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Mr. Mark Gerretsen (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate), Lib.)

Mar/28/22 5:01:45 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, since we are on the topic of not talking about the bill, I thought I would ask a question that does not have to do with the bill. This is about the F-35 announcement today. This member and I sat on the defence committee together for quite a while. He fought long and hard for the government to invest in the F-35 fighter jets. I am just curious. Is the member very happy or ecstatic with the news that he received today? I would like to give him the opportunity to rise in the House and thank the government for following through on his suggestion.

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Mr. James Bezan

Mar/28/22 5:02:24 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for the question and acknowledge that he recognizes that I am the biggest proponent for the F-35 and have been for a long time. It is better late than never that he showed up to the party. I can tell him that this is the right plane for our Royal Canadian Air Force. This is the right plane for our NORAD mission. This is the right plane for our NATO mission, and it is the right plane for the Canadian aerospace sector. This is a serious investment and one that should have happened six or seven years ago. Instead, the Liberals played politics with this until now when they realize it is the only choice. I will call it the Liberal government because members dithered and delayed on it, but nonetheless I am glad that the NDP government made the right decision.

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Mr. René Villemure (Trois-Rivières, BQ)

Mar/28/22 5:03:10 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, last weekend, I attended the Trois-Rivières book fair, where I met people who asked me what is happening with the budget. It seems to me that this budget signals that the government is tired. It contains very little to address the labour shortage and mismanages supply problems. One issue I care about, which we will talk at length about but is nowhere to be found in the budget, is the fight against tax havens. What does my colleague believe could be done to step up the fight against tax havens? At present, there is nothing in the budget about that. What can be done to crack down on people who use tax havens?

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Mr. James Bezan

Mar/28/22 5:03:49 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I really enjoy working with the member on the ethics committee since I joined it a month ago. I know that this is something that he has personally been championing for many years, even before he entered politics, to ensure that we have accountability in government and that we have the proper processes in place to do those audits and find those that are trying to hide their money, whether it is in offshore tax havens or by other nefarious means. We believe that we have to have a fair tax system here in Canada for all Canadians, and that means that those who are tax cheats need to be found out and ultimately those monies have to be repatriated here to help the Canadian budget system. I am looking forward to the fact that we are getting very close to a new budget, and I am hoping that the NDP finance minister will be coming forward very shortly with her budget so that we can actually see what the plans are of this new NDP-Liberal coalition, where that ultimately will take the finances of the nation and how they are going to crack down on those who are hiding their monies in offshore tax havens.

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Ms. Laurel Collins (Victoria, NDP)

Mar/28/22 5:05:05 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, there is nothing in the bill on EI reform and we know that workers are struggling. We know that self-employed workers need benefits when they lose their income. I am curious if the member agrees that EI reform is desperately needed in this country.

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Mr. James Bezan

Mar/28/22 5:05:24 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I am sure that the Liberal backbencher is going to have a chance and opportunity to discuss that with her caucus colleagues very soon. I know this is something that does have to be reviewed, and I am hoping that we will see something in the future to ensure that we address all the problems that are out there in the shortfalls happening in the EI system. All of us as members of Parliament witness this and hear from constituents all the time about how they have fallen through the cracks. Especially during this time of COVID, there were too many industries where people did not qualify for either CERB or EI because they were not in industries that were recognized and properly funded by the government.

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Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

Mar/28/22 5:06:07 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I really want to thank my colleague from Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman for bringing attention to how the appalling and immoral Russian aggression in Ukraine could affect world food supplies. One of the things I learned recently, and I would like to have his comments on it, is that fortunately, because we can store corn, barley and wheat, there are large stockpiles. The Food and Agriculture Organization looked at that, although some do it disproportionately, maybe in China. I am wondering if he has looked at that in terms of that we are not starting from zero. If we do not get the seeds in the ground, we still may be able to feed people, but how do we get it distributed to the people who need it?

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Mr. James Bezan

Mar/28/22 5:06:48 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I am glad the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands is taking an interest in this because these are very troubling times. The last thing we want to see is famine, hunger and starvation across the planet. Although there is some hoarding by certain countries in their own coarse grain stocks, whether it is rice, wheat or corn, we also know that the coarse grain stocks and carry-overs we have right now are at some of the lowest points that we have seen in the world in history. On any given day, the actual amount of food that is on supply is only about a 30-day window. That really is how tight stocks are. By taking a country like Ukraine out of the equation, it can have a serious impact. Of course, it is going to go to the highest bidder in a lot of cases, but this is why we need organizations to step in to ensure humanitarian relief is there for those who cannot afford it.

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Mr. Philip Lawrence (Northumberland—Peterborough South, CPC)

Mar/28/22 5:07:45 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, it is great to be here in the House again today rising on Bill C-8. As members are aware, Bill C-8 is an omnibus bill and a large piece of legislation, so I will spend my time focusing on several elements of it, particularly with respect to the carbon tax. However, before I do that, I think it is important to put down the context for Bill C-8. From the time it was initially introduced to where we are right now, things have changed dramatically. Canadians are finding it harder and harder to get by. They are challenged to put gas in their tanks, feed their families and get through these cold months of early spring. The reason is that there has been profligate spending by the Liberal Party, and this unnecessary spending is being put right on the backs of Canadians. What happens when we spend and spend is that the money has to come from somewhere. Either it has been coming from the taxpayer directly or it has been going to our loans. For people who are not aware, through quantitative easing we are actually borrowing money from ourselves, which is challenging because where is that money coming from? Well, the Bank of Canada is printing that money. It is a basic concept of economics that where we have more of something it is worth less, so what we are getting by having our printing press on overdrive through quantitative easing is more and more currency. There is $400 billion of extra currency out there, and we have driven down the value of money in our country. Not surprisingly, shock upon shock, guess what? We have inflation, which means the value of goods is going up and the value of money is going down. Scotiabank is saying that we may in fact face inflation of up to 8% going forward. Let us put that in context. We call this the “inflation tax” because what it is really doing, just as sure as income tax or sales tax, is taking value from the taxpayer and putting that value into the vaults of government. To give members an idea, at 8% inflation, a Canadian earning $40,000, such as a single mother in Cobourg or Port Hope trying to get by earning a bit more than minimum wage, is going to be paying $3,200 in extra inflation tax just this year. Imagine a couple earning $50,000 each, and let us say they have a family four. That is $100,000 total. As we know, with housing prices and everything else going up, that is not a tremendous amount of money to get by on. They are going to be paying an additional $8,000 in inflation tax at 8% interest. This is robbing Canadians of the value of their labour and they are working so hard. The billionaires and millionaires will get by, but for those folks at the lowest rung of the economic ladder, those who are struggling, this inflation tax is enough to knock them down into poverty. Then we exacerbate that problem with the carbon tax. I had the opportunity to ask the Governor of the Bank of Canada, Tiff Macklem, some questions about inflation and about the impact of the carbon tax. Surprisingly, he did not know what the impact was when I asked him. However, he wrote back to the finance committee and said that, at the time, nearly 10% of inflation was caused by one tax: the carbon tax. Imagine that. We have income tax, sales tax and taxes on tax, but just one tax, this carbon tax, is responsible for 10% of the pain being inflicted by the inflation tax. The reality is that the purpose of the carbon tax is to increase the cost of certain goods and services that emit high amounts of GHG so that people will not want to buy them. We then push those individuals into buying lower GHG-emitting goods and services, which in itself is not a bad thing. The challenge, though, is that it is often a fallacy, because there are no other options available. As I said earlier, a single mother earning $40,000 a year simply cannot afford to buy a $50,000 or $100,000 Tesla. It is the equivalent to saying, “Let them eat cake” when we say to buy an electric vehicle. For farmers, this problem is particularly acute, and for many of them, at least at this point, there are no alternatives. We are starting technologies for electric tractors, which is great, but they are not there yet, so when we increase the carbon tax on propane, natural gas and other fuels, we are putting that directly on our farmers. One particular example I have is with respect to propane and natural gas. I had the great privilege and honour of introducing Bill C-206 in the House last Parliament, and what that called for was an exemption for farmers, not just on gasoline and diesel, as that already exists, but on cleaner fuels as well, like natural gas and propane. That gave farmers a full exemption, because they do not have the ability to use other technology right now. It does not exist. We listened to expert after expert at the agriculture committee, and they said there is not a commercially viable alternative to fossil fuels when it comes to drying grain or heating livestock barns. We live in a cold country, as we know. Those who do not know that should walk outside here in Ottawa. We need clean Canadian energy to allow our farmers to be competitive. Bill C-8 offers a rebate to farmers instead of an exemption, and this rebate is a step in the right direction. However, I remember being in this very House about a year or two ago when the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food said the cost of the carbon tax is not a serious issue for farmers. Well, the farmers disagreed. They rose to the occasion and we were able to bring the discussion to Ottawa. We said that it is an issue and that farmers are paying tens of thousands of dollars. However, as is often the case, the new NDP-Liberal government is up here a day late and a dollar short, because this rebate only covers a very small amount of the cost. It is incredibly inequitable. Let me explain what I mean by inequitable. Of course, this country is very different climate-wise, region-wise and even farming-wise. The type of farming someone does in Victoria, B.C., is much different from the farming someone does in St. John's, Newfoundland, and all parts in between. The system set up with Bill C-8 is one size fits all. It says that depending on expenses, the government will give a certain amount of a carbon tax rebate. That is a terrible proxy. It makes no sense because the expenses for farming in Victoria, B.C., will be different from those in Regina, Saskatchewan, and Northumberland—Peterborough South. We are just grabbing this one-size-fits-all solution. What I can guarantee will happen is that farmers will have no choice but to be in high carbon-intense areas of farming that will receive minuscule rebates, whereas other areas where carbon is not as important in a particular industry may receive higher rebates. We are creating inequity because the calculation in Bill C-8 makes no sense. Here is a better idea. My colleague from Huron—Bruce has reintroduced the new and improved Bill C-206 as Bill C-234. It says we should just give them an exemption. That way they get 100% of the dollars they spend on propane and natural gas back in their pockets. It is a broader discussion we need to have. We need to decide whether we can trust Canadians with their own money. Members will remember that back in the Paul Martin era, the Liberal government, now the Liberal-NDP government, famously said that if we leave Canadians alone, they are going to spend their money on beer and popcorn. This reeks of that. It reeks of this conversation. Why would we not just allow them to exempt that money instead of transporting all of it to Ottawa, since, shocker, some of it gets lost and stays here in Ottawa? Why would we not just leave it in the jeans of our farmers, instead of having that money go to Ottawa, where some of it will be left over, and then having a small portion go back to farmers? I will give an exact equation. A farmer in Manitoba would pay $9,000 in carbon tax and will get $3,000 back, whereas under Bill C-234, they would get all $9,000 back. I believe in the individual—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Mar/28/22 5:17:51 p.m.
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We will have to continue on with questions and comments. The hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Mar/28/22 5:17:57 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, in listening to the debate today, I would like to emphasize that Bill C-8 encapsulates these issues primarily: school ventilation, proof support for vaccinations, rapid tests, the first annual tax on foreign home ownership and support for small businesses. That captures the essence of the bill, yet we have the Conservative Party talking about all sorts of other budgetary measures. This bill has been before the House for a great deal of time. The Conservatives are saying they want to continue to debate it virtually indefinitely. That is fine. They can continue to do whatever they want. Can the member explain to those who might be interested in the legislation itself why the Conservative Party would oppose the measures being proposed to support Canadians in all regions as they continue to go through this pandemic?

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Mr. Philip Lawrence

Mar/28/22 5:18:59 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, it is not surprising that the NDP-Liberal government would forget farmers. If the member would look at subsection (d) in Part 1, that is exactly what it talks about: It talks about the farming rebate I was just talking about for 10 minutes. I am not surprised that he would forget them, but for me and for our party, our farmers are important.

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Mr. René Villemure (Trois-Rivières, BQ)

Mar/28/22 5:19:22 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, every day for some time now, the Minister of Health has told us that he has spent $63 billion or $75 billion. The exact figure does not matter. What does matter is that not once has he said that it is a one-time expenditure, not a reinvestment in health care. I would like to ask my colleague if he agrees with me that the government should make unconditional health transfers to the provinces.

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Mr. Philip Lawrence

Mar/28/22 5:19:50 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, it is a troubling development that the new NDP-Liberal government seems to focus, more and more, on centralizing. It is taking money and the rights and freedoms of Canadians, of Quebeckers, and transplanting them into Ottawa. Yes, I stand with my friend against centralization and I stand for Canadians and individuals across this great land.

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Ms. Laurel Collins (Victoria, NDP)

Mar/28/22 5:20:19 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, the member mentioned farming in Victoria, British Columbia. In my riding of Victoria, we have an incredible urban farm called the Mason Street Farm. Jesse Brown and the nursery manager JJ have been doing incredible work. JJ is actually moving on to do further work on food security. If we want to support farmers across Canada and if we want to protect food security, we need bold climate action. I wonder this. Can the member comment on the need for bold climate action to support farmers?

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Mr. Philip Lawrence

Mar/28/22 5:20:55 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I think I would agree with the member in saying that no one is more committed to our fight against climate change than our farmers. They are the ones who live on the farms. They are the ones who will be most affected by climate change. I am willing to sit down and talk to her about climate change and fighting climate change any day. I can tell her that with the Conservatives there would not be seven years of hot air and missing targets, as the current Liberal government has done.

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Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

Mar/28/22 5:21:27 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I could not agree more about the important role that farmers play. I would like to ask my hon. colleague if he agrees that we need to pay for the ecological services that farmers perform: for instance, not cultivating areas of wetlands, pulling back and protecting hedgerows, using low-tillage or non-tillage methods and doing things that sequester carbon in the soil. Does he agree with me that we should pay farmers for sequestering carbon in the soil and protecting biodiversity?

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Mr. Philip Lawrence

Mar/28/22 5:22:14 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I join this member in wishing her Green Party colleague all the best as he has recently been diagnosed with COVID. I would ask her to tell him that we want him to get better soon so we can continue to argue about fossil fuels. I would agree with the hon. member, but with this caveat. Instead of taking money to give to Ottawa and then giving it back, why do we not just leave more money, but acknowledge the work that farmers are doing to fight climate change and soil erosion by having the government get the heck off their backs?

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Mr. Arnold Viersen (Peace River—Westlock, CPC)

Mar/28/22 5:22:54 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, we are talking about Bill C-8. It is the fiscal and economic update, and I will be spending my time, as many of my colleagues have been, talking about inflation. Inflation is probably the greatest challenge our country is facing at this moment in time, due in no small part to the fact that the government has basically written itself a cheque for $400 billion. It then brought that cheque to the bank, deposited it in its bank account, and proceeded to spend the money. That money was basically created out of thin air, and now we see this new influx of cash cascading through the economy. We see it in the rising of prices of all kinds of things, clear across the country. Why should we care about inflation? We hear from the Liberals all the time when they say, “Well, it is happening all around the world. It is not just something that is happening right here in Canada.” That is all true. A little bit of the problem is that we are unable to then measure what inflation is actually doing. If we are floating down the river and somebody is floating a little faster than somebody else, it may actually feel as though one is getting ahead of another who is floating a little slower. That is the problem we have. When the whole world is experiencing inflation, we cannot measure what the inflation looks like here in Canada effectively. We often measure our inflation or relative inflation against the American dollar. We say that our Canadian dollar is worth 78¢ to the American dollar, and that is a decent measurement of our currency. However, if the American dollar is being devalued and the Canadian dollar is being devalued at a similar rate, that percentage might actually stay the same, in terms of the 78¢ to the American dollar. If inflation is running at the same rate, we are not going to see a big change between the two, because we do not have a fixed point we can measure up against. The devaluation of our dollar is what happens when there is inflation. When our dollar is unable to buy the same amount of goods as it was capable of buying before that, that is a devaluation. One of the things that I use to measure inflation and to measure effective currency exchanges is the Big Mac. McDonald's Big Mac is sold around the world. We can see the relative value of one's money by seeing what the Big Mac is worth around the world, everywhere one goes in the world. For me, that is my quick check to see what a dollar is worth. The relative price of a McDonald's Big Mac around the world gives one a measure of what one's dollar is worth. When we see that the value of the Big Mac, or the price of the Big Mac, is going up right here in Canada, we know that our money is worth less. We see that in housing prices. If one's house has appreciated in value over the last couple of years, as many Canadians' homes have, it is because of, one, more demand for the house or, two, the dollar now actually being worth less. The house did not change. The house is still the same house one bought several years ago. If one is a Canadian that happens to own a house, that is an advantage at this point of time, but it is still the same house. The fact that it has doubled in value or gone up by 50% is a measurement of inflation. It does not mean one's house is now suddenly worth more. It just means that our dollar is worth less, so it takes more dollars to buy the same house. What does that mean, particularly now that we hear about how the government seems to be oblivious or does not seem to take this as seriously as I think it ought to, in regard to the whole issue of inflation? Members of the government will say, well, it is just a matter of fact, it is happening around the world and there is not much we can do about it. There are a lot of things the government could do. First of all, it could stop printing money. Second, it could show some fiscal restraint. Many times when we ask in this place about what the government is doing about a particular thing, its members stand up and tell us how much money they are spending on the thing. When it comes to housing prices, we say that housing prices are getting out of control and government members stand up and say, “Yeah, we know and that is why we are going to spend this much more money on housing affordability” or when we say that taking care of children is getting more and more expensive in this country, they say, “Yeah, we know and that is why we are going to spend this much more money” on that particular thing. I am from a Dutch family and the Dutch are notorious in terms of their money management. If one is getting the same thing for more money, that is not a good deal. If one gets the same thing for less money then one is doing a good job. That is what is going on in this country. Government members say that Conservatives were obviously not managing that particular issue well because they only spent that amount of money and we are spending this amount. Border controls are a clear example. When Conservatives were in charge of this country, we did not have a massive influx of people running across the border. We were managing our border. We were keeping our border secure. It did not even cost us that much. Now we have a steady stream of people running across the border. We could say that this perhaps is a problem. There is a front door to Canada. People are welcome to Canada. If they just apply through the normal channels, people are welcome to come to Canada. What is happening now is that the government says this is obviously not a problem because it is spending x number of dollars on border controls. If we have a bigger problem and we are spending more money on it, that to me is not good value for the money. That is another area where we see the government spending more and more money to achieve less and less. The Liberals may say it is all fair and nice for me to say as I am a Conservative with my own arguments. They will make their own arguments and say that they are here to fight climate change and all those kinds of things and that costs money so they have to spend money. That is fine if that is the argument they want to make. Why should a person whose number one concern in the world is climate change and the environment care about inflation? I am going to make the argument that they should care about inflation because runaway inflation drives short-term thinking. To pull this to an extreme, in Germany after World War I, they had runaway inflation, like unheard of inflation. Folks were demanding that they get paid by lunchtime so that they could run to the store to buy a loaf of bread, because if they got their wages later, the price of the loaf of bread would have gone up by the end of the day. People demanded to get paid for their work in real time and turned that cash into a tangible asset in about the same amount of time. That drives very short-term thinking. We see that happening here in Canada right now as well. Everybody is trying to turn their cash into something. They are trying to take their earnings and turn them into a hard asset so that they do not lose the value of their money. They do not lose the value of their effort. Real estate is an example. Folks across the country have turned their earnings into real estate. It drives the fact that we do not save for a rainy day. We do not think about the future. We want to get our earnings into a tangible asset by any means possible. If someone is able to afford a house, that is a good place to do that, but if one is unable to afford a house, one buys other things in order to manage that. Runaway inflation drives short-term thinking. Climate change and the environment, all these things, are pressing issues, but they are all issues that are somewhat long term. There are a lot of studies around the world that point out that the net worth of the population must reach over $5,000 U.S. before people start to care about the environment and things like that. There is a correlation between one's net worth and inflation that drives long-term thinking. We should be thinking about those things. If we are going to drive inflation up wildly, people are less likely to look further into the future. They are going to think about turning their earnings today into tangible assets in real terms. That is a reality. I hope I can make that argument to folks who are concerned about the environment to say that runaway inflation drives short-term thinking. If we want to make it so that our country thinks about things in the long term, we have to get this inflation under control. It looks like I have to wrap up. I hope to have many questions so that I can continue on some of these issues.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Mar/28/22 5:33:12 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, the member has put a great deal of focus on the issue of inflation. In that regard, I believe it is appropriate for us to take a look at what is happening in the United States and the European Union. In both situations, Canada's inflation rate is less than theirs. To try to give the impression that inflation is not an issue outside of our border I think is somewhat misleading. By the way, I did a quick Google search regarding the Big Mac, which is still cheaper in Canada than it is in the United States using American dollars. It seems to me that the Conservatives are off base with Bill C-8 in terms of its many benefits, including to our farmers, and I do not understand why they are voting against it. I have not heard a substantive reason, other than the fact that they really do not understand the bill.

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