SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 58 - Apr/26/22

Ms. Yvonne Jones (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources and to the Minister of Northern Affairs, Lib.)

Apr/26/22 1:25:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the House today. I want to first thank and acknowledge my colleague from West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country for that fantastic speech he gave this morning, but also for all the work he does inside of our government, lobbying on so many issues that affect his riding and other Canadians. I listened to a lot of debate around this budget in the last few days, and I know that some days, when we get up and everything is doom and gloom and all we see is negativity, it is really hard to see the positive impact that is happening for so many in their lives across this country. However, I live in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, and I can tell members that in my riding of Labrador we will be supporting this budget wholeheartedly, and I want to tell members the reasons. It is because not only are we recognizing that there are sectors in this country that deserve to be lifted up and singled out in terms of investments, but we are also responding to critical needs of people who have been ignored for far too long in this country. I am an MP from a northern region of Canada. I represent a strong indigenous population of Inu and Inuit people. I have many rural and remote communities across my riding, and I can honestly tell members that we have never seen investments in our northern communities before in our history like we are seeing today. When we look at Newfoundland and Labrador in general, we have the federal government that renewed the Atlantic accord agreement with Newfoundland and Labrador at a time in its history when it needed the financial revenues and the assistance. The investment of $2.5 billion under the Atlantic accord is allowing that province to share in the royalties it has over the years and continues to foster, develop, produce and remit to the Government of Canada. We made investments in rate mitigation of $5.2 billion. That, again, was an agreement we made with the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. As a shareholder, Canada has drawn down taxes and benefits from our province for many years through the oil and gas industry. No other government, including those of the members opposite, ever agreed to do what was fair in giving back some of that revenue to the province at a time when it needed it the most. Ours is the first government to do that. The members opposite talk about our not supporting industry or jobs. We have invested more in economic and resource development than any other government before us. We have bought pipelines; we have set up critical mineral developments; we have invested in infrastructure to support major resource development projects in Canada; and when the people of Alberta needed assistance through COVID, when the oil and gas industry was reaching the bottom of the barrel, who stepped up? It was our government, because we recognized that workers should always come first and that families should always come first. Members stand up and they criticize the money that was spent in COVID. They criticize the fact that 40% of businesses that employ people in Canada received a wage subsidy. Do members think these workers should not have received that and that they should have been sent home with no income? They would have lost their homes; they would have lost their cars; their kids would have had to leave universities and colleges. Is that what they are suggesting? That is not what we believe. Do members know that in my own province of Newfoundland and Labrador, 49,000 jobs were maintained as a result of the wage subsidy? That is 49,000 income earners who were able to pay their mortgages on their homes through COVID because of the response of our government. That is something I will never apologize for. It is easy to be a naysayer. It is a lot more difficult to devise a plan that responds to the real needs of Canadians. That is where the challenge is. We talk about health care. There is no issue more important to the constituents I represent in this Parliament than health care, whether it be care for mental health and supports for suicide prevention, or addiction services, surgeries, physician access or nursing access. All of these things are critical. They are important, not only for the constituents I represent in the House of Commons, but for all Canadians. Sometimes it is not a bad thing that the Government of Canada steps up when it is needed to step up. That is what we are doing. There is a backlog of surgeries in this country. I talked to a doctor in Quebec only last week, who told me that he cannot even get scheduled emergency room time. That is how much the ERs are blocked. That is how deep their backlog is. I talked to doctors in Newfoundland and Labrador, and the situation is no different. It exists across the country. When members stand and say they will not support this budget, they are saying they will not support the Government of Canada investing in surgeries and bringing the wait-list down for Canadians who need access to health care. There is another thing we are doing. I am not the only member of a rural riding in the House of Commons, and I am not the only member of a northern riding in the House of Commons. I can say that the recruitment of doctors and nurses in rural and northern Canada has become a crisis. The only way to get a doctor or nurse is on a locum. It is temporary. There is no consistency in service. What we are doing as a government is providing an incentive for doctors and nurses to come and live in northern and rural communities across Canada, an incentive that will allow people to have good medical services no matter where they live. The consistency of having a regular doctor or regular nurse could mean having diagnoses and treatments that will save people's lives early on. We can never forget that. Is that something we should be apologizing for as a government, that we are going to invest in a health care system that allows for that to happen? I heard members today say it is not the federal government's responsibility and the provinces could be doing it. These are the same provinces that are asking us for more health care money. They are asking us to increase spending. They are telling us they cannot afford to continue down the path they are going down. Therefore, we are stepping up, and we are stepping up in those areas, just like we are doing on dental care and just like we have done for many northern Inuit communities on a suicide strategy, to deal with what is becoming and has been a major crisis for many northern communities in Canada. There is no other government in our history that has stepped up on reconciliation. We are the first. Not only have we built a relationship that respects and honours the rights of indigenous people in this country, but we have worked with them in partnership to build better homes, to build better infrastructure, to build a stronger economy and to build a future that they can grow and prosper in and one that they can control. Can anyone honestly say that is not the right direction for Canada? I can guarantee everyone that what we bring to indigenous Canada, they bring to the rest of us 10 times over.

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Mr. Larry Maguire (Brandon—Souris, CPC)

Apr/26/22 1:35:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on her speech. It is a pleasure to sit with my colleague on the natural resources committee. It is no coincidence that the price of a house has doubled in Canada, because the government has doubled the debt as well in the years the Liberals have been in government. It is a parallel, and it is not a plan for the future. Prime Minister Harper was the first to apologize to first nations for the indignities that had taken place, so there is room for all governments to be involved. The current government is not the first one to do any of these things. Liberals talk about the money they are putting into housing. We are still tremendously short of housing in Canada, yet inflation has doubled and the price of a house has gone to $840,000 from $420,000. How can they sustain this and say that the spending they have done is not causing inflation, when the Parliamentary Budget Officer himself has indicated that only a third of their spending has gone toward the pandemic?

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The Deputy Speaker

Apr/26/22 1:36:12 p.m.
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Let us not forget that it is questions and comments. The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources.

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Ms. Yvonne Jones

Apr/26/22 1:36:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, not only do I sit on the natural resources committee with my colleague, but for a few years we were Arctic parliamentarians together and he has certainly been a tremendous support for communities across the Arctic as well. I want to say a couple of things. First of all, members cannot get up one moment and in one sentence criticize the fact that the Government of Canada is investing in Canadians and then in the same breath say it is spending too much money on Canadians. It is one way or the other. As a government, we have invested in housing. We have invested in housing for urban centres, for rural centres, for indigenous people and for low-income families. We have invested in housing for women and for women fleeing violence. We have invested in housing for the homeless and for many groups and developers who want to provide co-development housing. We have invested to make it more accessible and affordable for homeowners to buy. My question for the member is this. What suggestions do you have that we have not done to make the programs stronger and more affordable for Canadians?

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The Deputy Speaker

Apr/26/22 1:37:40 p.m.
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I have all kinds of suggestions, but as Speaker I am not allowed to share them with the member. Questions and comments, the hon. member for Longueuil—Saint-Hubert.

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Mr. Denis Trudel (Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, BQ)

Apr/26/22 1:37:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, last week I did some volunteering in a homeless resource called “La Halte du Coin”, which took over an old church during the pandemic and is open 24/7. It was very troubling. I was there from four hours to six hours and helped serve meals. At six o’clock, everyone is asked to leave. They can serve 50 meals, but they have only 30 beds. People wait outside, but not everyone can get in. That night, it was raining. It was unbelievably sad. When I left at around 6:30 p.m., there were a lot of people waiting outside. Those who were unable to get in would sleep somewhere in the neighbourhood, in a park or near an ATM. It is a tragic situation. The federal government was very reluctant to renew funding for these resources. According to the budget, they will continue to fund the reaching home program, in response to the pandemic, until 2026. People want predictability. Those who work there are not paid $150 an hour. We need predictability. Why can we come up with 15-year plans for all sorts of things like climate change, but not to help the homeless? That is scandalous, in my opinion.

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Ms. Yvonne Jones

Apr/26/22 1:39:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I certainly understand where my colleague is coming from. I know that he recognizes a problem that has been challenging for many Canadians with regard to homelessness. He will be happy to know that in this budget we are investing over $8 billion in housing and homelessness across Canada. It is the first housing strategy ever in the country, and I look forward to his voting for the budget and supporting that initiative.

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Mr. Peter Julian (New Westminster—Burnaby, NDP)

Apr/26/22 1:39:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I always enjoy listening to my colleague in the House of Commons. She represents a stunningly beautiful part of this country in Labrador, but it is also an area, as she well knows, that has been unfortunately facing the same incredible shortage of affordable housing that we have seen in other parts of the country. Over the past few decades, from the former Paul Martin government that axed the national housing program to the dismal decade of the Harper government and going back to the current government, we have seen that governments have not adequately funded the important sector of affordable housing. Because of the NDP push and the work of the member for Burnaby South, we now have, for the first time, adequate investment in housing. How does my colleague feel about these previous governments that refused to take the incredible dearth of affordable housing seriously?

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Ms. Yvonne Jones

Apr/26/22 1:40:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate the question from my colleague, but it would take me the rest of the afternoon to answer it in terms of telling him how I really feel. What I will say is that the money in this budget is not by accident when it comes to responding to housing needs in Canada. We know they are there. We know what Canadians have been saying. We have been listening and we are responding. I want to thank my colleague for his advocacy and his support toward these investments for Canadians.

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The Deputy Speaker

Apr/26/22 1:41:20 p.m.
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I want to remind everyone that the quicker the questions, comments and answers are, the more people get to participate in this great round of questions and comments. Continuing debate, the hon. member for Red Deer—Lacombe.

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Mr. Blaine Calkins (Red Deer—Lacombe, CPC)

Apr/26/22 1:41:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to rise today and join in the debate on the 2022 budget. I would like to congratulate the government for having a string of two years in a row where it tabled a budget. It kind of broke that historical trend for a while. In many ways, this is a historic budget, and one that may well be remembered for generations to come. It will be remembered as a budget that failed to rein in reckless spending and restore fiscal responsibility, a budget that has put the financial well-being and access to government services for future generations at risk, and a budget that doubled down on failed policies in the pursuit of ideology. It will also be remembered as the New Democratic Party's first federal budget, which is no small feat for a party that officially won only 25 seats with less than 18% of the vote just six months ago. It is a government nobody voted for and was not even debated in the last election. It has never been clearer that we have an NDP Prime Minister who just happened to be born into the Liberal Party. Instead of going his own way as a New Democrat, he decided it would be easier to turn the once fiscally reasonable Liberal Party of Sir Wilfrid Laurier and Jean Chrétien into a mirror image of the NDP, complete with a coalition-style partnership, to avoid scrutiny and accountability. That reality is reflected in this budget, and it is future generations who are going to bear the burden of it. It was necessary to engage in extraordinary spending in the early days of the pandemic in order to ensure that Canadians had the support they needed to make it through the incredibly difficult times brought on by the pandemic and the various public health measures brought in across the country by all levels of government to address it. Unfortunately, the government treated—

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The Deputy Speaker

Apr/26/22 1:43:32 p.m.
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We have a point of order from the hon. member for Windsor West.

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West

Mr. Brian Masse

Apr/26/22 1:43:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to note that this was not the first NDP budget. Our first budget was with the hon. Jack Layton. I was there at the time, and thought I would correct the record that it was not the first NDP budget. We have already done that and been there.

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The Deputy Speaker

Apr/26/22 1:43:51 p.m.
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We are descending into debate once again. The hon. member for Red Deer—Lacombe has the floor.

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Mr. Blaine Calkins

Apr/26/22 1:43:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from the NDP for reminding us of the napkin budget brought in a few years ago. That was with the Liberals as well. Unfortunately, the government treated this rationale as an opportunity to spend wildly and recklessly on policies that did nothing to support Canadians through the pandemic or that would help create sustainable economic growth in the future to help pay for their spending. This budget continues this practice, with a deficit of $52.8 billion and no plan to reach a balanced budget. At the end of the 2014-15 fiscal year, the federal debt was just over $612 billion with a budgetary surplus of $1.9 billion. Now, the federal debt is almost $1.2 trillion, and is anticipated to reach $1.3 trillion in the next couple of years. The cost to service our debt this year alone will be $26.9 billion. Inflation has reached a 31-year high, and we have just seen the largest rate hike in decades by the Bank of Canada: a full half a percentage point, bringing the overnight rate to 1% in order to deal with government spending-driven inflation. We know that the Bank of Canada will continue to aggressively raise interest rates, making this spending even less sustainable. In fact, one of the reasons why the Bank of Canada had to increase it so aggressively was because of this unsustainable spending, something the NDP-Liberals would realize if they were not all following the Prime Minister’s example and not thinking at all about monetary policy. We are all aware of the devastating impact that inflation is having across Canada. Too many people who have been just getting by for the past couple of years, or even longer in some cases, now find themselves in a situation where they no longer can get by. Groceries, fuel and pretty much everything else we can think of is getting more expensive. Housing costs have skyrocketed, with the price of the average house doubling since the Prime Minister came into office and increasing 30% in the last year alone. Young Canadians, who have seen their dream of home ownership evaporate under the government, were hoping for some sort of inspired measure in this budget: something that showed the NDP-Liberal coalition understood the issue and was actually trying to fix it. Instead of hope, the government doubled down on more of the same failed policies that have not helped young people get homes in the past six years. Nothing in the budget will help get homes built this year. In fact, the solution that the coalition government has put forward seems to be a plan to increase the size of the bureaucracy, not the supply of houses. The budget almost acknowledges that the government is not even trying to help young people get into their own homes. Instead of a serious plan to cut red tape, cut costs and build homes, the government decided that a multi-generational home renovation tax credit was the way to go. Families are the cornerstone of our society, and supporting our loved ones as they age or when they are facing hard times is admirable. I am sure we would do it for our families, and most Canadians would want to do the same if they were able to do so. However, considering the housing crisis, this tax credit, which gives up to $7,500 for renovations to make a secondary suite, is not a nice social policy to help support strong families. It is an admission of failure by the NDP-Liberals. It is an admission that they are going to give up on helping to get young people out of their parents’ basements and put them into their own homes. The government is telling young people that instead of trying to fix the mess it created and helping to get them into homes, it is going to help families fix up basement suites so that they feel like their own places. Young Canadians want the pride of home ownership and the ability to build some equity, and they want to have the autonomy that comes with living on their own or with their partner or spouse. They do not want the government to help put a shower in the half-bath in mom and dad's basement and call it a day. Without a meaningful plan to increase supply, bring prices to a reasonable level and help new people enter the housing market, that is exactly how this tax credit is going to be interpreted by Canadians, and who could possibly blame them? Another thing that was in this budget is the expected increase in the amount of equalization payments. Members will recall that in 2018, Bill “no more”, I mean Bill Morneau, quietly locked in the equalization formula until 2024 with virtually no consultation. The Liberal government members of the day did not really care that Alberta and other western provinces were going through hard times; they just saw my whole province as a piggy bank that they were willing to shake every last dime out of while they could. After all these years of Liberals taking from that piggy bank without putting anything back in, there is not much left to give, but that will not stop the NDP-Liberal coalition from trying, and if that means smashing the bank open, they are going to be quite all right with that. The feeling that the government does not understand Alberta or that it is actively trying to dismantle its economy and way of life is not new. Some held out hope that, with the finance minister being at least born in Alberta and the associate finance minister representing an Edmonton riding, there could have been some sort of consideration given to our province, but that certainly was not the case with this budget. The attack on the energy sector continues, with the NDP-Liberal government doubling down on the plan to phase out the oil and gas sector. With this budget, the government will no longer allow the use of flow-through shares for the oil and gas industries, so smaller firms that rely on this important tool will find it that much harder. The government has asked them to reduce their emissions and navigate an ever more complicated regulatory system, and at the same time the Liberal-NDP government is working to ensure that oil and gas companies do not have the resources that they will need to accomplish either of those goals. The budget did include, however, a tax credit for carbon capture and storage, but unfortunately it is deeply flawed. The budget suggests that there is a credit for carbon capture, utilization and storage, which means that the recovered oil can also be utilized, but in the case of the energy sector in my province, that is simply not true. The tax credit specifically rules out enhanced oil recovery, where the carbon that is being sequestered can be pumped back into the well to be permanently sequestered and in the process help extract oil that is at the bottom, which otherwise can no longer be accessed. This technology creates the lowest-emission oil possible and allows for wells to be fully utilized, resulting in jobs and royalties, and the CO2 is still sequestered. Enhanced oil recovery sequestration is already taking place. There is already a process, a regulatory regime, and there are businesses operating in this space. In my riding, enhanced energy has used this method to sequester CO2 and recover the cleanest oil in North America. A year ago, they announced that they had reached the monumental milestone of sequestering one million tonnes of CO2, an equivalent of taking 350,000 cars off the road. If anyone is puzzled by the fact that the government is against this technology, so is absolutely everybody in Alberta. If the NDP and the Liberals want to see emissions reduced, they need to put their ideology aside, support the oil and gas sector and support CCUS.

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Ms. Jennifer O'Connell (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, Infrastructure and Communities, Lib.)

Apr/26/22 1:51:55 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member opposite spoke out of one side of his mouth saying the government has spent too much, and then out of the other side of his mouth saying we are not supporting Canadians enough. I would like him to clarify what exactly he does not support in this budget. Does he not support providing early learning and child care? Does he not support dental coverage for seniors? Does he not support other supports for seniors? We doubled the first-time homebuyers tax credit. He talks about housing being an issue and housing affordability, yet he does not support these very measures. Which is it? Do the Conservatives support Canadians, or are they just here for political hits?

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Mr. Blaine Calkins

Apr/26/22 1:52:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am pretty sure, when we look at the budget, that the dental care plan is for people under the age of 12, and the member who asked me the question just asked it for seniors, so I do not even think she understands her own budget. The reality is that not a single province was asking for dental care transfers from the federal government. What that actually is is a promise made to the NDP for continued support of a corrupt, tired government that does not have any idea how to get its spending under control.

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The Deputy Speaker

Apr/26/22 1:53:18 p.m.
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Order. The hon. parliamentary secretary is rising on a point of order.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen

Apr/26/22 1:53:32 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member just said that the government is corrupt. Then, the member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman said the Prime Minister is corrupt, in a heckle. Perhaps both members would like to apologize to the House for making such an outlandishly false statement.

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The Deputy Speaker

Apr/26/22 1:53:50 p.m.
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I would suggest to the member that he maybe rephrase that. The hon. member for Red Deer—Lacombe.

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