SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 314 - May/21/24

May/21/24 3:42:14 p.m.
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Colleagues, I thank you for the kind words and thoughts that you have shared and the deep respect you have shown for our 32nd Speaker, the Hon. John Allen Fraser. He lived a long, rich life in service to his country. I was a page standing in front of this chair, and I can tell everyone how inspiring he was. I can also say how his shoes squeaked every time he stood up, which gave the signal to the pages to stand. When asked what advice he would give a young person, he said, “Try mightily to maintain a vivid curiosity about everything, care about things a great deal and have courage.” Those are, indeed, words to grow and live by. He had a deep love for the traditions and history of this place. He said that democracy does not function well without a sense of history and that we cannot take freedom and civility for granted. In many ways, his career path led him inevitably to this chamber and to this chair. He started in law and moved into politics. John Fraser was always interested in politics and an active member of the Progressive Conservative Party, so he finally decided to take the step that everyone here has taken and run for a seat in the House of Commons. He was elected for the first time in 1972 in the riding of Vancouver South, and he obviously served his constituents well because he was re-elected five times. He served as Speaker from 1986 to 1994. Following the enactment of significant changes to the Standing Orders, many of his decisions created the basic interpretation of our modern rules and redefined what is appropriate practice in our chamber today. John Fraser lived a long life of service. We are very grateful for his service to Canada and to this place. He was also, as was mentioned by several members, a man who loved nature and all creatures, great and small. I heard an interesting anecdote about Speaker Fraser when he used to live at the farm, the official residence for the Speaker. One year there was an infestation of raccoons, and the people who take care of the official residence thought it was appropriate to set raccoon traps throughout the property. Mr. Fraser thought otherwise, so he would get up early, at the crack of dawn, armed with a broomstick, and set off all the traps along the property so the raccoons would not get hurt, much to the befuddlement of the people who took care of the official residence, as they wondered why all the traps were set off and not one raccoon was caught in them. We extend our deepest condolences to his family, who are here with us today. We hope that John Fraser's remarkable contributions to Canada will bring comfort to his family in their time of grief. I thank his family for being with him and having him serve not only this place but our great country.

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The Speaker

May/21/24 3:46:05 p.m.
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It being 3:46 p.m., the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion of the member for Carleton relating to the business of supply. Call in the members.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

May/21/24 4:15:26 p.m.
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I declare the motion lost.

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Lost
Declare

The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

May/21/24 4:16:22 p.m.
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The House will now proceed to the deferred recorded division on the motion at report stage of Bill C-59. The question is on Motion No. 1.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

May/21/24 4:28:34 p.m.
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I declare the motion defeated.

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Hon. Steven MacKinnon

May/21/24 4:29:13 p.m.
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moved that the bill be concurred in.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

May/21/24 4:29:13 p.m.
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If a member participating in person wishes that the motion be carried or carried on division, or if a member of a recognized party participating in person wishes to request a recorded division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen

May/21/24 4:29:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I request a recorded division.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

May/21/24 4:40:49 p.m.
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I declare the motion carried. It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, Foreign Affairs; the hon. member for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, Mental Health and Addictions; the hon. member for Battle River—Crowfoot, Carbon Pricing.

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Mrs. Salma Zahid (Scarborough Centre, Lib.)

May/21/24 4:41:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a privilege today to rise to speak to the 2024 budget. It is a plan to build more homes faster, help make life cost less and grow the economy in a way that helps every generation get ahead. When I talk to my constituents in Scarborough Centre, they tell me that they want to see our government work to ensure fairness for every generation, including for the youth just finishing school and ready to enter the world, for the families trying to get by and save for the future, and for the seniors looking to live the dignified retirement they have worked so hard for. That is the goal of this budget: growth that lifts everyone up and fairness for every generation. Let us start with housing. It is consistently the number one priority of my constituents. I will admit our government has not always gotten this right. Successive governments from both parties and at all levels of government, including cities, provinces and the federal government, have failed to work together on housing with the seriousness this issue deserves. That is why we are in a housing crisis in Canada. It is a crisis that impacts every generation. Young people are moving back home after college or university because they cannot afford to move out on their own, homeowners are worried about keeping their homes when their mortgages are up for renewal and seniors are trying to either age at home with dignity or find assisted living that meets both their needs and their budgets. Inaction in the past does not mean we should not act today. We must act on housing and this budget lays down the federal gauntlet in a serious way with an ambitious plan to unlock 3.87 million homes by 2031. If we are going to do it, we will need to work together, and the federal government is ready to do its share and then some. We would invest $1.5 billion in the Canada rental protection fund to help affordable housing providers acquire units and preserve rents at a stable level for decades to come, preventing those units from being redeveloped into out-of-reach condos or luxury rental units. The $6-billion Canada housing infrastructure fund would accelerate the construction and upgrading of housing, enabling water, waste-water, storm-water and solid-waste infrastructure that would directly enable new housing supply and help improve densification. More money would be available to cities that legalize more housing zoning for smart density and more missing middle homes. We would leverage the $55-billion apartment construction loan program to partner with provinces to build more rental housing across the country. Provinces would need to make their own investments, cut red tape to begin building faster, and agree to expand protections and rights for renters in order to access federal funding. Solving the housing crisis requires a team Canada approach. Working with the provinces, we are creating the Canadian renters' bill of rights to protect renters from unfair practices, make leases simpler and increase price transparency as well as crack down on renovictions, introduce a nationwide standard lease agreement and require landlords to disclose historical rent prices of the apartments. We are taking action to make it easier for homeowners to increase Canada's supply of housing by adding additional suites to their home. The new Canada secondary suite loan program would enable homeowners to access up to $40,000 in low-interest loans to add secondary suites to their homes. More homes need to be built closer to the services that Canadians count on. Transit that is more accessible and reliable means Canadians can spend more time with their friends and family members. It is crucial that all orders of government work together to achieve this. Any community seeking to access long-term, predictable funding through the federal government's permanent public transit fund would be required to take action that directly unlocks housing supply where it is needed most, by eliminating mandatory parking requirements and allowing high-density housing within 800 metres of a high-frequency transit line. These are just a few of the concrete measures, backed by real dollars, that we are taking to jump-start housing in Canada. We are ready to work with the provinces and cities that are ready to get serious on housing, and we are ready to take on the gatekeepers if they stand in our way. However, we need to do more than just focus on housing. Affordability is impacting all facets of life in Canada and around the world, and we are taking action. In Scarborough and in many communities across Canada, many children are going to school hungry. It is hard to learn on an empty stomach. Our next generation deserves the best possible start in their lives. That is why we are launching the national school food program to help 400,000 more kids get the food they need through existing school food programs. Our child care program is saving families thousands of dollars every year, but there still are not enough child care spaces. We will help public and not-for-profit child care providers to build more child care spaces and renovate existing centres. We are investing $8 billion to build more child care spaces, offering student loan forgiveness for rural and remote early childhood educators and training more early childhood educators. We are taking action to help seniors on a number of important fronts. Since 2017, we have invested $11.8 billion in long-term care and community care, but more action is needed to keep our seniors safe. We will introduce a safe long-term care act to support new national long-term care standards to help ensure safe, reliable and high-quality care and improve infection prevention and control practices. The old age security program, which includes the OAS pension, GIS and other allowances, is the government's largest program. It will provide $80.6 billion to more than seven million seniors in the year 2024-25. Old age security annual program expenditures are projected to grow by close to 24% to almost $100 billion by 2028-29 for Canadian seniors. Oral health care is an important part of overall health care, and we are rolling out the Canadian dental care plan, starting with Canadian seniors. Since May 1, more than 50,000 Canadian patients have accessed care through the CDCP, and more than 9,000 dental care professionals have signed up to provide care. This program will improve health outcomes and save money for Canadians, starting with our seniors. We have introduced legislation to help make essential medications more accessible and more affordable for Canadians. The budget includes $1.5 billion to support the launch of the national pharmacare plan. The first phase will ensure the effective rollout of pharmacare by providing immediate support for health care needs of women as well as people with diabetes. More areas will be added very soon. Budget 2024 is a plan to take bold action to build more homes faster, help make life cost less and grow the economy in a way that is shared by all. This year's budget would drive our economy toward growth that lifts everyone up, because that is fairness for every generation.

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Mr. Rick Perkins (South Shore—St. Margarets, CPC)

May/21/24 4:50:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I listened intently to the member's speech, but I did not hear any explanation from that member as to why, as the first speaker, she thought it was appropriate that time allocation be put on the budget bill on a half a trillion dollars of spending, limiting debate before it even starts. I would like her to explain to this House, if she could, why she thinks that not having sufficient debate on this spending is a good idea.

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Mrs. Salma Zahid

May/21/24 4:51:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a budget for fairness for every generation. It is really very important that Canadians are looking to all of us to come together and make decisions that will help build more houses faster. Action needs to be taken today, and many Canadians are relying on us, so it is really very important that we put our partisan politics aside and make sure that the implementation of the budget starts as soon as possible, so that Canadians can start seeing the results. We can start building housing; we can make sure that the kids do not go hungry at school. This budget would help 400,000 kids get food during these food programs.

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Mr. Mario Beaulieu (La Pointe-de-l'Île, BQ)

May/21/24 4:52:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on her speech. Earlier, during oral question period, we heard the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance tell us how important the Quebec nation and the French language in Quebec are for her. However, there is nothing in the budget to subsidize French. From 1995 to 2002, I found that 94% of funding of official languages in Quebec went to support English. Furthermore, in the action plan for official languages 2023-28, it is the same thing, with 94% of the money going to supporting English. I know that my colleague believes in people's right to self-determination. In her opinion, should the federal government not stop using official languages funding to undermine Quebec’s self-determination?

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Mrs. Salma Zahid

May/21/24 4:53:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to highlight that in Bill C-13 there are major investments for the French language. Within the 2024 budget, we are here to support Quebec by investing $3.4 billion to support young researchers in Canada and in Quebec, $1.28 billion to fight homelessness and $1.5 billion to protect and to expand affordable housing. These are some of the measures being taken in this to make sure there is help to support Quebec.

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Ms. Bonita Zarrillo (Port Moody—Coquitlam, NDP)

May/21/24 4:54:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we know economists have been saying for years that there is going to be a need for more rental housing. The capitalist society realized this very quickly, and corporations started buying up more affordable apartment buildings. I think about REITs and about one specific REIT, Boardwalk, which recently made its profit announcement. It talked about the fact that it is using CMHC funding and is taking advantage of low interest rates through CMHC that average Canadians do not have access to. My question to the member is this: Why is the Liberal government continuing to put the needs of corporate Canada ahead of people who need a place to rent?

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Mrs. Salma Zahid

May/21/24 4:54:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I really want to thank the hon. member for her question and for making sure that we have more rental units available here in Canada. Rental units are really very important and our government is doing its best to make sure that we see the construction of more rental units. That is why we will leverage the $55 billion apartment construction loan program to partner with provinces to build more rental housing across the country. Rental units, for sure, are really very important, and we have taken many initiatives to make sure that there is a greater stock of rental units in Canada.

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Hon. Robert Oliphant (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lib.)

May/21/24 4:55:42 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. There have been consultations among the parties, and I believe, if you seek it, you will find unanimous consent for the following motion: That the name of the individual referenced by the member for Don Valley West during his speech on the opposition motion standing in the name of the member for Carleton, be struck from the House of Commons Debates of Thursday, May 9, 2024, and from any House multimedia recording, and that the Parliamentary Publications be authorized to make the necessary editorial changes.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

May/21/24 4:56:14 p.m.
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All those opposed to the hon. member moving the motion will please say nay. It is agreed. The House has heard the terms of the motion. All those opposed to the motion will please say nay.

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Mr. Rick Perkins (South Shore—St. Margarets, CPC)

May/21/24 4:56:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to lead off second reading debate for His Majesty's loyal opposition on Bill C-69, the NDP and Liberals' budget implementation bill. I am disappointed that there will be so few Conservatives allowed to speak on this bill. That being said, we will deal with it at a later date in committee. I know the House will be shocked to learn that I will be voting against this budget bill, and I will tell members why. As the opposition critic for industry, I have been focused on Canada's declining prosperity since 2015. The public policy choices of the Liberals have caused this decline in prosperity because of three major choices the Liberals made. Number one is that we have too much debt in Canada. Number two is that the world no longer buys enough of what Canada makes, our exports. Number three is that too many oligopolistic industries are charging Canadians too much for their services. Let us start with the first point: too much debt. When the government debt grows faster than the economy, which is how the Liberals have been managing the country's finances, we eventually hit a wall. Liberal debt has caused inflation, which has caused interest rates to rise. Liberal inflation and interest rates have doubled housing costs and have hurt Canadians. For the ninth year in a row, the NDP-Liberals are running a huge deficit. This year alone, it is $40 billion, and a balanced budget is not even in their thinking. Let us look at the numbers the budget the Liberals are so proud of proposes. The Liberal spending spree continues with $61 billion in new spending initiatives. The national debt will rise to a record $1.37 trillion. Interest on the national debt will rise from $26.6 billion in the last year of the Harper government to $64.3 billion. Debt interest payments will be more than what Ottawa spends on health care and twice what it spends on national defence. The budget projects the government's spending to grow to $608 billion, which is $328 billion more than the first year of the Liberal government in 2015. That is a 117% increase in spending alone under the Liberals. That increase alone is more than the entire Harper budget of the last year. In case someone is worried about it, revenue, which is taxes, will rise from $282 billion in 2015 to $586 billion. In other words, government tax revenue has gone up by $304 billion, or 108% under the Liberal government. However, spending has gone up 117%, hence the debt. If government spending made for a stronger economy and for more powerful paycheques for Canadians, we would be leading the world on our standard of living. However, that is not what Canadians are experiencing. Instead, what we have is a homegrown affordability and productivity crisis. The price of everything has gone up, and productivity per worker has declined. Since 2022, inflation-adjusted GDP per capita, which is an indication of living standards, declined from $60,000 to $58,000 in only a year and a half into 2023 and is now below where it was in 2014, a decade ago. In other words, declining incomes at a time of rising costs of food, fuel, heating and everything, while our incomes are sliding back, make it more difficult for people to afford daily life. It is a double hit on Canadians thanks to the NDP-Liberals. Clearly, the record spending by the NDP-Liberal government, with the Liberal finance minister adding 62% of Canada's national debt, is not making people better off; it is making things worse. This is the result of the disastrous policy choices of the NDP-Liberals on deficits, spending, government manipulation of the free market and policy choices to destroy Canada's competitive advantage over other countries, and those are our natural resource industries. Let us turn to my second point. The world is not buying enough of what Canada creates anymore. As a small nation globally, in terms of population, Canada needs to export in order to maintain and to grow our living standards. I spent most of my career in business, and when one's company has a competitive advantage, one innovates and works extremely hard to grow and to protect that competitive advantage, otherwise one's business declines and eventually dies. To export what Canada does successfully, we need to offer something other countries do not. In the world of nations, what is Canada's competitive advantage? It is our natural resources. Those include renewables, such as agriculture, fisheries and forestry, and non-renewables, such as minerals, oil and gas. We have been blessed like few others. We need to lead in exporting those commodities and the technology to harvest them. We do not hear Saudi Arabia saying that they are glad they do not have all those forests to manage like Canada. We do not hear Germany saying that they are glad they do not have all that Canadian oil and gas to manage. In fact, Germany is begging for our oil and gas. However, In 2016, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau— An hon. member: Oh, oh! Mr. Rick Perkins: I apologize, Madam Speaker. In 2016, the Prime Minister told the World Economic Forum “My predecessor wanted you to know Canada for its resources. Well I want you to know Canadians for our resourcefulness.” While that is a cute thing, let us look at how that has worked out. In 2019, natural resources accounted for 14.9% of Canada's economy, dropping from 19.5% in 2015. At the same time, Canada's prosperity began to decline, as measured by GDP per capita, and it is now the worst in Western democracies. By the way, Klaus Schwab apparently has resigned from the head of the World Economic Forum, so there is a job opening for the Prime Minister. Why is productivity important? When productivity rises, it means that more output is generated with the same number of hours worked, which boosts profit for business and creates wage growth without lowering business profitability. The growth and export of Canada's natural resource sector not only is the driver to restore our productivity and prosperity, but also is the most important factor in restoring Canada's productivity. It is our competitive advantage globally. The challenges that the natural resources sector has faced are because of the specific Liberal government policies, which are the key driver of Canada's overall economic decline. The policy choices of the Liberal government with its unconstitutional Impact Assessment Act, which is basically a no-capital-back act, has diminished our ability to get things to market. The Liberals do not recognize that the policy choices they have had on Canadians are driven by their decisions. According to a report from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, displacing only 20% of Asia's electricity that is generated by coal with clean Canadian liquefied natural gas is the equivalent to eliminating all of Canada's emissions globally. Our goal should be to displace 40% of Asia's coal generation, which would remove two of Canada's carbon emissions from the globe while driving more powerful paycheques at home as Canada resumes its place in the world as an energy superpower. Why would the NDP-Liberals think that destroying this industry is anything but harmful not only to Canadian prosperity but also to reducing carbon emissions? They will have to answer this to voters, hopefully in the not-too-distant future. However, there is good news. Common-sense Conservatives would proudly restore Canada's competitive advantage by developing all of our renewable and non-renewable resources. Canada's productivity recovery begins with our resource sector. It also begins with restoring fiscal sanity to our finances. We would fix the budget, reduce spending and ensure new spending is matched dollar for dollar with spending reductions. Common-sense Conservatives know that the value of Canada's competitive advantage is our natural resources, and we will get projects permitted in under 18 months. Does the Liberal budget do anything to get clean, ethical, liquefied natural gas to Asia to replace harmful coal generation? There is not a word, not a peep, not a sentence in the bill on that. This is not a serious budget, since it would not do anything to improve our productivity, and it would do nothing to improve the world's climate issues. However, there is hope on the way and hope for the planet, and it is called an election, which cannot come soon enough for Canadians.

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

May/21/24 5:06:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is somewhat consistent, yet disappointing, that the Conservative Party does not see fit to support many of the initiatives the government is looking to provide through budgetary measures, such as the national food program for kids. Somewhere in the neighbourhood of 400,000 children would benefit from that particular program. There are programs dealing with pharmacare and dental care, and the Conservatives continuously vote against these programs by voting against the budget. I am wondering if the member can explain why the Conservative Party does not believe it should be standing up for Canadians and providing the services that are needed across the country.

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