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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 167

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 9, 2023 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 167 - Mar/9/23
Mr. Brad Vis (Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, CPC)
  • Mar/9/23 10:08:45 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of the Conservative members of the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology and table, in both official languages, our dissenting report. After eight years of the Liberal government, Canadians are struggling to cope with 40-year-high inflation and the rising cost of living. The Standing Committee on Industry and Technology heard from 65 witnesses on the challenges impacting small businesses. We heard about high levels of pandemic debt, labour challenges and the fragile economic period. We heard that only half of small businesses are seeing sales return to prepandemic levels. While we agree with many of the recommendations in the report, it fails to address key measures the government could take right now to help small businesses immediately, namely the suspension of the automatic annual increase of excise duty rates, freezing of CPP and EI increases for SMEs and workers, and that the Government of Canada immediately cancel the federal carbon tax. This committee failed to recognize the struggles small businesses are facing. It is a struggle they refer to as a death by a thousand cuts.
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Context: House Hansard - 167 - Mar/9/23
Mr. Kevin Lamoureux
  • Mar/9/23 6:45:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what the member just said is completely inaccurate. It is just not true. Within a couple of years, we had a federal government that, unlike Stephen Harper's government, negotiated health care accords with the different provinces, providing secured funding. We just had a major announcement in regard to health care. Historic amounts of money are currently going to health care, with an additional $198 billion. When the member says that we are not spending money where we should be spending money or implies that we are wasting money, he can tell that to the hundreds of thousands, going into the millions, of Canadians who received CERB payments during the pandemic. He can tell that to the business owners who received literally billions of dollars through the wage subsidy so that we could keep Canadians working during the pandemic. Canada was in a great position to be able to rebound out of the pandemic because the Government of Canada supported the economy and supported Canadians. That is why, in comparison to the rest of the world, we are doing relatively well.
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