44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 17, 2022 10:00AM
- Nov/17/22 11:14:30 a.m.
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There is another point of order by the hon. member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes.
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Mr. Speaker, my friend from Kingston and the Islands sounds a bit hangry. Let us go get a shawarma.
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- Nov/17/22 11:14:46 a.m.
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Of course, that is not a point of order, but for those of us who like shawarma, I know it is difficult.
The hon. parliamentary secretary.
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Mr. Speaker, my friend for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, who lives in the riding next to mine, should come visit me. I would be happy to take him out to lunch in Kingston any time. I will pay with Canadian cash, if he is okay with that.
However, what we are seeing is, unfortunately, that he and the Conservatives are up to their games again. Just the other night, he was up to the game of orchestrating quorum calls in the House. He was standing behind the door and would get all these Conservatives to leave the room, and then somebody would jump up and say, “Quorum, quorum.” This is what our official opposition is doing. These are childish games that I would not expect of my four-year-old in kindergarten.
They are elected as members of Parliament. The member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes thinks that this place is a big joke, that the work we do here is supposed to be a big joke and that they can play these games. Do not let Bloc colleagues turn their heads from this, because they were equally responsible for that the other night too and playing these games. It is unfortunate. We have to do work for Canadians, but the member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes would rather play games than do that. I would encourage him to get back to the business of Canadians, and if he wants to discuss it over lunch in Kingston, I would be happy to do that with him.
When we talk about the supports for Canadians, I will draw a comparison, and this is my whole point. I will draw a comparison between what this government has been doing to support Canadians versus the hyped-up rhetoric, division and sowing the seeds to plant doubt in Canadians when it comes to the financial institutions we have. The member for Carleton, the Leader of the Opposition, rather than working towards some of the measures contained in this bill, wants to get up in the House and tell Canadians to not believe in the Canadian dollar, effectively saying that it is worthless because it happens to be run by a bunch of people that he does not particularly like. Instead, he tells them they should go out and invest in bitcoin. What happened to bitcoin over the last six months? It absolutely plummeted, and anybody who took his advice would be in a pretty devastating position right now.
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- Nov/17/22 11:17:09 a.m.
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The member for Berthier—Maskinongé on a point of order.
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Mr. Speaker, I will not often defend the leader of the Conservatives, but let us be serious about our work.
We must work on the measures that the government presented so we can help people face inflation, but the member has spent about eight minutes talking about cryptocurrencies.
People are watching us on television. Can we get to work?
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- Nov/17/22 11:17:40 a.m.
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I believe that is a matter of debate, but I repeat that members must speak to the bill at hand.
The member for Kingston and the Islands.
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Mr. Speaker, that is incredibly rich coming from this Bloc member who happens to be sitting next to the member who, only two nights ago, made the point that, yes, it is fun to watch members run out of the room and do a quorum call. However, this member wants me to trust that the Bloc is taking this place seriously when his own colleague, sitting right next to him, was engaging in those activities just two nights ago.
If Bloc members want me to talk about them because they are feeling a little left out as I have been focusing on the Conservatives, I am happy to do that too. However, for the Bloc member, his colleague sitting next to him asked moments ago why the government was not focused on supports for Canadians during these difficult times. Is he living under a rock? That is my question to him, because we can look at the countless initiatives and things that are in this fall economic statement that are there specifically—
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Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Certainly, in light of the many things that the member is not able to do directly that he seems to be doing indirectly, I would ask you, Mr. Speaker, to ensure that there is, in fact, quorum in this place to ensure Canadians know there are actually people here doing the work they expect us to do in this place.
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- Nov/17/22 11:19:14 a.m.
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There is a quorum call, and I believe I quickly have to count.
And the count having been taken:
The Deputy Speaker: The Table says we do have quorum.
We will go back to the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands.
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Mr. Speaker, three times the other night while I was speaking, the Conservatives did the exact same thing. I would take this opportunity to encourage people to go to my Twitter feed right now, where I posted a really interesting video that shows how Conservatives were playing with that quorum game just two nights ago in the House. They did it again. What happened when they did a quorum call? The Speaker stood up, verified we had quorum, and then I continued. This happens to me; it happened to the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands. The Conservatives are doing it routinely, and I do not understand if they think that is the business of the House, because it is not.
I would like to get back to the Bloc, and I apologize to my Conservative friends that I have gone off topic from them, and I want to focus on the Bloc. I am back with the Bloc now. Its members say we are not doing any initiatives for Canadians and that there is nothing to help Canadians. They can look at the countless measures in here making life more affordable, like by taking the interest off students loans. They can go talk to students who have interest on their loans and ask them if that is going to help make life more affordable for them. We are lowering credit card transactions and doubling the GST tax credit for six months for certain Canadians. There is a $500 top-up for the Canada housing benefit, the Canada dental benefit and a new quarterly Canada workers benefit.
Are Bloc members trying to tell me that those are not meaningful things that would impact people? Are they nodding? If they are nodding, that basically means they do not think that stuff would be impactful to Canadians and Quebeckers. Even if they are nodding, I doubt they would actually agree with that.
We can also look at some of the other stuff in here, like making housing more affordable. The housing top-up I mentioned is helping young Canadians afford a down payment faster. We are helping Canadians save on closing costs, introducing a new refundable multi-generational home renovation tax credit and cracking down on house flipping by ensuring profits from properties are held for less than 12 months. Do those members think these are initiatives that Canadians are not going to benefit from?
There is the Canada growth fund to help build technology, infrastructure and businesses. I could go on and on, and then the Bloc is going to get up, ask about the health transfers and say we are failing because they do not happen to agree with the manner in which we are distributing the health transfers.
This fall economic statement is about providing supports for Canadians. That is exactly what has been laid out in this document. It is exactly why I am very much in favour of supporting it, and I think the Canadian people will judge those who choose not to support these measures, and we will see how that comes to be when we get to vote for this. Hopefully Conservatives will let us vote on this some time in the fall, rather than waiting until June, like last year, but I will not hold my breath.
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Mr. Speaker, you might rule me out of order, because I wish to ask a question on the fall economic statement. Finally, I did hear a comment at the end of the speech that listed a few topics broadly that were listed.
In an earlier exchange with the member for Calgary Shepard, he asked a question of the previous member. One of those things the hon. member across the way did not list was the $14.2-billion blank cheque. I have yet to hear what that is about. How is that not incendiary spending, as identified by the Parliamentary Budget Officer? I would like to know whether that is a measured response, which a previous speaker so described.
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Mr. Speaker, I have not asked a single question this morning. He might be referring to somebody else. I do not even know what he is talking about.
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Mr. Speaker, today we are talking about Bill C-32. The opposition's role is to point out what the bill is lacking. So far, it appears that the government's role is to boast a lot and not listen.
We are here to point out the flaws, the jurisdictional issues and the agreements that are not being honoured. Among those agreements is the one on infrastructure, which my colleague mentioned earlier, but there is another one that has not been respected for a very long time. It is the Constitution.
Strangely enough, in the last election, The New York Times said that the party that respected the Canadian Constitution the most was the Bloc Québécois, the separatist party. We are asking that the jurisdictions of Quebec and the Canadian provinces be respected in accordance with the Constitution.
Since I am talking about agreements we want the government to respect, I would like to point out that the 1867 Constitution, the only one that Quebec has signed, has yet to be translated, despite the 1982 agreement to translate it within six months.
When will this finally happen, and when will the government respect its own Constitution? It is about time it did.
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Mr. Speaker, if I heard the member correctly, she said that The New York Times said that Quebec was the best at respecting the Constitution. I apologize if I am not willing to take advice from a foreign newspaper on Canada's Constitution and the way that various different parties contribute to it. I apologize, but I just cannot see how I can possibly answer a question that is based on the premise of a foreign newspaper weighing in on our Constitution.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
An hon. member: I cannot believe you just called The New York Times fake news.
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- Nov/17/22 11:25:08 a.m.
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Order, please.
Questions and comments, the hon. member for Edmonton Griesbach.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. colleague for his important intervention holding the opposition members accountable. I believe as a member of the opposition that it is important to advance our program, the program that New Democrats fight for every single day in this place, which is to make the material conditions of Canadians better.
In my community of Edmonton Griesbach, I want to offer a respectful reflection of what they are experiencing. We know that across the country there is a housing crisis. People in my community cannot get ahead. We have 3,400 houseless folks across the city of Edmonton. We have nearly 470 people who died in the last two years of houselessness. These are folks I knew, real people who are affected. To give credit to the government, this fall economic statement does, in fact, help some of those folks with a $500 housing benefit. I know that is going to help Canadians. New Democrats pushed for that and we agree with that.
However, it was clear that the national housing strategy detailed by the Auditor General earlier this week is damning. What the government was supposed to build for folks did not hit its targets. It also said that the government would fail to ensure that the proper amount of housing is established by 2027 and 2028.
When will the government take housing seriously and when will it increase the supply?
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Mr. Speaker, that is a great question. I think it is a valid question. I want to thank the member for bringing it up. I would agree that there will always be more we need to do.
I want to thank the NDP for actually being adults in the room when it comes to the other parties. It is the NDP who can take credit for what is in this bill, which they do when they see it as appropriate. They saw a situation where it is a minority Parliament. Rather than just be obstructionist like the two other opposition parties, they decided to try working with the government to actually advance things for Canadians. They did exactly that.
If the member would like to continue talking about housing, I would be more than willing to do that because I think it is an important issue. I hope he keeps raising it.
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Mr. Speaker, this fall economic statement arrived during one of the most difficult financial periods in many Canadians' living memory. For my constituents of Edmonton Mill Woods and for Canadians across the country, life has become increasingly difficult. We are witnessing an unparalleled affordability crisis, and too many Canadians are barely hanging on. My constituents are struggling to deal with inflation, which is at a 40-year high, and with interest rates that are increasing at the fastest rate in decades.
This crisis derives almost entirely from a government that, since being elected into office, has decided to spend more money that Canadians do not have on projects and initiatives that Canadians have not seen. After years of imprudent spending, the government has run out of Canadians' money. The Bank of Canada is working overtime, attempting to keep up with the government's fiscal irresponsibility.
This is why Canada finds itself in the position that it is in today. Our national debt has doubled, and the Prime Minister has created more debt than all other Canadian prime ministers combined. We have heard from the government benches that the Prime Minister had no choice but to double our debt, yet 40% of all the new spending measures have had nothing to do with COVID. That amounts to 205 billion dollars' worth of unnecessary and harmful debt that future generations of Canadians will have to account for.
Similarly, government spending is now up 30% from prepandemic levels. The cost that it takes for the government to service the debt that it has created, often needlessly, is as much as the Canada health transfer. This means that Canada can spend less and less money on crucial social expenditures like health care. Canadian tax dollars that could have gone toward hospitals and nurses are instead being squandered on the effort to keep up with the Prime Minister's debt.
This is just one example of how government spending is hurting Canadians. There are the real-world consequences to the Prime Minister's reckless decisions.
The Prime Minister is happy to spend $6,000 a night on the most expensive hotel room in London while Canadians cannot even afford to pay their rent. As a consequence of this, we are now in a position where the cost of government is driving up the cost of living for Canadians. The Prime Minister's inflationary deficits, to the tune of half a trillion dollars, have created more dollars while Canada produces fewer goods. Worse still, inflation has increased the cost of producing and distributing these goods. This is how we have come to find ourselves in this very difficult position.
Canadians are having to skip meals and food banks were visited over 1.5 million times in a month, a 35% increase in comparison to just last year. Canadians across the country can no longer afford basic necessities like heating their homes and gas. Mothers are having to mix water into their babies' milk, and as we head into this holiday season, parents have less to spend on their children.
Nearly every single component of the Canadian economy is failing. Home prices have doubled, and a significant number of young Canadians simply cannot afford to purchase a home in the cities and towns they grew up in. There was once a time when being able to afford a home was not a luxury reserved for the wealthiest. However, now in Canada, the second-largest country in the world with the second most space for housing developments, purchasing property is outside the realm of possibility for too many Canadians. The cities of Vancouver and Toronto have the third- and tenth-most overpriced housing markets in the world. This means that poor and working-class kids and new Canadians will never be able to afford a home.
Despite Canada having the most inflated housing bubble in the world, those who have been able to afford a home may lose it. Monthly payments on mortgages are rising even as house prices are starting to drop. Families that bought a typical home five years ago with a typical mortgage that is now up for renewal will pay $7,000 more per year. This is clearly unsustainable for many Canadians.
Recently, a constituent of mine wrote to me about how they can no longer afford to pay their mortgage, which had increased significantly every single month. How can we expect Canadians to afford this? Despite this, the Bank of Canada has said that it will have to continue hiking interest rates just to keep up with the government's inflation. We now face a crisis where many Canadians can no longer afford to pay for their mortgages.
As the Prime Minister's inflation makes the cost of everything even more expensive, household debt has skyrocketed, as more Canadians are relying on credit cards instead of paycheques. Despite this, Canadians have never paid more in taxes to the government. The government goes on collecting taxes, further draining the pockets of Canadians. It has revealed no intent to slow down.
The government plans to triple the carbon tax, making vital goods like food and heating a home even more expensive than they are today. The Conservatives have consistently voiced our concerns for seniors and families unable to afford food or even heat their homes this winter. For some families in Mill Woods, this will be the toughest holiday season yet. However, the Prime Minister continues to carry on with his wasteful spending agenda on the backs of hard-working Canadians.
Canadians need a break. The government cannot go on spending like this while providing little to no support for Canadians who are struggling to keep their heads above water. This economic update does not come close to what Canadians are expecting and what they need to see. It fails to address the cost of living crisis spurred on by the government's out-of-control spending.
Before the fall economic update, the Conservatives made two demands of the government: that it stop the tax increases and that it stop the spending. We urged the government to introduce no new taxes on the backs of my constituents and those who are struggling across Canada. This includes cancelling all planned tax hikes, like the tripling of the carbon tax. We need to work toward making life easier for Canadians. Instead, the government chooses to actively make life more expensive and much more difficult.
We also asked the government to stop the needless spending. A Conservative government would ensure that new spending is matched by equivalent savings. However, as we have seen from this economic update, the government will continue its wasteful spending and expanding its inflationary deficits, which will drive up the cost of everything.
Despite the government saying that it will now be fiscally prudent, it has refused to commit to any of our requests. This fall economic statement will keep Canada regressing down the path of economic hardship. Instead of creating more cash, the government should be supporting the creation of more of what cash buys. The Prime Minister should be looking at building more homes and developing our ethical natural resources. This would mean the production of cheaper food and other essential goods right here in Canada.
For this reason, we cannot support the government's inflationary update, and we will continue to represent Canadians who are struggling by holding the government to account. It is time for a government to address the cost of living crisis. It needs to plan to make energy more affordable.
That is why the Conservatives will repeal anti-energy laws and get Canadian energy out to market. We will remove government gatekeepers, get more homes built and make Canada the quickest place in the world to get a building permit. We will reform the tax and benefits system to ensure that whenever somebody works an extra hour, takes an extra shift or earns an extra bonus, they are always better off working.
Canada does have a future, and hope in the Canadian dream can be restored. However, first the government must control its wasteful spending and address the cost of living crisis that is affecting every Canadian.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians need to be concerned when Conservative after Conservative stands up to say that every dollar borrowed that was not directly attributed to the pandemic is harmful and unnecessary debt. That is what the member said.
Let us think about child care and the national child care program. Yes, there is a cost to it, but there is also a benefit to it that the Conservatives continue to not recognize. In fact, the Conservative Party of Canada wants to get rid of our national child care program. I have a tough time with that. Canadians have a tough time with that.
We had to borrow some money to support our national health care system. Given what the Conservatives are saying today, can we anticipate that the Conservative Party would also roll back the investments we are putting into health care? Is that part of the hidden agenda from the Conservative Party? Do the Conservatives intend to roll back health care transfers?
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