Debates of March 24th, 2026

Respecting Families of Murdered and Brutalized Persons Act

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, John Nater]

The question is on the motion.

If a member participating in person wishes that the motion be carried or carried on division, or if a member of a recognized party participating in person wishes to request a recorded division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.

[Jeff Kibble, Conservative, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I request that we pass this bill on division.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, John Nater]

Is it agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, John Nater]

I therefore declare the motion carried on division. Accordingly, the bill stands referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.

(Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and referred to a committee)

A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.

Employment

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the latest job numbers show that jobs are, figuratively, falling off a cliff, with 108,000 full-time jobs lost in one month and 47,000, almost 50,000, youth jobs lost in the same period. Under this Prime Minister, we are losing jobs at speeds not seen in a generation, and that is quite literally true. Outside of the COVID period, the last time we had a single drop in jobs in one month comparable to this was way back during the great recession. We are now a year into this Prime Minister's tenure in office and have had well over 10 years of Liberal government. We continually hear these promises about how good things are about to get, yet job numbers are falling off a cliff.

Some of the news coverage of these terrible job numbers was to say what a surprise it was, apparently, that we lost over 100,000 full-time jobs in a month. I can tell members that I was not surprised, because in the year I have been in this role as the shadow minister for employment for our caucus, I have been speaking with young people, employers, training institutions and other organizations. I can say that there is deep, abiding concern about the employment situation and about the policies of government that relate to it. There may have been surprise in some quarters about the fact that we lost over 100,000 full-time jobs last month, but this was not a surprise to me or, I think, to many people who have been talking to Canadians and hearing about these issues closely.

We heard a myriad of excuses from across the way for these terrible job numbers. We heard the minister for AI say that it was because of the war in Iran. Maybe he got that answer from AI, but the fact of the matter is that these job numbers come from a period that was before the war in Iran even started. Putting aside the absurdity of that speculation, it is chronologically impossible. We had another minister say that this is all because of the trade war, yet we have the second-highest unemployment in the G7. The Prime Minister promised a deal by last summer. He has not delivered on that. Moreover, Canada has a more acute unemployment crisis than many other countries, and it is particularly acute for young people.

We had different excuses from different ministers. The Prime Minister actually said that these numbers were not so bad. He said to compare our performance to that of the U.S. Well, okay, their unemployment rate is 4.4%, and our unemployment rate is more than two full percentage points higher, so we have substantially higher unemployment in Canada.

The critical point to make about our engagement on this issue of jobs is that last fall, Conservatives put forward our Conservative youth jobs plan, with specific policies to unleash our economy, to fix immigration, to fix training and to build homes where the jobs are. It emphasized the need for a stronger economy, how failures of immigration have exacerbated competition for entry-level jobs, how there are mismatches in our training system that need to be remedied, and how we need to support labour mobility to help people take opportunities in areas of lower unemployment. We proposed these constructive solutions, and the Liberals have failed to adopt them. In fact, in many ways, they are moving in the opposite direction.

Given the Liberals' catastrophic failures on this file, why will they not adopt the constructive ideas we have put forward?

[Leslie Church, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Secretaries of State for Labour]

Mr. Speaker, I would note that in the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan's nearly four-minute opener, we barely heard about the impact of the trade war on Canada's economic situation. In fact, what we heard was a fair amount of heavy sarcasm about the state of challenge that has been placed on Canada and on Canadians in the past 14 months as a result of a very serious trade war that continues to change and shift our industries and our workforces in ways that I think no one would have predicted a year or a year and a half ago.

I want to assure him of some of the things that I think we should be thinking about in terms of where we sit in our Canadian economy right now. Canada is poised to have the second-fastest growth in the G7. We have been rated as number two in the world for confidence in foreign direct investment. In fact, FDI in Canada has been at its highest level in 18 years. The Economist ranked Canada number two in the G20 for doing business over the next five years.

I point these out because they are evidence of a serious plan, a tough plan, a plan that is making serious changes and bringing the Canadian economy and our workforce through a period of great transition that we did not ask for, but we are going to win.

I want to assure my colleague across the way that the plan we put forward in budget 2025, which is effectively our economic and jobs plan as a government, is heavily invested in providing employment support, skills training and federal, provincial and territorial partnerships that are going to help create jobs and prosperity across Canada. These are measures that will not only help workers and their families thrive, but help Canada build the strongest economy in the G7.

It is no secret that these tariffs have hit our economy hard, and we know that some regions and sectors are facing significant labour market pressures. Steel and softwood lumber are two of the hardest-hit, so we need to work together as a country to meet many of these pressures head-on.

Labour market agreements are, quite simply, the most responsive tools we have to help workers move into new jobs and seize new opportunities. Through these agreements, provinces and territories deliver flexible, locally tailored training and employment supports, ensuring that services meet the unique needs of the labour markets. Each year, these agreements reach around 800,000 Canadians, providing employment services, skills development and training. All of this is supported by a $2.9-billion federal investment annually, demonstrating the scale and importance of this work to Canada's labour market.

However, more is needed to help Canadian workers who are affected by U.S. tariffs and global market shifts. As we laid out in our budget, our government is increasing its investments in Canadian workers with an additional $570 million over three years in targeted funding through these LMAs to support workers affected by these serious trade disruptions, including $70 million to support up to 10,000 workers in the steel industry with training and employment supports; $50 million for upskilling, re-skilling and employment supports for over 6,000 workers in the softwood lumber industry; and $450 million for a re-skilling package to retrain up to 50,000 workers affected by tariffs and global market shifts.

Through these investments, affected Canadian workers will gain the necessary skills to find new jobs and be more productive in existing jobs. At the same time, we are going to continue with investments into our sectoral workforce innovation fund, into apprenticeships, into trades and into improving education across the country with other investments that we have made to support student financial aid. This is part of our economic plan for jobs—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, John Nater]

The hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, as a response to the question that was asked, that was breathtakingly absurd. Is the government not aware of the job numbers? We had a four-minute response that pretends to ignore the existence of the massive drop in full-time employment. Over 100,000 full-time jobs were lost in the last month alone, yet the parliamentary secretary wants us to believe that we are about to have never had it so good and that we are poised to do all these things, which I would very much like to see happen, but the government has not approved a single major project. It continues to support job-killing measures across the board. There are some things we cannot control, but there are some things that we can. Blaming a war in the Middle East that started after these job numbers were recorded is clearly absurd.

When it comes to the budget, the Liberals' budget cut off vocational colleges from student grants completely. Why in the world are they continuing to attack training and undermine job growth in this country?

[Leslie Church, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to correct my colleague across the way. I said no such thing. I take these concerns very seriously, as does our government: investing in jobs and investing in the growth that is going to propel new jobs in this country in the years to come, to bring in foreign direct investment, to diversify our trade, to build major projects, to invest in housing and to make life more affordable. These are all ingredients in a serious economic plan working for the people of Canada.

I also want to tackle what my colleague has raised about youth. I want to share the example of the Canada summer jobs program. Budget 2025 committed nearly $600 million over two years to support job opportunities for youth, including 100,000 jobs this upcoming summer for Canadian youth. We have also earmarked more than $300 million for our youth employment and skills strategy program. These are programs that work. They give youth that first foot on the ladder into the workforce. They are important to continue and important to grow, and that is exactly what we are doing.

The Economy

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon South, SK]

Mr. Speaker, after one year with the Prime Minister, things have only gotten worse for Canadians.

Canada is now the food inflation capital of the G7, with food prices skyrocketing 7.3% and food bank lineups of 2 million visitors per month. At the Saskatoon Food Bank & Learning Centre, we serve 23,000 to 24,000 people a month. That is up 6,000 to 7,000 per month since 2019.

Unemployment in this country has now hit 6.7%, with 84,000 more Canadians losing their full-time job last month. Youth unemployment is big now, skyrocketing to 14%, the worst level since the great recession. Canadians are increasingly reliant on part-time work to afford their basic necessities day to day. The federal deficit has doubled. Debt-to-GDP is now rising again. Families have to pay $3,300 a year of the interest just to service the national debt.

The dream of home ownership has never been more out of reach in this country. CMHC is predicting housing construction to decline 18.1%, well below the 10-year average. The government's own housing agency has said it will add only 5,200 homes this year. It promised 500,000 new homes every year. At the same time, Canadians are carrying record household debt, $2.6 trillion, mostly from mortgages just to keep a roof over their head. The Prime Minister promised to build at a scale we had not seen in generations. He promised this less than a year ago, yet one year later, Canadians are now finding it even harder to make ends meet.

Food inflation is now rising twice as fast as it was before the Prime Minister took office a year ago. Food prices, as I mentioned, have skyrocketed 7.3% year over year, leading to Canada having the worst food price increases in the G7. Canadian families are projected to pay nearly $1,000 more in food costs alone this year.

Meanwhile, the cost of food purchase for restaurants alone was up 12.3% in the same period, and for takeout and fast food it was up 14%. That means it is no surprise that nearly half the restaurants are operating at a loss or are barely breaking even. With 7,000 closing last year, about 4,000 are projected to close this year.

Canada, by the way, is the only country in the G7 with a shrinking economy, contracting 0.2% in the last quarter alone of 2025. That has a real impact on jobs, with over 100,000 full-time jobs lost in February alone, the largest single-month decline since the great recession, outside the pandemic.

Canadians are really struggling, and all we hear from the government is how great we have it. It will be interesting to hear the response of the government with these dismal numbers we have received in the last 12 months.

[Leslie Church, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Secretaries of State for Labour]

Mr. Speaker, the government's priority is reducing pressures on costs and creating new opportunities for Canadians. I would note to my colleague that, as mentioned in the previous response, Canada right now is set to have the second-fastest growth in the G7. Foreign direct investment into the Canadian economy is at an 18-year high. These are proof points that the serious economic plan that we have put forward for Canadians is working. It is under way, and it is taking effect. This includes supporting Canadians with the cost of groceries and everyday essentials, which have stretched many Canadians' wallets.

This past January, the Prime Minister announced the new Canada groceries and essentials benefit, which will become available this spring. This benefit will help more than 12 million low- and modest-income Canadians to afford day-to-day essentials. It builds on the existing GST credit but will be more generous.

First, we will be providing a one-time payment equivalent to a 50% increase in the value of the GST credit this spring, and then we will increase the benefit by 25% for five years, starting this July. The difference will be considerable for Canadians struggling with putting food on the table. Before this new benefit, a person living alone who is eligible for the GST credit would have received a maximum of $543. That same person now will get approximately $950 in total this year from the 50% one-time payment and the 25% increase thereafter, thanks to the changes that we have announced. For a couple with two children, the amount will increase from approximately $1,086 annually to $1,890. These amounts will increase each year in line with the rising cost of living.

We are not stopping there. Last September, we launched a new strategic response fund to help sectors impacted by tariffs. We are committing up to $500 million from this fund to help businesses address the costs of supply chain disruptions without passing those costs on to Canadians at the checkout line. We will provide another $150 million under the regional tariff response initiative, specifically to help the small and medium-sized businesses that my colleague opposite was speaking about in the food sector, and we will allow growers to fully write off the cost of new greenhouses immediately to free up the capital they need to expand production. This will ultimately help lower food prices for Canadians.

At a time when global supply chain disruptions are driving up prices, the government is lending Canadians a hand. I appreciate many of my colleague's examples, but I would also point him to the fact that in his home province of Saskatchewan, parents are now paying $10-a-day child care, saving close to $7,000 per child per year through early learning and child care. Saskatchewan has received close to $60 million in federal funding to expand access to school food programs, helping more kids in more schools access nutritious meals, saving families up to $800 a year. In 2025, we have committed close to $20 million through the national housing strategy to support housing initiatives in Saskatchewan. These are measures that go hand in hand with making life more affordable for Canadians right across the country and with growing our economy.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon South, SK]

Mr. Speaker, when Canadians thrive, they do not need to rely on government handouts. Our province is like that. It does not enjoy the fact that the government is handing out billions of dollars throughout the country just to help Canadians. I know what people in my province want. They want jobs, and unfortunately, this country lost 100,000 jobs in the first two months of 2026. Let us think about the 100,000 jobs that have been lost in the last 60 days.

Canada has the only shrinking economy, the second-highest unemployment, the highest household debt and the highest food inflation in the entire G7. Let those numbers sink in. The Liberal Prime Minister cannot just blame global factors when the other members of the G7 are in fact dealing with the same issues.

Canadians cannot afford this failure any longer.

[Leslie Church, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have to say that I am a bit confounded by this particular line of argument from both of the members opposite this evening, somehow comparing Canada to European countries in particular, and to Japan, in terms of just comparing the level of integration that we have as a Canadian economy with the United States and calling it comparable to that of European members of the G7.

I think the members opposite should stand up and face facts and talk about the trade war that we have been in for the past year with a little more precision and clarity about the impact that has had on our economy. It is the reason Canadians have given the mandate they have given to the Prime Minister to transform the Canadian economy, to diversify our trade, to build major projects and to grow our economy and our industries, so that we are as strong, resilient and sovereign at home as we can be.

Pensions

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is important for me to rise in the House and speak about the Cúram software because there have been outrageous cost overruns.

I will remind members of the facts. In the beginning, the project was expected to cost $1.75 billion, but it is now costing $6.6 billion. That is a cost overrun of more than $5 billion, which is almost ten times the cost of SAAQclic. In that case, Quebec took its responsibility seriously and had a judge conduct an independent inquiry. Recommendations were made to ensure that these sorts of IT errors would not happen again.

Ottawa seems to be ignoring this reality. We asked questions in the House and we were told by ministers that we should be happy about Cúram and that the Bloc Québécois was just fearmongering. However, obviously, the money being wasted in this financial scandal belongs to Quebeckers and Canadians.

Two weeks ago, we were given a technical briefing. It seemed as though the Liberals no longer had any good answers to give the House. The government decided to provide a technical briefing to try to manage the crisis. The technical briefing told us little that we did not already know. That is one of the problems.

They did the same thing with journalists. The journalists reported—so this is public—that Ottawa knew the first estimate was not reliable and costs were going to explode. Is that responsible management? Absolutely not. Government officials said that IT projects always involve cost overruns. Why is that? If we all managed our own finances that way, it would be catastrophic.

Government officials cannot even identify the new functionalities or the short-term program operating costs. Apparently, the post-2031 operating costs have not even been evaluated. That is an additional $660 million per year. That is an annual cost overrun equivalent to a whole SAAQclic, and it was not planned for.

The federal government needs to do the responsible thing and give us the real numbers. The initial estimate, $1.75 billion, was only for the tranche 1 costs. The government says there is no problem and it really did not have that information. According to a 2023 briefing note to the Minister of Citizens' Services at the time, the December 2020 cost estimate was $2.2 billion for the benefits delivery modernization program, which included old age security, employment insurance and the Canada pension plan.

This contradicts the idea that the government did not know the figures, but an assessment was conducted. The Auditor General's report later on yielded new figures in 2022. At that point, the estimate was more in the range of $3 billion to $4 billion. The Auditor General's report was particularly noteworthy because it also indicated that the government knew the Cúram program was problematic, given that there were precedents, notably in Ontario. The Ontario government had used this platform for its Social Assistance Management System software in 2009.

This project was the subject of an audit carried out by the Auditor General of Ontario in 2015. Her report stated that IBM had missed deadlines for converting the data while also introducing errors and that IBM had not provided adequate expertise. It stated that the ministry said it had relied on the IBM project manager to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of Cúram consultants' work, that the consultants were overseen by an IBM consultant, and that Cúram consultants worked inefficiently before the launch.

The same mistakes are being repeated. My question is: When will there be an independent public inquiry? We are looking at a figure of $6.6 billion, and we know it is going to keep going up.

[Leslie Church, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Secretaries of State for Labour]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue for his question. I also want to thank him for attending the technical briefing recently held for members of Parliament.

This debate gives us yet another opportunity to share with Canadians our commitment to ensuring that they may continue to receive the critical federal benefits to which they are entitled. We have been investing in benefits delivery modernization because Canadians deserve functional and responsive services that are dependable and modern. Any interruption to old age security, employment insurance or the Canada pension plan could significantly affect recipients' abilities to meet their daily needs, such as buying food, paying rent and just getting by. To guard against this problem, ESDC has spent more than $1 billion in maintenance over the last 10 years. The older and more obsolete these systems get, the more costly it becomes to run them and the more fragile they become. It is simply not sustainable.

This undertaking currently is massive and requires significant investments. Between 2017 and 2025, the BDM project has cost $1.8 billion. The program will bring together old age security, employment insurance and Canada pension plan payments onto the BDM platform, in a phased and prudent manner, by 2030. It will also bolster cybersecurity and bring together a number of call centres onto a single, modernized, accessible platform by October 2027.

As with any technology project of this scale, many of the costs that needed to be considered could not be fully known at the start. Over time, the estimates have become more refined as we better understood the complexity of unravelling decades-old systems, the challenge of protecting against modern security threats and the impact of unanticipated global inflation across markets and supply chains. Despite this, over the life of the program, total benefits to Canadians will amount to more than $1.6 trillion, while funding expended on the BDM platform is less than 1% of the total payout of these programs.

To operate the core technology, ESDC selected the Cúram social program management platform. Cúram has been chosen because it is a platform designed specifically for managing large and complex social programs. It is a proven product that comes equipped with built-in functions that other generic platforms would have to custom build and test, which would have increased the time, cost and risk to deliver. As of 2023, Cúram has been successfully implemented by 970 government social programs across 12 countries, serving 187 million clients worldwide. Before choosing Cúram, the BDM program studied its deployments in other jurisdictions and examined the past experiences of these deployments to design a solution tailored to the federal context, not to replicate an existing model. Our number one priority is maintaining the delivery of benefits with no interruptions, so we are making this transformation carefully and in phases. Everything is fully tested before release.

To date, the new Cúram system has made close to 90 million payments to more than 7.7 million clients, distributing nearly $85 billion in benefits accurately and on time.

Managing EI benefits is the next step. The first stage occurred in November 2025, and all EI benefits will be transitioned to the new platform by 2028. The BDM project is a major project and necessary, and it is helping us reimagine the way services get delivered to Canadians.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the parliamentary secretary for her tone of voice. It makes a refreshing change from a lot of ministers, including the Prime Minister.

Obviously, we forgot to mention during this debate that errors have occurred in 85,000 cases, that some seniors have not received their benefits on time, and that many people are still waiting a year later. That is irresponsible on the part of this government. It has assured us that some cases have been resolved but that 69,000 cases are outstanding. The problems persist, and people are suffering.

Let us talk about the context surrounding IT contracts. This is not the first case of its kind. Allow me to remind the House that the ArriveCAN contract started out costing $80,000 but climbed to $60 million. Phoenix went from costing $309 million to over $5 billion, and it is already on the way out. It is headed for the trash heap and being replaced by Phoenix 2.0: Dayforce. This pay system was expected to cost a few million dollars, but the price tag has since climbed to $4.2 billion, not including the cost of transitioning to the new system. A year ago, the contract was supposed to cost $350 million; today, the amount is about $560 million.

The question remains: When can we expect an independent public inquiry? Everything is exploding.

[Leslie Church, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Mr. Speaker, let me address the member opposite's concerns, particularly about costs. He was looking for answers. He may not like them, but here they are.

The fact of the matter is that spending on the project has not surged. The recently completed move of old age security onto the Cúram platform was delivered as planned and under budget. Let me say that again: It was delivered as planned and under budget. Specifically, the completed OAS project cost $633 million, below the initial estimated $674-million project cost from 2023.

What has increased is the estimate of the total cost to complete this once-in-a-generation transformation. What we are talking about is the full transformation of benefits for all of OAS, employment insurance and CPP, including modernizing all of ESDC's call centres. It is not the amount spent. That is $1.8 billion as of this past December.

This transformation is being undertaken in a responsible, transparent manner, with concern for all those involved. So far, 7.7 million seniors have received their benefits on time and accurately. We are making progress with those who have had issues. Many of them are in paper form. We are correcting those errors. We are working with them.

We trust that this is going to be a system that is suitable for the next generation of Canadians.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, John Nater]

The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 2 p.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).

(The House adjourned at 7:28 p.m.)