44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 29, 2022 10:00AM
- Sep/29/22 4:59:04 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for his speech. I was interested to learn that he used to teach economics.
I apologize, but I will have to stop for a moment because I can hear the interpretation in my earpiece.
As the member mentioned, many economists have said that broad-based tax cuts would lead to inflation. People are frustrated about having to pay more for their rent and their groceries while rich CEOs rake in huge profits.
Would my colleague agree that a better strategy would be to tax companies that increase the prices that Canadians pay at the grocery store and at the pumps?
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- Sep/29/22 5:00:19 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, first, I would like to thank the hon. member for Victoria for making such a concerted effort to ask her question in French. We have all had the experience in the House where we hear the interpretation while we are asking our question. To hear your question being translated, especially in your mother tongue, is quite disconcerting, so I salute her effort.
The Bloc Québécois is a progressive party. We support the idea of a more progressive tax system, meaning that the wealthy pay a higher percentage of taxes than the poor. As we know, poorer people tend to use their income to cover the cost of essential goods. For example, members of the House earn high salaries and, despite what we pay in taxes, we do not have to make such agonizing choices.
My colleague's question is well worth considering. The fact that big corporations are making excess profits as a result of the current situation is something that needs to be looked at. I have read quite a bit about this, and let us just say that analysts are quite divided on the feasibility of this. What is the right way to go about it?
We certainly need to move in that direction, but we must do so efficiently while maintaining stability in the system.
Again, bravo to my colleague for asking her question in French.
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- Sep/29/22 5:01:51 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I must apologize to the hon. member because I will not attempt to speak French with the question I have.
We have seen a “back to the future” move from the Conservative Party. Stephen Harper thought that lowering taxes would promote the trickle-down effect, but what trickled down certainly was not much help to the Canadian economy or the Canadian people. We are hearing the same thing from the new leader of the Conservative Party. Given that they are cut from the same cloth, we should not be surprised.
I would like the hon. member to comment on the effectiveness he sees in the Conservative strategy to simply cut taxes as a way to help people through tough times.
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- Sep/29/22 5:02:42 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question, even though it was not asked in French. Perhaps he will try next time.
The trickle-down theory, which refers to the notion of creating wealth before distributing it, was popular in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. I would say that it was possible to continue embracing the theory up until the 1990s. It was an ideological vision. Since the 1990s, however, this theory has been clearly debunked. Nothing ends up trickling down, so it is not a theory that can be supported.
As for the second part of my colleague's question, I will use the example of England, which is really not doing well right now. The Bank of England has adopted a restrictive policy, but the government has adopted an expansionist budgetary policy. Together, these short-sighted policies cancel each other out and result in debt.
It is wishful thinking to believe that cutting taxes will significantly stimulate the economy, especially at a time when the economy is overheated and inflation is high. When I taught in CEGEP, we taught the Laffer curve, which espoused this theory and was developed by an American economist. It never worked. It is a myth. Experience has shown that it does not work.
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- Sep/29/22 5:04:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his intervention and for his speech. Since he taught economics at two CEGEPs, I would like to ask him something. We are familiar with the incendiary declarations that the Leader of the Opposition made regarding the central bank, before he became leader of his party. We know that the central bank is often a target.
In the 20th century, however, John Maynard Keynes started talking about the importance of these banks. He also suggested that inflation was not primarily a monetary phenomenon.
If I were to ask my dear colleague and friend to give our Conservative Party colleagues a quick economics lesson on central banks, what would he say, in a nutshell?
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- Sep/29/22 5:05:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague and friend for the question, although when he mentioned the second CEGEP, I realized he was talking about UQAM. That is a serious mistake. I would have him know that the economics department at UQAM does good work.
Keynes' work certainly contributed to the establishment and creation of the first central banks and highlighted their importance. The other thing that came out of his work is the famous equation for the quantity theory of money. It does not happen automatically and instantaneously. It depends on several other factors. Keynes particularly drew attention to the perceptions or psychology of people and economic players in the phenomenon of inflation.
For example, the U.S. dollar is the global reserve currency. If a lot of money is printed, prices will rise much more slowly than in an economy where the currency is weaker, where foreign investors have less confidence in their currency. If they deviate slightly from established practice, prices can soar because confidence is lost more quickly in those economies. The central bank plays an important role, and it is important to respect its autonomy.
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- Sep/29/22 5:06:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a privilege and an honour to be able to speak in this House on behalf of the constituents of Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan concerning this issue.
This past weekend I received a phone call from a constituent who is very concerned. This young man had been looking at his energy bills, and he noticed that on top of the carbon tax that he is paying on his energy and power bills, he is also paying GST. Come April, when the carbon tax will be tripled, so will his GST payments increase.
Why did he come to me? It is because he is facing some struggles and challenges at home. When someone takes the time to look at that and understand that they are paying more in compound tax, they are very concerned. A tax upon a tax is just not right for the people of Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, and it is not right for the people of Canada.
Policies should be there to help us, not to punish us, but I feel that is what is actually happening. The government in power right now is trying to coerce the people of Canada into changing habits. I do not think it is actually winning the people of Canada over, because the habits have not changed and the carbon reductions have not met the government's targets. The Liberal government is failing, not only with bad policy; it is failing the people of Canada, and it is not listening to the people of Canada.
In the House, we hear about a climate crisis. When I do research and I look at what is happening in Saskatchewan and the challenges that farmers face, I see that drought is an issue in my riding. When I go to the University of Regina and look at the history of droughts in our province, I see that it goes way back. It goes back to 1910, 1914, 1917 to 1921, 1924, 1929, 1931 to 1939, 1958 to 1963, 1967 to 1969, 1974, 1977, 1979 to 1981, 1983 to 1986, 1988 to 1992, 2001 to 2003, 2009 and, people could argue, 2021. They cannot solve a crisis by creating another crisis. The crisis that the Liberal government is creating is taxing and burdening the people of this country.
I know by the physical posture on the other side that my colleagues in the Liberal and NDP government are hearing the same concerns that we are having. They are hearing that their people are being taxed way too much, that the policies in place are not solving the problem and that people's concerns are food, fuel and essentials. They are hearing that people need to provide a roof above their heads for their families, and that they want to plan for the future.
I am here because I want a better future for my children. One of the things I also teach my children is to be able to listen. The Liberal government is not listening to the people of Canada. The gentleman who called me last weekend said that at this point he would spend $600 million on an election, just to get the government out. He would spend a little to save a lot. That says a lot about what people are going through. The Liberal government needs to listen to the people of Canada. No more taxes. Axe the tax.
It is about time the current Liberal government listened to the people of Canada. That is our job. We are in the House of Commons because we represent the common people of this country. We are commoners, and we should be looking out for the people who are in our ridings, who are our neighbours and who are our friends and family, and the government is not doing that.
It is time to axe the tax.
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- Sep/29/22 5:12:23 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I still think there are better solutions. I would like to know what my colleague thinks about this. Right now, we know that rising prices are often driven by a lack of competition. We also know that the Competition Act encourages company mergers, which means more monopolies.
Does my colleague agree that the act should be amended?
Should the Investment Canada Act also be amended to counter the trend of foreign takeovers of our head offices?
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- Sep/29/22 5:13:00 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, when I think about the free enterprise system we have in Canada, I believe in competition. I believe that what we see are people who are innovative. I find that the potential in our country is in its people, that we are creative and innovative, and that the solution for our future is always in the future generations of our country.
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- Sep/29/22 5:13:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is great to hear about believing in the market system and the free enterprise system. One would think, then, that the Conservatives would understand why pricing pollution is the right thing to do, because it builds into the equation of putting a cost on pollution. The member would know from this free market enterprise system, the system he speaks so highly of, that by doing that we then incentivize companies to look for solutions, to find alternative ways of doing business to reduce their costs. That is the whole point of putting a price on pollution, making it part of the economic model of pricing something and building the inputs into that product.
Can the member at least not reflect on why he would be against something like this, since he believes in that model?
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- Sep/29/22 5:14:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, when I have a gentleman who is being taxed by the carbon tax on his heating and power bills, I wonder where that question comes from, because this is the everyday person who is being taxed for an essential that he needs in his house.
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- Sep/29/22 5:15:07 p.m.
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It being 5:15, it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the business of supply.
The question is on the motion.
If a member of a recognized party present in the House wishes to request a recorded division, or that the motion be adopted on division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.
The hon. member for Regina—Lewvan.
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- Sep/29/22 5:15:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would request a recorded division.
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- Sep/29/22 5:15:59 p.m.
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Pursuant to order made on Thursday, June 23, the division stands deferred until Monday, October 3, at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions.
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- Sep/29/22 5:16:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order.
I believe if you seek it you will find unanimous consent to see the clock at 5:30, so we can move along to Private Members' Business.
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- Sep/29/22 5:16:26 p.m.
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Does the hon. member have unanimous consent?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès): It being 5:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business as listed on today's Order Paper.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-230, the protection of freedom of conscience act. I appreciate the contributions of the member for Carlton Trail-Eagle Creek to medical assistance in dying, or MAID, which is a complex and deeply personal issue to many Canadians.
First, I want to acknowledge that the aim of the bill, which is to support the conscience rights of health care professionals, is indeed laudable. The government has always supported conscience rights, which is why, since the very beginning of Canada's MAID framework in a former bill, Bill C-14, these rights have been specifically recognized and acknowledged. However, at the same time, the criminal law is a blunt instrument that should be reserved for the most serious situations.
In my remarks today, I want to raise some questions about whether new offences are an appropriate solution to the legitimate concerns raised by the bill's sponsor. In this regard, it bears recalling the primary reason the criminal law is concerned with MAID in the first place, which is to provide the necessary exemptions to ensure that persons who choose to provide or assist in providing MAID do not face criminal consequences for doing so. The MAID provisions found in the Criminal Code were carefully crafted to respect the autonomy of Canadians, respond to the evolving issues and protect vulnerable persons. In other words, the involvement of criminal law is necessary to permit MAID while ensuring it is carried out in a safe, responsible manner.
However, Bill C-230 seeks to involve the criminal law in two very different ways: first, to create a new MAID-specific intimidation offence, and second, to create an employment sanctions offence. With respect to the former, the intimidation offence, it is worth reiterating that the Criminal Code already provides provisions for several offences that would be available to respond to situations where a health care professional is a victim of coercive or threatening behaviour, including the intimidation offence in section 423 and the extortion offence in section 346.
To me, it is not evident that an additional specific offence is required to protect conscience rights. I should also say that I am not aware of any evidence of health care professionals facing threatening circumstances in the context of refusing to provide MAID or that there is a specific gap that needs to be filled in our law.
I have taken note of the fact that the proposed intimidation offence in Bill C-230 would be a summary conviction offence, which, if enacted, would stand out from other intimidation offences in the Criminal Code. The existing offences are either straight indictable or hybrid offences. In addition to being duplicative of existing offences, the fact that the proposed intimidation offence would only be prosecutable by summary conviction may suggest that intimidating conduct is less serious in a MAID context, which seems counterintuitive.
To further highlight why I have concerns about creating a specific intimidation offence as proposed by Bill C-230, I would like to draw members' attention to a recent example that offers a clear contrast. Last year, as members will recall, unfortunately in some parts of our country there was a threatening atmosphere of intimidation present for many health care professionals who were simply trying to go to work and care for members of their communities during the pandemic. That is why the government responded with Bill C-3, an act to amend the Criminal Code and the Canada Labour Code, which provided new criminal law tools to protect all health care workers and all Canadians who are seeking their care.
I believe Bill C-3 was an appropriate criminal law response to the credible threats to the safety and security of health care professionals and Canadians, but I am not convinced that a similar response is necessary when it comes to the situation of conscience rights and the provision of MAID. It seems to me that the charter and existing criminal law offences already provide the necessary protections for those rights, alongside the specific provision in the current MAID framework that expressly states that nothing in the federal law compels an individual to provide or assist in providing MAID. There is simply no obvious need to supplement what already exists.
Turning to the employment sanctions offence, I am struggling with Bill C-230's proposal to create a new offence that would exclusively target employers who dismiss or refuse to employ health care professionals who choose not to provide MAID. Moreover, in my view, Bill C-230's employment sanctions offence would not address the concerns described in the bill's preamble regarding conscience rights and certain requirements for professionals to make effective referrals for MAID.
As members are aware, in some jurisdictions, the professional orders that regulate health care professions have established requirements that their members provide effective referrals for MAID. While there have been cases where these requirements were challenged, the courts, including the Court of Appeal for Ontario, have upheld them, noting that this is a difficult issue that involves taking into consideration the conscience rights of professionals and the needs of their patients.
I do not believe it would be constructive for Parliament to intervene by creating a new criminal offence such as the one proposed by the bill. Rather, a more productive approach is for the government to continue its efforts to work closely with the provinces and territories on the implementation of MAID in a manner that supports persons who may be considering it and the health care professionals who provide exceptional care to their patients.
For the reasons I have mentioned, I have significant concerns with Bill C-230. While I agree wholeheartedly with protecting the conscience rights of all health care professionals, including those who choose to participate or refuse to participate in MAID, I am not persuaded that the two offences proposed in the bill are necessary or desirable.
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Madam Speaker, we are here to discuss Bill C-230, which would amend the Criminal Code to make it an offence to intimidate health care personnel—a medical practitioner, nurse practitioner or anyone who could provide medical assistance in dying. It seeks to create a Criminal Code offence to “protect” health care personnel. These health care professionals, now and in the future, may take part in the provision of medical assistance in dying.
Excuse me, Madam Speaker, but there is a lot of commotion. I would like to give my speech in peace.
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- Sep/29/22 5:24:27 p.m.
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I ask the hon. members who wish to carry on a conversation to go to the lobby, please, so the hon. member can give a speech we can all hear.
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Thank you, Madam Speaker. Now I feel I can deliver a speech.
I want to make one thing clear to the House of Commons. I think this is the appropriate time to point it out, and I think everyone here will agree with me. No one is condoning bullying, be it of health care workers or here in the House. We all know people who have bullied others. Bullies are mean-spirited people whose actions betray their insecurity and fear. We all agree on that.
That being said, we are well aware that this bill has nothing to do with bullying or protecting health care workers from bullying. What this bill would actually do is interfere with people's ability to obtain medical assistance in dying. As I said this morning, the Conservative Party is once again exploiting a serious problem to put forward a misleading solution. The party claims this bill will protect health care workers from bullying, but it is hiding the real objective, which is to interfere with medical assistance in dying. As I said this morning, this is populism.
This morning, a member corrected me, saying that being populist was not necessarily a bad thing. Fine. I should have used the term “demagoguery”. It is demagoguery.
We know full well that this bill does not seek to eliminate the bullying of health care professionals. Its objective is simply once again to obstruct existing legislation in Quebec. What is more, it seeks to allow a medical practitioner or a health care professional to not refer a case to a colleague. That goes against what we have in Quebec.
Obviously, the Bloc opposes this bill, just as we opposed Bill C‑268 in the last Parliament, and just as we opposed the proposed amendment to Bill C-7 when it was studied in committee. We have always been opposed to this. I do not know why it has come up a third time. Apparently, they have run out of topics, when there are so many to work on. If the Conservatives are looking for topics, we can help them with that.
Again, the Conservative Party is presenting us with a bill that has a certain objective, but which is worded differently in order to hide its real objective.
We oppose this bill for two reasons.
First of all, it contravenes the Quebec charter of values, rights and freedoms. There are already laws in place to protect health care workers in such situations involving intimidation. Let me give some examples of legislation that allows health care workers to refuse to provide medical assistance in dying.
Quebec's Act respecting end-of-life care states the following:
A physician practising in a centre operated by an institution who refuses a request for medical aid in dying for a reason not based on section 29 must, as soon as possible, notify the executive director of the institution or any other person designated by the executive director and forward the request form given to the physician, if that is the case, to the executive director or designated person. The executive director of the institution or designated person must then take the necessary steps to find, as soon as possible, another physician willing to deal with the request in accordance with section 29.
Subsection 241.2(9) of the Criminal Code states:
For greater certainty, nothing in this section compels an individual to provide or assist in providing medical assistance in dying.
Health care workers are already protected by the Criminal Code.
Finally, section 24 of the Code of ethics of physicians of Quebec recognizes conscientious objection for medical practitioners, which is the right not to resort to a medical act that goes against their values. It is also recognized in Quebec's Act respecting end-of-life care. The physician is nevertheless required to find another physician.
A physician must, where his personal convictions prevent him from prescribing or providing professional services that may be appropriate, acquaint his patient with such convictions; he must also advise him of the possible consequences of not receiving such professional services. The physician must then offer to help the patient find another physician.
Ontario has a similar provision. Therefore, physicians and health care workers in that province do not need this bill.
Second, we are opposed to this bill because it allows physicians not to refer a case. Let us recall certain statistics. It is all too clear: There is a growing demand for medical assistance in dying, in Quebec as well as in Canada, since these laws were passed.
End-of-life care meets a need and helps ease the suffering of patients who are dying. Since the act came into force, the number of cases of MAID in Quebec has increased year over year. In 2016-17 there were 599 cases and in 2020-21 there were 2,426, which represents a 405% increase.
According to the annual report of the commission on end-of-life care, three-quarters of patients who requested MAID had cancer.
We can all agree that individuals who request MAID do not do so lightly. These people have a right to dignity and that is what is most important in all of this.
A certain balance must be struck and a decision made. That is the issue: striking a balance between an individual's dignity and freedom of conscience and religion. This has already been studied. Quebec has been discussing these issues for 10 years. That was the objective of the bill sponsored by Ms. Hivon, who I would like to congratulate today, and which was adopted on June 5, 2014. A lot of work went into this. Years were spent studying and evaluating these issues. Why not trust the work that has already been done by Quebec in this area?
This seems to be a recurring theme in the House. The federal government starts from scratch without building on what has already been done. It does not have to look far; Quebec is just across the Ottawa River.
The Quebec National Assembly is working on the issue; among other things, the Select Committee on Dying with Dignity was created on December 4, 2009. There is a consensus in Quebec that access to medical assistance in dying should not be restricted. The Quebec National Assembly spent 10 years examining both sides of the issue I just spoke about.
I will conclude here. I repeat: Medical assistance in dying is not designed to go against the values, religions or religious practices of certain Conservative Party members. Medical assistance in dying is an essential measure that allows people to die with honour and dignity. That is in line with Quebec's charter of values and its charter of rights and freedoms.
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