44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 21, 2023 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, my colleague knows, as a former municipal councillor himself, just as I am a former municipal councillor for Tofino, that municipalities shoulder a large majority of services and costs. However, they only collect 8% of the overall tax revenue.
The government just made a retroactive agreement with the RCMP to ensure that they get paid more. We know that our frontline law enforcement deserves to be paid more, and they deserve better training, especially de-escalation training. We also need to ensure they get supports when they are injured, especially with PTSD.
However, the Association of Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities just met in the member's former hometown of Nanaimo. They were unanimous that the federal government needs to support local governments after the downloading of this retroactive funding. Unlike federal and provincial governments, which can run deficits, municipal governments have to run a balanced budget.
Will the federal government get back to the table with FCM and local governments to make sure they are not eating the costs of a deal they negotiated without consulting local governments?
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to the budget implementation act. This is a challenging time in a challenging world. With every challenge comes an opportunity. It is in this context that I speak to this budget implementation act.
There are two main things in this budget for me. The first is that we would ensure that Canadians can continue to count on us to be there with our continued support to all vulnerable Canadians. The second is that we would also meet the challenges of today and tomorrow while building a Canada that is more secure and more sustainable, and ensuring that the prosperity we enjoy today will be available to future generations too.
Let us start with the challenging times. We all know that the pandemic hit not only Canada but also all the countries across the world. With the co-operation of Canadians, we managed to contain the pandemic to the best extent possible. We are one of the best countries in the world to have managed the pandemic this well.
The economy got hit, and 8.9 million working Canadians lost their jobs. We came out in support of them. We also supported more than half a million small businesses through the wage subsidy scheme and the small business account. As well, we managed through the pandemic with relatively fewer deaths compared to many other countries in the world.
Then came the war, the illegal invasion of Russia on Ukraine. This created a problem in the energy crisis across the world. It also gave rise to the rising crisis of food grains. We also had the problem of the supply chain issue due to the pandemic. There are a lot of shortages because the supply chains were disrupted across the world. We also realized the importance of self-reliance in that time, when critical goods were not being produced and were not available at the right time to all those who needed them.
Due to all of this, we faced inflation, which peaked to 8.1% in September 2022. However, during the last nine months, we have seen the inflation rate going down. Currently, it stands at around 4.3%. With all of this, we can still say that Canada has done relatively well. In fact, among G7 countries, we have the best economic growth. We have recovered 865,000 jobs more than there were before the pandemic.
These challenging times are also in globalization. Globalization, as we knew it for several decades, is on the way down. The multilateral agencies, such as WTO, on which international order-based trade depends, are also facing their own problems. With all the vacancies at the appellate body at WTO, it cannot even operate today due to non-cooperation by some key member states.
We are seeing that, the more bilateral free trade agreements taking place, free trade agreements among certain blocks taking place and the concept of friend-shoring is coming in. While these are challenges, they also provide opportunities for Canada. I will come to that a bit later.
We also had the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States, our biggest trading partner, which was a game-changer. This Inflation Reduction Act, combined with the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act, is close to one trillion dollars in legislation. They have rewritten the rules of industrial policy and industrial development in the United States.
The Inflation Reduction Act did affect many of the trading partners of the United States, but Canada was able to manage the bulk of it through effort brought by different levels of the government and the industrial bodies. Before the IRA became legislation, we were able to ensure that all North American manufactured vehicles are included in the incentives and subsidies proposed in that IRA.
At the international trade committee, when we were discussing the effects of the IRA on Canada, one trade union leader very aptly said that we cannot respond with every dollar to dollar to IRA, but we can respond smartly. That is what Canada has done, and that is what Canada would also be doing with this budget.
Canada is prosperous, and has been prosperous for a long time, due to our natural resources, such as oil, gas, minerals, metals and forestry products, and due to the hard work of several generations of Canadians, but the world is changing. The world is moving more toward a knowledge-based economy.
This knowledge-based economy makes a flat world out there. Canadians, especially the younger generation of Canadians, today face competition from all across the world, whether from Sydney, Australia; Tokyo, Japan; Shanghai, China; Mumbai, India; Frankfurt, Germany; or any other place. We all are facing the same competition in this digital world.
Even in this digital economy, we have invested. In last year's budget we came out with an investment of over $1.2 billion in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and other advanced technologies. In this budget, we have committed $1.2 billion for space technology. If possible, I will touch on that a little later.
The other key thing is that the world is moving toward a clean economy. Between now and 2050, it is projected that about $100 trillion of private capital will be invested across the world in building the global clean economy, and that is where the opportunity lies for Canada. We have the opportunity to be a supplier of critical minerals and the entire supply chain. In the transition toward electrical vehicle industries, Canada can play a major role.
We are already seeing investments announced by major auto manufacturers in Canada. I believe even today there is going to be a very major announcement on battery manufacturing in Canada. We have seen the battery recycling plants coming up in Canada, and already Canada is projected to be one of the leaders for the supply of critical minerals required for this entire ecosystem. We need to see the processing of critical minerals also take place in Canada today.
We have a lot of opportunities on that front. However, we have a small issue with the new mines coming up to mine the critical minerals. There is a long regulatory process that is involved in that. For that, the federal government has come out with agreements with various provinces. For example, we have signed an agreement with the Province of Ontario where we can work together to align ourselves on the timelines, on the resources and on the regulatory approval process so we can deliver quicker, faster approvals, which are required to get the minerals from the ground for battery manufacturing.
As I mentioned, we would invest $1.9 billion in Canada's space agencies. This funding would support the development of new technologies and capabilities, including space robotics and exploration missions, as well as support for Canadian companies involved in the space industry.
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Mr. Speaker, my regards to my hon. colleague for Louis‑Saint‑Laurent. I thank him for his speech. We might not always share the same values, but he always has something interesting to say during our debates in the House.
I want to ask him about something that is unclear to me, to see if he feels the same way. In her budget, the Minister of Finance announced funding of $80 billion for the economic transition, as it is called. A lot of upcoming tax credits are absent from the bill. No money for investments, subsidies or support is directly announced, but the infrastructure development is there. From the way things are presented, it appears as though the money earmarked for this will not be part of the budget framework and will be managed separately, outside government accounts. That means there will no longer be accountability to the House.
What does my hon. colleague think of that?
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- Apr/21/23 11:57:13 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the commissioner of the environment is very critical of the federal plan to combat climate change, and the government is not out of the woods yet.
Speaking of wood, he specifically mentions the Prime Minister's much-touted plan to plant two billion trees.
How is the government doing on that front? It has met 2.3% of its target. Two per cent is not terribly impressive, and that is assuming all the trees that were planted managed to survive. The commissioner warned us that Ottawa is not doing any tracking.
It is time to get serious. Instead of pretending to plant trees, when will the Prime Minister take real action by cutting off funding to oil companies?
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Mr. Speaker, it is deeply concerning. Is the government doing a good job of managing public finances? The answer is no. The government is not paying attention to the cost of the services that it is providing.
I will give some examples. Issuing a passport costs four times more than issuing a driver's licence when Quebec does it. Processing an EI claim costs two and a half times more than processing an application for social assistance in Quebec City. Resources are badly managed. Nonetheless, the Parliamentary Budget Officer identified what is indirectly a fiscal imbalance by pointing out that the flexibility is here in Ottawa. Instead of funding, say, health care in the provinces, the government is increasing the number of programs and interfering in jurisdictions. That is unacceptable.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague, the member for New Westminster—Burnaby, for his real championing of so many things that give Canadians a better life. One of the things he has been championing is the green new deal, the idea that we have to have a transition to a cleaner future and leave no workers behind. Because of the NDP pressure on the government, we have significant funding for clean tech in this budget that is tied to good union wages so people can have a respectable life in this new future.
I wonder if my colleague could provide further comments on that and on whether this should be standard operating procedure for future government infrastructure funding.
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