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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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Mr. Arnold Viersen

Mar/28/22 5:34:09 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I do not think the hon. member understood my speech, because the point I made was that when the entire world is suffering from inflation, there is no standing-still point, no reference point. When all of the world is experiencing inflation, we have a hard time judging what our inflation actually is. There are some really exciting things happening around the world, particularly with Bitcoin, which may be the instrument that will enable us to measure what a particular country's currency is doing relative to inflation, because Bitcoin is tied at 21 million total, so it is not inflationary, unlike other currencies. There are some really cool things that are happening around Bitcoin and inflation, and I hope we will be able to continue that discussion as well in this place.

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Mr. Yves Perron (Berthier—Maskinongé, BQ)

Mar/28/22 5:35:05 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. I usually enjoy his interventions. They are articulate and meaningful and offer good arguments. I have a lot in common with him. He raised several very positive points. He pointed out that spending a lot of money does not equate to being effective. That is something we should bear in mind and repeat more often to keep the Liberal propaganda from taking hold. There is another piece of Liberal propaganda that we must watch out for. The Liberals promise a lot of things by saying they will spend a lot of money, but we often realize three years into a program that only 10% of the money has been spent. Even though the announcement seems promising, the Liberals spend only one-tenth of what they promised. Then there are promises that are slow to be fulfilled. Just look at the fight against tax havens, which has not started yet. However, the bulk of my colleague's intervention focused on inflation, and that is what I will ask him about. Government intervention to address inflation is not easy. It is something very complex. My colleague spoke a lot about housing, and I think it is an area where we could intervene more, in building social housing, for example, to increase supply and meet the high demand. I would like my colleague's point of view on the need to quickly build and invest—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Mar/28/22 5:36:22 p.m.
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Order. I must interrupt the hon. member. There is not a lot of time left. The hon. member for Peace River—Westlock.

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Mr. Arnold Viersen

Mar/28/22 5:36:28 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for his question. He obviously did listen to my speech, and I appreciate that. On the housing aspect, I am very much in agreement that there is a need for more supply. I have driven across this country several times to drive here to Ottawa, and there is an immense amount of lakefront property in this country that is undeveloped. I would recommend that perhaps we start selling off some lakefront property and get some more housing built, particularly once we get to Kenora. From Kenora to here, I can tell members that there is an endless amount of beautiful lakefront property that is probably valuable. We might be able to raise some tax money off of it and build some beautiful housing all across this country.

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Mr. Richard Cannings (South Okanagan—West Kootenay, NDP)

Mar/28/22 5:37:21 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I take issue with the member's comments about climate change being something we can put off. Climate change is not something we can put off. We have to act now, and we have to act boldly. Any investment we make into fighting climate change now will be well worth that investment, because it is going to cost us 100 or 1,000 times more if we wait 10 or 20 years, and we will be worse off besides.

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Mr. Arnold Viersen

Mar/28/22 5:37:46 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, it is unfortunate that I did not get my point across as well as I had hoped I had. My point was that when there is wild inflation, people do not think about the long-term effects of their spending, so if we can bring inflation down, people will start to invest their money in longer-term things. We need to invest in and think about climate change and the environment in the long term. There is no doubt that there are consequences to our immediate actions, but if we are all worried about our money being devalued in the moment, we are not going to spend it on things that are further in the future; we are going to spend it on things that are tangible in the moment.

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Mr. Pat Kelly (Calgary Rocky Ridge, CPC)

Mar/28/22 5:38:35 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise and add my voice to the report stage debate on Bill C-8. Here we are on March 28 debating the so-called fall economic statement, which was tabled just before Christmas, three full months after the summer election. That election was supposedly called to establish a mandate for an urgent, transformational, once-in-a-lifetime moment. I do not agree with the rationale that was offered for last summer's snap election, that it was a transformational moment, but what has been transformational is what has happened since this bill was tabled and during the more than three months during which this bill has been debated and studied. It might not be reasonable to have expected the government to have taken an invasion of Ukraine into account when it tabled Bill C-8, but Vladimir Putin has long threatened Russia's neighbours, including Canadian friends, such as Ukraine. Putin's Russia has also long been a threat to Canada's Arctic lands, Canada's territorial waters and Canadian airspace. There is nothing in this statement that will address the now critically urgent need to prepare for our own self-defence and to increase our capacity to provide all forms of aid to our friends and allies. Financial aid, humanitarian aid, logistical aid and, yes, lethal military aid are all urgently needed by Ukraine. Since this bill was tabled, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has confirmed that the government's military capital spending, including its 2017 strong, secure, engaged funding announcement, is hopelessly behind schedule. In other words, even the spending that has been approved and authorized by Parliament is not being spent. The PBO went on to point out that more money will probably still be needed in addition to what has been approved to meet the goals of existing capital procurement. This is a critical failure of government at a time when Canada's ability to defend itself and support its allies is at the most urgent point that it has been in decades. I am pleased that the government has reversed its earlier positions and finally announced that it will buy the F-35s. That is good. Now it should buy ships. Canada was a founding member of NATO. It is our principal alliance and it has secured our peace since 1949. We have an obligation to it to increase military spending to 2% of GDP, yet we cannot even get our act together to spend the money that Parliament has already authorized. Russia is not going to wait for us. China is not going to wait for us. The time to act is now, and there is nothing in this bill that will fix systemic failures in Canada's long-broken defence procurement system. Also, since this bill was tabled, the true structural nature of Canada's inflation crisis is becoming increasingly clear. When I spoke on this bill at second reading, the most recent report said that the average Canadian house price was $717,000. That is about 14 times the annual earnings of an average Canadian worker and absolutely unaffordable for a typical Canadian household, but now, just within the last couple of months, new reports show that the average price is now $100,000 higher than it was when this bill was debated at second reading. Just moving from one stage of debate on this bill, the price of a home in Canada has gone up $100,000. It is certainly not just housing that has gone up. Groceries continue to go up and, of course, the price of energy has also gone up. The war has enormous effects on the price of energy, but the government must take responsibility for its role in the inflation crisis. The government is charging ahead with its annual carbon tax increase set to take place this Friday. Gasoline is already over $2 a litre in some parts of Canada, and the government will push gasoline prices higher, along with the cost of home heating. Since this bill was tabled, the Bank of Canada has published research confirming that the carbon tax alone is responsible for 0.4% inflation. While the bank's target rate is 2%, the actual rate is now just under 6% and the carbon tax, one single piece of government-engineered inflation, contributes 0.4% of that inflation. The government should be fighting against inflation, not explicitly contributing to it with punitive and increasing taxes. The real shame of the global crisis of affordable and reliable energy, given the situation with the degree to which many parts of the world rely on Russian imports, is that the current government has done everything it can to prevent Canadian energy from reaching foreign or even domestic markets. Canada could be doing its part to keep the price of energy under control by replacing Russia's exports, but this bill is a continuation of the government's anti-energy, anti-Alberta agenda. We now find ourselves in an inflation crisis exacerbated by both high energy prices and a punitive domestic carbon tax. It is not just the carbon tax going up this Friday. This Friday is also the day that the tax on beer, wine and sprits will automatically go up and further fuel inflation. We will not see this tax increase in this bill, because the excise escalator is an April Fool's gift that the government announced in budget 2017 that keeps on giving every year, which raises taxes without a vote in Parliament. There is no bill and no vote, but a tax increase nevertheless. Another thing that is not in this bill is any demonstration of short-, medium- or long-term fiscal discipline. The endless deficits, enabled by monetary expansion and increasing taxes, mean that inflation will make life increasingly unaffordable for Canadian families. Again, I will refer to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, whose recent report confirms that the conditions for the withdrawal of stimulus spending in budget 2021 have been met, yet the spending continues. The Liberals laid out criteria to withdraw the stimulus, and then they got rid of the criteria and just kept the spending in this fall statement. The bill contains $70 billion in inflationary new spending on top of $176 billion in extra non-COVID spending that the government has run up. It would bring Canada's debt total to over $1.2 trillion. I remind the House that the government was teetering on the brink of a recession with a horrifically blown deficit projection, even before Covid struck. The government blew all of its fiscal credibility long before COVID. It has ignored every single fiscal anchor, guardrail or election promise it has made on deficits. Now, against this fiscal backdrop, the Liberals invited the NDP to abandon its opposition role and join the government in a de facto coalition. I can already hear the howls of protest. I can hear the desperate explanations. I imagine New Democrats saying, and we have heard it before, that just because they have entered an agreement to support the government on all confidence and supply votes until October 2025, that the government has agreed to brief them on any such potential motion before it is made public and that they have promised to snitch if they get wind of opposition procedural tactics that might slow down the government's agenda at a committee, it does not mean it is a coalition. They will say that none of them is in cabinet, so it is not a coalition. They will ask whether I passed political science 201, and say it is not really a coalition. We will let Canadians be the judges of what is really going on here. They can call it whatever they want, but the really sad part about what we have seen here is that an opposition party is now supporting the government rather than opposing it. This comes at a time when the current government increasingly fails to govern competently and transparently, which takes us right back to the beginning and the circumstances around which this bill was tabled. This bill was tabled just before Christmas, and in the briefing on the fall economic statement the PBO told us: This year both the Annual Financial Report and Public Accounts were published on December 14, 2021, the latest publication since 1993-94. Comparatively, Canada was among the last of the G7 countries to publish their [reports].... Canada falls short of the standard for advanced practice in the [IMF] financial reporting guidelines, which recommends that governments publish their annual statements within six months. ...the delay in the Government's release of its audited financial statement undermined [Parliament's] ability to meaningfully scrutinize proposed Government spending. This matters because it is symptomatic of declining basic government competency. We have a government that needs to be challenged by a loyal but vigorous opposition, which will challenge the government to better serve Canadians. Instead, it is emboldened by the defection of the members of the NDP caucus to the government in support of this tired and—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Mar/28/22 5:48:50 p.m.
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Unfortunately, the hon. member's time is up. I do want to remind members, especially parliamentary secretaries, that instead of heckling or thinking out loud they should hold onto their thoughts quietly until it is time for questions and comments, which it is right now. Questions and comments, the hon. member for Mirabel.

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Mr. Jean-Denis Garon (Mirabel, BQ)

Mar/28/22 5:49:19 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, in our view, Bill C-8 represents a significant encroachment on provincial tax jurisdictions. This new tax on underused housing infringes on the property taxation jurisdiction. The Bloc Québécois proposed an amendment at the Standing Committee on Finance. We asked that Quebec and the provinces be given the right to opt out, so that the provinces could tell the federal government not to encroach on their areas of jurisdiction. The Liberal committee chair of the Standing Committee on Finance ruled the amendment inadmissible, which meant that it could not even be debated. Does my colleague think it would have been a good idea to give the provinces the right to opt out on property taxation?

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Mr. Pat Kelly

Mar/28/22 5:50:10 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, the member seemed to refer to something that happened at finance committee. I am not sure I caught exactly the piece of tax legislation that he was concerned about for provincial jurisdiction, but provincial jurisdiction is something that Conservatives always respect. We respect the Constitution and the delineation of provincial responsibilities. I am not certain I have a specific answer to his question, but I certainly believe in provincial jurisdiction.

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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 5:50:56 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I listened to the comments made by the member today and I cannot help but once again reflect on the fact that no Conservatives who have spoken, at least in my time listening to the debate today, have actually been talking about the substance of this actual bill. Nonetheless, I know it is so important for them to keep debating this as they are the only ones in the House who are still going on about this. I would hate to think that this was done with the intent of trying to delay passage of the bill. In the interests of continuing to debate this and to give them more opportunity, I am wondering this. If I were to move a unanimous consent motion that we sit until midnight in order to allow Conservatives to keep speaking and debating this, would the member support that?

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