44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 22, 2024 02:00PM
- May/22/24 3:00:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, once again, the Conservative leader completely ignores the facts and the data in every political argument he tries to make.
In reality, the global inflation phenomenon has not hit Canada as hard as it hit many other countries, and inflation has remained within the Bank of Canada's target range for the past four months in a row. That is due to this government's investments and prudent, responsible fiscal management.
We will continue to be there to invest in Canadians while working to lower inflation. That is something that the Conservative leader does not understand.
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- May/22/24 5:06:09 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, certainly there are many reasons to get behind this kind of legislation, but there is also an economic reason. I appeal to the red Tories who are standing opposite right now. On the diabetes stats alone, unnecessary costs are incurred from lost productivity and elevated health care system use due to diabetes and its complications, which include heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, blindness and amputation. If we provide diabetes medication free of charge, we can save an estimated $27 billion to $39 billion in our health care system in this country by 2028. That makes fiscal sense, not to mention ethical sense.
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- May/22/24 5:16:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I think the fiscal case for proceeding in this manner is quite remarkably already laid out in studies, such as the one at UBC that I cited, and studies that we have seen in other areas with respect to diabetes. If there was no need for these kinds of services, I would query the Conservatives why 1.9 million seniors in this country registered for the Canada dental benefit, if no actual need existed.
I would put to the Conservatives, also, that if there was no need for extending that coverage on dental care, why we have already had 100,000 appointments set up, in literally the first three weeks of the program. It expresses to me, on a simplistic analysis, that the need is acute.
We are addressing the need with the program. Does it cost money? It absolutely costs money. However, that is an investment on the front end that cures costs to the system on the back end, which is something that a traditional red Tory would normally get behind.
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- May/22/24 5:22:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, when it comes to this legislation, I believe there should be more debate on it because it is a wider bill. Right now, it takes about seven years for an oncology drug to be approved in Canada. That is partly because of the many processes it has to go through at Health Canada and through a provincial group that discusses drugs, etc. This would add to that, so we need to have more conversation about it.
Outside of that, I would like to correct the minister. It is within the purview of the government, through the regular supply process, to basically fund initiatives, and it can come to agreements with provinces to fund particular things under its fiscal power. It does not need to have legislation such as this.
Would the minister please acknowledge that the government does not need to have this legislation in place to make payments to individual provinces? British Columbia has already approved contraception through its own budget process. That is something that was debated in its legislature and passed. He does not need to do that here and now.
I am concerned with other measures within the bill. The government does not need this bill to pass to make those payments to provinces, whether it be for diabetes or for contraception.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to be here this evening to finally give this speech, which I have been looking forward to doing for quite some time. I would like to start by saying that there are some good measures in Bill C‑59. As everyone knows, this is an omnibus bill. It would have been terrible to not have anything to sink our teeth into. Of these good measures, I have identified a few that I think are worth highlighting in the House.
First, Bill C‑59 seeks to make it more difficult to use tax havens by cracking down on two schemes. The Bloc Québécois has wanted to crack down on tax havens for a long time. It is not perfect, but the government is nevertheless tackling two schemes, specifically interest deductibility between subsidiaries and hybrid mismatch arrangements. This measure was recommended by the OECD working group on tax evasion.
One of the schemes involving tax havens is the creation of financing subsidiaries. Simply put, the primary function of a subsidiary in a tax haven is to lend to the Canadian parent company. The interest paid by the Canadian company is thus diverted to a tax haven where it is essentially not taxed. That is the loophole that Bill C‑59 aims to close. This is a good measure. As for the implementation of rules on hybrid mismatch arrangements, this is consistent with the OECD and the Group of Twenty base erosion and profit shifting project recommendations regarding cross-border tax avoidance structures.
This bill also picks up on the idea of Bill C-323, an act to amend the Excise Tax Act regarding mental health services, which was sponsored by my colleague from Cumberland—Colchester and passed unanimously at second reading. The Bloc Québécois supports that bill. Quebec is a pioneer in psychotherapy legislation and has inspired several provinces, like Ontario, to regulate psychotherapy. Anyone who wishes to offer psychotherapy services in Quebec and who is not a doctor or psychologist must obtain a licence from the Ordre des psychologues du Québec. However, the different tax treatment afforded to the various professional associations is unfair. For doctors and psychologists, psychotherapy falls within their scope of practice and is therefore not taxable, but all other categories of professionals must charge tax on the services they provide. The bill would address this unfairness and would come as a welcome change, given the growing need for mental health services. The bill also includes a review of the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act. At first glance, this is a small step in the right direction.
In the House, if a bill is good for Quebec, then the Bloc Québécois votes in favour of it. If a bill is bad for Quebec, then my colleagues and I vote against it. As I said in the beginning, there are some good things about Bill C‑59, but mostly it is a bad bill. That is why the Bloc Québécois will be voting against it. Bill C‑59 is an omnibus bill that is almost 550 pages long. It sets out 60 different measures and amends or creates 31 laws and regulations. I would like to remind the House that there are some good things in the bill but that the Bloc Québécois will be opposing it at second reading because of two measures.
There are two things that the Bloc Québécois still does not like about the bill. That will not change, regardless of the political party sitting on the other side of the House. The first thing is that this is the umpteenth time the federal government has tried to infringe on provincial jurisdictions. The second thing is the subsidies that the government is giving to oil companies at Quebeckers' expense. This bill gives $30.3 billion in subsidies to oil companies in the form of tax credits. The Minister of Environment and Climate Change is telling us that his government has put an end to oil subsidies, but he should have read his government's bill because that is not what it says. We are talking about $30.3. billion that is being taken out of taxpayers' pockets and given as a gift to oil companies so that they can pollute less, when they obviously do not need that money. One thing is certain, I highly doubt that the official opposition will do much to oppose that, even if it is “wacko”, as they say.
Another crazy idea in this bill is the creation of a federal department of municipal affairs called the department of housing, infrastructure and communities, which will lead to more federal attempts at interference, more endless discussions and more delays, when the housing crisis requires swift action.
On top of these two very bad measures, the government made no attempt to address the Bloc Québécois' priorities, priorities that reflected the real and urgent needs of Quebeckers. When my colleagues and I are on the ground, in our ridings, we connect with our constituents and take calls every day at our offices. People talk to us about these needs.
Worse yet, in response to Quebec's requests, the federal government decided once again to disregard provincial jurisdictions. Housing, local infrastructure, land use, municipal affairs: none of that falls under federal jurisdiction.
Nevertheless, Bill C‑59 creates the department of housing, infrastructure and communities. By creating a designated department, Bill C‑59 gives the minister the capacity to interfere even more. This department will allow the federal government to impose even more conditions on the provinces and municipalities and, of course, make the delays even worse.
Former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau tried a similar stunt when he created the department of urban affairs in 1971, and it failed miserably. To prevent the federal government from meddling in municipal affairs, the Quebec government amended its Act respecting the Ministère du Conseil exécutif to prohibit municipalities, RCMs, school boards and crown corporations from dealing directly with Ottawa. That law remains in effect.
The department of urban affairs caused endless bickering between the federal government and the provinces for its entire existence and never managed to deliver anything useful. It was finally shut down in 1979, which was good for Quebeckers, under pressure from a certain PQ government led by René Lévesque.
Despite this disastrous experiment, the federal government is trying something similar today. After the national housing strategy was announced, it took more than three years for an agreement to be signed between Quebec and Ottawa. Just recently, the federal government refused to give $900 million to Quebec to create housing, with no strings attached. It is hard to imagine that negotiations will be streamlined under a new department.
The picture is not much brighter if we look at the other federal parties. The government is essentially proposing more and more centralization. The Conservatives display the same centralizing tendency, only they are also threatening to cut investments if housing construction targets are not met. This is a disturbing trend among all the federalist parties in the House.
It will come as no surprise to learn that we will not support the creation of a department whose main mission is to interfere in Quebec's jurisdictions. We will not support Bill C‑59 either. The Bloc Québécois will continue to oppose all forms of federal interference in Quebec's jurisdictions for as long as it takes, for one very simple but exceedingly important reason: Quebec never has been and never will be dictated to by the federal government.
Once again, we have proof that this government, this institution, the federal Parliament, does not respect the Quebec nation. It will not respect the Quebec nation until the people of Quebec decide to create a true nation with all the tools needed to achieve Quebec's sovereignty and independence.
When that time comes, we will congratulate them on creating a new department of no consequence to us.
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Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to be sharing my time with the member for Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, who, I am sure, will happily rise and comment about how proud he is to represent people from his riding.
Now, after 20 minutes of absolute fiction from the member for Winnipeg North, I thought I would continue with a bit of fiction that describes, so well, Bill C-59 and Liberal financing. It is by Hemingway, from The Sun Also Rises. It goes like this. “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
That is exactly the Liberal government.
There is another great line, which is not fiction. I wish it were fiction, but it is not. It is actually from the Prime Minister himself. It is a great line: “The budget will balance itself.” Does everyone remember that? What do we get with the Liberal Prime Minister saying that the budget will balance itself? We end up with $1.4 trillion in debt. That is $93,000 for every single household in Canada; $3,400 per year, per household, just for interest on the Liberal debt.
We think about it like the GST. It is 5% on everything purchased. People go out to a restaurant, have a beer or go to a Blue Jays game. Perhaps they would go to the Edmonton Oilers game, but not the Vancouver Canucks game because they are gone. They pay 5% tax on the ticket. This year, we expect the GST is going to raise about $52 billion. The equivalent of every single penny of the GST collected is going to go solely to the interest on the debt. It will not go toward health care or toward any of the fantasy things the member for Winnipeg North brings up; it is just for interest.
The interest on the debt next year is going to be so bad that the GST will actually have to rise to almost 6% just to cover the interest. That is more than we give for health care to the provinces and more than we give to defence. Over the next five years of the budget, it is going to be $338 billion of interest payments.
Do members remember the Prime Minister, when questioned about interest costs, condescendingly saying to Glen McGregor, “Interest rates are at historic lows Glen”? Guess what? Interest rates are not at historic lows, and the Liberals, when they actually had a chance to lock in those interest rates that supposedly were at the historic low, did not. The Liberals actually borrowed vast sums, almost a half a trillion dollars, on a short-term basis. This debt is coming due, and the government is going to have to refinance, so instead of paying 0.25% on that $454 billion, it is going to be a lot more. Billions of dollars are added every year, just in interest.
Let us imagine that someone who is buying a house is at the bank, and they are negotiating a mortgage. A bank officer tells them that he has an all-time low for interest rates and that they can lock it in for a long time at 1%, and the customer says that they are going to roll the dice because they do not think the rates are going to go up. Then, boom, all of a sudden, they would end up with 5% to 8% when they renew. People would not do that. No one would be foolish enough to do that, but that is what the Liberal government has done. It has just basically said that it does not want a long-term, locked-in rate and it is going to roll the dice. Then what happens? We end up with massive increases.
What could we actually buy with that $338 billion that the government is going to pay just in interest costs alone for the next five years? The government could buy 5,600 ArriveCAN apps, not at the $80,000 it was originally going to be, but at the $60 million that the government paid for it. It could buy 17,000 contracts with GC Strategies to develop apps and to not actually do any work on them. The government could do a half a million studies from contractors such as KPMG to advise the government on how to cut back on contracts from the government. The government famously paid KPMG $670,000 to provide advice on how to cut back on contracts to people like those at KPMG. It could buy 42,000 luxury barns, like the $8-million barn it put up at the Governor General's property.
Do members remember the Liberal cabinet spending $1.3 million on three luxury getaways to talk about the affordability crisis? The Liberals could actually afford 260,000 of their luxury getaways to discuss the affordability crisis. They could buy 37 million nights at the $9,000-a-night luxury plaza where the Prime Minister took his Christmas vacation, but was just staying with friends like every other Canadian.
Now, I say some of these things just to show how ridiculous this spending is, but in real terms, we could actually build, with that $338 billion, just on interest, a new hospital for the 100 largest cities in Canada. So, basically, for every city with more than 35,000 people, we could actually build a brand new $3.5-billion hospital. We could increase health care transfers to the provinces by about 700%. We could buy 482,000 houses across the country at the current average house price of $700,000. Instead, it is going to interest, but that is okay, the budget will balance itself and “interest rates are at historic lows, Glen”. We do not have to worry about it. We could actually afford 800% of the current outlay that all Canadians are paying on pharmaceuticals, not a fake pharmacare plan of the Liberal government, for contraceptive and diabetic medication. That is not pharmacare; that is two items. The government could actually pay for everything with just 12% of what it is paying on interest right now.
Now, I want to get to Bill C-59 itself, the fall economic statement, with just a couple quick items from the Parliamentary Budget Officer. This is from his highlights. He says, “Revisions to the...economic outlook and fiscal developments...lower the outlook for the budgetary balance by [$19] billion.” So, the PBO is saying that things are getting worse by $19 billion.
He goes on to say, “Government announced [$23] billion in new spending that was partially offset by [$3] billion in 'refocusing”. So, lots of added spending.
The fall economic statement claims to expand the budget commitment to “refocus government spending, with the goal to identify an additional $2.4 billion in savings” over a four-year period. Now, that is out of $465 billion a year in revenues, about half a trillion a year, and costs about a $2.5-trillion spending budget over the five years. The Liberals are going to save $2 billion, including half a billion this year, even though it is money that they are saying now is not needed, but it went through the Treasury Board process as needed.
He continues, “There is currently little information available on the status of the $15.4 billion in Budget 2023 spending reviews” and savings announced by the government. “Further, there is currently no publicly available information related to the $3.6 billion spending to be reallocated in 2023-24.”
Now, one of the things the government has promised to cut back on in this $3 billion is outside consulting. Of course, if members remember, in 2015, as the member for Winnipeg North, I am sure, will tell us, the Liberals promised to cut back on outside contracting, consulting. What has happened instead is that it has ballooned to $21 billion, including, as I mentioned, $670,000 to KPMG to advise the government on how to stop spending so much money on companies like KPMG.
I have a couple other favourites that the Liberals spent money on through outside contracting. They gave Deloitte a quarter of a million dollars to give a four-page report saying not to buy sophisticated IT security equipment from despotic regimes. They paid a quarter of a million dollars also to Deloitte for a fairness study on an RFP for a security contract for something that they sole-sourced under government policy. There are 50,000 people in the public service whose job is to make sure that the contracts are fair, but they decided they had to give money to Deloitte.
It is clear the government has no clue what it is doing with the economy. It is clear it has no clue what it is doing with the budget. The budgets will not balance themselves. A Conservative government, however, will balance them.
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