44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 18, 2022 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. He refers to provincial programs as though they were leftover programs and inadequate solutions, when the Quebec program already exists. What we are asking is not just to tell them to accept the program as it is and give us the money. What Quebec is asking for is the right to opt out with full financial compensation for programs with comparable objectives.
I understand that they want to do something big that they call “national”. They say this is the Parliament of Canada and that this applies to all Canadians, but when it was time for the carbon tax, the provinces that performed like Quebec with its permit trading system, the government was very proud to allow Quebec to opt out because it was effective.
Why does that work for the carbon tax but, suddenly, when the government has this desire to centralize everything, the principle of asymmetry no longer exists?
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Madam Speaker, the member and I have spoken specifically on the carbon tax in the past and I have been very complimentary of Quebec's very aggressive position when it relates to pricing pollution. It understands it. It gets it.
As it relates to this particular bill, conceptually I am very much supportive of ensuring that individuals under 12 years of age who are in families that make less than $90,000 a year get access to this funding. If the member is suggesting that we need to further look at the bill to ensure individuals are taken care of and that Quebec in particular would have an opportunity to realize some savings due to the fact that it is already doing this, then that is something that could come up in committee where the bill is going to next.
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Madam Speaker, this debate always strays away from the real need for dental care in this country. When people say programs already exist, it is simply not true. There is no province that provides coverage for every family, every individual, every person with a disability who earns less than $90,000 a year. It simply does not exist in this country. I can tell the House about a family that came into my office for help on another federal program and literally burst into tears when they found out they could take their kids to the dentist.
We have heard the Conservatives, in particular their leader, talk like Santa to working people, but when it comes to trying to delay this program so that cheques do not come out before the end of the year, their delay tactics look a lot more like Scrooge.
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Unfortunately, Madam Speaker, what the member is saying is right. That is the impression that would be given to somebody who is paying attention to what is going on in the House.
To the member's point, he is absolutely right that there is no program that covers all children under 12. In fact, I hope the program does not stop there. I hope that one day there will be a dental care program similar to the health care program where everybody is covered. That is where we ultimately need to get. When the founders of our health care system created it, there was an understanding that pharmacare and dental care were on the horizon, that those things would happen in the future, and yet here we are so many decades later still waiting.
I applaud the NDP's passion for this and continually pushing for it. I am glad that we can work together on this. I hope this is not the end and that we can continue to see dental care expand not just to the criteria that we are seeing here, but, indeed, to more Canadians in the years to come.
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- Oct/18/22 5:18:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I very much support this bill and I value the opportunity to ask the member a question and, in the process, explain why I voted against the motion to have closure on debate.
I want this bill passed, but I find closure is used all too frequently. In the first Parliament in which Stephen Harper had a majority, I was sitting as an opposition member and almost every bill had closure. All of us, including the Liberals, lamented it because every time we have closure, we diminish the process of democracy and debate in this place.
There has been a rule traditionally that no member can read a speech. Because we ignore that rule in this place, the House leaders from the different parties are able to say that all of their members need to speak to this or that they cannot tell us yet how many member will speak to it, clogging up the procedures. I think they could be unclogged by reinforcing that rule. Does the hon. member have any other thoughts on what could work?
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- Oct/18/22 5:19:19 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the question is slightly rhetorical because I think the member already knows my position on this.
I totally agree and support what she is saying. I am reluctant to say members cannot read speeches because some people rely on that and prefer it. I can understand that. However, where the member is going with this is that she is basically saying that whatever anybody delivers in here needs to be something of substance and coming from a place of informed opinion, as opposed to just grabbing something that is handed to them and reading it.
One of the other stall tactics we see is not just putting up as many speakers as the party can. After a whole wack of speakers have spoken, then the opposition will put forward an amendment, which basically resets the roster and everybody can speak to it again. I used to be frustrated when I would see and hear about what Stephen Harper was doing. I admit that I was not as informed about the realities of how this place functioned at the time. I now understand it and I see what happens. I really hope that we can amend the Standing Orders to better reflect and put to rest that method of debate.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my friend for his very passionate speech on Bill C-31.
Can he outline what kind of impact getting dental care will have on his community and the children in Kingston?
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Madam Speaker, the most important thing is that we ensure we are giving kids the access they need to preventative dental health care. What we see quite often is that those who cannot afford dental care end up in our emergency rooms accessing emergency dental care, which is being paid for through our health care system anyway. What we can accomplish by providing that preventative work in advance is that we can help ensure that kids do not end up in an emergency room and put to sleep in order to have emergency dental work done on them.
The impact it will have on individuals in my community is similar to the impact it will have on individuals in his community and communities throughout Canada. This will help create a baseline by which we all agree that children need access to dental care to ensure they have a shot at a healthy life in the future.
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Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Barrie—Innisfil.
For my constituents back home in Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, I am rising on Government Business No. 20, which was tabled on October 17, to resume consideration of the motion by the government House leader, seconded by the Minister of Health, on Bill C-31.
This is a programming motion that effectively curtails the normal Standing Orders, which guide the democratic process by which bills are debated, reviewed and voted upon in Parliament and effectively streamlines that process to the objectives of the government. That is problematic. It is problematic for one very important reason, and that is a reason that was outlined in the Liberal platform of the 2015 election.
Government Business No. 20 is a programming motion that not only cuts off debate on a bill that is going to cost approximately $10 billion, but it dictates to parliamentary committees what they can and cannot do. In the 2015 election platform of the Liberal Party of Canada, it stated very clearly that committees would be the masters of their own parliamentary work. Indeed, this is a democratic principle that is upheld through both convention and some of our existing Standing Orders.
The motion before us today effectively wipes away the democratic processes outlined in the rules that govern the operationalization of democracy in Canada, so that the government can push forward a piece of legislation to expedite its own political objectives.
Before I go into the programming motion and what it effectively does, I will say that for the last two weeks we have been more or less debating this bill. The bill was tabled on September 20, and we debated it on September 23, September 26, October 3, October 5, October 7 and now today for a total of 11.5 hours. For all the rhetoric about the Conservatives stalling everything, it has been 11.5 hours for a bill that is going to cost $10 billion.
Effectively, for every hour of debate, we are talking about $900 million and change in taxpayer money. Think of all the small businesses in Canada that are struggling right now and that pay taxes for us to debate and distribute funds accordingly. Ten billion dollars is a lot of money, and we are here in this House to debate it. Our primary constitutional responsibility is to review and approve parliamentary expenditures, and to debate and review legislation. The motion before us today effectively cuts that off.
Since the debate started, the Liberals have been saying that Conservatives do not care about young children, that we do not care at all because we are opposed to this motion. I will just remind them of the second promise made in 2015 that the Liberals do not seem to care about, which was to eliminate water advisories on first nation reserves. That has not been accomplished in seven years, so the rhetoric coming from the government about Conservatives not caring is simply untrue. All Canadians care about children getting the proper health and sanitary measures that should exist in every community in this country but that effectively do not. I am just going to put that on the table.
Now, let us look at Government Business No. 20 a little more closely. Paragraph (c) reads:
...if the bill is adopted at the second reading stage and referred to the Standing Committee on Health, during its consideration of the bill,
(i) the committee shall have the first priority for the use of House resources for committee meetings....
Paragraph (c), subparagraph (i), essentially states that the government is taking over the administration of committees with this motion and saying that all other committee business is secondary to this bill right now. There might be a valid argument for that, but there is a lot of other important work taking place in Parliament that is now subject to this motion. The first thing this motion does is curtail not only the independence of the health committee, where this legislation will be referred, but the entire administration of parliamentary democracy in Canada.
Subparagraph (ii) reads:
...amendments to the bill, including from independent members, shall be submitted to the clerk of the committee by 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 20, 2022, and distributed to the committee members in both official languages by noon on Friday, October 21....
Therefore, now that we have voted, after our debate ends this evening on the motion before us and later on the legislation by 11:45 p.m., the government is now dictating to members when they can or cannot submit an amendment to be reviewed in committee by a specific date. Again, that is contrary to the principle that the Liberal Party ran on in the 2015 election that committees are the masters of their own parliamentary work.
What this would do is effectively diminish the power of committees and say that the Government of Canada is going to take over what committees are doing and that it is going to control how democracy operates. I do not agree with that practice. In paragraph (c), the motion states:
(iv) the committee shall proceed to clause-by-clause consideration of the bill no earlier than 7:00 p.m. on Monday, October 24...and if the committee has not completed its clause-by-clause consideration of the bill by 11:59 p.m. that day, all remaining amendments submitted to the committee shall be deemed moved, and the Chair shall put the question, forthwith and successively without further debate on all remaining clauses and amendments submitted to the committee, as well as each and every question necessary to dispose of the clause-by-clause consideration of the bill....
Paragraph (c), subparagraph (iv), indicates again that the government is controlling the democratic process. It is setting specific timelines for parliamentarians, irrespective of party, on what they can and cannot do at the Standing Committee on Health. That is not a principle that any member of Parliament should be happy with.
Subparagraph (v) in the motion is so specific that it even states which members of the committee could table the bill back in the House of Commons. Not only are we told by the government when we can table amendments to be reviewed in a very short period of time of less than a week, but the motion is stating that any member of the committee could effectively put something forward.
I could go on, but this is a very prescriptive programming motion. Again, they are the principles the Liberal Party ran on in 2015, principles that I know the member from Kingston who spoke right before me seemed very concerned about when he was on the environment committee. The member for North Vancouver sat beside him, not as a member of the standing committee but as an observer, and he understands that what his government is doing is contrary to the principles that he ran on in the 2015 election and, frankly, contrary to the Standing Orders and the operationalization of democracy in Canada.
During our 11 and a half hours of debate, there were a couple of key points raised. One is how this bill relates to the inflation crisis that we are facing here in Canada. Just today, Tyler Meredith, former financial adviser to the Prime Minister, outlined in an article in Bloomberg, that the people impacted most by inflation are the ones who could benefit from the money in this bill. In other words, low-income Canadians, those who make under $35,000 a year who might qualify for the rent subsidy and those who might qualify for the dental subsidy, are the ones who are being impacted by inflation. We know, on this side of the House of Commons, that one of the primary reasons we are in an inflationary environment today is government spending. Looking carefully at how public dollars are being spent in this country, that needs to be considered.
The second point is a question about governance. Over the last three years, when some programs that I even voted for were operationalized by the government, they were not done very well. We have no assurances from Bill C-31 that there would be transparency and that there would be effective checks to ensure that money being disbursed to Canadians would be used wisely. I know $650 for dental care means a lot to people, but at a minimum I believe that receipts or a bill should have to be submitted before the money is received to outline a minimum threshold to ensure transparency.
I could go on, but I look forward to any questions in the House this evening.
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Madam Speaker, the member is absolutely correct with respect to laying out what this programming motion would do. It is very prescriptive. It talks about the various different stages the bill would go through before coming back to the House. However, the member must recognize and understand the reason it has to be done this way. It is because Conservatives who are opposed to this bill just will not let it go through.
If I were to ask the member why they need to put up speaker after speaker, he would give me a reason about the democratic process and it being an affront on democracy if not everybody can speak their piece and whatnot. The reality of the situation is that he knows just as well as anybody else in the House that the Conservatives are playing games with the legislative tools that they have in order to slow down the process in the House. Can he at least not reflect on that?
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Madam Speaker, no, the Government of Canada is playing games with the pocketbooks of Canadians.
We worked in good faith with the government to pass Bill C-30 to give GST rebates, but we have not seen the level of co-operation needed by the government to work to address the primary concerns, one of which I just outlined, with transparency in what has been put forward by the government in this legislation.
The government needs to come clean with Canadians as to why it has not provided clean water to first nations across the country, despite making that promise for seven years.
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Madam Speaker, whether people like it or not, Canada was founded on the division of powers and respect between the federal and the provincial governments.
In this bill, we see once again the federal government interfering in the jurisdictions of—
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Madam Speaker, I would like to ask the following question of my hon. colleague: Does he not think that the government’s priority should be to respect provincial jurisdictions, and, if the government wants to invest in areas under provincial jurisdiction, it should transfer the money to the provinces so they can make decisions based on what is already in place?
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- Oct/18/22 5:33:53 p.m.
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I am sorry to interrupt the member, but the member for Nunavut is indicating that there are problems with the interpretation.
It seems to be working again. The hon. member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from the Bloc Québécois for his question.
It is true that we must respect provincial jurisdictions. It is even stated in clause 4 of this bill that the provision of this benefit will take provincial programs into account. No province has requested that program. It is an important question that the government is not answering.
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Uqaqtittiji, the NDP has been supportive of the bill because it has been made obvious that there are gaps in the dental care program. This bill attempts to fill some of those gaps.
Why, during this time of inflation, when families are forced to make difficult choices as to what they can afford for their dental care needs, which is an essential part of their overall health, do the Conservatives continue to play with these delay tactics?
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Madam Speaker, as I outlined in my speech, there have only been 11 and a half hours of debate for a bill that will effectively cost taxpayers $10 billion. When I was debating Bill C-31 last week, I outlined some of the work from every big bank in Canada that talked about the inflationary impact of further spending right now.
If the government continues to spend money, the people who are going to be impacted the most are low-income Canadians. We need to get a handle on our spending right now to prevent further inflation and a further demise of the spending power of low-income Canadians, who are struggling the most.
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Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise on behalf of the people for Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo.
I want to thank my colleague for the passion with which he conveys his points in the House. He spoke about transparency, and that is very important because, on the one hand, the Minister of Health was asked a question three times about whether the provinces asked for it. He did not answer it. On the other hand, the parliamentary secretary flat out said that they do not need to talk to the provinces if they are doing something that is right.
I am just wondering if he can comment on that discrepancy. If that was the case, why would the Minister of Health not just flat out tell us that?
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Madam Speaker, I think my hon. colleague answered his own question. The reality is that we have meetings regularly between each provincial health minister and the federal minister to outline priorities.
Dental care was not one of those priorities. Increased transfers to the provinces to deal with our doctor shortage was one of the priorities put forward by our provincial ministers.
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Madam Speaker, as this is the first time I have risen in the House since, I would like to mention that we have had a pretty terrible week in the riding of Barrie—Innisfil with the loss of two South Simcoe police officers, Constable Morgan Russell and Constable Devon Northrup. I want to thank, on behalf of the people I represent in Barrie—Innisfil, not only all of the Canadians who have reached out to my office but also those who have shown support for the South Simcoe Police Service family and the families of the fallen officers.
Sadly, we had another reminder of the danger that police officers face again today. An RCMP officer in Burnaby has been killed, stabbed, in the line of duty. On behalf of the people I represent, I express my sincere condolences to that family and the RCMP family as well. It is an inherent reminder, as we talk about many issues in this place, of the dangers that police officers face day in and day out as they put on their uniforms to protect our communities, not just in South Simcoe or Barrie—Innisfil, but right across the country.
I am rising today to speak on Bill C-31, which is the rent and dental piece of legislation the government has proposed. There is most definitely an affordability crisis in this country. We have seen that over the course of the last several years. Much of this has been predicted. In fact, Conservatives were predicting, through our finance critic at the time, that we were heading toward this inflation crisis.
The reason for that is the amount of liquidity that has been injected into the market, and that continues to be injected, by the government through bond purchasing by the Bank of Canada and through other government programs that have been announced, not the least of which is this, a $10-billion program. This inflationary crisis, which was considered to be transitory at the time, will continue. It is actually almost becoming structural.
We have seen that the Bank of Canada has had to increase interest rates in a fairly aggressive way to mitigate some of the inflationary crisis that is facing Canadians. It is facing Canadians right across the country, such as those who I represent in Barrie—Innisfil. I had a chance to travel the country over the summer and speak to many Canadians who were quite concerned about the rising cost of food, groceries and shelter, as well as the increases in the carbon tax and the impact they are having, not just on individual families, but also on businesses.
I heard from one restaurant owner who sent me a copy of a bill. The carbon tax portion of his heating bill was over $1,300, which is an additional cost to his business. Let us assume, for example, that he works off of a 10% margin, which is quite likely in today's competitive retail space. That means that, in order to pay for that carbon tax bill, that restauranteur would have to sell 13,000 additional more dollars' worth of food that month to pay his carbon tax bill. Those are the types of things that are impacting Canadians.
I got an text from a resident of my riding, Kevin, just over the weekend. He mentioned to me that he got his carbon tax rebate last week of $163. He wrote, “How is that supposed to help. It's not even a small dent in all of our extra expenses with gas for our 2 cars and heating for this winter.” I do not want to say what he wrote next because it is an expletive, but he then said that he has paid way more in carbon tax than he would ever get back. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has confirmed that.
The majority of people in Ontario will be getting less back in their carbon tax rebate than they will be paying in carbon tax. That is clearly the case in Barrie—Innisfil and the people who I represent. They are disproportionately being impacted by this carbon tax because of the cost of gas that they have to put in their cars to travel to go to work and for heating their homes. We are also hearing about a potential 300% increase in home heating costs this winter. How are Canadians going to handle that? This is not just the people who I represent. We have heard stories about Atlantic Canada about the cost of propane and the impact the carbon tax is having on that.
We have asked the government many times to give Canadians a break and stop the impact and increases of the carbon tax, which is now $50 a tonne and is going up to $170 a tonne. This is in spite of an election promise in 2019 by the Prime Minister that the carbon tax would not increase over $50 a tonne. However, eight months later, there was an announcement by the environment minister and the Prime Minister that called for a tripling of the carbon tax.
This is not just going to impact families in a negative way, especially at a time when they can least afford it, but it is also going to speak to and impact the competitiveness of our Canadian businesses, such as the example of the restauranteur I gave. It is time right now for this government to look at the self-inflicted wound that it has created on the Canadian economy and to do something about it.
There were several times before the summer break when Conservatives proposed real and pragmatic solutions to solving the inflation and affordability crisis that is impacting Canadian families and businesses. However, in every circumstance, the NDP-Liberal coalition voted against. What do we have in front of us here today? We have a patchwork bill that is somehow going to solve a dental and rental crisis.
For rent, the government would be giving a one-time $500 payment to those who qualify, and not every Canadian is going to qualify for this. However, the $500 would not even cover today's rents across the country, particularly in Barrie—Innisfil, where it would not cover more than a week's rent.
Somehow this patchwork solution is the Liberal's solution to a problem they have created, which is really the problem we are facing right now. The Liberals and their NDP partners have boxed themselves into what I would classify as an ideological box, and they cannot ideologically align with and accept the very real solutions required for us to solve this inflation and affordability crisis. That is the problem we are facing right now, so they come up with these patchwork solutions.
On the dental program, I mentioned this last week, and I tried to table the healthy smiles Ontario program, which gives low-income people and children under 17 with disabilities the ability to get their teeth cleaned, have examinations and have dental work done. In fact, in my county, Simcoe County, the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit has a bus that goes around and provides dental work, programs, examinations and preventative work for students while they are at school.
Several times the health minister was asked how many times the provincial health ministers had been asked about this program? How many of them actually asked for this program? He would not answer the question, because right now, 11 out of 13 provinces and territories have a program for healthy smiles. In fact, 70% of Canadians right now are covered through a health insurance program.
We have heard that there may be consequences to what the government is doing, one of which is that small and medium-sized enterprises may look at not providing this type of coverage if the government decides it is going to do it. Clearly, through this motion, the government is trying to effectively ram a $10-billion bill through the House of Commons without looking to solutions.
What is the solution? The solution is for government to get out of the way and allow for the power of our Canadian businesses, the people they employ, and the products and services they produce in every sector and every region of this country, and that includes the typical wealth-creating sector, which is the natural resource sector.
Right now, we are seeing around the world the geopolitical problems that are going on because of the ideological attack on what has always been and always will be a great revenue and wealth generator in this country. We have the ability to supply the world with clean Canadian energy and see the revenues that come with that, yet, because of the ideological alignment of the NDP and the Liberals, we are not doing that.
If Canada is not providing clean Canadian energy to the rest of the world, then who will? Would it be Russia, Venezuela or Iran? Those are the choices we face to find the solutions to open up the revenue side of the ledger so we can pay for the expenses this government has incurred and the inflation and affordability crisis that Canadians and businesses are now facing.
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