Pierre-Luc Dusseault

[Budget Implementation Act, 2019, No. 1, June 5th, 2019]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today on behalf of my caucus. I am sure that other members will have a chance to do the same, but I am deeply honoured to be taking part in the third reading debate on Bill C-97.

This bill has already been heavily scrutinized here in the House and at the Standing Committee on Finance, and its sheer size has provoked much debate. The bill is more than 400 pages long. It is yet another omnibus bill. Its content has also sparked debate. I would be remiss not to mention the content of the bill, as well as everything that the government left out. I am going to focus on the aspects of the bill that we consider most problematic, as well as the things that were completely left out of this last-chance budget.

It is 2019, and this is the government's last opportunity to deliver on its mandate and vision for the country. It is already June 2019. The latest budget was tabled in March, and this bill seeks to realize the vision outlined in budget 2019. This is the Liberal government's last bill, its last chance to turn its ideas and its vision for the nation into reality. It goes without saying that everything that was left out, everything that still has to be done and everything the Government of Canada is leaving unfinished will have to wait until later.

We will have to take the word of the Prime Minister, who, during the next election campaign, will try to convince Canadians that he will have time in the next four years to do what he did not have time to do in the past four years. We know full well that many promises have been broken over the past few years. Some were much bigger than others. Take electoral reform. Many Canadians remember quite clearly that this was a solemn promise. The Prime Minister repeated it almost daily during the election campaign. Nearly a year and a half later, he did not hesitate to break that promise, brushing it aside by saying that he changed his mind, that it was not a good idea after all, and that he would not be moving forward with electoral reform. This is a government that broke some of its signature promises, such as returning to a balanced budget. I know that my Conservative colleagues like to bring that up quite a bit.

Clearly, this government, which is nearing the end of its term, is suffering from a lack of credibility in terms of its campaign promises, and it will soon try to convince Canadians that it needs another term to complete what it did not have time to do in this last budget. Canadians are not stupid. They know what this Prime Minister's word is worth, because they have had four years to see him at work, to listen to him and to see what he had to offer Canadians. The people of Sherbrooke, Quebec and Canada will realize that his word is unfortunately not worth very much. This is the kind of thing that fuels cynicism among Canadians, and among my constituents back home in Sherbrooke. I often hear people say they are disappointed by politics and politicians. I am trying to get them interested in politics again, but when a government like this one, formed by the Liberal Party of Canada, breaks so many promises so shamelessly, it fuels cynicism about politics. That is why people will be so wary of any of the campaign promises made by the Prime Minister of Canada, and with good reason. We have to give them some credit. They will be right to doubt him, because the Prime Minister has broken so many of his promises during this last term.

This is a last-chance budget. Today we are debating the government's budgetary policy, its execution and its implementation. That is why, on our side of the House, we will ultimately have to vote against it. We will be forced to vote against Bill C-97 at third reading because it does not meet Canadians' needs. Clearly, on many issues, the government has not responded to the concrete problems Canadians are facing, and it is not about to do so over the next few months.

We will be voting against this budget, and we hope that many members will do so as well. We need to send the government a clear message. Its fiscal policy has not worked so far, and the rich are getting richer. We saw this recently. I will give just one example, that of KPMG. The accounting firm and its clients once again reached an out-of-court settlement after they were caught avoiding taxes using a scheme that was dubious and questionable, to say the least. It was certainly questioned by the Canada Revenue Agency.

The Canada Revenue Agency recently made a proposal to these clients. They were told to pay their taxes and the matter would be closed. They could move on once they paid their debt to society.

These people had a minimum of $300,000. For every file that KPMG opened, the client had to pay the firm at least $300,000 to put the scheme in place. In addition, the firm would take a cut of the tax savings that their clients realized with the Isle of Man scheme.

The scheme was revealed to the general public, so I will not repeat all the details. We know that the clients moved money abroad to a place with low taxes. They managed to avoid paying taxes by using all kinds of strategies, such as shell companies and fake directors. In its agreements with clients, this accounting firm demanded a cut of the tax savings. That is not something to be taken lightly. The firm promised tax savings and took a percentage off the top. This week, these clients signed a settlement with officials of the Canada Revenue Agency. With this settlement, they can put the matter behind them, close the books, pay the taxes, say goodbye and carry on as if nothing happened.

That is the message the Government of Canada decided to send all Canadians today. It conflicts with the standard messaging that the government and the Minister of National Revenue has been delivering up to now, about how the net is tightening, how tax cheats will pay, and how there never has been and never will be an amnesty. The Canada Revenue Agency and the minister even sent out photos showing people in handcuffs back when the KPMG scandal broke. She said that tax cheats would pay for their actions and that criminals would be put behind bars.

Today she is sending a different message. People who could afford to spend $300,000 on a scheme, plus a percentage of the money they saved on taxes, can afford to pay lawyers to get them off the hook with just a slap on the wrist.

Understandably, most Canadians, including most of the people of Sherbrooke, find that frustrating. They see rich people who can afford to pay the accounting firm and who have the means to defend themselves in court against charges relating to these borderline schemes getting off with a slap on the wrist, and my constituents find that frustrating in the extreme. I know my colleagues are frustrated too, but, unfortunately, the government decided to do nothing. Rather than do something, the government decided to follow in the Conservatives' footsteps and give preferential treatment to people who can afford to pay accounting firms, tax experts and lawyers to defend them against these charges and emerge virtually unscathed. Sure, they will pay the taxes they owe. It is the least they can do, but the government is signalling that they can keep doing this. The worst-case scenario is that they will end up in the Tax Court of Canada like the family from Vancouver and end up signing a settlement to close the books.

This sends the message that, under the current government, it is acceptable to engage in tax evasion and shady schemes. The government is turning a blind eye to all of that. That is the sort of behaviour that is perpetuated by the implementation of this budget and the government's budgetary fiscal policy.

We heard some powerful, compelling testimony in committee. The witnesses spoke to many parts of the bill, which is 400 pages long. This bill affects many laws and makes significant changes to many sectors of our economy. However, some provisions have nothing to do with the economy, but the government threw them all into the budget implementation bill anyway. It is therefore difficult for parliamentarians to speak to the bill as a whole.

We will soon have to vote on this 400-page bill. It will be a single vote, even though the bill makes many changes to many different laws. Earlier today, we voted on the amendments to this bill at report stage. We therefore had the opportunity to speak to many parts of the bill. At third reading, there will be just a single vote either for or against the bill as a whole. When the Liberal Party was on this side of the House, it spoke out against this practice. The Liberals criticized omnibus bills at every opportunity, because omnibus bills do not allow parliamentarians to vote on each measure or group of measures.

Since we have to cast a single vote on the bill as a whole, we need to consider the pros and cons of the bill. Today, it is clear that the cons outweigh the pros. Although we recognize that the bill contains some good measures, we have no choice but to vote against this budgetary policy.

The government has tried to make up for its blunders on several issues by presenting amendments in committee or at report stage. Earlier today, we debated the amendments that the government had proposed, with a royal recommendation, to change the bill. The government had to backpedal to fix things, particularly as regards the housing act.

The section on the housing act fell well short of what Canadians and housing experts had expected. The experts said that the right to housing is a fundamental human right, something the government refused to acknowledge in the first draft of the bill. It had to fix that, just like it had to fix other parts of the bill.

In committee, we tried to get the government to see reason on certain issues. We wanted it to provide a list pertaining to student loans as quickly as possible. In the bill, the government proposes starting to charge interest on student loans after six months. We tried to persuade it to just make student loans interest-free. It is not right to ask former students to pay interest on loans they took out to train for a career.

In committee we learned that this interest brought $700 million annually into the coffers of the consolidated revenue fund of Canada. That money funds the government's priorities when it could stay in the pockets of young people who just completed their studies and are entering the workforce. Those young people have to save money to get into the real estate market and invest in our economy in various ways. The government is currently taking $700 million out of the pockets of young workers who are fresh out of school, and putting that money in the consolidated revenue fund.

The government is giving former students a six-month relief period when it could have gone further by permanently eliminating interest on student loans and stopping government funding by students. The government rejected this proposal.

As far as worker health and safety is concerned, representatives from the Canadian Labour Congress told us in committee that the flexibilities of the Hazardous Products Act benefited industry to the detriment of the health of the workers who are exposed to these products in the short or long term. They could have accidents with these hazardous products. The government is easing the rules to give the chemical products industry a free pass, which jeopardizes the health and safety of Canadian workers. In committee, the government once again sided with industry and the major lobbies in this country to ensure that their profits keep going up every year.

Furthermore, a large number of witnesses spoke out against the changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. Bill C-97 is, quite simply, anti-refugee. It creates two classes of refugees: those who enter Canada regularly and those who enter irregularly. The government is creating two parallel systems that it claims complement each other or are nearly identical.

The government could have simply turned to the Immigration and Refugee Board, which does a very good job and which needs more resources. Unfortunately, it decided to create two classes of refugees. One refugee even testified in committee that if the government's heartless bill had been in force, he might not be in Canada right now because he would have been sent back to his country, where he is in danger. Numerous experts called this a bad idea. That is why we are compelled to oppose the bill.

Now let's talk about pensions, which were not protected and which continue to be at the bottom of the order of creditor priority in the event of bankruptcy or insolvency. They could have had the courage to respond to the concerns heard at consultations. Most people said that the order of creditor priority had to be changed. The government decided to ignore all the experts' recommendations.

That was also the case for stock options. The economic update indicated that the government would address this situation, which is clearly problematic because it benefits the wealthy. It even says so in the budget document, but they decided to ignore the issue. In this budget, which is its last chance, the government decided to do nothing and wait until after the election to solve the problem, even though we know this government will be gone in October 2019.

The Liberals gave in to the pharmaceutical lobby on pharmacare. They gave them more time to rake in the biggest profits of the corporate world at the expense of taxpayers. They were given a free pass. The government is asking Canadians to trust it even though it broke many promises. It says that it will keep this one and that we must trust it, even if it has been saying so for 25 years.

As for oil companies, the Liberals continue to subsidize the fossil fuel industry to the tune of billions of dollars every year. This budget would have been a good opportunity to put an end to that.

Also, household debt continues to rise. Canadians are within $200 of insolvency each and every month, and the government is doing nothing to fix that.

Furthermore, the media bailout has been the talk of Parliament Hill and elsewhere. The media just want tax fairness. Of course, they also need some assistance to meet certain challenges, but above all, they need tax fairness. The government needs to put an end to the double standard that is giving web giants a free ride when it comes to taxes. They are exempted from paying income tax and sales tax, and are raking in billions of dollars in ad revenues, while our local and national media can barely make ends meet and take in sufficient ad revenues.

This is a bad budget bill. The government missed out on its last opportunity to show some courage and make the right choices.

I can assure the House that Canadians will not give the Liberals another term, since they merely spew empty rhetoric and make lofty promises, and have not honoured their commitments over the past four years. Canadians will turn to an alternate serious and credible solution, like the NDP, so we can finally fix the problems facing our society in 2019.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2019, No. 1, June 5th, 2019]

Madam Speaker, I have a question for my colleague about his favourite topic, mortgages and home ownership.

He already raised some points that came up in committee about the new first-time home buyer incentive, which will allow the CMHC to take on 5% to 10% of the mortgages of Canadians participating in the program. I was surprised to hear experts say that this program would not help anyone get a mortgage from a financial institution, since the program will only apply if the person has already qualified for a mortgage with their financial institution.

Could my colleague talk about this point, which has been ignored? The government is implying that this program will help more Canadians buy homes, but witnesses in committee said the complete opposite. Only Canadians who have already qualified for a mortgage will be able to participate in this program.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2019, No. 1, June 4th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, last Friday, the difference between the Liberal Party of Canada, which my colleague is a member of, and the New Democratic Party, could not have been any clearer.

The NDP announced an ambitious plan to transition to green energy and a green economy. The estimated cost of this transition is $15 billion. This announcement, made in Montreal by our leader, is only the beginning.

The Liberals already have plans to invest these $15 billion into a pipeline project that has already cost Canadian taxpayers $4.5 billion. If the expansion goes ahead and a second pipeline is built, the government will spend an additional $10 billion. We are talking about approximately $15 billion for a pipeline that transports dilbit from the oil sands.

What does my colleague tell her constituents who care about the environment? Which plan should they choose, the one that invests $15 billion into the energy transition or the one that gives the fossil fuel industry $15 billion?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2019, No. 1, June 4th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, since my colleague talked about something other than Bill C-97, I will do the same and talk about something that he must have forgotten in his speech, and that is the problems with the Phoenix pay system, which affect so many people in his riding.

This topic is fresh on the minds of public servants in Sherbrooke, and that must be the case in his riding as well. The unions are still very angry with the government for making nice promises that it did not keep. The problems with the Phoenix pay system persist and are getting worse over time. My colleague is well aware of that, since he is in charge of this government file. He did not keep his promises.

Two budgets ago, the Liberals announced the end of the Phoenix pay system. Today, as we speak, in June 2019, Phoenix is still the pay system being used by the federal public service.

In 2015, he made a promise, but he failed to fulfill that promise before the end of his term. He is asking his constituents to put their trust in him again. He thinks that this time he will fix the problem. I wonder what message that sends to public servants, the public service and the people of his riding.

What does he say to his constituents who are fed up and disappointed with his performance within the Liberal government?

[Energy Costs, May 31st, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Motion No. 230 from my Conservative Party colleague. I am pleased to have the opportunity to share my opinion.

As my colleague said in his speech, he took this measure from the NDP's policy book. He even said that a number of NDP members and our party's leader spoke about the idea of lowering heating costs for Canadians. That said, our new plan is even more ambitious. Our idea of lowering heating costs for Canadians has evolved, so much so that our leader recently announced an even more ambitious measure than the one proposed by my colleague. The measure would lower heating costs at the source, which is the real solution to the problem we are debating today.

Of course heating is essential in Canada with our climate. It is a basic need just like housing. The recently unveiled NDP plan is very clear. We were just talking about it this morning, when we were unveiling our broader plan for the environment and climate change. Our plan would renovate all Canadian homes by 2050 to make them more energy efficient. This solution would allow Canadian homes to save $900 a year. My colleague's proposal, which consists in removing the GST from home energy bills, would save Canadians only $117 a year on average, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

This week, Habitat for Humanity in partnership with Université de Sherbrooke and engineers, announced that they would develop a house using new technologies that would cost on average $8 a month to heat. That is the type of solution we need to be looking at instead of a half measure that simply removes the GST from home energy bills. The Conservatives should have chosen that solution instead of coming up with a half measure and hoping that would solve all our problems. We have to address the problem at the source. Homes have to be more energy efficient. The less energy we need to heat our homes, the more we save. We think that is the best approach.

I know several members and leaders of APCHQ-Estrie back home in Sherbrooke. They told me that they were pretty disappointed when the previous Conservative government cancelled the eco-energy retrofit program, a program that offered savings to Canadians that make energy efficient retrofits. The Conservative government decided to cut that program between 2011 and 2015 in its attempt to balance the budget at all costs.

The Conservatives speak out of both sides of their mouths. Today they are complaining that the cost of heating is too high, but when they had a chance to fix the problem, they went in the opposite direction and cut a program that helped people renovate their home and make it more energy efficient, which reduced their energy bill at the source, not just when they got their bill. This encourages people to be more environmentally conscious.

I would to remind members that buildings, which must be heated and air conditioned, are the third largest source of greenhouse gases. They represent 25% of energy-related emissions. Of the current stock of buildings, 70% will still be in use in 2050. Thus, to reduce current and future emissions, one of the most important steps we can take is to make our housing stock more energy efficient.

There is another aspect of this motion that is disappointing. When I started reading it, it was familiar and was something the NDP had talked about already, up to the last paragraph, paragraph (e). Once again, the Conservatives are trotting out the carbon tax bogeyman. They seem to be fixated on this. They talk about it every day in the House. They mentioned it at the very end of this motion, and it seems like a poison pill to prevent the NDP from supporting it.

As the member said in his speech, these are measures that we presented in the past, but they added the provision to repeal the carbon tax. It would seem that my colleague has managed to ensure that he will not have the support of our party on this issue. In the spirit of co-operation, he should have stuck to the issue of the GST.

That was a little disappointing, so I am going to propose a slight amendment to the motion that will reveal my colleague's true intentions. I am going to propose removing the part about the carbon tax. He can mull that over for the few minutes we have left. We will see if his desire to advance his cause by collaborating with other parties is genuine or if he is just trying to score political points.

Regardless, I think his main intention, gaining traction for his idea, is good. In general, his intentions here are good, but I want to point out that the real solution is reducing at-source energy costs. By merely lowering the final bill after calculating energy consumption, we are not encouraging households to reduce consumption because we are not reducing costs at the source. That means the more energy one consumes, the bigger the discount at the end of the year. Some of my colleagues have already talked about this. The bigger one's house, the more energy it takes to heat, the more it costs and the bigger the annual savings. It is contradictory, in a way. We should be encouraging people to consume less energy, not more.

I am going to propose an amendment that will reveal my colleague's true intentions and show us whether his mindset is one of collaboration or confrontation. I propose that the motion be amended by deleting the words “(e) repeal the Carbon tax”.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2019, No. 1, May 31st, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I was pleased to hear the question my colleague asked earlier, even though she refrained from calling the figures rhetorical, unlike her colleague from the Toronto area, who characterized all of the government's figures as rhetorical without really being able to indicate which of the figures were real.

That said, I am interested in the half-baked manner in which this bill was presented and moved through the parliamentary process. The initial version made absolutely no sense and had absolutely no purpose because it did not even recognize housing as a fundamental human right. This was fixed during the study in committee, which recognized this right. There were other mistakes, including the fact that the housing advocate has no mandate or power. This was just fixed at report stage. The government is proposing amendments.

My question is about where the process went so wrong that they twice had to make a series of amendments to fix such a terrible first version of the bill. What happened during the consultations? Did they not listen to experts' recommendations? Did they just realize what people have been saying for months?

[Canada Revenue Agency, May 31st, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, he does not understand that the lack of transparency is coming from his own government. The Minister of National Revenue is in charge of the CRA. It is ridiculous.

We learned that wealthy Canadians were still signing secret agreements with the CRA. The parliamentary secretary should shed light on that.

Over the past four years, the Liberals had the opportunity to repair our two-tiered tax system, but now we see that the government simply does not have the political courage to act.

How is it that wealthy taxpayers are still able to get away with not being charged after all the talk from the Minister of National Revenue?

No one gets scared any more when the minister says that the net is tightening. The net is wide open and the hon. member is doing nothing about it.

[Canada Revenue Agency, May 31st, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, the years come and go, but we continue to see a lack of action on the part of the government.

Yesterday, we learned that the Canada Revenue Agency once again signed a secret agreement with wealthy Canadians to avoid prosecution for tax evasion. Once again, the rich get away with a slap on the wrist and a warning not to do it again.

Yet, three years ago, the Minister of National Revenue told us to our faces that there was no amnesty, that there had never been an amnesty, that the agency would never offer an amnesty. In the KPMG affair, she publicly stated, “The agency will definitely exhaust all judicial avenues.”

She also stated that KPMG's clients could face criminal charges and that there would be no amnesty agreement.

Today, the minister is once again putting her incompetence on full display by casting blame on everyone but herself. Today, she is saying that she will look into the matter to resolve the problem. That is ridiculous. The minister has had four years to fix our two-tiered tax system, but her record is clear: no convictions, no arrests, no money recovered in cases of tax evasion abroad.

The minister just lost the little credibility she had. She only has herself to blame for all of this.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2019, No. 1, May 31st, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I am so pleased that my colleague asked me that question. It gives me an opportunity to explain things all over again to my Liberal colleague, who keeps repeating those lines ad nauseam like some kind of mantra.

During the last election campaign, the Liberal Party forgot to pay attention to the revenue side of the ledger, which is a pretty important part of a fiscal framework. Apparently the minister is forgetting to consider the fiscal framework part of a campaign platform.

We had the courage to say that the wealthiest Canadians must pay their fair share because that enables the government to support important social programs and invest in Canadians. My colleague does not want to do the politically courageous thing. She does not want to generate revenue by making Canadians pay their fair share and fighting tax havens. She does not want to reinvest that money in Canadians.

Our fiscal framework was sound. It included additional revenue sources to finance numerous initiatives such as child care and pharmacare. My colleague is so blinded by the expenditures column that she is forgetting to take the revenue column into account.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2019, No. 1, May 31st, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I have no idea where my colleague got his information. He claims that the NDP is against free trade deals, but we actually supported certain free trade agreements, even during the last Parliament. I invite him to look into it.

The NDP supports free trade agreements that benefit Canadian workers, the Canadian economy and major Canadian industries. Signing deals that jeopardize entire sectors, like the dairy sector and all the supply-managed sectors, is a bad idea.

If my colleague cannot understand that, I do not know how he sees these issues. Supply-managed farmers in Sherbrooke and the Eastern Townships are livid, because this is the third time that the government has sacrificed their sector and family farms to cater to the needs of Donald Trump and the Prime Minister, who is anxious to sign a deal with the U.S. and Mexico at all costs.

The only thing the government is doing is bowing down before the Americans, agreeing to all their demands and sacrificing major economic sectors like agriculture. Canadian farmers are furious with this government, and they will make that clear in October.