The Hon. the Speaker: Are honourable senators ready for the question?

The Hon. the Speaker: Is leave granted, honourable senators?

The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable senators, when shall this bill be read the third time?

Hon. Percy Mockler, Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance, presented the following report:

Thursday, June 15, 2023

The Standing Senate Committee on National Finance has the honour to present its

TWELFTH REPORT

Your committee, to which was referred Bill C-47, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, 2023, has, in obedience to the order of reference of Tuesday, June 13, 2023, examined the said bill and now reports the same without amendment but with certain observations, which are appended to this report.

Respectfully submitted,

PERCY MOCKLER

Chair

(For text of observations, see today’s Journals of the Senate, p. 1839.)

Hon. Patti LaBoucane-Benson (Legislative Deputy to the Government Representative in the Senate): Honourable senators, I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government response, dated June 13, 2023, to the second report of the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying, entitled Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada: Choices for Canadians, tabled in the Senate on February 15, 2023.

The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable senators, I wish to draw your attention to the presence in the gallery of Laura Eggerton and Keith Collins. They are the guests of the Honourable Senator McPhedran.

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

The Hon. the Speaker: Are honourable senators ready for the question?

Hon. Senators: Agreed.

(At 10 p.m., the Senate was continued until Tuesday, June 20, 2023, at 2 p.m.)

Hon. Stan Kutcher: Honourable senators, I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the report of the Canada-China Legislative Association and the Canada-Japan Inter-Parliamentary Group concerning the Thirtieth Annual Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Parliamentary Forum (APPF), held in Bangkok, Thailand, from October 26 to 29, 2022.

Hon. Stan Kutcher: Honourable senators, I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the report of the Canada-China Legislative Association and the Canada-Japan Inter-Parliamentary Group concerning the Forty-third General Assembly of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (AIPA), held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, from November 20 to 25, 2022.

The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable senators, when shall this bill be read the third time?

The Hon. the Speaker informed the Senate that a message had been received from the House of Commons with Bill C-294, An Act to amend the Copyright Act (interoperability).

(Bill read first time.)

Hon. Stan Kutcher: Honourable senators, I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the report of the Canada-Japan Inter-Parliamentary Group concerning the Co-Chairs’ Annual Visit, held in Osaka and Tokyo, Japan, from October 10 to 15, 2022.

Hon. Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu: My question is for Senator Gold. I too want to talk about the Bernardo case, which has sparked a lot of outrage across the country and among victims’ groups.

Yesterday, Minister Mendicino used the word “victim” more times in one hour than his government ever did in eight years. The minister never talked about victims before the Bernardo case. Suddenly, victims of crime are his top priority. He even issued a directive to his department to ensure that victims’ rights are central to Correctional Service Canada’s decisions.

For the past eight years, I have been asking the Government Representative in the Senate why victims’ rights are not being respected. He mentioned a directive, but that directive existed in 2015. The act that created the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights is a federal act, which means that all federal institutions must abide by it.

Senator Gold, why is Minister Mendicino now using victims for his own ends? Why did he not respect families? Most importantly, why did he not tell the truth?

Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): Thank you for your question and for the offer, as the son of an English teacher, to school you.

I think the best advice I could give would be to listen to the very impressive speech of the former leader of the Conservative Party, Mr. Erin O’Toole, which he delivered in the chamber, because he reminded all of us parliamentarians — and he included himself in that, to his great credit — that both the language of debate and the way in which more attention is being paid to creating video clips in order to serve the algorithms for “likes” are debasing our politics and endangering the things to which we should all be responsibly attentive.

Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): Once again, thank you for your commitment to victims’ rights.

As I stated, and you did point that out, the minister made these decisions to ensure that the relevant information is communicated, not just to him personally, but also to victims. It is a step in the right direction and I hope it will yield results.

Hon. Rosa Galvez: My question is for the Government Representative in the Senate.

Senator Gold, the clean investment tax credits set out in budget 2023 seek to reduce our emissions while creating more clean energy, which we will need to meet the Net Zero Accelerator target before 2050.

That being said, the government failed to make one essential climate technology eligible for its series of investment tax credits, namely, the production of renewable biogas from organic waste.

In 2019, I wrote a report for Quebec that shows how biogas can transform greenhouse gas emissions from our farms and domestic solid waste into a source of clean energy.

Canada is not currently using this technology to its full potential. Municipalities and farmers need support to develop these important technologies, so that they can be competitive in terms of investments. When will the government include renewable biogas in its tax credit regime for investments in clean technology?

Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): Thank you for the question. It’s an important one. It’s clear that Canada is facing a supply shortage, as highlighted by the recent report of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, or CMHC.

I have said this on many occasions, and I won’t belabour the point; I’m going to answer your question directly. As reported as recently as today in The Globe and Mail, the housing problem in Canada is a function of so many things that are outside the scope of any one government or even all governments. My answer is that the government is doing its part in the hope it will assist in the face of market forces and demographic forces that are beyond its control.

Look, it’s hard for Canadians to find affordable places to live in their communities. That’s really obvious. What you could call the “financialization” of the housing market has exacerbated this problem, the way in which housing has been used as an investment vehicle. That’s why the government has introduced a variety of measures that will put us on path. We hope to double the number of homes built in Canada over the next decade, to rapidly increase the supply of affordable housing and to help ensure that homes are used to house families, not simply as investment vehicles. It launched a $4-billion Housing Accelerator Fund to speed up construction and help create 100,000 new units; provided $4 billion for the new Urban, Rural and Northern Indigenous Housing Strategy; and made the largest investment in co-op housing in 30 years, in the amount of $1.5 billion.

This is what the federal government is doing and it hopes that others, governments and private sector, will contribute as well.

Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): Thank you for the question.

Look, the appointment process varies depending on the position and the process in place. Here in the Senate, we are eagerly awaiting appointments to fill the seats. This particular process involves a board consisting of members appointed by the federal government and members appointed by the provinces.

For judicial appointments, the process is under way and judges are being appointed. As I have said several times, yes, there are vacancies, but the Minister of Justice and the Government of Canada have appointed more than 600 judges since 2015 and are still going.

With respect to other vacancies, the process is designed to find qualified individuals and is always based on merit. These processes might seem slow, but they do make it possible to find the best people to serve the needs of Canadians.