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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 230

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 5, 2023 10:00AM
  • Oct/5/23 10:55:52 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the interpreters are signalling that there is feedback. I am not sure whether it is from an electronic source close to the microphones, but the interpreters are hearing a thud.
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  • Oct/5/23 10:55:58 a.m.
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I want to remind members to keep their phones and earpieces away from the microphones and not on their desk because it creates problems for the interpreters. I would ask the member speaking to make sure his interpretation earpiece is off and that there is no phone beside the mike.
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  • Oct/5/23 10:56:37 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, as this is the member's maiden speech, would it be acceptable for him to restart his speech from the beginning given the challenges we have had technically?
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  • Oct/5/23 10:56:44 a.m.
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I will do that, but I want to remind all members of the House to make sure that they are prepared, and that includes having phones and earpieces away from the mikes. The hon. member for Oxford.
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  • Oct/5/23 10:57:01 a.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-56 
Madam Speaker, I rise today for my first debate on such an important issue facing not only Oxford residents but also Canadians across our country. Before I dive into Bill C-56, I would like to take a few minutes to quickly recognize all those who made my journey to this chamber possible. First there is my great campaign team and the hundreds of volunteers who showed up and knocked on doors. There is also a strong riding association, my family and friends, and my great Conservative caucus colleagues, who came out, knocked on doors, put up signs and helped me to take my seat in this chamber today. I am truly blessed to be representing the great riding, one of the best ridings, of Oxford. We are a great community with so much potential. We are the best dairy farmers in Canada. We are the best agriculture sector in Canada. We have the 401 and 403 intersecting in my riding, making it a great transportation logistical hub for Canada. We have the leaders in the auto sector and two massive plants in my riding, with Toyota in Woodstock and CAMI in Ingersoll. We are leaders in hospitality in the food industry. Many members may have heard of Shaw's Ice Cream or Jakeman's Maple Farm, and both are in Oxford. We are a great community with so much potential. Why? It is because of our people. We have hard-working, dedicated, committed folks who want to roll up their sleeves and get things done, which is the story of my family. Like many Canadians, I do not come from privilege. I am a proud son of immigrants. My mom came to Canada from India from a dairy farming family back in India and dad was working class. They came to Canada with $10 in their pocket and a dream for a better life, not just for themselves but also for the next generation, and they worked hard. Growing up, I saw them both work in factories with 16-hour shifts. They picked up the odd shift on weekends whenever they could to make ends meet. Growing up, we picked strawberries to put food on our table. That is the story of other hard-working Canadians as well. We all worked. Nothing was given to us. We knew that if we worked hard and played by the rules, we could earn an honest living and get ahead in this country. This is why it is an honour of a lifetime to be standing here in this chamber because only in Canada can a proud son of immigrants, a son of factory workers, take a seat in this chamber and be a public servant to Canadians, which is why I do not take this role lightly. I will be one of the hardest-working members of Parliament in this chamber. I will give it everything I have. I will serve with humility because I know that in public service I am serving, and Canadians are my boss. I work for them. I will always stand up for what is right, not what is easy. I will always be a strong voice for the voiceless. The stakes are high in our country. After eight years of this Liberal-NDP government, Canadians are struggling. The Canadian dream that my parents came to this country for is sadly starting to fade away. To address the issue at hand today, Bill C-56 is the Liberal's response to addressing an affordability crisis that they themselves created with failed leadership, weak policies and simply incompetence, which is why they are looking around for ideas, and they are looking at the Conservative caucus for ideas. I do not mind that at all. I understand that they like to steal ideas, which is not a bad thing because Conservatives have common sense ideas that will get our country back on track. We will bring affordability to coast to coast to coast for Canadians. However, it does break my heart to see half of Canadians living paycheque to paycheque. Seven million Canadians are now struggling to put food on their table. There are 1.5 million Canadians who are now visiting a food bank. These are our friends, our neighbours, our relatives, and one in five are now skipping meals. In my riding, we have great organizations that have stepped up to support the most vulnerable. One of them is in Tillsonburg, which is called the Tillsonburg Helping Hand Food Bank. It has great volunteers who are working hard to make sure they support our community. I met with Dianne and the team, and they told me that food bank usage is up 60% just from last year. Another shining light in my riding is Operation Sharing. It does great work with the homeless community. When I spoke to Shawn Shapton, he told me the exact same thing, that we are at a crisis point that has never been seen before. I remember speaking to a single mom when I was knocking on doors in Woodstock during my campaign. We had a conversation, and there were tears coming down her face. She was concerned for her family. She was worried that she would not be able to feed her children and provide for the newborn son she had just had. When I was in Tavistock, I met a senior who worked all his life, did everything right and saved money, but now he is on a fixed income and is looking for a handout from his daughter. That is not the Canadian dream my parents had. What really bothers me is when veterans, who served our country, and working-class Canadians, who are now struggling, are being pushed to potentially end their lives with the MAID program. That is not the Canadian dream. When the government finally wakes up and talks about affordability, what is the first thing it does? It gets the cameras out, stages a photo op and calls grocery CEOs. Canadians do not need more photo ops. They need more food on their tables. The Liberal-NDP policies, such as the carbon tax, do nothing for the environment, but they do punish Canadians. They make everything more expensive, including heating their homes, putting food on their tables and putting gas in their cars. It punishes our farmers in Oxford, who have seen their input costs skyrocket. When they are heating their barns, drying their grain and running their operations, they are paying tens of thousands of dollars for that. However, members do not need to take my word for it. The government's own Parliamentary Budget Officer said the carbon tax is going to cost farmers a billion dollars in the next few years. It punishes our truckers, who ship our food, and it ultimately punishes Canadians who buy the food. Our common sense Conservative team, led by our great leader, will axe this failed tax and put more money back into hard-working Canadians. It does not end there. Liberals have created a mess in housing as well. Way back when, we could go to work, earn an honest living and buy our dream home. Now that dream of home ownership is starting to fade away. Housing, rent and mortgage payments have doubled. Nine in 10 young Canadians feel they will never be able to buy a home. I met with a young couple in Norwich last week. We had coffee and were talking about their future. They told me that they did everything right. They went to school, got decent jobs and saved their money, but it is still not enough for a down payment. They are still living with their parents, and it is a barrier to them starting their own family. For years the Prime Minister and the government have been telling Canadians that they have an affordable plan. I watched the minister stand to say they have a plan and now, all of a sudden, he has switched and is saying that housing is not a federal responsibility. Real leaders do not hide and make excuses. They find ways to get things done. That is why the Conservative leader and our strong team have put forward a plan. We are going to remove government gatekeepers who are blocking construction. We are going to incentivize our local townships and municipalities to build more homes. We are going to make sure we have affordable homes for Canadians. The Liberals gave us a long list of challenges after they broke Canada, but I believe deep in my heart that, with the right leadership, we will get our country back on track. With the Conservative leader as prime minister, we can restore the Canadian promise that Liberals have broken. We are going to bring home affordable homes, and we are going to bring home affordable groceries. We are going to bring it home.
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  • Oct/5/23 11:07:05 a.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-56 
Madam Speaker, I would like to welcome my hon. colleague to the House, and congratulate him. I am really positive about Bill C-56 and how it would strengthen the Competition Act. I wonder if the member could comment on this approach and on whether he thinks it would have positive impacts in lowering grocery prices across the country.
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  • Oct/5/23 11:07:24 a.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-56 
Madam Speaker, I appreciate the best wishes coming from the other side of the chamber. What I do know for a fact is that staging photo ops with grocery CEOs will not solve this problem. They are trying to take our plan, which is a great plan, and I commend them for that. We need to use common sense thoughtful policies, which I do applaud the Liberals for taking them from our leader and caucus. However, photo ops will not fix the problem. We need real, concrete solutions. They have been at the helm for eight years. This is not a new problem. For us, it is about getting practical solutions that will give Canadians relief, solutions like scrapping the failed carbon tax. That will provide relief to hard-working families right away.
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  • Oct/5/23 11:08:15 a.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-56 
Madam Speaker, first, I want to congratulate my colleague on his election. One thing I did not hear in his speech was about corporate profits when it came to grocery prices. We know that corporate profits are contributing over 25 times the impact than the carbon tax, according to the Governor of the Bank of Canada. He cites that the carbon tax is 0.15% in terms of its contributions to the overall impact of inflation. I would like to hear whether my colleague believes there should be an excess profit tax on the big grocery stores like Sobeys, Metro and Loblaws, which had a $3.6-billion profit just last year alone. We saw grocery prices skyrocket. I hope my colleague can talk about the corporate greed and the impact that is having on inflation.
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  • Oct/5/23 11:09:10 a.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-56 
Madam Speaker, I appreciate my hon. colleague's wishes, but I am also concerned, because those members have been part of the government for the last eight years. It is the NDP-Liberal government that has caused the problems we see today. They should be pushing this legislation through their colleagues on the other side. The carbon tax is driving up the cost of our groceries. We would scrap that tax. For them, it is about CEO photo ops; for us, it is about bringing home real solutions for Canadians.
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  • Oct/5/23 11:09:45 a.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-56 
Madam Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on his election and his first speech in the House. I think that he spoke with remarkable aplomb. I congratulate him. He talked about Conservative solutions to the housing crisis. The Conservatives want to talk to cities. That does not work. That entire strategy does not work at all. In Quebec, the federal government cannot talk directly to cities. That is done through Quebec. Housing is a provincial jurisdiction. Moreover, the crisis is not quite as serious in Quebec as it is in the rest of Canada—for example, in Toronto and Vancouver—because Quebec stepped in when the federal government withdrew from housing for 30 years. For 30 years, Quebec created programs that actually provided for social housing while nothing was happening in Ottawa. Does my colleague not agree that, if the federal government wants to develop strategies, it must talk directly to the Government of Quebec and send in the money? The federal government has fiscal capacities that Quebec and the municipalities do not have. It must reach an agreement with Quebec to ensure that the money to build housing will be released as soon as possible.
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  • Oct/5/23 11:10:47 a.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-56 
Madam Speaker, last year, we built the same number of homes that we built in 1972, but our population has gone up significantly. When the member says that there is no solutions and asks how we will work with the government, we have federal funds that will go toward infrastructure. We will ensure that before we give a dollar to municipalities, it will be tied to success, to building more homes. If municipalities build more homes, they will get a bonus. They will get more rewards. Our plan is to work with our local mayors and give them support. We will work with our provinces and build more affordable housing.
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  • Oct/5/23 11:11:33 a.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-56 
Madam Speaker, it is an honour and a privilege to rise today to speak to Bill C-56, an act to amend the Excise Tax Act and the Competition Act. We know that the bill calls for two important aspects: to remove the GST from construction costs on new rental units and to enable the Competition Bureau to conduct better investigations, while also removing efficiency exemptions during mergers to improve competition. With respect to the removal of the GST, the New Democrats have been calling for this, but it will not meaningfully reduce rent payments or create social and co-operative housing effectively, and we absolutely need that. However, the bill would be part of a bigger comprehensive approach that we want to move forward to address the affordable housing crisis. With respect to the Competition Act, the bill is a start at reining in and regulating monopolies, but it would not go far enough to support Canadians on their desire to control these monopolies and the impacts they have on our economy. We know that in the eight years the Liberal government has been in power, it has been the New Democrats who have been bringing forward solutions to get help for people, like this GST removal on housing, although it would not go far enough or have enough restrictions to deal with competition. I am going to speak about a couple of things. We know the bill is a little too late with respect to the housing crisis, but I will speak to that first. Le us look at the impact of housing. I am the critic for the NDP for mental health and substance use. We know that the cost of housing is escalating. There is a lack of affordable housing and the available occupancy rates are at historic lows. This is having a huge impact on people's mental health and stress levels, and this is a long-standing issue When there was a minority government in 1972, the NDP worked with the Liberals to create the national housing strategy, which developed 18,000 to 25,000 units a year until 1992. In fact, I am one of the many Canadians who grew up in co-op housing, so I am a beneficiary of that housing. I lived first-hand the experience of having safe and secure housing for my family and my parents. I saw what that could do. In fact, I can go back to that co-op today and see many of the people with whom I grew up. Their kids and their grandkids are living there as well. However, since the Liberals pulled out of the national housing strategy in the early 1990s, both the Conservative and Liberal governments consecutively failed to dive back in. As a result, we have lost between 18,000 and 25,000 units a year for over 30 years. Now our non-market housing availability is at 3.5%, and we do not have to look far to see what 3.5% looks like. If we go outside the doors of the House of Commons, we will see homeless people. I can go to Port Alberni, a medium-sized city in my riding, or a small city in my riding, and I will see homelessness. We can go to any big city and we will see homeless people everywhere. However, we can go to Europe, where places like the Netherlands is at 35% non-market housing and Vienna it is at 60%, and we will not see the scale of homelessness that we see in our country. We know it is so much more expensive to not provide people housing. There is the cost to hospitals, a cost to all our systems. It could eventually impact our prison system, as we know. Ben Perrin, the former public safety adviser for the Stephen Harper Conservatives, hosted an event the other night. He has a new book called Indictment, about the reform of Canada's justice system. He talked about how the lowest cost approach was to put people in proper housing. That would cost a fraction of what it would cost if we did not, in terms of the prison system, hospital system and health care system. We need to get back into affordable housing. We keep hearing this from the Conservative Party. We heard the leader of the Conservative Party talk about divesting, selling off 6,000 government buildings and the divesting of 15% of public lands. What would that look like? We just saw what happened in Ontario with the Conservatives under Doug Ford. It looks like profiteering, profits for developers. In fact, a handful of developers would have made $8.3 billion almost overnight, donors of the Doug Ford government. This is what it looks like when Conservatives divest public lands. Public lands belong in public hands, not in the pockets of developers. The B.C. Liberals, who have now rebranded themselves as B.C. United, did the same thing. They sold off $493 million worth of public lands to the private sector, to donors of their party. That was worth $860 million just a couple of years later. The Conservative ideas of selling off public lands ends up in the pockets of developers. We need to fix this. I am bringing forward a plan to do that. We know we need 3.5 million homes just to meet the demand by 2030. This is going to take a wartime-like effort to do that. We have to work together in the House if we are to achieve that. We have to remove barriers, and we need to provide guidelines and regulations so we do not have another Greenbelt or the scam like we saw in British Columbia, when the Conservative and the right wing get into government. We need to ensure a regime is put in place. I put forward a motion at the government operations and estimates committee to do just that, to look at selling or leasing. We should not ever sell public lands. That should never, ever happen. We should only lease public lands. Public lands belong in public hands. I cannot say that enough. If we do lease or use government buildings, it should be done with free, prior and informed consent of indigenous peoples whose lands we live, work and reside on. Also, they are the most impacted when it comes to homelessness, overcrowded housing and housing needs. They have to be part of the conversation; they cannot be left out. I urge all of us to work together to provide regulations so that we never see a Greenbelt-style divestment of housing or government lands. That is not going to create affordable housing. That is not going to solve our housing crisis. We heard from Leilani Farha, former special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, regarding this bill, which lacks a lot. She said, “I thought we were worried about affordability for tenants not developers! Average rents in Canada are now more than 2,000/mos. If the GST waiver is going to make a difference it must be conditional on building affordable units. Public value for public dollars.“ I want to thank her for that comment. When I talk about how 3.5% of our housing is in non-market housing right now, over 30% this year is in corporate interests in REITs. We have seen corporations buy up a large amount of our residential housing stock. That needs to stop. We need to get to the opposite. It should be 30% non-market housing and 3.5% corporate housing. That is the problem. It has to get flipped on its head. I will speak quickly, because I only have a couple of minutes left, about the Competition Act. Loblaws, Sobeys and Metro had $3.6 billion in profits, and that went in the pockets of the owners. The co-op in my hometown of Tofino had $12 million in sales in groceries, $16 million at the gas bar, $28 million in overall sales, and they gave back a 5% dividend to their members. They kept 0.5% for capital costs and improved services. We need to ensure we have an excess profit tax on these excess profits for grocery store owners, and use some of that profit to support models like the co-op model. We know that that 5% went back into the hands of the people in my community. With the private sector, that money went into the pockets of people like Galen Weston. That needs to be discouraged. We need to find a better way forward. We hear the Conservatives talk about the impact of the carbon tax. It is 0.15% of inflation, according to the Government of Canada. Eight in 10 families get it back. What they do not want to talk about is that they are fighting for the two in 10. It is a diversion tactic. The Conservatives do not want to talk about who they are really fighting for. If we do not do anything and put a price on carbon, then it is shouldered by the eight in 10 of all Canadians. If we do nothing, then there will be a carbon adjustment at the border, but the Conservatives do not want to talk about that. That would cripple industry in our country. The truth is that grocery store prices have had a 56 times increase than the carbon tax impact on food and services, and 26 times in terms of the corporate greed and profit when it comes to grocery stores. I want to put things in perspective.
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  • Oct/5/23 11:21:42 a.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-56 
Madam Speaker, I do not agree with my friend and colleague's comments in terms of demonizing the private sector. The private sector is going to be an important partner to get us out of this housing crisis. However, I also do not agree with the Leader of the Opposition when it comes to demonizing municipalities. My friend and colleague talked about working with municipalities to build the non-market housing supply. Unlike the Leader of the Opposition, who has demonized small-town mayors and municipal councils, we have worked with municipalities; our housing accelerator fund is one example of that. Why is it important to work with municipalities rather than making them out to be the demons, as part of our housing crisis that we have today?
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  • Oct/5/23 11:22:31 a.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-56 
Madam Speaker, let us face it: the Liberals' and Conservatives' free-market developer-style model has not worked. I sat in local government and if they actually put money on the table for non-market housing, that would get gobbled up in a heartbeat. Municipalities want to be partners, but they do not have the resources. They have been downloaded on and downloaded on since 1992 by Conservatives and Liberals consecutively. They need resources for non-market housing. They will deliver it. The municipalities will work with the private sector. There is an opportunity to work together, but it does not mean giving up public lands. It means that we can work together in leasing out projects and working with the development community in that way. The current method of Liberal and Conservative policy when it comes to the developer-driven model is not going to work. It has never worked anywhere around the world that an affordable housing crisis has been solved by the private sector and a free-market approach.
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  • Oct/5/23 11:23:28 a.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-56 
Madam Speaker, I appreciate my hon. colleague's raising grocery costs. Let us put some things on the record here: The day after the photo op with the five retailers, the retailers decreed to their suppliers, starting with the largest one and the second ones following suit, that they would accept no price increases from their suppliers for the next 12 months. The PBO's analysis of the carbon tax is not specific around food inflation. It is a general analysis. Food production is energy intensive. If this hon. colleague were to convince his government partners to put a profits tax that would take the entire retail profit into the form of a tax into government coffers, that would lower the cost of groceries from a $25 set to $24, which is 4%. With carbon tax being applied to the farmer, to the trucker and to every step of the process, with retailers saying they will not absorb it and there are no price increases, who should pay that carbon tax? Is it the farmer, the supplier to the farmer, the trucker or the distributor?
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  • Oct/5/23 11:24:36 a.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-56 
Madam Speaker, the Governor of the Bank of Canada said the impact of the carbon tax is 0.15% of inflation. However, we look at oil and gas companies, which are having record profits; these big grocery stores are having record profits; and the big banks are having record profits. We can look at other countries, like Britain, where the Conservatives are in government, by the way; they have an excess profits tax on oil and gas. We cannot even get Liberals in Canada to do that; never mind Conservatives. We do not need lobbyists for oil and gas here on the Hill because the Conservatives are the lobbyists for oil and gas and that is the truth. It is a diversion. The reality is that we need an excess profits tax on these industries that are runaway, causing inflation and really harming Canadians every day with the costs that are being downloaded on them. We really need to have an honest conversation and not this diversion method of deterrence.
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  • Oct/5/23 11:25:36 a.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-56 
Madam Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's speech and his plea for off-market housing. I think that is the direction we need to take. I would like to ask him a question that is a bit more specific. We have a structural problem. Quebec alone needs 1.1 million housing units by 2030. If we mobilized all of the resources in Quebec, the maximum number of units that construction workers could build per year is 80,000, and that is if all home builders participate. We would need to build 200,000 units in Quebec alone. I do not have the numbers for Canada, but I am sure they must be similar. I agree with my NDP friends that we need an acquisition fund so that we can acquire existing housing, but we also need to find other solutions. Does my colleague have any other solutions to suggest?
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  • Oct/5/23 11:26:25 a.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-56 
Madam Speaker, I really appreciate the comment and we are on the same page: that we need a wartime-like effort. We need to use every tool in the tool box to deal with this. Right now, the government does not have a plan. It has no plan on how it is going to build 3.5 million homes, and this is what we need to do in this chamber. We need to have that conversation and bring forward ideas. Like I said, let us use some public land, but let us keep it in public hands, leasing and working with the private sector to ensure that we can build affordable non-market housing. This free-market approach will not work. It has not worked anywhere in the world to solve an affordable housing crisis and it is not going to start working now. I want to work with my colleague because we need a plan and right now the current government is a rudderless ship. Removing the GST on rental housing is low-hanging fruit.
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  • Oct/5/23 11:27:26 a.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-56 
Madam Speaker, it is an honour to join the debate today virtually to continue the discussion of Bill C-56, which aims to and claims to address the dual affordability crises of the affordability of housing and of food and groceries. There is no question on any side of this House that we are seeing very difficult conditions for most Canadians, and particularly for anyone who is not in the billionaire class. We are seeing very difficult conditions in affordability, particularly for those who are not in the housing market yet and need to find ways to meet increasingly challenging costs of rent, and, for those who are in the housing market, the increasingly high costs of maintaining their mortgages as interest rates rise. It is with some irony I remember that during the early days of the COVID crisis, and I would say probably it was in 2020, we had at the Standing Committee on Finance the then Governor of the Bank of Canada, Stephen Poloz, appear. Some of the members said to him that we were spending this money and asked him what would happen afterward. They asked if we would suffer inflation. I remember the former Governor of the Bank of Canada said, on inflation, “That's a problem I'd love to have.” They were so certain at that point inflation was not the threat and deflation was the threat. What happened? It was not that his analysis was wrong; it is that conditions changed dramatically. Why are we seeing rising food prices? Let us look at food for a minute and then look at housing. Bill C-56, while well intentioned, would not make a big difference for Canadians in the cost of housing or food. That is not because the Liberal government is malevolent, but it is because it has taken the wrong approach, as have the Conservatives. We really need to look at this and ask if we can really fight what we are seeing in rising costs or if we should make sure we top up government revenues, sources, such that we can provide the sources of income and revenue to Canadians so they can survive what is coming at them economically. Let us step back and look at this. Certainly, the fact we went from a fear of deflation to inflation was an unexpected event. Putin's attack on Ukraine had the effect of driving up oil prices all around the world. The attack on Ukraine also had an impact on food prices, because, as we all know, Ukraine is part of the breadbasket of the world and provides grain in massive exports, which have been significantly challenged by blockading Russian ports. Occasionally we have grain deals that let grain go through, but there is no question the biggest impacts on driving up prices in Canada in our grocery carts have been Putin's attack on Ukraine, the rising costs of fossil fuels as a result, and the supply chain disruptions in growing food and shipping out grains. This is combined with climate crisis events, which have created droughts, which affect access to food, and which have created extreme weather events. As an example, there are the extreme weather events that affect the island of Mauritius where most of the vanilla is grown. There are massive typhoons that keep hitting because of climate change, which drives up, by the time it goes through the supply chains, the cost of ice cream in Canada because vanilla costs more. We are looking at a complex web of pressures that have driven up prices. If we look for guidance on what we are now experiencing, there was a 2005 book called The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century by James Howard Kunstler. He accurately predicted what we are experiencing: war, climate crisis and instability in fossil fuel production as we hit peak oil. That is what he was looking at in 2005 when the book came out. We need to look at this and ask if we are able, with Bill C-56, to confidently say to Canadians that this will bring prices in their grocery carts down. I do not think we can, and I do not think anyone wants to say that or hold out this false hope to Canadians. We actually need to look at what we are facing. The climate crisis will drive up the price of certain foods. As long as the war in Ukraine persists, we are looking at cost impacts throughout our economy. In fossil fuel production, where Russia has hit Ukraine, it has also had an impact on fossil fuel production and on excess profits to the fossil fuel sector. Let us step back and examine it. The approach of this bill is to create more supply for rental housing, which is good as far as it goes. I do not think any of us on any side of the House object to the idea that we should take the GST off the construction costs of building more affordable rental housing. Will that solve our housing crisis? Not when we allow short-term vacation rentals, such as the Airbnb sector, to continue to suck up what we have as available homes, making them inaccessible to people who want to live there. We must provide a very different model for how we use buildings that should be homes because they have become investment properties. The more we can take speculation and investment interests out of housing, the better off we will be, which is why the Greens have been calling for ages to get rid of real estate investment trusts, which operate to make money off housing in a way that was never intended. I completely agree with the hon. member for Courtenay—Alberni, who mentioned in his speech the importance of co-op housing. We need to return to that. It is a complex question on two key issues. Looking at this, we can approach rising prices by saying that we are going to do what we see in Bill C-56, and I am certainly going to vote for Bill C-56, which is trying to get a Competition Act extension to look at the lack of competition in the grocery food sector. This is good as far as it goes, as the big five control too much, but that does not go to our immediate problem, neither does getting rid of the GST on building rental housing. We need to make some rather large structural changes, like not having our GDP growth depend so much on rising home prices. Breaking our cultural addiction to rising residential home prices would make a big difference. What do we do in the short term? We need to turn to excess profits taxes on the oil and gas sector and grocery chains. We did this with the Canada Revenue dividend during the COVID crisis. We should return to it and extend it so it applies to excess profits in the oil and gas sector and grocery chains. The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates that if we extend the Canada dividend to just oil and gas excess profits, we would have $4.4 billion more. We need to make sure Canadians have the money in their pockets to be able to keep a roof over their head and have nutritious food for families. That really means bringing in a guaranteed livable income. How do we afford a guaranteed livable income? We essentially did it with COVID benefits, which rolled out quite quickly and did not require needs testing. A guaranteed livable income would protect the most vulnerable in our society from increased energy prices, housing prices and grocery prices. How can we afford it? We bring in an excess profits tax on the oil and gas sector and grocery chains, as well as continuing it on banks and insurance companies. The key to this is in Motion No. 92, introduced recently by the hon. member for Kitchener Centre. We need other MPs to support an excess profits tax, so I would ask members to sign on as seconders to the motion. We have to stand back and say that we cannot guarantee people that the climate crisis is not going to affect food prices, because it is. Until we have an end to Putin's attack on Ukraine, what we are really seeing in the oil and gas sector is war profiteering. We must not allow these multi-billion dollar multinational corporations to rake in billions in profits, which is really impacting people who can barely afford to make it to the end of the month. With my remaining 40 seconds I will say this. Let us step back and use a different lens. Let us tax where we need to tax excess profits and get that money into the hands of Canadians who need it.
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  • Oct/5/23 11:36:57 a.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-56 
Madam Speaker, I want to make reference to the member's statement with respect to Airbnbs. It amplifies the need for the government to recognize the roles we all play. One way to meet the needs of Canadians for housing is for all levels of government to work together, federal, provincial and municipal. Airbnb is more of a local municipality issue, so it is best for the municipalities to deal with that. From a national perspective, it is important that we demonstrate leadership on a number of fronts, which I believe we have demonstrated. Could I get the member's thoughts on how important it is that all levels of government work together to meet this situation?
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