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Oct/6/22 3:43:35 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would be pleased if the Liberals voted in favour of this. I hope they do, but one vote today is not going to make up for decades of inaction and refusal to make corporations and companies pay their fair share. There absolutely is a comprehensive corporate gouging across all sectors of this country. My colleague asked what other sectors are doing it. The oil and gas sector is doing it. In fact, some of the biggest oil companies have recorded the highest profits in the history of their companies in the last 12 months. The so-called FIRE sector, which is finance, insurance and real estate, is recording double-digit profit increases, as are other companies across this country. This corporate gouge is not limited to the food sector, for sure. That is why we need fair corporate taxation, something the NDP has called for over a long period but both the Liberals and the Conservatives have refused to do.

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Mr. Alex Ruff (Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, CPC)

Oct/6/22 3:44:33 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the intervention by the member for Vancouver Kingsway. I may not agree with everything he stated, but I agree with the intent behind this motion. We have to address high food prices in Canada. My question to him is this. Why did the motion not include talk about the costs of inputs and how they impact high food prices? I think that would have made it even more clear. That additional cost is driving up food and making it so expensive for so many Canadians. The second thing is that I know the member mentioned Loblaws. I and other Conservative members have pointed out the hypocrisy of the Liberal government over the $12 million that it gave to Loblaws. I did not hear anything about that in his speech, and I am just wondering why.

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Mr. Don Davies

Oct/6/22 3:45:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it was a pleasure to serve with the member on NSICOP. The motion is, I think, very well crafted. It identifies the problem in a very pithy way, and it identifies four concrete solutions. I suppose there are always things to add, and the Conservatives could have added an amendment if they had wanted to. In terms of inputs, what we are talking about here is plain gouging. It is my assertion that corporations, including food companies, are using the supply chain problems as a cover to gouge consumers. There is no question about that, because their increases bear no resemblance whatsoever to any of the input costs, including wages, which is usually the single largest component of any product, like a food product. They are gouging agricultural producers as well. It is certainly not our farmers who are reaping the benefits of these prices. It is the food companies themselves. That is why we are zeroing in on them.

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Mr. René Villemure (Trois-Rivières, BQ)

Oct/6/22 3:46:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his question. Surely no one could oppose a motion that denounces greed. I wonder, however, whether it needs to go a little further. We know that Canadian companies managed to hide $381 billion in 12 tax havens this year. We know that tax avoidance goes relatively unpunished by Ottawa. I know it is more dramatic to talk about retail and grocery store profits, but I would like to know what my colleague thinks about going further and looking at tax havens.

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Mr. Don Davies

Oct/6/22 3:47:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think the NDP has been the loudest, strongest and longest voice in this House on going after tax havens. We have been raising that in every election I have run in since 2008. We were doing it before that as well. In fact, this motion does talk about forcing CEOs and big corporations to pay what they owe, by closing loopholes that allowed them to avoid $30 billion in taxes in 2021 alone. That results in a corporate tax rate that is effectively lower now than when the government was elected. Part of closing loopholes is going after that money that is parked in offshore tax havens as a means of extracting the wealth from Canada and parking that capital offshore to avoid taxes. That is immoral and should be illegal, and only the NDP has consistently called for effective action to close those loopholes.

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Mr. Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay, NDP)

Oct/6/22 3:48:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as always it is a great honour to rise and speak on behalf of the people of Timmins—James Bay, particularly at this time of incredible uncertainty. We noticed and are very pleased to see the Russian army suffering defeats in Ukraine, but we are in a time of major global uncertainty. We are in a time of crisis in prices and crisis in supply chains. Workers are being told, with respect to their lack of ability to get higher wages, that if they somehow got a more level playing field, it would exacerbate the inflation crisis. What New Democrats are calling for today is to focus in on where these inflationary problems are being driven. They are being driven by gouging by some very major and powerful corporate interests. On the oil sector, around the world there are questions being raised about the massive profits coming out of the pockets of ordinary consumers, who cannot even afford to heat their houses. The other really disturbing issue we are seeing is the crisis in the affordability of food, and that is directly tied to the price gouging that has been under way throughout this crisis. What we are asking for is very straightforward. We are asking the Competition Bureau to launch an investigation into grocery chain practices, to increase the penalties for price fixing and to strengthen competition laws to prohibit these companies from abusing their dominant positions in the market, which exploit both consumers and agricultural producers. We are also calling for the House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food to look into this, because we want to make sure we are dealing with issues of fairness, as people are being gouged and cannot afford to pay their bills. It is very interesting and indicative that we are debating this today, when the New Democratic motion on doubling the GST tax credit has received support from this House, because we came into this Parliament saying we were going to fight for people who are being left behind in this time of uncertainty. We brought forward three major initiatives for the fall. First, the doubling of the GST tax credit will get money right back into the hands of people, families and seniors so they can buy their groceries. Second, for low-income renters, the $500 supplement is essential support at this time of gouging and particularly high housing prices. Third, of course, is the initiative the Liberals have now moved to agree with us on, which is a national dental care plan. If a person cannot afford to get their kids' teeth fixed, all other issues pale in comparison. A mother or a father who cannot afford to get their child's teeth fixed is in a situation that should not be allowed to happen. My friends in the Conservative Party have been very much against these initiatives. I appreciate the flip-flop on the tax credit, but the word they have been using is that actual steps to help people in this crisis would somehow be “vaporized” by inflation, as though inflation is some kind of magic thing. I am interested in the term “vaporizing”, because the only thing I noticed that vaporized over the summer was the price of cryptocurrency after the leader of the Conservative Party told us that he gets his financial advice from a conspiracy blogger on YouTube. I know they got a lot of their medical advice from anti-vax conspiracy bloggers on YouTube, but the idea that the leader of the Conservative Party was promoting cryptocurrency, which dropped 70% in value after he began promoting it, is something we should think about for a minute. I know a lot of working-class people in northern Ontario who do not have savings, who are insecure and who thought maybe crypto would be a way of allowing them to get some kind of savings. They listened to the Conservative leader. Seventy per cent of that value vaporized. I will tell members what is not going to vaporize, which is getting that $500 cheque if someone is a low-income renter, or getting the $460 to $600 GST rebate so people can pay their rent. What is not going to vaporize is the hopes of children to get dental care. That is what New Democrats came to Parliament to do. It was to get results for people. What we need to do is strip off a lot of the mythologies and misrepresentations on what is causing inflation. Now, I mentioned the Russian war at the beginning, and we know that has destabilized the situation globally, but when we drill down on the numbers in Canada, it becomes very clear that certain powerful interests are using the fears of inflation to drive up their profits and their corporate lines. The CEO of Sobeys was paid $8.6 million in compensation this year. What does this guy do to deserve this? Groceries rose nearly 11% in that time. It is supposed to be inflationary growth that caused the 11% rise, but the profits we saw from Sobeys, Loblaws and Metro are much higher than the rate of inflation. The rates of wage earnings are much lower than the rate of inflation, so workers who got an increase this year did not contribute to inflation; it is the gouging that is going on. The CEO compensation at Loblaws was $5 million; at Metro it was $5 million, and at Sobeys it was $8.6 million. I want to focus in a bit on the Weston family, on Galen Weston, living in his gated community. He was found guilty of price-fixing with respect to bread, for crying out loud. I want to thank Irene Breckon, a good northern Ontario woman from the mining town of Elliot Lake, who led the class action lawsuit. Does anyone think that Galen Weston is ever going to be punished for ripping off families with respect to bread? That is not what happens to the super rich. They get free gifts, for example, $12 million to fix Galen Weston's fridges. My mom, and I am thinking of Loretta Lynn today, is a coal miner's daughter. I had to explain this to her. She called me to ask what was going on with the Liberal government fixing Galen Weston's fridges, and whether it would fix her fridge. I told her that I knew it was really not right and that we were trying to deal with it. Then she came home and told me about the grocery prices she is having to pay and asked about Galen Weston and all the money he is making. I told her not to worry, that we are going to make this right. That is why we are in the House today. Across party lines, we need to start saying to these CEOs that they cannot use inflationary fears anymore to gouge working-class families that have no choice but to go to the grocery store and pay for the food they need for their children. In our motion today we are not talking about the oil price gouging that is going on, but that has been one of the other massive drivers of inflation. At the beginning of October, when the price of a barrel of oil was $80, prices were still 13% higher than they were the last time the price of a barrel was that high. I am sure other people in the country know this too, but anyone in northern Ontario knows that the second a hurricane hits the southern Gulf coast the price of gas at our local pumps jumps up 30¢ overnight, but when everything is going fine that price does not come down. There is consistent gouging. Members do not have to believe me. I know people think I am the wild New Democrat from northern Ontario, but I would say that my good friend the CEO of Shell agrees with me, because he is saying that the situation around the world is so unstable due to the gouging of the oil companies that this crisis can no longer be left to the markets. He says it is time we started to tax that windfall back. We are not saying it is wrong to make profit. Profit is good. It is what drives industry. However, companies are gouging people over their fears of inflation and using the Russian war to pad their pockets. How are they padding them? Let us talk about the $52 billion in the second quarter of this year, which is an increase of 235%. That is the kind of gouging that is going on. The United Nations, California, the EU and even President Biden are talking about the windfall tax that is necessary to pull some of that gouging back and restore it to ordinary Canadians. That is our job in the House of Commons, to stand up for the people who do not have a voice in the back rooms of power, who do not have the lobbyists and who do not have the Cayman Islands to hide their tax accounts. They have to go and feed their kids. They deserve dental care. They deserve an investigation into the gouging that is going on in the grocery stores right now.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate), Lib.)

Oct/6/22 3:57:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will ask my question, picking up on the last comment the member made. He talked about dental care in particular. I am not sure if he caught it, but during question period the Prime Minister basically asked the Leader of the Opposition why he would not support dental care and help put smiles on children's faces. The very odd response was that they will not be smiling if their parents cannot buy them a bit of pumpkin pie, as if to suggest that parents would rather give their kids pumpkin pie than provide dental care. Is it just me, or are the Conservatives completely out of touch with what the most vulnerable in our society need?

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Mr. Charlie Angus

Oct/6/22 3:58:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, to those who say there is no such thing as miracles, I note that my hon. colleague from the Liberals, who until just recently was dead set against a federal dental care plan, has seen the light. I appreciate that. When someone has seen the light, we have to welcome them into the light. As for the leader of the Conservative Party, he has nothing to worry about with his pumpkin pie this weekend. He does not have to worry about how much sugar is put in there for his kids because he has had free dental care since he was elected at 20-some years old. His family has free dental care. All the Conservatives have free dental care. They just do not want working class parents to get free dental care. That is the issue I have. I do not care how many pumpkin pies are put on the table. Nobody is going to swallow that malarky.

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Mr. Ryan Williams (Bay of Quinte, CPC)

Oct/6/22 3:59:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we do agree with much of the bill. The big thing is competition, and that looks at how companies are acting and what choice is there for consumers. The member talked about people being gouged and what they cannot afford. Our farmers provide food, and if we are looking at the competition, we see there are 189,000 farms in Canada. They are paying, on average, $45,000 each in carbon tax, and they are only getting back $862. We are talking about that end of the industry. Of course, we are also going to look at competition for our grocery stores. We are going to look at farmers' markets and the other ways that people get nutritious, healthy food. That seems to be about gouging. They are not finding relief at a time when farmers cannot choose other sources. We want them to use hydrogen and want them to use better fossil fuels or no carbon, but when it comes to that idea, they do not have a choice. Why is the member not pushing for relief for farmers to get better, nutritious food for Canadian families that need it right now?

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Mr. Charlie Angus

Oct/6/22 4:00:51 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, one thing that always strikes me about the Conservatives when we are talking about people not being able to pay their bills is that they are very concerned that big oil is not getting enough of a free deal. Nine billion dollars is the figure for one year of climate damage in British Columbia. How many farms were wrecked by climate damage? We never hear the Conservatives worry about that, because they are focused on big oil. They believe that pollution should be free and that the big oil companies should be able to jack as much CO2 into the air as possible. My issue with the carbon tax is that the Liberals do not seem to have a climate plan to go with it, so they are raising the money. I find it really concerning that when we are talking about price gouging and about bringing this forward so the producers are heard at the table, the Conservatives want to talk about the interests of big oil.

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Ms. Sylvie Bérubé (Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, BQ)

Oct/6/22 4:01:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Timmins—James Bay for his speech. He talked mainly about food prices. It is important that we not confuse all the causes of rising food prices. We do not think that CEOs are the only ones to blame for the price increase. A unique set of circumstances involving a multitude of external factors is causing economic instability. These factors include rising operating costs related to COVID-19, higher input costs including more expensive staple foods, and poor harvests due to droughts and the impact of climate change in recent years. Could my colleague comment on that?

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Mr. Charlie Angus

Oct/6/22 4:02:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I invite my hon. colleague to take a plane and go up to the north of her riding to see what people pay in the northern stores. They are ripped off consistently. Does she think that the northern stores are not making massive amounts of money? The northern stores' CEO is making millions as well. This is happening to her constituents. Loblaws made $901 million, up $132 million. Metro made $680 million, up $49 million over the last year. Sobeys made $744.8 million, up $46.7 million. The member can talk about input costs and COVID, but we are talking about price gouging.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate), Lib.)

Oct/6/22 4:03:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will start by saying that I am sharing my time with the deputy House leader to the government. I have had an opportunity to read this motion and I think there is a lot of good in it. Quite frankly, I am inclined to support it and most likely will, to be completely honest. It reminds me that just a few days ago, during a question and answer on a different issue, the member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie asked me specifically about this issue in the context of another bill that we were discussing. I can recall replying to him that I thought it was a very important issue to discuss. I did not realize that this exchange would lead to the NDP, just a couple of days later, introducing a motion to that effect, but I am absolutely delighted to see it. I think it will give an opportunity, if passed, for the necessary studies to be done. I think there is quite a bit of anecdotal evidence out there to suggest that there are large corporations profiting off of inflation and the fear of inflation, and it is something we need to address. I look forward to, hopefully, this passing with the support of the House and to the opportunity to ensure that these practices are dealt with in a swift fashion. I want to compliment the NDP on bringing forward a very reasonable motion, quite frankly, unlike my colleagues from across the way, the Conservatives. They bring in motions that are pretty much predicated on slogans like “triple, triple, triple” whatever. By the way, I do not understand this “triple, triple, triple” thing. It does not make any sense to me. When I hear them say “triple, triple, triple”, all I think of is that there have been three times in the last eight years that the population has rejected them. Maybe they are referencing “triple, triple, triple” because they have been rejected at the polls three times in a row. I am not sure. That is all I can really put together based on it, because otherwise it does not make sense. It does not even deliver well. In any event, that is what I assumed. The Conservatives have policies that are completely out there, as opposed to coming forward with stuff like what we are seeing today, which is very reasonable, in my opinion. We obviously know their position on cryptocurrency. That is becoming very well known in the House. The Leader of the Opposition is a big fan of cryptocurrency. As a matter of fact, and I am not sure if the public knows this, there is a private member's bill in the name of the member for Calgary Nose Hill on cryptocurrency. We were actually supposed to debate that private member's bill during the first sitting of the House, when we resumed in September, but guess what. The Conservatives punted it forward. Do members know when it was punted forward to? It was today. We were actually supposed to discuss that bill today at 5:30 p.m., but guess what the Conservatives did. They punted it forward. The Conservatives seem to be very scared about the issue of cryptocurrency. If they are not, why will they not let the member for Calgary Nose Hill bring forward her bill? Free the bill. Free her bill. Allow it to come to the floor. The Conservative leadership, run by the member for Carleton, the Carleton crypto king, is purposefully preventing this bill from moving forward in the House. Let us have a discussion on cryptocurrency. Allow the member for Calgary Nose Hill to bring her bill before the House. The Conservatives need to stop holding it back, because, quite frankly, it is unfair to Canadians to not let us have the opportunity to discuss this very important matter. That is the contrast I am trying to show here with the reasonable motion we see today to look into a very important matter. The NDP clearly accepts the global reasoning that has been supported by economists throughout the globe as to why we have inflation. No, it is not the Prime Minister of Canada who caused inflation. It is a global issue. The NDP knows that and I am fairly certain the Bloc knows that too. The Conservatives are set on trying to convince the Canadian population that it is actually the Prime Minister who caused global inflation. If he had the ability to do that, I would be really impressed, quite frankly, especially considering that the Conservatives routinely accuse the Prime Minister of being incapable of doing just about anything. Now suddenly they are willing to give him credit for being able to control global inflation. Nonetheless, those are the kinds of issues the NDP is trying to look at in a realistic way, rather than saying that we do not want to spend money giving GST rebates because that is going to cause inflation. Members might note that this is one of the original arguments that came from the Conservatives before they flip-flopped on it. They have now decided that it is maybe not in their best interests to vote against that, so maybe they should support it. Rather than taking the approach of the Conservatives and saying we are not interested in inflation because we know where it comes from, the New Democrats are actually trying to get to the root cause of it, and I think their main complaint here has a lot of merit to it. We have seen a lot happen today. It has been a pretty revealing day for the Leader of the Opposition. We have learned this morning that he was actively using misogynistic tags on YouTube to get users to go to his YouTube page. For people who do not understand how this works, there is a particular hashtag, #mgtow, which is “men going their own way”, from a group that is specifically based around anti-feminism and misogyny. There are primarily and pretty much only men in this group. What the Leader of the Opposition was doing was using that hashtag—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Oct/6/22 4:10:10 p.m.
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The hon. member for Battlefords—Lloydminster is rising on a point of order.

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Mrs. Rosemarie Falk

Oct/6/22 4:10:14 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I understand that we are debating an opposition day motion today from the NDP about food supply. I am unsure of the relevance of what the member across—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Oct/6/22 4:10:32 p.m.
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The hon. member does know there is a lot of latitude in the way we get to the object of the debates, and I will let the member get there. The hon. member for Timmins—James Bay is rising on a point of order.

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Mr. Charlie Angus

Oct/6/22 4:10:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, in response to that, because we do have a tradition in Parliament, I would like the hon. member to clarify whether he thinks the member for Carleton was just trying to attract incels in general, or maybe even some on the back bench.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Oct/6/22 4:10:57 p.m.
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Can we wait until questions to ask questions of the hon. member making the speech? The hon. member has addressed the issue of the motion. He has started his speech on it and has spent most of the time so far on the issue of the motion. The hon. member for Prince Albert is rising on a point of order.

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Mr. Randy Hoback

Oct/6/22 4:11:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member for Battlefords—Lloydminster was very clear that she would like to see the member stick to the topic at hand. Also, the fact is that our leader has been very clear on this issue. He condemns it and condemns all the—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Oct/6/22 4:11:29 p.m.
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That is debate. Let us allow the hon. member to finish his speech.

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