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Mr. Adam Chambers (Simcoe North, CPC)

Feb/9/22 4:41:25 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I feel like a baseball player who steps up to the plate after somebody has hit a home run, but I will do my best to follow the hon. member for Carleton. It is my honour to rise today and speak to Bill C-8, which is the economic and fiscal update implementation act of 2021. The bill touches on several different topics, but I would like to focus on a few critical elements related to farmers, housing and what this bill represents overall. For farmers, this bill quite simply is an acknowledgement that the government's approach has been wrong. It recognizes the harm of its carbon tax on farmers, but there is just one problem. The remedy does not go nearly far enough. Instead of discounting the carbon tax at the point of sale, the government is attempting to introduce a complicated rebate method. It puts an additional burden on farmers to collect their receipts, and at the end of the year they will get a fraction of what they paid in carbon tax back. A tax credit is not good enough. Farmers deserve much more than that. What is the science-based justification for treating diesel and gas differently from natural gas and propane? I hope that all members in the House understand exactly how important farmers are to this country. When we live in cities and do the majority of our travelling by plane, if we take a look down what we see are beautiful farms covering the countryside. For many rural communities across this country, farming was the reason they sprang up, and it is the reason they continue to exist today. Farming is one of the things Canada is known for internationally. Let me quote the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance, which states, “Canada is the fifth largest exporter of agricultural and agri-food products in the world after the EU, U.S., Brazil, and China”, and “over 90% of Canada’s farmers are dependent on exports”. Our farmers are competing with farmers from around the globe. It is a global industry, and farmers across the country, including in my riding, check the prices of global commodities, which help them determine and decide what to plant. They then follow international news to inform them of the best times to sell their products. A drought in Germany means farmers know their canola is likely to rise due to supply and demand factors. When the carbon tax was initially announced, farmers were concerned. They knew they could not raise prices like other industries can. There was no way they could reduce the amount of fuel they were using, and increased costs come directly from their bottom line. That means they reduce the amount of money farmers can take home to their families at the end of the year, and the amount of money farmers have available to pay workers. If it was not clear, farmers use a lot of fuel. A large tractor can hold 400 gallons of it. Thankfully, the minister understood that taxing diesel and gasoline was a non-starter, but that is not the only fuel that farmers use. Propane and natural gas are critical to farming. Natural gas and propane are cheap and efficient ways to heat and cool large buildings for many farmers, whether these are the shops they do repair work in or the places where livestock live in the cold winter months. These fuels are vital to selling most crops because of how farmers dry their products. Before something like corn can be shipped to market, it must be within a specific moisture range. It costs thousands of dollars to dry every month. Last night, I spoke with a few farmers in my riding. They think this bill is quite clearly not doing enough. They sent me a copy of a few bills. I have a copy of a bill with me here. Just for the month of October to November, a natural gas bill for the farmer was almost $58,000. The carbon tax on that bill was $13,000. That is an unbelievable additional cost added to the monthly cost of operating that farmer's enterprise. Another farmer, Will, in my riding spends $40,000 to $50,000 some months on fuel. This huge expense to farmers is why the Ontario Federation of Agriculture has been calling on the government to rethink the carbon tax application to farms. In March, the federal government needs to understand this, and to work to lessen the negative impacts of the carbon tax on the ability of farmers in Ontario to compete in both domestic and international markets. They may have asked for our understanding because it appears the government does not understand how much damage this is doing. That is perhaps why the Minister of Agriculture felt it was appropriate to say that the carbon tax was not significant for farmers after it was introduced. I would like to point out that, like the carbon tax, it is a common theme with the government to not listen to Canadians when developing policy choices. This is where I would like to thank my hon. colleague, the member for Northumberland—Peterborough South, for all of his work on the farm carbon tax file. He said the tax was crippling agriculture. Without his work, the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food may have continued to believe the carbon tax was insignificant. The member for Northumberland—Peterborough South called for an exemption to the carbon tax and put forward a bill to do just that for natural gas and propane, but with an unnecessary election called, that bill died with the last Parliament. The tax credit proposed is complicated, it is onerous and it does not make it equitable with other fuels. There is an excellent solution here to help the farmers. It is quite simple and it is not in this bill. The solution is to provide a full exemption at the point of sale. A similar criticism can be directed at the government on the proposed tax on vacant properties with a national annual 1% tax on the value of non-resident, non-Canadian-owned residential real estate that is considered to be vacant or underused. That is very complicated. In the last election, housing was a major theme. Our party, the Conservatives, put forward a plan to limit and ban foreign investors not living in or moving into Canada from purchasing homes for a two-year period. This plan was well received. Really what we are asking for is a two-year pause to let everyone take a break so we can curb some of the off-the-record demand we see for homes that are driving the prices up for everyone else. When we talk about housing, the government likes to point to a commitment to bring in a beneficial ownership registry, but like many Canadians, I am skeptical that the government will deliver on this commitment. It is absent from this bill and the government has a long history of promising something and failing to deliver. The bill represents a disconnect that seems to have taken hold of the government. It is a disconnect between government spending and the consequences of that spending. The only policy solution the government has is to spend more money. That is the only solution that it has proposed over these last two years. In fact, it is the only policy solution it has proposed since 2015, since coming into government. When COVID first arrived, it was unprecedented. Although I was not in this chamber at the time, I was pleased to see all parties working together for the benefit of Canadians to make sure businesses, families and all of us had the support we needed to get through the pandemic. However, that time has passed and experts are warning the government to stop the rampant spending and pointing to the effects that spending has on inflation. We need a credible, fiscal plan with a focus on growth, not on redistribution, that acknowledges the risk that additional spending represents to Canadians. I believe the buck has to stop somewhere. The House cannot keep signing off on billion-dollar pieces of legislation without a plan to find some savings or a plan for how to pay for it. There needs to be a debate where we can find savings to offset some of these new expenditures, which might be worthwhile. That is the very least the government could do. In fact, I would propose that the government, for every new spending measure it brings forward, finds an offset savings somewhere else. This mountain of debt is not the legacy of COVID that we wish to leave for our children. They deserve better than this.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Feb/9/22 4:50:28 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, it was only a couple years ago we heard the Conservatives stand up and give a lot of speeches about the carbon tax, saying it was bad. Then they minted a brand-new, shiny leader. It was not that long ago he was inside the chamber where the position they campaigned on was that they were in favour of a price on pollution. That is what they said. Somewhere they had a flip and they are now in favour of it. Based on the discussions and the debate so far on Bill C-8, they are like a fish out of water and they are flipping and flopping all over. Is it the member's opinion that the Conservatives are going back to their Reform ways and adopting a policy position against the environment in support of not having a price on pollution?

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Mr. Adam Chambers

Feb/9/22 4:51:31 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I do not know if it was just luck, but I am quite happy to answer another question from the hon. colleague, as he asked a question of me on my last speech. Talking about carbon tax is really cold comfort to a farmer who is paying $13,000 a month in carbon tax. Where is that money coming from? I would like to ask this member about the farmers he has spoken to. This is what we are talking about, the impact of a carbon tax on a farmer. It is important to recognize that some of these individuals and business owners cannot afford to keep spending and paying the tax increases. Therefore, we on this side of the House are going to continue to stand up for farmers and fight against a carbon tax that does not work.

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Ms. Kristina Michaud (Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, BQ)

Feb/9/22 4:52:26 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. I heard him say that the government is spending too much and needs to look at where it can cut back. I have a suggestion for him. The government spends billions of dollars a year on oil and gas subsidies even though it has very ambitious climate targets to reduce greenhouse gases by 40% to 45%. It will never meet these targets if it continues to subsidize the oil industry. What does the member think about that? Does he agree that the government could cut the subsidies to the oil and gas industry?

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Mr. Adam Chambers

Feb/9/22 4:53:05 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, when we are talking about subsidies to the oil and gas industry, we need to have a much more fulsome and honest debate about what represents a subsidy. The truth is that the oil and gas sector represents a significant economic driver for this country and has provided much of the wealth, economic progress and productivity that we have seen in this country over the last generations. I would propose, in addition to considering all spending measures, that it has been over 10 years since the government has done any kind of review of its spending through any kind of efficiency review. There is plenty of money for the government to look at to see where we can find savings to spend on the priority areas. As I mentioned, there might be some really good priorities that we should be funding, but we can find the savings for that, going forward.

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Ms. Rachel Blaney (North Island—Powell River, NDP)

Feb/9/22 4:54:10 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, one of the things, as the seniors spokesperson for the NDP, that I have been fighting for that I did not see in this fiscal update was an actual commitment to the seniors who lost their GIS because of the clawback by the government. The most vulnerable seniors, working seniors across this country have lost everything in some cases. I am talking to seniors who have lost their homes and are living in vehicles. I have talked to seniors who cannot afford medication. I heard a story not too long ago about a senior who could not afford healthy meals and could not afford their diabetes medication and, as a result, lost their life because of this GIS clawback. I wonder if this member could speak to that and his feelings about what we need to do to treat the seniors of this country more respectfully.

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Mr. Adam Chambers

Feb/9/22 4:54:58 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for all of her hard work on this topic and making sure that it is rightly addressed. This was a mistake by the government, in a fairly complicated system, that imposed on seniors a difficulty in terms of the GIS clawback. I definitely support the proposals put forward in the House to right that wrong. However, it should be done very quickly, and it needs to be done immediately and not wait until June or July.

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Mr. Eric Duncan (Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, CPC)

Feb/9/22 4:55:38 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I am rising today to respond to the government's economic update, formally called Bill C-8. I have had the opportunity over the last few weeks, since the House came back, to address a few of the important economic situations that I feel is putting our country under enormous strain right now. I will use my time to talk about two key themes that I am hearing about repeatedly, over and over, and it is not just among constituents in my riding. It is a loud and clear message coming from every part of this country. I will start with housing. When the Liberal government came to power in 2015, the average cost to purchase a home in Canada was $435,000. If we fast forward to today, we are getting to the point of nearly $800,000 on average. That is an 85% increase in housing prices over six years, 25% in many areas in the last year alone. Many people say, or the government will argue, that this is an international phenomenon. That is absolutely not true when we look at the degree and the severity of the housing crunch our country faces. Bloomberg has reported that Canada has the second-worst housing bubble in the entire world. We localize that. Part of our job is to bring the stories and examples from our communities here to the floor of the House of Commons. In question period, I highlighted the situation we are facing in Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, the area in eastern Ontario I am proud to represent. I am grateful to the Cornwall and District Real Estate Board for keeping statistics. They show we have basically doubled the housing crisis in the Cornwall area over the course of the last five years. We saw one month's average price was Over $400,000. One real estate agent told me that this is not uncommon. Supply continues to be a major challenge. Who wants to sell their home? Yes, money can be made, but where else will people go? Supply is a challenge and pricing on that everywhere is a challenge. The number of bids on one house was 13 bids in four days. Talk to any real estate agent, and they expect that problem to continue into this year and beyond, unfortunately. One thing I want to do is to put on the record some of the feedback I have heard in my riding. We talk about housing prices, which impacts people getting into home ownership. I have heard a number of examples of 30- to 35-year-olds living in their parents' basement with a full-time job trying to save up to buy a house. If they can afford the mortgage, they cannot afford the risk of the mortgage rates going up in the coming years. One of the other things we need to make sure of when we are talking about housing, a key aspect of our quality of life, is the rental market as well. Rental prices are rising across the country, including in my community of Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, be it in Winchester, Cornwall, Lancaster, Morrisburg or any point in between. Supply is very low and prices are going up astronomically. A property manager told me this week that there was a three bedroom rental for $1,400 a month plus utilities. I do not know if it was a house or an apartment, but they had 127 applications in one week. This is not sustainable. People will ask us what we can do at the federal level. At the federal level we have been advocates of finally tackling money laundering in this country. Canada has a reputation, which is growing and not diminishing, of being an opportunity for money laundering in our real estate market. We need to ban foreign investment very clearly in this heated market. Another constructive idea is this. As opposed to banning investment in the real estate market completely, foreign investment should be directed to building apartment rentals and units to help that market as well. The government's economic approach to this is wrong. It says what it is going to do is spend billions and billions more dollars to give people more money to have equity to buy a house. The economics show this is the wrong way. All it is going to do is further inflate the housing market. When we have 17 people bidding on a house and they know they can maybe get more assistance, it is going to take that $400,000 average in the Cornwall area and make it over half a million, I am sure. The optimism in our housing market in this country has never been lower. It has started, it is here now and it will be continuing because of the bad pieces of legislation and fiscal policy the government is proposing. The government put $400 billion of new debt, cheap money, into the market. We see a direct correlation with the time frame of that and the negative effect it has had on our housing markets. I also want to talk today, as we talk about economics and fiscal updates, about how this should be a happy time, an optimistic time, in our country right now. We are seeing countries around the world present plans and updates to get past this pandemic, open up, get rid of mandates, provide a plan and give people optimism, from an economic and fiscal perspective and from a mental health perspective. Look at where we are in this country today. In every single phone call I take, the tone and temperament in this country is getting worse. The Prime Minister's language and rhetoric is unacceptable. People are more divided, more angry, more bitter and are getting increasingly pessimistic about the tone and dialogue in this country at a time when it could be the opposite. I am proud to say I am vaccinated. People have heard me in the House and on social media encourage people to get vaccinated. It is a positive that we are one of the most vaccinated countries in the entire world. Millions of people have gotten booster shots and in February 2022 cases are going down. We are going in the right direction. People should be hearing from the Prime Minister a plan to lift mandates. When it comes to travel, we are the only G7 country that has the outdated testing practices in place. People are getting more frustrated and more pessimistic. We should be presenting a plan and a timeline and giving hope, like numerous other allied and similar countries around the world are doing. We can look to the south and see Democrats and Republicans alike, as well as governors, giving hope and optimism, showing a light at the end of the tunnel, telling people it is getting better, giving them some relief with regard to their mental health and getting people back to work. We have a paralyzed political environment in the country because the Prime Minister decides, if people want to open up, if they want to get back to normal, if they want to live their lives and get their freedom back, to tarnish everybody and say they are racist or they are misogynist or some other disrespectful comment. I am hearing over and over again back home that this needs to end. We are a wonderful country. Everybody I speak to is proud to be Canadian, but they are extremely frustrated by the lack of leadership and the tone that is coming from the Prime Minister. As a matter of fact, as opposed to what everybody else is doing in terms of opening up and giving that optimism, still on this table is a Prime Minister who, through the words of his caucus members, two of whom have rightfully and thankfully stepped forward, is doubling down on division and spreading, I believe, further disunity in the country. They are actually talking about an interprovincial mandate for truck drivers. What does that mean? It means putting it in place at every single border, in every single province of this country. Read the room. The science is not there and Canadians are not there. I oppose this legislation. I oppose the direction the government is taking. I will stand up to make sure we get back our freedoms, get opened up and finally get back to normal once again. It has been long enough.

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Ms. Ruby Sahota (deputy government whip, Lib.)

Feb/9/22 5:05:16 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I thought I could agree with a lot of aspects of the hon. member's speech. We need to work on housing across party lines. However, near the end of his speech, I started hearing the rhetoric we constantly hear from the opposition. He is labelling the leader of this country as the one who is cranking up the rhetoric, but I would argue it is really coming from the other side. Canadians are onside with getting vaccinated. If we were not united, we would not have the great numbers we have. Canada has done so well through this pandemic, and it is because of the leadership that has been shown by the Prime Minister and by this government. Would the member not agree that Canadians are on board with health measures, that Canadians want to be safe and that Canadians want consistent messaging from their government?

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Mr. Eric Duncan

Feb/9/22 5:06:13 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, we are one of the most vaccinated countries in the entire world. That should mean that at this point in the game, with the science and the data that are available to us, we should be opening up and getting back to normal. People should be getting back to work. What people see is a deliberate strategy to politicize the pandemic, to give fear, to stigmatize people, to make it appear that we cannot open up, and we hear it not from me or from the opposition, but from the Liberals' own benches. I will say it again: Read the room. Canadians followed the health advice. They have been double- or triple-vaccinated. They followed the rules and they are seeing what is happening around the world, which is opening up, getting back to a semblance of normalcy and getting past COVID once and for all. The time has come to start doing that.

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Mr. Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe (Lac-Saint-Jean, BQ)

Feb/9/22 5:07:12 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I just loved my hon. colleague's speech. I believe he spoke from the heart. He was very sincere. One of the things he talked about was division. I have to agree with him on that. Because of this government's policies, we are seeing a lot of division right now all across Quebec and Canada. However, one thing we all agree on is what was left out of the economic update: health transfers. I think my colleague will agree with me. The feds did not increase health transfers even though 85% of Canadians want them to, even though the premiers of Quebec and all the provinces and territories want them to up health transfers. Everyone, including all the opposition parties here, wants higher health transfers. There is nothing in there about it. My colleague talked about leadership, but I have not heard from any Conservative Party members yet that they support the request by the premiers of the provinces and Quebec to raise transfers to 35%. Will my colleague be the first member of the Conservative caucus to show some leadership and tell me he supports Quebec and the provinces' request to boost health transfers to 35%?

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Mr. Eric Duncan

Feb/9/22 5:08:22 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from the Bloc for that intervention and comment. I agree with him. I laughed in the House the other day as we were talking about this legislation. A member on the government benches said they had had 35 meetings with premiers across the country in the past couple of years. The premiers' number one ask for the entire time was a permanent increase to health care transfers to allow them to build up surge capacities that we need, not just during COVID, but in the winter months every year. One thing that has been near and dear, going back to my days as a mayor in our region, is long-term care. We need to be making more capital investments in improving quality of care. I will agree with the Bloc Québécois that we need permanent significant increases in our health care transfers. The government has done everything but promise that. That is the number one demand of provinces; the government is far from it. Again, at this point in the game, that should be the core and foundation of what should be in an economic and fiscal update. It is not.

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Mr. Richard Cannings (South Okanagan—West Kootenay, NDP)

Feb/9/22 5:09:30 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I really appreciated the member's comments on the supply of housing. What I especially want to emphasize is the supply of housing that is affordable. We are so far behind. The federal Conservative and Liberal governments over the past 30 years got out of the affordable housing game. We are 500,000 units of affordable housing behind where we should be, and the NDP has put forward a proposal that we need to build those 500,000 units now. I am wondering if the member can say the Conservatives support us, because it is affordable housing that we really need, housing that everybody can move into to have a roof over their head.

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Mr. Eric Duncan

Feb/9/22 5:10:23 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I was involved in municipal politics for years and I know that housing supply is a municipal and provincial jurisdiction. However, I agree wholeheartedly that we need to increase housing supply in this country. That will help with affordability. We hear NIMBYism all the time: We need to get stuff built, just “not in my backyard”. I also say part of the challenge that we need to tackle nationally, provincially and municipally is the BANANA acronym of “build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything” and the CAVE mentality of “citizens against virtually everything”. We need to start working together at all levels around transit planning, around all these different factors. That will help to raise the private sector affordable housing supply. It is the number one thing we can do, and I appreciate the member's intervention on that point.

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Mr. Pat Kelly (Calgary Rocky Ridge, CPC)

Feb/9/22 5:11:15 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bill C-8, an act to implement certain measures included in the fall economic and fiscal update. This debate comes amid a real crisis of leadership in Canada. We know the Prime Minister called a summer election that Canadians did not want, and by cleverly sowing enough division and fear in just the right places, he managed to squeak out another minority government with the same willing partners in the Bloc and the NDP. He claimed that the 2021 election was necessary because we were at the most transformational moment since 1945, and that he would need a new mandate to implement a bold new agenda befitting a grand historical moment. Once elected, with the same partners who were already giving his government a free hand to do anything he wanted, what did the Prime Minister do that was so transformational that it required an election and a fresh mandate? He did absolutely nothing. He waited weeks before making a few tweaks to his cabinet. Then he waited a few more weeks before finally reconvening Parliament, delivered a bland, recycled Speech from the Throne, and eventually, the week before Christmas, tabled what he was still referring to as the fall economic statement. What was in this much-delayed update? What worthy, once-in-a-lifetime transformational programs required a new mandate from an election to implement? We saw absolutely nothing. The statement was a continuation of the same trajectory the government has been on both since and before the COVID crisis began. The fall economic statement shows that the government is continuing down the path that it has long walked of out-of-control spending, higher taxes and continuing inflation that threatens to trigger a spiral of higher prices for consumers, higher interest rates, higher mortgage payments for consumers and higher debt service costs for governments, which will eventually mean higher taxes and service program cuts. This is the trajectory we are now on and it began long before COVID. Canadians are facing an affordability crisis. Inflation is now the highest it has been in decades. Families can expect their grocery costs to increase by $1,000 this year. For millions of Canadians, this means hard choices about what they will do without. The vast majority of Canadians do not have an extra $1,000 a year to spend on groceries. Before the pandemic, nearly half of Canadians were virtually broke after paying all of their monthly obligations, and they simply cannot absorb higher food costs. There is the cost home heating. This is an absolute life necessity in Canada. Nobody in Canada, not even on the west coast, can simply tough it out in the winter and just put on a sweater when it gets cold. When it does get cold, and it gets bitterly cold in every part of Canada, Canadians need reliable and affordable energy to heat their homes, and the government slapped an ever-increasing carbon tax on home heating costs for millions of Canadians. Transportation is also more expensive; gasoline is more expensive. This is also due in part to the carbon tax. This cost affects everyone, whether they own a car or not, whether they drive or take the bus. It makes driving to work more expensive, it makes bus passes more expensive and it puts pressure on municipalities, which have increasing costs to operate police, fire, ambulance, waste collection and transit vehicles. These higher costs have resulted in higher property taxes or cuts in services, and this will continue. Nowhere is the increased cost of living and inflation crisis more obvious than in Canada's housing market. A true crisis in affordable rent and home ownership has deeply taken root in Canada under the current government. It became much worse during the COVID crisis, and this bill does not give hope to would-be homebuyers or renters. In fact, it is a continuation of the very policies that have pushed home ownership out of reach for young families. COVID has had a devastating effect on the Canadian economy, resulting in a significant drop in GDP and massive job losses, yet the price of residential real estate has gone up, and not just by a little. The Canadian real estate market saw the most spectacular run-up in home prices ever seen. The average price of a Canadian home went up 30% in the middle of an economic contraction with massive job losses. How could that possibly happen? Was there a massive collapse in other asset classes to offset a rush of money into residential real estate? No. Stock markets also enjoyed a spectacular run during COVID, so where did the money come from? Can there now be no doubt that massive deficits, facilitated and enabled by central banks that massively expand the money supply by buying the government's debt with newly created money, inflate the value of assets without actually creating any real wealth? It is Justinflation. This bill, with its deficits and the absence of credible fiscal anchors or an acknowledgement of the inflation crisis, is a doubling down on the previous fall economic statement and last year's budget. There is nothing to give Canadians hope for a future where there will be affordable homes, manageable costs for basic necessities, relief from taxes or the better public services they want and need. There is nothing in this statement to give Canadians confidence that their leaders are prudent managers of the nation's finances. In fact, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has pointed out that the government's own stated rationale for the billions in additional spending contained in the update no longer exist. The PBO has also pointed out that since the pandemic began, billions of dollars have gone into non-COVID new spending programs. Furthermore, beyond the dollars and cents, the PBO has pointed out that the government is struggling with basic fiscal transparency. The PBO stated: This year both the Annual Financial Report and Public Accounts were published on December 14, 2021, the latest publication since 1993-94. Comparatively, Canada was among the last of the G7 countries to publish their financial accounts for the 2020-21 fiscal year. The PBO goes on to point out that the federal public accounts are published later than most provincial and territorial public accounts and that “Canada falls short of the standard for advanced practice in the International Monetary Fund’s [fiscal] reporting guidelines”. In some respects, these quotes from the PBO about basic competence and transparency might be the most disturbing part of all. For six years, the government has been increasingly paralyzing the country with incompetence. We watched a government just shrug off payment systems that do not pay, procurement systems that do not procure and create regulatory systems designed to kill projects. It dithered for years with a non-decision on Huawei, jeopardizing national cybersecurity. It defied parliamentary orders. It has presided over the resignation of eight generals, one clerk of the privy council and a governor general. Now we are adding the inability to file timely fiscal reports to the incredible litany of muddled and incompetent government. Today, as we debate the implementation legislation for the fall economic statement, Canada is as divided as it has ever been. The government has long pitted east versus west, urban versus rural, and now the vaccinated against the unvaccinated. The government operates under an “us versus them” mentality that has finally and courageously been called out by one of their own this week. To conclude, I will not support this bill. It is a matter of confidence in the government, and I have none.

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Ms. Ruby Sahota (Brampton North, Lib.)

Feb/9/22 5:20:09 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague talked a lot about the housing issue but has not mentioned anything about how supply has decreased during COVID-19. He talked a lot about government spending but has not talked about why that spending was necessary. I would like to know which of the benefits the member would have liked to see cut. Does he not agree with the business supports? Does he not agree with supporting seniors? There are measures in this bill as well that would help curb the buying of homes and residential properties. Does he not agree with that? Inflation is not just a problem here in Canada but is a global problem right now. The supply chain is the main reason for causing this problem. I would like the member to give me his comments on that.

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Mr. Pat Kelly

Feb/9/22 5:21:06 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, there is a lot there, and I will do the best I can with the time I have. To start with the last point, yes, indeed there is inflation in other parts of the world, but in no other advanced economy is it like it is in Canada. This is a Canadian phenomenon compared with our peer countries. On housing, yes, indeed supply is an issue. We have seen nothing from this government to meaningfully address supply. It is quite the opposite. We have a continuation of regulation, and that goes to other levels of government as well, but certainly there are supply issues here. However, what the government has done is inflate the entire asset class with its deficits that were facilitated through the creation of new money, which I addressed. With respect to programs, yes, indeed we supported all of the support measures that were necessary to combat COVID. However, as the member might have noted in my speech, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has pointed out that the criteria for the stimulus portions, and the government's own rationale for them, have disappeared, yet the expenditures remain. Finally, I would like to thank the member for participating in the debate. It is nice to see somebody besides the member for Winnipeg North and the member for Kingston and the Islands actually doing their job and speaking in the House of Commons.

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Ms. Monique Pauzé (Repentigny, BQ)

Feb/9/22 5:22:45 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Calgary Rocky Ridge denounced the Liberal government's lack of innovative policies or programs. Last spring's budget included measures to crack down on tax evasion, but nothing came of it. There is nothing about that in Bill C‑8. Would ambitious measures to deal with tax havens not give people the hope that my colleague was talking about and restore their confidence in the government's finances?

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Mr. Pat Kelly

Feb/9/22 5:23:22 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely right. This government has spent a lot of air time during committee meetings, and occasionally in the chamber, paying lip service to the problem of money laundering in Canada, which is a very serious problem, and we see it in the real estate industry. It is not a new phenomenon, but it is one that this government has failed to adequately address. I would agree with the member on that point.

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Mr. Bernard Généreux (Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, CPC)

Feb/9/22 5:24:06 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I just saw on Facebook that in Rivière‑du‑Loup, in my riding, the price of gas is $1.66 a litre for regular and almost $1.90 a litre for premium. That is unprecedented in Canada. My colleague referred to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who has said that it is time to stop spending money and that it is not getting us anywhere because inflation keeps soaring. I would like his opinion on that.

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