SoVote

Jun/7/22 10:14:37 a.m.
Watch

Since today is the final allotted day for the supply period ending June 23, 2022, the House will go through the usual procedures to consider and dispose of supply bills. In view of recent practices, do hon. members agree that the bills be distributed now? Some hon. members: Agreed.

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Mr. Francesco Sorbara

Jun/7/22 11:20:53 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as a government and as a society, we always must monitor any anti-competitive practices that are being put in place or practised by whichever sector of the economy where they are in place. It was great to see a number of measures in budget 2022 that are aimed at strengthening the Competition Act and giving more teeth and more resources to that entity.

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The Speaker

Jun/7/22 3:21:44 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-19

It being 3:20 p.m., pursuant to an order made on Thursday, November 25, 2022, the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division at the report stage of Bill C-19. The question is on Motion No. 1. A vote on this motion also applies to Motion No. 2.

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

Jun/7/22 7:01:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague from Winnipeg North mentioned the Infrastructure Bank, and I have to say that some of the early spending by the Infrastructure Bank was very encouraging, but I am devastated that budget 2022 does not promote the continued building of interties to connect our electricity grid so that we can have a functional, robust electricity grid working east-west and north-south to move renewable energy from one province to another. As the member will know, I am very disappointed in his government's climate plans, but I do not understand why it is ignoring the urgent need to build a strong electricity grid to meet our needs to decarbonize energy.

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Ms. Monique Pauzé (Repentigny, BQ)

Jun/7/22 7:35:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to inform you that I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères. I just got back from a short trip to Stockholm last week to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Summit in 1972. These summits on global environmental challenges are always very informative, but over the years they sometimes take on another tone. I have to say that the data is becoming quite worrisome. This year, in 2022, the call for urgent action was clearer than ever. The statistics and the evidence should be stirring us into action and motivating us to implement bold public policy that provides hope for the future. People say there is always someone who is worse off than we are, but based on what I saw in Sweden, I would venture that Canada might not even be able to say that. That is how badly off we are. In its most recent report, the IPCC highlighted the important, if not critical, role that municipalities play in combatting climate change. I would say that Stockholm recognized that well before—

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Mr. Xavier Barsalou-Duval (Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, BQ)

Jun/7/22 7:51:45 p.m.
Watch

Madam Speaker, we are here this evening to debate the supplementary estimates for the 2022-23 fiscal year. As members know, budgets generally go up to March 31. That is usually how they work. My question is about the supplementary estimates or the budget. Since we are talking about the 2022-23 budget, I want to talk more specifically about budget 2022, which was presented in March. I think tonight is the perfect opportunity to talk about a subject that is near and dear to me, but that the government does not seem to care much about. This will become clearer in a moment. There was one short segment in the budget that the government presented not too long ago that might have been overlooked. A federal budget is several hundred pages long, and it is rare for someone to go through it line by line, word by word. It is easy to miss things. Obviously, as the transportation and infrastructure critic, my staff and I are more interested in those areas, so we dug a little deeper. We found that on page 79 of the budget it says: Budget 2022 signals the government’s intention to accelerate the deadline for provinces to fully commit their remaining funding under the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program to priority projects to March 31, 2023. As a measure of fiscal prudence, any uncommitted funds after this date will be reallocated to other priorities. The federal government will work closely with provinces to support them in expediting project submissions. The next line says that the deadline remains unchanged for the territories. It is important to understand that the deadline was not 2023. It was moved up; it used to be later. In fact, the deadline was 2025. That is the whole problem. It is 2022 and the government is saying that all projects have to be submitted by 2023. We also have to understand what type of money and what type of projects we are talking about. The investing in Canada infrastructure program is a huge program. It has a $7.5‑billion envelope for the Quebec component alone. How much is left in the program right now? A bit more than $3.5 billion roughly has been allocated, so there is $4 billion left. In an election year, where all sorts of things may happen, where we might lose a month and there may be changes in government and ministers, people had 10 months to submit plans instead of the three years they should have had. Worse yet, it is not just the Government of Quebec submitting plans. The municipalities and towns of Quebec are doing so as well. Who will pay the price for these decisions at the end of the day? It is Quebec's towns. I mention this today because it has had significant and profound adverse effects, but it is more than that. When a government decides to change its agenda, we might say that is its right. It can do that and we can speak out against the resulting consequences, which is what I am doing right now. However, it goes further than that. An agreement was signed with the Quebec government in 2018, which essentially said that the end date was going to be 2025. There was a signed agreement in which the parties agreed on the amounts and the dates. When you have a signed agreement, you usually expect your partner on the other end to stick to it. Of course, when it comes to the federal government, it is a bit harder to know for sure whether one can rely on anything it agrees to, since it does have a bad track record in that regard. Many will remember, as I do, the famous 1980 referendum in which Trudeau senior said that voting “no” was a vote for change. I was not there in 1980 because I was not born yet, but I remember the images, and they come back to haunt me every time I see things like that happen. The infamous change was the patriation of the Canadian Constitution. This was not a very positive change for Quebec, which never signed it, not even to this day. Again in 1995, we were promised the world and what we got was the notorious sponsorship scandal and the equally notorious Clarity Act. That is the kind of reliable partner we can do without. On the subject of infrastructure specifically, I could talk about the national trade corridors fund, which gave us peanuts. I could talk about contracts for the Davie shipyard and how the government laughed in our faces and gave us next to nothing. The federal government seems to enjoy laughing at us and showing us who is boss. That is what we are seeing here. The problem is not just that the government wants to pretend it is the boss. The problem is that real people in real communities will be passed over. These are programs for green infrastructure, public transit and drinking water systems, which are huge issues for all the cities that need them. There is $4 billion up for grabs. Those people over there will say that cities still have a shot at those billions because they still have 10 months to submit something that takes three years to prepare. That means cities will be in a big rush and will put anything down in an effort to save as much as they can, but they are almost guaranteed to lose. It is sad to see a government acting that way. What is even sadder is that, in reading the agreement in detail, we realized that it contained something specific to Quebec. In Quebec, we do not necessarily like to be yes-men. Infrastructure and municipal affairs are not under federal jurisdiction. A total of 97% of the country's infrastructure belongs either to municipalities, provinces or Quebec. This means that the federal government owns roughly 3% of infrastructure, next to nothing, but it thinks it is the boss. The problem is that this government, which is notorious for thinking it is the boss, does not even uphold the agreements it signs. However, we need this money for our infrastructure. As I was saying, we took a look at the agreement to see the differences between Quebec and the other provinces, because we know that the federal government does not like it when Quebec does something different—that is practically criminal—because Quebec does not have the right or because it is dangerous. Quebec is not allowed to have its own identity. There are two sections in the 2018 agreement with Quebec, sections 3(a) and 3(b), under the heading “Commitments by Canada”, which are not in the other agreements. At the end, there are two short phrases noting that Canada would subsequently add phases to the program. There have indeed been several phases in the investing in Canada plan, but in the first phase, there was $342 million remaining in the amount allocated to Quebec. The sections I just mentioned state that the amounts not used in phase I will be able to be used in subsequent phases. This is worthwhile and very positive, because Quebec will not lose money and will be able to use this money to plan other projects. However, something happened at last Monday's meeting of the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities. Since we have a reliable partner that always keeps its word and never backs out of agreements, I asked the Minister of Transport what would happen to the money remaining from phase 1 and whether it would be transferred as set out in the agreement. The minister told us no, we would not see or get that money, and that the government would keep it, that it would be recovered by the receiver general of Canada. I was not impressed. I then asked myself if Canada plays these kinds of games when negotiating with other countries. Take for example an agreement with China, the United States, France, Germany or Japan, or a bilateral agreement with another country. Will the Canadian government renege on this agreement a few weeks later? If so, do members think that the other country would be happy about it? Obviously not, and Quebec is also not happy today. I am wondering if Canada generally honours its agreements. I am guessing it does, and I am guessing that the only reason it is not honouring this agreement is that Quebec is not a country. It is that simple. We are not a country, and the government knows that ultimately, there will be no consequences. It can do whatever it wants, and it knows that its word is worth absolutely nothing. That is disappointing. Quebec is set to lose hundreds of millions of dollars because of the arrogance of this government, a government that we cannot trust, that could not care less about Quebec and that only wants to be in charge and impose its own laws. That is completely unacceptable. That is what we are fighting against, and we are really going to ensure that we hold the government to account on that. I find this so unacceptable that we passed a motion in committee this week to once again summon the minister to explain why Canada is not living up to its bilateral agreements. The government has not upheld its agreement with Quebec, but the other provinces are also suffering because their bilateral agreements have not been upheld either. Quebec is not the only one being disrespected; all the Canadian provinces are, through the decisions that the government makes. However, the biggest difference is that it is Quebec that is being punished the most. Quebec believed the government opposite. Perhaps we were naive to believe that we could trust the Liberals and trust the Canadian government. I am not sure if I any time left, but I think I have said basically everything I wanted to say.

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Mr. Daniel Blaikie (Elmwood—Transcona, NDP)

Jun/7/22 8:05:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise this evening to speak to the main estimates for 2022-23. I want to start by talking a bit about climate change and the importance of the government taking a leadership role in charting an economic path from where we are today to where we need to be, both in order to lower emissions and to try to avert the worst of what is coming with climate change in the climate crisis. That continues to be, or must be, the priority. I am not always convinced that it is the priority that it needs to be around here, but it must be a priority. That economic course is important, not only to mitigate the economic and the very real human effects that climate change will bring, but also because it is about securing a prosperous future for Canadians in an economy that is changing. If we look around the world, we see a lot of countries that are accepting the reality of climate change and trying to transition their economies away from such a heavy reliance on fossil fuels. We have seen the importance of that from a climate change point of view, but recently we have seen the importance of trying to transition away from fossil fuels from a defence and security point of view too. Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine has shown just how fragile the world economy is in the face of its reliance on fossil fuels. Therefore, we are trying to develop energy alternatives that are closer to home, and we are fortunate in Canada to have many ways that we can do that and many resources that can enable a transition away from such heavy reliance on fossil fuels. There is certainly more than one reason, and I do not even pretend to have captured them all. With regard to the government's spending plan, what we saw in the budget was a commitment, first of all, of about $2.6 billion for carbon capture and sequestration. That is a bad bet, not only in terms of the success of the technology at scale, which many experts have called into question, but also in terms of emissions reductions as well. It is just not where we should be spending the lion's share of public funds that are meant to transition the economy away from reliance on carbon. In fact, it is designed to not be transitioning away from reliance on carbon; it is meant to find ways to perpetuate that reliance, which is still a form of climate change denial, and it is going to do a fair bit of harm. We saw already in the budget that the government has not understood the severity of the crisis. I do not think the government is at a place where it is going to invest in the right options. It was very disappointing to see that, particularly in the context of a government that had committed to reduce fossil fuel subsidies and not increase them. That is one area of government spending in respect to climate that is important to highlight, and I want Canadians to know that the government is making a serious mistake in that respect. With respect to the budget still, the Liberals want to land investment in renewable energy in the Infrastructure Bank, which means they want to capitalize the bank for a lot of renewable energy projects. That is what they say. However, part of the issue is that in so doing, they are handing it off to an organization that has a very bad track record so far on delivering projects. It does not give us a lot of hope to know that the Infrastructure Bank is on the case. It has not delivered a lot of projects. To the extent that its successful projects list has increased—and I am sure somebody will want to quote some high numbers at me later—it has largely been around bus purchasing. That is great and is an important part of it, but we do not need an Infrastructure Bank and we do not need to pay former Liberals high salaries in order to figure out how to source electric buses. This is something that we already know how to do. It is something municipalities were doing before the Infrastructure Bank, thanks very much, and it is something that they could continue to do without the Infrastructure Bank. As well, perhaps we could do it more effectively if we did not have to go through another layer of administration and pay the salaries of government cronies over at the Infrastructure Bank, if I am being honest about what I think about it. There is another intentional or unintentional consequence of running that funding through the Infrastructure Bank, although I would impress upon colleagues again that there is not a lot of evidence that it is worth it, because the Infrastructure Bank is not so great at delivering projects on time and on budget. The other consequence is that those projects that may have appeared in an estimate—projects that might have appeared somewhere here on the floor of the House of Commons to give parliamentarians and, through their representatives, Canadians, an opportunity to weigh in on the key nation-building projects that ought to be a part of our response to climate change and drive our transition to a low-carbon economy—will not grace the floor of the House. Instead, that money will be set aside at some point, perhaps in estimates one time, and then those debates will be happening internally at the Infrastructure Bank. Municipal governments will be talking to the Infrastructure Bank, not our duly elected government—or parliamentarians, for that matter. I think there is a real loss of democratic involvement in the way that the government is projecting the delivery of those funds, and it is a mistake. I think of my colleague from Manitoba, who represents the riding of Churchill—Keewatinook Aski and has done some great work and presented a private member's bill to try to change the nature of the Infrastructure Bank, which is a good thing. However, that work is not done. That bill has not passed. The Infrastructure Bank remains largely as it was originally set up by the Liberals and is not doing the job that I think was advertised in the 2015 election when the government initially ran on the idea of having an infrastructure bank. If we are going to successfully transition the economy to a lower-carbon economy, that is also an opportunity to engage Canadians who are wondering a lot about their future right now, wondering a lot about how they are going to afford a home, how they are going to get the education they need to get a job that is actually out there in the market. We hear a lot from employers right now, who are saying they cannot find qualified people to do the jobs that they need done in order for their businesses to succeed, in order for their customers here in Canada and abroad to get the products and the services that they want. As we think about serious public investment in the economy to respond to climate change, I think we should also have a process that brings more Canadians into that conversation and helps them get some direction over the kinds of employment that we are going to see and the pathways to that employment as well. Running the lion's share of the funding for new renewable infrastructure projects through the Infrastructure Bank is a real missed opportunity to foster that kind of engagement and participation on the part of Canadians. There is another major spend by government that is not in the estimates, and that is the recent loan guarantee of $10 billion for the TMX pipeline, in addition to what had already been committed. I do not think anyone should kid themselves: It is an expenditure. It is a commitment of public funds above and beyond what had already been budgeted, which was around $15 billion or maybe a little bit more. This is another $10 billion. We are getting close to the $30-billion mark, for those who are keeping track, and because that happened through the Canada Account of Export Development Canada, it does not appear on the books here. That is a decision that cabinet got to make off in the corner, as it did when it initially purchased the Trans Mountain pipeline. When we think about the Mackenzie pipeline debates of the 1950s and what a watershed moment that was for the country and for Parliament, this is a real disappointment. I think that is an understatement. I am feeling very parliamentary at the moment. It is disappointing that the government chose to fund that project in that way for all sorts of reasons. It is disappointing because it is the wrong project at the wrong time and it does not take us in the right direction in terms of the economy for the future, but it is also disappointing because it circumvented this place. We do talk a lot about pipelines in this place. I have my own views on that and I have been pretty open about that. People can search the record in terms of what I think about pipelines. I have probably given enough that people can probably read the tea leaves here already. I know others disagree, and that is fine. Parliament is a place where disagreement comes to live. If we are doing our jobs well, hopefully we can tackle some of those real disagreements and we can find some common ground. On the things that we cannot find common ground, we cannot. At the very least, something like the federal government buying an existing pipeline and committing close to $30 billion, certainly $25 billion, to get the thing built is a major national undertaking, whether I agree with it or not, and whether others like it or not. It would be outrageous for someone to claim that is not a major national expense and that it will not have major national implications down the road. The government could have tried to fund it through estimates, but it did not. It decided to circumvent Parliament instead and make that decision on its own. I think how it chose to make that decision was wrong, independently of the fact that I think the decision was wrong. Why was TMX even up for sale? It was not just the existing pipeline, but the projected future pipeline. It was because a large company in the oil and gas sector, which is very good at building pipelines, decided it was a loser. If it thought it was going to make money on that thing, it would have hung onto it. The company decided it was going to lose a lot of money, so it put the pipeline up for sale. Who came knocking? The federal government. It was the government that ran on getting serious about tackling the climate crisis. A government that has since many times repeated about, but not often actually acted on, reducing fossil fuel subsidies. Just like everyone else, we are reading in the media about where this project is headed and the massive cost overruns. We know that when the government says it is going to provide loan guarantees, and it is not public funding, then it is a sham because one of two things is going to happen. The project could be a wild success and it would make a lot of money for the private investors who are kicking in cash, with no risk, because the government has already underwritten those loans. In this case there would not be a public expenditure, but there would be a lot of happy private investors. However, in the case where it goes wrong, it would be a public expenditure because the government is going to step in and cover the loans. In that case the private investors are going to walk off scot-free without ever having taken a meaningful risk. To me, that sounds worse than public expenditure. At least if the government had spent the money itself, it would be entitled to the profit and, if it were successful, it would make income off it. However, the government has said the only for sure thing is that it is not going to make a lot of income off that project because, if it is a success, the private investors will walk away with the return. Only if it is a failure, will Canadians have to pay the bill. It is a completely wrong-headed project, but I am glad to take this opportunity to talk about it in the context of the estimates because it is not there and it really ought to have been a parliamentary conversation. I wish we had a better debate about that before the decision was made. In fact, it was announced as a surprise. I remember reading about it on my phone walking up to the Hill one morning, that the government had decided to do this. It is quite a disappointment. I say that by way of trying to remind people of the importance and the significance this place can have and sometimes does have. These kinds of circuitous funding routes are ways that government, the executive, minimizes the role of this place and keeps important decision-making and important national conversations away from this place. We have taken up the question of the TMX pipeline. I do not just mean the NDP. I mean in this place, we have heard about it from all sides of the House in various ways during question period. However, there really ought to have been a time for a better and more focused debate. It should not just be in 35-second snippets during question period that we are trying to make sense of this major decision with import not only for Canada. When we talk about climate change, we have to talk about the global context. That was a decision that actually has import far beyond Canada's own borders. I wanted to raise that as an example of something that is a government expenditure, but is something not in the estimates that really ought to have been in the estimates. I want to talk more generally, having addressed some of the features of the estimates, both in terms of its content and absence, about where I believe government spending and government intervention in the economy has to go. We have seen a lot of big numbers announced from the government. Unfortunately, too often this is a government that conflates spending announcements with real action. New Democrats are often accused by others of wanting to spend everybody else's money, and it is always implied that we do this frivolously, which is simply not the case. We are here to talk about how we could invest in Canadians and how we could invest in the country. I would say that we do not think of a return on investment as being solely a financial question. If we pool our resources as Canadians and we find a more efficient way to pay for prescription drugs, or we pool our resources and we make sure that not just my kids but every kid in the country has access to dental care, to me that is a return on investment. In respect of pharmacare, I think there is a financial return that we could realize as Canadians against what we are already paying for prescription drugs. We know a number of studies have been out, and the most small-c conservative estimates on how much we could save is in the order of about $4 billion a year, and this is dated information. We are living in a period of great inflation, and I am sure the numbers have gone up but I bet the differential has not. Back when the PBO reported on pharmacare, he said that Canadians were spending about $24 billion a year on prescription drugs, and one national prescription drug insurance plan would cost about $20 billion. That would be a savings of $4 billion. That would be a very concrete financial return on an investment out of the public purse. We could also measure return on investment in other ways. Government spending to build new housing supply so we could house people who are currently living on the street brings return on investment. It brings return on investment, and that is another one where I would say there is actually a financial component. We know that people who are experiencing homelessness have more frequent interactions with the justice system. They are more likely to end up in jail, and we know that jailing people is expensive. We also know people experiencing homelessness are also more likely to end up in the health system, and not through preventative care, like a typical physical at the doctor's office, but in the emergency room where the issues are more acute and the costs are much higher. That is a return on investment. When we talk about people who are nervous about taking the bus because there are people who have set up their home in the bus shelter, and they do not know what those folks are like, they do not know what state of mind they are in, so they get nervous about taking the bus and say that we need to get these people out of the way. Well, creating a sense of safety in our communities by housing those folks instead of waiting until something goes sideways and the police show up to arrest them is another way we could realize tangible return on investment. That is something we could do together through our governments that no individual could do on their own. As we think about what was required in the pandemic as a response, and as we think about the ongoing and mounting challenge of climate, we have to revisit the conventional wisdom of the last 30 or 40 years around public involvement in the economy and recognize that, if we are going to get to where we need to be, then we need some bold public investment. It should be happening in a way that allows it to be discussed in this place with public deliberation, instead of at the boardroom table at the Infrastructure Bank or at the cabinet table in secret, spending out of the Canada account, instead of doing it transparently here in the estimates. Even if we consider the oil and gas industry, an industry that has had its heyday and now we need to figure how to have a lower carbon economy, that industry in Alberta was built with tons of public investment. That economic engine did not actually happen with the private industry on its own. There were years of publicly funded research and publicly funded infrastructure at the provincial and federal levels that led to that economy being what it became. It is going to take that level of seriousness and public investment to build the economy of the future to provide good-paying jobs and prosperity for Canadians again, which is why it is important that this place get it right when it comes to how we evaluate government spending.

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Mrs. Tracy Gray (Kelowna—Lake Country, CPC)

Jun/7/22 9:01:35 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I took particular interest when the member was talking about interprovincial trade barriers, and I appreciate his comments on that. I know we have the Canadian Free Trade Agreement and the government has been working on that. The last time it disclosed its annual report was back in 2021. We have not seen the report that ends March 2022. It has not been disclosed yet on the website. I wonder if the member can explain, since he is in the government, some of the recent activities the government has been working on to eliminate some of the interprovincial trade barriers.

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