44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 23, 2023 10:00AM
- Nov/23/23 4:41:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am always happy to see you. I like speaking when you are in the Chair. I know you are eagerly awaiting my speech, but I know you are even more eagerly awaiting that of the colleague with whom I am sharing my time, the member for Saint‑Hyacinthe—Bagot, a man so very cultivated that his riding is zoned for agriculture.
I feel like repeating that we are faced with closure yet again. They are reducing our debate time and bypassing the process. They are taking time away from the Standing Committee on Finance for a bill that we feel is important.
The argument the government gives for working this way is this. It says that housing is so important that we need to ram this through by bypassing parliamentary processes and that the Competition Act reform is so important that we need to ram it through before Christmas by bypassing parliamentary processes.
I am not very satisfied with that type of logic for the following reason. There have been problems with the Canadian competition regime for years. In the early 1980s, we had 13 big box stores in Canada. Geographically speaking, Canada is a rather large country. We allowed mergers and acquisitions to occur at the expense of consumers to the point where the minister can now sit down with the entire grocery market around a coffee table in his office one morning. The government let that happen. The Liberals and Conservatives let that happen. We have had alternating Liberal and Conservative governments, and this has never been urgent until now. It was never urgent until the Liberals' pre-session caucus meeting where an argument broke out and then, all of a sudden, they had to move quickly. All of a sudden, this is so urgent that every parliamentarian who is not a Liberal is having their rights violated.
Housing and the GST on housing are so urgent that they have to be rammed through under a gag order. Where did this measure come from? I am not saying it is a bad measure. I am not saying that it will not help increase the supply of housing.
What I can say is that the Liberals had a caucus meeting prior to the parliamentary session. They were down in the polls, they panicked and they had to do something about housing. They came up with the GST measure, but were not even able to include the parameters of a major change to the tax laws in the bill. Now here they are introducing a very flawed bill that will give the government disproportionate regulatory power. Now they are telling us that it has to be passed quickly.
However, they had not thought about it before. This is the government's new way of skirting democratic debate: gag orders.
Today, when we ask questions about the administration of the Canada Revenue Agency's programs, we are told that the CRA is independent.
Now there are new bills where we are given only a framework and everything else is set by regulation. The Liberals had promised help for the disabled. They finally introduced a bill with a framework, but it does not include a penny for the disabled and its parameters are unknown to us.
That is why I have to say that, once again, the Liberal government is disrespecting parliamentarians. I believe in parliamentary work. I disagree with lots of people in the House, but I recognize that they take the time to look at the issues, read the bills, propose amendments, rise in the House and express their views on bills. I think those parliamentarians should have the right to speak. Now the Liberals are talking about the cost of living. They say we have to bypass the whole process because of the cost of living.
The economic statement contained no immediate social housing measures. That is what Quebec wanted. We have permanent programs to build low-income housing and housing co-ops. The federal government has been stalling on handing money over to Quebec for years. The Bloc Québécois had to push to get the last $900 million we were owed. There is virtually nothing in the latest economic statement that acknowledges the urgency of the situation.
Take the cost of living, for one. Now that there are only five major grocery chains left, we have to hustle for legislation they took decades to introduce. On housing, not only is there nothing in the statement, but, to make things worse, they are complicating matters with Quebec by creating the department of interference in Quebec's municipal affairs.
It is a bad idea. Pierre Elliott Trudeau's government tried it back in the day and gave up. That government had no luck doing anything with it. Now it is the son's turn. Repeating a mistake twice is never a sign of common sense. It must be an intergenerational thing.
Small and medium-sized businesses and chambers of commerce in my riding are asking that we give our businesses more time to repay their Canada emergency business account loans. What is this government's contemptuous response? It says that the federal government provided $8 out of $10 of assistance during the pandemic and that it has helped businesses tremendously. However, it did so with our tax dollars, and piled up a debt that our children will have to pay interest on. This is not money that the federal government conjured out of thin air. It is money that the federal government borrowed at the expense of future generations. True, we collectively took the risk. However, the government is telling us that since it helped businesses during the first phase of the crisis, it has the moral right to abandon them during the second.
Now the government is talking to us about competition. When people in my riding go out shopping, how many small businesses, suppliers and shops will be closed? How many fewer stores will people have to choose from? What effect will this have on consumer choice and prices in rural areas, where often the only place people can buy many products is from a small business? Despite all that, the government is doing absolutely nothing.
Earlier, I had a phone conversation with a produce grower in my riding. He called to tell me that he had a bad season, that it was terrible. I see Conservative MPs looking at me and they know that what I am saying is true. We all get these calls. People are asking us when the government is going to pay out emergency support to get them through the year. The government's answer is that it will not do anything. It will not offer them any emergency assistance to make up for the worst season they have ever had. How will consumers be affected when produce markets close? In the world of fruit and vegetables, we need produce growers to provide us with local, environmentally friendly products that are grown nearby, that are homegrown and that revitalize our rural areas and regions. The government is doing absolutely nothing about that.
I understand that the NDP wanted to shut down the debate. I do not know what they got in return, but I am very curious. Everyone in the parliamentary precinct is dying to know what the NDP is getting in return for shutting down the debate. Everyone wants to know how the movie ends. I cannot wait to find out. I do not know what the NDP got but I think it was probably pretty costly for the Liberals, although the NDP did not get anything in the economic update. What we want are measures for the middle class. We want measures for our farmers, for our businesses and for housing, but there are no such measures.
Now, on the substance of the bill, it is a good bill. We have been saying for years that this kind of legislation should be introduced, specifically regarding competition.
In Canada, our competition regime is archaic on every level. It is not that the commissioner of competition does not want to do his job. The Competition Bureau employs competent people, but there are fundamental flaws in their mandate. Among other things, mergers and acquisitions are allowed based on efficiency gains alone. In Canada, when two businesses merge, no one asks whether the cost reduction and efficiency gain will allow them to be more competitive with the others and in turn lower the price consumers pay. They only ask whether they are able to be more efficient and to hell with the consumer.
I do not have enough time to get into the details of the bill, but I can say that it will change this particular situation. It will also prohibit other anti-competitive practices. In Canada, it is prohibited to directly come to an agreement with a competitor to reduce competition, but getting the dirty work done by another is allowed. For example, a business has the right to tell the shopping centre it is renting space from that it cannot rent space to another grocer or another hardware store. They get others to do the dirty work.
This bill contains a number of good things. They include the government giving the Competition Bureau more power to conduct investigations, obtain documents and compel witnesses to testify. That will be a good thing.
I will conclude my speech by saying that a bank merger is coming. HSBC is being acquired by the Royal Bank of Canada, or RBC. This file is on the Minister of Finance's desk, and the Competition Bureau only looked into the efficiencies that would be generated by the transaction.
If the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry is at all committed to his principles, he will require that the Minister of Finance wait for this legislation to be passed and for the Competition Bureau to conduct a new analysis before authorizing this transaction.
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- Nov/23/23 4:52:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, first, I am not attacking anyone. I am making some factual observations. The fact is that our right and my right as a parliamentarian to express myself on this matter is being curtailed.
The member across the way talks about the Conservative filibuster. It is not right that we are pushing this bill to the Standing Committee on Finance next week when this is legislation that amends the Excise Tax Act and fundamentally changes the Competition Act. It is not right that such an important bill is getting only two meetings, next Monday and Wednesday until midnight. If the Liberals thought their bill was so important and they, like me, thought that the content of this bill was so important, they would allow the Standing Committee on Finance to do its job properly, but this is absolutely not the case right now.
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- Nov/23/23 4:54:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, and there was light.
I understand my colleague's viewpoint and her question. It is a reasonable question. I understand how, from the NDP's perspective, voting for multiple closure motions might seem like a good thing for democracy. Let us say for argument's sake that this is a great closure motion, even though I would disagree.
Not only are they muzzling us at this stage, they are also muzzling us at the committee stage. No one with an iota of intelligence in the world of economics, finance or competition would think that two evening committee meetings are enough for a bill with such potentially deep and long-term effects on our competition system.
What would I have done? I might have done a better job of negotiating.
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- Nov/23/23 4:56:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I get the same kinds of questions from both Liberals and Conservatives. We support the bill. We think its underlying principle is good and its main features will be useful. We do not think these solutions will fix everything, and especially not when it comes to housing, but there are good solutions here for competition issues.
What I think we should do is take a little more time to hear from witnesses so that stakeholders can share their views and we can suggest amendments and work toward improving the bill. If things do come to a standstill at some point, we will discuss all that, but I think that holding a gun to the committee's head and making it work as fast as possible will rob us of a tool that is of vital importance to parliamentary democracy and the legislative process. I find that deeply disappointing.
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