44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 5, 2023 11:00AM
- Jun/5/23 2:10:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberal budget is the work of a finance minister who says one thing and does another. She does not answer a single question asked of her in this House, and she lectures Canadians who do not agree with her. The $60 billion in new spending pours gas on the inflationary fire. She admitted that to be true. She said she would not do it, and she did it anyway. She told Canadians that the budget would be balanced in 2027. Now, she says it will never be balanced. She said the debt ratio would go down, but she cannot tell this House the number, because it went up.
Canadians cannot afford the Prime Minister or the government. They think we can spend our way to prosperity, but the last eight years have created a crisis. There is good news, though. Conservatives will deliver lower prices and more powerful paycheques by capping spending, ending the deficits and scrapping the carbon tax. Those are our demands of this budget. The choice is clear. It is freedom versus control, prosperity versus poverty and technology versus more taxes.
There have been enough lectures from the minister. Canadians cannot afford to be duped by her any longer.
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- Jun/5/23 2:18:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, six months ago, the Minister of Finance promised a balanced budget by the year 2027. She said that deficits fuel inflation by throwing fuel on the inflationary fire. She was right. Her budget has added $60 billion of inflationary fuel. That amounts to $4,200 per family.
Will the Minister of Finance finally recognize that Canadians can pay no more and put before the House a plan to balance the budget in order to bring down inflation and interest rates?
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- Jun/5/23 2:20:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what is truly astonishing is the Conservative Party's entirely irresponsible and immature position. They would rather engage in partisan bickering than do something to help Canadians.
I will explain what is in the budget and what Canadians need. The measures include automatic advance payments of the Canada workers benefit and doubling of the tradespeople's tools deduction. There are many other things, and I will list them—
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- Jun/5/23 2:21:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it was just six months ago that the minister promised a balanced budget by the year 2027. She said that deficits fuel inflation. The former finance minister John Manley, a Liberal, said that while the Bank of Canada was slamming on the brakes of inflation with higher rates, the government was slamming the gas with higher spending. This could cause the whole engine to blow when all that mortgage debt Canadians hold comes up for renewal unless the rates come down.
Therefore, will she act now to put in place a plan to balance the budget to bring down inflation and interest rates?
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- Jun/5/23 2:30:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the Liberal government, the finance minister has never found a tax that she did not like, a pocket that she did not want to pick or a deficit that she did not want to run. Thanks to her endless spending, we have a crisis. Canadians are paying more for groceries, more to fill up on gas and more to heat the home, if they can afford one.
Will she finally stop the reckless deficits, stick to a single thing that she told Canadians and tell us in which month of the year never will she balance the budget?
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- Jun/5/23 2:35:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Stephen McNeil, the former Liberal premier of Nova Scotia, stated that if provinces continue to spend beyond their means, inflation will persist and continue to put pressure on household budgets.
Former Liberal minister John Manly also stated that it is like driving with one foot on the gas and the other on the brake. It is not a good plan for controlling the direction of the economy.
The Prime Minister is not listening to the opposition or to his Liberal friends. We have been clear: The government must balance the budget now.
Will the Prime Minister act in the interest of future generations?
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- Jun/5/23 2:52:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as we know, the Minister of Finance said last November that deficits fuel inflation. What happened after that? A few months later, Liberal Party supporters told her they wanted deficits.
That is certainly not good news for someone who dreams of becoming the leader of the Liberal Party, but that is how Liberal supporters responded. What is especially bad news for all Canadians is that there is going to be a second Liberal carbon tax.
Will the Minister of Finance confirm the Parliamentary Budget Officer's conclusion that it will cost families in Quebec an extra $436, on average?
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- Jun/5/23 2:53:43 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have absolutely nothing against the Minister of the Environment, but my question was for the future leader of the Liberal Party or at least, its aspiring future leader, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance.
Why? Simply put, the matter directly affects the wallets of every Canadian family. The Parliamentary Budget Officer said it would cost Quebec families $436 on average.
Could the Minister of Finance, Deputy Prime Minister and aspiring prime minister tell Canadians whether or not this is true?
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- Jun/5/23 3:07:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, a few weeks ago, I asked the government why the budget for the Canada summer jobs program had been drastically cut by 30% compared to last year. At the time, the Prime Minister told me that the budget had simply dropped back down to prepandemic levels. However, when we look at the numbers, we see that the budget for this program is now $60 million less than it was in the years before the pandemic.
Given the impact that this will have on community organizations, municipalities, the agricultural industry, small businesses and, of course, job opportunities for young people, can the Prime Minister assure us that he will remedy this situation in the next budget?
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- Jun/5/23 5:09:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank the members of the House for rejecting that motion to adjourn; this gives me the opportunity to speak to this very important issue. I found it interesting that it was a report from the public accounts committee that was looking to be concurred in, but little was actually said about the report.
Instead, there was just a lot of talk about a price on pollution, something that the Conservatives should realize they have lost the war on. They keep fighting this fight thinking that, somehow, more members in the House are going to change their opinion on the matter. That is just not true.
Canadians should know what is really going on right now, which is that the soldiers of the Leader of the Opposition are doing his dirty work for him. Earlier today, in a news conference, he said that he was going to put up every roadblock possible to ensure that we could not get the budget through.
I have news for Conservatives. We are absolutely going to be here as long as it takes to get the budget passed. We are going to pass the budget; we are not going to bend to their two ridiculous demands in the process. We can keep playing these games all they want. We can sit here into July if they want, but we are going to deliver for Canadians. That is what we have been sent to do.
Canadians should also know about the games the Conservatives played on Friday. There is a great montage and summary of all that, which I have shared on Twitter. This shows the extent to which they used the hybrid provisions that we have in the House, provisions that are there to assist members in participating from outside this chamber, in order to delay absolutely everything.
I hope that Canadians are aware of that. Typically speaking, on any given motion like this, we would have maybe one or two people who would have to raise a point of order after the debate. They would do this if something happened to their phone, where they were not able to utilize it properly or it flagged and said to “please verify”. Do we know—
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- Jun/5/23 5:12:00 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the parliamentary secretary knows full well that we are debating the budget bill. This has nothing to do with the budget.
Second, because this has relevance, the Speaker, on Friday, committed to looking into all the problems we had during that vote.
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Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to rise this evening to speak to Bill C-47, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, 2023, introduced by the government.
The budget is a key exercise in our democracy. It is the time when the government decides how and where it will spend the hundreds of billions of dollars that it controls. The government does not pull all this money out of thin air. Each of these dollars comes directly out of the pockets of individuals from the four corners of Quebec and Canada who worked hard to earn that money. That is why the government has a duty to use that money responsibly and reasonably. Most of all, it has to spend so as to meet the needs and priorities of the public—because, again, it is our money.
The government can also use the budget to implement its vision for society, the vision it has for the future. We saw that in Quebec with the construction of hydroelectric dams, which continue to make the Quebec nation an ambitious, visionary and decidedly green nation. I will say, however, that if we want to find a vision of the future, then we need to look somewhere other than this Liberal budget.
If we take a close look at the budget, we see that the government's priority is more about saving its faltering marriage to the NDP than meeting the needs of Quebeckers and Canadians. While the Prime Minister plays political games and uses the treasury as his personal piggy bank to stay in power, everybody else is tightening their belts and wondering how they will pay their mortgage.
We are talking about inflation, recession, the economic slowdown and skyrocketing interest rates, but the government has not seen fit to implement preventive measures to prepare the economy for the possibility of rough times ahead in the coming months and years. This government is completely out of touch with the economic situation and its day-to-day impact on the lives of real people. Since these ministers are chauffeured around and do not often take the time to look beyond Ottawa and the greater Toronto area, I will use the rest of my time to explain what is happening in areas such as mine, the Lower St. Lawrence, and how their inaction is making life difficult.
The first urgent issue is housing. It is not complicated. There is virtually nothing available on the market in my region. According to the most recent data from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, or CMHC, the vacancy rate in Rimouski is 0.4% this year compared to 0.2% last year. That is a slight improvement, but it is nothing to write home about. To give members an idea, a healthy real estate market usually has a vacancy rate of about 3%. We are nowhere near finding a balance between the current vacancy rate of 0.4% and the average of 3%.
That imbalance is having unprecedented consequences for my region. I held a housing summit in my riding in March to better understand and identify those consequences. Here are some of the things that the organizations and people on the ground shared with me. There is no longer any such thing as affordable housing. The housing units that are available are unaffordable or not fit to live in. Requests for emergency assistance have tripled since the beginning of the pandemic. Obviously, there are not enough resources to help all of those people and many are being left to fend for themselves. Emergency shelters, particularly in Rimouski and the surrounding areas, are full to overflowing. It is unprecedented. People were homeless in Rimouski in the middle of winter. Spending the night outside in the Lower St. Lawrence area in the middle of winter is far from pleasant.
I have heard some extremely disturbing stories. Students looking for housing are being approached by older men offering to put them up in exchange for services. That is completely unacceptable. Staff at addiction treatment centres have even told me that people cannot leave their facilities because there is nowhere go.
Given all the precariousness and the distress people are feeling, one might think the government would have made it a priority to tackle the housing crisis, but no. The Liberals have completely dropped the ball. There is nothing at all for housing in the latest budget—zero, nada, niet, not one penny.
The government members are patting themselves on the back and quoting data from the 2022 budget. It is unbelievable. How can this be happening? A crisis is going on, but no investment is being made to find solutions that could end it. The disconnect is staggering.
However, the demands of the Bloc Québécois and community organizations were fairly clear and specific. For instance, the government was asked to permanently renew the rapid housing initiative and to increase the rent supplement transfer.
The need to speed up the transfer of funds between governments was also discussed. With each day that the federal government holds on to funds instead of passing them on to Quebec to send where they are needed, construction costs keep rising and our students, families and seniors keep growing poorer. How much longer do we have to wait for action? Urgent action is needed now to resolve the housing crisis.
Another area where we hoped the government would deliver on expectations is employment insurance. This issue has been a topic of discussion for a long time. When the Liberal government came to power in 2015, it was one of their election promises. When it came back to power in 2019, it did not keep its promise then either. In 2021, it made the same promise again. We were told that consultations were being held to find out what was going on, but they know what is going on. They know the problems and they know the solutions. What is missing is the will to act, the action.
I have not forgotten the Liberal promise of 2015, and I can say that the rights groups advocating for the unemployed have not forgotten it either. The unemployed men and women who are waiting for the government to deliver real reform have definitely not forgotten it.
Currently, six in 10 workers who pay into employment insurance are not eligible for it because the eligibility criteria no longer reflect the reality of the labour market in 2023. These are not people who hope and pray for an unemployment cheque, they are people who pay into the fund. It is not complicated: this program was set up many years ago and has not been updated. There has been no reform. Naturally, it no longer reflects reality. I hope that the government will take action on this for once and for all.
As mentioned, on reading budget 2023, we learn that the government is not planning for any reform before 2030. The Liberals promised reform in 2015. During the 2019 election, they said they would do it.
In 2021, they called an early election. We all remember what a good idea it was to change government and call an election in 2021. What is more, they did it in the middle of the pandemic, when they were telling people to wear their mask and maintain social distancing. Then the government and its Prime Minister, the member for Papineau, went out and took photos with babies. They acted like the pandemic was over because they wanted to win the election. They did not want to change things for people. They wanted to return with a majority government. It is not easy to be in a minority government.
Every day, this government shows us that it does not care one iota about democracy. We know that it entered into an alliance with the NDP, which has been doing its bidding for some time. This is not new. The NDP also serves the government by supporting its gag orders. There have already been a dozen gag orders since the government and the NDP, which calls itself the New Democratic Party, struck a deal.
Let us come back to the budget. My colleagues will understand that it is quite difficult to just go along with it. I hope that the people listening to us at home will realize what is happening in this democracy. It is now operating under multiple closure motions to allow the government or an opposition party to save face. That is what we are currently putting up with in a G7 country.
I will repeat that six out of 10 workers who pay into EI are unable to access it. In the Lower St. Lawrence area, back home, seasonal work is a large part of the economic activity and the lives of workers. A strong EI system would help build solid regions and ensure that people keep living in our regions and do not leave.
The EI reform is urgent. It is part of the support measures that are necessary for seasonal work, which is an economic driver in our regions. I am thinking mainly of tourism, agriculture and the fishery. We can discuss that.
All of these sectors rely on seasonal activities. It is not because people do not want to work in certain seasons. Potatoes cannot be planted in the middle of winter. Some government ministers do not seem to grasp how it works. People are still wondering about this in 2023.
Another issue I absolutely must address has to do with seniors, specifically the inequity suffered by people aged 65 to 75 who are not getting an increase in their OAS benefits. The government is completely out to lunch on this. It is yet another broken election promise. I hope the government will do something once and for all.
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- Jun/5/23 8:03:51 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what I am about to say is no secret, but it is important. The government purchased a pipeline. It is not for shipping grain; it is for shipping oil. The pipeline cost $30 billion. It started off at $7 billion, and then climbed to $15 billion, $22 billion, $24 billion, $28 billion and $30 billion. I hope that the government realizes that it could fix an awful lot of problems with that money. It could build housing, help seniors and support families.
What my colleague from Terrebonne said is important. The government is not even trying to hide anymore. It bought a $30‑billion pipeline with our money. In the latest budget, it is also giving away $21 billion in tax credits to oil and gas companies. I will not be shedding any tears here tonight for these companies over tax credits. They are not even subsidies now, just tax credits. That makes it even harder to track how much money will be disappearing into the pockets of which multi-million dollar corporation.
The government cannot be serious. It wants to transition to green energy, yet, today, the Minister of Labour is praising the government's action on seabed oil and gas development, saying, “Don't tell me a green energy future doesn't include oil and gas.” I want to congratulate the Minister of Labour. This government is not going to make the net-zero energy transition happen, I guarantee it.
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Madam Speaker, I congratulate my colleague from New Westminster—Burnaby on his speech. I have the pleasure of working with him on the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, and we appreciate the collaboration we have. I think we do. I do, at least.
Having said that, I want to talk a little bit about the content of Bill C-47 and the budget in general.
We heard from many witnesses from the arts community and the cultural industry in recent months and years. They were unanimous in saying that the cultural industry needs to be supported during the post-pandemic recovery. We actually discussed this with the minister last week in committee.
I would like to hear my NDP colleague's opinion on the fact that this budget does not include the money that the cultural industry specifically asked for to survive the post-pandemic recovery. What is more, the little bit of money that is being spent is not being used the way the industry wanted.
I would like my colleague to talk about that.
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Madam Speaker, I am curious because we are debating Bill C-47 tonight, which is not the budget but the budget implementation act. In terms of reading that piece of legislation, I can understand that speeches can wander off topic, but I did not hear anything of the topic in that speech. I am wondering what part of his speech the hon. member would refer me to in terms of the budget implementation act we are debating tonight.
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- Jun/5/23 8:36:30 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would respond to my colleague's question by saying there are many things that we find missing in this budget and that are not included, one of them being the ability to control the inflationary spending and the huge deficits. Just six months ago, the finance minister talked about having to end the inflationary deficits because she acknowledged that they were fuelling the flames of inflation.
There are a lot of things missing in this budget. We have made it very clear that there are some requirements that are missing for us to support the budget. They would include a move toward a balanced budget and something to control the inflationary spending and the increasing cost of living. Those are the things that are missing in this budget that we feel are very important.
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Madam Speaker, I have put this question to other members debating tonight. Over the course of any discussion of Bill C-47 in this place, I have heard very few members actually speak to Bill C-47, which is not the budget. The budget carried already in this place. We are now debating a budget implementation act, which changes many pieces of legislation. It is an omnibus bill, but it is not an illegitimate omnibus bill. It follows through on changes.
I actually voted against the Liberal budget, but I will vote for the budget implementation bill because it contains many, many useful measures, none of which relate to the topics that my hon. friend discussed. Universally, it seems, in this place, we assume that the legislation, Bill C-47, is the budget.
I just ask my hon. colleague if he has any comments as to why that is, since that is not what we are debating tonight.
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- Jun/5/23 8:51:49 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is an excellent question and the member is exactly right. There is everything anyone could choose, part of which is the budget and part of which is in this bill for the budget implementation act.
I had here in my notes 10 different issues on the budget implementation act, which I could have spoken about today. Getting to them, of course, requires some preamble. I hope the member appreciates all the issues about the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, which I did refer to in my speech. It is also in the budget implementation act. We are changing words in the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, which we just recently put through at our own committee, and the member attended.
There is a bunch in here that does not belong. Frankly, it is an omnibus bill and should be presented when we are amending those acts in Parliament. We just did that with something where the government clearly took an overstep into jurisdictions that it does not belong in.
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- Jun/5/23 9:20:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what is important about what was outlined by the member opposite in his statement is that concerns about mental health are equally shared across all parties. However, what was not mentioned in the comments referenced by the member opposite is that part of what this budget includes is a formalization of an agreement that includes $190 billion in funding for health care and—
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- Jun/5/23 9:20:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what I was saying is that the funding agreement with respect to health care is about $190 billion over the next 10 years. It is approximately $46 billion of new funding. One of the aspects of that funding includes certain conditional priorities, and one of those priorities is exactly what the member was referencing: access to timely, equitable and quality mental health, substance use and addiction services. I would just point that out, to flesh out the record in terms of the context of this debate.
The member's party is steadfastly committed to voting against this budget. This budget includes $158.4 million over three years to support the implementation and operation of a 988 number that would be a suicide hotline in this country, which would serve the mental health needs of Canadians. Does the member seek to revise his voting position in that regard?
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