44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 21, 2024 10:00AM
- May/21/24 7:02:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as always, it is a privilege to speak in the House on these decisions. We are talking about the implementation of the budget.
I will be a good sport and highlight the positive elements of the budget. Everyone is in favour of doubling the tax credit for volunteer firefighters and search and rescue volunteers. Extending the family allowance by six months for parents whose child has died, that is just being compassionate. We support that. Raising the ceiling on eligible expenses for newsroom staff and increasing the tax credit, we are in favour of that.
Yes, we agree when it comes to supporting clean technology, but we have to be careful. We need to be very vigilant about the interference we see into Hydro-Québec's pricing. The increase in the amounts available for the home buyers' plan is also a good thing. So far, so good. We agree with capping the excise duty on beer, wine and spirits at 2%. We also agree on halving the excise duty rate on the first 15,000 hectolitres of beer brewed in Canada for two years. This is one of our rare requests that have been granted. We agree. As for the school food program, we agree, but we need to be vigilant. We have always said so.
As one of my colleagues mentioned earlier, half of our taxes are here, in Ottawa. We need that money to help our people. We want the money, but we want it distributed to organizations that are already working in Quebec.
There is a worthwhile measure on underused housing. It would eliminate filing requirements, reduce the penalty for failing to file a return and create an exemption for residential properties held as a place of residence or lodging for employees. I think that could be a good thing for the agricultural industry in particular. The budget talks a lot about grocery prices. The government is saying that it is going to control them. We know what to do. We need to increase competition and stop authorizing mergers that do not make sense and that take place even after the Competition Bureau advises against them.
The budget also very briefly mentions that the government will do something to help cattle producers. We do not really know what the government will do. The Bloc Québécois has some ideas. All the government has to do is ask us about them. For example, could the government give $100 per hectare to maintain grasslands? That would have a positive impact on the environment and on greenhouse gas emissions, and it would give our farmers a potentially worthwhile source of additional income.
What is in this budget for the future of agriculture and agri-food? There was talk of the advance payments program. We know that the government lowered the limit to $100,000, which is completely ridiculous, given current prices. Farmers were asking for $350,000. It was set at $250,000. It might be disappointing, but at least they got something. Sadly enough, that is how the farming community thinks now. They are so used to being disappointed that they tell themselves that at least they got something.
The big problem I see is that it is only for this year. The government is offering $250,000, but only for this year. What does that mean? It means that, next year, farmers will have to come crawling back to the government to ask that it maintain the same limit for the advance payments program and not reduce it once again to the ridiculous amount of $100,000. However, if the government really wanted to show good will and respect for agricultural producers, it would have increased it to $350,000 on an ongoing basis. Farmers have better things to do than come here begging. They have crops to tend to, they have animals to care for. There do not seem to be many people here who understand that.
There is much more money for the local food infrastructure fund, the LFIF. I think that is great. The amount doubled. Will it be enough? We will see. Some sad things happened in the ridings, as members know. Several of my colleagues told me about people submitting a grant application only to be told that the rules had been changed because there was so little money in the program and that only small producers were being accepted. Producers that were no longer eligible for the program were told, “Sorry you spent two weeks completing your application and maybe hiring an accountant or experts to help, but it was all for naught. Better luck next time”.
That is not professional. The government needs to take things seriously. Even so, I applaud the LFIF budget increase and the capital gains increase for intergenerational transfers. It is not enough for me, but, in any case, it has gone up.
Then there is innovation, like the $10‑million exemption for capital gains realized on the sale of a farm business to an employee ownership trust. That is a good measure, but it got no attention. Hardly anyone talked about it. I fail to understand why members of the government do not put good initiatives like that one front and centre. It seems like they are too busy stammering over their mistakes to remember their successes.
However, a few things were missing that should have been included. Take the excise tax on berry- and maple-based alcohol. An exemption was recently created for mead. It would be easy to include these products in the exemption too. It would make sense. They are made by very small businesses that need the money. What is the government waiting for?
Earlier on, I spoke about making the $350,000 increase under the advance payments program permanent. What is the government waiting for? It would cost next to nothing. It is just interest.
Let us talk about the emergency on-farm support fund. Members will recall how devastating the 2023 season was for southern Quebec, where extremely heavy rains drove many market gardeners to ruin. Northern Quebec had the opposite problem: Terrible droughts forced cattle farmers to sell off part of their herds, not because they wanted to sell, but because they did not have enough hay to feed them. Farmers are in a bad way when they get to that point, and no one is getting the picture. These people cannot receive compensation from a program because, since they sold cattle, they made more money this year than last. Their financial position does not look bad on paper, but once in a while, we have to look up from the paperwork and go see for ourselves. It takes something important, but these people are important.
That is why we need an emergency fund that is agile, permanent and fast. I know this is a complicated topic and it may sound dry, but if I may summarize, there are a bunch of agricultural programs that do not work. However, there is one that has been set up as a last resort if nothing else works.
This program is supposed to be triggered quickly. It is an emergency program called AgriRecovery. I am still waiting for more information. Everyone is waiting to hear more. The provinces and Quebec have to apply to the federal government. Quebec applied in November. Today is May 21. They call that an emergency program? Far from it.
I do not want to be unreasonable. I know there are complex calculations involved in these claims and that people are going to be compensated for things that are new to us, but could someone at least start working on those calculations? As far as I am concerned, if it takes from November to the end of May, someone, somewhere, is taking their sweet time. That is the only explanation.
I really liked what a witness told me in committee last week. I asked Mr. Forest if there was anything he wanted to emphasize. We had 30 seconds left. He looked me straight in the eyes and said that, on a farm, we have to be efficient, and when something happens, we have to act quickly and figure things out. He said that farmers need programs that are as responsive as they are. The government needs to get going on this. He added that people are not participating in the current programs because they are not working anymore. When programs stop working, they need to be changed. It is as simple as that.
We expect something to happen, like an investment in agri-food. Agri-food is the largest employer in the country. Not too many people talk about that around here. This is a critical sector not only in terms of the number of jobs, but also in terms of what we eat three times a day. Where is the program to help this sector modernize, to invest in innovation and to improve the productivity of our businesses?
I would really like to see an investment in this sector, which is often neglected. Farmland is undervalued. The Liberals have grand plans to plant trees. Could they at least spend the same amount not on planting trees, but on restoring land for cultivation, especially land that has a lot of potential? Improved and accelerated capital cost allowances for agricultural equipment are simple requests that would not cost the government very much. I find the budget extremely disappointing in that regard.
We in the Bloc Québécois hope that the government will show some vision at some point. If people on the government side want to speak with us, we will gladly go out for a beer and explain it to them.
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- May/21/24 11:27:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, while we are discussing what we renamed the SES, the summer economic statement, Canadians are experiencing the worst cost of living crisis in 40 years, due to a lack of affordable housing, the carbon tax, and record-smashing food bank use and grocery prices. Canadians have always had common sense. When Canadians look at their own expenses, they budget. They stretch dollars. They choose whether they go on vacation or whether the kids go to after-school activities. They go to a grocery store and have to budget what they are buying. They have to look at practical solutions to everyday challenges with resilience and resourcefulness.
However, common sense is like deodorant; the ones who need it the most never use it. With respect to this level of government, Canadians are shaking their heads in disbelief because of the lack of common sense on the opposite side of the aisle. This is the greatest country in the world. We have great people, innovative minds, great institutions and hard workers. We have resilience. Canadians invented peanut butter, the zipper, the Ski-Doo and the Sea-Doo, but common-sense approaches have become rare commodities.
In 2015, among the Liberal campaign promises was the promise to help the middle class and those looking to join it, as well as tax cuts for the middle class. What do we see now? We see more people who are out of the middle class. We see tax increases. The carbon tax alone went up 23% on April 1. More people are finding themselves out of the middle class, and more people are finding themselves taxed, as we have a government that lacks common sense.
Look at what the government could do if it looked at the basics. Let us say a dozen people went into the woods to try to start a community. What would be the first things they would do? They would build shelter. They would hunt and find food. The community would make sure it had a place to look after the children and one another, that everyone would be well looked after.
After nine years under the government, more Canadians than ever before are finding that rent has doubled, mortgage payments have doubled and the amount needed for a down payment has doubled. They are finding that grocery prices are $700 more this year alone. Groceries have gone up 24% over the last four years. Look at the cost of heating one's home. All prices for farmers growing their crops have gone up. The government's common sense has just disappeared. Let us look at some examples of its lack of common sense.
The government borrowed $400 billion back in the day when the Prime Minister said that interest rates were at historic lows. When we borrowed $400 billion, the government borrowed it over the short term. The government did not look ahead 20 or 25 years as a family would when looking at a mortgage. The government looked at the short term.
Now the debt is coming up for renewal. Do members know how much the renewal is going to cost us just in 2025? It is going to cost $12 billion, because the government did not have the common sense to look at long-term loans to look after Canadians' money. I wonder how many water bombers we could have bought and had fully crewed to be operating in B.C. right now to look after forest fighters.
Look at NATO and NORAD. They are our trusted allies. NATO and NORAD have asked us for years to contribute our 2%. We even passed a resolution in the House to do so, but we have not contributed. Because of that, we do not have a seat at the table. What happens to international security if we are not at the table? We will also not be at the table when it comes to international trade because our trading partners will work only with partners who work with them for security.
What is happening up north right now? The fact is that we do not have a base. We cannot even land an F-35 fighter in the north right now in Canada? We have jets being purchased, but it has taken 10 years. Remember when we said that the F-35 was too much? The Prime Minister said we were not going to buy it, and nine years later, of course, we are buying it for how many billions more? However, we cannot even land the thing in the north. Finland is buying half as many F-35s as we are, and it has already built a runway to land in the north to defend the northern border.
We talk about icebreakers in the north. We have one barely functioning icebreaker. Do members know how many icebreakers Russia has in the north right now? It has sixteen. Do members know how many China has? It has forty. We did not have the common sense to put any money toward our security or the north, which we really need in order to play our part in NORAD and NATO, on behalf of our allies in the U.S. and, of course, just for our security.
We have talked about drugs in hospitals. We are saying that smoking crack at a hospital or bringing in a weapon should be outlawed. More importantly, I visited Millhaven maximum security prison in Kingston only two weeks ago; three inmates there were high on drugs.
After nine years, we have mergers and more mergers under the government. We talk about competition. Part of the bill is about competition. However, under the government's watch, the merger of HSBC and RBC was approved. Because of that, mortgage rates have gone up. HSBC used to have a mortgage rate that was 1% lower than RBC's offering. Right now, that is costing the average taxpayer, who has a $500,000 mortgage, $300 more a month because that merger was approved.
We had WestJet buy Sunwing. Only a couple of months later, it was announced that Sunwing was going to shut down. There is only one competitor in the west. Sometimes it is Air Canada; most of the time it is WestJet. We had Rogers buy Shaw. What happened two months ago? It was announced that cellphone prices were to go up nine dollars a month. When we look for competition, it is not there.
The bill would bring in some aspects of competition. Thanks to the Competition Bureau, and dare I say, some amendments by the NDP, we are going to look at ensuring that we have no mergers approved that have a market share of over 30%. At the end of the day, the government has approved more mergers.
Open banking is probably the closest thing we can have to actual competition coming to one of our oligopolies right now. Open banking in Canada would open up the doors for Canadians to bring them financial freedom. One example is this: If Canadians have a Wealthsimple account, they have to screen scrape and find different ways to get through it. The government makes it really difficult for people to try to use a new banking app. This app right now pays Canadians 5% on their cash balance daily. What is the average bank interest rate right now? It is 0.2%. I think if someone had $10,000, over 10 years, they could make $100. Competition is freedom for Canadians. Open banking was not in the fall economic statement or in the new budget, to make that a reality for Canadians.
We are talking about no common sense. The government has hired 100,000 employees, a 40% increase since 2015. However, it takes 58 days to get an email back from CRA, compared with 43 days in 2015. Someone should try getting a passport. There has been no efficiency. There is more government and less efficiency.
On housing, the $4.4-billion housing accelerator has not built one home. We have a lack of skilled trades. Here is my favourite stat from last year, as we are talking about no common sense. We brought 1.3 million immigrants to Canada, new Canadians, permanent residents and TR. Do members know many home builders we brought last year? It was 4,300, and we wonder why we have a housing shortage.
We need immigration. Our birth rates are extremely low. We need people to come in, but when we are looking at immigration, let us make sure we are also looking at building homes first, so we have a place for people to go and house prices do not go sky-high. We even had the member for Winnipeg North say that MAID has saved lives. That was a statement used. There is no common sense.
Another one of my favourite examples is that the government has cut the budget to the Information Commissioner at a time when access to information is at an all-time low. The Ethics Commissioner had their salary cut when the workload has never been higher. Common sense is not common. Canadians have common sense, but the government does not.
It will only be in electing a common-sense Conservative government that we once again restore common sense to Canada and to Canadians. Of course, we will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. We are also going to create competition for a change, for my home, for everyone's home, for our home. Let us bring common sense home.
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