44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 1, 2023 11:00AM
- May/1/23 5:16:33 p.m.
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I have to stop the hon. member.
Questions and comments, the hon. member for Niagara Falls.
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Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his comments, but there are consequences to this government spending the cupboards bare.
I wonder if the member could speak to whether he is as disappointed as I was, when I reviewed budget 2023, that there was no mention of the wine replacement program. In last year's budget, the government identified that it would be generating $390 million because of the excise tax now being applied to 100% Canadian wine. That $166 million, two-year replacement program ended last year, and the government has refused to provide details on whether it is going to be extended. Could the member speak to that?
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Madam Speaker, the hon. member for Niagara Falls asks a very diligent and informed question.
As chair of the wine caucus, I will continue to advocate for the program to continue. Along with many other members of Parliament from across all aisles, I advocated for the initial wine replacement program that was put in place. We will ensure that our voice carries on so that the industry continues to grow. I know many winery owners down in that area; people have invested a lot of money to grow tourism, culture and art and create jobs, and I will be there to support this.
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Madam Speaker, after the 2021 election, we got a clear message from Canadians. They wanted us to come back and actually make this Parliament work and not just stand in the corner, light our hair on fire, jump up and down, and scream.
I wanted to focus on the climate crisis through the need to invest in well-paying jobs to build a clean-energy economy. We spent the last year negotiating with the Minister of Natural Resources and the Minister of Labour.
I want to ask my hon. colleague about the importance of finally getting the tax credit incentives that are tied to well-paying union jobs and apprenticeships. We have $85 billion to kick-start a clean-tech economy, a revolution that Calgary Economic Development says will create 170,000 jobs in Alberta alone. Why do the Conservatives continue to oppose anything that has to do with a clean-tech economy?
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Madam Speaker, I know the hon. member from northern Ontario quite well; I have worked closely with him and had trouble with him as well.
I will say that we can only strengthen and grow the middle class and help those joining the middle class with jobs that pay good salaries with good benefits. Those jobs are, to a large extent, union jobs here in Canada.
I have the two largest construction unions in the private sector in my riding. Their training facilities and headquarters are in my riding. I know the type of training that they provide to their members and the types of jobs for the future. I will always be there to support them.
I was pleased to join the Prime Minister in St. Thomas, Ontario, for the announcement by Volkswagen AG and its power affiliate of a $7-billion investment right here in the province of Ontario. All levels of government are collaborating and working together to create jobs and create those bright futures that all Canadians deserve from coast to coast to coast.
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Madam Speaker, yet again, I hear the Liberals touting the grocery rebate as proof that they are finally going to help people out of their current financial difficulties. Would my colleague not agree with every seniors group in Quebec when they say that it is hard to argue with a good thing, but that what they really need is an increase in old age security for all seniors starting at age 65?
The inequality between the two classes of seniors unfairly created by the Liberals must stop. The government should agree to extend the 10% increase to seniors aged 65 to 74 as well. There is also the guaranteed income supplement. The government could also have provided an enhanced tax credit for experienced workers. There are other options that could have helped seniors over a much longer term.
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Madam Speaker, It is very important to help everyone who is retired. For example, all benefits are indexed to inflation.
I believe old age security went up by 6% this year, along with the other benefits, because they are automatically indexed to inflation. In addition, we obviously raised the old age security benefit by 10% for those seniors above 75. If we look at the statistics, we know that most vulnerable seniors who are living in poverty are above age 75.
We have been there to help all seniors, of course, since 2015; our record speaks for itself. We must continue to help all seniors.
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Madam Speaker, hope is the glue that holds us together and allows us to go on when we think we cannot. It is a powerful force that has carried humans through the worst of times. In order to have hope, we must face reality. We must acknowledge the truth.
I ask everyone at home if they are happy with the cost of living. Are they happy with the rise of crime? Are they happy with the homelessness crisis? Are they happy with the addiction crisis? Are they happy with our country?
The truth is the government, which is currently the Liberal-NDP coalition, cannot give us anything it has not taken away from us. The government does not have any money. It has our hard-earned money, and every dollar it spends is our dollar earned.
The most important piece of legislation that is voted on in this House is the budget, which we are debating today. The budget tells Canadians where the priorities of the government are. The budget determines the future of our children and our grandchildren. The Liberal-NDP coalition has doubled government spending, yet nothing in this country is twice as good. In fact, it is twice as bad. Housing prices have doubled, rent has doubled and health care wait times for treatment have doubled.
The overdose rate in this country is 300% higher than when the Prime Minister took office. Each day, 22 people in this country die from an overdose. Do people know how much money is allocated in the Liberal budget for treatment and recovery? None. The Liberal Prime Minister continues to fund people to stay stuck where they are in their disease of addiction, rather than funding off-ramps to help them break free. Remember the 2021 election promise of $4.5 billion in a mental health transfer? The Liberals must have forgotten about it because it is nowhere to be found in the Liberal-NDP budget.
The truth is Canadians are suffering. There are many Canadians who make good money, almost $100,000 a year, yet these same people with full-time jobs are relying on food banks. Food banks across this country are reporting record high usage, the highest in history. We are a G7 country and middle-class Canadians are relying on food banks, so we can imagine how awful life must be for our most vulnerable, including seniors on fixed incomes.
Albert from my riding is a widowed senior on a fixed income. His gas bill tripled with the carbon tax, and he is angry and scared. How does the Prime Minister expect Albert to pay his bills?
People are suffering in a way that many have never experienced. Innocent people are being stabbed in broad daylight while onlookers video it, because, under the Prime Minister, there are no consequences in this country. Our bail system is broken and there is nothing in this budget to fix it.
In a cost-of-living crisis, we have forced women out of choice, like the choice to go back to work because they cannot access child care. Yes, the Liberals will tell people their $10-a-day child care has saved the nation. I can tell everyone with certainty the detail the Liberals left out is that only a select few can access it. This is another classic winners and losers Liberal bill. There are thousands of families left out because there are no spaces and there is no labour strategy to help with the labour shortage. Women cannot go to work because they cannot access child care and the wait-lists are years long.
One female child care operator wrote on a public forum this morning, “Why are so many child care providers closing? Well, I just filed my taxes and 56% of incoming funds went directly back into my program. They are closing because they cannot afford to stay open.” This is another anti-feminism Liberal bill.
Nine out of ten young people have given up the dream of ever owning a home. Many young people say they will never start a family because they do not think they can afford to bring a child into this world.
People are applying for medical assistance in dying because they cannot afford rent or food. Seniors are freezing because they cannot afford to turn on the heat. There is no accountability, there is no transparency and it has eroded trust in the government and leaders.
What is happening? How did we get here, and more importantly, how do we get out of this? We need hope but we need to face the facts to change the facts. It is time to acknowledge that what the Liberals are doing, what the Liberals have been doing, is not working.
The current Liberal government is so far down a rabbit hole, it does not know how to get out. Instead of acknowledging the suffering it has created, its members double down on their failed policies. Every day in this House of Commons during question period, a Liberal MP or minister tells Canadians how great things are and what a great job they are doing, and it is simply insulting to Canadians who are barely getting by.
The New Democrats are just as guilty. They too have failed to acknowledge that their coalition is not helping Canadians, but it is hurting them.
Social programs rely on a healthy economy in order to secure sustainable funding. The government has run up the highest ever debt. Yes, the Prime Minister has accumulated more debt than all other prime ministers combined. Canada's debt is $1.18 trillion. That is a pretty tough number to imagine. There is $44 billion spent on interest. Just for comparison, the government spends $24 billion on EI and $25 billion on the Canada child benefit. That means the Liberal government spends almost double the amount servicing its debt compared to supporting social programs to support Canadians.
The current Liberal government is hurting Canadians, and it has no intention of stopping.
It is important to try different approaches, but it is also important to recognize when those approaches are not working.
We tried safe drug supply, and more people are dying and living on the street. We tried spending more, and now life is unaffordable. We tried to be soft of crime, and now violent crime is up almost 40% under this Trudeau government—
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- May/1/23 5:28:27 p.m.
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The hon. member knows she cannot use names of current members of Parliament.
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Madam Speaker, it took me a minute.
We tried to decriminalize drugs. Addiction has skyrocketed, and there is zero money allocated in the 2023 budget for treatment and recovery, but there is more money allocated for more hard drugs. We tried to tax carbon, and it is costing Canadians thousands of dollars and crippling our farmers. We tried to save everyone by saying nice things and not following through, and the results are catastrophic.
It is not working. Enough is enough. We need to stop doing the same thing and expecting different results. We must stop telling people what they want to hear, and tell them the facts. We must give people hope.
Everything has an expiry date, and the current Liberal government has far exceeded its own. We need to change course, and we can. We need honest, accountable leadership that puts people and fiscal responsibility first. We need to show Canada that everyone is important. We need to show Canada that we do not need divisive labels to separate people. It does not matter our gender, age, ethnicity or religion, we are all Canadian, and we all deserve to be free from a government that believes it knows best.
Canadians are smart, and they do not need a government telling them how or where to spend their money or what media to watch. They do not need a government clawing back their hard-earned paycheques with nonsensical taxes. It is time for a government that evolves with the people, but more importantly works for the people, and working for the people means listening to the people.
The people have spoken. They are hungry, afraid and in need of housing. Conservatives can fix this; it will take time and patience, but we have the facts that bring us a plan, and a plan brings hope. We are here for Canadians, and that means fighting every day to reveal the hard facts of what is not working and putting forth solutions to bring the people together.
The first solution is to ask the members in this House to face the facts and vote this terrible budget down.
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Madam Speaker, I have a quote for the member opposite.
As she knows, I have spent considerable time in her riding of Peterborough—Kawartha, and this quote is as follows: “Safer supply...is what's giving us hope”. This is a quote from Peterborough Currents, an organization that provides harm reduction for many of the member's constituents who suffer from addiction. Participants in this safer supply pilot program in downtown Peterborough continue to receive prescription opioids for as long as they need them, because of investments we have made to support people through the process of ending their addictions and saving their lives.
I know there are many different ways and many different opinions in this House of Commons, but there is only one evidence-based approach, and I would like to hear comments from the member opposite on what she would say to her constituents in Peterborough on this life-saving remedy.
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Madam Speaker, I have been very vocal in my community of Peterborough—Kawartha. Safe supply and our consumption treatment service has been very helpful. I have advocated for them and worked with the Minister of Health through our MSORT funding.
The problem with this budget, as I said in my speech, is there is no off-ramp. The member opposite actually misled this House by saying that safe supply has stopped their addiction. That is untrue. It is life-saving. It is important to build relationships. The problem is that in this budget there is no off-ramp for treatment and recovery. There is no money for transitional housing with wraparound supports. There is no money allocated to help people break free from the disease, only to keep them stuck in the merry-go-round that is actually hurting our ERs as well.
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Madam Speaker, in her speech, my colleague said that nothing is working here in Canada. The Bloc Québécois also finds that most of the time the government is just treading water, when there is a lot more that could be done for Canadians.
For example, the government launched two consultations focusing on agriculture. With regard to the first consultation, Bill C-294 and Bill C-244 were just examined in committee, so why is this consultation necessary?
With regard to the second consultation, the government wants to consult the provincial and territorial governments to help farmers with urgent financial needs. Why hold another consultation when the government just negotiated the agricultural policy framework?
Does my colleague have a word to describe that? It is as though we are taking one step forward and two steps back.
I will let my colleague come up with a word to describe the government's approach on this.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague from the Bloc hit the nail on the head. This place is extremely frustrating. Let us have a meeting about a meeting and make a subcommittee about a subcommittee about facts that we already have. These reports and consultations just reinforce what needs to be done.
It is just infuriating to waste taxpayers' money on inaction when there are things that we know need to be fixed and they are not doing anything about them. They just continue to have more meetings and more consultations that waste more taxpayers' money.
We need more action and less talk.
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Madam Speaker, I wanted to ask about the idea of an excess profit tax. The member spoke about some of the struggles that Canadians are facing, about the high cost of living. We also know that grocery store chains and big oil and gas companies have been gouging Canadians. One way to address that is to put in place an excess profit tax that would disincentivize that kind of price gouging. The Liberals have been unwilling to tackle corporate greed. The Conservatives do not seem to be talking about corporate greed and the role it has in inflation and the rising cost of living.
I am curious about the member's opinion on this.
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Madam Speaker, I am just searching here. I was actually going to put this in my speech because it is a really interesting meeting that I had recently with not-for-profits and charities across the country. They are a critical industry that serves one in 10 jobs.
It is an alternative minimum tax that has actually been raised in this budget. It is going to have catastrophic consequences because what it does is to disincentivize. Many of the not-for-profits and charities rely on corporations and private donors to meet their fundraising goals. This alternative minimum tax, given the way it is written about in the budget, will disincentivize, crippling the not-for-profits and charities that are primarily, I believe 70%, run by women.
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Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to take part in this debate on Bill C-47, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, 2023.
Over the past number of years, I have heard from my constituents about how difficult life is getting to sustain. They want to take care of their families and ensure they are doing well, that they are living comfortably and that they are continuing to be part of the middle class and among those who are working really hard to join the middle class. We have worked so hard over the past seven and some years to ensure that those Canadians are able to sustain themselves. Whether it is through reducing taxes on the middle classes and increasing them for the wealthiest; including early learning and child care within our Canadian system; enhancing health care; or providing supports for small businesses and students, we have been working hard to ensure that the middle class thrives.
I know, because I hear from my constituents, that people in the middle class have had trouble and have really been struggling over the past year to thrive. That is not just a Canadian problem. It is a global catastrophe that economies across the world are dealing with. However, we are really lucky that here in Canada we are doing well in comparison to the rest of the world. We are doing better than most G7 nations. We are doing better by our middle class. We are doing better by our students, by our single mothers and by our children to ensure that they are thriving despite the challenges they are faced with not just here in Canada but across the world.
Budget 2023, then, is really significant. It is really important that we make sure that those working hard to join the middle class and those who are a part of the middle class are well supported as we buckle down and ensure that we get through this and weather the storm.
What I really appreciate about budget 2023 and what I hear from my constituents is what I would like to highlight today in my remarks. That includes our grocery rebate, which would really impact the middle class in my community. They will be able to keep the lights on, work and take care of everybody in the family on a regular basis.
The budget means cracking down on junk fees to ensure that businesses are transparent with their prices. That is another way to ensure that access to the economy and to capital is fair and equitable so that those who need support are able to get support without having to be gouged for it.
The budget also means securing commitments from Visa and Mastercard to lower fees for small businesses and cracking down on predatory lending. What that means to my community and my riding of Mississauga—Erin Mills, which is a significant small business community, is that small business owners who hire five, 10, 15, 20 or 50 people in my riding will be able to save and make their overhead costs balance out because of the reduction in credit card fees. It is a big deal. It is something that I have been hearing from my constituents on a very regular basis, and I am so happy that budget 2023 ensures that we tackle this issue. This is a really important issue that businesses in my community and across Canada deal with.
Since 2015, our government's focus has been on investing in the middle class. It has been about growing the economy. It has been about strengthening Canada's social safety net and making life more affordable for Canadians. We know that investments in our economy are basically investments in Canadians. Canadians do not need handouts; they need a leg-up.
Canadians have the capacity to take care of themselves. They just want a foundation, that equality of opportunity, and, when they are down, to know that their government will look out for them. That is exactly what this government represents.
The important budget measures I have outlined really provide additional support for inflation relief. They will help put money in the pockets of people who need it the most and who need help to make life affordable. I have advocated for these measures in my role as the previous chair of the women's caucus and in my community. I am hearing directly from my constituents to ensure that their voices are carried here in this chamber.
In budget 2023, the government outlines how targeted inflation relief is going to support Canadians, including the proposed grocery rebate, which will support the many Canadians and families struggling to put food on the table due to the rising cost of groceries. For 11 million low- and modest-income Canadians and families, the one-time rebate would provide eligible couples with two children with up to an extra $467, single Canadians without children with up to an extra $234 and seniors with an extra $225 on average. This would be delivered through the GST credit system.
By targeting the grocery rebate to Canadians who need it the most, the government will be able to provide important relief without making inflation worse. Let me be clear: It is going to get better for Canadians.
As I mentioned, we know that inflation is still too high, and the steep increase in interest rates has caused economic pain for a lot of Canadians, including small businesses, which need to pay more for their lines of credit to keep business rolling and keep capital circulating. We saw that the pandemic led to an increase in people using credit cards when they shop. Canadian small businesses pay significant fees to provide Canadians with the ability to process credit card transactions. The largest component of that is the interchange fee paid to credit card issuers.
To support hard-working small business owners, budget 2023 has outlined the government's efforts to work closely with small businesses and the payment card industry to lower these fees. This includes the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, which represents over 97,000 small and medium-sized enterprises. I have had the pleasure to sit down with some of them and learn more about the challenges that small businesses, these mom-and-pop shops across our country, go through on a regular basis and how we can help.
This issue has been a number one issue not just for this year but for many years. I was really happy to see that budget 2023 addresses it with a concrete measure that is going to make small businesses more and more sustainable when doing their daily transactions as the consumer base changes and as transactions happen.
In budget 2023, the government announced that it secured commitments from Visa and Mastercard to lower fees for small businesses, while also protecting reward points for Canadian consumers, because Canadians love their reward points. Over 90% of credit card-accepting businesses in Canada will benefit from these small reductions. Small businesses will see their interchange fees reduced by up to 27% from the existing weighted average rate.
I know I have been a bit passionate in my remarks so far, and there is so much more I want to talk about, but in conclusion I just want to say how important it is for us as a government to support the little guy, whether it is students who are getting out of school and who now no longer have to pay interest on their student loans, the small business person who now has lower interest fees on credit cards or the small families having difficulty putting food on their tables that are now able to access the grocery rebate. This budget is about Canadians, and I am so happy to support it.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member opposite for her recognition, quite frankly, that people are frustrated financially at this moment in time. I can honestly say that even in my riding, where I have been elected since 2019, the number of calls and emails I have had from blue-collar and middle-class Canadians has gone up drastically. I think part of the blame needs to be on the government's shoulders.
We have heard again that this is a global issue. Well, at some point in time I think the government needs to reflect on that. Does the member not agree that lowering the carbon tax and putting less spending in the budget would, in the end, lower interest rates and make life better for Canadians?
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Madam Speaker, as much as the member would disagree, the government supports that were given during the most difficult time for Canadians in our history, which was COVID-19, helped them keep their lights on and put food on the table.
If it means that Canadians can live and sustain themselves as our economy improves and as the global economy improves, our government should definitely be there for Canadians to make sure we are their safety net while the global—
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- May/1/23 5:47:55 p.m.
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Questions and comments, the hon. member for Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques.
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