44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 11, 2023 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, the Liberals in the House have been crowing about removing the GST on housing construction. I find it ironic, and would ask my colleague to comment on this, that they talk about making life more affordable by removing GST on housing yet the government has refused to remove the carbon tax on groceries, on everything we produce in this country and on gasoline.
I would ask my colleague to comment on the apparent contradiction between the Liberal government's intent to make life more affordable by removing the GST on housing and the fact that it will not axe the tax.
103 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, my colleague is absolutely right. The carbon tax is a totally hypocritical tax for all Canadians. It increases the price of everything, everything that is transported. All of our goods and services are transported all over Canada several times, and everyone keeps a cut. That is how we end up with two-by-fours going from $3 each to $12 each, and fruits and vegetables going from maybe 35¢ a pound to $1.50 a pound.
This is never going to end. We need to get rid of the carbon tax, because that will lower the cost of everything.
102 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Dec/11/23 12:52:14 p.m.
- Watch
One second, I need to seek unanimous consent.
Is it agreed?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
15 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, I wish to inform you that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Lac-Saint-Jean.
22 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, this is the first time in two years that I have gotten the unanimous consent of the House, and I am proud of it. Before beginning my speech, I would like to make one thing clear. This is not a case of the Bloc, the NDP and the Liberal Party standing together. It is the Conservatives that stand alone. That is not the same thing.
Today we will be discussing Bill C-56, an act to amend the Excise Tax Act and the Competition Act. I will be talking mostly about that last part of the bill, in terms of both its technical points and its rationale. Before we begin, though, we always need to establish what we are talking about. What is competition? It means coming together and converging on the same point. That is what competition is. It is not necessarily a bad thing. However, what is the motivation for coming together? What is the purpose? Is it good or bad? As members of Parliament, our objective must be commendable, because we obviously have the public interest at heart.
In one amendment, the bill would increase the maximum monetary penalty for abuse of a dominant position to $25 million for the first offence and $35 million for subsequent offences. The aim is to give the law teeth, to make sure that it will not be taken lightly, that people will not think that they can get away with a slap on the wrist. This provision also makes Canadian law more comparable to U.S. law, of course.
The second important amendment in the part on competition would allow the Competition Bureau to conduct market study inquiries if the minister responsible for the act or the commissioner of competition so recommends, and would require the minister to consult the commissioner before doing so.
The Competition Bureau already has significant powers, but it cannot demand certain things from the people it is investigating. It cannot request a search unless there is a clear offence. It cannot request a search just to look around. It cannot make assumptions. All of us here know that groceries are expensive and that we pay the highest cellphone fees in the OECD. It does not take a genius to realize that the commissioner might want to investigate these things.
When it conducts a study, the bureau will have to determine whether there is adequate competition in a market or industry. Right now, it does not have that power in every industry. What the Competition Bureau can do at present is all right, but it is not necessarily the best thing right now. It may have been sufficient at the time, but now it needs to be enhanced.
In its report on the state of competition in the grocery sector, published in June, the bureau noted that the grocery chains did not really co-operate with its study. I like that euphemism: “did not really co-operate”. They said no, which is not the same thing, and the Competition Bureau, with its current powers, could not make them say yes. They refused to provide the documents the bureau asked for, and they refused to answer certain questions. My colleagues will no doubt agree that there are many shades of meaning between “did not really co-operate” and “refused to answer”. The aim of Bill C-56 is to solve this problem by granting the Competition Bureau the power to conduct inquiries where applicable.
Lastly, the bill would revise the legal test for abuse of a dominant position prohibition order to be sufficiently met if the tribunal finds that a dominant player has engaged in either a practice of anti-competitive acts or conduct that is having or is likely to have the effect of preventing competition. That is the technical part of the bill. However, when someone drafts a bill, they need to think about why they are doing it, what they are trying to accomplish.
The purpose of the Competition Act is to ensure that Quebec and Canadian consumers have freedom of choice. We sometimes talk about monopolies. What is a monopoly? It is an exclusive right. What does “exclusive” mean? It means doing everything possible to keep others out. It means restricting, refusing, blocking, rejecting. Exclusivity means limiting access. It is almost like a secret agreement.
The bill also seeks to prevent stakeholders from abusing a dominant market position. To dominate means to master, to control. In the past minute, I have talked about refusing, blocking, mastering, controlling, exclusive rights. All of this goes against the free market that this country promises, that it says it has, but that is sometimes, in reality, only an illusion.
Essentially, the drafters of the bill wanted the Competition Bureau to have more power, the power to provide us with freedom of choice, the power to investigate where appropriate until it is satisfied that it can make this possible.
As I said at the beginning of my speech, competition means getting together and converging on the same point. If that is not possible, if certain players dominating a market prevent that from happening, we are being deprived of our freedom of choice. It is a sort of manipulation. It is a sort of lie.
Without calling anyone a liar, we can still talk about what a lie is, here in the House of Commons. A lie from someone in a dominant position may prevent someone else from doing something they would have done had they known the truth. Lies imply secrecy. Monopolies imply secrecy. It is this secrecy that this bill seeks to eliminate so that everyone can exercise freedom.
954 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, I appreciated the comments about the bureau and how when we think of competition and enhancing competition, making changes to the act would, in fact, take away the efficiency argument.
Therefore, I believe, at the end of the day, it would be healthier for Canadians because it would ensure there is more competition. The member made reference to cellphones. Whether it is cellphones or groceries, taking away the efficiency argument within this legislation, I believe, would help address that going forward.
Can he expand on why it was good to see changes to the legislation affecting the bureau?
100 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, those who hold monopolies or exclusive rights do not need to be good at what they do. They just have to be there. At the end of the day, they can charge whatever they want, with whatever conditions they want, to whoever they want. They do not have to sell to everyone if they do not want to.
The law will need to improve the efficiency of service providers, because they will not have the luxury of serving a passive and captive clientele.
85 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, all the legislation in the world and all the regulations in the world will not help us make our environment and economy more competitive if we do not have a government that has the backbone to say no to anti-competitive mergers. There have been a lot of mergers over the last eight years that the Liberal government has approved, and those mergers have reduced competition in the marketplace here in Canada.
Has the Bloc supported those mergers or does it support a more cautious approach to making sure Canadians have full competition, so the price of groceries and the price of housing go down in this country?
110 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, competition is for oil companies too. Funny how the price of gas never goes down, only up.
Regulation is not always a cure-all, but it is the right solution in this case because the players are not trustworthy. If they were, we might be inclined to let them self-regulate, but they have shown that that was not good enough, particularly when they refused to answer questions from the Competition Bureau.
I think that the proposed legislation seeks to restore consumer confidence in the bureau's services. I do not believe that there will be a loss of efficiency. I think that we will see increased efficiency, because the players will have no other choice.
118 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, as I have pointed out previously, another aspect of the legislation is to increase the number of purpose-built rentals to increase housing supply. What we have witnessed, and I mentioned earlier, is provinces adopting the same policies where they are incorporating sales tax relief to encourage more construction. I am not too sure what the Province of Quebec has done.
Does the member know what the Province of Quebec has done with respect to the GST being forgiven for purpose-built rentals?
85 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, I will respond candidly and honestly: I simply do not know.
If my colleague so desires, I can look into it and get back to him later. At this point, I could not say.
36 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, on many occasions I had the fortune or the misfortune to observe that when a member of the Bloc Québécois uses the old expression “it is about time” in the House, most of the time, unfortunately, it is a euphemism. Unsurprisingly, that old saying “it is about time” applies well to the bill before us today.
Currently, when the Competition Bureau studies the competitive environment in a given sector, it cannot compel anyone to testify or order the production of documents. That is not very convenient. However, with the passage of the Bill C‑56, it will be able to do so. When I say it is about time, that is because the Bloc has been calling for this measure for a good 20 years.
On the other hand, I would be lying if I said that Bill C‑56 did not lack teeth. I will spoil the surprise right away: I will vote in favour of Bill C‑56 like my Bloc Québécois colleagues. Here are the reasons why. This bill contains some good measures. Most of all, it does not contain any that are outright harmful. Let us just say that I expected more. For me, this is just a drop in an ocean of needs. Now I will explain my thoughts in greater detail.
Part 1 of Bill C‑56 modifies the Excise Tax Act. It extends a GST rebate, 5% of the sales tax, to builders of rental housing. The rebate will occur at the moment of sale or alleged sale if the builder becomes the owner. The rebate does not apply when the purchaser is already entirely or partially exempt. For example, this is the case for government organizations, municipalities, not-for-profit organizations or housing co-ops. That means that Bill C‑56 will have no impact on the cost of social or community housing projects because it concerns only private housing.
Part 2 makes three amendments to the Competition Act. The first, as I said earlier, gives real investigative powers to the commissioner of competition. The second broadens the range of anti-competitive practices prohibited by law. At present, competitors cannot agree to push another player out of the market. Bill C‑56 will prohibit agreements even with non-market players aimed at reducing competition. For example, when a grocer rents space in a shopping centre, it is common for the lease to contain clauses prohibiting the landlord from renting to another grocer. Such practices that effectively limit competition will be prohibited under Bill C‑56.
The third amendment to the Competition Act will make mergers and acquisitions more difficult. Today, when a business wants to buy a competitor, for example the Royal Bank's proposed acquisition of HSBC, the act states that the Competition Bureau should allow the merger if it can be proven that the purchase will result in a gain in efficiency, even if the merger will reduce competition. This provision, which appears to favour concentration, will be repealed by Bill C‑56. The Bloc Québécois and my colleague, the member from Terrebonne, have been asking for this measure for some time now.
As I said at the start of my speech, Bill C‑56 contains a number of good measures and, more importantly, none that are outright harmful. However, I also said I believe it is but a drop in an ocean of needs.
In housing, there is real urgency. However, nothing indicates Bill C‑56 will do anything to reduce rents. It would be astonishing if a landlord dropped rents just because they no longer had to pay the GST on a new property, especially since interest rates alone are driving up mortgage costs. This increase will greatly exceed the GST exemption on new rental units. When landlords renew their mortgage, who will they pass the increase on to? The question is rhetorical. We can expect prices will keep rising, with or without Bill C‑56. At best, by removing the tax on rental buildings, Bill C‑56 might entice some developers to build rentals instead of condos. It might simply become more profitable for them. Again, this is just speculation.
Although Bill C‑56 will not directly affect rents, it could help alleviate the housing shortage in some small measure. If Bill C‑56 increases the percentage of new rental housing construction even a little, it will be a good thing. However, we would still be light years away from meeting needs.
I repeat: There are some good things in this bill, such as the amendments to the Competition Act. The Bloc Québécois fully endorses those. On the other hand, we consider it misleading to claim that the bill will help lower the cost of groceries, as the government suggests.
Giving the commissioner of competition real investigative powers when carrying out a study should enable him to get to the bottom of things when it comes to the competitive environment in a given sector. That is very true. Now, learning more about an issue is a good thing, but it does not increase competition and it certainly does not bring down grocery costs.
Since 1986, the vast majority of grocery chains have disappeared, after being bought out by competitors. Steinberg disappeared. A&P disappeared. Provigo was bought by Loblaws. IGA was bought by Sobeys. Marché Adonis was bought by Metro. Of the 13 grocery chains that existed in 1986, only three remain. If we include the two American big box stores that also sell groceries, Costco and Walmart, that means that five players control 80% of the market.
While it is true that a number of factors are contributing to the increase in food prices, it is important not to lose sight of the grocers' profit margins. When prices go up, profits go up. However, according to the Competition Bureau study published last June, grocers did not just maintain their profit margin, they increased it.
When a merchant can raise prices at will, it is a blatant sign of a lack of competition. The amendments to the Competition Act found in Bill C‑56 will certainly prevent the situation from worsening, and they will make mergers and acquisitions harder to do in the future. However, they do not resolve the situation. The damage is done and, unfortunately, Bill C‑56 will do nothing to fix it.
In short, even though Bill C‑56 does put forward some good measures, this cannot possibly be the government's one and only response to the skyrocketing cost of housing and groceries. When it comes to housing, the government needs to review and improve the national housing strategy, which, let us face it, has failed.
In terms of competition, they need to review the notion of abuse to prevent the big players from endlessly profiting from their disproportionate market share. Those two initiatives must be undertaken, and we are just starting both, whether Bill C‑56 passes or not.
To end my speech, I would like to say the following. The Bloc Québécois's support for Bill C‑56 is certainly not a motion to congratulate the government, quite the contrary. However, we do see it as a step in the right direction. The Bloc Québécois's support today is like a pat on the back. It is like a nod of the head, but coupled with a “what comes next?”.
I suspect that I may have to wait awhile before the government actually takes any further action, but I hope I will not have to wait too long.
1313 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, I listened carefully as the member described the steps we are taking as a federal government to try and alleviate some of the pressure in the rental market. The rental market is generally under provincial jurisdiction, which I know the Bloc watches very carefully.
Removing the GST in a time of high interest rates is to try and stimulate construction, create conditions where there are more units to rent and introduce competition in the rental market and, therefore, drive down prices. That is the move we are trying to make as a federal government.
Could the hon. member comment on how creating the right conditions in the market might actually help the people of Quebec?
117 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his excellent question.
The problem that we have with this provision, which seeks to eliminate the GST on the construction of rental housing, is that the government is making assumptions. The government is trusting the private sector to bring prices down. It is always a bit risky to trust the private sector to lower prices. There is nothing to guarantee that, once the rental units have been built, private builders will pass those savings on to renters in the form of lower rental costs. The government is making assumptions.
That is why we do not think that this is the answer to the problem we are facing. However, as I said in my speech, this measure could result in the construction of more rental units, which would reduce pressure on the market by increasing availability, but there is no guarantee of that. The government is hoping that is what will happen if it implements this measure, but we are not convinced that it will have such a major impact on lowering rent. In fact, we are not convinced that that will happen at all. That being said, we will not vote against Bill C‑56, because it contains good measures and nothing harmful.
211 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, for the most part, I agree with my colleague's observations and analysis.
I am not suggesting that removing the GST from rental housing construction is a bad measure. It was one of our proposals as well. However, I agree that this measure alone is not going to solve the housing crisis that has been going on since 1994, when the federal government completely pulled out of building truly affordable social housing.
I would like to hear his thoughts about the fact that the real solution is non-market housing, such as co-ops, community housing, student housing and, most importantly, social housing.
105 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, the member for Rosemont—La Petite‑Patrie and I generally agree on that.
Quebec is a unique ecosystem. In fact, we call that a distinct society, a nation. The co-operative system is rather unique in Quebec, at least in terms of the number of co-operatives that exist in Quebec.
Housing falls under the jurisdiction of Quebec. Social and affordable housing requires funding. As usual, Ottawa knows best and it is interfering in a jurisdiction that is not its responsibility. The federal government does not have the expertise, but it has the money because of the fiscal imbalance and because all of the revenues are in Ottawa and all the expenses are in Quebec and the provinces.
We are asking Ottawa to send money to Quebec, the provinces and the territories who have the expertise in affordable and social housing. Then things will go much smoother. That being said, there is an even more radical solution that would be even better and would practically solve everything: if the federal government stayed out of Quebec and we had all the power over such matters. If we were a country, the housing situation would be lot better.
200 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-56 once again and maybe take a stab at addressing some of the issues that have come up in debate. I will start just by saying, first of all, that New Democrats, of course, support this legislation.
What we said at the beginning in respect to housing was that it is good to increase supply but that it is not just any increase in supply that is going to help with the housing crisis. We have to be concerned about the various kinds of housing along the way and ensure that we are increasing supply in all parts of the housing spectrum where there is need. Of course, there is a need for more market-based, purpose-built rental and eliminating the GST off purpose-built rental is a way to incent the development of more market rent apartments. This will be great for Canadians who can afford market rent, which is certainly a smaller percentage of Canadians than it was just a short time ago. Nevertheless, for those who can afford it, are looking for it and cannot find it, more market supply will certainly be helpful.
However, we cannot wash our hands of the issue and think that the work is done simply because we have brought in a measure to incent the development of more market-based housing. A lot of other Canadians out there will not be able to access that market housing; nevertheless, they need to be housed, deserve to be housed and, as far as I am concerned, should have an enforceable right to be housed in Canada. That is why, from the word go, when this bill was introduced, New Democrats said that this on its own would not be enough. We want to see the government accompany this legislation with some measures for development of non-market housing, which does not always mean affordable or social housing. Non-market housing can be provided at market rents. We see that in some co-ops that choose to offer market rent suites to those who can afford them and, at the same time, offer some affordable rents or social rents, where rent is actually geared to folks' income. Therefore, it is only ever a percentage of their income. It does not eat up the entirety of a household's budget.
All this is to say that incenting more market supply is not enough. This bill would do that. It is one component of addressing the housing crisis. There is a lot more to do. New Democrats were certainly disappointed in the fall economic statement for not having been more ambitious on that front. There was a billion dollars announced for a replenishment of the coinvestment fund, but the fact that this replenishment does not come until 2025 is a serious issue. I think it is a sign that the government still does not understand the extent to which we need to confront the housing crisis in Canada with a serious sense of urgency.
Other housing that we need to look at, whether market or non-market, is housing to be able to address the concerns of many indigenous communities across Canada. I just want to take a moment to recognize the good work that my colleagues from Nunavut have done, both the current member for Nunavut and Mumilaaq Qaqqaq, who was the MP for Nunavut in the last Parliament. She spent a considerable amount of time travelling through her riding, the territory of Nunavut, documenting the serious housing need there: the overcrowding, the mould and the dilapidated condition of a lot of housing that has been built. I think it is important to note that taking the GST off purpose-built rental is not going to do a thing for folks in Nunavut and small remote communities, where there is not an abundance of contractors waiting to build housing. They are not looking to go there as a market.
We have talked a lot about the competition space, whether it is telecoms, grocery companies, banks, fossil fuel companies, where we have these oligopolies that have developed in Canada. Members can just name the market. We can talk about better competition policy until we are blue in the face. If we are talking about grocery prices at the one grocery store in a rural community where people have to drive hundreds of kilometres just to get to the next grocery store, the fact is that improving the competition framework is not going to do a lot in respect to pricing in a community like that. Taking the GST off purpose-built rental is not going to do a lot to incent the development of new housing in small and remote communities in Nunavut. That is why we have to go outside just thinking about the market and how to incent market players. What do we hope they will do? It is not profitable in the way that they are used to making profit in a place such as Toronto, Vancouver or even Winnipeg or Halifax.
It is not profitable to build up there, and folks certainly do not have the money to pay to make it profitable for somebody to build up there. However, we need people to do so. That is why we need good public policy that is not dependent on just trying to provide little carrots for profit-seeking companies in the market.
It is not that they are doing anything wrong. They are not bad people for not wanting to move their business from downtown Toronto, where they develop condos, to Nunavut and start building appropriate housing for people in small, remote northern communities.
We should not expect people to do that all on their own; however, one needs public policy in the context of a strategy that includes addressing workforce needs and training up local people to have skills. Such a strategy includes having the funding required, when they are done building homes in one community, to move that infrastructure and the people to the next community to do some of that building and to share those skills. It also includes having what amounts to an economic development plan that is about putting indigenous people back in charge of their own communities while ensuring that they have the resources to do something with their skills as they develop them.
The market is not going to do that. It is not meant to do that, nor is it interested in doing that.
We get up and talk a lot about these things. People say that we do not care about entrepreneurs, business or risk-taking. That is not true, but we understand the limits of it.
There is an intellectual and administrative laziness that permeates the Liberal and Conservative parties, where they would rather just pretend as though somehow, if one gives the market enough of a free hand, it will fix all these problems. It is not true.
The market is not designed to fix certain kinds of problems. Sometimes, the very problems that it is not designed to fix are some of the most important problems. The people who, not wrongly, but we all make choices, decide to live their life seeking profit in the market are not interested in solving these problems, because there is no money to be made in solving them in that way. However, they are life and death problems.
The problem of housing in Nunavut is killing people right now. It is making it impossible for them to get an education. We have heard stories about schools built in indigenous communities that were not even open for six months before they got shut down. A shoddy job was done of building the school, and they ended up having structural problems with the school right away. We were just talking about this last week.
If a child is fortunate enough to have a school, and they go to school, come back and try to do homework, but their home was built for five people and houses 15, we can be damn sure that this child is going to struggle to get their homework done. If they have to sleep in shifts because there are not enough bedrooms for people to go and lie down, the child will struggle to focus on learning.
We know that, even in major centres, kids in school right now are having a hard time concentrating. This happens more and more as Canadians struggle to afford food, because the kids do not have a full belly.
This is why New Democrats have been supporting the idea of a national school food program.
I am proud to say that this is a priority of the new government in Manitoba, and I look forward to it getting done. I do not think it should have to do it on its own. I think the federal government should be at the table doing that. We have heard a lot of words, but we have not seen a lot of action. We certainly have not seen any funding for that.
We need to get on with that. If we want people to succeed, if we want the “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” language to make any sense at all, it has to be in a world where people have the resources to be able to do that.
As a starting point, they have to be housed. They have to be fed. Their parents cannot be working three jobs just to make ends meet and never be around to have any time to provide support or direction.
These are some things that the market is not going to do for us. That is not what it is there for. It is all well and good for people who are well resourced, whose children have opportunities and who are well-supported, to say, “We did it. Why can't everybody else?”
The fact of the matter is that there are so many more children who can do it and would do it if they had the right start and just a little bit of those resources that so many of us have the privilege of being able to take for granted.
I say yes to eliminating GST from purpose-built rental, but we cannot then pretend that the work is done. I think the fall economic statement betrayed that the government does think that the work is done and that it can take its sweet time getting around to the rest of it. The government thinks it can say to the territorial government in Nunavut that if it wants money for housing, it will have to apply to the indigenous government that it already gave money to, failing to recognize that they serve different populations. There is a lot of overlap, but their mandates are not the same. Indigenous governments should get money to provide housing to people in their communities, but not in lieu of territorial governments getting resources to build housing in those communities. The deficit of affordable housing is large enough that we need both of these organizations, if they are willing, to be working together to try to meet the housing need.
We need to start addressing some of these things, just as we need to address some of the larger infrastructure required in order to build the housing. I think of the Kivalliq Hydro-Fibre Link, for instance, which, if built, would deliver power to a community in Nunavut, as well as a mine. It is an important thing we could do, both to incent economic development in the region and also to make it possible to build housing. There is no point in building a house in the 21st century for somebody who does not have electricity. We need to find a way to get power to communities even as we think about building more housing in those communities.
I talked before a little about what I think is a kind of intellectual laziness and an administrative laziness, by which I mean governments that do not want to do the hard public policy work of developing an effective strategy, funding it and resourcing it. Let us be frank; I think we tend to dismiss the work of public administration. However, it is important to be able to have a plan and line up all the players, which includes market players. For instance, we are not going to have a housing strategy that does not involve talking to the people who build the homes. I am an electrician by trade. There is a lot of good information that can be gleaned from the people who actually do the work, as opposed to talking just to the engineers or the estimators.
To put together a public strategy like that, to bring all of those pieces together, takes a lot of time and a lot of work. It is also a unique set of skills that we do not necessarily see everywhere else. That is why courses in public administration are offered. For too long, there has been a prevailing attitude, in both of the parties that have governed since the mid-1990s, when they cancelled the national housing strategy, that we are here just to make it easy for the guys in the market to take care of it all, and that if cannot be taken care of by the market, it is not for us to worry about.
It is quite the contrary; that is exactly the thing that people in government should be worried about. It is exactly the job of government to take care of some of the very important things that the market will not take care of. However, first of all, we have to accept and admit that the market will not take care of every need if it is left to its own devices. Thankfully there is a lot of overlap between what one can make a lot of money at and providing services to people in good ways. We see that in many facets of our economy; small and medium-sized businesses, particularly, are very good at identifying gaps in the services in their local communities, and developing a product and selling it at a fair price. When we look at some of the larger companies, like telecom companies, oil and gas companies and banks, that is not what is going on. Even though they make a lot of money and benefit greatly from a public policy environment designed to help them make their money and defend their interests and power in the economy, they do not accept any reciprocal responsibility.
There are only three big Canadian grocery chains. Do they accept any responsibility for providing groceries at an affordable price to Canadians? No, it is very clear they do not see that as their job. Just take a look at the work that my colleague, the member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford has done, asking difficult questions of grocery CEOs at the agriculture committee. They made it pretty clear that they accept no responsibility. They have a completely privileged position in that market. Food is something Canadians cannot decide to do without. The CEOs accept no reciprocal sense of responsibility to Canadians for that.
We can look at oil and gas companies that have been making money hand over first lately, even while laying off more employees. Do the Canadian oil and gas companies think that they need to do anything to try to reduce the cost at the pump? Absolutely they do not. They see an opportunity. They see that they have a captive market. To the extent that they can push prices up, they certainly have been doing so.
Between 2019 and 2022, oil and gas profits in Canada rose by 1000%. This is not an industry that accepts any responsibility for the privileged position it occupies and the power that comes with it in the Canadian economy. The idea that we are going to leave it all to the market is, I think, a false idea, but unfortunately it has been the predominant idea for at least 30 years in Canada. We can trace it back at least to the original free trade agreement debate in 1988 and the years leading up to that. This is relevant to the point of competition, I would say. My Conservative and Liberal colleagues usually argue about who is the greatest supporter of corporate free trade.
It is interesting to watch, after the Conservatives voted against the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement most recently, how the argument goes. We see that the Conservatives voted against the trade agreement for no good reason I can identify except to make everything about the carbon tax. That includes things that are not about it, like a conflict half a world away that has everything to do with the preservation of democracy. Instead of taking that seriously on its own terms, they would rather make it about the carbon tax for their own domestic political needs. That is a sign of a government that does not have our back. It has been interesting to watch Conservatives try to defend their position as the greatest defenders of corporate free trade while voting against that trade agreement.
It has been interesting to watch the Liberals not just zero in on the Ukraine issue but also see this as their opportunity to establish themselves as the biggest champion of corporate free trade in the Canadian political space. That has been fascinating, because the thing about free trade is that it was supposed to bring us lower prices. I just heard a Conservative member talk about how there are only five big grocery companies in Canada, three Canadian ones and two American ones. He talked about how he wants more Canadian companies. That was the argument New Democrats were making in the free trade debate: that if we opened up the economy, what we would end up with is Americans coming over and taking over essential industries. Just watch.
There are Conservatives who believe we should deregulate the air industry and invite American airlines into Canadian spaces as a way to lower prices and improve service. Just wait until it happens; they are going to be singing the same crocodile tears song 20 years after it happens that they are singing now about grocery companies, as if anyone should believe them. Either we are of the point of view that we can take a strategic approach to certain pillars of our economy and believe that we need the tools at our disposal to protect those things and conduct business in a certain way, or we believe that we should open it up completely to competition and free trade agreements and even give foreign companies the right to sue the Canadian government, which is what Conservative and Liberal governments have done when they have tried to have a strategic economic approach.
Conservatives get up and cry foul, not just on groceries but also on the battery plant jobs and on workers coming in. Do they know how they are coming in? They are not coming in through the temporary foreign worker program, for the most part, although we would not know that when listening to the Conservatives. What is interesting on that point too is that the TFW program blew up under the Conservatives' watch and then had to be fixed because it had become such an exploitation of foreign workers. The workers are coming in under international labour mobility provisions negotiated in free trade agreements by the Conservatives. At the time, when we asked them if they knew that would mean that multinational companies were going to import foreign workforces when there is a big investment in Canada, they said that it would not happen, that they would just bring in supervisors who were going to help share some specific expertise and then move along. The jury is out on whether that is what is happening in the battery plants. The government owes Canadians a better answer and more guarantees for what it is doing for their tax dollars. The fact of the matter is that it is just egregious for Conservatives to get up and pretend they do not know how those international labour mobility provisions work or that they did not negotiate them.
I look forward to talking more about these things in the Q and A.
3434 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, I listened with interest to my colleague's speech. I noted, when he was talking about the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement, that he was positioning it as though the government's position were to somehow one-up the Conservatives with respect to our commitments to free trade.
I have been very vocal on this issue. For me, this is not about bringing attention to one side's being better than the other on free trade; rather, the whole issue of the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement is to suggest that Canadians look into why it is that Conservatives have taken this position. I believe it is because they are moving so far to the right that we are now seeing an all-right influence from the United States, the pro-Russian propaganda they are buying into. Would he agree with me that this is a shared concern that he and his NDP colleagues have?
157 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, as I said, what is important is that the conflict be judged on its merits and that Canada take a position to support Ukraine, because I do think that is an important front for freedom and democracy in the world right now, and Russia cannot be allowed to win. The effort to try to make it about something else, like the carbon tax, to suit the domestic political needs of the Conservatives is short-sighted, and I think it is wrong. There is a serious question to be asked about why they do not see that and why it is not decisive for them.
We can think about the time that Canadian Conservatives spend with the Republicans across the border talking about political strategy and about how to implement a common agenda for North America, and about the prominence of Donald Trump in the Republican movement and the fact that he was bought and paid for by the Russians a long time ago and has been influencing the Republican Party, which is not to let any of the Republicans themselves off the hook, to diminish support for Ukraine. I think that there are some real questions we should be asking about the Canadian Conservative connection to that movement.
210 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, I have a lot of respect for my colleague opposite, but there seem to be a lot of conspiracy theories flying around the chamber about the Conservatives' view of Ukraine. We have been clear that we support Ukraine. We already have a free trade agreement with Ukraine. Ukraine has asked for more munitions and weapons; the liberals and the NDP voted against that. The Liberals have also not given the LNG that Ukraine is asking for. Certainly, I think it would be good to look at the record of the members opposite on that file.
However, the current debate is about affordability. Instantly, if the Liberals and the NDP both cared about affordability for Canadians, they could axe the tax that is going to be quadrupled and the tax on that tax.
Why is the member standing and supporting the Liberal government to drive people into poverty?
149 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
