44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 6, 2022 10:00AM
- Oct/6/22 10:08:08 a.m.
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moved:
That, given that,
(i) big grocery stores have made massive profits in the past year, not long after several were investigated for bread price-fixing,
(ii) workers’ wages and the prices paid to producers in the agricultural sector are not keeping up with those corporate profits, or with inflation,
(iii) Canadian families are struggling with the rising costs of essential purchases,
the House call on the government to recognize that corporate greed is a significant driver of inflation, and to take further action to support families during this cost-of-living crisis, including:
(a) forcing CEOs and big corporations to pay what they owe, by closing the loopholes that have allowed them to avoid $30 billion in taxes in 2021 alone, resulting in a corporate tax rate that is effectively lower now than when this government was elected;
(b) launching an affordable and fair food strategy which tackles corporate greed in the grocery sector including by asking the Competition Bureau to launch an investigation of grocery chain profits, increasing penalties for price-fixing and strengthening competition laws to prohibit companies from abusing their dominant positions in a market to exploit purchasers or agricultural producers; and
(c) supporting the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food in investigating high food prices and the role of “greedflation”, including inviting grocery CEOs before the committee.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I wish to notify the House that I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie.
Today is a good day in the House of Commons because we as New Democrats are forcing parliamentarians to deal with the issues that are concerning Canadians. The motion that we as a party are bringing forward for debate today is specifically calling out the massive corporate profits that are occurring in so many sectors, often at the expense of what ordinary Canadians are able to afford.
Canadians see this week in and week out. They see it when they fill up their vehicles with fuel and they see it when they are at the grocery stores. It is reaching a breaking point for many families. It is forcing too many families to make difficult decisions that no family in a country as wealthy as Canada should have to make. These are decisions on whether their family budgets can afford to pay the rent or mortgage, decisions on whether we can get as much fresh produce for our young children as we used to get and decisions on whether we should only fill up the car with half a tank this week because we need to save money for next week.
This is the reality for too many families, and not only in my riding of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, but across British Columbia and across Canada, from coast to coast to coast. For far too long, these Canadians have been looking at the profits that have been made, especially over this year. Some oil and gas companies are making over 100% more compared with what they were making just a few years ago. I hear a lot of talk in this place about taxes, but not enough talk is happening about the revenue we are losing, the revenue that would be there to support Canadians who are in dire need of it.
It is important that Canadians see that their members of Parliament are addressing their concerns. It is important that they see the people they have sent to this place debating this issue with sincerity and making policies that are going to address it. That is why I am such a proud member of the New Democratic caucus. We have been the only party in this place to call out massive corporate profits and champion an excess profits tax. We will continue to champion that until policy-makers see the light in this place and respond with effective policy.
I want to segue to the remarkable success that Canadians enjoyed yesterday at the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food. I want to thank my colleagues from that committee who agreed to my motion to study the excess profits in the grocery sector in particular.
I want to centre particularly on food because food is the great equalizer in our society. No one can live without food. Everybody needs to eat, but some in our society are able to eat without worry. Others have to make difficult choices. When it comes to our nation's children, we know that a healthy and balanced diet is incredibly important not only for their growth, but for their ability to achieve a good education. In a country as wealthy as Canada, far too many children are suffering.
Juxtapose that reality with the fact that the three largest grocery chains in Canada have been raking in the money. We can look at Empire's net profits, which are up by 27.8% in two years. Loblaws profits are up by 17.2% compared with those of last year, and Metro's are up by 7.8%. I know that the CEO of Sobeys has recently been in the news complaining about us taking up an examination of their profits and shining a spotlight on this issue, but if I am in the bad books of a corporate CEO, I think I am doing my job properly in this place.
Those profits are publicly available, but I also want to identify the fact that calls are coming from inside the house. Last week, my office received an email from an employee. I am going to keep him anonymous. I am not going to mention who he works for, because he is afraid of reprisals, but I will quote him. He said:
I have noticed a worrying trend over the last year of large quantities of retail price increases being sent down on a weekly basis.... However, cost increases on these items don't match the increases of retail prices that are sent down....
I have noticed a trend where retail prices consumers must pay for products will increase, and cost increases will come down months after the fact, if at all. Based on what I know of our systems at [the] store level this means that the profit margins on saleable goods will increase for the company until a related cost increase brings it back down. Thus prices consumers must pay are overinflated until costs align with the retail change....
...That is why I believe that a federal probe into grocery store price increases should be supported in our parliament.
I would say to that employee that the New Democrats have heard their call. We are taking action and we are leading the initiative in this Parliament, not only at committee but in the House of Commons, to address this person's concerns and the concerns Canadian consumers have.
We are not going to stop there. We are also going to go after oil and gas. It is one thing to talk about the carbon price, a price on pollution, but if the government is going to completely ignore the massive profits that oil and gas companies are making off the backs of working Canadians, I think it needs to do some reflection on where its policies stand.
We are at a point where the CEO of Shell is being more progressive than the Liberals and calling out something the Conservatives will not even touch. I do not know what kind of a topsy-turvy world we live in when we have to depend on a CEO to be more progressive than our own government, but it is shameful.
In British Columbia, my constituents know the price of gas. They see it all the time, but they can also match that up with what large oil and gas companies are raking in right now. We need to follow the lead of other countries like the U.K. We need to implement an excess profits tax. That natural resource is owned by Canadians. Private companies have the privilege of bringing it out of the ground and selling it back to us, but it is a resource that is owned by Canadians. It is high time we put in place policies to make sure we are getting the full value out of it.
We also heard earlier this week that last year alone we did not collect $30 billion in corporate taxes. That is the difference between what corporations actually paid and what they should have paid. We are having this talk about the structural deficits we see in our housing and the structural deficits in supports for Canadians who are going through hard times, and then we look at what $30 billion in one year alone could have paid for: How many doctors could we have hired? How many school food programs could we have implemented? How many workers could we have retrained with that money to prepare them for the 21st-century economy?
That is the fundamental question before us. It is a question of what we want to be as a country. Do we really want to pursue well-funded programs that help lift everybody up, not just those at the top? I know where I stand on this matter, and I hope colleagues and other parties will do some genuine reflection on where they stand as well.
We are in a place where there has been extreme inaction from both the Liberals and Conservatives. If we were to follow Conservative tax policy, the Margaret Thatcher cosplay they are so often engaging in, we need only look to the United Kingdom as to what Conservative policy would result in. The Conservative prime minister there has single-handedly caused the U.K. economy to go into an absolute economic free fall through tax policies that rightly belong in the 1980s and have no place in the 21st-century economy, especially when we are trying to address massive inequality.
I know I am in my last minute of this speech, but I want to assure my constituents in Cowichan—Malahat—Langford and people in British Columbia and people right across this great country that, for as long as I have the privilege of standing in this place, I will never let them down. I will continue to aggressively pursue these progressive policies. I will do that until we actually see the fundamental change we need to see.
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- Oct/6/22 10:19:01 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Kings—Hants and all colleagues on the agriculture committee for supporting my motion yesterday. It is going to be a very important inquiry to get the answers Canadians deserve.
I am trying to approach this issue from the perspective of one of my constituents. Two things are true. Prices on food items that people need to survive are going up faster than the general rate of inflation. That is the first truth. The second truth is that the large corporations that have cornered the grocery market are making profits. These two things exist at the same time, and it is about time that parliamentarians took this issue seriously, started an inquiry, got answers and met the challenge with effective policy that is going to tackle inequality in this country.
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- Oct/6/22 10:20:43 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am so glad to see Conservatives, yet again, going to bat for their corporate friends. If the member thinks this is an NDP policy, he should look across the Atlantic Ocean to Conservatives in the United Kingdom who are proposing the exact same policy and have implemented what we are pursuing.
It is actually time for Conservatives to wake up, listen to their constituents, stop moaning about taxes and going after CPP and EI, and join us in going after the corporate fat cats who are profiting from an economy that so many Canadians are suffering under.
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- Oct/6/22 10:22:09 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to compliment my colleague. Indeed, he is a pleasure to work with at committee. We have always had very constructive talks on this.
As for the grocery code of conduct, absolutely, it has come up repeatedly at our committee. What we have heard, especially from producers and processors, is that when they are trying to market their items in large grocery chains there are all of these hidden fees. They can get charged for not supplying enough product, supplying too much or late delivery. That is why this grocery code of conduct is being put in place. It is because of the business practices of large grocery chains, which have put an unfair advantage on our producers and processors.
Again, it is part of the trend of why we are here today to tackle this issue and meet it with effective policy.
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Madam Speaker, if this bill is able to make it to committee, what does my colleague anticipate will be some of the big issues that come up from witness testimony? Does he foresee any possible improvements coming that way, or anything he can anticipate from that stage of the bill?
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to be able to rise to join debate on Bill C-294. I would like to congratulate the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands on bringing forward a bill for debate. We know the lottery system has its winners and losers, and to have a spot to be able to bring forward a piece of legislation for debate is a pretty big honour.
Bill C-294 is an enactment that would target the already existing statute of the Copyright Act to essentially allow a person, under certain circumstances, to circumvent what is known as a technological protection measure, also referred to as a TPM, to basically make a computer program interoperable. Let us see how many times I can say that word quickly without stuttering over it, but basically it would be to make it interoperable with any device or component or with a product they manufacture.
Just so we can understand the section of the Copyright Act this bill would be amending, the existing text of paragraph 41.1(1)(a) specifies that “no person shall circumvent a technological protection measure”. That is a pretty solid barrier to any kind of progress in this specific area.
Before I go much further, I have been pleased to be the agriculture critic for my party now for four and a half years. I recall an important study we did back in the 42nd Parliament on the pace of technology and innovation in agriculture in particular. As a part of that study, our committee travelled right across Canada. We stopped in several different locations and met with some of our leading agricultural producers, manufacturers, researchers and scientists, who are really pushing the envelope in so many different areas and lending themselves to establishing Canada as the agricultural powerhouse it is. We got to see some of the amazing crop breeding technologies going on, but also the equipment.
One thing that became abundantly clear is that, with the manufacturing of agricultural equipment, the pace of technological change, particularly in how advanced the computer programs operating this equipment are, is going ahead at a speed that leaves one's head spinning. It is still quite a competitive field, but it is also one dominated by several big players. We heard in other speeches about the fact that because they want their equipment to be used with other pieces of their equipment and are basically trying to corner consumers into sticking with their line of products, they are increasingly resorting to what is known as digital locks. Those locks do not allow for different pieces of equipment to operate with one another. It has long been identified as a frustration among farmers, but this also goes beyond the agricultural sector.
This can be applied to many different areas of business, where they are increasingly having to use different computer programs that do not always mesh well with each other, and it can cost a lot of money for a business to have to switch gears and maybe dump one computer program and adopt a whole new system. This is really an important change to basically allow a bit more consumer choice but also to allow some of those small and medium-sized enterprises that are really trying to get their foot in the door to compete on a level playing field, so they can go out into the marketplace with confidence knowing that when they sell their products it is not going to put any pressure on someone to maybe disregard their product because it is not compatible operating with maybe a larger manufacturer. In that sense, this is very noble intention in this bill.
When we speak of the word “interoperability”, that basically is what it is. It is going to allow those different systems, devices, applications, products or whatever one may have to be able to essentially connect and communicate with one another in a coordinated way. This is something the user of the product ultimately wants all their stuff to do.
I heard one of my colleagues talk about the problem of e-waste. That is a very real problem in this country, and indeed around the world. We are generating so much e-waste and toxic chemicals that can leach into our landfills as a result.
If we want to try to stop that from happening, then we have to find ways in our policies and in our laws to encourage people to be able to use a product for as long as they possibly can. Interoperability is going to be a key component of that, so that people can feel confident they do not need to throw something away but can keep on using it with another product.
I want to also reference the fact that we in the House have already voted on a bill that was dealing with the concept of the right to repair, and now we are dealing with a bill that would also amend the Copyright Act to allow for interoperability. There is a slight difference between those two concepts, and I know the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands has taken some time to really delve into that from a previous question, but I think we can tackle both of them.
On the right to repair, I know at committee I have certainly had some manufacturers raise some concerns with it, so I certainly hope that at the committee stage, dealing with the right to repair bill in particular, they address some of those concerns. Manufacturers were concerned that some people might be able to tinker with their equipment to remove safety mechanisms. For example, a lot of forklifts require that an operator be sitting down in the seat, and the seat has to feel a person's weight in order for the machinery to operate. Manufacturers were worried that a person could tinker with that safety system, so that they could operate the forklift while standing beside it and outside the safety box, which, of course, would be incredibly unsafe were the load to tip over or something like that.
There have been some concerns raised on it, and I know the committee will do its due diligence in addressing those.
Returning to Bill C-294, we also have to set the context. This bill came about after an important report was issued by Western Economic Diversification Canada in February of last year. It essentially set the context of the fact that this is a pretty big issue within the agricultural field. It is a big issue because of new market dynamics that have arisen, created by those digital technologies.
Ongoing policy in this area, because of the rapid technological change, has to really address a number of items. The first bullet point here was on copyright policy and whether there are exceptions in the law to permit circumvention of technological protection measures, TPMs, so that we can adapt to this and the reality in the marketplace.
I do not want to spend too much more time speaking to the bill. I know my colleague, the member for Windsor West, who sits on the industry committee, may want to say some words on this bill during its second hour of debate, but I know he is looking forward to getting this bill to committee so that it can be studied in further detail. It deserves to continue on its journey to committee. We can let that deliberative body take a closer look at it and really get that airing from witnesses who are directly involved in the field, so they can come and say in their own words why this initiative is so important and give the reasons parliamentarians should ensure that it continues on its journey.
I will end by just saying that I look forward to having the opportunity to vote to send this bill to the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, and I would like to congratulate the member again on bringing forward this initiative for us to consider.
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