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Mr. Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay (Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, BQ)

Apr/26/22 4:19:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I also represent a mostly agricultural riding where there are many producers and processors. My colleague from Beauce mentioned the various trade wars, a reality that I think will become more and more frequent, unfortunately. Consider China, which closed its market to Canadian and Quebec pork a few years ago. After reading the budget and the economic statements, I feel that we are not prepared for future trade wars. Would my colleague agree to having permanent funding to ensure that we will be prepared to compensate our producers in the case of future market closures?

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Mr. Richard Lehoux

Apr/26/22 4:20:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is really important. In the agri-food and food processing sector, we are a country that exports a lot. As I said earlier, it is important to diversify our markets, but we need programs to support our businesses in trade wars like the ones going on now. I am very comfortable with that, and such measures should already be in place.

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Ms. Lisa Marie Barron (Nanaimo—Ladysmith, NDP)

Apr/26/22 4:20:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the government's emission reduction target plan relies heavily on the use of carbon capture in order to meet our climate goals. Across Canada, experts tell us that carbon capture is unproven and will not be enough to help us meet our—

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Ms. Lisa Marie Barron

Apr/26/22 4:21:21 p.m.
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—emission reduction targets. We no longer have time for empty talk. Does the member agree that Canadians cannot rely on carbon capture, and that we need to invest today in alternative energy sources that cause zero emissions?

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Mr. Garnett Genuis

Apr/26/22 4:21:21 p.m.
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It is happening in my riding.

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Mr. Richard Lehoux

Apr/26/22 4:21:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, carbon capture is indeed very important. Far from ruling out this option, perhaps we should be looking at how to move forward faster. The agriculture sector can play a very important role in carbon capture, in my humble opinion.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Apr/26/22 4:21:51 p.m.
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That is it for questions and comments, but I want to remind the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan that, as opposed to shouting out when people are speaking, he should wait until I ask whether there are questions and comments. It is not really respectful to be yelling when someone else has the floor.

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

Apr/26/22 4:22:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am going to start by acknowledging that we are here on the traditional territory of the Algonquin peoples. Meegwetch for tolerance and patience in the path of reconciliation. I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Mirabel. I am addressing the budget late this afternoon. There are things in the budget I like quite a lot, so I am going to start with the things I like quite a lot and then explain why I cannot possibly, in good conscience, vote for this budget. Among the things we like quite a lot, yes, is that we have the New Democratic Party's confidence and supply agreement. It has been a Green Party policy since 2015 that dental care is health care and should be part of our health care system, so we are pleased to see it in this budget. We also are pleased there is a repetition of some sort of aspirational goal to deliver pharmacare to Canadians. There is not enough in this budget for me to believe it yet. We want to see the actual path to pharmacare clearly laid out, and fast. I am very pleased to see a number of other items here, such as the follow through on child care. I suppose “I am old enough to remember” will be a theme in this speech. I start sentences with “I am old enough to remember”. I am old enough to remember 2005, when then minister Ken Dryden achieved what the now new government, which is not that new anymore, has done. Ken Dryden had gotten signed agreements with every province and territory to deliver affordable child care to every Canadian. Many years later it was derailed by the decision the NDP made in those days to defeat the Liberals and put Stephen Harper in place for a very long time. We lost Kyoto, we lost Kelowna, and we lost the child care plan in 2005 and the election in January 2006. I am really pleased child care is back. Affordable child care is going to make a difference to every Canadian family that has children and desperately needs to have child care. When I was a single mom, I earned $24,000 a year as executive director of the Sierra Club. I spent half of it on child care. The woman who was hired to do the child care in a program in the neighbourhood is a wonderful woman who became a good friend. My salary was split in half and I paid her through a child care program. Because she earned only $12,000, her child care for her children was free. I was making $24,000, and half of it was going to child care. These things are sort of unbelievable to people with good incomes, like those of us in this place, all of whom are paid so handsomely as members of Parliament. I do not take it for granted. I am pleased with much that is in this budget, and I am pleased to see the government keep its promises in a couple of areas. On housing, the thing that made me most pleased was to see co-op housing back on the agenda. It is not enough money; we need to do more, but there is $1.5 billion to bring back one of the most affordable, socially supportive ways that we can house ourselves, which is through co-ops. That is good. I know there are a lot of good intentions behind things like the tax measures against flipping. There are many good measures, including one of the promises, which was to bring in for the first time a searchable public registry for beneficial ownerships. Let us hope that helps deal with the problem of snow washing and of overseas interests buying up our housing. We still really need to deal with things like Airbnbs and the ability of people to buy homes, residential properties, and take them out of the marketplace. At the same time as they are making it harder to find affordable housing for Canadian families, they are undermining the tourism business, in which hotels and real B & Bs have to pay staff, buy insurance and be regulated. We need to protect our housing market from Airbnbs, but I also think we need to protect tourism industry employees and owners from the competition of Airbnbs. Let me move on to areas that were token and inadequate, and where we need to do so much more. It really was a broken promise on the mental health strategies and the need for mental health and addictions. The hon. member for Cariboo—Prince George has done so much good work on this. Why do we not have the suicide prevention line? Why do we not have supports for mental health in this budget? We should have seen them. Another key gap is the commitment that was made in the Liberal platform to put $1 billion toward fresh water. This budget is such a bitter disappointment. This title comes from The Hill Times and was signed by some of Canada's leading advocates for fresh water. Ralph Pentland, who used to run Environment Canada's freshwater programs, signed this article, as well as Oliver Brandes and Bob Sandford, who are eminent people in the field. The headline says it all: “Federal budget a failure when it comes to addressing the water crisis”. This is one of those sentences that starts with, “I am old enough to remember”. I am old enough to remember that, when I worked in Environment Canada in the 1980s, the Inland Waters Directorate in Burlington, Ontario had a staff of 1,250 people who did nothing but work on freshwater science and regulatory policy work. They had an annual budget of $60 million, so when this budget says the Liberals are going to provide $43 million over five years on fresh water and $8.7 million to the new Canada water agency, I would laugh if it was not so sad. It does not even begin to start adjusting dollars for inflation. This is an abject failure, and I do not know how this has happened when there is such urgency and when the government had already pledged to do this. The promise of a Canada freshwater agency is now more than two years old, and here we are with flooding and drought and fires. Water policy is also climate policy, and I want to just take a moment to say to the people of southern Manitoba, who are right now being walloped by climate crisis events, that a Canada water agency could help anticipate, prevent and adapt. I just want to give a shout-out to those people right now, because I know that in Manitoba things are very tough for many families. Also, in this budget there are things that are completely missing. There is nothing for ground transportation. Many people will say that is provincial jurisdiction, but so is municipal public transit. It was really great that the Harper government made the gas tax a permanent predictable fund for municipal transportation, but where are we as a federal Parliament in responding to Canadians from coast to coast who have lost their bus service, and whose service on VIA Rail is down to an occasional antique train that rumbles through? I am talking about between Vancouver and Toronto and Montreal to Halifax. We have not seen any significant investment in that ground transportation in at least a decade. All the money that has gone to VIA Rail in all these years has gone to the Windsor-Quebec corridor. That is great. We need decent train service in the Windsor-Quebec corridor, but we also need decent train service with spokes that run off this hub. We need bus service across Canada. Again, this is more than transportation and this is more than climate policy. This is justice. One of the key recommendations of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls was that people need to be able to get access to safe and affordable public transit so they are not hitchhiking. The most marginalized people in our society are forced into hitchhiking because we act like there is not a problem. If people want to get from Kamloops to Prince George, if they want to get from Kamloops to Vancouver or any of these routes, or if they want to get from Moncton to Campbellton, they have almost no way to travel if they do not own a car. Also, for seniors and for a lot of us, being forced to drive on unsafe roads, particularly during hazardous winter blizzards, to get to doctors' appointments does not suggest we are a wealthy industrialized society. In fact, our public ground transportation system is worse than in any developing country I have ever visited. Moving on to what else we need, there is nothing in here for the tourism sector, which I would submit has been the hardest-hit sector in the pandemic. What we hear is that there is going to be a tourism strategy developed, but there is no money in this budget for it. We really need to do something to make sure that since, and I will say it out loud, the pandemic is not over, small businesses in the tourism sector can survive. Why can I not vote for this budget? It is a complete failure in responding to what, three days earlier, was laid out by the IPCC. On April 4, the lead author said it was now or never. The panel never gave the option of later. It is now or never for a habitable planet, and this budget fails in that fundamental threat to our survival.

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Mr. Garnett Genuis (Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, CPC)

Apr/26/22 4:32:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, there is a lot I disagree with in my hon. friend's speech. I found, in particular, her denunciation of Airbnbs to be a little bit odd. They are a great, affordable opportunity, especially for families to travel, and they have more flexibility than hotels. I want to focus on the issue of carbon capture and storage, because the NDP, speaking previously, said that carbon capture and storage was unproven technology. I have news for the House. There is carbon capture and storage happening as we speak in my riding, in a project called Quest. I was at an open house last week for a project called Polaris that is entirely private-sector-funded. It benefits from credits, but it does not involve any direct spending by the government. Industry is making these investments now in carbon capture and storage, and there are carbon capture and storage projects that are up and running. They are working and they are capturing carbon. It is bizarre that some members say that we do not know if it works. It is happening. Could the member acknowledge the benefits of carbon capture and storage and the positive impact that it has had?

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Ms. Elizabeth May

Apr/26/22 4:33:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, first, in my riding, one of the reasons that local businesses have to close earlier and more often is that there is no affordable housing for workers to come in and use. A very real concern of local businesses in my riding is that places that used to rent to summer students and workers are no longer available because they are Airbnbs, so we can pursue that conversation later. Meanwhile, the difficulty with carbon capture and storage is that it works far less than advertised. It can sequester some carbon, but in no project around the world has it ever met its goals or targets. It is about the most expensive way, and one of the less reliable ways, to do what is needed to be done reliably, quickly and affordably.

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Mrs. Claude DeBellefeuille (Salaberry—Suroît, BQ)

Apr/26/22 4:34:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her beautiful speech. I know she cares about the most vulnerable people in our society.. I wanted to remind her that there is a large organization in Quebec called the Fédération de l'âge d'or du Québec, which brings together all people aged 55 and over, and that means 500,000 people. The FADOQ has asked the government to increase old age security payments for people aged 65 and over. The current government plans to increase it for people aged 75 and over. Can my colleague explain whether she agrees with the need to increase the old age security pension for seniors aged 65 and over? Why does she think there is absolutely no mention of this in the budget?

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Ms. Elizabeth May

Apr/26/22 4:35:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Salaberry—Suroît. I voted in favour of the Bloc Québécois budget amendment specifically for the reasons she outlined in her question. The Bloc Québécois added that we must have a concrete program to combat the climate emergency. As for the question of funding for our seniors, I do not have an answer to her question. Ignoring the needs of our seniors makes no sense.

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

Apr/26/22 4:35:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am wondering if the member could provide her thoughts. She started to talk about the child care program, and we do have a national child care program. Even though we at times see governments spend money, there are many derivatives that come out of that. That particular program will also generate revenue and it will also have a real, tangible impact on the lives of many. Can she just provide her thoughts on that?

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Ms. Elizabeth May

Apr/26/22 4:36:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as I reflected on in my statement, for virtually all of my daughter's childhood, I was a single mom, and if this program had been in place, it would have been much more affordable. Early childhood education and good child care are not just about parking your kid somewhere. They are about actually creating an enriched, educational experience for children, and it should be available to every Canadian child, regardless of the economic status of their parents or parent, and it is about time we brought this forward. It is catching up with many other countries in terms of the social safety net. Let us make sure we continue going forward. We know this was a she-cession. We know that a lot of people who quit their jobs were not the dads but the moms. This was not always, but a lot. We have a huge chunk of our workforce right now that is not able to go to work until they know for sure that they have reliable child care. This is something that was a long time coming, and I am really happy to see it.

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Mr. Jean-Denis Garon (Mirabel, BQ)

Apr/26/22 4:37:24 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague and friend from Saanich—Gulf Islands for sharing her valuable time with me. If I had to describe the thin little budget that was tabled three weeks ago, the phrase that would come to mind would be “missed opportunity”. I am not just talking about one missed opportunity, I am talking about a slew of missed opportunities. First, the pandemic should have alerted the government to the plight of seniors, to the fact that they are on fixed incomes and their purchasing power has been greatly eroded. I was hoping that the Liberals would understand, given that before the election, they had said it was urgent to send a $500 cheque to seniors aged 75 and over, to win their vote. Indeed, the plight of seniors was appalling back then, when it was time to win votes. All of a sudden, we are presented with a budget that not only contains nothing for seniors, but includes a small graph that basically tells them to stop complaining and whining, that their lives are fine, that they need to stop asking for money, and that the government is tired of them, literally. The budget should have been an opportunity for the Liberal government to show that it understands that there are major funding problems in the health care system. We are not making this up. For weeks now, the Minister of Health has been going around bragging about how, during the pandemic, he was forced to rush tens of billions of dollars to the provinces. The provinces—underfunded since the 1990s, thanks to the Liberals—started offloading, rescheduled surgeries and ran out of space, almost to the point of leaving people to die in the streets. Instead of increasing health transfers and recognizing that reality, the minister says we should consider ourselves lucky that he bailed us out during the pandemic and would be wise to settle for what he has to offer, which is nothing. We have a Minister of Environment and Climate Change who should have realized that, if he continues to allow increased oil production, it will have a negative impact on the future of the energy transition. This same minister boasted on social media last week about how Canada had lowered its emissions in 2020, in the middle of a pandemic, when cars were off the roads and planes were grounded. The government is congratulating itself instead of acknowledging the sacrifices that will have to be made in the future to make this transition. The Minister of Environment is happy about the pandemic, the Minister of Health is happy about the pandemic and the Minister of Seniors is happy about the pandemic. This budget is jam-packed with oil subsidies. When I checked the news and turned on my computer to see reactions the day after the budget was presented, I figured I could judge how good the budget was based on who liked it. The first reaction I saw was from the oil and gas industry, which was very happy with the budget. It obviously did not get everything it wanted, since the Liberals had to leave a little for Jean Charest and the member for Carleton, but oil companies still did well. Legal and environmental associations, as well as the mayor of Montreal, whom the environment minister likes to quote, came to say that this is a bad budget. The organization West Coast Environmental Law told us that carbon capture is an experimental technology that could increase water and energy use, as well as our GHG emissions. The budget includes subsidies for exactly this purpose, even though we have been calling on the federal government for years to abolish subsidies to oil companies. We are not talking about small amounts here, but about huge subsidies. For the next five years, $2.5 billion will go directly into the pockets of the oil companies each and every year. That means $12.5 billion in total over that period, but we have to remember that the government has no money for health care. For the next four years, $1.5 billion per year will go directly into the pockets of oil companies, for a total of $18.5 billion over nine years. The government says that it is also making an effort and that it has done away with “inefficient” subsidies to oil companies. We have been waiting for many years for a definition of what an inefficient subsidy is. It is important to note here that the subsidy that the government has abolished is worth $9 million out of a total of $18.5 billion. Rounding up the figures, the difference between the two is therefore $18.5 billion more to the oil companies, no more and no less. To get us to buy into that, they trot out their classic excuse, which is that, in western Canada and Newfoundland, people work hard to earn a decent living in the oil and gas sector. They call it the energy sector, which sounds better. They talk about these people who earn a decent living, families with mortgages. That is true. There are people who are stuck in this situation, who work in that industry and did not ask to be stuck in it. The problem is that, as we produce more and more oil, we get more and more families in trouble because they depend on that industry. The more trouble they are in, the more complicated it will be to scale back the industry in the future. From 1990 to 2010, Canadian oil production rose by 69%. From 2010 to 2015, it rose by another 31%. From 2015 to 2019—and this was under a Liberal government, our eco-friends across the way, Conservatives garbed in green—there was another 22% increase. Their recent announcement of an extra 300,000 barrels per day to save the world is another 13%. That is a 209% increase since 1990, the Kyoto protocol base year. The reason the Liberals use 2005 as their base year is to hide that. Let us get back to the fact that the government is getting families in trouble and making the transition harder as a result. We have the numbers. From 1995 to 2012, as a barrel of oil went from $33 to almost $130, the number of people working in Canada's oil and gas industry and depending on it grew from 99,000 to 218,000. We prefer a constructive approach. We believe there has to be a transition. It has to be done fast, but it has to be done right. We have not asked to shut everything down. We think production needs to be capped and there should be a gradual transition. We also think there should be green finance initiatives. This plan has nothing but generic sentences such as, “the Sustainable Finance Action Council will develop and report on strategies for aligning private sector capital”. It is all hot air. The federal government's plan is nothing but hot air. It has no transition plan. That makes it hard to vote in favour of this budget. There are solid proposals, like the train, the high-speed train that we have been wanting in the Quebec-Windsor corridor for years. The Minister of Environment and Climate Change has been bragging for years in interviews about not having a car and about how he likes the train. What we want is a high-speed train, a turtle that comes by twice as often. In the budget, there is $400 million over two years. A person might think there may be a train. However, when we ask officials what the $400 million is for, they tell us it is to find partners. Partnership is expensive. However, when it comes to the issue of western oil, then there is enough cash. That works. When it comes to infrastructure, it is even worse. The government wants to again start using the Canada Infrastructure Bank to save the world. This bank was created by the Prime Minister in 2015 during the economic downturn. The bank took so long to get off the ground that when it did start operating the economy was in full flight. Today, the government wants to drag its feet a second time with the transition. That is why this budget is against seniors, against our health care systems and against the transition. However, it is not too late to change it. We have a Prime Minister who travels across Canada, from coast to coast to coast, who lectures us, who tells us that we need to purify our hearts. He tells us that we must change, and that we are to be better. However, this budget contains irrefutable evidence that we have a tired government and a Prime Minister who does not intend to be better.

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

Apr/26/22 4:47:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, far from being tired, this is a government that is very progressive, and it continues to move Canadians and this country forward. It is interesting. The Conservatives stand up to say that we have abandoned the oil industry, and the Bloc stands up to say that we are giving too much to the oil industry. The bottom line is that we understand what Canadians want. They want clean air, good jobs, a healthy environment and a strong economy. I have good news for my friends in the Bloc and my friends in the Conservative Party. We can actually do both, and that is what this budget does. Does my friend and colleague not recognize that? One of the things he criticized, the Canada Infrastructure Bank, has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to get zero-emission buses in the city of Brampton. There are a lot of positive things in this budget, and the Canada Infrastructure Bank is doing a lot of positive things.

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Mr. Jean-Denis Garon

Apr/26/22 4:48:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the measures put in place by the Liberal government are brown measures disguised as green measures. The Conservatives see the green, and we see the brown. The reality is that they are only half measures. The Commissioner of the Environment confirmed it once again today. My colleague is boasting about his infrastructure bank, which barely worked. My loyalty does not lie with Brampton, but with the Bloc Québécois. When my colleague from Winnipeg North has travelled one kilometre on a high-speed train in the Quebec-Windsor corridor, he can ask me his question again.

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Mr. Garnett Genuis (Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, CPC)

Apr/26/22 4:48:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it was encouraging to hear the member talk about how oil production is going up in this country. I think one of the greatest solutions to the challenges we face in energy would be to support the development of liquefied natural gas products in Quebec. I think once those products were on stream, we would see the Bloc supporting the energy sector. There are some hopeful opportunities maybe in the future. I want to ask the member a question about subsidies because he went on about alleged subsidies. It seems to me that people looking for reasons to oppose the energy sector call any kind of incentive, any kind of tax break, a “subsidy”. They use such an expansive definition of the term. There are no real subsidies to the oil and gas sector, but the Bloc tries to redefine the term “subsidy” to be so expansive that it includes almost anything. Would he be supportive of applying the same definition of “subsidy” to industries that are important in his province and ending subsidies to those industries as well?

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Mr. Jean-Denis Garon

Apr/26/22 4:49:50 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Conservatives have it so easy. Their problem is that they never have enough oil, so their solution is to have more oil. There are times I would love to be in their position. We are talking about investment credits. When an oil company invests $1 but ultimately pays less than $1 because the government makes up the difference, that is an economic subsidy. I do not need any lectures from my colleague on equalization or transfers. It is like a dog chasing its tail. The Conservatives blame us for equalization and use that as an excuse to produce even more. When they produce even more and the fiscal gap gets even bigger, they will blame us even more. The Conservatives are creating their own problems and their own solutions. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be in their head.

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Ms. Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, NDP)

Apr/26/22 4:50:42 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member opened his comments with concern for seniors and the lack of action for seniors. One of the things the NDP would really like to see is for the government to adopt my colleague's bill on the guaranteed livable income. That would support seniors and, of course, many others as well who are living in poverty. Would the Bloc support such a bill?

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