44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 4, 2022 10:00AM
- Mar/4/22 10:04:20 a.m.
- Watch
- Re: Bill C-8
He said: Mr. Speaker, happy Friday. I believe few would dispute that we live in highly unusual times. Indeed, we are charting a path through a pandemic without a playbook. This is not the fault of the government: Every government is in the same situation, and as we all know, different governments have proposed different ways of moving forward. We must recognize that we agree, and I say “we” because we have to in large part unanimously agree, on most fiscal measures to this point. Canadians sent a minority Parliament to Ottawa and aside from the Prime Minister's shameless attempt to stage a power grab by calling an expensive and unnecessary election, here we are again in this minority Parliament.
We must recognize that, rightly or wrongly, our fiscal cupboards were literally spent dry responding to this pandemic. I am not here today to debate the past. I am simply pointing out the obvious. A significant portion of Canada's fiscal capacity has been spent. It is gone and we must recognize that. Why? Because in the event we run into any type of future emergency situation, we will have less fiscal room to respond.
Again, I do not raise that to point a finger of blame. I raise that because we must recognize that, going forward, we must be very careful how we proceed fiscally. Let me give an example. If anything, during this pandemic we have learned that our health care system was ill equipped to deal with the stresses and demands placed on it, more so when we see fully vaccinated Canadians who find themselves in our hospitals in the ICU. Every premier of every political stripe is clear that current Canada health care transfers are not enough to meet the needs of Canadians now or going forward.
Here is something I would like to share with every member of this place. The Canadian health care transfer stands at over $45 billion a year. In the current fiscal update bill, spending is forecast to increase to over $55 billion in fiscal 2026-27. In other words, there is an increase of over $10 billion in that time frame. I am hopeful that my friends in the fourth party hear that clearly, as they have a bad habit of referring to increases in health care spending as cuts.
I will get back to this increase in health care spending. The increase in health care transfer spending between now and fiscal 2026-27 is $10 billion. Here is the problem. Today, the interest we are paying on servicing our debt is just over $20 billion. Over the same time, it too will increase. The same budget bill forecasts that debt servicing costs will increase to almost $41 billion by fiscal 2026-27.
I can already hear members of the government say, “But debt-to-GDP ratio”. They will say, “The AAA credit rating”. They will say, “But now there is another thing”. Between now and fiscal 2026-27, we know two things will happen. The health care transfer will increase by $10 billion, but servicing our debt will increase by over $20 billion. That is $10 billion on health and $20 billion on debt.
To be clear, our interest costs of servicing our debt are climbing at twice the rate as our increases in the Canada health transfer. Does anyone not see that as being as a serious problem? The Parliamentary Budget Officer put out a report recently that said that the numbers the government put out in its last fall fiscal update actually underestimate our debt servicing costs in 2026-27 by $6 billion.
When the government talks about all the things it wants to do on the economy, and when it talks about all the action it wants to take, we really have to understand that we are putting ourselves in a situation where we will not have the fiscal room to respond in cases of further external or internal events. In external events, we have nowhere further to look than the situation that is happening in Ukraine.
We heard from the Governor of the Bank of Canada last night. We see that now the talk about inflation being transitory has washed away. We are now seeing that Canadians are being told by economists they face a perfect storm of higher gas prices, rising interest rates and the costs that go with that, and rising food prices.
The Dalhousie report that came out earlier this year said the average family would be paying over $1,000 more in just grocery costs alone. That is not even factoring in the hit to their income with Canada pension plan increases that the government has put forward.
We do not have the fiscal capacity, in my mind, to be able to say to Canadians that we can handle external events. Why? It is because the government has baked extra spending into it and, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, it is not giving proper projections of that. It is probably going to be higher. Government needs to be better than this. Our citizens are worried and anxious about their financial future, and the government continues to kind of walk around the issues that we have.
My particular area of focus right now, both on the finance committee and here in the House, has been given to me by our leader of the official opposition. I have been given the task of focusing on housing and inflation. Here is what I have to say on that matter: There has been a 43% increase in home prices. Right now, the average Canadian home price is $811,000 and rapidly rising. We are seeing where the number of people purchasing homes and the low supply, coupled with many of the things that are causing those fundamentals to go up, are pushing away the dream of home ownership. The government continues to put forward policies, inadequate policies in my view, that simply walk around the issues.
The great MP for Simcoe North put forward a very reasonable amendment. In fact, members are probably going to be a little shocked here. We actually were trying to help the government by putting forward that amendment. It was around banning foreign ownership of residential properties. It would have been for two years so we could take a look. The government says that it wants to look at data. We could have given it a two-year ban, and essentially we would then be able to see if it pushed down demand in the market and allowed more young Canadian families to have that first shot at home ownership, by pulling out, for a temporary time, foreign bids.
The government voted against the amendment. We were only trying to help this Prime Minister who, by the way, in multiple elections has said that he wants to address skyrocketing housing prices, which are a gobsmacking 43% higher than in 2019. The Liberals voted against the amendment. That is the main problem with the current government. It has underestimated how much money it has spent. We will see much of that $6-billion gap that the Parliamentary Budget Officer has identified in our fiscal track, so we are going to have less firepower from that.
We also have, at the same time, the perfect storm in which economists have told us that Canadians are going to be subjected to gas prices that they have never seen. I was born in Victoria, and I saw yesterday reporters pointing out that the cheapest form of gas was priced at $1.94 on the island. I have never seen that. In April, we will see the carbon tax go up to $50 a tonne, the backstop as well, and we will see where gas becomes increasingly unaffordable.
I have put forward with my able colleague, our industry critic, some very reasoned amendments to help improve the legislation that has been brought forward. Really, we can no longer simply let the government talk around the issues. It needs to start putting forward real policies, such as banning foreign owners from purchasing Canadian properties to give Canadians that first chance at home ownership. The government continues to bring forward legislation that is not up to the task.
Let me say again that it is always an honour to rise in this place. Again, I am imploring the government for my own riding. Those flooding victims in Merritt, Princeton and other rural areas of British Columbia are counting on the government. Unfortunately, they are told to wait as well. This is the problem I have with the current government. It is not addressing these important needs that Canadians have right now.
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- Mar/4/22 10:30:27 a.m.
- Watch
- Re: Bill C-8
Mr. Speaker, I thank my esteemed colleague from Sarnia—Lambton for her question.
Bill C-8 provides funding for COVID-19 tests. Ottawa is going to pay for COVID-19 tests and send them to the provinces.
We want transparency and the ability to follow up. We naturally agree with this necessary expenditure. However, it reminds us that Ottawa is not contributing its share to health care.
In the 1990s, the Liberal government decided to fix its deficit problem by reducing transfers to the provinces. Since then, Ottawa's revenues have far exceeded the services it provides. Health care funding must be rebalanced. We do not want conditions, we want money now.
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- Mar/4/22 10:33:51 a.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Mr. Speaker, I thank my brilliant and esteemed colleague from Mirabel for his speech.
The housing shortage is affecting everyone throughout Quebec and Canada. It is a major problem. A whole series of measures is required to remedy it.
Yes, a 1% property tax for non-resident owners of underused housing is more than marginal. It is symbolic, and this level of government has no business collecting it, at least not without the co-operation of the provinces.
The problem is that there is not enough housing. The government really needs to make up for all the lost time and, most importantly, build more social housing.
Once again, Ottawa abandoned social housing back in the 1990s, and today we are paying the price many times over. We are now seeing where decades and decades of underinvestment has led.
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- Mar/4/22 11:38:01 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, even now, new moms who were let go from their jobs while on parental leave cannot collect employment insurance.
When these women, who have just started their families, lose their income, Ottawa abandons them. The federal government has been refusing to fix this injustice for years. Six women took the government to court and won. Instead of fixing the problem, Ottawa appealed the decision. These are young mothers who have lost their jobs, and the government is dragging them to court.
Why not help them instead?
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-235. It is clear that we need better co-operation between the federal government, the provinces and the territories in order to get serious about climate action. We know that is the case because we have not seen serious climate action. We haven't seen our governments rise to the occasion and make the investments we know we have to make for Canada to do its part with respect to lowering its greenhouse gas emissions. Clearly, there is a need for a conversation, so it is difficult to oppose a bill that sets up a framework for that conversation and a mechanism to report on that.
It was interesting to listen to the member for Lakeland because I think we have a very different take on the central message of this bill. I do not see it as an “Ottawa knows best” bill. I think it is an admission that Ottawa does not know enough about how to take serious action on the climate change file. That is a real disappointment to a lot of people who have been looking to governments and especially the federal government for leadership on climate action since it was elected in 2015 and promised it would do exactly that.
It is worth remarking on the fact that the bill is being presented by someone who has been a central player in that government, a former minister of both natural resources and international trade. If there is a disappointment with respect to the bill, it is that there are no clear indications as to what kinds of projects we should be moving forward on as a country. Clearly, there are conversations that need to happen to be able to co-determine those priorities along with other jurisdictions.
The fact that we have somebody who has been a central player in the current government for the over six years now that it has been in power, and whose main suggestion is to get the conversation going, is a real testament to the fact that Canada is not where it needs to be and that the government has not lived up to the promises it ran on in not only 2015, but 2019 and 2021. The fact that it went from having a comfortable majority in 2015 to just kind of hanging on by its fingernails in 2019 and then again in 2021 is a testament to the fact that Canadians are watching and they know the government has not made good on its commitment to take serious climate action.
Therefore, by all means let us carry on this conversation and have some public reporting out so there can be some accountability, but I do not think we can pass over in silence the disappointment at not having some concrete ideas about how we get there as a country.
It would be nice to see the federal government, the provinces and the territories agree on some things with respect to investments. I look to our own region, the region that is indeed the subject of this bill, western Canada and I think about some of the conversations that have happened and the various reports that have been published about the possibility of a western Canadian power grid. That would be about more than just simple transmission between provinces, but about trying to have a coordinated system of generation, transmission and distribution so that provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan, which have an enormous potential for solar and wind energy, can benefit from having neighbours in B.C. and Manitoba that have an abundance of hydroelectric power that can be used to even out the generation cycles of those other forms of renewable energy. That could be a massive benefit to Canada with respect to lowering our own greenhouse gas emissions.
It is also a project that could create a lot of employment, both with respect to the building and the ongoing maintenance and operation of the grid. A lot of Canadians look to pipeline projects as a place to create construction and ongoing jobs, but we can do that with renewable energy infrastructure as well.
Six and a half years of government by the Liberals and no real progress in championing a large infrastructure project like that is a missed opportunity and we are running out of time to keep missing opportunities. We need to get serious about selecting some of these opportunities. We need to get serious about investing in them. We need to get serious about investing in them not as a one-off pilot or a little project here or there, but with a plan for the next 10 or 20 years on how we are going to create sustainable infrastructure in Canada. That is important to not only get a sense of how we will do with respect to our greenhouse gas emissions but for work forecasts as well.
That is what gives Canadians confidence that they are going to be able to go out and get jobs, if they are employed in the industries that build and maintain our critical infrastructure of this kind.
It is also really important when we look at a stubbornly high unemployment rate, and we are going to talk about training. We need to talk about training, but we need to know what work is going to be there in the next 10 to 20 years. Certainly, a lot of work is going to be there just as a product of demand in sectors such as housing and others. We are going to continue to need tradespeople. There is an opportunity here to lay out some ambitious projects on a timeline for companies and other actors in the sector. I think of my own union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which does a lot of good work in training electricians for the workforce.
Having a sense of the kind of work that is going to be out there, and that is going to be publicly funded as part of our effort to do our part in the battle against climate change, allows those organizations to work with training colleges, unions and contractors to figure out how we supply the workforce that we need.
That is why it is so disappointing. This would have been a great bill in the year 2000. This would have been lovely work to do back then. It would have been great for the government to have done it in 2015. The information and the research are out there. That is why these conversations between governments are important, because it is a matter of choosing those priorities and building that political will, in the absence of which we are simply not going to make progress. As I say, we are really just running out of time to get this done.
To the member for Lakeland, I would say that this is not about whether government knows best. This is about there being a meaningful role for public investment in facing down the climate crisis and in training people for the economy. All the time, we hear that employers are concerned that they cannot find people with the relevant skills and experience to make their businesses go. They are looking to the government for solutions on that. They are looking to have meaningful training programs that are publicly funded, at least to some extent.
Those are things that the private sector is looking to the government for. We know that there has to be a role for the public sector in rebuilding the economy post-pandemic, and we know that there has to be a role for the public sector in taking on the climate challenge. The idea that somehow there is not a role for the public sector here is certainly naive, if it is true. Otherwise, it is just sort of trying to pass over the important role of the public sector here for the purposes of a political narrative. I think that is doing more harm than good.
We need coordination in order to meet the challenges of the climate crisis. We need coordination to meet the challenges of the labour supply shortage that we are facing, even in the face of a high unemployment rate. We have this curious problem in Canada: we have a whole bunch of people who are looking for work and cannot find it, and a whole bunch of employers who are saying that they are looking for workers and cannot find them. If the private market, on its own, was going to fix that, it would have done it by now. There is absolutely a role for governments to work with all of those stakeholders and come up with a plan.
Ultimately, this is a bill that is about planning. That is fair enough. This is planning not only that we need to do, but it is planning that we should have done by now. I think it is an admission. The fact that this bill comes from somebody who has been such a central player in the government is an admission that the government has not been doing that work, or certainly not doing it well enough.
Let us get on with this. I hope the government will not wait for the deadlines established in this bill, because I think it has enough information, or it should by now, in order to come up with a plan. I would hope that the conversations this bill calls for are conversations that are already ongoing. If they are not, we have a big problem.
I am comfortable moving the bill along, but I certainly hope the government is not going to take that as a sign that it can sit on its hands and wait another 18 months to start thinking seriously about how we take climate action in Canada.
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