44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 8, 2022 02:00PM
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Joliette, who is our excellent finance critic. One file overlaps both of our critic roles: the luxury tax.
One of my parliamentary files is aerospace. For over a year now, I have been hearing about this tax, which we agree with in principle. In the Bloc Québécois, we are big fans of better distribution of wealth. We gladly support that goal, since the ultrarich have to pay their share. However, often the devil is in the details, and that was the case with this luxury tax.
A year ago, it was only natural that we did not necessarily understand all the implications of the description of this luxury tax. However, the stakeholders contacted the government. How is it that a year later they continue to—
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Madam Speaker, I listened with great interest to the excellent speech by my colleague from Thérèse-De Blainville.
I have to say that this has really affected me. When I was young, I remember seeing the signs at election time asking who had stolen money from the unemployed. Movements like the Sans-Chemise coalition spoke out election after election, reminding us that workers were always worse off after EI reforms, especially the poorest and the oldest ones. What is more, the government was going to dip into the EI fund to finance far different priorities.
I do not know if my colleague can give me a little hope today, but what good could new EI reforms do us after everything we have seen over the past 30 years?
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Madam Speaker, our colleague is talking about child care. We do actually get a sense that he really cares, that he is truly concerned about people in need.
One of the things that really bothers us about this budget and its implementation act is, first, that health care is being completely ignored. When I say that, I am not talking about an intrusion. We are not talking about dictating standards to the provinces. We understand the division of powers. We are talking about sending money to the provinces, which are struggling because of underfunded health care. We are also talking about seniors who deserve more than just a one-time pre-election cheque, and only for those aged 75 and over.
Does our colleague share our indignation about these two major omissions?
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Madam Speaker, to pick up on what my colleague from Joliette was saying, there was indeed not much of a connection between our colleague's statement and the subject at hand, which has me wondering if he is tacitly acknowledging that there is nothing in the budget.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to inform you that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue.
We are heading into the final hour of Wednesday, June 8. I am pleased to be spending the final moments of this day with my colleagues. I want to thank them in advance for their rapt attention.
We are here tonight to discuss Bill C-19, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on April 7, 2022 and other measures. I would like to review the timeline. This bill has come back from committee. First, there was the budget. There were many things about it that bothered us, so many, in fact, that we could not support it. Voting against it was our only option. The bill contained a significant amount of intrusion, interference, and federalism pervaded. That rampant federalism would have steamrolled our jurisdictions and dictated the terms. There would have been interference here, there and everywhere.
There were also some things that were frustrating because they were not in the budget, such as health. I am not big on whataboutism. People cannot just say there is this thing but not that thing. They cannot just say that there is no actual debate on health. They cannot say that we have not moved forward, that we have not pressed the issue, that we have not been talking about it for quite some time. When I say “we”, I am not just talking about the Bloc Québécois. I am talking about all the provinces, which are united. It is Quebec too. The National Assembly has passed so many unanimous motions on this. They cannot say the government might be surprised when we raise this issue. They cannot say we are coming out of left field. No, we have been talking about this for a long time. It is a problem.
We are at the tail end of a public health crisis—or let us hope so, anyway—that did not create the situation. No doubt it exacerbated it, but we have long been aware of skyrocketing health care costs. We have known for some time that it is up to the provinces to hire doctors, nurses and PSWs and that the money is tied up in Ottawa.
As we know, funding has been cut for quite some time. In the 1990s, Ottawa made its surpluses on the backs of the provinces. Since then, the provinces have had to fight like hell to be able to fund their health care services and social services in general.
There was nothing for seniors, either. As everyone knows, there was the infamous last-minute pre-election cheque last summer, but only for those aged 75 and over. Because of inflation, the cost of living is going up, so pensions also need to increase permanently. By the way, one is a senior as of age 65. A permanent increase in the pension is needed, but there is nothing about that in this legislation.
One could argue that some funding has been allocated to housing, but we are a long way from sustainable, significant and really strong investments that would actually compensate for the current crisis.
The Bloc Québécois advocated for an annual reinvestment of up to 1% of public funds. I do not think that is unreasonable. Money also needs to be diverted so that it does not always go just to private developers, but also to groups that are familiar with the real needs on the ground, such as not-for-profits, housing co‑operatives, and community organizations. The whole financial structure needs an overhaul. There was nothing on any of that. We were unable to support the budget because of what was in it and what was not in it.
Then came the budget implementation bill. We supported it, but with reservations, saying that we would see what came out of it. We would study it, look at it, analyze it. There are committees for that, such as the Standing Committee on Finance. I commend my colleague from Joliette, who is our finance critic and did this work patiently and conscientiously. He did some extremely serious work on this issue.
Several irritants were removed from this implementation bill, which contains some things that we want to improve and that make it possible for us to continue supporting it.
Let us talk about the excise tax. I am the Bloc Québécois critic for international trade, and the excise tax is a subject that I am very familiar with.
As a result of a complaint filed by Australia, the excise tax will once again be charged on all Canadian wines, effective July 2022, after having been exempt since 2006. This tax does not distinguish between grapes, apples and honey, but why should it apply to all wines, including mead and cider, when these last two products were not the target of Australia's complaint?
Mead production is small. The association of cider producers was established in 1992 and has 81 voluntary members. It testified before the Standing Committee on Finance.
Cider production rose from 3.2 million litres in 2016 to 5.1 million litres in 2021, an increase of 60% in five years. The market for cider is booming. This is a nod to the past, because, I remind members, cider was popular in New France. People started drinking beer after the conquest. The beer was not always good, but we have made up for that with microbreweries, which make very good beers.
Cider and mead, or honey wine, will suffer because of the excise tax. I do not understand how the government was unable to make a distinction between honey made by bees in their hives, apples and grapes. It makes no sense to me, especially because, in a similar legal battle with Australia, the Government of Quebec was able to exclude different products that were not standard wine varieties.
Clearly, each country is going to want to promote and protect its own producers and wines. However, Canada should not be penalizing an entire industry because of the government's incompetence and inability to differentiate. We would usually talk about not comparing apples to oranges, but in this case, it is a question of not comparing apples to grapes. What a ridiculous farce.
In the little bit of time I have left, I would like to talk about an unresolved issue, the infamous luxury tax. We support the principle of the luxury tax, taxing the ultrarich, banks, oil companies and their profits as inflation rises. As I said yesterday, our inflation is their loot. The issue we have is that the tax is flawed and very poorly designed, as it will penalize SMEs and the aerospace industry, which is flourishing in Quebec.
I started hearing from the industry about this a year ago. I realized at the time that there was a problem with the wording of the tax. Since then, stakeholders have asked the government to do an impact study, but it has refused. Now, the government can no longer justify pursuing this fallacious, erroneous, catastrophic plan that will penalize an industry that is just as important to Quebec as the auto industry is to Ontario.
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Madam Speaker, as I said several times, we support the principle. We support the underlying idea. Even industry stakeholders tell us that they agree with the idea, but they are asking us to do things properly.
It has nothing to do with momentum and everything to do with how this is deployed and how the targets are set. It would have been a good idea to do an impact study for something this big.
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Madam Speaker, we believe in the idea of having more green vehicles. I understand that this is a general question on green vehicles.
Canada has long presented itself as a leader, but it was not one. In 2019, Canada was the last western country to bring in rebates on the sale of individual electric vehicles. That is bad, if we think about it.
The delay is unfathomablere, considering how many things need to be done about transportation electrification. Furthermore, most of the programs encourage industries that are often multinationals based in Ontario, instead of SMEs based in Quebec that are making a real effort to electrify transportation.
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Madam Speaker, I am very pleased that someone has finally found a riding where that technology works, because we have been searching for one from the start.
In any case, we do not believe in that. The best carbon capture facility is a tree. There was a strategy for that. The government was supposed to plant billions of trees, but it has yet to plant a single one. I myself have planted more than that.
Let us say that this is a carbon capture strategy that has shown that this technology has not worked so far and that it would cost a fortune. It would be pretty sneaky to make taxpayers foot the bill.
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Madam Speaker, the amount that the member is referring to had already been announced. It was then put into the bill, so it is nothing new. It was not specific to this bill.
It also falls well short of expectations, given inflation and skyrocketing costs. I remind members that this amount is far from what was promised in the Canada Health Act.
We could ask the provinces what they think about working with Ottawa. They all say that Ottawa is not doing enough. The Government of Quebec is unanimous on this.
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Madam Speaker, in any case, one could argue that my colleague from Abitibi—Témiscamingue can bury the government better than the government can plant trees. I salute him for that.
My colleague spoke at length about competition. There is a basic rule: The more competitors, small suppliers and small businesses there are, the better the prices. He talked a bit about solutions to create more competition.
I have the impression, however, that the Investment Canada Act favours monopolies, not to mention takeovers by foreign companies, which lead to price increases and often push businesses to relocate their head offices.
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