Ed Fast

[International Trade, January 30th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, it is January. New year's resolutions are beginning to fade and, surprise, surprise, the Liberals' much-vaunted trade agenda is in shambles.

The long-promised softwood lumber agreement is nowhere in sight. Remember the Prime Minister's bromance with Barack Obama? Then there is the TPP meeting in Vietnam where the Prime Minister was a no-show, embarrassing his hosts, and burning all his bridges to Southeast Asia. A visit to China to beg for a trade agreement was similarly embarrassing, with the Chinese dismissing our Prime Minister, and sending him packing. Now our reckless ambassador has suggested that China could replace the U.S. as our best trading partner and ally. All of this is happening while our hapless Prime Minister is trying to negotiate a NAFTA trade agreement with Donald Trump.

Cozying up to communist China is not going to help our relations with the United States. When will the Prime Minister finally realize that negotiating trade agreements is not for rookies? When will he get out of the way—

[Taxation, January 29th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, I am surprised that the member for Gatineau would presume to speak for the people from Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, a riding I know well because I live in it, that he would presume to speak for the people of Abbotsford. He has not been there in recent memory that I know of, yet he suggests they are all happy.

In fact, the small business people in my riding, neighbouring ridings, and right across the country are angry with the Liberal government. They were promised they would see tax reductions. It was only when we put the fire to the feet of the Liberal government that it actually started to reduce the small business tax rate. Also, small business is not happy with carbon taxes being levied against them, which are going to undermine their competitiveness within a very competitive global economy. They are not happy with additional payroll taxes. They are not happy with the GST that the Liberal government charges on carbon taxes. This is a—

[Taxation, January 29th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in this House and address a matter that I dealt with some months ago when I directed a question to the government, more specifically a question for the member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, asking the Liberals and asking the member about how shabbily small business owners in Canada have been treated under the Liberal government's new tax laws.

These tax laws were awful. I had hundreds of emails coming in from small business owners who felt that the current Liberal government that had promised lower taxes was actually breaking its word and making it more difficult for Canadian businesses. Of course, these angry Canadians ran to their MPs. The problem was that some members of Parliament did not actually engage with the members of their community who were concerned about the taxes. One of those was the member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon. I am in the neighbouring riding. I had to go into his riding and hold a round table there where angry small businessmen and businesswomen from his riding shared with me how frustrated they were with the Liberal approach to small business. The changes that were being made involved the ability of business owners to sprinkle income—in other words pay money to their children and to their spouses because in many cases the whole family is involved in running the business. The heavy-handed government was coming down and saying they shall not pay money to their children unless the government, the tax department, allowed them to. We could understand why there would be such anger among our small business owners.

The people also had a problem with the fact that money that these businesses would have earned and the profits they would have made would have been set aside by them in a rainy-day fund. Perhaps, if someone in the business got sick, or perhaps the business took a turn for the worse, or perhaps there was an opportunity to grow the business and expand it, there was some cash available to invest in that. Historically, that money sitting there, worked hard for by the business owners, was taxed at a low rate. Now, the Liberals were going to tax that money at 73%. The government members have come forward and said they might make some changes there, they have amended the sprinkling provisions a bit, but they are not going to announce until the budget what they are going to do with passive income.

Small business owners found this out on the eve of Christmas. Suddenly, they were scrambling to find their accountants and their lawyers to make sense of the changes the Liberals were making, and again it was a fundamental breach of trust. That should not surprise us. When we look at the history of the Liberal Party in government, all we have seen are breaches of trust. What we have seen is the breaking of promises on deficits, breaking of promises on balanced budgets, breaking of promises on reducing the tax burden on Canadians. In fact, now we find the Prime Minister and the finance minister entangled in a web of scandal and intrigue that involves French villas. It involves Caribbean islands and the Aga Khan. It involves offshore companies, all being traced back to the Prime Minister and his finance minister.

My question for the parliamentary secretary, or whoever is here to answer this question, is threefold. First, has the government done an analysis of how much extra revenue it will receive by changing the small business rules? Second, will the tax rules apply to the Prime Minister and the finance minister? Third, why did the member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon not conduct public meetings to address these concerns?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, January 29th, 2018]

With regard to Canada’s conservation objectives and federally protected terrestrial and marine spaces: (a) which terrestrial and marine spaces does the government intend to protect to meet Canada’s Aichi Targets by 2020; and (b) what are the details of all areas referred to in (a), including (i) the geographical size and location of each space, (ii) the scientific rationale for protecting each proposed site, (iii) the forecasted costs associated with the protection of each space broken down by type, (iv) the economic impact for each proposed protected site, (v) all community stakeholders consulted for each project?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, January 29th, 2018]

With regard to expenditures on electric vehicle charging stations on government property since November 4, 2015: (a) what are the details of all expenditures, including for each the (i) amount, (ii) vendor, (iii) date, (iv) location of charging station, (v) description of expense; (b) what is the total amount of expenditures in (a); (c) for each charging station, what is the average time, broken down by month, in which the charging station has been charging a vehicle; (d) what are the locations of all such charging stations; and (e) how many charging stations are scheduled to be installed before December 31, 2018, and what is the proposed location of each such station?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, January 29th, 2018]

With regard to the negative economic impacts of government regulations and the decision to impose a carbon tax between 2016 and 2026: (a) according to government projections, what are the ten industries most likely to be negatively impacted by a $50 per tonne price on carbon; (b) for each of the industries in (a), what are the details of the projected negative impacts, broken down by year, beginning in 2016, including (i) projected job losses, (ii) projected number of business bankruptcies, (iii) projected number of personal bankruptcies, (iv) lost federal revenue as a result of the job losses and bankruptcies; (c) what is the average age of the employees who will lose their jobs as a result of the government’s decision to impose a carbon tax; (d) according to government projections, what are the ten industries most likely to be negatively impacted by the proposed regulatory steps under the Pan-Canadian Framework on Climate Change; (e) for each of the industries in (d) what are the details of the projected negative impacts, broken down by year, beginning in 2016, including (i) projected job losses, (ii) projected number of business bankruptcies, (iii) projected number of personal bankruptcies, (iv) lost federal revenue as a result of the job losses and bankruptcies; and (f) what is the average age of the employees who will lose their jobs as a result of the proposed regulatory steps under the Pan-Canadian Framework on Climate Change?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2017, No. 2, November 28th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, although the member and I occasionally will disagree on trade policy, one thing we do agree on is that Canadians have lost trust and confidence in the Liberal government. More particular, they have lost trust in the finance minister, who has the most senior role in the Liberal government, a finance minister who just will not come clean on whether he put his assets into a blind trust the way he said he would do. It turns out he did not. The finance minister was fined $200 by the Ethics Commissioner for not disclosing a company that owned a villa in France.

Canadians are watching this. They are saying that he is a senior minister in the government and they cannot trust what he says. Now there is some speculation about stock trades that took place. We do not know yet if they were made by him. He will not tell us. He was asked 21 times yesterday in question period if he was the person who undertook the trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange, and 21 times he would not say yes or no. That should be embarrassing. This is why the Liberal government has struck fear in the hearts of Canadians. They do not trust the government anymore, and certainly not on trade policy.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2017, No. 2, November 28th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, CETA is the free trade agreement between Canada and the European Union. It was an agreement that was negotiated under our former Conservative government. When the Liberals got their hands on that agreement, they made a big error in judgment. They agreed with the EU to reopen the agreement. Once they did that, there was a big problem when some of the European states wanted to renegotiate the agreement the previous Conservative government had negotiated.

Again, getting back to the spine, the backbone, when we are negotiating trade agreements, we have to be tough. The Liberal government is not tough. In fact, the member is wrong. When CETA was signed, it was the foreign affairs/trade minister who walked across the floor and embraced me for the work our Conservative government had done. That is a correction on the record. I think he would agree that this is actually what happened.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2017, No. 2, November 28th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to again engage in debate on the budget implementation act. As we know, the budget implementation act comes out of the budget process. Every year, the government tables a budget, and that budget tells Canadians where the government wants to go, where it wants to land; the taxpayers' money it is going to spend; where it will be spent; and how it will be spent. The budget implementation act, of course, is effectively the master plan going forward. It is the government's plan to implement the budget.

I would like to focus my remarks on one of the most important drivers of economic prosperity in the country, which is trade. Members will have noticed that in the budget implementation act, the government proposes to spend $10.1 billion in trade and transportation projects. The Liberal government believes there is $10 billion worth of taxpayers' money that should be spent on promoting Canada's trade and transportation interests at home and around the world.

I believe Canadians have the right to ask whether the Liberal government can be trusted to actually negotiate trade agreements in Canada's best interests, and whether the government has the competence to get these agreements right. I am going to digress and talk about three different trade negotiations that are presently ongoing that should give Canadians great concern in terms of the ability of the Prime Minister to negotiate agreements that serve Canada's interests.

First is the softwood lumber agreement. As we know, back in 2006 the softwood lumber dispute had escalated to a point where there was tremendous fear within our softwood lumber industry that we were going to lose companies, opportunities to drive economic growth, and hundreds and hundreds of jobs across Canada because the government of the day, the Chrétien government, just could not resolve that dispute with the United States.

It was at that time that our Conservative government, under Stephen Harper, appointed David Emerson to be the trade minister. His number one responsibility was to negotiate an end to the softwood lumber dispute. Guess what? Mr. Emerson got the job done. He negotiated an agreement that served Canadian interests well, and returned to Canada billions and billions of dollars that the Americans had levied against our softwood lumber exports.

The agreement that we entered into with the United States, under the leadership of David Emerson and Stephen Harper, was a seven-year agreement. Seven years of peace in our woods. Again, it served Canadians well. When that seven-year period expired, there was a provision in the agreement for another two-year renewal. That required the consent of both the United States and Canada, and guess what, we had a great relationship with the American government and were able to persuade it that a two-year extension was in its interest and our interest, and so the agreement was renewed. Now we had a total of nine years of peace in the woods.

It just so happens that on the approximate date the new Liberal government was elected back in 2015, the standstill agreement, the softwood lumber agreement, expired. Canadian forestry companies were left faced impending duties, which have indeed now been imposed by the Americans.

We have had a new trade minister and new foreign affairs minister as of 2015, and they set to work to get this agreement resolved and put to bed. In fact, there was a meeting in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, D.C., where our Prime Minister and President Obama got together and said they had established a framework for resolving the softwood lumber dispute and that within 90 days they wanted get the framework in place and resolve it. Here we are two years later and there is no resolution to the softwood lumber dispute in sight. Whether it is incompetence or a failure to understand the softwood lumber agreement, we know that the Liberal government has failed on that front.

The second is the North American Free Trade Agreement. I know the media has been paying a lot of attention to the renegotiation of that agreement. That agreement is now subject to renegotiation because our Prime Minister, when asked by the Americans to renegotiate it, simply said he would gladly renegotiate it, and yet the issues that Donald Trump, the president of the United States, had were with Mexico, not Canada. The Prime Minister has made the fateful decision of aligning Canada's interests with Mexico's, when in fact those interests are not aligned at all.

Members may recall that the first comprehensive trade agreement in the world was actually between Canada and the United States, and Mexico was added in years later. Today, the United States and Canada have a perfectly balanced trade relationship. Canada exports as much to the United States as they do to Canada. Therefore, the president of the United States, if truth be known, does not have a big beef with Canada on trade. He certainly does with Mexico. To entwine our interests with those of Mexico, I believe, is a strategic mistake.

NAFTA negotiations are going nowhere. In fact, most pundits are looking at what has happened in the last few rounds, where the Americans have put demands on the table that are completely unacceptable to us as Canadians, somehow expecting us to surrender or cave in on these negotiations and give the United States everything it wants. Why do they get away with that? It is because we have a government in place that does not have the spine to say absolutely not. We have a government that embarks upon trade negotiations in a manner that does not serve Canada's interests.

The last trade negotiation I want to deal with is the trans-Pacific partnership. That negotiation commenced under the Conservative government. It was completed in Atlanta in November of 2015. Then the United States left the TPP, and now the remaining 11 partners are trying to negotiate a deal among themselves. One of those partners happens to be Japan, one of the largest economies in the world, which we would have a trade agreement with if the TPP actually comes into force.

What happened in Vietnam when the Prime Minister was at the APEC summit? All of the 11 parties to the TPP agreed that the basic essentials of that agreement were now in place and had gathered in a room, where they were going to make the announcement. Where was Canada? It was missing in action. The Prime Minister was nowhere to be seen, a national embarrassment on the international stage. This is what we get from the Liberal government. There is no understanding of what it means to build trusted relationships with some of our most trusted trade allies, like Australia, New Zealand, or Japan. Not to show up at a meeting when it was agreed ahead of time that there was a consensus on the basic elements of a trade agreement is unconscionable. That is not good trade negotiation.

Canadians have a right to ask whether the Liberal government can be trusted to negotiate trade agreements in Canada's best interests as an economic driver for prosperity in Canada? The resounding answer has to be no.

There are many Canadians across Canada who have heard that the Prime Minister now wants to run pell-mell to China to negotiate a trade agreement with that country. They are thinking that he is not getting any of the other deals done. He is juggling them and he cannot put them to bed. How will he ever negotiate an agreement with what he called the “basic dictatorship” that is China?

In summary, when it comes to promoting our economic prosperity, economic growth in Canada through trade, the government so far has been an absolute disaster.

[Ethics, November 27th, 2017]

Yes or no?