SoVote

Apr/26/22 4:21:21 p.m.
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It is happening in my riding.

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Apr/26/22 4:21:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, carbon capture is indeed very important. Far from ruling out this option, perhaps we should be looking at how to move forward faster. The agriculture sector can play a very important role in carbon capture, in my humble opinion.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Apr/26/22 4:21:51 p.m.
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That is it for questions and comments, but I want to remind the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan that, as opposed to shouting out when people are speaking, he should wait until I ask whether there are questions and comments. It is not really respectful to be yelling when someone else has the floor.

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Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

Apr/26/22 4:22:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am going to start by acknowledging that we are here on the traditional territory of the Algonquin peoples. Meegwetch for tolerance and patience in the path of reconciliation. I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Mirabel. I am addressing the budget late this afternoon. There are things in the budget I like quite a lot, so I am going to start with the things I like quite a lot and then explain why I cannot possibly, in good conscience, vote for this budget. Among the things we like quite a lot, yes, is that we have the New Democratic Party's confidence and supply agreement. It has been a Green Party policy since 2015 that dental care is health care and should be part of our health care system, so we are pleased to see it in this budget. We also are pleased there is a repetition of some sort of aspirational goal to deliver pharmacare to Canadians. There is not enough in this budget for me to believe it yet. We want to see the actual path to pharmacare clearly laid out, and fast. I am very pleased to see a number of other items here, such as the follow through on child care. I suppose “I am old enough to remember” will be a theme in this speech. I start sentences with “I am old enough to remember”. I am old enough to remember 2005, when then minister Ken Dryden achieved what the now new government, which is not that new anymore, has done. Ken Dryden had gotten signed agreements with every province and territory to deliver affordable child care to every Canadian. Many years later it was derailed by the decision the NDP made in those days to defeat the Liberals and put Stephen Harper in place for a very long time. We lost Kyoto, we lost Kelowna, and we lost the child care plan in 2005 and the election in January 2006. I am really pleased child care is back. Affordable child care is going to make a difference to every Canadian family that has children and desperately needs to have child care. When I was a single mom, I earned $24,000 a year as executive director of the Sierra Club. I spent half of it on child care. The woman who was hired to do the child care in a program in the neighbourhood is a wonderful woman who became a good friend. My salary was split in half and I paid her through a child care program. Because she earned only $12,000, her child care for her children was free. I was making $24,000, and half of it was going to child care. These things are sort of unbelievable to people with good incomes, like those of us in this place, all of whom are paid so handsomely as members of Parliament. I do not take it for granted. I am pleased with much that is in this budget, and I am pleased to see the government keep its promises in a couple of areas. On housing, the thing that made me most pleased was to see co-op housing back on the agenda. It is not enough money; we need to do more, but there is $1.5 billion to bring back one of the most affordable, socially supportive ways that we can house ourselves, which is through co-ops. That is good. I know there are a lot of good intentions behind things like the tax measures against flipping. There are many good measures, including one of the promises, which was to bring in for the first time a searchable public registry for beneficial ownerships. Let us hope that helps deal with the problem of snow washing and of overseas interests buying up our housing. We still really need to deal with things like Airbnbs and the ability of people to buy homes, residential properties, and take them out of the marketplace. At the same time as they are making it harder to find affordable housing for Canadian families, they are undermining the tourism business, in which hotels and real B & Bs have to pay staff, buy insurance and be regulated. We need to protect our housing market from Airbnbs, but I also think we need to protect tourism industry employees and owners from the competition of Airbnbs. Let me move on to areas that were token and inadequate, and where we need to do so much more. It really was a broken promise on the mental health strategies and the need for mental health and addictions. The hon. member for Cariboo—Prince George has done so much good work on this. Why do we not have the suicide prevention line? Why do we not have supports for mental health in this budget? We should have seen them. Another key gap is the commitment that was made in the Liberal platform to put $1 billion toward fresh water. This budget is such a bitter disappointment. This title comes from The Hill Times and was signed by some of Canada's leading advocates for fresh water. Ralph Pentland, who used to run Environment Canada's freshwater programs, signed this article, as well as Oliver Brandes and Bob Sandford, who are eminent people in the field. The headline says it all: “Federal budget a failure when it comes to addressing the water crisis”. This is one of those sentences that starts with, “I am old enough to remember”. I am old enough to remember that, when I worked in Environment Canada in the 1980s, the Inland Waters Directorate in Burlington, Ontario had a staff of 1,250 people who did nothing but work on freshwater science and regulatory policy work. They had an annual budget of $60 million, so when this budget says the Liberals are going to provide $43 million over five years on fresh water and $8.7 million to the new Canada water agency, I would laugh if it was not so sad. It does not even begin to start adjusting dollars for inflation. This is an abject failure, and I do not know how this has happened when there is such urgency and when the government had already pledged to do this. The promise of a Canada freshwater agency is now more than two years old, and here we are with flooding and drought and fires. Water policy is also climate policy, and I want to just take a moment to say to the people of southern Manitoba, who are right now being walloped by climate crisis events, that a Canada water agency could help anticipate, prevent and adapt. I just want to give a shout-out to those people right now, because I know that in Manitoba things are very tough for many families. Also, in this budget there are things that are completely missing. There is nothing for ground transportation. Many people will say that is provincial jurisdiction, but so is municipal public transit. It was really great that the Harper government made the gas tax a permanent predictable fund for municipal transportation, but where are we as a federal Parliament in responding to Canadians from coast to coast who have lost their bus service, and whose service on VIA Rail is down to an occasional antique train that rumbles through? I am talking about between Vancouver and Toronto and Montreal to Halifax. We have not seen any significant investment in that ground transportation in at least a decade. All the money that has gone to VIA Rail in all these years has gone to the Windsor-Quebec corridor. That is great. We need decent train service in the Windsor-Quebec corridor, but we also need decent train service with spokes that run off this hub. We need bus service across Canada. Again, this is more than transportation and this is more than climate policy. This is justice. One of the key recommendations of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls was that people need to be able to get access to safe and affordable public transit so they are not hitchhiking. The most marginalized people in our society are forced into hitchhiking because we act like there is not a problem. If people want to get from Kamloops to Prince George, if they want to get from Kamloops to Vancouver or any of these routes, or if they want to get from Moncton to Campbellton, they have almost no way to travel if they do not own a car. Also, for seniors and for a lot of us, being forced to drive on unsafe roads, particularly during hazardous winter blizzards, to get to doctors' appointments does not suggest we are a wealthy industrialized society. In fact, our public ground transportation system is worse than in any developing country I have ever visited. Moving on to what else we need, there is nothing in here for the tourism sector, which I would submit has been the hardest-hit sector in the pandemic. What we hear is that there is going to be a tourism strategy developed, but there is no money in this budget for it. We really need to do something to make sure that since, and I will say it out loud, the pandemic is not over, small businesses in the tourism sector can survive. Why can I not vote for this budget? It is a complete failure in responding to what, three days earlier, was laid out by the IPCC. On April 4, the lead author said it was now or never. The panel never gave the option of later. It is now or never for a habitable planet, and this budget fails in that fundamental threat to our survival.

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Mr. Garnett Genuis (Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, CPC)

Apr/26/22 4:32:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, there is a lot I disagree with in my hon. friend's speech. I found, in particular, her denunciation of Airbnbs to be a little bit odd. They are a great, affordable opportunity, especially for families to travel, and they have more flexibility than hotels. I want to focus on the issue of carbon capture and storage, because the NDP, speaking previously, said that carbon capture and storage was unproven technology. I have news for the House. There is carbon capture and storage happening as we speak in my riding, in a project called Quest. I was at an open house last week for a project called Polaris that is entirely private-sector-funded. It benefits from credits, but it does not involve any direct spending by the government. Industry is making these investments now in carbon capture and storage, and there are carbon capture and storage projects that are up and running. They are working and they are capturing carbon. It is bizarre that some members say that we do not know if it works. It is happening. Could the member acknowledge the benefits of carbon capture and storage and the positive impact that it has had?

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Ms. Elizabeth May

Apr/26/22 4:33:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, first, in my riding, one of the reasons that local businesses have to close earlier and more often is that there is no affordable housing for workers to come in and use. A very real concern of local businesses in my riding is that places that used to rent to summer students and workers are no longer available because they are Airbnbs, so we can pursue that conversation later. Meanwhile, the difficulty with carbon capture and storage is that it works far less than advertised. It can sequester some carbon, but in no project around the world has it ever met its goals or targets. It is about the most expensive way, and one of the less reliable ways, to do what is needed to be done reliably, quickly and affordably.

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Mrs. Claude DeBellefeuille (Salaberry—Suroît, BQ)

Apr/26/22 4:34:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her beautiful speech. I know she cares about the most vulnerable people in our society.. I wanted to remind her that there is a large organization in Quebec called the Fédération de l'âge d'or du Québec, which brings together all people aged 55 and over, and that means 500,000 people. The FADOQ has asked the government to increase old age security payments for people aged 65 and over. The current government plans to increase it for people aged 75 and over. Can my colleague explain whether she agrees with the need to increase the old age security pension for seniors aged 65 and over? Why does she think there is absolutely no mention of this in the budget?

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Ms. Elizabeth May

Apr/26/22 4:35:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Salaberry—Suroît. I voted in favour of the Bloc Québécois budget amendment specifically for the reasons she outlined in her question. The Bloc Québécois added that we must have a concrete program to combat the climate emergency. As for the question of funding for our seniors, I do not have an answer to her question. Ignoring the needs of our seniors makes no sense.

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

Apr/26/22 4:35:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am wondering if the member could provide her thoughts. She started to talk about the child care program, and we do have a national child care program. Even though we at times see governments spend money, there are many derivatives that come out of that. That particular program will also generate revenue and it will also have a real, tangible impact on the lives of many. Can she just provide her thoughts on that?

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Ms. Elizabeth May

Apr/26/22 4:36:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as I reflected on in my statement, for virtually all of my daughter's childhood, I was a single mom, and if this program had been in place, it would have been much more affordable. Early childhood education and good child care are not just about parking your kid somewhere. They are about actually creating an enriched, educational experience for children, and it should be available to every Canadian child, regardless of the economic status of their parents or parent, and it is about time we brought this forward. It is catching up with many other countries in terms of the social safety net. Let us make sure we continue going forward. We know this was a she-cession. We know that a lot of people who quit their jobs were not the dads but the moms. This was not always, but a lot. We have a huge chunk of our workforce right now that is not able to go to work until they know for sure that they have reliable child care. This is something that was a long time coming, and I am really happy to see it.

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Mr. Jean-Denis Garon (Mirabel, BQ)

Apr/26/22 4:37:24 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague and friend from Saanich—Gulf Islands for sharing her valuable time with me. If I had to describe the thin little budget that was tabled three weeks ago, the phrase that would come to mind would be “missed opportunity”. I am not just talking about one missed opportunity, I am talking about a slew of missed opportunities. First, the pandemic should have alerted the government to the plight of seniors, to the fact that they are on fixed incomes and their purchasing power has been greatly eroded. I was hoping that the Liberals would understand, given that before the election, they had said it was urgent to send a $500 cheque to seniors aged 75 and over, to win their vote. Indeed, the plight of seniors was appalling back then, when it was time to win votes. All of a sudden, we are presented with a budget that not only contains nothing for seniors, but includes a small graph that basically tells them to stop complaining and whining, that their lives are fine, that they need to stop asking for money, and that the government is tired of them, literally. The budget should have been an opportunity for the Liberal government to show that it understands that there are major funding problems in the health care system. We are not making this up. For weeks now, the Minister of Health has been going around bragging about how, during the pandemic, he was forced to rush tens of billions of dollars to the provinces. The provinces—underfunded since the 1990s, thanks to the Liberals—started offloading, rescheduled surgeries and ran out of space, almost to the point of leaving people to die in the streets. Instead of increasing health transfers and recognizing that reality, the minister says we should consider ourselves lucky that he bailed us out during the pandemic and would be wise to settle for what he has to offer, which is nothing. We have a Minister of Environment and Climate Change who should have realized that, if he continues to allow increased oil production, it will have a negative impact on the future of the energy transition. This same minister boasted on social media last week about how Canada had lowered its emissions in 2020, in the middle of a pandemic, when cars were off the roads and planes were grounded. The government is congratulating itself instead of acknowledging the sacrifices that will have to be made in the future to make this transition. The Minister of Environment is happy about the pandemic, the Minister of Health is happy about the pandemic and the Minister of Seniors is happy about the pandemic. This budget is jam-packed with oil subsidies. When I checked the news and turned on my computer to see reactions the day after the budget was presented, I figured I could judge how good the budget was based on who liked it. The first reaction I saw was from the oil and gas industry, which was very happy with the budget. It obviously did not get everything it wanted, since the Liberals had to leave a little for Jean Charest and the member for Carleton, but oil companies still did well. Legal and environmental associations, as well as the mayor of Montreal, whom the environment minister likes to quote, came to say that this is a bad budget. The organization West Coast Environmental Law told us that carbon capture is an experimental technology that could increase water and energy use, as well as our GHG emissions. The budget includes subsidies for exactly this purpose, even though we have been calling on the federal government for years to abolish subsidies to oil companies. We are not talking about small amounts here, but about huge subsidies. For the next five years, $2.5 billion will go directly into the pockets of the oil companies each and every year. That means $12.5 billion in total over that period, but we have to remember that the government has no money for health care. For the next four years, $1.5 billion per year will go directly into the pockets of oil companies, for a total of $18.5 billion over nine years. The government says that it is also making an effort and that it has done away with “inefficient” subsidies to oil companies. We have been waiting for many years for a definition of what an inefficient subsidy is. It is important to note here that the subsidy that the government has abolished is worth $9 million out of a total of $18.5 billion. Rounding up the figures, the difference between the two is therefore $18.5 billion more to the oil companies, no more and no less. To get us to buy into that, they trot out their classic excuse, which is that, in western Canada and Newfoundland, people work hard to earn a decent living in the oil and gas sector. They call it the energy sector, which sounds better. They talk about these people who earn a decent living, families with mortgages. That is true. There are people who are stuck in this situation, who work in that industry and did not ask to be stuck in it. The problem is that, as we produce more and more oil, we get more and more families in trouble because they depend on that industry. The more trouble they are in, the more complicated it will be to scale back the industry in the future. From 1990 to 2010, Canadian oil production rose by 69%. From 2010 to 2015, it rose by another 31%. From 2015 to 2019—and this was under a Liberal government, our eco-friends across the way, Conservatives garbed in green—there was another 22% increase. Their recent announcement of an extra 300,000 barrels per day to save the world is another 13%. That is a 209% increase since 1990, the Kyoto protocol base year. The reason the Liberals use 2005 as their base year is to hide that. Let us get back to the fact that the government is getting families in trouble and making the transition harder as a result. We have the numbers. From 1995 to 2012, as a barrel of oil went from $33 to almost $130, the number of people working in Canada's oil and gas industry and depending on it grew from 99,000 to 218,000. We prefer a constructive approach. We believe there has to be a transition. It has to be done fast, but it has to be done right. We have not asked to shut everything down. We think production needs to be capped and there should be a gradual transition. We also think there should be green finance initiatives. This plan has nothing but generic sentences such as, “the Sustainable Finance Action Council will develop and report on strategies for aligning private sector capital”. It is all hot air. The federal government's plan is nothing but hot air. It has no transition plan. That makes it hard to vote in favour of this budget. There are solid proposals, like the train, the high-speed train that we have been wanting in the Quebec-Windsor corridor for years. The Minister of Environment and Climate Change has been bragging for years in interviews about not having a car and about how he likes the train. What we want is a high-speed train, a turtle that comes by twice as often. In the budget, there is $400 million over two years. A person might think there may be a train. However, when we ask officials what the $400 million is for, they tell us it is to find partners. Partnership is expensive. However, when it comes to the issue of western oil, then there is enough cash. That works. When it comes to infrastructure, it is even worse. The government wants to again start using the Canada Infrastructure Bank to save the world. This bank was created by the Prime Minister in 2015 during the economic downturn. The bank took so long to get off the ground that when it did start operating the economy was in full flight. Today, the government wants to drag its feet a second time with the transition. That is why this budget is against seniors, against our health care systems and against the transition. However, it is not too late to change it. We have a Prime Minister who travels across Canada, from coast to coast to coast, who lectures us, who tells us that we need to purify our hearts. He tells us that we must change, and that we are to be better. However, this budget contains irrefutable evidence that we have a tired government and a Prime Minister who does not intend to be better.

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

Apr/26/22 4:47:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, far from being tired, this is a government that is very progressive, and it continues to move Canadians and this country forward. It is interesting. The Conservatives stand up to say that we have abandoned the oil industry, and the Bloc stands up to say that we are giving too much to the oil industry. The bottom line is that we understand what Canadians want. They want clean air, good jobs, a healthy environment and a strong economy. I have good news for my friends in the Bloc and my friends in the Conservative Party. We can actually do both, and that is what this budget does. Does my friend and colleague not recognize that? One of the things he criticized, the Canada Infrastructure Bank, has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to get zero-emission buses in the city of Brampton. There are a lot of positive things in this budget, and the Canada Infrastructure Bank is doing a lot of positive things.

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Mr. Jean-Denis Garon

Apr/26/22 4:48:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the measures put in place by the Liberal government are brown measures disguised as green measures. The Conservatives see the green, and we see the brown. The reality is that they are only half measures. The Commissioner of the Environment confirmed it once again today. My colleague is boasting about his infrastructure bank, which barely worked. My loyalty does not lie with Brampton, but with the Bloc Québécois. When my colleague from Winnipeg North has travelled one kilometre on a high-speed train in the Quebec-Windsor corridor, he can ask me his question again.

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Mr. Garnett Genuis (Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, CPC)

Apr/26/22 4:48:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it was encouraging to hear the member talk about how oil production is going up in this country. I think one of the greatest solutions to the challenges we face in energy would be to support the development of liquefied natural gas products in Quebec. I think once those products were on stream, we would see the Bloc supporting the energy sector. There are some hopeful opportunities maybe in the future. I want to ask the member a question about subsidies because he went on about alleged subsidies. It seems to me that people looking for reasons to oppose the energy sector call any kind of incentive, any kind of tax break, a “subsidy”. They use such an expansive definition of the term. There are no real subsidies to the oil and gas sector, but the Bloc tries to redefine the term “subsidy” to be so expansive that it includes almost anything. Would he be supportive of applying the same definition of “subsidy” to industries that are important in his province and ending subsidies to those industries as well?

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Mr. Jean-Denis Garon

Apr/26/22 4:49:50 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Conservatives have it so easy. Their problem is that they never have enough oil, so their solution is to have more oil. There are times I would love to be in their position. We are talking about investment credits. When an oil company invests $1 but ultimately pays less than $1 because the government makes up the difference, that is an economic subsidy. I do not need any lectures from my colleague on equalization or transfers. It is like a dog chasing its tail. The Conservatives blame us for equalization and use that as an excuse to produce even more. When they produce even more and the fiscal gap gets even bigger, they will blame us even more. The Conservatives are creating their own problems and their own solutions. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be in their head.

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Ms. Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, NDP)

Apr/26/22 4:50:42 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member opened his comments with concern for seniors and the lack of action for seniors. One of the things the NDP would really like to see is for the government to adopt my colleague's bill on the guaranteed livable income. That would support seniors and, of course, many others as well who are living in poverty. Would the Bloc support such a bill?

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Mr. Jean-Denis Garon

Apr/26/22 4:51:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we are debating the ways and means motion. We have the opportunity to do something now for seniors, to increase their pensions. However, the NDP, which decided to sign an agreement with the Liberals and will therefore support the budget, is being sanctimonious here. We will see how we vote on their bill. However, the NDP will soon vote on a budget that has ignored our seniors, and we need to hold the NDP to account.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Apr/26/22 4:51:38 p.m.
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It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Vancouver East, Employment; the hon. member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, Health; the hon. member for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, Housing.

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Mr. Yves Perron (Berthier—Maskinongé, BQ)

Apr/26/22 4:52:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Shefford. I am pleased to weigh in on the budget. It will become clear quite quickly that I am going to talk about agriculture. I have a certain bent in that direction. Many people are disappointed because there is not much in the budget for the farming community. We are hearing announcements about the obvious things, among others, as well as things that are already under way. Specifically, we are being told that negotiations will continue for the Canadian agricultural partnership. Those negotiations are under way but have stalled because some western provinces refuse to improve the AgriStability program. The Bloc Québécois has long suggested—and this is the position of the Union des producteurs agricoles in Quebec, by the way—that the federal government proceed with the improvement it had proposed, that is, a compensation rate of 80% of the reference margin, with the provinces that are ready to move forward. I am reiterating that proposal today. I think it is important that we improve the performance of our insurance programs, because our farmers are the ones who feed us. These programs are supposed to make our supply chain more stable. There is a lot of talk these days about the supply chain not doing well, and so on. However, we can take steps that are going to be permanent and effective time and again. Of course, it is not as fun for the party in power, because it cannot simply come along and suddenly announce that it is going to give such a gift or create such a program, as it is doing at the moment in the health care sector. My colleague from Mirabel just demonstrated this very eloquently. Many have spoken about the $28 billion that we need in health care, but the government announces $2 billion and expects us to be satisfied with that. This is similar to what the government is doing with the agricultural programs. We need to act quickly on this. The next really disappointing aspect is that we are also told that an announcement is coming about compensation for supply-managed producers in the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, or CUSMA. I am trying to stay calm. Enough is enough. Does the government believe in our supply management system? Does it believe in our producers and does it have any respect for them? The answer is no. In the budget, the government boasts that, thanks to international agreements, Canada has access to all the other G7 countries, but this has come at a cost. It has cost our producers a share of the market. Our producers are efficiently organized, they protect the environment on a daily basis, they control the quantity produced and the price, they give us extremely high quality products, and yet they are constantly scorned. I am fed up. That is what I wanted to say today. Our producers should not have to beg for four or five years to get compensation for CUSMA. They have scrapes on their knees from dragging themselves through the muck. It looks like the government is trying to keep them civil, by saying that it will give them something soon and that they should behave. Enough is enough. Can we resolve this, please? It is extremely disappointing. We know that the negotiations are over and that the amounts have been established. The money needs to be paid so that we can move on to something else. Over time, the government is neglecting producers in supply-managed industries. I suspect this is not the first time I am saying this in the House, but I will say it again today. I feel like this government is being sneaky by chipping away at our supply-managed industry markets, letting time go by, allowing unfair competition from outside that undermines our system, and delaying compensation to harm that system so that it disappears through no fault of the government. My message to the government is that if its intention is to get rid of supply management, it needs to say so and own that politically. The Bloc Québécois has the solution. We are going to introduce another law to protect it. We are going to ask the government to pay compensation right away. As usual, I can see that I will not have enough time to say even one-tenth of the things I wanted to say. Let us talk about the next generation of farmers. In the previous Parliament, my esteemed colleague from Brandon—Souris introduced a bill that he asked me to co-sponsor, which I was happy to do. We had an excellent working relationship with the NDP folks at the time, and we succeeded in passing a bill that made it no less financially attractive to transfer the family business to one's own child as to a stranger. At present, the situation is the same as it was before the bill was passed. It is utter nonsense for a government that claims to understand the importance of business succession, agriculture and the need to feed people. It is appalling and disgusting. I am about to say something unparliamentary, so I will stop here. What is even more surprising is that this legislation was passed. If the government wanted to make changes to it and question it, then it could have done so in the last Parliament, which it actually did in committee and in the House. The bill was then debated in the Senate and the matter was settled. When legislation is passed in the Senate, it has to come into force. Well, to my great surprise, last year, the Minister of Finance held a press conference the next day to announce that her government would wait six months before enacting this legislation, claiming that she was not happy with it. What does that mean? Where is the democracy? Parliament passed the bill by a majority vote because the majority of its elected members respect farmers and want to ensure their future. Can the government take action? Obviously we put pressure on the government and the government people backed off. They agreed to enforce this legislation, but very shortly afterward, they announced that they would make changes. I am talking about it here because there are still no numbers or anything in the budget. However, it is noted that a change will be made to this legislation because “the exception [in the legislation] may unintentionally permit surplus stripping without requiring that a genuine intergenerational business transfer takes place.” Putting it in my own words, that means “we will delay the enforcement of this legislation because we suspect our small farmers of being a bunch of fraudsters”. At the same time, the government is doing nothing about tax havens, as has been the case for many years. It is estimated that we lose at least $7 billion a year to tax havens in dozens of countries. Everyone is aware of this. It is perfectly legal and completely ironic, and I do not understand why people are not more outraged. However, when farmers want to sell their farms to a son or a daughter, they are told that they may well be fraudsters and the process is delayed by getting tough and closing any loopholes. This is going to have consequences. According to the government's official line, the law is in force and transactions can go ahead. However, in reality, according to what I have been told, financial advisors, accountants and notaries are all telling our farmers that they do not know what the government is going to do with the legislation and that they are taking a very big risk if they go ahead with their transactions at this time. They are therefore suggesting to farmers that they delay selling, which will again result in sales to strangers. However, selling to a stranger has the same effect as killing supply management. This is about land use. If a farmer sells the land to a neighbour instead of selling it to a son, there will be only two farms left in a zone that used to have 20, and the residents will complain that the town school is empty, which is obvious. This is all part of a whole. When production is stable, it keeps our economy going. To conclude, I will say that the Bloc Québécois has done what it usually does, which is to work constructively. Last night, the House voted on our amendment to the amendment. If something is not to our liking, we do not say that everything is bad and that we should vote against it; we propose changes. However, the House voted against our amendment to the amendment. The NDP-Liberal coalition refused to increase old age security starting at age 65. I want people to remember that when they flock to hear the brilliant speeches about how they claim to be working for everyone.

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

Apr/26/22 5:02:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, for the first part of his speech, the member talked a great deal about supply management and tried to plant the seed of doubt in terms of where this government stands on supply management. Virtually from day one, going back to 2015, the Minister of Agriculture has been very clear that we support supply management. In fact, it was a Liberal administration many years ago that created supply management. The difference is that the government understands that Canada is a trading nation, and we continue to negotiate the trade agreements that provide the types of jobs that are so important to our middle class and for growing our economy. Does the member not recognize the benefits of having these trade agreements and understand and appreciate that there is no hidden agenda here? We created supply management. We will continue to protect the need for supply management for the fine work that it does.

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