44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 29, 2022 10:00AM
- Sep/29/22 4:15:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech. I was very pleased to hear her talk about the benefits of a dental care program for children, youth and, next year, seniors.
I find it surprising that she did not mention that this was an NDP demand that the Liberals voted for. We forced them to do it as part of the agreement we signed for the next few years. Will she acknowledge that this is something that the NDP pushed for and that they finally agreed to?
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- Sep/29/22 4:16:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to assure my hon. colleague that we are very thankful for the fact that there is a lot of collaboration here in the House. As for dental care, I think it is really a win-win situation that we have achieved together.
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- Sep/29/22 4:16:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Lethbridge.
I am happy to be here today supporting our opposition motion, which states:
That, given that the cost of government is driving up inflation, making the price of goods Canadians buy and the interest they pay unaffordable, this House call on the government to commit to no new taxes on gas, groceries, home heating and pay cheques.
I want to bring the voices of my constituents from Kelowna—Lake Country to Ottawa, not the other way around. Over many months this year, I have sent out several surveys to hear how people are struggling with the government's 40-year-high inflation. I had thousands of responses. Robyn in Lake Country said, “People can't afford to eat, to get to work, to take care of the basics for their families in this economy.” Rollie in Kelowna wrote that the government must “slow down on their spending. They're putting people in the poor house. It's a real shame.”
Tax relief is what my constituents are asking for, and the vast majority agree. With the record gas prices we are seeing today in British Columbia, that relief is more desperately needed than ever.
Recently, as a member of the industry committee, I questioned Aaron Wudrick, director of domestic policy at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. In response to my questioning about Canada's regulatory burden, high taxes and expensive housing affecting young adults, Mr. Wudrick said, “In short, they're discouraging.”
I agree with his assessment, especially after speaking with many young people in Kelowna—Lake Country and across B.C. over the summer. They feel hopeless. They feel hopeless when seeing the value of their paycheques decline, hopeless in finding the money they need to start a business and hopeless in finding an affordable apartment, let alone ever dreaming of owning a home of their own.
International students often pursue education in high-demand fields. They have lost hope in being able to afford to live in Canada. We have a labour crisis in everything from health care to farming to tourism. The government's high-spend, high-cost agenda will see us lose their ingenuity and entrepreneurship.
A recent Leger poll showed that 46% of young immigrants say they are now less likely to stay in Canada. When asked why they would not recommend Canada to future immigrants, the top two reasons given were the cost of living and the current government.
Higher taxes are not the solution either. How do we know? It is because under the last Conservative government, we oversaw the lowest federal tax burden in over half a century, nobody needed to wait month after month for passport renewals past deadlines and homes were half the price. Furthermore, it should come as no surprise that new taxes, as well as presently automatic tax increases, would have a significant impact on small business owners.
As the shadow minister for small business recovery and growth, I have had the opportunity to speak with numerous workers and owners of small businesses in Kelowna—Lake Country and across the country to hear their perspectives, the challenges facing them and what needs to be done, or not done, by the federal government to allow them not just to survive but to succeed. We have a 40-year-high inflation rate, labour shortages, supply chain issues, increasing business debt and federal tax increases on businesses, and they are already increasing costs at an unmanageable level for small businesses.
Small businesses have been hit particularly hard as a result of the volatile open-and-shut cycle over the last two and a half years, with 54% of businesses still reporting below-normal revenues. About 62% of small businesses are still carrying debt from the pandemic, according to the CFIB. It also notes that small business insolvencies are on the rise, with a reported one in six businesses considering closing their doors. Downtowns and business districts have been hollowed out, with small businesses in those areas struggling to even keep their doors open given limited customers.
I spoke to a BIA organization this week, a business improvement area organization, that often represents main streets. It is saying that now the heart of some of its issues deal with mental health and addiction crises. It also said its members are burdened with debt. They are having a very challenging time.
Many are barely hanging on. It is nothing short of cold-hearted to increase multiple taxes that would further hit their bottom lines. I know what a small business owner is going through, as I have been one myself. Small business owners have not forgotten the 2017 Liberal-proposed tax changes that party attempted to ram through on small businesses, which would have been devastating to entrepreneurship in our country. These tax changes would have had “significant, unintended effects on all SMEs, particularly middle-class, family businesses.” Those are the words that came from the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade back in 2018.
Thanks to the advocacy of small businesses, chambers of commerce, BIAs, boards of trades and Conservatives pressing the issue day in and day out, the government finally backed down. This just shows the government's mindset.
What are the main taxes that are going up soon? We have the payroll tax, the excise tax and the carbon tax, which affects the cost of everything. Dan Kelly at the CFIB put it well recently in explaining why a payroll tax is, in fact, a tax. As he put it, “1. They are mandatory, with penalties for not paying. 2. While there are benefits that come back to some of those paying premiums, they are not proportionate to the amount paid. 3. For the business that pays 60% of EI & 50% of CPP costs, they are unquestionably payroll taxes as the benefits are for workers, not employers.”
Regardless of what the government says and tries to obfuscate, even the Prime Minister has called these payroll taxes, and many other Liberals have as well. These taxes are going up every year, hitting the paycheques of workers and the bottom lines of small businesses, and should not be increasing during a time of 40-year-high inflation.
The excise tax is an escalator tax, which is a fancy bureaucratic word for “automatic”. It is a tax that does not have to come to Parliament to increase. It automatically goes up. The excise tax is on beer, wine, ciders and spirits. These industries raise concerns about this every year while the government ignores them, and 95% are small businesses.
Every year these taxes go up automatically, hitting our local producers with more taxes, as well as the retailers and restauranteurs who buy these products and who then have to pass on the price to people who buy them. This ultimately adds further to inflation. As Restaurants Canada said, the government introducing the automatic escalator in 2017 “made an already bad situation worse” for restaurants.
Recently at the industry committee, we heard from Beer Canada, which called excise tax increases “counterproductive and harmful” to their sector, and “simply not sustainable over the long term.” Let us not forget this escalator is tied to the CPI and, therefore, inflation, meaning it will go even higher next year, adding more to inflation. It is set to increase again on April 1.
On the carbon tax, after the government said it would cap it at $50 a tonne, it is now planning to bring it up to $150 a tonne, more than three times what was initially promised and at a rate that small businesses are still disproportionately paying into without the appropriate rebates to offset it. Carbon tax increases make the cost of fuel, food and goods shipped anywhere more expensive.
It is time for the government to recognize that adding taxes only increases costs and inflation. The government has provided no solutions to address inflation itself, and now, on top of 40-year-high inflation and interest rate hikes, small businesses' bottom lines are being further squeezed with higher costs for imported goods due to the Canadian dollar falling to the lowest point in almost two years.
Stop the pain. Stop the tax increases.
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- Sep/29/22 4:26:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, if we were to accept the Conservative position that payroll taxes are taxes and they are something that people have to pay for now, how would the member explain the fact that, if we do not invest in CPP now, those same individuals will have to pay for it later when there is no CPP available to provide for them and their pensions. I do not think we can have it both ways.
Are CPP and EI payroll taxes, or are they tools that help provide resources for people in their times of need?
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- Sep/29/22 4:27:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the point is that people cannot afford food right now. They cannot afford to put fuel in their vehicles. We have reports of students living in homeless shelters. We know that the stats for food banks are up across the country. This is the state we are in right now. People cannot even afford their basic necessities. Now is not the time to increase anything, during this 40-year-high inflation, that will further stop people from being able to afford even the basic necessities.
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- Sep/29/22 4:27:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech.
I do not entirely agree with her and, more importantly, I do not share the same vision. I think it would be better to reduce our dependence on oil and accelerate the energy transition to protect our economy against sudden increases in the price of fossil fuels. We know full well that the price of gas has jumped 33.3% since last year, and that is an important driver of inflation.
I would like her to explain the reasons behind her decision.
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- Sep/29/22 4:28:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as of today and tomorrow, we still have vehicles that are transporting food to grocery stores. We still have vehicles that are going across this country transporting all the goods we buy every day when we go out to all of the stores. That is the reality we have right now. People use their vehicles to take their kids to school and to all the sports, recreation and arts they do. Those are the vehicles they are using today. It is really unrealistic to say people cannot go anywhere, go to work or go to the grocery store. The cost of everything they are buying just keeps going up. It is unrealistic and it is out of touch.
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- Sep/29/22 4:29:24 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I heard the member of the official opposition talk about inflation and copayments for pensions and employment insurance, but not once did she talk about profits. I would like to give the hon. member the opportunity right now. Oil and gas made $147 billion, yet not one word came out of this member about that.
Would she perhaps give some consideration to the runaway profits of the oil and gas sector, the food sector and the housing market, rather than simply being stuck on the taxation associated with it?
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- Sep/29/22 4:30:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am sorry that I am stuck on talking about small businesses, which are actually the backbone of our Canadian economy and the backbone of communities all across the country. Right now, with the situation we are in, and I talked a lot about small businesses, they are experiencing crushing debt. They cannot even afford to pay some of their bills.
While the member is chirping at me and not allowing me to answer, small businesses are in a situation right now where one in six are considering closing. That is the reality. That is the situation they are in. Now is not the time to be increasing any taxes that affect people and small businesses.
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- Sep/29/22 4:30:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, today's motion is about putting people first. It is about Canadians. It is about seeing them. It is about hearing them. It is about making sure they are understood. It is about doing no harm. That is what today's debate is all about.
I am advocating for Canadians. This should not be something that is controversial or that causes disgraceful comments to be made within this place from the opposite side, but somehow it is.
The last several months have left Canadians absolutely dumbfounded at the federal government's lack of care, concern and compassion toward them. As food prices have continued to rise astronomically due to inflation, as energy costs have put people in detrimental places, the Prime Minister is choosing to increase the cost of living for Canadians through one policy implementation after another.
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- Sep/29/22 4:31:52 p.m.
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During question period today my Conservative colleagues and I asked the government to demonstrate a little compassion and to stop its planned tax hikes. The Liberals responded with obscure studies and statistics, telling us that, actually, we had it all wrong and that Canadians were better off and getting ahead. It was as if to say that government knows best and that what Canadians are feeling is illegitimate. How demeaning and how heartless.
I have heard many of my constituents share their stories with me and post other stories online that tell me that they are struggling, they are hopeless and many of them are in despair. I am talking about a senior who recently came into my constituency office in Lethbridge to share with me that she lives in a mobile home and she is having a hard time making ends meet. Normally she would go to her neighbour or maybe her son in order to get assistance, but the reality is that they are in the same boat. I am talking about another couple who came into my office who had lost their home because they could not make their mortgage renewal due to inflation. Now they are living in an RV in their parents' backyard. She is struggling immensely with mental health issues.
I am talking about an elderly man from Medicine Hat, Alberta, who, several weeks ago, submitted his application for medical assistance in dying because he cannot afford to pay for medication, food and shelter. He made the choice to end his life. In a public statement, this man, who lives with a physical disability, said that he does not want to die; he simply can't afford to live.
These are the kinds of stories that are transpiring from coast to coast to coast. This is not the Canada these folks deserve.
A recent report revealed that almost a quarter of Canadians are having to cut back on the food they eat or the groceries they buy, because they just simply cannot afford it. Meanwhile, the number of people accessing food banks and the number of children going to sleep hungry at night is drastically increasing. We are a country that feeds the world. There is no need for this.
However, there are ramifications for “Justinflation”. These ramifications—
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- Sep/29/22 4:34:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, on a point of order, the Chair has ruled repeatedly that the term the member just used is not appropriate because it is doing indirectly what members are not allowed to do directly. Perhaps the Speaker could remind the member of that, and she could retract her comment.
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- Sep/29/22 4:34:46 p.m.
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Agreed, and I would strongly suggest that the member use another term.
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- Sep/29/22 4:34:51 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, more and more Canadians are struggling to get by because their dollars are valued less and less due to inflation.
Let us talk about charities for a moment. Many charities have filled the gaps we have had in this country, but because Canadians are so hard done by right now, they do not even have enough left at the end of the month to donate where they normally would. This is then leaving an increased gap in social services and the ability to care for one another. That is shameful.
We have an affordability crisis that is actually destroying people's lives, but the government can play a role. It can if it chooses to. It is simple. It needs to axe the tax. It needs to stop its out-of-control spending, and it needs to be a responsible government that brings in investment rather than pushing it out.
There are other things, too. We have an opportunity in the realm of agriculture. We are incredible at producing food. We literally feed the world. My riding of Lethbridge does this incredibly well. The bounty that comes from there should be celebrated, but instead we have a government that wants to put policies in place that would reduce crop yield. We have a government that wants to punish our farmers and producers, those who bring life, rather than celebrate them or give them credit for the incredible superpower they hold.
There is another superpower too: energy. We have the third-largest oil reserve in the world, and we are the fifth-largest producer of natural gas. Just like food, the world needs energy. It is what keeps us going, and Canada has the potential to be the solution to the world's needs in this regard. We could be stepping up and taking our place on the world stage, but instead we are shrinking back. We could displace the reliance, currently in existence, on regimes that we should not be supporting, but instead we continue.
We have an opportunity to be the answer to Europe's need for LNG, as the chancellor of Germany asked us to be, but the Prime Minister responded by saying there is no business case. How is there is no business case? Of course there is a business case. There are people in need of energy, and we have energy. The government should figure out the infrastructure and make it happen. It simply takes political will.
The NDP and the Liberals love to rail against profitable organizations, but in their attempt to foster an environment of hostility and demonize those who would generate wealth, they forget about a few facts. One is that, in the generation of wealth, jobs are created. In the generation of wealth, taxes are paid and, ultimately, those taxes come full circle and help support the very social programs that we value. It is crucial to understand that without the generation of wealth, there is no safety net for those in need.
Let me say that again. Without the generation of wealth, there is no safety net for those in need. Therefore, instead of demonizing the businesses that are producing jobs, generating wealth and helping our country do well, let us celebrate them. I am confident that, if we can get government out of the way to provide the freedom for Canadians to reach their greatest potential, our nation would not only thrive but also be a leader among nations. It just takes a bit of political will.
We have the opportunity to foster an environment of entrepreneurship, to remove unnecessary boundaries and red tape, to scrap excess taxation, and to draw investment into our country. That is what Conservatives are calling on the government to do.
Yesterday, we gave the folks opposite an opportunity to vote with Conservatives and for Canadians. We asked them to do this by halting their plan to triple the carbon tax. Sadly, they chose themselves instead of the Canadian people, so today we are giving them another opportunity to stand with millions of Canadians. Millions of Canadians are struggling to get by. Millions of Canadians are struggling to feed their families, pay their rent, afford their mortgages and fuel their cars. That is real.
The folks across the way can pull out whatever sorts of charts, graphs and “statistics” they want. It is not going to convince Canadians that somehow they are better off just because the Liberals told them so.
Canadians know the reality. They feel the reality, day in and day out, when they have to make hard choices about where they will spend their last dollar.
In the midst of an affordability crisis, we are calling on the government today to stop their planned tax increases on the paycheques of Canadians so they can keep more of the money they earn.
Canadians and Conservatives are hoping that the government will finally demonstrate some compassion, do the right thing and vote in favour of this motion today. It is time to give Canadians back the control of their lives that they always should have had because the potential is within the people. The future of this country is within the people. They are the problem-solvers. They are the solution makers. They are the wealth generators. They are the ones who are going to take us toward a prosperous future. They are the ones who deserve for the government to get out of the way to allow them to move forward in the direction they wish to go.
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- Sep/29/22 4:41:08 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I listened with interest to my colleague's speech. It is funny, the people who keep saying that we need to create wealth before we can redistribute it never really redistribute it.
My colleague talked about people who are suffering, the less fortunate and persons with disabilities. That is very good, but action speaks louder than words.
I have a simple question for my colleague. How can she explain that yesterday the Conservatives refused to refer to committee a bill that seeks to increase support for persons with disabilities? Does that not contradict what she just said?
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- Sep/29/22 4:41:50 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the motion on the floor today is, in fact, about serving Canadians. It is, in fact, about making them better off.
The motion on the floor today, unfortunately, is not about what the opposite member mentioned. I think you would probably desire, Madam Speaker, that we stay focused on what we are discussing today.
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- Sep/29/22 4:42:12 p.m.
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I am sorry. Would the hon. member please repeat her comment that I would desire something?
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- Sep/29/22 4:42:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I was wondering if you would desire for the House to stay on topic with the motion today.
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- Sep/29/22 4:42:37 p.m.
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That is the point of the question.
The hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.
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- Sep/29/22 4:42:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I do not think that answer was sufficient because the member from the NDP asked a specific question.
The member's entire speech was about affordability for Canadians and providing supports for Canadians. The member from the NDP asked a specific question about why the Conservatives are preventing a very important piece of legislation for people with disabilities from going forward. This is a piece of legislation that would help individuals and Canadians with disabilities.
Perhaps the member can reflect on the non-answer she just gave to the NDP and provide an answer as to why the Conservatives are holding up that piece of legislation.
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