Hon. Ginette Petitpas Taylor, P.C., M.P., Minister of Official Languages and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency: Thank you, senator. It’s always nice to see you, and you are quite right. With 8 million francophones in Canada living amongst more than 360 million anglophones from coast to coast to coast in North America, protecting the French language warrants special and immediate attention. Protecting French and promoting French internationally are also top priorities for me. Minister Joly and I are promoting it because we want to make sure we’re doing our part to protect our French language. The digital world is indeed causing some real concerns, and we must work tirelessly to ensure that French is used equally on the international stage.

Senator Dalphond: Yes, I will be careful not to try to give an answer to colleagues that are still doing the work.

The first and most critical element will be the content of the regulations to be adopted by the minister or the government because they will provide some indicators — like taking notes and having a record of what was done in what type of circumstances — because what the courts will not accept is a process which is not reviewable by the court.

The word “reasonable,” within the rest of the sentence, normally refers to something that is an objective criterion. The court, in order to find if this objective criterion has been met, will have to get a record that shows, for example, how it was applied, what the questions were, whether the device was disconnected from the cloud — because you are entitled to search only the device, not outside the device — and whether there are notes taken because the officer may not remember because perhaps he has done hundreds since then. All factors that are critical will be found, unfortunately, not in the law, but in the regulations because the concept is undefined in the law. As I said, it will have to be fleshed out by the courts, and the courts will be careful to balance all the interests at stake.

You may end up with criteria that are a bit lower than reasonable suspicion but maybe not far from it.

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator Boniface, seconded by the Honourable Senator Gold, P.C., for the second reading of Bill S-7, An Act to amend the Customs Act and the Preclearance Act, 2016.

Hon. Paula Simons: I have a question for Senator Dalphond, if there is enough time.

Hon. Peter Harder rose pursuant to notice of Senator Gagné on April 26, 2022:

That she will call the attention of the Senate to the budget entitled Budget 2022: A Plan to Grow Our Economy and Make Life More Affordable, tabled in the House of Commons on April 7, 2022, by the Minister of Finance, the Honourable Chrystia Freeland, P.C., M.P., and in the Senate on April 26, 2022.

He said: Honourable senators, before I begin my remarks on the Senate inquiry into the federal budget, I want to start by underlining what the inquiry is and what it isn’t. It is not a vote on whether or not to approve the budget unveiled by the Minister of Finance, nor is it an effort to amend the budget or to move a motion to condemn or improve it. Senator Gold, I want to assure you that my views on the budget bill and the Senate’s approach to the budget bill have not changed. However, this is an opportunity for the Senate to engage on what it does best — discuss, evaluate and offer alternatives to make the outcomes better for Canadians. It is in this spirit in which I make my remarks.

It was heartening last month to see the words productivity, innovation and fiscal anchor dot the pages of the Minister of Finance’s 2022 budget. It was also encouraging to see the minister frame the budget using the following words, and I quote:

. . . now is the time for us to focus—with smart investments and a clarity of purpose—on growing our economy and on making life more affordable for Canadians. . . .

— and —

— . . . to tackle the Achilles heel of the Canadian economy: productivity and innovation.

These are important goals, made more so by the increased anxieties Canadians are feeling at a time when we expected a reprieve from the apprehension triggered by the COVID pandemic. The war in Ukraine has exacerbated our worries over inflation, interest rates and personal economic security. This budget is even more consequential than we would have imagined a few short months ago.

I commend the government for what appears, at the outset, to be an evolving policy direction in favour of growth. It is just as important, however, to evaluate whether the specific measures announced in the budget are adequate for achieving this policy intent.

In this, I believe, the budget has some ways to go. Given what I believe is an overemphasis on distributive programs and an underemphasis on improving our collective prosperity, the budget lays out, in the minister’s words, three pillars designed to grow the economy and make life more affordable. The first focuses on investments in Canadians themselves through support for housing, skills development, immigration and child care; the second supports a transition to a greener economy through spending on carbon capture, incentives on electric vehicle purchases and investment in mining of critical minerals; and the third focuses on economic growth, underpinned by a new innovation and investment agency and a growth fund. Each of these pillars are crucial components in growing the economy.

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Welcoming more immigrants and focusing on training can help fill the needed employment gaps while mining minerals that are essential to developing a greener economy with reliable supply chains can put Canada on a leadership track.

As an aside, these two pillars are also important parts of an economic report put together last fall by the Senate Prosperity Action Group, of which I am a member. I’ll speak more about that later.

The third pillar, economic productivity, is one that I believe requires clearer and stronger focus. Indeed, the minister herself said in her speech that Canada’s underperformance in this area constitutes an insidious problem. I agree completely, which is why I think we must be more creative, more focused and more ambitious.

Take, for example, the two lynchpin initiatives designed to tackle the issue: a new $15 billion growth fund and the creation of a new innovation and investment agency, which will provide advice. It seems to me both these instruments already exist in various forms. How, for example, will they be different from the Canada Infrastructure Bank; the Venture Capital Catalyst Initiative; the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program, or NRC IRAP; or a myriad of other initiatives already in existence? Public investments like those contemplated in the growth fund won’t really lead to improved productivity if we don’t better incentivize innovation.

Parenthetically, the growth fund is actually not even new money, given that it will be sourced from the existing fiscal framework. In fact, the $6 billion for growth will come from a reprofiling of the infrastructure spending, presumably from the aforementioned Canada Infrastructure Bank, which I dare say was slow in getting started.

I would prefer to have seen the budget apply a greater emphasis on the innovation side of the equation. The notion that our country’s ability to innovate is constrained only by our inability to commercialize those areas is erroneous. Canada’s capacity to do industrial research is inadequate, and we spend too much time on incremental innovation and not enough pursuing groundbreaking radical inventions. As Robert Asselin of the Business Council of Canada wrote in a recent article in the Financial Post, where would the health of Canada’s and the world’s citizenry be today without the breakthrough development of mRNA vaccines? How would we reach our climate goals without revolutionary initiatives in carbon emissions reduction? Our performance record on innovation and the digital economy has so far been mixed at best.

According to The Global Competitiveness Report 2019, published by the World Economic Forum, we are ranked sixteenth internationally in innovation capacity, eighteenth in patent applications and twenty-third in R&D expenditures. Similarly, OECD and World Economic Forum data rank us nineteenth in university-industry collaboration. With respect to growth overall, the average annual Canadian GDP rate dropped by half since the beginning of this century when compared to the years between 1960 and 2000.

As mentioned in the Senate Prosperity Action Group’s report last fall, we have much to overcome, including the fact that we lag behind other nations in commercializing innovations. We have failed to develop an adequate pool of talent in the STEM sector, we are slow to adopt new technology and we lack availability of high-speed internet in remote areas.

Solutions are too numerous to itemize in a short speech, but we could start by spending more on research and development on high-risk and mission-driven research. The United States’ DARPA comes to mind. We could make other strategic investments in supporting entrepreneurship and in the scaling up of Canadian-based companies. We must also look at co-investing with venture capital and commercialization opportunities such as biotech. Regulatory burdens should be reduced.

Before turning to some other potential remedies, I would be remiss if I failed to comment on the fiscal anchors upon which this budget rests. As the minister mentioned, dealing with the deficit incurred during the pandemic is imperative. The anchor put forward in the budget is to simply ensure that the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio continues to decline. The view of the Prosperity Action Group is that we should go further if we wish to maintain our nation’s fiscal advantage as a G7 country with the lowest debt-to-GDP ratio pre-pandemic. Rather than the anchor proposed in the budget, the government should limit debt servicing costs to no more than 10% of the government revenues and cap federal program expenditures as a percentage of GDP. Doing so would form the basis of a fiscal management plan that allows the country to continue to make appropriate investments on high-priority economic and social programs while reducing expenditures on those that have been shown not to work.

As it stands, the budget calls for new net spending of $56 billion offset by a projected $26 billion in savings that stem from a growth-enhancing tax of $6 billion on banks and insurers, another $10 billion from tax enforcement as well as other savings from government efficiencies. This is not a huge fiscal impact, but it still calls for increased spending in areas like dental care, defence commitments, subsidies for electric vehicles, housing, reconciliation and others.

Moreover, I’m concerned that the assumptions for the fiscal framework are based on overly optimistic economic assumptions given the uncertainties facing Canada and the world at large. The projection for inflation, for example, is 3.7%, which is at the more modest — and dare I say hopeful — end of the spectrum. While these projections are plausible, slight deviations can throw the plan out of whack completely.

In the few minutes I have left, I would like to turn to a final suggestion for promoting growth, which is the need for renewed fiscal cooperative federalism. Aside from some of the prescriptions in the budget and others that I outlined earlier, I believe the government could have taken lessons from the way in which all orders of government cooperated in tackling the pandemic. The successful federal-provincial-territorial approach in dealing with the coronavirus ought to be a model for forging a new path for sustainable, inclusive shared prosperity in Canada — a grand bargain to be forged between government, business, Indigenous peoples, racialized communities, Canadian labour unions, hard-to-reach citizens and all other members of civil society.

To that end, the Prosperity Action Group recommended last fall that a new body, which we labelled the prosperity council, be established to spark energy and foster dialogue in pursuing solutions to our economic challenges. It’s way past time, of course, that we dealt with interprovincial trade barriers, variable apprenticeship criteria and barriers to labour movement, not to mention how we deal with other interjurisdictional challenges like the carbon tax, creation of new daycare programs and the like. A body such as the one we propose would also keep our governments accountable by reporting on how we are competing on key performance indicators that measure economic progress. How does Canada fare vis-à-vis other nations when it comes to the ease of doing business, public spending on training or global talent attraction? These are measurables that exist and may be included in a government plan as recommended by the Prosperity Action Group.

In my view, there aren’t enough of them in the budget tabled last month, and a new prosperity council would lay out these targets in much finer detail for all to see.

Such a renewal might also go some way towards ameliorating the federal-provincial-territorial differences that often emerge when Ottawa develops shared programs that far too often result in decreasing the share of federal contributions to those very programs.

While I am not inherently opposed to new programs for dental care, Pharmacare, long-term care or housing, I am concerned these programs adequately recognize provincial jurisdiction in design and sustainability. To be sure, we need to perfect our social union, but frankly, we also need to enhance and focus on our economic union — hence the need for a grand bargain. Aside from whether a national prosperity council like we are suggesting is the perfect model to follow, it is imperative that some kind of wide and ongoing national conversations on the economy take place. Premiers and the Prime Minister have met, by my count, some 39 times since the onset of COVID. Surely we can organize four or five first ministers meetings on the economy.

Let me conclude by saying that we are in an age during which polarization and identity politics sow increased mistrust among Canadians for their institutions. For our governments to achieve anything approaching consensus on where our economy should go, we need dialogue and to walk in each other’s shoes. So while I do think that the budget may not have completely lived up to the rhetoric, developing a plan for prosperity for Canada is a project that goes well beyond an annual economic plan. I urge the government to reach out to all Canadians to build trust and a culture of innovation that will make us resilient in the face of economic challenges to come and become a global leader again.

Hon. Ginette Petitpas Taylor, P.C., M.P., Minister of Official Languages and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency: Thank you so much for that question. Once again, I’m fully aware and have read the report that was provided by the commissioner. The transition to a low‑carbon economy is a massive economic opportunity, and ACOA is certainly vigilantly working towards that. Creating sustainable jobs will look different across the country to meet the needs of each region’s unique landscape. Because a one-size-fits-all approach is not ideal, ACOA officials are working closely with communities across Canada to build inclusive solutions that can mitigate potential future projects for employers and workers. We are focused on outcomes that create non-coal jobs that diversify local and regional economies and that allow our communities to develop and prosper economically now and well into the future.

Once again, we welcome the commissioner’s report, and we really are looking at finding ways to boost economic growth while also doing so in a green way.

Hon. Dennis Dawson: Thank you, minister, and welcome to the Senate. I’m going to open a debate on a new topic, the issue of French on the international stage. As you know, at the UN, the International Olympic Committee, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, and other organizations, French has the same status as English. However, that status is not respected and the use of French is decreasing every year. This week, you are meeting with the president of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie. I also know that the APF is meeting in Quebec City on the weekend to promote French. Should we be ensuring that French is used wherever we have the right to do so? In light of the growing use of English in the digital world, we in the international francophone communities need to work together on finding a way to combat the growing presence of English internationally and ensure the presence of French.

Hon. Kim Pate: Minister, given your excellent engagement, both as the Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and as a member of Parliament, I’m sure you are aware that P.E.I. is eager to move forward with a guaranteed liveable basic income. They would be a valuable demonstration project and site because of the diversity of industries and income levels, as has already been mentioned by some of my colleagues. Also, P.E.I. leaders, including the premier, have emphasized the necessity of federal government support. In addition, Newfoundland and Labrador is also interested in exploring a guaranteed liveable basic income and is focused on poverty as the number-one social determinant of health.

Economic security and stability ensure basic needs are met in addition to promoting dignity, equality and meaningful participation by enabling people to exercise agency in their own lives and communities. Can you advise what concrete steps have been taken by you as Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and your government to ensure federal involvement in the implementation of a guaranteed liveable income project on Prince Edward Island? Also, are there any action plans for Newfoundland and Labrador?

(Pursuant to the order adopted by the Senate on December 7, 2021, to receive a Minister of the Crown, the Honourable Ginette Petitpas Taylor, P.C., M.P., Minister of Official Languages and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, appeared before honourable senators during Question Period.)

The Hon. the Speaker pro tempore: Honourable senators, we welcome today the Honourable Ginette Petitpas Taylor, P.C., M.P., Minister of Official Languages and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, to ask questions relating to her ministerial responsibilities.

Pursuant to the order adopted by the Senate on December 7, 2021, senators do not need to stand. Questions are limited to one minute and responses to one-and-a-half minutes. The reading clerk will stand 10 seconds before the expiry of these times. Question Period will last one hour.

Hon. Donald Neil Plett (Leader of the Opposition): Honourable senators, my wife Betty and I had the privilege of watching a wonderful sporting event recently, the 2022 Under-18 Canadian Boys and Girls Curling Championships. This week-long event was hosted by the Oakville Curling Club from May 1 to May 7, and they put on a world-class event. There were more than 200 curlers in attendance, along with 42 coaches and a multitude of parents, grandparents, siblings and friends.

I want to thank the City of Oakville and the Oakville Curling Club for hosting the championships and congratulate them for putting on a professional, well-organized event. It truly was exceptional and no small undertaking, with most provinces putting forward two women’s and two men’s teams.

I had the privilege of taking part in this fabulous event over the past two weekends as an active and enthusiastic participant from the bleachers. However, colleagues, I must confess that I was not cheering for a Manitoba team like I normally would. Instead, I was rooting for the Alberta provincial champion, skipped by none other than my granddaughter Myla Plett, as they competed tirelessly for the win.

Honourable senators, what a competition it was. Alberta had two women’s teams at the championships, with the second Alberta team skipped by a young lady named Claire Booth. Over the last two years, Claire and her team have given Myla’s team their biggest challenges on the ice, and the Canadian Under-18 Championships were to be no different. Team Booth went into semi-finals with a record of five and one, while Team Plett had four wins and two losses. When Team Booth beat Saskatchewan in their semi-final game, and Team Plett beat Quebec in their pool, the Alberta teams found themselves again face to face for an all-Alberta final. In the end, patience combined with strategy worked to the advantage of Team Plett, as they scored a 5 to 1 win, becoming the gold medal winners of the Under-18 Canadian Girls Curling Championships.

I want to offer my congratulations to the entire team for their victory, including Myla Plett as skip, Rachel Jacques as third, Alyssa Nedohin as second, Lauren Miller as lead and Chloe Fediuk as alternate, along with their coach, Blair Lenton. I am proud of them all, but it probably goes without saying that I am beyond proud that the best women’s under-18 curler in Canada calls me grandpa.

Myla, you have my love and my congratulations. And to paraphrase my good friend, colleague and Paralympian gold medallist Senator Chantal Petitclerc’s kind words, I am delighted to see that we both share the same fighting spirit. Colleagues, please join me in congratulating not only Team Plett but all of the athletes who competed, wishing them the very best in all future competitions. Thank you.

Hon. Patricia Bovey: Honourable senators, I rise today to congratulate the winners of the international public competition to create the National LGBTQ2+ Monument in Ottawa. The selected group for this major monument is the only all-Canadian shortlisted group — Winnipeggers Liz Wreford, Peter Sampson and Taylor LaRocque of Public City, a multidisciplinary architecture and landscape architecture studio; visual artists Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan; and Indigenous and two-spirited people subject-matter expert and adviser, Albert McLeod.

Their winning design, “Thunderhead,” will be installed in 2025 on Wellington Street, next to the Ottawa River, close to the Judicial Precinct. It meets all the competition goals: to educate, memorialize, celebrate and inspire. Minister Rodriquez said in the March 24 announcement that “Thunderhead”:

. . . embodies the strength, activism and hope of LGBTQ2+ communities. It will be a lasting testimony to the courage and humanity of those who were harmed by the LGBT Purge, homophobic and transphobic laws and norms, and Canada’s colonial history. . . .

In selecting this team, the jury sought public input through a national survey, which had 5,469 valid responses. The shortlisted teams were graded on each of the principles and goals in the call, with the winning group being a favourite. This team was set on creating a dynamic place “for gathering and honouring, for contemplation and performance.” Meant to be a people place, its landscaped park traces the history of LGBTQ2+ people in Canada and includes a healing circle, the stones for which will be hand-picked by two-spirit elders. The monument is a cylinder containing the impression of a thundercloud. It is solemn and luminous. As artists Dempsey and Millan say:

The thundercloud is an expression of energy transmuting, rising and transforming. It is a symbol of renewal and hope, cleansing the earth through life-giving rain. . . .

This inclusive, innovative, inspiring, commemorative design bears both truth and optimism. Reflecting on past wrongs and looking to the future with hope, this visionary landmark will be timeless.

I extend my sincerest congratulations to my fellow Manitobans for their integrity, honesty and innovative approach. I wish them all the best as they undertake the next steps for this important installation — the development of the detailed design and then its construction. I will follow the project with interest and pride. Thank you.

Hon. Senators: Hear, hear!

The Hon. the Speaker pro tempore: Honourable senators, I wish to draw your attention to the presence in the gallery of representatives from Canadian charities attending Imagine Canada Hill Day. They are the guests of the Honourable Senator Omidvar.

On behalf of all honourable senators, I welcome you to the Senate of Canada.

The Hon. the Speaker pro tempore: Honourable senators, I wish to draw your attention to the presence in the gallery of recipients of the Global Pluralism Award. They are the guests of the Honourable Senator Omidvar.

On behalf of all honourable senators, I welcome you to the Senate of Canada.

Hon. Ginette Petitpas Taylor, P.C., M.P., Minister of Official Languages and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency: Again, thank you for this very important question.

[English]

It is a truly important question, and one I take to heart. In our official languages legislation in Bill C-13, we have made it clear in two or three areas of the legislation that through our legislation we absolutely do not want to infringe or impede on any part of Indigenous languages.

[Translation]

We recognize that there are 70 Indigenous languages in Canada. As Minister of Official Languages, I want to be clear that we absolutely do not want to impede the development of Indigenous languages. A bill on official languages designed to promote and protect the 70 official languages of Canada received Royal Assent in 2019. Furthermore, our government has allocated funds to ensure that these official languages will continue to be taught.

[English]

It’s important to make sure we recognize that our language is a part of our identity, a part of our culture. That is why the Indigenous language legislation that passed in 2019 was so critical.

For myself, as the Minister of Official Languages, I was eager to speak to the Commissioner of Indigenous Languages, Commissioner Ignace. We spoke about the work we could do collaboratively. They also indicated that while they are putting the Indigenous language office together, that if the Commissioner of Official Languages could work collaboratively with them, they were absolutely pleased to do so.

[Translation]

Hon. Dennis Glen Patterson: Honourable senators, I rise today to applaud the second-largest contributor to Nunavut’s economy: mining. This week, hundreds gathered in my hometown of Iqaluit for the Nunavut Mining Symposium.

According to the latest numbers from the NWT & Nunavut Chamber of Mines, mining in Nunavut has accounted for almost 5,000 person-years of Northern employment between 2009 and 2019 and contributed $4.98 billion in Northern spending over that same time frame. In 2019 alone, the Hope Bay, Meliadine, Meadowbank and Mary River Mines have spent $897.3 million in the North. Focusing on 2019 as the last normal year of activities prior to COVID, Agnico Eagle’s 2019 Socio-Economic Monitoring Program Report shows that 20% of its employees are Inuit, and Agnico Eagle Mines spent 58% of its total spend of $501 million contracting dollars on registered Inuit businesses.

These numbers are reflective of the contributions mining has made, not just in terms of salaries and contracting, but to propping up secondary and tertiary sectors. Mining operations have paid many tens of millions of dollars in royalties to regional Inuit organizations as well as Nunavut Tunngavik. These monies are then spent on important priorities to Inuit including, but not limited to, elder supports, education initiatives and scholarships, as well as hunter support programs. Nunavut News reported that:

Since the development of Baffinland Iron Mines’ Mary River project, approximately $1.1 billion worth of contracts have been awarded to Inuit-owned businesses and joint ventures.

Baffinland and other Nunavut firms have also funded a myriad of valued community projects, ranging from arenas to training centres and daycares in impacted communities.

According to Duane Wilson, Vice-President of Stakeholder Relations for Arctic Co-ops:

Honourable senators, while there is still always work to do in increasing the percentage of Inuit employment and balancing protection of the environment and traditional values with development, mining has presented a source of jobs, training and revenue generation for Nunavummiut across the territory.

Thank you, qujannamiik, taima.

Hon. Nancy J. Hartling: Honourable senators, on this National Hospice Palliative Care Week in Canada, it is time to celebrate and share achievements. I would like to offer my congratulations on the recent opening of our new hospice residence Maison Albert House in Moncton, New Brunswick. My gratitude to Dennis Cochrane, former chair of the not-for-profit Hospice SENB, and to the board of directors and volunteers whose tireless efforts over the past 15 years made this project possible. It is truly a labour of love and compassion with so many people working to make it a reality. I toured the facility before it opened and later attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony, and I am so proud to see such an outstanding project in my hometown.

It was named in recognition of Albert Arseneault, a prominent member of our community whose family donated $1 million to the project. In addition, financial backing from all levels of government ensured success. The residence was built on land generously donated by the Hum-Lew-Sun Lions Club. This is truly a community effort.

Maison Albert House in southeast New Brunswick is the first residential hospice and will eventually serve up to 150 palliative care patients a year. The residence operates in close collaboration with the New Brunswick Extra-Mural Program run by Medavie.

The type of care most of us will need at the end of our lives can be very complex and it needs to include consideration for physical comfort, emotional and spiritual needs, daily care and other practical considerations. In Canada, hospitals have become the default providers of end-of-life and palliative care because of the multitude of tests and scans that are needed at this stage of life, and because alternatives are sometimes difficult to find. This is very taxing on hospitals and stands in contrast to most patients’ stated desire to spend their last treasured days at home or in a quiet, private place. Maison Albert House and the Extra-Mural Program are working to provide better options.

The need for this new facility was clear. Despite Moncton being the fastest-growing region in New Brunswick, there were only 13 palliative care beds available at our two major hospitals.

Maison Albert House will be able to provide personalized palliative care free of charge for up to 10 residents who will each have their own private room. Families from out of town will be able to visit their loved ones and stay in one of four guest rooms. Residents will be served by 12 full-time and 9 part-time nurses and support care workers, along with trained volunteers. An in-house chef will prepare healthy, delicious meals. Also, it’s pet friendly — a wonderful policy, as our furry companions can bring us much joy and comfort. Sweetpea is the in-house therapy dog and will also be doing her rounds, visiting the residents on a daily basis.

My sincere thanks to all the volunteers, the staff and the board of Hospice SENB for making Maison Albert House a reality through this wonderful, much-needed initiative. Thank you.

The Hon. the Speaker pro tempore: Honourable senators, pursuant to the order adopted by the Senate on December 7, 2021, Question Period will begin at the later of the end of Routine Proceedings or at 2:30 p.m.