Dan Albas

[Criminal Code, May 8th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, part of the minister's argument today has been that we need to get this legislation to the Senate to speed things up. I can understand that. We only have so much time.

That being said, by the same token, Bill C-75 has gone to the other place and it is a much larger bill. Would the member not agree that this particular bill, Bill C-84, should have been wrapped up in Bill C-75, gone to the justice committee and had full exposure to all of the different parts in that omnibus piece of legislation, so it could have maybe left a stand-alone bill for us to have a full discussion on the deferred prosecution agreements, an issue which was in Bill C-74, division 20?

That piece of legislation did not get a full hearing at finance committee. Only one witness from the justice department came to speak to it. I still get calls on a regular basis from people in both the academic and the legal communities who feel that the Liberal government's approach to that piece of omnibus legislation maligned Parliament and denied the proper hearing of major changes to the Criminal Code.

Would the member not agree that this place must be respected? Would he agree that that kind of sleight of hand by the government needs to change?

[Criminal Code, May 8th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly appreciate that the Minister of Justice has not been the Minister of Justice throughout this Parliament, so he is taking on some legislation he had no role in crafting. However, he is the representative of the government today, and he needs to stand and answer and be accountable to the people and their representatives.

Why such a different approach? On this piece of legislation, we have a stand-alone piece of legislation that has gone through committee process and whatnot, and through debate, yet shamefully, in Bill C-74, an omnibus piece of legislation, the Liberals pushed through a provision for deferred prosecution agreements. They did not have a single witness from the academic community or bar association come for a thorough discussion about that particular regime, which is unlike any that has been used in the Criminal Code before. Why did they do that while giving a stand-alone bill to this, when they could easily have taken that DPA section from division 20 of Bill C-74 and put it in Bill C-75, another piece of omnibus legislation? Why is there such a mismatch in how they present to this place and with where their priorities are?

[Natural Resources, May 7th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, throughout Canada, people are suffering because of the failures of the Liberal government. Over and over again, it has taken actions that raise the price of gas, which is deepening the Liberal affordability crisis. In my province, we are forced to rely on American fuel because of the failure by the government to approve the Trans Mountain pipeline. It is time to stop punishing Canadians.

When will the government revoke its carbon tax and approve the pipelines we need to ensure that Canadian fuels can get to consumers affordably?

[Telecommunications, May 6th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member said she believes that the process the government is using is transparent. She also believes that it is working with telecoms across the country. She also said that the government is always going to put our national security in place.

First of all, the government has not been transparent. We have been asking for quite a long time for Canada to join with our Five Eyes partners, like Australia, New Zealand and the United States, in banning Huawei. When it comes to transparency, we have no idea when that process will be there.

I mentioned some of the university infrastructure. Universities have publicly asked for the government to be clear as to what partnerships they should engage in. The member opposite did not even refer to that.

The former executive vice-president of NSERC recently wrote in The Globe and Mail that the Chinese government is using research deals in seemly unrelated fields to support Chinese military development, and the Chinese government has the power to force companies to comply with the government in undertaking espionage.

It is absurd that the government is not focused on these key issues in this country at this time.

[Telecommunications, May 6th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government has spent months ignoring the advice of our allies and refusing to ban Huawei from our future 5G network.

Countries and providers across the world are acknowledging the reality that it is far too dangerous to allow a Chinese government-controlled company to have access to every level of our communication network. However, the government is refusing to make a decision, leaving the industry and the Canadian people in limbo.

Now we see that while the government stalls this decision, it is denying anyone who is opposed to Huawei from providing any input on whether the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada should allow Huawei to fund a research chair. It seems that no one opposed to Huawei is allowed to provide any input on whether it should be allowed to further entrench itself in our scientific and technical research infrastructure. This is typical of the government: make a decision, and then only allow those who agree with it to provide any input. It is certain that if anyone opposed to Huawei's funding research is barred from participating, then only those in favour will be heard.

Right now, UBC is partnering with Huawei on 5G research because the government has not told it that it should not do so, although three former directors of our key security agencies have said that Canada should cut ties with Huawei when it comes to the development of our 5G infrastructure.

The director of CSIS has said we need to be wary of state-sponsored espionage on the 5G network, yet one of the largest universities in the country is allowing Huawei into its network, with zero guidance from the Liberal government. Universities like Stanford, Berkeley, and Oxford are severing ties with Huawei, while the Canadian government is basically welcoming it with open arms.

lt is unthinkable why the government is helping Huawei embed itself into Canada's research infrastructure and 5G network while saying it has not decided on whether to allow it at all. We cannot have a government that pulls the wool over its eyes and pretends that everything is fine while Canadians await execution in China. It is unreasonable to allow Chinese government-controlled Huawei to infiltrate our 5G networks and our universities.

lt is far past time for the government to listen to our allies, do what is right, ban Huawei from our 5G network and also stop signing research deals with it.

[Ethics, May 3rd, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians deserve to have confidence in the integrity of their government, and right now they do not. My colleague from Thornhill has written to the RCMP to ask it to investigate whether the Prime Minister broke the law when he accepted the gift of a vacation to a tropical island from someone who was lobbying the government.

Canadians deserve answers, and they deserve them now. Will the Prime Minister co-operate with any such investigation?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2019, No. 1, April 11th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to rise to speak in this place and more so to speak to this Liberal budget.

As we know, the the Liberal 2015 campaign promise was to deliver three years of modest $10 billion a year deficits with a return to a balanced budget in 2019.

Let us remind ourselves that this was a promise the Prime Minister himself said was "very cast in stone", not somewhat cast in stone, not a little bit cast in stone, but very cast in stone.

In this budget, the 2019-20 deficit forecast is set close to $19.8 billion. This is on top of the $60 billion in deficits added in the first three Liberal budgets. The current budget indicates there is no path to balance until at the very least 2040, and by that point racking up an additional $271 billion in new debt.

There are words as a parliamentarian that I do not like to use, and many of those words describe the Prime Minister's broken promise to Canadians.

As every person in this chamber well knows, the reality is that the Prime Minister did not even try to honour his promise. That is a Prime Minister who will basically promise anything if at the time he believes it is what Canadians want to hear. On this point, Canadians want a government that will live within its means.

However, we are not here to debate the Prime Minister's broken promises. We are here to debate this budget, and on that point I do have some serious concerns.

Let me start with household debt.

Aside from the fact this budget is silent on it, I would submit it will only serve to increase it. Why is household debt a problem? After the Liberals first year in government, household debt, as a percentage of gross income in 2016, was 166%. In January of 2019, that increased to a whopping 176%. Let us think about that for a moment. Canadian household debt is now 176% of gross household income.

In spite of the Liberal government spending over $60 billion to date, people continue to fall further and further behind. Keep in mind we are not talking about the government debt being added onto their backs that one day somehow they will have to pay. We are talking about household debt.

How is that a concern in this budget? One example is the new Canada training benefit. On the surface, it sounds like a good thing. What could be wrong with encouraging job skills retraining?

When we read the fine print, only $250 is available per year up to a career maximum of $5,000. The challenge that I am already hearing is that the majority of training programs cost well in excess of that amount. Many skills training programs are literally thousands of dollars or more. For many workers to benefit from this $250 training credit, it means borrowing thousands of dollars and increasing household debt.

Similarly, to access the credit of $5,000 toward the purchase of a new electric car for most would mean borrowing up to the maximum for the program amount of $45,000. This again results in more household debt for anyone borrowing for a new vehicle purchase.

A similar situation is created with the new homebuyers program. Rather than simply eliminate the GST on affordable new housing, which has been done with the provincial sales tax in British Columbia and which would save people money, this budget only offers more options that encourage borrowing. That means borrowing $10,000 more from an RRSP up to a maximum of $35,000. How many new homebuyers have a spare $35,000 kicking around in an RRSP? This is not the reality for most new homebuyers.

The new first-time homebuyers incentive on the surface looks helpful. The program can help provide between 5% and 10% of the down payment toward a maximum CMHC insurable mortgage up to $480,000. That is not counting the total down payment.

The challenge for this program is also in the fine print. The maximum $480,000 mortgage value is based on the program's maximum allowable household income level of $120,000 annually. However, in a community where the average household income is $70,000, the maximum value under this program is set at four times the income. Therefore, the CMHC insurable mortgage limit is just $280,000, which is a significant difference.

Here is the great frustration: Housing markets throughout Canada have been severely impacted by the changes made by the current Liberal government largely because of housing markets in just two Canadian cities. However, with this signature program, even at the maximum $480,000, it will not make a dent in housing affordability in places like Vancouver or Toronto. In fact, it will most help in areas where housing is comparably already affordable. As public policy goes, this is an expensive one and a misguided one. CMHC told us at the technical briefing that it will have to borrow in order to finance this program.

These are just a few of the examples that all point toward increased household debt in order to access the benefits of these programs. Ironically, these programs are being offered in a budget with a $19.8-billion deficit, which means that the current Liberal government is borrowing money it does not have, which, as I have just demonstrated, will in many cases cause people to borrow money they do not have just to access these program benefits. That, my friends, is not good governance.

There is also another major missing part of this budget, which is any type of fiscal strategy to deal with Canadian competitiveness. We are hearing increasingly of plant closures, production shifts being eliminated, and of Canadian companies not investing here in Canada but in the United States and elsewhere. To be clear, the Liberals were warned. We know that the Department of Finance's own figures warned that the Liberals' enhanced CPP program would be a drag on the Canadian economy at least until 2030.

Now, we do not know what precisely the Liberals' carbon tax will do to the economy, but we do know that the Liberals are increasingly giving Canada's worst polluters carbon tax breaks. The Toronto Star has reported that polluting industries, such as cement, iron and steel manufacturing, lime production and nitrogen fertilizers, will get carbon relief based on a 90% industry average. Firms in other industries that emit at least 50 kilotonnes of greenhouse gas per year will get relief based on 80%. In New Brunswick, the federal government gave a 95.5% carbon tax relief to a dirty coal-powered plant.

Almost every day we hear the environment minister and the Prime Minister talk about putting a price on pollution, but of course, they do not talk about the growing list of exemptions and breaks for the worst polluters. Of course, our major competitors and trade partners do not have a carbon tax. Meanwhile, we continue to watch investment in these countries growing while this budget sits back and proposes no solutions.

I get that it is an election budget designed to buy people's votes with their own money. I also get that the Liberals who once promised a balanced budget now call that concept “austerity”. It is bewildering but true to hear any discussion that talks about living within our means described by the finance minister as an austerity measure. At some point, the Liberal government is going to need to reconcile this with reality.

All of this deficit spending was not spent during a time of world financial crises. Further, despite all the deficit spending, the Bank of Canada forecasts are crystal clear. Our economy is slowing down at an alarming rate, and this budget proposes nothing to address that, I think, in part, because the finance minister does not believe these things to be true, yet we all know that they are. It is another denial budget, spending money that Canadians do not have, and it is not a budget that I can support.

Therefore, I move:

That the House do now adjourn.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2019, No. 1, April 11th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Vaughan—Woodbridge for his work on the finance committee when it comes to credit unions. He is also the all-party chair of the credit union caucus.

To that point, there were two promises made in the investing in the middle-class budget 2019 that were specifically requested in terms of regulatory reform, which the government committed to. In this budget implementation act, I see only one.

I would like clarification from the government member as to the rationale for not following through on the promises made on the floor of the House of Commons just a short time ago.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2019, No. 1, April 11th, 2019]

Madam Speaker, I have heard from a parent in my area who was quite concerned. In responding to the opioid crisis, the provincial health authority has been making drug kits available to youth rather than addressing the issue. In a place like Kelowna, which many consider urban, youth can wait up to six months and be transported to Vancouver to get the help they so desperately need.

The member has travelled the country to discuss opioids. Could she please comment on the mismatched priorities of how the government does not seem to be listening as to how to deal with it, particularly for the most vulnerable youth?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2019, No. 1, April 11th, 2019]

Madam Speaker, the member raised the issue of a shared equity position that the Government of Canada is proposing CMHC would have for first-time homebuyers. However, he neglected to mention that it is based on income. The maximum someone could receive under the program is four times their income, and in the member's own riding, the median income is just under $30,000. That is not a lot for someone to be able to borrow on and to move forward.

Does he not believe that in areas like his across the country, this amount would not be enough to even support someone, let alone if they actually want to be in partnership with the government and have it as a stakeholder in their home?