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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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Mr. Pat Kelly

Feb/9/22 5:24:39 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the member completely, and I am sure that in his riding most people rely on personal vehicles for transportation to get to work and back. There is no subway system in the member's riding, so the inflation impact, particularly on transportation, is a real problem for working people in Canada, and the PBO's concerns were well noted on the out-of-control spending.

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Hon. Michelle Rempel Garner (Calgary Nose Hill, CPC)

Feb/9/22 5:25:20 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, today we are debating a bill related to the fall economic update. I think we have to realize that the situation we are in right now is the context in which we are debating this bill. I have never seen our country more divided in my time in office, and I have never seen us in the kind of national crisis that we are in right now. We are now in year three of COVID. Every one of us in this House and every member listening has constituents who are tired, who are facing mental health crises, who want stability and certainty, who have lost jobs, who are trying to find labour. We have a big problem in this country right now. We are seeing civil unrest. I just feel that the legislation that the government is putting forward right now and the tone that the government is taking with these problems are not treating these things seriously. It is really easy for us to just assume that Canada is always going to be this place of wonderful, vibrant, inclusive pluralism that sees constant economic growth, but we cannot make that assumption. It actually takes work and it takes effort, and that effort is not deep political polarization and it is not making political hay out of crisis situations; it is actually trying to work with each other to come up with solutions. This bill does not recognize that point right now. My constituents are seeing out-of-control cost of living increases. I was just at the grocery store last night in my community, and I watched a woman pick up a container of chicken breasts and then put it back. She picked it up again and then she put it back. She picked it up again, and then she put it back and walked away. That is happening across demographics. People do not know if they can afford to pay for basic necessities, and this has changed in such a rapid period of time. This bill does not address that, because we are not addressing the underlying causes of inflation. We are not addressing the continued deficit spending that we have seen over the last couple of years during the pandemic. I really think that now is the time for a new approach. I believe we should not be debating any new budgetary measures without having a plan to end pandemic restrictions. I understand why we looked to restrictions at the very start of the pandemic. I think we did that for several reasons. The government needed time to figure out what COVID was, particularly as we were watching the body bags pile up in different parts of the country. There was a desire to try to contain COVID. We now know that is not possible. COVID zero is not possible. It is not a thing. We have to learn to live with it. Restrictions were supposed to buy us time to get vaccines and therapeutics. We have both. Thank God we have both. Restrictions were supposed to incent people to get vaccinated, and very many Canadians have been vaccinated and have been boosted, and I want to thank them for that. However, I would argue that after six months under many of these restrictions, the people who have not been vaccinated to this date have probably made a choice, and frankly, the political rhetoric around vaccination that we saw during the federal election campaign did nothing to help raise vaccination levels. All it did was divide our country further. My last point is that restrictions were ostensibly put in place to buy politicians at all levels of government time to build up capacity in our very broken health care system. On the first four points, we do not need restrictions anymore to do those things. On the fifth point, to build up capacity and deal with Canada's broken health care system, restrictions are not going to do that; only political will gets that done. This bill misses the mark, and I would like to see the federal government immediately put forward a plan to end pandemic restrictions. I think that would take the temperature down across the country, and it would also serve to give us a starting point to think about how we are recovering as a country from what has been collective trauma across our nation. That needs to be the starting point. The thing this bill does not address, which it really should have, given the amount of spending in it, is that point number five I just mentioned: how we are addressing Canada's broken health care system. I know a lot of this fourth round of restrictions was to do with worry about whether a few hundred emergent patients suffering from COVID would overload our ICUs across this country. I know health care is provincial jurisdiction. The federal government also has a convening role in a national crisis to ask provincial governments how we can help, how we can fix this problem and how we can support the doctors and nurses, who are rightly asking for solutions from all of us. We cannot point fingers at each other across levels of government and then expect Canadians to continue to sacrifice through restrictions and continued impingements on our freedom. We cannot keep expecting to divide Canadians, so I really hope the government will turn its attention to those types of forward-looking measures, when it comes to moving into a state of endemic management for COVID, figuring out how we can unite each other and figure out how we can have common ground and understand one another, rather than just using political rhetoric to try to drive wedges. I hope the federal government somehow uses its convening role to see how we can support the provinces and fix our broken health care system so this does not happen again. I hope the federal government commits to ensuring these types of restrictions we have seen over the last couple of years are not normalized and that we put safeguards around when the federal government can actually use these, so that Canadians are not sort of sitting is a state of suspended terror or uncertainty on when they are forward again. I hope the federal government actually puts some resources into ramping up the pandemic warning system. We should not have to be relying on data from the WHO and other areas. We should be having our own data to be able to figure out how we can best manage our borders. There are so many things we could be doing, but I feel this bill is a continuation of the status quo in the middle of a national crisis, rather than saying how we get out of that crisis and heal the rifts from the collective trauma our nation has gone through, and then focusing our efforts on rebuilding. The last few days and weeks have been difficult on every Canadian. I have gotten so many emails and calls from people of all political stripes and proclivities panicked and worried about the future, and it is our job here to give that stability and that sense of hope moving forward. I watched question period today, and we all have to do a lot better. The interim leader of the Conservative Party of Canada asked the Prime Minister to meet and has proposed a meeting across party lines with all the party leaders to figure out not only how we can move forward and how we can ensure that critical infrastructure is not being blockaded, but also how we can ensure that pandemic restrictions are removed. These are both reasonable to move forward, and they are what we are here to do. That is our jobs. We cannot keep trying to take a side one way or the other and try to think something is going to happen. There has to be an acknowledgement of an issue on both, and I do not see that happening here. This is less of an admonishment and more of an encouragement to all of my colleagues who are listening today, and to anyone who is listening at home. If we do not start taking these things seriously, we are going to keep seeing this spiral and disintegration. So many different generations have worked so hard to build our country up, not tear it down. It is our job here to make sure we do so. With that, I encourage my colleagues to work together across party lines to come up with solutions, take the temperature down and invest in our future.

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Ms. Ruby Sahota (Brampton North, Lib.)

Feb/9/22 5:35:21 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

I would say that we should be thanking the government for being able to manage in such difficult times. We were able to procure more than enough vaccines for our country. I know that this member was basically demanding that the government provide rapid tests to all the provinces. We did so. This fiscal update provides all of those measures. It provides for ventilation in schools. It asks, and we did ask, the provinces what they need. They needed funding to create vaccine passports at the time. They needed supports for their businesses. This fiscal update would do all of those things. I am a little tired of hearing, from the opposition, these extreme ideas. At the very beginning of the pandemic, the opposition members were saying to shut down all borders immediately. Now they want us to open—

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Ms. Ruby Sahota (Brampton North, Lib.)

Feb/9/22 5:35:21 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I found my colleague's speech to be quite interesting. First, I am a person of faith as well, and she thanks God for the rapid tests and vaccines this country has now procured. I know she was a big critic on whether we would be able to do all of those things.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Feb/9/22 5:36:18 p.m.
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I have to give the hon. member for Calgary Nose Hill the opportunity to answer.

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Hon. Michelle Rempel Garner

Feb/9/22 5:36:28 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I just want to thank my team and my caucus for standing behind me for over a year as I stood in the House as the official opposition critic for health. In the role of the opposition, during that time, we held the government to account. When we were not getting vaccines and other countries were, every day we were in the House, asking questions as to when they were coming, as well as in committee meeting after committee meeting. That is the role of the opposition: to put pressure on the government to make sure that it is delivering results for Canadians. In a functional Parliament, that is what we should be doing. I want to thank my colleagues in the Conservative Party for lifting me up during some tough times, and lifting my team up to get that job done. I am proud to say that. My colleague spoke in the past tense about measures that the government had taken, such as vaccine passports and these things. We have to be talking in the future tense. We have to be saying where we are, going forward. We cannot be looking in the—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Feb/9/22 5:37:25 p.m.
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We have to give more opportunity for questions. The hon. member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue.

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Mr. Sébastien Lemire (Abitibi—Témiscamingue, BQ)

Feb/9/22 5:37:33 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to see you in that chair. I thank my hon. colleague from Calgary Nose Hill for her speech. She was extremely critical of the government's lack of leadership and vision when it comes to health. I wonder if she could comment on what proposals she would make if she were sitting on the government side. Is it not time to provide funding to the provinces? There is a historic shortfall. Over the years, health transfers have declined from 50% to 22%. As a compromise, Quebec, the provinces and the territories have unanimously requested an immediate increase to health transfers to cover 35% of costs. Would my colleague support this measure?

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Hon. Michelle Rempel Garner

Feb/9/22 5:38:19 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague, who is always bright and good to work with. We need to have a much more robust response from the government on addressing Canada's broken health care system. Funding is certainly a large component of that. We need to make sure that the provinces are adequately funded. We also need to look at some of the significant learning that has occurred, and at the cracks that have been exposed in our health care system throughout the pandemic with a level of honesty and determination in order to fix it. We cannot sweep these problems under the rug. The Conservative Party of Canada had several ideas, in the last election, of what we needed to do. In the spirit of bipartisanship, I look forward to working with members of all political parties to see how we can fix this because we—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Feb/9/22 5:39:12 p.m.
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One last question, the hon. member for South Okanagan—West Kootenay.

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

Feb/9/22 5:39:19 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I know that the member for Calgary Nose Hill and I agree on a number of things. We agree that my riding makes very good wine, and I agree with her that Canadians are struggling to get by. There are Canadians who are not struggling to get by. Those are the billionaires of Canada, the ultrawealthy. Could the member comment on the NDP's idea that it is time for the ultrawealthy to pay their fair share, so that the tax burden of Canada is not on the shoulders of those who are struggling to get by? Would she agree that we need a wealth tax on the ultrawealthy, so that we can make sure the costs of the pandemic are shared equitably?

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Hon. Michelle Rempel Garner

Feb/9/22 5:40:08 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for raising one of the key economic engines of his riding, the wine industry. I certainly know that our party has several ideas for tax relief, around the escalator tax, to incentivize growth in that sector. I believe that all Canadians, particularly low-income Canadians right now, should be afforded some measure of tax relief, but particularly low-income Canadians to ensure that they can make—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Feb/9/22 5:40:37 p.m.
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Resuming debate, the hon. member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands.

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Mr. Jeremy Patzer (Cypress Hills—Grasslands, CPC)

Feb/9/22 5:40:42 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House once again. How do we begin to go over the country’s finances under the Liberal government? There is always so much spending and it is impossible to keep track of it all. It can give someone a headache if they try to keep up with it. Many of my fellow Conservatives are doing a great job of going through these spending items, showing how a lot of them do not make any sense and helpfully explaining how to handle Canada’s finances more effectively to get a better deal for the taxpayer. I think it needs to be said, as a general comment, that in difficult times it is actually more important, not less, to make sure that we are managing our finances carefully and with close attention. The government must not act like it received a blank cheque from Canadians. However, when we are dealing with unusually large amounts of money, and when our minds are easily distracted by the news and events surrounding us here in this country, the temptation is always there to fall into a spending spree and make impulsive decisions without clearly thinking about the future and the ramifications of the decisions we make. Everybody knows by now that we have entered a time of soaring inflation and supply chain shortages. Maybe it took an extra while for the Liberals to acknowledge it, because the warnings were coming from the official opposition, but they got there eventually and recognized that it was more than “Justinflation”. To a degree, some challenges were expected during all the uncertainty and real disruptions to do with COVID and two years of lockdowns. That is the sort of thing that has been affecting countries around the world, which has been the government’s favourite talking point for a little while. However, it is not the perfect excuse that the Liberals are trying to make it out to be. Their mandate for truckers crossing the border, for example, at a time when supply chains are fragile with moving goods, is only one of the latest examples of their wrong-headed and unbalanced policies. We are already behind 18,000 truckers, and the mandates are only further exacerbating that issue. The Prime Minister's inflammatory and extreme rhetoric has also not been helping. However, I am not so much speaking on national unity today. It is the economic side of these problems that is the focus of debating the bill in front of us right now. As far as handling COVID is concerned, the Liberals really have been normalizing lockdowns in practice. They have gone along as if it was a fallback or default position. Sometimes it seems as if they are stuck in the spring of 2020. The Liberals did not listen to feedback inside or outside of the House about supporting the provinces, strengthening their health care funding and providing all kinds of preventive measures as requested. The Conservatives demanded that they maximize all the incentives for businesses to hire and for more people to keep working, but now we find ourselves with ongoing labour shortages across different sectors. We are not out of the woods yet. Even though we do need to be prepared for the worst-case scenario, it is still concerning to see the government announce a local lockdown program when it has consistently lacked a balanced approach. It would be one thing if the government was caught off guard by a crisis and had trouble finding its way, but with the Liberals and their economic update, it is about so much more than just COVID. Our finances were not in good shape before 2020 because of the same government’s mismanagement. We started off weaker than we needed to be, and it is obvious that the Liberals have not learned anything and are not willing to correct the course. Over the last couple of years as a member of Parliament, I have had the chance to work on a few committees. In each of them, I have seen the same pattern up close. The government will make announcement after announcement for our future economy yet to come, while it does not hesitate to actively undermine our strongest sectors in the current economy. We cannot go on spending as much as we are if we do not have a strong economy to back it up. When we ask them practical questions about the most basic details of their dream economy, there is not an answer, because questioning them on it just kills the mood. The Liberals are shooting our country in the foot and asking questions about it later, but it is okay, as there is a buyback program for the proverbial gun anyway. They will happily bring in new restrictions on people’s lives through taxes and new laws, but they do not seem to care as much about making sure that ordinary life can function in their new utopia. First, they brought in their carbon tax, with no regard for the disproportionate impacts it has on rural areas, like the ones I serve, and the most vulnerable populations, even though their regulatory review admits it. It specifically singles out seniors living on a fixed income, but also single mothers, who are most at risk of experiencing energy poverty. As the carbon tax continues to escalate, The Liberals are looking to pile on the clean fuel standard, which has another carbon pricing mechanism attached to it. These people are only going to feel more and more crushed by the burden of the government's tax-heavy approach. However, there is no need to worry because they say they are preparing our economy for the future. They promise a boom for industry with electric vehicles and biofuels in Canada. Again, without a plan, it sounds too good to be true. A couple of days ago in committee, I followed up with the Minister of International Trade on a potential problem under CUSMA. Since coming into force in July of 2020, we have had a window of time to prepare for a requirement to regionally source 75% of lithium for EV batteries with minimal impacts on tariffs. If we are unable to do so there will be a massive increase in tariffs. With or without them, we could easily fall behind in this new industry, which appears to be crucial for the government's direction. What if it does not work out as well as expected? I asked the minister about it a year ago. She did not seem to know what it was, and with no clear answer since then I decided to bring it up again this week, one year later. I am still not sure if the minister is actually aware of it and it is hard to get anything done if one does not know what one might have to deal with. When it comes to new mines or resource projects in this area, industry has clearly said that the Liberal government's own impact assessment process is getting in the way and causing delays. The timelines for approval take way too long and it does not have to be this way. Our Canadian economy depends on resource development, the energy industry, specifically oil and gas, as a major contributor for work and wealth, but it is the same Liberal legislation, with an activist environment minister, that would aggressively shut it down while preventing the projects it will need to replace it. If the Liberals want to keep spending away, where will the money come from? This is not the only way Liberal policies are working at cross-purposes either. Ever since the Liberals first floated their idea of reducing fertilizer emissions by 30%, producers and industry have been deeply concerned that this would follow the European Union's model of restricting the total amount of fertilizer used. It went with a 20% hard-cap reduction on fertilizer usage. This could cause huge losses for crop production. Following its efforts, I raised this issue multiple times and the government has not ruled it out here in the House of Commons. Last fall, Meyers Norris Penny released a commissioned report on the estimated impact of such a policy in the coming years. By 2030, according to the report, losses of crop yields for corn, canola and spring wheat could total tens of millions of tonnes, costing up to nearly $48 billion to the Canadian economy. For Canadian agriculture, which is already a leading example of environmental efficiency and sustainability, this would be nothing short of devastating. Considering the estimated number of losses to crops, this would also create new problems for trade exports and disruptions to domestic or global supply chains. Price pressures with reduced supply can easily combine with inflation to make it worse. What makes it even worse yet is this. Part of the Liberals' plan for their new economy for the new future is going to be biofuels. We all know that both corn and canola are the main crops we are going to be growing for biofuels going forward. According to this report, the number of bushels that are going to be produced is going to massively drop and we are not going to be able to meet this demand to fuel the future set out in the Liberals' plan. Do members know what the government's response continues to be to all of this? It disagrees with the report, which is fair enough, except it has not even done its own impact studies or clearly laid out to farmers and producers what it is going to do. I was glad to hear it is looking at options besides heavily reducing fertilizer, but the main issue I am trying to raise today, and in the past, is that it continues to refuse to rule out the hard cap for the use of fertilizer. This whole time the government could have reassured us by saying it is not going to happen, but here we are again. It will not do it. The Liberals need to think twice about ruining their own plan for biofuels where there is going to be even more demand for canola. How will it work for our producers who are having a harder time growing it underneath this new regime it is putting in place? The input costs are already through the roof, both for seed, fertilizer and spray. Machinery costs are also through the roof. Somehow I do not think they understand the practical realities and decisions that our farmers have to consider. The government already is not taking the concerns about land used for food versus fuel seriously, but now it wants to play with the idea of restricting fertilizer. Despite all the uncertainties right now with inflation and supply chains in our economy, Canadians can be sure of at least one thing. The current Liberal government has been and will continue to be a disaster for our economy. It really could be so much better if it would only listen.

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Mr. Kody Blois (Kings—Hants, Lib.)

Feb/9/22 5:50:09 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, the member mentioned the economy during his remarks. I would remind him that, prepandemic, this government had resided over an economy where unemployment was at a 40-year low and our debt-to-GDP ratio was declining. During this pandemic we have been there to support businesses. Our job numbers are strong, as is our GDP, notwithstanding the challenges there. What I want to ask the member specifically is this. When I look at the Hansards from 2020 and 2021, he made a lot of mention of blockades and the economic impact they were having in his part of the country, and indeed elsewhere in the country. I have yet to hear the same type of language from him as sometime in 2020, calling for the protesters to go home. I have yet to hear that language. I will go on record right now to say it is important that the protesters go home, not only those here in Ottawa but also those in Windsor and in Coutts. Will the member take the opportunity to do the same thing on the record right now for his constituents and all Canadians?

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