic statement is a missed opportunity for the Liberals to act on the priorities and the desperate needs of first nations on housing, on infrastructure and on climate change mitigation. I am wondering when the Liberals will finally act to make the investments on first nations that are desperately needed.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Madam Speaker, that is an important question. The cost of housing is top of mind for the residents in Halifax West, for renters, mortgage holders, prospective first-time buyers and of course the first nations community. In fact, I was proud to be part of an announcement in Hammonds Plains to announce the building of the Acadia First Nation indigenous shelter for women, specifically in the Hammonds Plains area. That is something this government has brought about, and that is in construction mode right now. It is something we are focused on, and we are very much engaged in that.

Again, there are many solutions we need to work on. This is not a one-solution-fits-all, and it is not one solution that is only for government. It is for all parliamentarians from all political parties. It is for different levels of provincial, municipal and federal governments and also for other stakeholders.

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

Madam Speaker, the Liberals like to blow the horn about their announcements regarding housing. However, the fact is that we have the lowest number of housing starts since the 1970s. People are struggling. I live in the Vancouver area, and inaffordability is just skyrocketing with respect to being able to get a home or rent a place. I wonder if the member would just agree with Conservatives that the Liberals' policy and what they are accomplishing is an unmitigated disaster.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak again on housing.

Listen, since I have become a member of Parliament, not even two and a half years ago in September 2021, I can say that the work I have seen that this government has done on the ground in Halifax West and in the Halifax Regional Municipality has been unprecedented. People need to go to that area and see all the cranes, all the good construction and the work going on. A number of people have come to me in the last number of months since we introduced a number of changes with the accelerator fund. What we have done with the municipality and with the removal of the HST on new housing stock that is going to be built will be a game changer, I would say, across the country. It certainly is in my region and in my part of the country. I very much look forward to what the next year or year and a half will look like. I see a lot of positivism and a lot of good things coming.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Madam Speaker, I listened to my colleague carefully, and I commend her for her work.

There is something that she did not mention. We are going through one of the worst housing crises in 35 years. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, CMHC, told us today that Canada's vacancy rate is 1.5%. The rate has not been that low since 1988.

The budget mentions housing, but not homelessness. I would like to draw my colleague's attention to the fact that homelessness has increased in Quebec by 44% in the past five years. The housing crisis is wreaking havoc everywhere.

The Liberals' national housing strategy is not working. Today, CMHC gave us more proof of that.

I would like my colleague to tell us what her government is going to do in the next budget. Despite what we had hoped, the last economic update did not say that any funds were set aside for housing.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague with whom I serve on the Standing Committee on Science and Research. We work together in a very collegial way.

I agree that Canada needs more housing. That is the truth. In that regard, the government is doing excellent work across the country to build more housing more quickly. I am seeing that every day where I live these days.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Madam Speaker, once again, I am rising in the House not only on behalf of the residents of Calgary Centre but also on behalf of Canada's finance industry and others who are lamenting the disastrous course our country is on as we dither away our national advantages.

Finding better economic solutions for Canadians is what I seek to do as a representative in the House. It is a focus. It builds on career expertise. It is part of my party's fundamental path forward to fix these budgets. However, in order to fix the budgets, the budgets have to want to be fixed, to put it lightly. Here I am again looking at a brick of legislative changes, along with a self-congratulating narrative about all the great outcomes Canada is experiencing, but not so much.

The bromides that came with the minister's speech on this latest tumble into economic irrelevance might play well for ostriches, but for anyone paying attention, there is actually very bad economic news. I do not want to spend a whole speech on the nonsense pats on the back the Minister of Finance delivers in her own performance review, but I would be remiss in not publicly rebuking at least some of the financial fiction that she uses to build a case that Canada is somehow doing well economically, all while real GDP is down and GDP per capita is down.

The minister seems to like the debt-to-GDP measure, and her target not to be exceeded over two years ago now was 40%. Although this number alone was much higher than it has been in years, that number becomes less relevant with each budget cycle that runs that ratio higher. Again in this fall economic statement, it will be up to 42.7% in the near future. That ratio, by the way, is irrelevant for anything but comparison purposes with other countries that are going broke.

The minister and her government colleagues seem to like to even change that metric so that it suits their ends and looks good comparatively. How do they do this? I am sure with ample support from a litany of bureaucrats, they add back the holdings in Canada's pension plans to their net debt numbers: the CPP, the Canada pension plan; and the QPP, the Québec pension plan. That is a total of about $700 billion. None of that belongs to the government. It is managed at arm's length for the benefit of Canadians.

Taking a $1.3-trillion debt, federal only, and taking away more than half that debt from the pockets of Canadian retirees is a nice trick calculation. There is always an offsetting rule in finance. If the government uses Canadians' retirement savings to offset its own debt, that leaves a liability owed to Canadians that would be unfulfilled. That $700 billion is not a free pool of funds to address growing government debt. It belongs to Canadians who have contributed and who are counting on those funds for their retirement.

What we find out from Canadians very quickly is that, if they find out their governments are trying to mess with their retirement savings, they are offside. This year, the government is again increasing the amount that Canadians need to give from their paycheques to the CPP, an effective increase in a payroll tax.

This is not the only way the government is changing the availability of pensions. In this fall economic statement, the government is changing the way pensions are allowed to operate. There are a couple of very important changes to pension oversight. Pensions will now be overseen by the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, or OSFI, as we call it. That is a federal regulatory body designed to ensure that Canada's banks are operating with the interests of the Canadian financial system and financial consumers in mind. Why? OSFI is overseeing a move to be the government's agency in charge of moving our country's financial system to a new norm of green finance, otherwise known as “sustainable finance”.

I have seen a lot of finance in my career on both sides of transactions, investor and agent. All of these moves toward green finance and sustainable finance are just ways of altering who gets paid from whom, as in who the taxpayer is subsidizing to make money. The Minister of Finance openly states in this fall economic statement that Canada is a leader in green finance, a leader in subverting financial math, like the outcome changes if the math is just tweaked a bit.

There is no secret math that makes this work. There are only payers and payees; those who get the funds and those who give the funds. The government has been relentless in doling out funds for industrial strategy, but the equation does not change, and the irreversible law in finance is always “follow the money”. The money flows right into the pockets of the government's friends. This needs to end. We need to fix these budgets. Our job here is to fix these budgets.

Let me give an example, because my colleagues across the way will want it, of what actual sustainable finance is. I will refer to a company in Calgary called Enbridge. It is a very good company on sustainable finance. It sets metrics for how it is actually going to perform for its investors' aims, and that allowed it to reduce its cost of capital by about 25 basis points. That means if it hit a number of metrics along the way, including DEI, which is diversity, equity and inclusion, in its board, in its makeup and in everything else the investors are looking for, the investors in that bond were willing to accept 25 basis points less than the market rate in order to be there. That is what we call sustainable finance.

Enbridge is a Canadian leader in that sustainable finance mechanism. It has nothing to do with equity. It has to do with market debt and getting a bit of a premium there, a bit of a discount to the investors, about how they can actually participate and move the needle, but those funds are few and far between. Enbridge has been very good at making sure it meets those requirements and serves that market well.

I want to talk about in this budget, as opposed to just criticisms, the Canada growth fund. It is an element, as we know, in the fall economic statement: $15 billion new dollars. There is no organization, no way of actually saying what its mandate is, and nothing that compels it to do anything outside of pooling $15 billion of funds and spending it on behalf of the government.

What will it do exactly? It will not do what the Canada Infrastructure Bank does. I heard my colleague across the way complaining about our position, that we are going to do away with the Canada Infrastructure Bank. It is not a secret; he called it a secret agenda.

It will not do what the strategic investment fund does, with billions of dollars going out to chosen industrial strategies that are accomplishing who knows what in the long run.

It will not do what the layers and layers of government support to fudge economic numbers do to push into new economic opportunities in which we have, as Canadians, no economic advantage and are following other countries that have much more expertise in this sector. Let us pretend Canada's economic advantage currently is not real and move to a fiction that we have a different economic advantage. Let us spend, so far, $135 billion in the effort.

Let us go back to the Canada growth fund; $7 billion of that $15 billion is being allocated toward carbon contracts for difference, the new subsidy du jour. I do not know if any of the bodies on that side of the House even understand how that works, but let me try and explain.

Contracts for difference hail from the financial world. They help to hedge against volatile prices, e.g. for shares or commodities. The seller and the buyer agree on a strike price for a certain product at a certain time. If the agreed price is below the market price at that time, the buyer has to pay the seller the difference between the agreed price and the market price. If the market price is higher than the strike price, the opposite happens: the seller has to pay the difference to the buyer. So this instrument is a good way of alleviating [some of] the risks of investing.

Unfortunately, it has many risks associated with it as well, and those risks have been detailed in many jurisdictions. Such socialized subsidies could lead to short- and long-term distortions, reducing the effectiveness of the price signal as an operational and investment decision driver. In energy and emissions markets, market participants can already use the available short- and long-term trading patterns, but additional support for low-carbon technologies is already granted through several instruments aiming to mobilize funding.

I will reiterate that the government has numerous instruments along the way, all of which are failing Canadians and making it much more expensive to do things in Canada. What is the accomplishment? The accomplishment is moving our industries offshore and making Canada less competitive on the world stage.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Madam Speaker, I listened attentively to the hon. member's speech and to his background in the financial sector.

On inflation and interest rates, many people in Canada seem to think they are the responsibility or shortcomings of the federal government. Does he not appreciate that the inflation rate is a global inflation rate? All the G7 countries are experiencing that. Interest rates are high in every single G7 country. Compared to many other G7 countries, our economic growth, including the latest numbers that came out yesterday or today, in the GDP growth rate shows that we will not go into a recession but are going to manage a soft landing.

Does he not agree that Canada is doing pretty well compared to our G7 partners in all metrics of the inflation rate, the interest rates and the economic growth that we are witnessing?

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Madam Speaker, I do not know what economic data he is looking at. When I look at shrinking GDP in Canada, shrinking GDP per capita, shrinking GDP across the board, real GDP, I am saying that it is the worst in the world. It is the worst among our competitor countries. We actually are doing worse economically. We are trying to cover that up by bringing more people into Canada, which of course will increase our GDP, but our GDP per capita is sinking like a rock as a result.

We are not doing well economically, and it is part of the financial fiction the government keeps putting forward. It is not working well. Interest rates are high in Canada. Interest rates are high in many places. This is partly because of financially failed experiments the government continues to push toward. If it does not think the carbon tax, the carbon contracts for difference, and everything else it is throwing at the wall in order to make everything more expensive in Canada are not having their own unique effect on inflation, then it is not watching the ball. It needs to do away with all this excess tax it is putting on the backs of Canadians.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Madam Speaker, I really appreciate my colleague. I was listening to his speech and, by way of introduction, he told us how good the Conservatives are at fixing and balancing the budget. He also spoke at length about the carbon tax.

I see a real carbon tax. It is the one that all Canadians are paying to the oil industry: $30 billion for a pipeline and $12.5 billion to the oil industry for carbon capture and storage.

My colleague's leader often says that we have to find a dollar's worth of savings for every dollar spent. I am wondering how they will balance the budget by being so lenient with big oil.

Can my colleague enlighten us on that?