44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 8, 2022 10:00AM
- Feb/8/22 10:48:24 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is wonderful to see the Conservatives standing up and calling for Canada's biggest corporations to pay their fair share. It is obvious that what we have been saying all these years is rubbing off, and it is good to see.
The court case between Saskatchewan and CP Rail has been going on for 13 years. It seems there would have been ample opportunity to have addressed this issue quite a bit earlier—for instance, when the Conservative Party was in government. I wonder if my colleague could reflect on why it has taken 13 years for the federal government to take this step.
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- Feb/8/22 11:58:06 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today and speak to the opposition motion brought forward by our friends in the Conservative Party down the way. I am even more pleased to be sharing my time with the excellent member for Elmwood—Transcona.
This motion proposes an amendment to the Constitution of Canada that would repeal section 24 of the Saskatchewan Act and deem the change retroactive to August 29, 1966. Notably, this would remove a provision dating back to 1880, prior to Saskatchewan's becoming a province in 1905, which exempted Canadian Pacific Railway from paying provincial taxes in Saskatchewan.
This has been an interesting issue to learn about over the past 48 hours. I understand that this motion here before us today complements a similar motion the Saskatchewan legislative assembly unanimously passed in November of last year.
I might seem to my colleagues a bit of an unlikely speaker to this issue, being a B.C. boy and all, but I am honoured to serve as the NDP transport critic. Of course, trains transport things, and Canadian Pacific owns trains. Hence, for the next 10 minutes, Madam Speaker, I am your guy. More important, I am a proud Canadian, and I believe in the principles of fairness and responsibility, which I believe lie at the heart of this issue.
For folks following along back home, and I will not hazard to guess how many of those there might be, I believe these are the basic relevant facts in this matter. Canadian Pacific Railway obtained access to a huge swath of our country, much of it unceded indigenous land, to build its railway. While the corporation made a significant investment, it also received substantive incentives from the federal government of the day. Among those incentives, the federal government agreed, in its contract with Canadian Pacific Railway, to exempt the railroad from paying taxes in perpetuity.
It is surprising, I know, that a Conservative government would agree to such immense corporate welfare, but there we have it. Despite this, and for reasons that are not exactly clear, CP has been voluntarily paying taxes to the Province of Saskatchewan for a century. It is also surprising to see such voluntary corporate benevolence.
Today, Canadian Pacific wants the taxes it has paid to the province since 2002 to be returned in the sum of $341 million on the basis that it should not have paid those taxes in the first place. I am not a lawyer, and I will not be making legal arguments today. The battery of lawyers who are engaged in the court case that is ongoing will have that aspect well in hand. Rather, the argument I will make in support of this motion is a simple moral one.
Today, Canadian Pacific benefits greatly from the Province of Saskatchewan and from the infrastructure and services its residents have funded through their taxes. CP employees drive to work on roads paid for by the people of Saskatchewan. They utilize hospitals paid for by the people of Saskatchewan. Their kids go to schools paid for by the people of Saskatchewan.
Ignoring, for a moment, the historic paperwork negotiated under who knows what kinds of circumstances, I doubt many in this place would dispute that Canadian Pacific has a responsibility as a corporation to contribute its fair share to the province's coffers. This is hardly a company that needs either a hand up or a handout. Last year, CP made $3 billion in profits.
It is not as though being exempt from taxes would level the playing field on which CP operates; it is quite the opposite. After all, Canadian Pacific's main competitor in Canada, CN Railway, pays its taxes. I imagine CP's other competitors in the United States also pay applicable state and federal taxes.
This is about fair treatment for Saskatchewan in this confederation. Saskatchewan deserves to be treated equally, with the same control over its internal affairs and taxes that every other province enjoys. The jurisdictional inequity raised in this motion unfairly denies it that. The people of Saskatchewan have made their will clear, and the unanimous passage of the same motion in the provincial legislature illustrates that there is cross-party support for this change. It is time for the House to act.
By nullifying the historic tax exemption, this motion essentially codifies into law the practice that CP has already been following for an entire century. It seems to be the right and proper thing for us to do.
Besides a questionable historic contract, how could CP possibly argue it should not pay its fair share to the Province of Saskatchewan? People in Saskatchewan want their taxes to go to the public services they rely on, things like health care and education. They do not want them to have to pad the profits of a multi-billion dollar corporation. The money that CP Rail is demanding could be much better spent. I think everyone in the House will agree that it would be much better spent helping the people of Saskatchewan.
The railroads, and I speak of railroads in the plural sense, had a pivotal role in the development of our country. It is one of the central narratives we are taught in elementary school, yet in many ways, it was a Faustian bargain because today we are left with corporations that wield power far out of proportion to their place in our society. Railway companies have their own private police forces that investigate their actions when things go wrong, as we saw in British Columba after the disaster that killed three men in 2019 near Field: Dylan Paradis, Andrew Dockrel and Daniel Waldenberger-Bulmer. Their families are still fighting for justice.
Railways own vast tracks of land, much of it adjacent to communities, and this too often constrains community development and restricts public access. Railway companies design their own safety plans, which are opaque to citizens and communities and, as the auditor general found in her follow-up audit last year, are inadequately monitored for effectiveness by Transport Canada.
Railway companies also own the tracks themselves, precluding the federal government from operating a dependable passenger rail service in much of the country during a time of climate crisis when our national bus service has been shut down for good.
Now I certainly recognize the positive role that railways play as well. They are certainly important employers in our communities. In the community I live, in the community of Smithers, the town is named after the former president of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, Sir Alfred Smithers. Notwithstanding those things, when I talk to community leaders about their relationship with the railroads, sadly, mostly what I hear are stories of frustration.
In light of this dynamic, which is admittedly difficult to reshape given all that has happened, I would submit that the least we should expect is that these highly profitable companies pay their taxes. Let us put an end to this historic injustice. I hope all parties in the House will come together and ensure that Saskatchewan is treated as an equal partner in our Confederation. It sounds like they will.
Learning about this issue made me think of my mom's family, who settled in Regina in the 1800s. My great-great-grandfather, George Broder, settled in Regina in 1882, right around the same time that CP was building the railroad. His son-in-law, my great-grandfather, Neil Taylor, was a lawyer, businessman, veteran, athlete and someone who loved his own province deeply. Incidentally, he ran for the federal Conservative Party in 1945. I checked the electoral record, and I was simultaneously delighted and dismayed to see that he was trounced by someone representing a little party called the CCF.
Now, Neil, my great-grandfather, was also known as “Piffles”, a nickname he was given in reference to a turn of phrase that was popular during that time. If someone said or did some thing that was, shall we say, extremely lacking in merit, one would say it was “piffle”. It was nonsense, rubbish, balderdash and all the other words I am not allowed to say in this place, either directly or indirectly.
I asked my uncle Sam in Vancouver about this. He is our family's historian. I wanted to know what he thought my great-grandfather would have said about this issue if he were alive today, what he would say about a wealthy railroad company trying to get out of its responsibilities to the people of Saskatchewan. He said he would probably say that it was a bunch of piffle.
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- Feb/8/22 12:08:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I certainly appreciate what my hon. friend is trying to do with his question. Now, I agree that the things that bring us together as different provinces across the country are good things indeed. I would submit that, given his province's excellent renewable energy resources, perhaps an even better opportunity is to come together around the vision of a clean energy economy, one that delivers the kind of safe and secure future for our kids that I think we all want.
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- Feb/8/22 12:09:57 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the parliamentary secretary will note that in my speech I detailed at some length the fact that CP, for some reason, has been paying its taxes for 100 years voluntarily despite a clause in the contract that clearly exempts it from doing so.
The question I have is a similar one. Why all of a sudden is this railway company wanting its taxes reimbursed? What happened 13 years ago? Maybe there was a change in its legal team or a new staff member came in who wanted to prove themselves, but all of a sudden it is coming forward and saying that it wants 300 and some million dollars from the people of Saskatchewan and that does not want to pay taxes going forward. What changed in its philosophy as a company?
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- Feb/8/22 12:11:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I listened carefully to the speech of the member's colleague on this matter, and I understand there are a number of long-standing grievances the Bloc would like to see remedied in one way or another. To make limited changes to the Constitution using this mechanism is something that has been done before by other provinces. It is an avenue available to every province.
I am not a constitutional scholar, and I will leave it to those more educated in those areas to give some sense of what might be possible, but absolutely it is important that it is a living document and that we make changes as appropriate over time to reflect the will of the people of our country.
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- Feb/8/22 12:13:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we seem to be straying a bit from the constitutional matter at hand, but I will humour the question from my colleague. Obviously, transporting oil by rail or by pipeline is a risky business, as we have seen evidenced by many spills over the years and all of the damage that has occurred.
We need to do things as safely as possible, and I have grave concerns about the safety of our railroad system. The transport committee is currently studying rail safety, and I would invite my hon. colleague to attend some of those hearings and learn about—
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- Feb/8/22 3:56:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member for Winnipeg South Centre spoke about the role that Canadian Pacific plays in some Prairie communities with some admiration. At the same time, this company has been in court for 13 years arguing that it should not have to pay taxes, and in fact that it should get the taxes that it has already paid back from the people of Saskatchewan.
Could the member help me square these two facts?
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- Feb/8/22 6:56:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this is an issue that affects so many northern communities so profoundly, as the member indicated in his remarks. There was a Health Canada expert task force on substance use just last year that issued a number of recommendations, and those recommendations are reflected very closely in the private member's bill of my colleague, the member for Courtenay—Alberni.
The bill seeks to decriminalize simple possession of drugs listed in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, provide a path for expungement of conviction records for those convicted of simple possession, and develop a national strategy to show the federal leadership needed in helping provinces, territories and municipalities manage the harms associated with substance use.
Does the member support those tenets, and can we stand together in the House and prevent the kinds of needless losses of life we have seen in all our communities across the country? Will he stand with us?
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Madam Chair, my colleague for Beaches—East York had powerful remarks. I have been deeply moved by the stories that the constituents of northwest B.C. have shared with me: heartbreaking stories about the loss of their loved ones, and particularly stories from parents who have lost their children. They plead with me to do something immediately in the House. I heard that urgency in my colleague's remarks. My colleague, the member for Courtenay—Alberni, has brought forward a bill that will come forward very soon in this Parliament for debate. It represents some of the very solutions that my colleague has outlined in his remarks.
My question to him is this, because I cannot imagine that he would not support my colleague's bill. What will he do to work with us to build unity in the House and pass this bill immediately, or as soon as possible?
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