44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 3, 2022 10:00AM
- Feb/3/22 2:52:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the slower the finance minister responds to questions of real concern does not make the matters any less urgent. To the federal government, our payments on debt servicing alone are growing faster than our health care transfers. If interest rates go up when affordability has never been worse, what would happen?
The Prime Minister and finance minister believe that budgets balance themselves, but payments will not pay themselves. What is their plan to help Canadians cope with rising gas prices, inflation and everything else?
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- Feb/3/22 2:52:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member opposite referred to federal public debt charges, so let me offer him some reassurance. First of all, this fall, Moody's and S&P reaffirmed our AAA credit rating. Second, as I detailed in the economic and fiscal update, nearly half of our bond issuance will be long-term bonds. That is up from 15% of bonds issued in 2019-20 that had a maturity of 10 years or longer. Our public debt charges as a percentage of GDP are 0.9% this fiscal year. That is the lowest in 100 years.
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- Feb/3/22 2:53:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister had no answer for the feed shortage crisis in western Canada and that is unacceptable. This is an animal health crisis that needs to be addressed immediately. Trucking mandates have cut off the vital feed supply from the United States and now an interprovincial trucking mandate could put our last lifeline, Hay West, in jeopardy.
Is the Liberal government really going to make matters worse and implement an interprovincial trucking mandate? If that is the case, what does the minister suggest that desperate livestock producers feed the animals in their care?
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- Feb/3/22 2:54:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my heart goes out to the farmers and ranchers who are affected by the historic drought of last summer. We are working hard with the provinces and the industry to provide them the support they need and I am in constant contact with the president of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association and the president of the Canadian Pork Council on this issue. We are providing $500 million through the AgriRecovery program and $4 million to the Canadian Federation of Agriculture for the Hay West initiative.
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- Feb/3/22 2:55:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, according to the Deputy Prime Minister, this is a false narrative.
Barrie house prices in December have averaged $855,000, which is a year-over-year increase of 30%, putting more and more young people out of the housing market. The price of gas this morning at Costco in Barrie was $1.488. A year ago, it was $1.068. This is not a false narrative. Families and seniors are anxious about the growing cost of groceries, heating and life. Their budgets are being stretched.
Affordability anxiety is real and Canadians feel it getting worse. The Liberals have created this problem. Why are they not solving it? Is it because their rich friends are getting rich by—
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- Feb/3/22 2:55:46 p.m.
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The hon. Minister of Housing.
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- Feb/3/22 2:55:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, since we came into government, we have invested almost $30 billion in affordable housing measures.
My hon. friend talks about help for Canadians. Why did Conservatives vote against the Canada housing benefit, which is delivering real money into the pockets of Canadians to help them with rent? Why did they vote against the first-time homebuyer incentive, which is about making sure that Canadians have access to their dream of home ownership? Why did they vote against the rapid housing initiative, which has housed over 10,000 households and lifted people's lives up and enabled them not just to get by, but to get ahead?
We know what works. The Conservatives have no credibility on this issue.
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- Feb/3/22 2:56:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Ottawa has issued a call for tenders for a vendor to collect location data from all citizens' cellphones, without their knowledge, and share it with the Public Health Agency of Canada once it is anonymized. The deadline for the tendering process is tomorrow.
I do not want to be alarmist, but we must be vigilant in the face of such a lack of transparency. At the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics meeting on Monday, following a Bloc Québécois initiative, all parties of the House, including the Liberal Party, called for the tender to be suspended. I repeat, the deadline is tomorrow.
Will the minister suspend the tender, yes or no?
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- Feb/3/22 2:57:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his question.
He is quite right to emphasize the importance of protecting people's privacy, especially in the context we have been living in for some time now, where privacy is not only a concern for most Canadians, but also requires concrete action and important discussion on the part of the Canadian government.
That is why, in just a few minutes, I will be speaking with members of the committee to explain why these data are confidential, private, disaggregated and anonymized, and why they are so important to the Canadian government.
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- Feb/3/22 2:57:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Bloc Québécois is not questioning the Public Health Agency of Canada's motives.
What we want is time. We want time for the ethics committee to make sure this move to collect massive amounts of personal data protects people's right to privacy. The tendering process closes tomorrow. The committee does not have time to investigate.
If there is one principle Health Canada should be thoroughly familiar with, it is the precautionary principle. Will the Minister suspend the tender, yes or no?
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- Feb/3/22 2:58:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we have been adhering to the precautionary principle right from day one with respect to COVID‑19. We have applied it to protecting personal information, of course, as well as to protecting people's health and safety.
Sadly, tens of thousands of Canadians have died in the past 22 months, and people have had to forgo hundreds of billions in employment income. There is so much fear, so much worry. Families are suffering so much. That is why we have to protect both safety and privacy.
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- Feb/3/22 2:58:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we all know that the Prime Minister is not concerned about monetary policy, but Canadians are.
I ran into my constituent, Anousha, at the grocery store in January. She was close to tears, and frankly scared about how she was going to get her family through in heat and meat all this winter. The price of gas for Anousha to get her from work to her kids' school is, wait for it, $1.78 a litre in B.C. There is no false narrative there.
Will the government tell us what plan it has to dry Anousha’s tears?
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- Feb/3/22 2:59:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have already spoken about something Canadians understand, which is that inflation is a global phenomenon.
We understand that affordability is a challenge for many Canadians. Let me talk about what our government is doing to help. A single mother with two children will receive up to $13,660 from the Canada child benefit. An average family in Saskatchewan will receive nearly $1,000 from the climate action incentive. Seniors received an extra $500 through the GIS this summer, and we are increasing OAS by 10%.
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- Feb/3/22 3:00:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, people living on a fixed income in my riding cannot afford to live.
With the Liberals' policies driving up the cost of home heating, their trucker mandates driving up food prices, the out-of-control escalation in the housing market, which they have not addressed, and the CERB GIS issue, which is still not fixed, people are being driven into homelessness.
When will the Liberals quit increasing the carbon tax, roll back the mandates and take action to help struggling Canadians?
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- Feb/3/22 3:00:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member opposite spoke about people living on a fixed income, so let me remind the member that seniors received an extra $500 through the GIS this summer, and we are increasing the OAS by 15%. As I announced in the fall update, we are making a one-time payment to support seniors who qualify for the GIS who were challenged because they received the CERB.
Let me talk about students. They will save more than $3,000 through our plan to eliminate federal interest on student and apprentice loans. On child care, I could say more—
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- Feb/3/22 3:01:38 p.m.
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The hon. member for Calgary Shepard.
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- Feb/3/22 3:01:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Jodi in my riding of Calgary Shepard is the latest victim of the Liberal cost-of-living inflation. She is on a fixed income and got her January, 2022, ENMAX bill, which was $638 for her utilities. That was a $200 increase over the last month. She said that this was absurd, and she is right. It is absurd. She said, “This is tough. It is like another mortgage payment.”
I would ask the government this: Is she another victim of Justinflation?
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- Feb/3/22 3:02:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will tell the member what is exactly like another mortgage payment for a young family with children: exorbitant fees for early learning and child care. That is why we are so proud to be putting in place a plan to make early learning and child care affordable across the country, including in Alberta where costs will go down 50% this year.
What I do not understand is how the Conservatives have the temerity to talk about affordability, but they campaigned on killing our early learning and child care plan.
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- Feb/3/22 3:02:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my riding of Sudbury has a long, proud mining history.
Canada has the potential to become a world leader in critical minerals.
Could the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry give us an update on the critical mining strategy the government is developing?
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- Feb/3/22 3:03:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question and for the great work she does on behalf of her constituents in Sudbury.
As the member said, Canada has a considerable competitive advantage when it comes to critical minerals. That is why we are developing a pan-Canadian critical minerals strategy with the Minister of Natural Resources to position Canada as the leader in exploring, extracting, processing and producing, so that we can become a global leader and develop a battery manufacturing ecosystem here in Canada.
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