44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 9, 2022 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, as the government continues to increase reliance on temporary foreign workers without the protections that come with permanent resident status, we know that temporary foreign workers are increasingly vulnerable to exploitation. Recently, the Auditor General found, through federal inspections, that the health and safety for temporary foreign workers has gotten worse, and that is after the government promised to fix it in 2020.
Could the member please clarify: Instead of increasing our reliance on exploiting workers to drive down wages, does she agree that the time to negotiate better wages and work conditions for migrant workers, permanent residents and Canadians is now?
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Madam Speaker, one of the things I hear very regularly within my community, especially from small business owners, is their inability to find workers and skilled tradespeople who can fill those gaps that are being created. We, as a government, over the past number of years have been finding those pathways to permanent residence for those workers who are highly skilled and want to come and live in Canada on a permanent-residence basis. We need to continue to build and provide those supports.
A number of years ago, I did a study in the justice committee about trafficking in persons and trying to ensure that migrant workers, for example, were very well represented. There is a lot of work that has been done on this, and we are going to continue to do that work with the advocacy of all members in the House.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to ask the hon. member about the budget generally. We have seen her government bring forward about $60 billion of deficits this year. In the past couple of years, it said that it needed it because of COVID. It needed all this program spending. We know that the $60-billion deficit this year has no COVID spending. I think it is quite reckless.
I am not sure if she would agree. I would like to know her thoughts. Their government is burdening our generation with a tremendous amount of debt and deficits. That means higher taxes and, frankly, higher inflation that families in her riding and my riding are being impacted by. I would like to know her thoughts. Does she think that it is responsible, now that COVID is over, that the government maintains massive deficits?
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Madam Speaker, while I appreciate the question from the member opposite, I think it is ill-informed. We did spend the past two years making sure that Canadians had roofs over their heads, had food on their tables and were able to safely isolate themselves if they had COVID.
Bill C-19 and budget 2022 are really about providing that economic recovery. The child care plan that we had installed across the country is addressing these very issues. The housing affordability piece in budget 2022 and Bill C-19 is addressing these very issues. The makeup and the buildup toward a greener economy are addressing these issues.
I will remind members in the House that inflation and COVID are not specifically Canadian things. They are worldwide phenomena. Right now is the proper time to invest in Canadians and ensure that they have that foundation to lift up the economy in Canada and globally.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague across the way talked a lot about the impact of inflation on people and what needs to be done to limit that impact. People have been hit hard by this.
She and I are roughly the same age and therefore probably from the same generation. I am concerned about the people who came before us, those who built our country and Quebec, including seniors who have been hit hard. Year after year, they complain about not getting an adequate increase to their pension.
This time it is even worse because, in addition to the fact that the government is doing nothing, inflation continues to rise. I wonder whether my colleague is proud of her government's record, given how badly it has failed seniors.
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Madam Speaker, absolutely, I am proud that it was this government that enhanced the CPP so that future seniors will have more pension to live on.
I am proud of this government for increasing old age security. I am proud of this government for investing in affordable housing and investing in long-term care for our seniors.
Bill C-19 shows us the empathy and the care that we have to really build upon in Canada to ensure that seniors in my riding of Mississauga—Erin Mills and that member's riding, as well, are able to thrive and sustain themselves.
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Madam Speaker, it is a huge privilege and honour to rise today on the budget implementation act, Bill C-19. I am also very grateful to serve the federal NDP as the critic for mental health and harm reduction.
There are many things in this budget that are a movement toward progress. There are many areas of this budget where there are huge shortfalls. I really want to follow up on what my colleague for Mississauga—Erin Mills spoke about recently, which is housing, because housing has such an impact not just on the economy for small businesses, workers and volunteers in our communities but also on people's mental health, especially when we are seeing the skyrocketing rates of real estate and rents that are out of touch for Canadians. The people who are the most impacted are workers, seniors and those who are the most marginalized. People who were not homeless before are becoming homeless because they are being pushed out onto the streets.
In my home riding and the community I live in, Port Alberni, we saw real estate go up in the last year by 46%. In Oceanside, it went up 34%. The average price of a home is over $1 million, yet we have seen wages remain fairly stagnant. I am probably the only member of Parliament in the House who, after being elected, moved away from his home community to better serve his riding and cannot actually move home. This is because the price of real estate in my home community of Tofino has gone up 400% since I was elected. This not only has an impact on me, but we can imagine the workers in Tofino and how impossible it is for them, or for the small businesses that require workers.
I know this is a huge challenge. We heard solutions come from the Liberals and questions from the Conservatives about housing, but they are fairly consistent in that they have centred their efforts around the free market. The free market will not solve these problems.
I grew up in the seventies and eighties in Victoria, British Columbia. I am really proud of where I grew up and the community I lived in. It took leadership and worked with the federal government to develop some co-ops. As we know, Canada went on a robust co-op housing program that was actually developed through a minority government of the Liberals and the federal NDP working together in the early seventies under our leader David Lewis. It was that agreement that got the national housing program going. They started to develop about 25,000 units on average throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
I was really fortunate to grow up in a co-op housing development. My dad was a transmission mechanic. He still is, actually, and is in his early seventies. He has been working on transmissions for over 50 years. I am so proud of my dad. My mom worked at HRDC as a clerk. They were middle class, if we want to call it that. I am proud of my mom, and it was Mother's Day yesterday. To my mom I say that I know I was not home, but happy Mother's Day. I love my mom and thank her so much. To all the moms in our community, I give thanks.
My parents worked really hard. The co-op was unique in that it provided safe, secure and affordable housing for my mom and dad and my brother Rob and I, but it also provided safe and secure housing for seniors, single parents, people of lower incomes and people on income assistance. I can go back to that co-op in Victoria to this day and some of the friends I grew up with are grandparents and live in that co-op. Their kids and their grandkids live in that co-op.
The problem is that there are not enough co-ops anymore. When the government pulled out of building co-ops and pulled out of the national housing strategy in the early 1990s, we lost 25,000 units a year. We are talking about over 750,000 units to this day in the shortfall of co-op housing.
I was visiting my friends John and Beth last night, who live in co-op housing here in Ottawa. They received safe and secure housing. They were on a wait-list for four years, terrified, which impacted their mental health. They were working two or three jobs and trying to figure out how they were going to make ends meet. They wanted to make sure their daughter Kira could live in a co-op, but they are not even taking names now in the co-op where they live because the wait-list is so long.
In fact, my daughter, who just graduated from the University of Ottawa, dropped me off today and she said, “Dad, I can't talk about ever owning a home, because I don't want to be disappointed.” It is just terrible that this is what we are leaving our children and the people in our communities.
We can look to Europe. First, I will go back to where we are at. We were at 10% of our housing being non-market housing in the 1970s and 1980s. Now we are at about 3%. We can look to Europe, which is at 30%, and Vienna, which is at 60%, because they understand how important it is to have safe, secure and affordable housing. The free market is not going to give us that. It has not. We are developing very rapidly on Vancouver Island.
I sat in local government in Tofino. I remember how frustrated we were when the federal government downloaded to provinces, which then further downloaded to local governments. I was part of the initial Tofino housing corporation. I am proud that today we are finally building a development that we talked about 20 years ago. Here we were, this small local government: this small municipality was trying to figure out how we were going to develop non-market housing to meet the needs of our community.
What a task for small communities to take on. They do not have the expertise or aptitude, and often do not have the leadership. They do not know how to do it. I can assure the House that if the federal government puts money on the table, local governments will access it. They will find the land.
Our province of British Columbia is building half of the non-market housing in the country right now. It needs a federal partner to go to the lengths it is going to. The province just had applications for over 12,500 shovel-ready units by local governments: local non-profit housing. They had funding for 2,500. It would have been great to see the federal government pick up the other 2,500. We are halfway there on shovel-ready developments that could help make sure people have affordable housing.
I get frustrated. I look to my community. We have a non-profit housing group in Ucluelet. Randy Oliwa called me the other day and said, “Gord, we can't even get an answer on a $5,000 planning grant to get things off the ground.” The Beaufort Hotel was being purchased. It is a hotel that already has low-barrier housing and private sector housing. The group made an application through the rapid housing initiative. The applicants were told that it looked very positive, but they got denied because they were oversubscribed. They had $5 billion in applications and they only had $1 billion on the table.
They were told to reapply, so they reapplied and got denied again. They decided to apply through the women and children shelter and transitional housing fund, and then got denied again. They brought in Lookout, a great partner from Vancouver, to develop non-market housing and ensure that the people living in this building were not going to get punted and thrown out on the streets. Again, they got denied. Now they are using the co-investment fund. The steps and hurdles these groups have to go through to make sure people have affordable housing are just ridiculous.
I want to speak a little about how important housing is, not just for small businesses, workers and people in our communities, but also to ensure that people are not suffering: those who are on the streets and who may be living with a substance use disorder. I was at a low-barrier housing unit in Duncan, B.C., where they built these sleeper cottages. I met a man who had his first home. It was basic needs. It was not low barrier; it was no barrier. For the first time in his adult life, he told me, he was not homeless or living in prison. He was on opioid therapy as a result, which he could never access living as a homeless person. He was treated like a criminal: He was moved from park to park, living in fear and not sleeping.
Another woman I met at the same low-barrier housing was moving to low-barrier from no-barrier housing. As a result of having that, she had been sober for eight months. For the first time in her adult life, she has a chance. Without housing, how can people have mental health? When people are homeless, they do not sleep.
The Prime Minister's goal to house 50% of the homeless people in the next 10 years is not good enough. It is not good enough. We need to move rapidly. We need to build non-market housing, and the government needs to step up its game. We need all parties to work collectively on this, because the free market simply will not solve the problems of our needs right now. Housing is a basic human need. It is a human rights issue. It is an economic issue. It is a social issue.
I have not even tapped into indigenous housing, because I am being told I am running out of time. I could speak another 10 minutes on that alone. I hope we can work together in the House to scale things up rapidly.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member across the way for his passion around housing, as well as mental health and harm reduction.
I was waiting for the member to talk about the budget allocations for co-op housing. He talked about the need for co-op housing, and I 100% agree with him on that. I am quoting the executive director of the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada, Tim Ross, who said, “Starting with 6,000 new homes over the next five years, we are optimistic that the new co-operative housing development program will kick-start the development of the next generation of co-op housing at scale in Canada.”
There is $1.5 billion there. He ended with indigenous and northern housing. I am looking at the $300 million going towards indigenous and northern housing. Could the member comment on how we are finally getting a start where we need to see it?
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Madam Speaker, I would say we are getting a start and we are talking about thousands now when it comes to co-op housing, but it falls far short of the 25,000 units we were building per year in the 1970s and 1980s. That is still 19,000 short of what we were doing then. How are we going to make up the gap?
Right now, the federal government's plan in terms of filling the workforce labour market shortage is to bring in new immigrants, but it does not tie housing to immigration. There are huge problems when it comes to the lack of cohesive planning, when it comes to housing and ensuring that we have a strong workforce.
In terms of indigenous housing, there is some money in the budget, which New Democrats helped negotiate, to get this agreement going. We talked about the agreement as the floor. We have much work to do. I have lots more to say on this, and I will.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciated the member's personal journey and story with co-op housing. I thought he did an excellent job, but I would like to ask him about the issues facing those who need government housing, particularly with inflation.
There are a lot of seniors in my riding who could use the housing described by the member. They live on very fixed incomes, so when inflation goes up 6% or 7%, that may not sound like a lot to folks in this room, but when people have only $100 a month for groceries, it is a lot and it really impacts their ability to eat well and feed themselves. We are seeing this impact families as well.
I would like the member to comment on the impact inflation is having on his constituents and whether he is at all concerned that the Liberal government is not addressing this.
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Madam Speaker, we have skyrocketing inflation, but we also have a skyrocketing concentration of wealth and skyrocketing inequality. We have seen grocery store prices and fuel prices go up. We see bank fees go up, and yet banks are having record profits. Grocery stores have record profits. Oil companies have record profits. How is that flowing down to seniors? How is that flowing down to Canadians? It is flowing down in increased costs to them and increased profits to the richest Canadians and shareholders.
What we need is some balance. Corporate taxes have gone from 28% to 15%, and yet people cannot find a place to live in our country. We need to bring a median to this situation and it needs to happen rapidly. Fairness is not happening right now. Inequality is skyrocketing, and we need to address that. It is part of the solution when it comes to taking on inflation and ensuring that people get the best support they can, and there is money. We can make sure that the wealthiest people can pay their fair share. That is a beginning in taking on this crisis, and we absolutely need to do more.
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Madam Speaker, I want to support a point raised earlier in the House by the hon. member for North Island—Powell River and ask her colleague from Courtenay—Alberni if he is also concerned for seniors who served in our military and former judges, but particularly those who were in the military and the RCMP. Right now, if they remarry after age 65, they do not get to convey any survivor benefits to their surviving spouses. It is called the gold-digger clause, going back to former finance minister Bill Morneau. The Liberals promised to get rid of it, but they have not.
I wonder if the hon. member has any comments on that.
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Madam Speaker, it seems there is commonality in that not just veterans, but seniors are being targeted, and there needs to be more work. The gold-digger clause absolutely needs to be revoked. It is discriminatory to Canada's veterans, the people who put their lives on the line so that we have a fair and free society. We are indebted to them, and we owe them the benefits that every Canadian deserves. This is an unfair penalty on the very people we should be supporting the most.
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Madam Speaker, two weeks ago, I had the privilege of rising in the House to speak to the many ways that budget 2022 will improve the lives of Canadians. Today, I have the privilege to speak to how the rubber would hit the road with the budget implementation act.
There are so many topics I would like to cover, but in the short time I have, I am just going to choose one because we are finally setting in motion the changes that are outlined in this bill, and this is a topic that deserves debate in the chamber. These changes are increasing the transparency and accountability in our financial system and in land ownership through legislative changes that would result in the creation of a registry for beneficial ownership.
Canada has developed a reputation as a haven for money laundering, tax evasion and other financial crimes due to the relative sophistication of our banking sector and the opacity, which is a defining characteristic of our corporate and land ownership. This reputation has led Canada to have an internationally recognized term for money laundering, which is “snow washing”. It refers to the fact that anonymously owned corporations in Canada are presumed by banks and other financial institutions as being legitimate without the transparency that should underpin such a determination.
An expert panel on money laundering in B.C. real estate estimated that, in 2018, some $46 billion in list funds were laundered in Canada, much of it moving through real estate. The 2017 analysis by Transparency International found that Canada had the weakest corporate transparency rules in the G20, tied only with South Korea.
Why does this matter? Few realize that white-collar crime such as this has very real impacts, even if it may not be obvious from the beginning. The fact is that these vulnerabilities feed directly into the largest challenges we face in the present day. Consider the example of the Vancouver model of money laundering. In this model, opioids are shipped in large quantities from China to Canada as a way of Chinese residents moving capital out of China to the safe haven of Canada by evading the country's currency export controls of $50,000 U.S. per year. The proceeds from the drug trade are laundered through casinos or invested in, among other things, Canadian real estate, where it is purchased through blind trusts or numbered companies with the real owners obscured.
Money laundering not only supports criminals. It is also estimated to have contributed to a 5% increase in the price of housing in B.C. as of 2018. When studies show that we do not know the true owners of over half of the 100 most expensive properties in B.C., we know that it is not just causing more housing unaffordability, it may also be linked to tax evasion of our treatment of principal residences. Importantly, it is also fuelling the deadly health emergency we have in the province of B.C., which is the opioid epidemic. Dirty and dark money comes from both domestic and foreign sources.
In the House, it has been a source of great pride to see how members of all parties have come together to support our Ukrainian friends who have been victimized by the brutal invasion of Vladimir Putin. One of the main tools we have relied on has been the use of targeted sanctions on Putin's inner circle. This budget implementation act indeed contains measures that will create the conditions for the seizing and disposal of assets from sanctioned individuals. However, when the ownership of assets is undertaken through complex, international schemes of shell companies in countries that have similar opaque corporate registries, then we currently have very little ability to determine who the real owners of assets are in Canada, which are held in Canadian banks, and our sanctions, therefore, have limited effect.
It is abundantly clear that we need to act, and through measures in this budget, we are doing just that. We are reviewing and strengthening our anti-money laundering and terrorist financing regime by extending the current system to monitor payment service providers and crowd-funding platforms for money laundering and terrorist financing. About $90 million is provided to FINTRAC to significantly expand and modernize its ability to detect and prevent financial crime.
We are also taking the first steps to establish a new Canada financial crimes agency, which will become Canada's lead enforcement agency for financial crimes. This is important because we need to have financial and accounting experts in law enforcement and the public prosecution services to effectively tackle complex, white-collar crime cases.
Most importantly, we are amending the Canada Business Corporations Act to implement a public and searchable beneficial ownership registry, which would be available by the end of 2023. This will require that corporations report the identities of those who own and control significant portions of any corporation. It will allow law enforcement, the CRA, banks, journalists and the public at large to see exactly who owns any given company and ensure that criminals can no longer hide behind anonymous numbered corporations. Beneficial ownership registries are the gold standard when it comes to combatting corporate financial crime, and this has been recognized throughout the world.
In fact, this is not even going to be the first beneficial ownership registry in Canada, as B.C. has had a land registry since May 2019. However, unfortunately, what was supposed to be a world-leading system has been plagued by delays, unclear and poorly defined rules and heretofore a lack of compliance. The system should be in place by the end of this year, but that already puts it a year behind schedule. The registry currently has information on only 46,000 owners with a total of 73,000 properties, which is just a tiny fraction of the 2.2 million titles in British Columbia. Therefore, it is crucial that when we develop our federal beneficial ownership registry, we learn through some of the challenges that British Columbia has had and adopt some of the best practices that we can find from around the world.
The U.K., as one of the first countries to create a publicly accessible beneficial ownership registry, has one of the best systems in the world so far. U.K. companies are required to keep an up-to-date register of people with significant control over it, meaning anyone who holds more than 25% of the shares or voting rights of a company, either directly or indirectly, through another company or trust. Failure to comply with this is a criminal offence, not only for the company but also for the officers of the company. In the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the U.K. has expanded its register to apply to land ownership to give the government the ability to require identity verification for people who manage, control or just set up companies.
There are uniquely Canadian challenges that we will need to face as we build our own beneficial ownership registry. Unlike the U.K., Canada is a federal system where provinces and territories have jurisdiction over real property and for federally incorporated entities. This covers an enormous number of the entities that we need to have transparency on, so we will need to work with such partners to ensure that we have a national system that works. We have a national registry for money services businesses, regardless of where in Canada they are registered. This system was also created to combat money laundering and is centrally administered by FINTRAC.
There are many forms that this system could take, but what is most important is that the data is standardized to make it easier for law enforcement to analyze, for simplifying regulatory compliance and to minimize the regulatory burden on companies that operate in multiple jurisdictions in Canada. What is most important is that this registry be publicly accessible and free to access. This is important because we know that law enforcement has a limited capacity to monitor the millions of corporate structures in Canada. The public, particularly the press, has the ability to play a role to connect the dots and uncover wrongdoing that can assist in uncovering illegal actions as well.
To give an example of why this is important, I note that B.C.'s land ownership registry was not able to find any property owned by a sanctioned individual. It was only due to leaks that were involved in the Paradise papers that we were able to find a single piece of land in British Columbia, in the riding of the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, connected to a sanctioned individual. That really shows the value of investigative reporting.
I would like to end by saying the following. We know the impact of financial crime is deep and far-reaching. It is clear that we need to act decisively and think big to mitigate the negative effects of money laundering and tax evasion, and to catch those who are using Canadian property and corporations to transfer, hide and launder their money in Canada. Now is the time to take lessons learned from jurisdictions around the world, calibrate them to the Canadian context and develop a system that will make Canada a leader in preventing financial crime.
Budget 2022 contains the building blocks for a financial system that has more integrity, and I look forward to working with my colleagues from all parties in the House to pass this bill as a first step in getting dirty money out of Canada.
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Madam Speaker, the Conservatives have been talking for a very long time about the need for action on money laundering. It is a regular concern I hear from Canadians. It is a particular concern I hear from Canadians from diaspora communities, actually. They raise the fact that money in other countries is taken by corrupt dictatorial regimes and then brought to and used in Canada.
In that vein, I want to ask a question that has been specifically brought to me regularly by people in the Iranian community in Canada. They are concerned about this issue. They are also concerned about the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The House of Commons voted to sanction the IRGC to list it as a terrorist entity, yet the government has not acted, despite the Liberals voting in favour of that listing motion three years ago. If we are not willing to identify terrorist organizations like the IRGC and list them under the Anti-terrorism Act, then we are missing out on a critical tool for combatting the kind of activities in which they might engage in Canada.
I wonder if the member has a comment specifically on the listing of the IRGC and whether that is something the government plans to do as part of a broader suite of measures. Also, why is there a delay?
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Madam Speaker, I think my hon. colleague's question speaks directly to the reasons why we need to move ahead on some of these measures. It is one thing to have a list of sanctions and individuals we are going to be sanctioning, but if we do not actually have the tools in place to ensure that we are able to go after the assets in Canada, those sanctions are not going to have significant effect.
In this budget implementation act, we have a number of measures that are going to allow us to do just that on beneficial ownership of companies. We have actions that are happening right across the country, in British Columbia and Manitoba and now Ontario as well. I would encourage the member opposite to talk to some of his colleagues in the provincial government in Alberta to see if they can start moving ahead with some of the measures that we need to have so we can move ahead with the measures that we need to bring in for sanctioned individuals.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague spoke a lot about investigations into money laundering and recovering money. We agree with all that.
However, there is something that really bothers me. How does my colleague explain the fact that his government is not doing anything at all about tax havens? They are perfectly legal and everyone is aware of them. It is estimated that the government is losing at least $7 billion a year to tax havens.
Also, is the member not the least bit embarrassed that his government is creating uncertainty about the coming into force of the farm succession act, on the pretext that our farmers are fraudsters rather than honest people who put food on our tables? I think that is completely shameful, and I encourage him to put pressure on the government from the inside to quickly dispel this uncertainty.
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Madam Speaker, I disagree with what the member said about the government not investigating tax havens.
We are going against some of the tax havens that we have here. There are new measures in the budget this year that do just that, including ways in which individuals are using international companies to get around paying taxes in Canada.
There is much more that we need to do. There are ways we can simplify our tax code to do that. Some of the measures I am talking about today will allow us to increase the amount of tax revenue that we can receive by going after some of the ways money is laundered, as well as the ways people are evading taxes through some of these anonymous organizations.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my neighbour for his interesting speech. I did not really see a profound investment in immigration. In my riding, we are having hundreds of calls day after day from people trying to figure out their status. They have done all of their paperwork and they have done everything they should. They are already living in Canada. We have people on worker visas who have done everything right and now cannot work. They are losing their homes. It is becoming a mess.
I am wondering if the member could talk about his government's responsibility and how long it is going to take to actually address these really important issues.
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Madam Speaker, I absolutely agree. In this budget, there is over $2 billion going to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to be able to deal with the backlogs. The idea is that by the end of this year, with these investments, we will get back to a normal service standard, as well as introducing new programs, such as an expedited temporary foreign worker program, which I know would be a game-changer for some of the hardest-hit sectors where there are major labour shortages, such as tourism in my riding.
There is a lot here on immigration. Because of the backlogs related to COVID, we have a lot we need to do. With these investments and some of the changes that are being made to expedite the processes, we are going to be able to deal with some of the backlogs that are causing major issues.
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