- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Simcoe North
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $121,028.17
- Government Page
- Dec/12/22 12:36:31 p.m.
- Watch
- Re: Bill S-8
Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the wonderful member for Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner.
It is always a pleasure to rise in this chamber to speak to legislation. Today, we are talking about Bill S-8 to ensure that foreign nationals who are subject to economic sanctions are not able to enter our country.
Since we are also talking about human rights, I did want to take a moment to address an incident that happened this weekend to a very important person to Parliament, Irwin Cotler, who was at the premier of a documentary of his life and tireless work for human rights across the world. He was openly harassed and criticized at this event, which disrupted it and made quite a mockery of the whole thing. It made people very uncomfortable. Everyone should be open to public criticism and debate, as Mr. Cotler has always been and has never shied away from, but we are losing our decency as a society if we think it is acceptable to treat fellow humans this way.
In many circumstances, criticisms of accomplished Jewish people are often rooted in some form of anti-Semitism. It is okay for us to disagree with each other and we should encourage that at all times, but free speech also comes with a responsibility to treat one another with respect and decency.
We are now 10 months into Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine, but it was back in 2014 when Russia took actions and annexed Crimea. This egregious step was a blatant violation of international law. These attacks have caused the widespread devastation of Ukrainian infrastructure and property and the deaths of a number of civilians, notably women and children. These actions are a continuation of accelerated aggressive steps taken by Russia against Ukraine, and they threaten the international rules-based order. Canada responded, in part, through the use of economic measures, as did many of our allies. These sanctions are contained in the Special Economic Measures Act, and they affect about 1,000 individuals in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
The bill we have before us seeks to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, or IRPA, as we just heard the minister refer to it, in order to do several things, as I understand it.
First, the bill seeks to reorganize existing inadmissibility provisions relating to sanctions in order to establish a distinct ground of inadmissibility based on sanctions that Canada may impose in response to an act of aggression.
Second, it proposes to expand the scope of inadmissibility based on such sanctions to include not only sanctions imposed on a country, but also those imposed on an entity or a person. This is important given we have listed individuals as part of our economic sanctions, not just countries.
Third, it would expand the scope of inadmissibility based on sanctions to include all orders and regulations made under section 4 of the Special Economic Measures Act.
Last, it would amend the immigration and refugee protection regulations to provide that the Minister of Public Safety and the Minister of Emergency Preparedness, rather than the immigration division, will have the authority to issue a removal order on the grounds of inadmissibility based on sanctions under a new paragraph of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. That will provide Canada with the needed ability to better link government action with economic sanctions for those who are seeking to come into Canada and experience a wonderful life here.
The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act defines when a person is inadmissible to Canada and establishes the applicable criteria for all foreign nationals and permanent residents who seek to enter or remain in Canada. However, its inadmissibility provisions do not align with the basis for imposing the majority of economic sanctions. This means that an individual who has been sanctioned economically can still show up to Canada and claim refugee protection. They are then able to be here in Canada to experience the life we have built. This is quite clearly a loophole that undermines confidence in our system and laws, and Canadians will not accept that these sanctioned individuals get to remain in Canada.
This loophole matters not only to Russian actors. Let us not forget about other countries with citizens who have been subjected to some of these sanctions: Belarus, Myanmar, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, North Korea and, of course, Iran.
With Iran, I will also mention that we should be doing much more than we are. We just heard an exchange between members of the opposition and the minister on that front. It is important to list the IRGC as a terrorist organization. That was the will of the House constituted back in 2018 and was again reaffirmed by the House just recently. We must act much more forcefully with respect to the IRGC. Canadians expect that of us.
Canada is often behind when it comes to some of these international actions. This is becoming part of our international reputation, and it is not a good one. We have been late with Magnitsky sanctions. We often wait to see where the political winds are blowing. We are too careful not to offend anyone.
Let us consider the government's official response to the Iranian protests, as we have discussed, or the treatment of the Uighur population by the Chinese Communist Party. We have been calling on the government to do more and it continually shies away from its responsibility. We are not being taken as seriously by the international community as we once were.
All too often, Canada's position is not substantive and not principle-based. It is slow to act, and often with half measures. Take, for example, the government's frenetic position on China. If we do not like the government's policy on China, we just have to ask another minister and we will eventually get the answer we like. Often the government is caught without a plan and requires significant public shaming to get some action.
Let us take, for example, the international commitment to fight money laundering through introducing a beneficial ownership registry and regime. This is exactly connected to preventing individuals who are sanctioned economically from hiding their assets across the world. Canada has one of the weakest laws for identifying assets in beneficial ownership. We are one of the only countries that has yet to introduce the beneficial ownership registry. The government promised to do it all the way back in 2019, then it said it would not get to it until 2025. Now it says that it will be bringing it in at the end of next year, but we are still waiting to see the legislation.
Yes, the government has agreed to fast-track it, but there is still much more to do. All the other countries are moving so much further ahead of us when it comes to fighting global money laundering. Again, it is connected to this legislation because these individuals have assets all across the world. It might be the case that we will not allow sanctioned individuals to come into Canada now, but those individuals could still hide their assets here because we do not have a way of finding out who owns what in our country. We need to do much more, much more quickly on this front.
Once again, the government says all the right things, but fails to execute on much of it. Yes, we see some action here, but I guess, as the saying goes, a broken clock is right at least twice a day.
I look forward to the committee discussions on Bill S-8. It is important legislation. We have already heard members in the chamber on the opposition side ask why it is taking so long. We look forward to moving the legislation through to committee, addressing perhaps some of the amendments that were brought forward by the NDP. It is an important step for our country to put in place measures that make it harder for individuals who have violated human rights and international laws to come here, to remain in a wonderful country that we have built and get the advantages of the political and legal systems that we have built.
It is with great pleasure that I speak in favour of the legislation and I look forward to it going to committee.
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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/28/22 9:28:17 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I have been hearing from some constituents, including one who actually just passed through one of the border crossings from Ukraine into Poland, and one of the things he mentioned to me was the lack of supplies and necessities to support people at the border, such as blankets in the cold elements. Many of the individuals fleeing are women and children.
I am wondering if the hon. member would like to comment on some of the humanitarian aid that we could provide and if she would be in favour of increasing that support.
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