44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 6, 2023 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for that riveting history around clause 510 in the budget implementation act. I appreciated learning more information about that.
I was reflecting, when the member was sharing his speech, on some of the things he was not talking about. I am wondering if the member could talk about the important work of ensuring that the ultrarich and banks are paying what they owe. Currently, thanks to the work of the NDP, we are seeing in the budget the alternative minimum tax rate increasing from 15% to 20.5%, which would recoup over $3 billion in five years.
I am wondering if the member supports this work and why we never hear from the Conservatives about the importance of having the ultrarich and large corporations paying what they owe so that money can go where we need it most.
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I have to confess, Mr. Speaker, that I had come prepared to talk about the Royal Style and Titles Act, not about some of the other aspects of the budget bill.
I will make the general observation that in Canada, we do have a problem with too much taxation, not too little. I recognize the member's point that she feels this is frequently inequitable, and while I might disagree with her on some specifics, it is a good point that in Canada the welfare state increasingly is focused on taxing all of us, but very inequitably frequently, and then transferring that money to those who are politically connected and who are in a position to receive benefits from government funds. Therefore, in fact, it is not a distribution from the wealthy to the less wealthy, as it ought to be. On that point, the NDP, like its CCF predecessor, has a good general point.
On the specific questions she asked, I am less capable of giving an informed answer.
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Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed the scholarly history lesson. I have enjoyed a lot of the speeches tonight. They have been quite wide-ranging. I heard a bootstrap argument about the agency to make more decisions about one's own economic future. I agree with that. However, I would note that it came from a member who would like for women to have fewer choices about their own reproductive futures. I also heard a comparison saying that $467 in support would never do anything to help a Canadian family but $330 was an extraordinary burden. There has been some difficulty on math.
I know that the member did not touch on carbon pricing tonight, but he did mention taxation. He said there is too much tax in Canada. I observed that in the last election, he, like all 338 MPs and candidates, ran on a carbon pricing scheme in one form or another. Oftentimes, people point to Brian Mulroney's ability to abate acid rain. I would point out that the Conservatives did that with cap and trade and a ban on burning certain types of coal. These are the types of advancements that come from really good government programs.
I will ask a question directly about the member's previous commitment to run on a carbon price. Where does he stand now on carbon pricing?
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Mr. Speaker, I, of course, came intending to talk about the Royal Style and Titles Act, and I was hoping for a question that would relate to that, but let me try answering this question, seeing as it was raised.
Speaking of having promised one thing and then going in a different direction, I cannot help but note that one of the most effective ways of capturing carbon is through reforestation. Of course, trees are composed largely of carbon. Wood is carbon. I cannot remember if it was in the last election or the one before, but the Prime Minister promised to plant two billion trees. He has produced less than one-tenth of 1% of that promise, despite the fact that a number of years have gone by.
If we are looking for concrete action to make this planet a greener place, a less carbon-intensive place, he is not setting a very good example.
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Mr. Speaker, I am having a hard time getting a clear picture. We are currently looking at Bill C‑47 and the member is talking about clause 510. His party seems to want to delete it as an anti-monarchy gesture, but he seems to be in favour of this clause. I am having a hard time wrapping my head around the proposal being made on this monarchy issue.
Again, I see that there is a divide and a disconnect between the Liberal and Conservative members, who talk about the monarchy, and us, who simply want to abolish it. When we talk about the monarchy it is to say that it is archaic and costs the government money. To us, the issue of seniors calling for an increase in old age security is a priority. Also, we are short on housing and we need EI reform to take care of people who lose their job in a period of economic uncertainty. Again, I am feeling the difference between Quebec and the rest of Canada.
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Mr. Speaker, I will simply say that the presidencies of republics like the United States and France are not without cost. It is very expensive to have a big building like the Élysée Palace in Paris for the President. He is not a king, but there is a real cost.
The same things goes for the White House in the U.S. and all the other trappings that go with the presidency.
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Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise to speak to Bill C-47 at report stage.
I want to share some reflections, particularly about the process the bill has undergone in its journey in the House of Commons and some of the debate that has arisen today on the subject of the bill. I apologize that the thoughts are not in any particular order, but there are some things that are nevertheless worth noting about the bill.
If you were to listen to the debate today and you were a Canadian who had not studied the bill, you might be under the impression that the recent increase in the carbon tax is somehow in this bill. It is important to say that it is not. There has been a fair bit of confusion around that, given the focus of the debate.
You might also think that a lot of the major spending items the government committed to in its budget are in this bill, or you might even think that this bill is the budget itself, given the nature of some of the conversation that has been had around the bill.
It is important to distinguish between the budget itself, which was already debated and voted on in this House some time ago, and budget implementation bills, which do not always legislate commitments from the most recent budget. In fact, sometimes they go back to previous budgets, but effectively, when the government is ready to move on some previous budget commitments and there is legislative work that needs doing, this is what we see in the budget implementation bills. There are some items from the most recent budget in this bill. There are some items from previous budgets in this bill.
One of the things that is important to emphasize is that as far as spending authority goes—that is, this bill giving permission to government to spend taxpayer money—there is not anywhere near the level of spending in this bill that some have said there is. For instance, even in respect of the dental program, this bill does not authorize the money for the dental program. It does have some legislative measures to facilitate the program, ultimately, once it is ready to be operationalized, like better sharing of information between government departments so that they can that ensure people who are making claims under the program are properly eligible.
In other words, there are some provisions designed to ensure eligibility up front and to move away from the attestation system, which is something Conservatives have said they do not like, and that there should be upfront checks of eligibility so people do not mistakenly receive benefits that then need to be clawed back. That is something this legislation seeks to do.
This legislation would reduce the excise tax increase that was going to be 6.3%, because it was tied to inflation through an automatic escalator, down to 2%. That is not a spending item. It is a reduction of government revenue, because it reduces a tax. It reduces a tax that Conservatives said they wanted to see reduced and takes on a tax increase that they thought was inappropriate in the circumstances. We agreed with that as New Democrats and we are glad to see that small brewers and small vineyards across Canada that are facing difficult times are not going to be hit with an outsized increase in the excise tax. However, that is only true if this legislation passes.
This legislation would also close a lot of loopholes in tax law and other law that is used by money launderers in order to avoid paying taxes and to mask their criminal activity. This bill would crack down on predatory lenders or payday loan places that are charging really inordinate amounts of interest. Canadians do not typically choose a payday loan centre as their first choice for banking. It is usually because they do not have a lot of options, and that is how they get there.
Somebody shared with me a statistic, and it was something like Canadians are 40% more likely to end up declaring bankruptcy if they just walk in the door of a payday loan place. There is clearly a close connection between payday lending and people on the financial margins. This bill seeks to do something about that by lowering the criminal rate of interest.
It also improves the Canada workers benefit, something that a colleague of mine on the finance committee likes to talk a lot about, which is the marginal effective tax rate for working-class Canadians and how it disincentivizes people to leave social assistance for work. That is his claim. He likes to reference the C.D. Howe Institute report to that effect. In fact, the changes to the Canada workers benefit would help reduce that marginal effective tax rate and make the transition from social assistance to employment easier.
The legislation also removes Russia and Belarus from a list of countries that get preferential tariffs for trading in Canada. In other words, it extends and strengthens sanctions that Canada has put in place since Russia's illegal and immoral invasion of Ukraine. These are the things that are being held up. They are not being held up because there is another huge spend that goes along with them.
In fact, the biggest spending items in this bill were the doubling of the GST tax credit and $2 billion in health transfers to the provinces that was negotiated between the federal government and the provinces. That was by far the biggest direct spend in this legislation. With the consent and participation of the Conservatives, all parties in this House expedited another bill, Bill C-46, that had those spending items in it. There are now some coordinating amendments in this legislation to make sure we do not do the same thing twice.
The fact of the matter is that the biggest spending items, with the full participation and knowledge of the Conservatives, have already passed through the House of Commons. What is left are a number of administrative changes to set up the administrative infrastructure for the growth fund and some legal changes to facilitate the administration of a dental care program. This is not actually where the money is being authorized.
We would think that a former finance critic, which the leader of the Conservative Party is, would know that. We would think that the current finance critic might know that. Perhaps the finance critic for the Conservatives might have known that if he had bothered to show up much at committee during the Bill C-47 process, but apparently he had other things to do. He left it to other members of his caucus to hold down the fort while the finance committee was studying Bill C-47 to the extent that it did.
Of course, we did not do as much extensive study of that bill as I would have liked, because Conservatives chose to talk out the time we had. First they talked out the time we had for hearing witnesses. They did that in the lead-up to the Minister of Finance's appearance.
Was it on a grand principle? I am not sure. Did they have an important point? I think so. It is one that I supported on the record many times. I thought the minister should have committed to come for two hours. As it was, she came for an hour and 40 minutes, but she told us she would only come for an hour. I do not think that was helpful to the process. I think more forewarning by the minister about how long she was actually prepared to appear would have been more helpful.
In the end, it meant that the Conservatives chose to talk over all of the time that we would have had to hear from Canadians who are concerned and from stakeholders who represent various concerns.
Then there was an agreement at the committee to have a process to move to clause-by-clause study. It would have allowed us some time to debate the clauses and various amendments and subamendments. Instead, Conservatives chose to talk through that time as well. Then they said that they wanted to hear from witnesses after talking through all the time we had for witnesses. They say the agreement they signed on to with the Liberals to do clause-by-clause study provided for another 10 hours of witness testimony that they never got.
Did they raise it when we still had three or four days to hear from more witnesses and come to an understanding? No, they raised it afterward. All the time to hear from witnesses had elapsed, so they knew when they raised the issue that there was not going to be a positive outcome and that they were not going to get what they wanted, and then they repeated this kind of behaviour in the House.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the speech from my colleague from the New Democratic Party.
For most of the evening, we have been hearing some pretty fanciful stuff with respect to climate change and the efforts by previous prime minister Brian Mulroney to abate acid rain, which was historic and so important. However, the way that this former prime minister worked to deal with the issues of the time have been stretched a little bit. Of course, he and the president of the day, George Bush, used things like cap and trade and changes in products used to produce electricity.
I note that my colleague's home province is Manitoba, which generates almost all of its electricity through renewable resources like hydro and wind. Most of the members who are so against carbon pricing are from provinces that still generate a lot of their electricity from coal and natural gas, like Saskatchewan and Alberta. Currently over 80% of the power from those provinces is from fossil fuels.
Perhaps the member from the NDP could comment on how carbon pricing is an effective measure to move provinces toward using renewable resources to generate electricity.
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Mr. Speaker, I certainly think that carbon pricing is one piece of the puzzle. It is meant to be a kind of market tool.
Putting a price on carbon gives companies an incentive to come up with more ways to try to get carbon out of their supply chains so that they can offer a more competitive price. Folks will be more likely to buy those cheaper products, so companies that have a lower carbon supply chain are rewarded. That is the idea. It was not originally a left-wing idea; it was a kind of right-wing idea, designed by folks who are on the political right but who nevertheless accept the reality of climate change.
I would remind my Conservative colleagues that the oil and gas industry in Alberta was built with a lot of public funds and a lot of upfront public investment. In fact, a lot of public investment continues to go to the industry, which is why we know that if we want to shift the economy somewhere else, that too will require a lot of public investment.
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Mr. Speaker, I had a lot to say about the previous speech on royal titles, but I will focus on the subject matter of the speech that was just given.
In terms of this issue of carbon taxes being a market mechanism or whether it is a market thing or not, I think the important point is that of course they involve the possibility of incentives and training and they recognize those realities, but fundamentally they are taxes that require Canadians to pay more. They are intentionally driving up the price of gas and the commodities that have gas as an input, making those things more expensive in an effort to incentivize changes in behaviour. The fact that the carbon tax increases prices for Canadians is not a bug; that is actually the intention of the policy.
I wonder if the member would just acknowledge that in his and the NDP's support of this policy, they are seeking to promote the increase in gas prices, that they want higher gas prices and that this is why they support a carbon tax.
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Mr. Speaker, I would note that New Democrats are quite firm in our belief that as we look at the record profits that oil and gas companies have been enjoying, we do not think that oil and gas companies should be able to walk away with that money and pay it out in dividends to their shareholders or squirrel it away in international tax havens, but that instead there should be an appropriate tax applied to oil and gas companies.
We, of course, have also been open to the idea of having some kind of a public utility board that would regulate the price of oil and gas. We recognize that long before the carbon tax, a long weekend was enough reason for oil and gas companies to jack up the price of oil and gas. We think that Canadians ought to be just as concerned about the advantage that those companies are taking of Canadians in their basic pricing structure; never mind what is added in tax.
There is a larger conversation to be had about how we get fair pricing for oil and gas. I think that the Conservatives' kind of monolithic focus on the carbon tax obscures a lot of ways that Canadians are getting screwed at the pump by oil and gas companies themselves in order to outsize their profits.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-47, the budget implementation act, this evening.
Canadians are facing a cost of living crisis; there is no doubt about that. Food, housing and fuel are all costing more these days. The more the Prime Minister spends, the more everything costs. Of course, even his finance minister has pronounced that the spending has driven inflation up. At a time when Canadians are already feeling the pressure of inflation on their personal finances, the Liberals' budget is adding $67 billion in new inflationary spending. These inflationary deficits are contributing to record-high food, housing and fuel costs, and I will briefly touch on the situation of each of these items.
The cost of food is at record levels. “Canada's Food Price Report 2023” predicts that a family of four will spend up to $1,065 more on food this year. That puts food-price inflation at a 40-year high, with costs pushing 20% of Canadians to skip meals because they cannot afford to eat. This is why the use of food banks has increased so dramatically. One in five Canadians says that they will likely need to get meals from a food bank this year; in fact, perhaps it will be longer than that in the future.
Some of the federal spending that has contributed to this inflation was the spending that took place during COVID. There was $500 billion that was spent or budgeted by the government and put into the hands of Canadians and out into the economy. Much of that was needed for things like housing, putting food on the table and keeping warm in our cold climate, but the independent Parliamentary Budget Officer came out and said that 40% of that, or $200 billion of the $500 billion, had nothing to do with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Therefore, 1.5 million Canadians are eating at food banks and one in five is skipping breakfast, lunch or dinner, because they cannot afford the cost of food. High home prices have left nine out of 10 young people who do not own a home believing that they will never own a home, and it is not just teens or people in their early twenties but many who are much older than that. The down payment needed to buy a house has doubled from $22,000 to $45,000. Mortgage payments for a new house doubled from $1,400 a month to over $3,100. If high interest rates and inflation continue, by 2026, Canadians may end up paying an additional $30,000 to $40,000 in interest per year on their mortgages.
Then there are the high fuel costs, which are made worse by the Liberal carbon taxes. There is not just one carbon tax; now, there are two. With the Prime Minister bringing in a second, hidden carbon tax, the cost of gas, groceries and home heating will only continue to climb. The first carbon tax did not succeed in reducing emissions. The second one will not either, but it will still make life more expensive. The independent Parliamentary Budget Officer has indicated that the second carbon tax will cost the average Canadian household an extra $573 a year without any rebate. Families in some provinces will face costs as high as $1,517. Combined, these two carbon taxes will cost some Canadian families up to $4,000 each year. This is an extra 61¢ for every litre of gasoline, with 37¢ a litre from the first carbon tax, 17¢ per litre from the second and another 7¢ accounting for the sales tax applied to the carbon tax.
In Manitoba, the second Liberal carbon tax will cost the average household an additional $611 a year, bringing the full cost of the two carbon taxes to $2,101 by 2030. That is asking a lot from Manitoba families at a time when costs are already skyrocketing. It should not come as a surprise that the Parliamentary Budget Officer confirmed that this tax will shrink our economy. Families should not be left to struggle under the weight of the reckless Liberal approach, particularly after the pandemic that they have just been faced with.
That is why Conservatives are fighting to make life more affordable for families and pressing for two key things. First, the Prime Minister must give us a plan to end the inflationary deficits and spending and to bring down inflation and interest rates. Second, the Prime Minister must cancel his carbon tax hikes. Canadians are struggling, and acting on these proposals could help bring real relief to those struggling to make ends meet.
I have a parallel that I just want to refer to. When I was in the Manitoba legislature, we went through the years of Mr. Doer from 2000 to 2009, when he left. They were probably the best economic years in Manitoba's history. Mr. Selinger took over as premier from then until 2015, and those were very high-spending years. The province increased the provincial sales tax again. It increased the tax by 1%, but the province was debating whether it should be 2%.
Today, the Prime Minister's spending provides a great parallel to what happened in Manitoba, with the most high-spending NDP premier we ever had. This means that, today, we have the most high-spending Prime Minister we have ever had. Therefore, I would say we have already elected the first New Democratic prime minister in Canadian history, and he is the member for Papineau; it is ironic that he is in a coalition with the NDP to do it.
In order to deliver results for Canadians, Conservatives are bringing forward many amendments to the budget bill, and I hope all parties will recognize the importance of supporting these amendments to support all of our fellow Canadians who are struggling right now. The reality is that Canada's federal debt for the 2023-24 fiscal year is predicted to reach $1.22 trillion, as some of my colleagues have already said today. That is almost $81,000 for every household in Canada. The Prime Minister has added more debt than all the other prime ministers combined and has no plan to balance the budget or to control his inflationary deficits, which are driving up the cost of the goods we buy and the interest we pay.
There are consequences to the government's actions, and we are seeing them now, as inflation erodes the spending power of our families, friends and neighbours. Conservatives have advocated for a plan to make Canada work for the people who work. Their paycheques should not be diminished because of their government's inflationary spending. Nobody wants to spend more and get less, but that is what inflation does. Instead, people's hard work should pay off. Every dollar they earn should be able to cover the costs of their everyday needs and, as often as possible, the extra things they enjoy, such as a weekend away, a night with friends or just something special for the kids.
One's ability to buy a home should not be diminished because of the government's inflationary spending. The Liberals' one-size-fits-all plan for mortgage development does not work in every area of Canada. Home ownership should not be only for the wealthy, but the way prices are going under the current government, it is hard for many who want to enter the housing market to make their dream a reality. By removing the government gatekeepers to free up land and speed up building permits, the government could have made a real difference in the lives of those who are looking to own a home.
I want to switch gears for a moment to talk about another important theme, and that is public safety. Again, in the budget, the Liberal government has failed to lay out a meaningful plan to respond to public safety issues in Canada. We are facing a 32% rise in violent crime since 2015. As my colleague, the member for Kildonan—St. Paul, has appropriately noted, 32% is not just a number. It represents 124,000 more very serious violent crime incidents that have impacted innocent Canadians across the country.
We want to bring home a nation that works for the people who do the work, bring home lower prices and powerful paycheques, and bring homes that people can afford. That is what we stand for on this side of the House, and we will keep fighting for that.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to repeat a question that I posed a little bit earlier, which was artfully dodged by the respondent.
Yes, there is a price on pollution, and it has added to the price of gasoline at the pump. However, in spite of all that, the oil companies have racked up an impressive $38.3 billion in profits, all coming straight out of the pockets of Canadians, straight off their after-tax income.
Would the member not agree that if he is talking about inflation, and if we know that food and big oil are the largest contributors to inflation, their profits are really the issue here, not anything that the government has done?
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague could not be more wrong. That is the most ridiculous statement I have ever heard in the House, or one of them.
Particularly, he is saying that farmers are the cause of food going up. The government has put the carbon tax on all the inputs for all the industries in Canada.
The profits that he is talking about are coming right out of the pockets of the individuals that he is trying to say are saving the country. They are building the food, trying to keep crime down and providing industries with jobs. These are the companies that are providing jobs in Canada. They are also the ones that have to bear the government's taxation, and they are the ones that provide the government with billions and billions of tax dollars.
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Uqaqtittiji, I have read the budget implementation act, and I see that there is going to be, in the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, a Canada health transfer. The Province of Manitoba will get a substantial amount if this bill passes.
Manitoba was making cuts to health care services earlier this year. Could the member describe to his constituents what is wrong with the Canada health transfer and the substantial increase that the Province of Manitoba will get so that it can deliver health care services?
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Mr. Speaker, I commend my colleague for raising that very good question. It is one that I did not get to in my speech.
The costs of health care, of course, have gone up dramatically, as well, over these years. One thing I know from my 14 years in the Manitoba legislature is that the former premier of Manitoba, Mr. Doer, in about 2006, indicated that the Liberal government cuts to health care from the federal government to all provinces in Canada were huge. However, in Manitoba, they amounted to $252 million in 1995 dollars.
If one extrapolates that to today's money, 28 years later, one can see the damage of the cuts made in those early days by the Liberal government. They decimated health care across the whole country of Canada and left all these provinces with a huge drain on their financial budgets. The government basically off-loaded huge percentages of support for hospitals and nurses and doctors in all our provinces.
I would say that the transfers are more important than ever in health care. However, it is certainly a detriment to the province's abilities to be able to maintain and increase the services we have.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to push back on the hon. member's earlier interaction with the member for Fleetwood—Port Kells. Conservatives like to be oblivious to the fact that, since 2019, oil and gas companies have seen their net profits go up by over 1000%. To suggest that this has absolutely no role in driving inflation for consumers, when everything that families depend on is driven by trains or trucks, which rely on diesel fuel, is being completely oblivious to the elephant in the room.
Surely, my colleague could offer some commentary on the gross profiteering that is happening on the backs of constituents like his and like mine, right across Canada. Why do Conservatives continue to ignore this, to the detriment of all Canadians?
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Mr. Speaker, there are several things one could say about my colleague's great question. One is that he knows in British Columbia there were something like 15 LNG projects that could have been built when the Prime Minister came into power, and not one of them has ever been completed. Those dollars could have been used for what natural resources have been used for in this country, and that is to build the coffers of the federal government to make those transfers in education and health care back to the provinces so that we can all have the same level of health care across the whole country.
The other thing is that the profits from those companies are being used to make those transfers, but the member knows full well that the government has stymied the development of those industries with Bill C-69. If we want to talk about percentages of profit increases, we are talking about $40 barrels of oil a number of years ago that are now $80 a barrel. There is a doubling right there. It is very hard to compare percentages when we have a product that has doubled in price over the last five years.
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Mr. Speaker, it is another great night for democracy. It is always an honour to rise on behalf of Canada's number one riding, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, and share a few words in the people's House of Commons.
In this year's budget, Conservatives asked for a couple of things, or three things to be exact: to bring home powerful paycheques, to bring home lower prices on homes and to build more homes that Canadians can afford.
Budget 2023 does none of these things. It fails to create the good-paying jobs Canadians need to keep up with the ever-rising cost of living. It fails to stop the government's reckless spending and punishing tax hikes, which are driving inflation, and it fails to deliver a real plan to address the housing supply crisis and ensure Canadians can find a safe and affordable place to call home. Further, it fails to address the labour shortages that are holding small businesses back. It fails to cut the mountains of red tape that have made Canada an unattractive place to do business, and it cuts away the fiscal anchor the finance minister so proudly touted in budget 2022, a declining debt-to-GDP ratio.
For these reasons, I will be joining my colleagues and voting against the budget.
On bringing home powerful paycheques, paycheques are not keeping up with the cost of living. I hear this from constituents every single day. Canada's inflation rate for April 2023 sat at 4.4%. Groceries are seeing some of the highest increases. In April, food prices rose 8.3% over the same month last year. “Canada's Food Price Report 2023” predicts the average family of four will spend $1,065 more on food this year. All the government can offer Canadians is a grocery rebate that will not come close to covering the substantial increase to their most important expense every month. The average family of four will still be out $598.
The Prime Minister's advice to Canadians who cannot keep up with this inflation is to just put big, important purchases on their credit cards. With the cost of a home reaching all-time highs, does the Prime Minister think Canadians should put their down payments on their credit cards too?
Budget 2023 doubles down on the failed $70-billion national housing strategy. Since its implementation, we have seen a doubling of the cost of an average family home in this country.
Conservatives have a different plan. We are going to get municipal gatekeepers and nimbys out of the way. In fact, we are going to do what the provincial NDP government in British Columbia is doing and work with municipalities to incentivize them to get more homes built. We are going to tie infrastructure dollars to increased housing development, and we are going to sell off 15% of the federal government's buildings to be converted into affordable housing.
Turning to small businesses, the housing supply crisis is also preventing small businesses from attracting new workers, particularly in rural communities. Ashcroft and Lillooet in my riding have raised this repeatedly. On top of this, businesses struggle to bring in workers from abroad thanks to massive backlogs in our broken immigration system. In fact, just last week I had the pleasure of attending the B.C. Chamber of Commerce's 2023 AGM and conference, where it called upon the federal government, as one of its key policy planks, to address the immigration shortfalls.
A recent CFIB report highlighted that small business owners are working 54 hours a week on average, largely to make up for staffing shortages. Labour shortages have had a particular impact on small businesses in the hospitality and agricultural sectors, where 84% and 82% of owners report working more hours respectively.
On top of labour shortages, most businesses are having trouble simply staying afloat. Many took on large amounts of debt to survive the pandemic. However, they have yet to fully recover to 2019 levels and are drowning in debt payments. According to Restaurants Canada, there has been a 116% increase in bankruptcies among restaurants over the last year, and 51% are only breaking even or losing money every day.
Small businesses asked for no more carbon tax hikes, a reduction of the small business tax rate and action to address labour shortages. Instead, they got continued carbon tax hikes, no tax relief and no action to clear the immigration backlogs we face.
I would be remiss if I did not mention the Village of Lytton in my riding. We are coming up on the two-year anniversary on June 30, when Lytton was consumed by wildfire. Nearly two years later, the rebuild has yet to begin. Residents of Lytton have been unable to return home, and businesses have been unable to reopen their doors. Many businesses took out CEBA loans during the pandemic to stay afloat, but without the ability to reopen many are unable to repay them. With the deadline for repayment coming up this December, these businesses are running out of time and are desperate.
Earlier this week, I received a reply to one of my petitions in which the constituents of Lytton had pleaded with the government to give them some reprieve. We are only talking about a dozen businesses here. The government said no. It said no to the village that has been referenced in every conversation on climate change and every conversation on natural disasters. To the very people who want to be able to go back and rebuild the community, the government said no. Shame on it.
I will acknowledge the minister for Pacific economic development, who did follow through on some housing supports, but rental housing was excluded from that as well. I really hope the government revises its program on housing grants to include rental housing moving forward.
In British Columbia, we are also facing the opioid crisis. In 2016, an increase in the number of overdose deaths in B.C., particularly those linked to fentanyl, led the medical officer of health to declare a public health emergency in the province. In the seven years leading up to that declaration, 3,002 British Columbians lost their lives to a drug overdose, an average of about 430 a year. Since 2017, there have been 10,396 deaths from opioid overdoses, an average of more than 1,700 per year. At the federal level, more than $6 billion has been spent since 2017, yet the crisis worsens. Conservatives are committed to turning hurt into hope for those battling addiction.
A few weeks ago, I hosted a number of people who have combatted addiction in their lives and overcome it. They talked about the need in the Fraser health region to put more money into detoxification beds. The Fraser health region, my health region in British Columbia, has the highest number of overdose deaths in this country. We only have eight detox beds. Moving forward we need to be in a position, and the Government of Canada needs to support a policy position, such that, if someone who is suffering from an opioid addiction feels that they can enter treatment, it is available on demand.
The number of people who die from opioids far surpasses the number of people who die from COVID–19. We spent hundreds of billions of dollars on COVID–19, yet not a fraction of that for the people who are suffering from opioid addiction. Canada must do better. British Columbia must do better. Our children and the parents of those who have lost a child are pleading with us to do better. We have not done well enough.
In conclusion, budget 2023 will not address the ever-increasing cost of living we are facing in British Columbia and across Canada. It will not create the good-paying jobs that Canadians need to keep up with the cost of inflation. It fails to address the number one issue in my riding, the rebuilding of Lytton, as well as the overdose crisis that is plaguing my province at an alarming rate.
We have so much work to do in the House and the Conservative Party, His Majesty's loyal opposition, is going to fight every day to make sure that Canadians see a future for themselves and their communities that is drug-free and where people have hope to live their best lives once again.
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Mr. Speaker, I regret having to play fact check. First, on foreign direct investment, the five-year snapshot of the foreign direct investments in the last five years is upward of $1,141 billion, so over $1 trillion is an average. In the Harper years, it was almost half of that, $617 billion over a five-year period per year. On foreign direct investment, there is really no comparing the federal Liberal government to the Conservative government. The Conservatives were just not able to attract the same level of investment.
Second, I am not sure why the member wants to compare COVID-19 to opioid deaths. However, more Canadians did die from COVID-19, tragically, than opioids. Opioids have consumed far too many lives in this country and we need to find solutions for both treatment and more safe supply. It is not a simple solution. It is complex.
Last, the member opposite lives in a province with carbon pricing, which has effectively demonstrated an ability to reduce carbon emissions. He ran on it in the last election. Will he stand up and tell his constituents that he no longer believes in carbon pricing?
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