44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 4, 2022 11:00AM
- Apr/4/22 12:36:06 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, I heard the member say that government policies “push Canada to the sidelines”. I will ask her to explain to me what she means by that. We have the best GDP among G7 countries. We also have the lowest debt-to-GDP ratio among G7 countries, which means that we are best equipped to deal with the economic challenges right now. We have recovered 114% of the jobs we lost during COVID, and when we compare Canada with the United States, we see they are so much further behind and have not even come close to getting all their jobs back.
Could the member please explain to me what she means by government policies are pushing Canada to the sidelines, with the exception of how this relates to oil, which the Conservatives like to talk about all the time?
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- Apr/4/22 1:06:11 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, the member started his speech by talking about how we are now in the spring and we are talking about the fall economic statement. As he would know, the only people who are still debating this are the Conservatives. Every other party has given up on it. I am wondering if he could provide some insight into how much longer the Conservatives are going to keep this up and drag this on.
Before I get any fake outrage about everybody needing to speak to this at every stage repeatedly because it is part of the democratic process, and I fully understand that, I am hoping that the member can provide some insight into when we will actually allow this to collapse so we can vote on it and move forward. I am really hoping that we can pass this before we pass the spring budget.
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- Apr/4/22 1:07:16 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I only represent two of the Thousand Islands. It is is Kingston and the Islands, not the Thousand Islands.
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- Apr/4/22 3:56:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am wondering if the member is aware of the fact that when he ran in the election in September of last year, his party was actually proposing to spend even more money.
More importantly, when he talks about a path to balancing the budget, what kind of path is that exactly, because the path that he ran on in September of last year was a path of 10 years. Is he saying that 10 years is the magic number, or is he now saying five years is the number, or is it 15 years? Can he quantify how many years is appropriate and if it is, indeed, what he ran on six months ago?
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- Apr/4/22 4:23:19 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, on the point of order, there are 221 recommendations in this report that address just about every fiscal—
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- Apr/4/22 5:41:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to this concurrence motion regarding a report that was done by the finance committee and then tabled.
For those who might be tuning in today to watch and who are asking themselves what the motion is all about, basically the Conservative Party has decided to table a report that I bet will pass unanimously in this House when we get to the time for voting. People might ask why the Conservatives would do that. In my opinion, it is for no reason other than to just delay the work of this House.
Of course, they will give us their fake outrage about how the democratic process entitles everybody to speak forever and ever, and they are not wrong about that. However, the reality of the situation is that there are things we need to deal with in this House. One of those things is passing the fall economic statement. We are unable to do that because the Conservative Party is putting up speaker after speaker to drag out the process. The Conservatives are probably starting to run out of speakers now, but one of the reasons they had to bring in this concurrence motion is to add a little more time, at least three hours, to this debate.
That is my opinion on why we happen to be debating this concurrence motion right now. Although the Bloc, the NDP and the Liberals all realize that maybe it is time to pass the fall economic statement, and it would be great if we could pass it before we pass the spring budget that will be introduced in a couple of days, the Conservative Party is relentless, quite frankly, because it figures this one motion is going to be its pathway to victory in the next election. I am sure that is what the Conservatives are thinking, and that is how we have ended up here. It is either that or just to tell Canadians later on that the government was unable to conduct its business, all for reasons of its own making, and that of course none of that had to do with the Conservatives.
We are here because our procedural rules permit this to happen. We are talking about a report that I am very confident will pass unanimously in this House when we get to it.
There was a comment earlier, when one of your counterparts, Madam Speaker, was in the chair, by the member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, who got extremely excited when the member for Winnipeg North accused some of the Conservative bench of being far right. I would point out that the member for Winnipeg North did not even say “alt right”; he said “far right”. I would say that the member for Winnipeg North was being extremely generous when he made that comment about being on the far right.
If the member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon is so concerned about members of his party being labelled “far right”, he might want to, I do not know, talk to the member for Lethbridge or the member for Saskatoon West. He could talk to them about maybe not coming into the House and calling the Prime Minister a dictator. That kind of rhetoric and language certainly leads in the direction of understanding why they might really be considered far right.
I will give another example. How about on February 17 in this House, when the member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke said, “Canadians want foreign interference”—
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- Apr/4/22 5:45:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is very interesting that when the member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon raised this issue earlier, the member who just rose on the point of order started heckling this side to give them examples. I am literally just fulfilling his request right now.
This is what the member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke said on February 17 in this House:
Canadians want foreign interference from the Prime Minister's jet-setting resetters to stop.
This was clearly a reference to the Great Reset conspiracy theory. If the member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon is worried about being labelled “far right”, he might want to talk to his seatmates about the things that they say in this House.
Hold on; I have another example. The member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands went out and took a picture with Pat King, who is now in jail and facing 10 charges for the events that took place out in front of this building. The member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands actually went out and got a picture taken with him.
I have one that is even better. The member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon himself said, at a “Truckers for Freedom” rally in his riding, “Right now, you're right to be angry. Everyone has a right to be angry. Our country isn't normal. You need to stand up for what you believe in and you need to do it in the way you're doing it.”
If the member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon—
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- Apr/4/22 5:47:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would be happy to talk to the member about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and how they were infringed upon as soon as he can bring forward to the House an actual example of how that has been determined to be a fact by the court, which it has not. Nonetheless, if the member is so concerned about being labelled far-right, he might want to talk to his seatmates and indeed personally reflect on the comments that he is making because doing that will certainly give him the ability to control that narrative.
However, we are here talking about this motion and this particular report. I am going to focus my comments on pages 191 to 193 of the report. That is the dissenting report from the Conservative Party, those that decided to dissent on this report.
What I found very interesting about their dissenting report is that it is a quick read with not a lot of complex words. People can get through that pretty quickly. It is only two pages long and a sentence, so I would encourage anybody out there to read it and see for themselves that this is not a report to provide recommendations. There is not a single recommendation in it. It is just whining on with the same talking points that we hear over and over in the House. There is not a single actual recommendation of how to do something different.
They do have four points in here, which I will address specifically. They say in their first point that there is no plan that has been recommended by the committee to balance the budget. I find that very interesting, coming from a party that ran on balancing the budget not after one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight or nine years, but 10 years. The party opposite, which in this report is so incredibly critical of this government's position on running deficits during this pandemic as a way to empower Canadians and our economy to get through this, somehow is able to be so incredibly critical of it. However, their former leader, the member for Durham, was more than willing to tell the Canadian public back in September that he was willing to wait 10 years to balance the budget, yet they have the audacity to be so overly critical about it.
Let us go to point number two. There is no plan to control spending. That is what the Conservatives are saying, but we might recall from that same platform that I just referenced that the party ran on a platform of spending way more money than our party did when we were elected in the fall of 2021. I find it fascinating how they are suddenly so concerned about running deficits and about balancing budgets when they literally ran on the exact opposite six months ago.
Point three is interesting. They said in their report that they have concerns over the fact that there is a lack of attention paid in this report to supporting growth and prosperity. We have the highest GDP in the G7. How can they possibly make that claim, if nothing more than to try to score political points from the hundreds of thousands of people who will read this report, that we do not have a thriving economy when we have the best GDP right now in the G7?
Hon. Ed Fast We have the lowest investment, Mark.
Mr. Mark Gerretsen: Madam Speaker, the member for Abbotsford is correct. We do have the lowest debt-to-GDP ratio. What does that mean? That means it puts us in the position of being able to rebound out of the economic hardships of the last two years better than any of our counterparts. That is what it actually does. They failed to mention that, and they said that we do not have a plan.
I would argue with them, as the member for Winnipeg North and other people have mentioned, that growing the economy is not strictly done by reducing taxes, in particular for the wealthy, which is what the Conservatives would like to do. There are other ways of doing that. One of the ways is to empower and put more people into the workforce. There are two ways they can do that. One, we can get more parents who are sitting at home with kids into the workforce. How are we doing that? I do not know. Maybe we will do it the way that every single premier of Canada agreed to, including all the Conservative ones, and bring in $10-a-day child care. We do not have to look that far to see it is a successful program. Just look at Quebec.
Quebec, for quite a while, has had a low per-day child care rate. It is $7-a-day child care, and look at the success. More women, in particular, are in the workforce in Quebec, and so that is one way we put more people into the economy and grow our economy.
What is another way we can do it? It is by having robust, meaningful immigration programs that can bring more people into our country, just like the programs that attracted my parents in the 1950s after World War II. These programs can bring more people into our country so we can help to stimulate and grow our economy even faster.
Therefore, when the Conservatives say that there is a lack of attention being put on prosperity and growth, they are absolutely out to lunch. The actual data does not support their claim. It is very well known that we have one of the strongest economies in the world. Indeed, we have programs in place, or that are coming online, that will even further enhance that.
The fourth and final point, which I find to be very interesting in the Conservatives' report, is that they talk about significant proposals to attack the immediate threat to Canadians, specifically in respect to housing. They seem to be suggesting that there is nothing in the committee report's recommendations to support that. I know that there are 220 recommendations in the report, and maybe they did not get to read all of them before filing their dissenting report, but there is actually a recommendation in there, recommendation 203, that calls for the creation of half a million, quality, affordable homes. There is a plan in there, despite the fact that the Conservatives are suggesting in their dissenting report that there is not.
In conclusion, as it relates to the dissenting report, I would suggest that the next time the Conservatives put together a report to try to be critical of the work the committee has done, they should do two things: One, put some thought into what they are putting down on paper and see if it reflects the actual report; and two, perhaps more importantly, put some suggestions in there as to what they are recommending we do.
It is very easy to be critical. We hear it all the time from across the way. They are always critical about this person and that person, or that something is happening in this part of the economy or in this sector, but there is never an actual suggestion, unless it is to unlock more oil. There is never an actual suggestion to do anything that would have an impact. It is all just a rambling on of complaints about this government, which we could get just by sitting here in QP.
In my remaining time, I would like to talk about a couple of the initiatives that are in the report that I really appreciate and really like. I will start off with those that specifically have to do with the electrification of our environment, of our vehicles and of just about anything.
The world is changing. I know that the Conservatives, whenever the word “energy” comes out of their mouths, are only ever talking about oil.
An hon. member: Hear, hear!
Mr. Mark Gerretsen: Madam Speaker, they even just said “Hear, hear!” However, believe it or not, energy comes in other forms than just oil. I do not know if the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, who just heckled me, would know this, but I encourage him to walk into—
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- Apr/4/22 6:00:02 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, what did we just witness there? We just witnessed a filibuster within a filibuster. They were already filibustering by bringing in this concurrence motion, and then the member stood on a point of order to try to filibuster the filibuster. It is absolutely remarkable what we are seeing, but I will have that member know that I take this as a compliment. I take this as the people in the back room over there saying, “Oh God, there goes Gerretsen again. Somebody get in there and go shut him up. Hey, get in there and read this,” and they handed him something to read so he could filibuster the filibuster. That is what we just witnessed there, but it is perfectly in line with what we see coming from the Conservative Party, day after day, to avoid having to deal with Bill C-8. That is where we are right now, and that is what we are seeing right now.
As I was saying to the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, before he interrupted me with the filibuster to the filibuster, he should really take a trip to somewhere like Home Depot and walk around inside for a second and see if he can buy a gas lawnmower. It is not easy to find them anymore. The electrification of everything is literally happening before our eyes. Everything is being converted to battery-operated. It is very difficult nowadays to find products, particularly power tools, that are not battery-operated, especially industrial or larger power tools such as lawnmowers, for example.
The same can be said about the vehicles throughout the country. They are moving in a direction. Whether or not Conservatives want to get on board, it is happening. It is happening right before their eyes and it is not something they can control. It has gone past the tipping point. We have gone past the point of no return, so we are either going to get on board with it or we are going to be caught behind.
Will we need oil? We are going to need oil for a long time. There is no doubt about that, and the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan can clap to that, too. We will, but that does not mean that we cannot at the same time look for a way to transition away from oil, and that is what the recommendations in this report that I referenced are doing specifically, by calling on the government to look for those opportunities.
I brought one up that speaks to ensuring that there are charging stations for electric vehicle readiness as part of the efficiency program to help Canadians who live in older houses. This is one of the problems that we have. A lot of older houses will have to be retrofitted to put in the proper infrastructure.
The one I really liked was recommendation 191. This specifically looked at establishing a greater focus on charging infrastructure investment needs by setting up and funding higher one- and five-year targets for electric vehicle charging stations. This is basically calling on the government to move faster than the already prescribed date of 2035 of being all net-zero emitting vehicles. It asks to set a goal to make one million existing apartment and condominium parking stalls electric-ready by 2030, which is incredibly important.
The apartment that I stay in here in Ottawa was only built in 2015, but for some reason the infrastructure was not already put in place for electric vehicles. That is going to have to be retrofitted. To that point, one of the recommendations that I really liked, recommendation 193, was to incorporate zero-emission vehicle requirements into the national building code and energy building code. Why is that so important? It is because most provinces look to the national building code. If we look at the Ontario building code, it is almost a carbon copy of the national building code. It is the same with Quebec's building code. We need national standards because those will then inform the other provincial standards that are out there.
Indeed, there are provinces that just look to the national building code. By encouraging this kind of stuff, which does not cost the government any money, and by putting these into the building code and encouraging that kind of infrastructure to be built now, we are going to be preparing ourselves for the future. That is one of the other recommendations that I really liked seeing in there.
I just want to say how disappointed I am that we got to the point today that we had to have this discussion. It is going to be unanimously approved by the House.
I imagine that will happen when the deferred recorded division takes place, but I find it very troubling that we even had to have this discussion, just as an opportunity for the Conservatives to once again stall the debate and filibuster what was going on so that we cannot deal with Bill C-8. For some reason, they are hung up on the fall economic statement and not letting it pass. At every step of the way, they are literally dragging their feet. They are the only ones still speaking to it. Every other party has given up on it, and 90% of the members from the Conservative Party who stand to talk about it do not even talk about Bill C-8. They talk about every grievance that they might happen to have at that time.
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- Apr/4/22 6:07:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what a great policy debate. Why did the Conservative Party not put that in its dissenting report? What an incredible point. That is something we could actually debate and discuss. I want to thank the member for bringing that forward, because he might very well be right. Why did the Conservatives not talk about it in the dissenting report? All they did in the dissenting report was whine and complain about everything the government is doing.
We are having this debate and he finally brings up a quite germane point. I would argue that, as the technology develops further and further, we are not really going to need that infrastructure, other than between extremely long commutes. Right now, the average electric vehicle gets about 400 kilometres, maybe about 320 kilometres in the winter in our climate, but as the technology develops further and further, that range is going to increase more and more. I would argue that the infrastructure will not even be needed as greatly as it appears to be needed right now, but I want to thank him for that very good point that he just brought up.
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- Apr/4/22 6:09:28 p.m.
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It is because as we evolve, Madam Speaker, and as regional levels adopt these programs, sometimes we get to the point of saying that maybe it is time for the federal government to take on this program now. Is that not one of the great things of being in this country, that we can look at what others are doing and look to those as examples of what we can do nationally?
I will give another great example. Thirty or 40 years ago, the environment was just a provincial issue. There was very little that the federal government got into in terms of environment. It was not until recently, when we started to realize the wider impacts of the environment, that we saw the need for the federal government to take it on. I would suggest that it is the exact same thing with this.
As we see the need for these programs and the need for them to develop over time, we can see the need for various provinces to want to bring in child care. I do not recall Quebec saying it did not want its portion of that money and turn the federal government down. I am pretty sure Quebec is part of the program that the federal government brought in.
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- Apr/4/22 6:11:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, there is an interesting thing about this question, and I am so glad I was asked it. The problem is that NDP members will say that we have not reduced oil subsidies as much as we have, but the reality is that when they are making those calculations, they are including the money being used to deal with orphaned wells. The government put in a significant amount of money, right at the beginning of the pandemic, to help deal with the orphaned wells out there. The calculation the member is using is including that. If we look at the traditional subsidies in oil and gas, they have been reduced quite significantly and are on track to being eliminated by 2025 or sooner.
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- Apr/4/22 6:13:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I love that the member cherry-picked some data. He talked about the last couple years and the average growth rather than talking about the GDP as it has applied over time. If we look at it over time, we have been successful in outpacing our G7 partners.
To the point about whether we need to look at spending differently from how we have over the last two years, I do not think there is a member in the House who would disagree with that. I suggest that, as we move forward, we are certainly going to see that. We are not going to keep the same level of spending that was required to provide CERB and a lot of the other supports to individuals.
If the federal government maintained the exact same spending level it has for the last two years to support people through the pandemic, I could understand the member's concern, but I really do not think that is going to happen. If that is his concern, I think he is going to be surprised on Thursday.
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- Apr/4/22 6:15:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I agree with the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands. Party position or not, my personal position is that we should not be subsidizing the fossil fuel industry, full stop.
Her question is about subsidizing through carbon sequestration. I would like to get into the details of that. I do not think that carbon sequestration is a long-term objective. Could it be used in the short-term? I think the technology is not there yet, and therefore it will never happen.
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