SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 160 - Feb/14/23

Feb/14/23 3:27:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his very important question about housing across Canada. We have to do many things to reduce the cost of housing. We need to do everything we can on the housing front, working with all partners and collaborating with the provinces, municipalities and regions. That is how our country is made, and that is what we must do. We unveiled the rapid housing initiative and the national housing strategy. The Bloc Québécois member has many ideas. I encourage the member to put forward those ideas to the government, and we will most certainly look at them, as we would any good idea that comes forward.

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Ms. Lori Idlout (Nunavut, NDP)

Feb/14/23 3:27:51 p.m.
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Uqaqtittiji, the Liberals have voted against an excess profits tax on oil and gas that would make them pay what they owe. Despite their promises to end fossil fuel subsidies, they have increased them even though big oil is showing record profits. When will the government extend the Canada revenue dividend to big oil so those profits could be used to help families?

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Mr. Francesco Sorbara

Feb/14/23 3:28:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, since 2015, we have put in place a number of measures, beginning with asking the wealthiest in Canada to pay a little extra on their personal income taxes. We even increased corporate tax rates on a number of different sectors with the Canada recovery dividend tax that we put in place. We put in place a special tax on share repurchases by corporations, which will be coming into effect. We always look at measures that will improve the competitiveness of our economy, but also ensure that the government is collecting the revenues to produce and to provide the services Canadians depend on day in and day out.

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Mr. Darrell Samson (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defence, Lib.)

Feb/14/23 3:29:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague a question. In the face of affordability, our government has increased the indexing for the CCB, the OAS and the GIS. How important is that for the member's community?

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Mr. Francesco Sorbara

Feb/14/23 3:29:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the indexing of all benefits will allow Canadians to alleviate inflation. We allowed increases for old age security, GIS, the Canada child benefit and a number of programs that we put in place to benefit Canadians and help with affordability. Our government is about helping Canadians and having the backs of Canadians, whether it is today or tomorrow.

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Mr. Frank Caputo

Feb/14/23 3:30:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I just wanted to wish my wife and all spouses and partners out there a happy Valentine's Day.

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The Deputy Speaker

Feb/14/23 3:30:25 p.m.
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Before everybody tries to do the same thing, let us all wish our spouses and our loved ones a happy Valentine's Day. Resuming debate, the hon. member for Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis.

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Mrs. Dominique Vien (Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, CPC)

Feb/14/23 3:30:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we on this side of the House are romantics, so I too wish everyone a happy Valentine's Day. I am pleased to share my time with my colleague from Prince Albert. I am very happy to speak today about this important motion introduced by my colleague from Calgary Forest Lawn. I congratulate him on it. I think he has done an outstanding job. Unfortunately, the Bloc member for Longueuil—Saint‑Hubert is criticizing us for speaking often and extensively about the cost of living. In my opinion, it is our duty as members of Parliament to discuss these things. These concerns and issues worry and trouble the lives of our constituents, Canadians and especially Quebeckers. I will read part of the motion, because it contains extremely important elements that can never be repeated too often to get the government to see reason. It reads as follows: (i) after eight years of this Liberal Prime Minister, inflation is at a 40-year high, (ii) after eight years of this Liberal Prime Minister, the cost of groceries is up 11%, (iii) after eight years of this Liberal Prime Minister, half of Canadians are cutting back on groceries, (iv) after eight years of this Liberal Prime Minister, 20% of Canadians are skipping meals, (v) after eight years of this Liberal Prime Minister, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment across Canada’s 10 biggest cities is $2,213 per month, compared to $1,171 per month in 2015... I would like to remind the House that 2015 is the year the Liberals came to power with the current Prime Minister. ...(vi) after eight years of this Liberal Prime Minister, 45% of variable rate mortgage holders say they will have to sell or vacate their homes in less than nine months due to current interest rate levels, (vii) after eight years of this Liberal Prime Minister, average monthly mortgage costs have more than doubled and now cost Canadians over $3,000 per month... I will keep it short because there may be more information to be shared from our colleague's very important motion. What we are ultimately asking the government to do is stop spending recklessly so that our economy can get back on track. I am going to address some very specific elements of the cost of living, ones that affect different sectors, whether it is housing, groceries, or other aspects of people's daily lives. On the overall economic front, I would like to remind the House that the Prime Minister of this Liberal government is the one who has single-handedly run up more deficits than all previous prime ministers of Canada. That is a lot of money. Somebody, somewhere, has to pay for that. We must also remember that the federal debt has doubled since the Liberal government took office. I would also like to remind the House that this Liberal government has never managed to table a balanced budget. It repeatedly told us that there would be just small deficits for a time, not for all time. In the end, that has not been the case. Experts have issued a warning to the government. It will have to rein in its spending if it wants to avoid adding further inflationary pressures. I am not the one saying this, but rather the experts. Still, we know that this Prime Minister almost never listens to anyone. In a report published in January, the Business Council of Canada and the firm Bennett Jones said that the forecasts in the last budget were overly optimistic. Not only do the Liberals not know how to count, but they are throwing money around like it grows on trees. Let us talk about the state of mind of Quebeckers. I am a Quebecker, so I would like to talk about what is going on in Quebec. I should mention that their state of mind is at its worst. According to a Leger survey, Quebeckers are going into 2023 with a high level of stress, and their number one concern is the impact of rising consumer prices. The Bloc Québécois has the nerve to stand up in the House and tell us that we are repeating ourselves and that we need to stop talking about this, when this is the number one concern of Quebeckers right now. Furthermore, over 20% of respondents are worried about not having enough money and said that increased interest rates are problematic. I want to quote a worker at the Association coopérative d'économie familiale de la Rive-Sud de Québec, a well-known organization in Quebec that helps Quebeckers ensure that they have a budget that they can stick to. The worker said this, and I quote: “People are very stressed about this. Before, they used to ask us how they would get by. Now they are telling us that they are not getting by anymore”. Let us talk now about businesses. The results of a recent study by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business were released this week. According to that study, 73% of Quebec's small businesses, about three-quarters, said that they will have to raise their prices to deal with inflation. If businesses raise their prices, Canadian and Quebec consumers who need to purchase goods and services are the ones who will be affected in their everyday lives. Quebec businesses are now telling us that things are so bad that they will be forced to raise prices for consumers once again. Obviously, this will have a major impact on Quebeckers' wallets. The study also found that just over half of companies, nearly 60%, plan to work longer hours to reduce labour costs. This really bothers many businesses. There is a lot of information in this survey, and one statistic that was really troubling to me was this: 43% of SMEs plan to temporarily reduce their profit margins in order to remain competitive, and 32% of SMEs are going to reduce their investments and growth forecasts. What does this mean in concrete terms? The vitality of a society is also measured by the vitality of its businesses. If businesses do not have confidence in the future, but rather fear it, they stop investing. It is not hard to see what this means. When a business stops investing, it is because it does not have confidence in the future. A lack of confidence disrupts society's economic balance. Do I have to remind the House that Canada is in the middle of a major housing crisis? Young adults are sleeping in their parents' basement because they cannot afford a house. What are the consequences of that? It puts pressure on the rental market and drives rents up. House prices have doubled in the past eight years. If I remember correctly, prices have gone up 21% in and around Quebec City. If we cannot house our people, we have a real problem. The cost of housing has gone up way too much, and now people, young families, cannot afford a house. Not only are they living in their parents' basement, but some students resort to shelters because they have nowhere else to go and not enough money for decent housing. In closing, I want to touch on the environment. The government loves to crow about its environmental record. Not to rain on its parade, but I would like to see it set a more ambitious agenda in that department. After eight years of Liberal rule, Canada is ranked 58th out of 63 countries in the fight against climate change, according to the UN. The government must carry out a full review of all the bad decisions it has made and its entire vision, because it is the wrong one and is getting us nowhere.

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

Feb/14/23 3:40:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I always find it amazing when one does a contrast between the government and the Conservative Party. The member says, as the Conservatives have, that we are spending too much money, and yet when we take a look at the money we are spending, in good part, we think of the billions on child care. Conservatives say they do not want that child care, and yet when we brought in the legislation to support it, they actually voted in favour of the legislation. We just made a commitment of $198 billion toward health care, and now the Conservatives are saying they would not cut that money back if they were to get elected. The Conservatives seem to be of the impression that they can just criticize and provide no actual plan. Does the hon. member not feel, whether it is on the environment, health care or child care, that it is an obligation of the official opposition to provide its plan on some of these important social issues?

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Mrs. Dominique Vien

Feb/14/23 3:41:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, just a short while ago, during oral question period, some of my colleagues rightfully and frankly pointed out that this government has been making very bad decisions for the eight years that it has been in office. We are not the only ones to say so. Experts have also been saying that the Liberal government is spending recklessly and that it must turn off the taps. We are proposing a much more rigorous vision for public finances. This will allow the country to be in a more peaceful and balanced situation. What we are saying is that every dollar spent must be accounted for by the public service and government.

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Mr. Denis Trudel (Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, BQ)

Feb/14/23 3:42:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be pleased to respond to my colleague who mentioned me in her speech. I very much like and respect that colleague. Unfortunately, in her speech, she echoed the mantra of my Conservative friends, who never have answers to the fundamental questions. Last week, we were talking about the carbon tax. The Conservatives want to scrap it. That is all well and good, but one of the major challenges of our time is the climate crisis. A carbon tax of $15 or even $50 is not going to cut it. The UN says that it should now be more than $200 a tonne for us to even begin to think about dealing with this challenge. My colleague also talked about the housing crisis. It is easy to say that there is a housing crisis and that young people cannot afford housing. I know it because I am in the midst of it every day myself. A few months ago, Scotiabank published a study saying that Canada needs 3.5 million housing units over the next 10 years. It has been reported that in Quebec alone, the market will build 500,000 units on its own. The governments need to intervene one way or another to build 600,000. We have to pay if we want to house the least fortunate in society. I am not hearing any response from the Conservatives. They have nothing to say about housing or the climate crisis, and that is a big problem.

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Mrs. Dominique Vien

Feb/14/23 3:43:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that was more of a comment than a question. I am rather surprised to hear the Bloc Québécois criticizing us today for wanting to talk about the cost of living and about how badly Canadians and Quebeckers are suffering because of what is currently happening in Canada, with high costs and families overburdened by tax hikes and increased housing costs. What we are proposing is to make sure that we are spending in a smart and careful way. For every dollar spent, there must be a dollar found in savings.

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Ms. Lori Idlout (Nunavut, NDP)

Feb/14/23 3:44:24 p.m.
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Uqaqtittiji, allowing big polluters off the hook needs to stop. Does the member agree that as a way to do this there needs to be taxation on big oil, which keeps having record profits? Does the member agree that in order to make sure we are coming up with better solutions, more revenue needs to be put into the Canada revenue?

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Mrs. Dominique Vien

Feb/14/23 3:44:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, taxes are high right now. I think we are an overtaxed society. After eight years under the Liberal government, Canada is ranked 58th out of 63 countries when it comes to climate change. That is a total failure.

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Mr. Randy Hoback (Prince Albert, CPC)

Feb/14/23 3:45:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is nice to see you acknowledge the member for Prince Albert to get up to speak in front of members today about the state of the Canadian economy and just how broken things are here in Canada. Before I get started, I have to do one special thing. It is my anniversary today. My wife and I have been married for 36 years. I would not be here without her. I would not be here fighting for the constituents of Prince Albert without her sacrifices. She is making a sacrifice today by letting me be here to talk about something that is very important to the constituents in my riding, and I thank her dearly for that, as I am sure the people of Canada do. In 2015, the government inherited an amazing situation for Canada. If we think back to what it looked like in 2015, it was the good old days. People could buy a house and afford it. They could get a mortgage and actually pay it off. People could go to a restaurant and buy a meal. They could go to the grocery store and fill their shopping cart. They could do a variety of things with their family, because their family was a strong mechanism. People could go on holidays. Both parents had a job. Let us look at what we have today and what we had back then. We had a balanced budget. We went through a global recession in 2008 to 2011. We spent money on infrastructure. We took on deficits, but we paid them back. We got to a balanced budget in 2015, so we have proven that we can go through all sorts of different crises, global crises, like the ones the Conservatives faced, and actually pay it back and progress. We had a united country from coast to coast. East and west were celebrating each other's victories. I used to take pride, and I still take pride, in a vehicle that is made in Ontario being sold in Saskatchewan, or somebody in Newfoundland buying bread made from wheat out of Saskatchewan. We worked together as a country. We functioned together. We were not divided. There was no city-rural division like the one we see today. Canadians were united. Back in 2015, Canadians did not look at the government and worry about how the coming budget was going to impact them, as they do with this budget that is coming forward, because they know that the Liberal budget is going to impact them one way or another. That means the government has become too involved in the day-to-day activities of the Canadian lifestyle. We had infrastructure being built. The port of Vancouver was functioning. It was one of the higher-ranked ports in the world, which it is not today. We had a health care system that was being rebuilt from years of cutting by the federal Liberals previous to the Harper Conservative government. We had a prime minister who had global respect. When he went around the globe, people respected him. They respected the country of Canada. We punched above our weight. We were principled in how we conducted ourselves with the global countries, in the global environment and on the global stage. What do we have today? We cannot help but say that it is broken. In 2015, if people wanted to get a passport and needed it today, they could pay an extra fee and actually get their passport today. What do we have today? If people want a passport and they are not travelling within six weeks, they are not even going to get looked at. If they need a fast passport, they can forget about that. Getting a passport is broken. People cannot get a passport. If they have a problem with the CRA and want to talk about an issue because they want to make sure they are doing things right, they call in and sit on hold for three hours. They take a number, relay their question and are told that someone will get back to them in three weeks. That is customer service brought to us by the current Liberal government. When we look at the things the government used to provide on an ordinary basis, it is now extraordinary. It is so disgusting and sad to see, because we know that in 2015, when these civil servants were working under a Harper government, they did their job. They knew what they were doing. They were happy in their job and functioned very well. They were not covering up expenses on hotel bills or spending time trying to hide ministers' expenses. We had a government of honour. We had a minister resign because of a $16 orange juice. We had another minister who resigned because of an ethics breach and who came back into cabinet. They knew what the right thing to do at the time was and they did the right thing. The biggest scandal we had in the Harper government was the chief of staff paying back taxpayers for another member's unwillingness to pay. That was the biggest scandal. When we look at the government today, what do we see? Things are broken, broken, broken. I was sitting in a board meeting with my constituents about three months ago and that is how one person put it to me, that things are broken. It does not matter what department one deals with, it is broken. If we talk to Health Canada, it is broken. If we talk to passports, it is broken. If we talk to CRA, it is broken. If we look at our military and defence, it is broken. If we look at our transportation system and airports, they are broken. The Port of Vancouver is now ranked second-last in the world for ports. It is broken. This is eight years of the Liberals' accomplishments, and they are broken. Can one afford a house now? One sure needs to have the income to do it. We heard our Bloc friends talk about the shortage of houses. Well, in eight years, why is there, all of a sudden, a shortage of houses? What has been in the Liberal policy book to encourage housing to be built or continue to be built? It, in fact, did the opposite. It encouraged people not to build houses. We can look at our business sector and competitiveness. We hear Canadian manufacturers and exporters talk over and over again about how we are losing businesses to the States and other jurisdictions because we are not competitive. What is the reason for that? It is bad Liberal policy. When we look at the policies under the Liberal government, they just have been added on, and they are the thousand cuts that have impacted our economy and our businesses. What does that mean? When we do not have a strong business sector, like we had in 2015, what happens? The Liberal solution is to spend more. The government will fill the void. Instead of an employer in the private sector, or a small and medium enterprise growing its enterprise, what happens? They get choked and smothered out by taxes, regulations and overburdening federal government policies. They go out of business. They cannot get employees. What do the Liberals do? They shrug and say, “Well, we can just write another cheque. We will just borrow some more money.” We have seen that. We have got $15 billion in extra payments that went out that CRA says is not worth collecting. It is not worth collecting $15 billion. How can that be? How can it be that broken that it does not know where that money went, who it belongs to, who should have had it and who should not have gotten it? How can it not go back and say, sorry, someone did not deserve this payment, so they need to pay it back or we are going to claw it back? How can they say that it is not worth it? That is a political answer. That is not an answer that has the value of Canadian taxpayers in mind. We look at this federal government and how it goes about conducting businesses and the military. For example, the F-35s should have been bought in 2015-16. They probably should have been bought before that. I will admit that. As a member of the Conservatives, I thought we should have bought them sooner. What did the government do? It bought some used piece of junk out of Australia to fill the gap, a gap that is now a serious concern because of what is happening in the globe. Has it prepared this country for the future? Let us think about that. Have we hit any of our environmental targets? No. Are we prepared to have an efficient, functioning manufacturing base? No. Have we encouraged our SMEs to take on the free trade agreements that Conservative governments, and some Liberal governments, put in place? No. We are seeing no activity in this economy that will grow. All we see is increasing government spending, deficit after deficit and out-of-control inflation. Let us go back to the grocery store. When we go to the grocery store and look at people's carts, are they full? No. They are half empty. Why is that? It is because of inflation, which was created by this government. When we go to go buy a house or take out a mortgage, can we afford it? That is the question that my daughter is facing right now. Kids in their 30s are looking at this and asking if they will ever be able to afford a house now. Well, what has happened in this government? Houses have gone out of control because of the inflation it created, and they cannot say that it is a global thing when houses go up in price. House are made in Canada and sold in Canada. It is not a global recession item. When people cannot afford a house in Canada, it is because it has spent too much money, or printed too much money, and created inflation. Also, the interest rates have gone up and, all of a sudden, their take-home pay is less, as they are paying higher mortgages. I should not say take-home pay, but their mortgage is consuming more and more of their actual income. What have we got? We have a government that is tired and broken. When we ask it about the future, it is a continuation of being tired and broken. There is no imagination. There is a better way. There is a way, and we proved it in 2015, where we had a strong economy, a balanced budget, and we could deal with climate change. They can deal with it and do it all at once. If they cannot do it all at once, then I would encourage the Liberal government to get out of the way, and we will do it for them.

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Mr. Patrick Weiler (West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, Lib.)

Feb/14/23 3:55:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to first congratulate my hon. colleague from Prince Albert on his anniversary today. I will pick up on a few things he talked about in his speech when he spoke of how things were under the Harper government, particularly on the environmental front. When we came into office, emissions were set to rise 15% by 2030. Now we are on a track to reduce emissions by 40% or more. In the last inventory, emissions went down nine per cent. Under the Harper government, on the international stage, Canada was lambasted as the fossil of the year and received the lifetime unachievement award for how we impeded not only reducing emissions nationally but also progress globally. In Canada, under the Harper government, there was a muzzling of the scientists who were bringing forward information that was not politically palatable to the government, so the few scientists who were kept were not able to share that information. I was hoping the member opposite could comment on that.

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Mr. Randy Hoback

Feb/14/23 3:56:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is nice to see another member of the Liberal Party stand up to ask a question because this Parliament is broken, and only two members of the Liberal Party usually ask questions. The rest sit there. I give him credit for doing that, and I thank him for his comment on my marriage. It is very important to me. The member talked about things that needed to be worked on in the Harper years, such as the environmental program. A good environmental program needs to balance the economy and the environment. We need to have results in both. The government has maybe achieved a bit of results on the environment, but I would not even give it that, because if we look at its targets, it has not hit any of them. What has it done? It has doubled down on the carbon tax. What has the carbon tax done? It has actually pushed people out of the economy. It has made it unaffordable to heat their houses. It made it unaffordable to grow crops, and it has created a worse situation for people here in Canada. That is the problem with the Liberal plan. It is a cult that the Liberals have. They have not looked at the big picture. They just looked at the little picture, and that is all they tried to solve, but they could not even get that right.

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Mr. Luc Desilets (Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, BQ)

Feb/14/23 3:57:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to wish you a happy Valentine's Day. I really appreciate you. I am feeling a bit torn. On the one hand, we have a government drifting on a sea of appalling departmental dysfunction and, on the other hand, we have an opposition party playing games and giving fake, facile solutions to a very real problem that is far more complex than it cares to admit. After all, inflation did fall from 8.1% in June to 6.3% in December, although it fell almost everywhere in the world. I would like to ask my Conservative friend the following question. Since inflation is a global, heavily interconnected problem, what solution does he propose to keep Canada, which is part of this world, from being affected by this inflation?

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Mr. Randy Hoback

Feb/14/23 3:58:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, he is asking me to fix mistakes from the past. I cannot not spend the money the Liberals have already spent, but what I can do is do the right policy things that make our economy function in a fashion that will allow businesses to grow and prosper and families to be employed, and work its way out of the system and get back to a 2% or 3% point. If the Governor of the Bank of Canada was doing his job, it would not have become out of control as bad as it did, so let us call a spade a spade.

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Ms. Lori Idlout (Nunavut, NDP)

Feb/14/23 3:59:07 p.m.
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Uqaqtittiji, I extend my congratulations to the member and his wife for their anniversary. What I think is broken is oil and gas companies seeing a 1,011% change in their net annual incomes since 2019. That is a $38-billion change, according to Statistics Canada. I would like to ask this member what he tells his constituents as Conservatives continue to protect these profits from taxation, which could go toward helping families who are struggling to pay for groceries.

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