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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 333

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 17, 2024 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 333 - Jun/17/24
Mr. Blaine Calkins (Red Deer—Lacombe, CPC)
  • Jun/17/24 1:34:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today to debate Bill C-69. Here we are again. Another year, another NDP-Liberal budget, and every budget it seems is worse than the one before. This year's iteration of the budget is falsely titled “Fairness for Every Generation”. The title is ironic because, after nine years of the government, virtually every generation in the country is worse off. In fact, I cannot think of a single demographic, other than the Liberal insiders, that is better off in nine years. Our youth can only dream of affording a home after the government has allowed a housing shortfall. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, we would need to build 1.3 million homes to close the housing gap. Both renters and homeowners are struggling to pay their bills after the cost of housing has been allowed to double under the leadership of the Prime Minister. Our seniors are seeing their pensions ravaged by inflation. Not that long ago, it used to be that their old age security, CPP and whatever other savings they might have could see them through on a monthly basis. That is no longer the case. The government has directly driven up that inflation, making life unaffordable by continuing to overspend. By piling on another $61 billion of new spending this year, piling on to our already enormous debt, it has proven that it does not plan on changing course any time soon. Parents are struggling with affordability, and it is now difficult for many families to feed their children. We are seeing yearly inflation rates for many food products in the double digits, while a record two million Canadians had to use a food bank in a single month last year, which is incredible. Let us not forget the pesky carbon tax that compounds through the economy, costing over $30 billion of economic activity, as recently highlighted by the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Therefore, not only is it costing us every time we make a purchase, but it is costing our economy $30 billion in output. After nine years of the government creating intergenerational poverty, that would be a more apt name for this budget. We know things are bad for the government when former Liberal Bank of Canada governor David Dodge has called it the worst budget since 1982, when the current Prime Minister's father was the prime minister. Like father, like son, as they say. Instead of cutting back spending, the government has continued to be irresponsible and is spending money that Canadians no longer have. This has forced the Bank of Canada to raise interest rates. The cost to service the debt is now $54.1 billion. One must wonder what $54.1 billion could have been spent on instead of servicing the debt. Like many Liberal bills, the budget has been turned into an omnibus bill to push forward strange and unusual requests that have little to do with budgets or measures, that are so controversial that if tabled on their own would not likely get the support of this chamber. This year's boondoggle is the new tax on capital gains, a direct attack on business owners. It is only after the Conservatives pushed back that the government relented and put the capital gains changes into a separate bill. I chalk this up to pure incompetence, as the government continues to wedge, stigmatize and divide Canadians, and has open class warfare in our tax system. The government claims that this change will bring fairness into the tax system essentially to target the richest 0.13%. Nothing could be further from the truth. What it conveniently ignores is how this tax will likely impact, and only impact, middle-class Canadians. This includes tradesmen, farmers who are worried about the succession of their family farms and small business owners who worry that it may not be worth growing their businesses in Canada anymore after these changes. The immigration stats are proving this to be true. This would not be the typical 1%, but in fact would not be any of the 1% at all. Rather, they are our neighbours, friends and family members, the people who put food on our table and build our homes, and those industrious small business owners who employ people in our local communities and, meanwhile, sponsor the T-shirts for our kids' soccer teams. I would also like to focus the attention of members on another underhanded change in the budget implementation act, and that is the newest changes to the Food and Drugs Act. The NDP vacated its role as an opposition party in March 2022, and instead of holding the government to account, its members have decided to help ease the passage of budget Bill C-47, which was the budget implementation act of 2023. The ghastly bill was a direct attack on Canada's natural health product industry, one of the safest and best regulated industries on Planet Earth. These changes came as part of a push to radically change Health Canada's regulatory framework. Health Canada claimed that the changes were necessary to safeguard public health, but we simply know, with all the powers that it has, that this simply is not true. The major alteration to the act was to change the definition of a therapeutic product to include natural health products. A therapeutic product is essentially a synthetic drug and it has little in common with food, which is the closest commonality that natural health products actually have. This would essentially put natural health products in the same regulatory framework as pharmaceutical drugs. It would also force the industry to pay for Health Canada's costly bureaucratic overhead with expensive new licensing fees and fines. Essentially, by putting a self-funding model in place, what the government would be doing is just taxing the industry with that self-funding regulatory model so that it could free up the $50 million a year, which it already uses to manage the natural health product space, and use that money on some other misguided priority of the government. Previously, natural health products were exempt from much of the regulations in the Food and Drugs Act, as a common understanding is that natural health products are a much lower risk to one's health than a pharmaceutical drug. That is why I introduced my private member's Bill C-368 to repeal these changes to the Food and Drugs Act and return to the status quo, maintaining the distinction between natural health products and therapeutic products. However, if my private member's bill fails to pass, this new budget may also have a big impact on the natural health products industry. That is because division 31 of part 4 of this new budget implementation bill has introduced new ministerial powers pertaining to therapeutic products. Once again, it would be another change to the Food and Drugs Act and Health Canada. Instead of putting it in its own bill, it is tucked into part of an omnibus budget implementation act. The most concerning of these changes is to allow the minister to make unilateral changes on therapeutic products without any basis in science demonstrating risk. Proposed subsection 30.01(1) of the bill states: Subject to any regulations made under paragraph 30(1)‍(j.‍1) and if the Minister believes on reasonable grounds that the use of a therapeutic product, other than the intended use, may present a risk of injury to health, the Minister may, by order, establish rules in respect of the importation, sale, conditions of sale, advertising, manufacture, preparation, preservation, packaging, labelling, storage or testing of the therapeutic product for the purpose of preventing, managing or controlling the risk of injury to health. That might seem innocuous, however, proposed subsection 30.01(3) states, “The Minister may make the order despite any uncertainty respecting the risk of injury to health that the use of the therapeutic product, other than the intended use, may present.” It states “despite any uncertainty”, so there would be no scientific rationale needed anymore, if the bill passes, for the minister to pull any product he or she wants off of the shelf. That is uncontrolled power. The powers that would be given to the ministers are concerning, but what is even more concerning is the combined effect of both budgets on our homegrown natural health product industry. The effect would be catastrophic. Not only is the industry reeling from the changes in the last budget implementation bill, but this one has introduced the element of arbitrary power in the hands of the minister. There is little worse in business than uncertainty, and natural health products are only a small part of what is wrong with this bill and with industries across Canada. Small businesses are closing across our country, and yet, instead of supporting our entrepreneurs, the government uses every budget it has to target them. We need a budget that empowers small business owners instead of penalizing them. In essence, I say not to buy into the budget title. If the last eight budgets from the Prime Minister are any indication, fairness for every generation is simply a pipe dream. As Winston Churchill once noted, “The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” If by promoting fairness, the government means promoting intergenerational poverty, then in its own way, I guess it is fair, but absolutely nobody is better off. Only the Conservatives can restore Canada's fiscal house to order. Instead of saddling Canadian families, tradesmen, small enterprise operators and entrepreneurs with ever-growing regulation and taxation, we would axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. Canada has a vast and untapped economic potential and it is time for a Conservative government to unleash that potential.
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