44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 17, 2022 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I want to continue on that theme of housing. If we listened to the Conservative leader, we would know that as long as there is this much capital in the market for bidding on new homes and new units of various kinds, we will have to build a lot of units to ever see the price of housing come down.
One thing in Bill C-32 is a pandemic dividend, or the Canada recovery dividend. It is really about going to the very same financial institutions that the Conservative leader has rightly complained about, which got a lot of liquidity support during the pandemic, and taking some of that money back into government coffers for it to be put out on things like the doubling of the GST rebate, the dental benefit and the Canada housing benefit.
I found it odd not to hear any support from the Conservative leader for the pandemic dividend, because it seems to me that it is very clearly an issue of justice, as we are talking about who should bear the cost of the moment we are in, in light of what has gone on in the pandemic. It also seems to be a pretty important tool for trying to right one of the structural problems in the housing market right now.
I wonder if the member might offer his thoughts on the pandemic recovery dividend.
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Mr. Speaker, I will briefly reiterate the question that was posed, which had to do with seniors between the ages of 65 and 74 getting access to the OAS increase that the government often talks about as if it is an increase for all seniors. However, I did not hear an answer about when that increase is coming for seniors 65 to 74.
In case the member missed it the first time, I want to make sure that he has an opportunity to actually answer the question. We had the preamble. Now let us have the answer.
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Mr. Speaker, last week, I spoke a bit about the shortcomings of the government's economic statement.
Today, I will speak about a particular measure found in Bill C-32 that I think is very important, because it is a matter of justice in the current economy. I am referring to the Canada recovery dividend.
We know that at the start of the pandemic, the big banks and financial institutions received a lot of support from the government. However, in light of the consequences of the pandemic and how well those same financial institutions performed during the pandemic, we can see that they did not need that assistance, or at least not as much as they were offered. The amount of assistance they got may even have put added pressure on the housing market.
Over the course of the pandemic, we saw financial institutions get a lot of liquidity support very quickly. We can see, if we look at their record of performance over the pandemic, that this help really was not necessary or certainly not to the extent it was delivered to them, because they made record profits. When most Canadians were worried about losing their homes and experiencing a significant decrease in their own household revenue, financial institutions were making even more profit than they did before the pandemic began.
There is some evidence, sometimes it is exaggerated to some extent, that this help did increase inflationary pressure within the housing market. There are other important factors, when we look at the housing market, that are driving that inflation. If we look only at the assistance that was provided to financial institutions and banks during the pandemic, we miss a very important part of the story about inflation in housing, which was happening at breakneck speed even before the pandemic. I do not want to minimize the impact of that, but at the same time, if we exaggerate that impact, we do not put ourselves in a good position to address the real structural challenges within the housing market that preceded the pandemic and continue even today.
One measure in the bill that is really important from a point of view of addressing that problem, which is also a problem of fundamental economic justice, is the pandemic recovery dividend. This is about assessing a one-time tax on the profits of banks and financial institutions in excess of one billion dollars. Before anyone freaks out about how this is a tax and that it will hurt the economy and everything else, it is only being applied to banks and financial institutions just on their profits over a billion dollars.
I think most Canadian business owners, if they are listening, would think that if they had a year where they had revenue over a billion dollars to tax at an exceptionable rate, that would be a pretty good year. If banks and financial institutions want to object that some kind of unfairness is going on, that is a sign of how out of touch they are with the real lives of Canadians and the people they are supposed to serve. I would also say that any politician in this place who wants to pretend that somehow this is an unfair tax, some kind of horrible socialism or some act of tyranny, is likewise out of touch.
I will talk a bit in a moment about how some of these measures, like the permanent increase on the corporate tax rate, are well warranted, and certain measures like the pandemic recovery dividend ought to be expanded to other industries through a windfall tax.
What has surprised me about the debate around the pandemic dividend is that I have not heard that term out of the mouth of a Conservative in the debate so far. It could just be that I missed it, so I apologize to any Conservative member who did talk about it. However, I have listened to a number of Conservative speeches now and it certainly is not a common theme. I find it strange that the Conservatives are not talking about it, because for a long time all their leader wanted to talk about was the role big financial institutions were playing in jacking up the prices in the housing market, because they had received too much accumulated capital from government during the pandemic, as he said.
Here is a measure that would actually address, specifically, undoing the harm that the leader of the Conservative Party has made the key plank of his leadership campaign, and now a central plank of his party's strategy in critiquing the government, and he has nothing to say about it.
This is an example of doing something to go after gatekeepers in the financial industry, who are jacking up prices for Canadian working families that are thinking about getting their first home or are trying to figure out getting another home to move to, if they cannot afford their current home, and all the chaos we know is happening for Canadians within the housing market. This is a way of rectifying that and helping to pay for certain things. The Conservatives often ask where we will get the money to pay for this, that money does not grow on trees. It does for the big banks and financial institutions apparently.
The leader of the Conservative Party is willing to talk about that as a problem, but when we get to talking about solutions, suddenly we cannot find him. Maybe he is under his desk right now or hanging out in the lobby. I do not know where he is but he is not talking about a potential solution. This is at least a beginning, to say that a perversion of the pandemic was that these large banks and financial institutions, which already make a ton of money, made even more money.
Assessing a one-time 15% tax on that extra profit above $1 billion, and this is not a low threshold by any measure, is a perfectly reasonable way of trying to get some of the money that we need to pay for things, like the doubling of the GST tax credit, when people are trying to figure out if inflation will mean they cannot buy food for their families or cannot make rent.
The banks and financial institutions are not going to miss that extra money. They may on their balance sheets, and I am sure they will shed a few tears around the boardroom table. I wish them well in their journey for catharsis, but I do not think it is a reason not to do it. They have the money to spare and that money is very much needed to accomplish things for Canadians, who really are in dire straits. They cannot just worry about whether they will post $2 billion in profit or $1.85 billion in profit in their next shareholder report at the end of the quarter.
This is a significant reason why New Democrats are supporting Bill C-32. We think that it is about time we start talking about the people who are making incredible money in this moment of extraordinary challenge for Canadians. Where we think the government has fallen short on this, and we have talked about this a lot on many opportunities, is that outside of financial institutions and banks, other companies are doing very well and posting record profits.
We have talked about Loblaws. This is an example within the grocery world where companies are making huge profits. We know that oil and gas companies are making huge profits in this moment when Canadians are struggling with the rising cost of energy. Those profits would not be growing if they were only increasing their prices to account for their increase in costs. They are not only passing the cost onto consumers, which would mean their profits would stay the same, all things being equal. They are raising prices that go above and beyond the increase in cost. That is how they are achieving record profits in a time of serious strife.
That is why we believe there should be a windfall tax, like the pandemic dividend, along the same structure, that applies to oil and gas companies, grocery retailers and big box stores, which also did very well during the pandemic while mom and pop businesses struggled because they could not offer the same level of service to people in extraordinary times. This has meant that some of those businesses have closed their doors and they are not necessarily coming back. There has been a permanent structural change in certain industries that has favoured larger companies. It makes sense that they would pay more tax on that extraordinary profit.
I am thankful for the opportunity to highlight what I think is a central issue with respect to Bill C-32, one that has not received enough attention to date.
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Madam Speaker, the way it works in the pandemic dividend in the legislation the government has crafted is that it establishes a baseline profit in advance of the pandemic. Then it looks at the pandemic window and how much more profit was made during the pandemic compared to baseline. That is how it comes up with a threshold. It then applies a tax for profits over that threshold.
There is a reasonable method already in place that could be applied to other industries. It would capture industry sensitive differences with respect to the level of profit. We do not like the words “cookie cutter”, but the way this works could be applied to other industries. The level of sensitivity that would be needed and expected is already in the mechanism.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.
Of course, the New Democratic Party believes that we need to invest in social housing. The Conservatives propose facilitating the construction of houses on the private market. However, without real investment and without the construction of social housing, many Canadians will not be able to buy these homes and will not have access to housing that they can afford.
Yearly, recurring investments are really important. Non-profit organizations need to know whether they will receive an amount every year to make their own investments in the initial stages of a social housing project. If they do not know when these investments will be made by the government, it is really difficult for them to plan—
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Madam Speaker, I think it is pretty clear that if Canada wants to get serious about meeting its emission reduction targets in the timeline, even in the inadequate timeline, that has been promised by the government, we have to see more projects getting built. The proof is in the pudding.
The investments are not there, and the construction is not happening. We are not going to see infrastructure that reduces greenhouse gas emissions if it is not getting built. Announcing it does not do the job, and so far all we have are announcements.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to raise this point of order. What I would like to do is just give a brief summary of the issue and give a couple of examples of parliamentary precedent that I think bear on the case and then propose a remedy.
This is with respect to Bill C-228. At committee, an amendment was moved to not only protect the pensions of workers when companies went bankrupt, but to also protect their termination and severance pay. It was an amendment that was agreed to by the bill's sponsor in advance of the second reading vote. It was ruled out of order by the committee chair. That was overturned by the committee itself. Subsequently, in response to a point of order by the member for Winnipeg North, that amendment protecting termination and severance pay was removed by the Speaker as being out of order.
There are a few examples in parliamentary history where amendments that were removed for the very same reason, which was that it was determined it was outside the scope of the bill, have been put back in with the unanimous consent of the House of Commons.
I refer specifically to June 17, 1986, when Speaker Bosley ruled three government motions in amendment at report stage of Bill C-106, at that time, were out of order because they went beyond the scope of the bill. The parliamentary secretary to the president of the Privy Council at that time asked Speaker Bosley whether the motions could be put to the House for unanimous consent. The Speaker agreed, and the amendment motions were reintroduced in the bill with the unanimous consent of the House.
Similarly, on April 28, 1992, the House was about to begin consideration at report stage of Bill C-54. The admissibility of three amendments to the bill, which had been adopted in committee, were called into question on a point of order. The three amendments were ruled out of order by the chairman of the committee, as two of the amendments sought to amend the parent act and a third, like these, went beyond the scope of the bill, but the chairman's decisions were overturned by the committee.
After hearing comments from other members, Speaker Fraser ruled immediately that the inadmissible amendments adopted by the committee to Bill C-54 be declared null and void and no longer form part of the bill as reported to the House. Right after the ruling, the amendments in question were agreed to by the House, once again, by unanimous consent.
I submitted these amendments again for report stage of the bill, which will begin tomorrow, so it is timely that I am raising this point of order now, with report stage of that bill pending for tomorrow, and—
Mr. Kevin Lamoureux: But what is the point of order?
Mr. Daniel Blaikie: Madam Speaker, I am getting heckled on a point of order now by the member for Winnipeg North, who is very clearly keen to remove protection for termination and severance pay from Canadian workers.
However, the point I am coming to is that the remedy is to seek unanimous consent. When I presented those amendments for report stage, in accordance with Standing Order 76.1(2), the table decided not to put those amendments on notice. Therefore, the only remedy now is to seek unanimous consent of the House.
In the context I have laid out, I would now like to seek unanimous consent of the House to reintroduce the amendment that would create subclause 4.1 to the bill, which would protect the termination and severance pay that a bankrupt owes to various categories of its employees. I would ask that you unanimous consent of the House now, Madam Speaker, to do that very thing.
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- Nov/17/22 1:16:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. This point of order is about the conduct of the member for Winnipeg North, who, it is no mystery to people in the House, speaks a lot, both on the record and off the record. When he said “no” to that request for unanimous consent, was that just part of his normal chit-chat on the benches that maybe the Speaker heard, because it happened to be very loud, or did he intend to say “no” to removing the—
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