44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 30, 2023 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, it is always an honour to stand in this place and speak to legislation and, in this particular case, it is an honour to speak to the report stage of Bill C-34.
Before I begin, having just spent the weekend back in my riding and arriving this morning back in Ottawa, at different events and in lots of interaction with my constituents, since we are speaking about competition, I cannot say enough about the impact of the Prime Minister's decision last Thursday to limit the carbon tax, or actually take away the carbon tax, on home heating oil within Atlantic Canada and how much of an impact that is having on the residents whom I represent in Barrie—Innisfil, in a negative way. Many are questioning and wondering why the same application of an exemption to the carbon tax was not applied equally across the country.
I know the Prime Minister gave his rationale, but that is literally cold comfort to the people whom I represent, especially the seniors who are struggling to pay for groceries and to pay their natural gas bills. Many of them are sending me their natural gas bill, and the carbon price is oftentimes equal to the distribution charge of natural gas itself. There are families who are struggling to keep a roof over their heads, moms who are worried about paying the bills on a daily basis and, of course, single-parent families who are just struggling to make ends meet, buy nutritious food for their families and pay their gas bills, especially with winter coming up. It was quite the topic of conversation this week within my riding.
Quite frankly, I did not have an answer for any of them because the Prime Minister's decision was to exclude solely Atlantic Canada when the rest of us are still paying the carbon tax for home heating in particular, and those prices are going to go up. The cost of distribution is going to go up and the cost of the carbon tax is going to go up. People in the riding I represent are quite concerned about the inequity of not having the same benefit other Canadians have. I wanted to share that message because it is something I heard on the weekend in my many interactions with the people whom I represent in my riding of Barrie—Innisfil.
We are here today to speak to Bill C-34 at report stage with respect to the improvements, and some needed improvements, to the Investment Canada Act. It is important because we just finished, at the ethics committee, a study on foreign interference and the role that nations, particularly China and Russia, are playing as state-owned actors making investments into our economy for the purpose, quite frankly, of control, including controlling Canadian businesses, controlling Canadian minerals, controlling Canadian resources and controlling, in many cases as the hon. member just spoke about, some of our northern and offshore areas as well. Therefore, it becomes critically important for the government to keep a keen eye, and multiple eyes, in fact, on what is happening with foreign investment and the approvals.
Bill C-34 highlights a few simple things. Number one, there are numerous foreign state-owned enterprises who have acquired interest and control in many Canadian companies, intellectual property, tangible assets and the data of our citizens. We are finding more and more that this access to data and theft of data are not just to use it for nefarious reasons but to propagate disinformation and misinformation to create societal chaos, so we have to be mindful of that. The government, quite frankly, would do very little to protect our national economic and security interests with this bill, despite what we are hearing the Liberals say today and other days during debate, and certainly at committee.
We have to take sensitive transactions seriously, and we have failed to fully review some of the transactions, particularly as they relate to Chinese state-owned enterprises in the past. Later, I am going to be citing some examples of where we have put at risk not just Canadian intellectual property but also Canadians in general.
One can agree with some of the principles of this bill, and we certainly agree with some of the principles, but it does not go far enough to address some of the risks faced by Canadians. That is why we worked to pass significant amendments in committee to better protect Canadian interests and Canadian assets.
When I look through the list of amendments that were proposed for Bill C-34, only four were passed at committee out of the roughly 13 we proposed. One that was accepted was on reducing the threshold to trigger a national security review from $512 million to zero dollars for all state-owned enterprise investment made in Canada. Lowering that threshold was critical so that at least it would trigger and initiate a security review.
The other amendment that was passed would ensure that items renewable under the national security review process include acquisitions of any assets by a state-owned enterprise. Again, this is all about protecting Canadians and protecting our valuable assets, our businesses and certainly our interests.
The other one would ensure that an automatic national security review is conducted whenever a company has previously been convicted of corruption charges. If somebody had not supported that, I would have been surprised, quite frankly. It is one of the proposals at committee that were adopted.
The last would require the minister to conduct a national security review by changing the word “may” to “shall” to ensure a review is triggered whenever it is in the new threshold. This was quite frankly a no-brainer.
However, there were some amendments proposed that were not accepted at committee and rejected. The one that concerns me the most is the one that would require the minister to conduct a national security review by changing “may” to “shall” to ensure the review is triggered whenever in the review threshold.
One of the things we have to be mindful of is that anytime a transaction being proposed impacts the national security interests of our country, we have to make sure there is a review. One of the proposed amendments was to have a Governor in Council review of this so there is not just one eye on it, the minister's eye. It would go to the cabinet table so there are multiple eyes on it and multiple questions being asked, which is critical when we are dealing with sensitive national security interests.
Why is this important? As I said earlier, there have been situations in the past where companies have not had the type of review they should have. That has been widely publicized. A Chinese takeover deal in 2015 had been previously rejected by the Conservative government, but it was approved in 2015. This was based on Hong Kong O-Net Technologies Group as it related to a business here. Having multiple eyes on the review therefore becomes critical.
In fact, three years ago, a Deloitte study suggested to the government that we should not buy sensitive security IT from despotic regimes. That was in relation to a $6.8-million contract to supply security equipment to Canada's embassies. This was Nuctech, which is known as the Huawei of airport security. Some may recall that this involved X-ray machines being supplied for use by the Government of Canada.
While there are some things to support in this bill, the amendments that were proposed by our Conservative colleagues in committee were reasonable and practicable and should have been applied to many aspects of the bill we are debating today.
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- Oct/30/23 2:20:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years, the Prime Minister has finally admitted that he is not worth the cost. How many years have I been saying that the carbon tax will do nothing for the environment and will hurt families?
I was just moments away from holding a massive rally in a Liberal riding to axe the carbon tax when the Prime Minister did a complete 180. However, he did not eliminate the second carbon tax, which applies in Quebec with the Bloc Québécois's support. Will the Prime Minister be consistent and eliminate the second carbon tax for Quebeckers and all Canadians?
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- Oct/30/23 2:32:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberal-NDP government is finally saying the quiet part out loud. It admitted that its carbon tax makes life more unaffordable and does nothing to help the environment. However, only certain people get relief: those who happen to live in places where Liberal polling numbers are the worst. Everyone else gets told that their vote does not matter and that the Liberals do not care.
If the Liberals can take the carbon tax off for some Canadians, why can they not take it off for all Canadians?
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- Oct/30/23 2:34:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has finally admitted the carbon tax makes heating homes more expensive and he is pausing the carbon tax in Atlantic Canada, and we know why. It is because the minister, the member for Long Range Mountains, said Atlantic MPs forced the Prime Minister to do it.
What the Prime Minister is saying after eight years is that if someone is a Liberal MP from Brampton, Toronto, Mississauga or Thunder Bay, their voice does not matter at all. They cannot have any change. They are effectively useless.
Will the Prime Minister stop playing politics with the carbon tax and just axe it?
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- Oct/30/23 2:36:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, now we have just been treated to the great carbon tax fable: first, it was revenue neutral; second, we get more money than we pay into it; third, it fights climate change. It does none of those things. What it does, and what the Prime Minister has admitted by pausing the carbon tax, is that it makes it more expensive for everyone. The real tragedy is for Canadians outside Atlantic Canada. Why? It is not being paused, and most people heat their homes in Ontario, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, B.C. and Quebec not with heating oil. It does not apply across the country.
Will they stop playing politics, picking winners and losers, dividing Canadians and axe the tax?
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- Oct/30/23 2:39:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as for the tax, I watched the show not once, not twice, but three times, and it was clear what the minister said. He even said that, as long as he is environment minister, there would never, ever be any further changes to the carbon tax elsewhere in Canada. He essentially confirmed that there will be no other pauses as long as he is in that role. It remains to be seen what the Prime Minister will do with that.
For now, I would also like to say that the Bloc Québécois, which supports the carbon tax, says it does not apply to Quebec and wants to drastically increase it.
At the end of the day, what is this government doing?
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- Oct/30/23 2:40:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I think that if he watched the show once, twice, or three times, maybe he should have practised his question once, twice, or three times. It is not entirely clear what he was asking. I think he was talking about carbon pricing.
Carbon pricing is in place across the country, from coast to coast. We have made sure there is a fair mechanism for all Canadians. We support Canadians in the fight against climate change as well as on the issue of affordability.
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- Oct/30/23 2:45:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we know that carbon pricing works. It both reduces emissions and puts more money in the pockets of middle-class families. We made a decision to attack a highly polluting source of fuel, home heating oil, in a different way so we could get rid of it faster. We are doing this by making a record investment in heat pump technology, which is not only going to reduce emissions at a household level, but it is going to save families thousands of dollars every year. This is sensible policy. It is good for the environment, it is good for the economy and it is good for the households not just in my riding but right across the country.
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- Oct/30/23 2:53:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, an obvious, desperate Prime Minister admitted his carbon tax is punishing Canadians and making life unaffordable. After eight years he finally proved to himself last Thursday that he is not worth the cost. His only strategy at this point is not about climate. It is about protecting his Liberal MPs. In Sudbury, in Nickel Belt, 55% of homes are heated by natural gas, yet for these struggling Canadians they get no exemption from heating their homes.
The Leader of the Opposition has proposed to axe the tax in all forms of home heating for every Canadian. Will the Prime Minister agree with that?
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- Oct/30/23 3:01:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the second carbon tax affects Quebec, and it is having a catastrophic impact on the lives of our constituents. Our food banks are overwhelmed and that includes Frigos pleins, Comptoir Le Grenier and L'Essential des Etchemins in my community. One in 10 people are using food banks.
After eight years under this government, with the assistance of the Bloc Québécois, everything is broken. It is costly to vote Bloc Québécois. The announcement that the Prime Minister made on Friday is not enough. He must abolish the full tax everywhere. When will the Prime Minister announce that the tax has been completely eliminated?
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- Oct/30/23 3:02:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is always a bit difficult for me to speak after this member who, for many years, was part of a government that was the first in North America to implement a carbon tax, the Government of Quebec. She was part of the government that did that.
An article in this morning's edition of La Presse said that Quebec had a record rainfall of 265 millimetres, the most rain it has seen since 1940. The impacts of climate change are real, particularly in the agricultural industry. They are driving up the cost of food. This summer in Quebec, there was $150 million in damages in the agricultural industry alone. Everyone pays for that.
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- Oct/30/23 3:02:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years with this Bloc Québécois-backed government in power, parents are struggling. They have to cut back on everything, including meeting their children's needs.
I do not know why people on the other side are laughing; there is nothing funny about what I am saying. A family in Lévis says they have to pay almost twice as much for food because of inflation. Voting for the Bloc Québécois is costly. They want to drastically increase the carbon tax. The second carbon tax applies in Quebec and hurts our people.
When will the Prime Minister abandon his carbon tax throughout the country?
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- Oct/30/23 3:03:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am having a little trouble keeping up with my Conservative colleague. She was there when they introduced the carbon exchange. She defended it and voted in favour of it in cabinet.
Does she change her mind every time she changes leaders, or every time she changes parties?
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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- Oct/30/23 3:07:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years, the plummeting, panicking Prime Minister admitted his carbon tax is punishing Canadians and making life more unaffordable. Liberals just announced their re-election platform: Vote Liberal and quadruple the carbon tax on home heating oil after the next election.
The Liberal minister from Newfoundland admitted this exemption was not granted to Canadians across the country because they do not vote Liberal. Rum bottle politics is back.
When will the Prime Minister stop with the band-aids, cure the problem he caused and axe the carbon tax?
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