- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Simcoe North
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $121,028.17
- Government Page
- Mar/4/22 1:14:42 p.m.
- Watch
- Re: Bill C-8
Mr. Speaker, I understand that the hon. member makes a number of interventions and I find many of them helpful, because it allows me to answer some of these questions quite clearly.
We would not know where all of the money is that is collected, because the government does not really, in a transparent way, show us this. It also does not indicate the cost of administering the carbon tax and rebate program that it has introduced, but I would welcome the opportunity to look at that.
Let us remember that, if a carbon tax is supposed to affect and change the behaviour of Canadians by increasing the price, what we have just seen in the last year, with prices for fuel increasing by 40% to 50% in some cases, is accomplishing what the carbon tax is supposed to accomplish. The carbon tax is, in many ways, just redundant and salt in the wound for many Canadians who can least afford its increase.
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- Mar/4/22 1:12:45 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for that very good question, and I agree with her. I think that the government is underfunding health care transfers to provinces.
In 2015, the incoming Liberal government ran on a platform to increase provincial transfers, but it has not. In fact, it has increased certain amounts of money, but then tied strings or attached some conditions on what that money could be used for. I would submit that the provinces know best where and how to use the money they receive from the federal government to provide services to their citizens.
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- Mar/4/22 1:11:00 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola. It is wonderful working on the finance committee, and I am learning a lot from him.
With respect to the interest charges on debt, we absolutely need to worry about this. One of the justifications for the government's spending using deficit financing early on in its mandate was that interest charges were so low. They told us not to worry. Now we see challenges with interest rates going up, and we know that they are going to continue to increase.
Now, as my hon. colleague has mentioned, we see that there is maybe a $6-billion additional cost that otherwise was not considered. Where is that $6 billion coming from? Of course, we could continue to borrow the money, but eventually my grandchildren, who are not even born yet, will be bearing that cost. I think that we need to consider this very closely.
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- Mar/4/22 1:00:37 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Mr. Speaker, it is very nice to see you in the chair. I hope we will see more of you there. It is a pleasure working with you at committee, but it is nice to see you in the chair today.
It is nice to intervene with my colleagues on Bill C-8, the economic and fiscal update implementation bill, but before I get to that, it seems rather appropriate to acknowledge the devastation that we see in Ukraine. What we see in the unprovoked aggression of the Russian Federation in Europe is heartbreaking. The Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the government have my full support to continue to respond in the harshest of terms. I would support them to take an even more aggressive approach and I look forward to a Canadian response that includes an increase in our humanitarian efforts and aid.
I have listened to many colleagues speak in the chamber about Bill C-8. We studied the bill at committee. I take this job very seriously. On its face, there are many items in Bill C-8 that seem rather reasonable, such as measures to support educators on an annual basis by increasing tax relief and measures to extend the COVID supports provided to businesses. How we will procure additional vaccines in the future is also addressed.
There are other areas that I have significant concerns about, in particular the proposed housing tax and the carbon rebate that the government has proposed for farmers. However, before I turn to these issues, I would like to address an overall objection that I have to the bill.
Legislation is constantly being sent to the House that has significant amounts of spending attached to it. We are never told how it will be funded, because the assumption is that these bills will be funded with debt. The assumption is that there is no limit to the debt this country can absorb and that when we want to fund our programs, the answer is to just add them to the deficit.
This is not sustainable. I am appealing to all my colleagues that we must hold the government accountable for its spending plans. If members agree with all the expenditures in the bill, that is completely fine, but unless the government is also going to propose areas where it will cut back in order to fund priorities, I cannot support this legislation. We are missing an opportunity to set priorities. There will be no objection from me on spending on the priorities that all Canadians rely on, including health care, education and social support programs, including those programs for our low-income and most vulnerable members of society, and of course our seniors.
We cannot just keep piling on debt and pretend that there are no consequences for future generations. On this basis alone, I am against the legislation, and until the government brings forward a proposal to review its spending and shows how any new spending will be met with reductions in other areas, it will be hard to persuade me to support future bills.
Until the government gets serious about setting priorities for its spending, we will continue to see difficulty passing legislation through the House. I think there is a reasonable debate we can have about what those priorities are, but I also want to know where it would like to cut back. I agree with a former Liberal leader who indicated that it was hard to set priorities. That is right, and if we have 100 priorities, I submit that we have none at all.
The Bank of Canada raised interest rates just two days ago, and it is projected that the bank will raise interest rates many more times before the end of the year. The Parliamentary Budget Officer released a projection indicating that the federal government alone could see interest payments on its debt increase to $40 billion a year annually. That is $40 billion a year that we are not spending on health care, that we are not transferring to the provinces for education, that we are not using to grow an inclusive economy.
A social democrat friend of mine recently told me that social democrats should care about fiscal responsibility because it means that governments do not waste in some areas so that they can spend in priority areas.
Let us think about that. We could be having a debate right now about how we could spend $40 billion. We could be debating pharmacare, a universal basic income or doubling or tripling the support for certain vulnerable groups in society. We could also be debating about how to provide much-needed tax relief for Canadians to keep the burden of taxation low on families and individuals, especially in an inflationary environment.
The Bank of Canada tells us the economy is robust. It tells us that the economy is operating at capacity. That also means new spending will have upward pressures on inflation. Many economists are recommending to the government that it review its spending and reconsider its proposals to introduce new spending plans, because at this point in the business cycle, new spending will have upward pressures on inflation, and we know the budget coming before us in a month or so will introduce new spending.
Last year's budget introduced almost $100 billion over three years, and curiously, I did not see one additional dollar for health care. At a time when health care expenditures in provinces are going up without any end in sight, at a time in a pandemic when health care spending is of the utmost importance, the government has not shown an approach that would see an increase in spending on health care.
Now I will turn to Bill C-8, and specifically to the two proposals I wanted to mention today that we had challenges with. We have just heard one of them in the recent intervention: the proposed underused housing tax for foreign purchasers or foreign owners. If we think a 1% tax is going to have any impact on purchasing behaviour or increase the level of supply across this country, we are sorely mistaken. When an asset price rises by 30% or 40% in a year, a 1% tax is not going to change somebody's behaviour and will not deter money launderers, so we put forward a reasonable amendment, which was to introduce a temporary ban to provide a reprieve on foreign purchases of Canadian real estate for two years.
This was a campaign commitment of both the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party in the last election. The Liberals are famous for making promises, but they typically make two kinds of promises: those they intend to keep and those they hope we forget about. Canadians want to know whether this is a commitment the government is walking away from.
With respect to the carbon tax as it relates to farmers, I have heard from farmers in my riding and across the country that the rebate does not go nearly far enough. I had one farmer send me a bill for $13,000, just in carbon tax, for natural gas to dry their product. We need to provide farmers with relief. They are the ones who feed our cities. They cannot afford additional taxes.
A carbon tax is supposed to do two things. It is supposed to raise revenue for the government and it is supposed to change behaviour. However, sometimes there are no alternatives available for changed behaviour, and with prices going up somewhere between 30% and 40% over the last year on natural gas and fuel across the country, the outcomes the carbon tax is hoping to achieve are already being achieved. The government needs to provide much-needed relief to farmers, but it also needs to reconsider raising the carbon tax on April 1 of this year, because in and of itself, this is an inflationary pressure.
I look forward to questions and comments.
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- Feb/9/22 4:54:58 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for all of her hard work on this topic and making sure that it is rightly addressed.
This was a mistake by the government, in a fairly complicated system, that imposed on seniors a difficulty in terms of the GIS clawback. I definitely support the proposals put forward in the House to right that wrong. However, it should be done very quickly, and it needs to be done immediately and not wait until June or July.
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- Feb/9/22 4:53:05 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Mr. Speaker, when we are talking about subsidies to the oil and gas industry, we need to have a much more fulsome and honest debate about what represents a subsidy. The truth is that the oil and gas sector represents a significant economic driver for this country and has provided much of the wealth, economic progress and productivity that we have seen in this country over the last generations.
I would propose, in addition to considering all spending measures, that it has been over 10 years since the government has done any kind of review of its spending through any kind of efficiency review. There is plenty of money for the government to look at to see where we can find savings to spend on the priority areas. As I mentioned, there might be some really good priorities that we should be funding, but we can find the savings for that, going forward.
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- Feb/9/22 4:51:31 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Mr. Speaker, I do not know if it was just luck, but I am quite happy to answer another question from the hon. colleague, as he asked a question of me on my last speech.
Talking about carbon tax is really cold comfort to a farmer who is paying $13,000 a month in carbon tax. Where is that money coming from? I would like to ask this member about the farmers he has spoken to. This is what we are talking about, the impact of a carbon tax on a farmer.
It is important to recognize that some of these individuals and business owners cannot afford to keep spending and paying the tax increases. Therefore, we on this side of the House are going to continue to stand up for farmers and fight against a carbon tax that does not work.
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- Feb/9/22 4:41:25 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Mr. Speaker, I feel like a baseball player who steps up to the plate after somebody has hit a home run, but I will do my best to follow the hon. member for Carleton.
It is my honour to rise today and speak to Bill C-8, which is the economic and fiscal update implementation act of 2021. The bill touches on several different topics, but I would like to focus on a few critical elements related to farmers, housing and what this bill represents overall.
For farmers, this bill quite simply is an acknowledgement that the government's approach has been wrong. It recognizes the harm of its carbon tax on farmers, but there is just one problem. The remedy does not go nearly far enough. Instead of discounting the carbon tax at the point of sale, the government is attempting to introduce a complicated rebate method. It puts an additional burden on farmers to collect their receipts, and at the end of the year they will get a fraction of what they paid in carbon tax back. A tax credit is not good enough. Farmers deserve much more than that. What is the science-based justification for treating diesel and gas differently from natural gas and propane?
I hope that all members in the House understand exactly how important farmers are to this country. When we live in cities and do the majority of our travelling by plane, if we take a look down what we see are beautiful farms covering the countryside. For many rural communities across this country, farming was the reason they sprang up, and it is the reason they continue to exist today.
Farming is one of the things Canada is known for internationally. Let me quote the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance, which states, “Canada is the fifth largest exporter of agricultural and agri-food products in the world after the EU, U.S., Brazil, and China”, and “over 90% of Canada’s farmers are dependent on exports”.
Our farmers are competing with farmers from around the globe. It is a global industry, and farmers across the country, including in my riding, check the prices of global commodities, which help them determine and decide what to plant. They then follow international news to inform them of the best times to sell their products. A drought in Germany means farmers know their canola is likely to rise due to supply and demand factors.
When the carbon tax was initially announced, farmers were concerned. They knew they could not raise prices like other industries can. There was no way they could reduce the amount of fuel they were using, and increased costs come directly from their bottom line. That means they reduce the amount of money farmers can take home to their families at the end of the year, and the amount of money farmers have available to pay workers.
If it was not clear, farmers use a lot of fuel. A large tractor can hold 400 gallons of it. Thankfully, the minister understood that taxing diesel and gasoline was a non-starter, but that is not the only fuel that farmers use. Propane and natural gas are critical to farming. Natural gas and propane are cheap and efficient ways to heat and cool large buildings for many farmers, whether these are the shops they do repair work in or the places where livestock live in the cold winter months. These fuels are vital to selling most crops because of how farmers dry their products. Before something like corn can be shipped to market, it must be within a specific moisture range. It costs thousands of dollars to dry every month.
Last night, I spoke with a few farmers in my riding. They think this bill is quite clearly not doing enough. They sent me a copy of a few bills. I have a copy of a bill with me here. Just for the month of October to November, a natural gas bill for the farmer was almost $58,000. The carbon tax on that bill was $13,000. That is an unbelievable additional cost added to the monthly cost of operating that farmer's enterprise. Another farmer, Will, in my riding spends $40,000 to $50,000 some months on fuel.
This huge expense to farmers is why the Ontario Federation of Agriculture has been calling on the government to rethink the carbon tax application to farms. In March, the federal government needs to understand this, and to work to lessen the negative impacts of the carbon tax on the ability of farmers in Ontario to compete in both domestic and international markets. They may have asked for our understanding because it appears the government does not understand how much damage this is doing. That is perhaps why the Minister of Agriculture felt it was appropriate to say that the carbon tax was not significant for farmers after it was introduced.
I would like to point out that, like the carbon tax, it is a common theme with the government to not listen to Canadians when developing policy choices.
This is where I would like to thank my hon. colleague, the member for Northumberland—Peterborough South, for all of his work on the farm carbon tax file. He said the tax was crippling agriculture. Without his work, the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food may have continued to believe the carbon tax was insignificant. The member for Northumberland—Peterborough South called for an exemption to the carbon tax and put forward a bill to do just that for natural gas and propane, but with an unnecessary election called, that bill died with the last Parliament.
The tax credit proposed is complicated, it is onerous and it does not make it equitable with other fuels. There is an excellent solution here to help the farmers. It is quite simple and it is not in this bill. The solution is to provide a full exemption at the point of sale.
A similar criticism can be directed at the government on the proposed tax on vacant properties with a national annual 1% tax on the value of non-resident, non-Canadian-owned residential real estate that is considered to be vacant or underused. That is very complicated.
In the last election, housing was a major theme. Our party, the Conservatives, put forward a plan to limit and ban foreign investors not living in or moving into Canada from purchasing homes for a two-year period. This plan was well received. Really what we are asking for is a two-year pause to let everyone take a break so we can curb some of the off-the-record demand we see for homes that are driving the prices up for everyone else.
When we talk about housing, the government likes to point to a commitment to bring in a beneficial ownership registry, but like many Canadians, I am skeptical that the government will deliver on this commitment. It is absent from this bill and the government has a long history of promising something and failing to deliver.
The bill represents a disconnect that seems to have taken hold of the government. It is a disconnect between government spending and the consequences of that spending. The only policy solution the government has is to spend more money. That is the only solution that it has proposed over these last two years. In fact, it is the only policy solution it has proposed since 2015, since coming into government.
When COVID first arrived, it was unprecedented. Although I was not in this chamber at the time, I was pleased to see all parties working together for the benefit of Canadians to make sure businesses, families and all of us had the support we needed to get through the pandemic.
However, that time has passed and experts are warning the government to stop the rampant spending and pointing to the effects that spending has on inflation. We need a credible, fiscal plan with a focus on growth, not on redistribution, that acknowledges the risk that additional spending represents to Canadians.
I believe the buck has to stop somewhere. The House cannot keep signing off on billion-dollar pieces of legislation without a plan to find some savings or a plan for how to pay for it. There needs to be a debate where we can find savings to offset some of these new expenditures, which might be worthwhile. That is the very least the government could do. In fact, I would propose that the government, for every new spending measure it brings forward, finds an offset savings somewhere else.
This mountain of debt is not the legacy of COVID that we wish to leave for our children. They deserve better than this.
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