- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Bloc Québécois
- Mirabel
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 65%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $114,073.56
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, this weekend in my riding I was at the Saint‑Janvier Optimist Club, whose mission is to work for youth and children. I want to take this opportunity to commend Linda Cardinal and the entire team who work very hard for children.
Attending this type of event always allows us to reconnect with people, the business community and community organizations, and I find it interesting that we are talking about competition in the House today because I heard people talking about that on Saturday evening. I was at that event with people from the Mirabel Chamber of Commerce, who came to see me to tell me that every year, there is a gala for entrepreneurs in Mirabel, but that this year the gala will not be held because the entrepreneurs are in over their heads, because businesses are extremely worried as they wait for extensions and flexibility for their emergency loan and because for some members the survival of their business is potentially at risk.
If we want to increase competition and stimulate entrepreneurship, and if we want people who enter stores and businesses to be able to shop—we talked about mergers and acquisitions that reduce the number of businesses in the market—then we need to make sure small and medium-sized businesses can survive and breathe and enjoy some flexibility. I find it mind-boggling that, out of all the parties that have spoken today, not one so far has asked the government to extend the deadlines and show flexibility when we know this would immediately increase competition.
I ask the government once again to show some flexibility. What it has shown to date is complete disregard for our entrepreneurial base. The government says it has shown flexibility, that it took measures during the pandemic and invested significantly. Yes, but the current economic circumstances are exceptional, as they were during the pandemic. Times are tough. This must be extended.
That said, it is true that we have a bill in front of us that is good for competition. It is time we started talking about our competition regime. What does this bill do? It increases penalties for some anti-competitive behaviour. We need tougher, more meaningful penalties. It changes the competition regime for Canadian businesses, big multinationals, when they merge with or acquire other companies, so that consumers and the price they will pay are considered in the Competition Bureau's decision-making process. It allows the Competition Tribunal to issue additional, broader orders so that mergers, acquisitions and so on can be more easily prevented. It extends the limitation period for the review of mergers and acquisitions from one year to three years.
These are good measures given our ailing competition regime. We talked about this during the debate on Bill C‑56. Around the world, when there is a major merger or acquisition, competition authorities ask two general types of questions. The first is, how will this make things more efficient? Will these businesses, which are expanding and increasing market concentration, operate more efficiently? That is a legitimate question. The second type of questions is, considering that consumers will have fewer places, fewer stores where they can shop, do they risk being fleeced? Could they end up paying more? Could there be an increase in the cost of living? Do consumers risk being held hostage by this smaller number of larger businesses?
Canada's system is unique in the world in that the Competition Bureau is not allowed to ask this second type of questions. As a result, in certain markets, such as grocery stores, we have seen market concentration, merger after merger, acquisition after acquisition. It is now at the point where there are three major grocery stores in the market, not including Walmart and Costco, even though Canada is a G7 country. When the minister invited representatives from these big companies, they were all able to sit around a small coffee table, in 10 square feet. That is just one example of the disease plaguing our competition system.
HSBC Bank Canada is the perfect example. It is selling its subsidiaries around the world because it needs cash. What is happening? HSBC is selling its subsidiaries and, obviously, it is the biggest, strongest player that is most likely to buy that bank, especially since we know that the mortgage market is struggling and some banks are vulnerable. The system is already vulnerable.
The Competition Bureau is keeping an eye on that to determine whether there are efficiencies to be had. Of course, there are efficiencies to be had. We do not have to have a honorary doctorate, like the member for Trois-Rivières, to know that. The biggest bank is going to buy the portfolios of customers from other banks. It will own the mortgages and will be able to close branches and reduce the number of players in the market. HSBC will likely not have any storefront locations after the merger or acquisition. It will be the same bank with the same customers. It will provide the same loans, with the same employees and the same systems.
The Competition Bureau allows this because it will save money. However, not even the Competition Bureau is authorized to check on whether this will reduce competition, and consumers are the ones who end up paying. What is interesting is that the government even recognized that. With Bill C-56, the message is that Canada's competition regime needs to be changed, because consumers have been getting shafted at every turn for decades.
The Competition Bureau allowed this to happen under the old rules. This has made it to the desk of the Minister of Finance, who is about to sign it. If I were the Minister of Industry, I would really feel like I was a laughingstock. It is imperative that this transaction be put on hold until we see whether Bill C-56 passes, depending on the will of Parliament, so that the Competition Bureau can reissue a notice under the new rules of Bill C-56, taking the consumer into account. That is why it is so important to review our competition system.
Bill C-352 looks at supply chains, which is a good thing. We experienced this during the pandemic. We know that when there are mergers and acquisitions, transactions often involve head offices elsewhere and there is a risk that foreign suppliers will replace local suppliers. A few years ago that was not seen as dangerous. However, with the closures during the pandemic, we realized the extent to which consumers’ buying power in Quebec and Canada could be weakened by supply chain disruptions in the event of a major shock to international trade. We have come to realize that, sometimes, it is good insurance to have local or national suppliers. It is a very good thing.
Furthermore, we will be able to give the Competition Tribunal some power to cancel mergers and acquisitions. We realized after all that, because the Competition Bureau’s advisory opinions are not always perfect, consumers were being cheated far more than people thought. Some trial and error is involved here, and, often, when the Competition Bureau has not taken everything into account, when circumstances have changed, the consumer ends up paying.
They say that a transaction will be cancelled if it takes the new company that merged or made an acquisition to a 60% market share. That could be at 30%. We are not sure where these figures come from, but we think this deserves to be properly assessed in committee and, perhaps, be amended. That said, the bill does leave the tribunal a lot of latitude to take other criteria into account.
There is also the dominant market position issue. Until now, companies with a dominant position have been prevented from forcing their competitors to not do business with some suppliers. A number of practices have been blocked, but nothing prevents these companies from abusing their dominance and charging prices that are too high. We know that when a company gains market power, when it becomes a monopoly or comes close, its first reflex is of course to raise prices excessively high, because the consumer has no other place to shop. The consumer is stuck with one brand, one company. In some regions, there are very concentrated markets where the consumer is stuck with one company.
What this bill shows is that the competition regime is in serious need of reform. Most of all, it shows that Canada's competition regime has been favouring business and capital, not consumers, for decades. With today's cost of living, the importance of putting consumers at the centre of our thinking, at the centre of our approach, is not lost on anyone.
I would therefore like to thank the leader of the NDP for introducing this bill. We will be pleased to debate it in committee.
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- Dec/8/22 2:38:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we know that the federal government subsidizes the oil industry, but so does the Canadian banking sector.
In two years, the Royal Bank of Canada's investments in oil rose from $19 billion to $39 billion. That is a lot of money. It more than doubled its investments in two years.
If the government was truly committed to fighting climate change, it would do two things. It would make it harder to obtain funding for polluting energies and it would provide incentives for investing in renewable energy. It has done neither.
What is the government waiting for? Will it take action only when there is not one drop of oil left to siphon?
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- Dec/8/22 2:37:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, urged banks to join the fight against climate change. He wants them to do one simple thing: Come up with verifiable plans for a swift transition to renewable energy.
Meanwhile, Canada's big banks are among the top 20 fossil fuel backers in the world. A lot of oil money comes from Canadian banks.
Will the government implement measures to encourage banks, our banks, to focus on renewable energy?
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- Mar/21/22 1:23:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague from Winnipeg North knows how much I admire him.
I find it fascinating that the Liberals are forming a coalition government with the NDP and are now claiming that there is a coalition of the opposition. Perhaps they are a bit embarrassed.
That being said, I have mentioned this before. It is true that large corporations pay out dividends. It is true for banks, which must observe minimum Canadian ownership tresholds. It is also true that profits have exceeded all projections. What the Bloc Québécois is asking is to consider the projections. No investment fund manager saw this coming.
During the election campaign, the Bloc Québécois suggested seizing some of these profits, because they have nothing to do with our banks’ business acumen. They are the result of circumstances, not the banks’ actions. We should take some of these profits. It would be both effective and fair.
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- Mar/21/22 1:12:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, let me begin by saying I will be sharing my time with the member for Terrebonne.
On this first day of spring, and I wish you an excellent spring, Madam Speaker, I see that the NDP is dedicating its opposition day to the Liberal Party's election platform. I wonder why. Part of the Liberal platform was to charge this surtax on the profits of the big banks.
I think maybe the NDP no longer has confidence in the Liberals. However, the budget is coming up and I have seen the NDP declare its confidence in the Liberals several times. It even did so when it came time to support the emergency measures, even though several legal experts confirmed that those measures breached the fundamental rights of Canadians. I wonder what has the NDP so concerned on the eve of the budget. The Liberals themselves proposed going after the big banks to the tune of $10 billion over four years.
I am thinking that it is probably because the Liberals are in the habit of listening to what Bay Street has to say. What happened when the Liberals suggested imposing this small surtax on banks during the election campaign? The banks made threats. Top bankers and their associations came out and started saying that they would increase consumer fees and eliminate jobs in the banking sector and that this would be catastrophic.
We are all worried that the Liberals will listen to Bay Street bankers. Not so long ago, a former finance minister came from Bay Street. We understand that he is no longer talking to them, but he was so charming that he surely still has friends there.
What surprises me the most is that we are discussing a surtax. The reality is that our banks are undertaxed. Our banks and the businesses that provide all manner of other goods and services are not on an equal footing.
Do we pay the GST on financial services? No, because financial services are generally exempt from pretty much all taxes. However, when we purchase goods and other services, they are taxed, even in the riding of the member who just spoke about buying goods.
Banks offer financial services and are funded in a somewhat underhanded way. We know what happens. When my constituents put their money in the bank, what kind of interest rate do they get? They basically get no return on their investment. However, the bank turns around and lends money at a rate of 22% on credit cards, 15% on lines of credit, 5% on other things and so on. The bank makes money because of this credit spread, but there are never any financial service transactions. That circumvents the principle of value-added taxation, which all other businesses support.
Banks are undertaxed, but there are ways to tax them. Great Britain's Mirrlees Review, a major tax commission led by a Nobel prize recipient, explained that, in order to remedy this problem, banks' cash flow and financial services could be taxed. However, it is surprising that no tax is proposed when it comes time to collect from banks to level the playing field for our companies.
When banks need funding, they turn to the Bank of Canada, which loaned them money at a rate of a quarter of a percentage point during the pandemic. This system is supported by the public trust and the taxpayer. Did banks complain when they were charging higher mortgage rates in a completely inflationary market? The answer is no. Bank lobbyists never told us that people were paying too much.
When banks seek funding by issuing debt obligations or bonds, they pay less than all other companies with similar capitalizations, and this is because banks will not be able to declare bankruptcy. They are too big to fail. People purchasing obligations from banks know very well that if disaster ever strikes a bank and there are problems with the financial system, Canadian and Quebec taxpayers will come to their rescue through the Bank of Canada as the lender of last resort.
This means that banks make more profit because they pay less for their debt certificates. We must stop calling this proposal a surtax. Our banks have access to many tax advantages based on the nature of the services they provide and on the fact that they benefit from a system that is less competitive than in other places, which means that they make more profit.
For the sake of fairness, justice and efficiency, we need to get an additional contribution, in the absence of more appropriate tax reform.
We hear them talk about the banks. We hear the Conservatives. There is no shortage of arguments against this tax. The first argument is that the banks are owned by large Canadian investment funds and those Canadian investment funds generate dividends. We hear them say that there will be fewer dividends if we tax the banks' profits a little more and that the big investment funds will pay, except that during the pandemic, profits were higher than normal. There were excess profits. No investment fund manager in Canada, whether they work for the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan or private funds, had anticipated those returns and the difference in performance from companies whose security is not guaranteed by the Government of Canada. We are in a situation where, if we tax a portion of excess profits, we are not even getting back to the profits already anticipated by all Canadian investment fund managers. This is therefore a bad argument.
Now we are being told this will affect housing prices. That is both practically and theoretically untrue. Why? The reason is that our banks structure their costs in such a way as to maximize profit. They have revenue and expenses, and their goal is to achieve the biggest gap between the two. That is called profit.
However, whether the government taxes that profit at 15% or 18%, the bank's recipe is exactly the same. It will still maximize profit, the same as before. Higher tax rates will make absolutely no difference. In fact, this approach to taxing banks' excessive profits is one of the most effective and one of the least likely to create distortion and to be passed on to consumers.
I have been listening to my Conservative colleagues. It almost sounds like they are talking about a sales tax. Taxes vary in the type of damage they can do, in their economic impact. This particular tax is justified and equitable.
The Bloc Québécois has already put a similar idea forward. We proposed a retroactive tax because the situation with excessive bank profits was unusual. Our thinking was that, in a full-blown pandemic, what people need is health care and health transfers. Governments are under extreme pressure, and never before have we been in such dire need of government support. That is exactly why we suggested it.
When I meet people in my riding, people who have lived through two years of a pandemic, and the hospitals are cutting staff, when the Quebec government is asking for transfers and the nine other provinces and the territories agree but Ottawa turns a deaf ear, I figure that at some point we will have to find a way to finance these services. Now the federal government has a way.
I am tired of hearing that the banks will pass on the costs to consumers, and so on. What we are proposing is justice. Banks are undertaxed and are legally avoiding paying tax. Since the 2006 crisis, taxes on corporate profits have been significantly and systematically reduced for all businesses. We are now at a crossroads where we must reflect on this and decide whether all businesses should be treated equally or banks should be taxed differently.
Are banks really different? Obviously, the answer is yes. Should we find other ways of taxing financial products and the credit spread? The answer is yes.
Let us think about this logically. The government is under pressure. It had to increase service delivery. It has to increase health transfers, listen to the provinces and find new sources of revenue. It is not surprising that the Conservatives and some of my colleagues are against this. They are against everything.
The only way they understand how to finance any service is through oil, oil, and more oil. However, because of their oil, before the last increase in the price of a barrel, the government of Alberta projected a $500-million deficit. It is obvious to me that taxes need to be fair and equitable. This is a motion that, in principle, supports this idea, and that is why I will vote in favour.
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- Dec/2/21 4:34:49 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we are interested in finance that generates long-term investments. Long-term growth is generated by investments that are sustainable. Likewise, long-term pollution is generated by sustained investments in the most polluting markets.
We want to increase the banks' transparency because we believe that consumers will respond in an informed way. We also believe that greater use should be made of taxation to ultimately incentivize financial institutions and investment funds to invest in the technologies of the future, as well as to reduce the risks that—
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- Dec/2/21 4:20:29 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Shefford.
I would like to take a moment to thank the volunteers at the Centre d'entraide Saint‑Colomban, the parish of Saint Francis of Assisi in Oka, and the Carrefour d'entraide Saint-Placide for organizing their charity drive. This was a tremendous act of selflessness, and I commend them.
In passing, I would also like to commend one of my constituents, Jasmine Bikarski-Lalande.
As a new member of Parliament, I was hoping to hear great things here, especially in the Speech from the Throne. To me, that speech was the ideal time for the government to set out its agenda and, without explaining each of its policies in detail, at least share its ambitions for the next four years. I say four years because I hope the Liberals realize that they cannot just call an election whenever they feel like it.
I had expectations when reading the Speech from the Throne, and this may have been the academic in me, but I was looking for footnotes because the speech was lacking in content, which bothered me. During the tough election campaign, I met with Mirabel residents who wanted to know why the election had been called and why they would have to go to the polling station in the middle of summer in the middle of a pandemic. These people, these families, these young people, including people from flood-stricken Sainte‑Marthe‑sur‑le‑lac, also talked to me about the environment and climate change.
I was expecting to find answers in the throne speech. The Bloc Québécois has been sounding the alarm for years now, saying that the government, whether current or previous, is not doing anything. We are told that we have it all wrong, so we respond that the government is not meeting its targets, and then we are told again that we have it all wrong and that the government is taking action.
Did the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development have it all wrong when he indicated in the report he released a few days ago that the government had not delivered? Canada is the laughingstock of the G7. It cannot even meet its own targets and it is using 2005 as the baseline year instead of 1990 so that it can conceal 15 years of unchecked exploitation of dirty oil. That is unacceptable. The other self-respecting countries, including Quebec and the 27 EU countries, use 1990 as the baseline year.
Being open-minded, I was curious to see how the minister would explain these facts. The minister told us that it was because of the Harper era. He said this even though the environment commissioner's report covered all the years under the current government.
As I said, however, I keep an open mind, so I kept listening. The government told us that the Liberals were taking action, but that the Harper government had been so terrible that we were still suffering the consequences. I decided to do a bit of research to see what this government has done for the climate, and I will admit that it has taken action: it went out west to buy a pipeline that cost $4.5 billion of taxpayers' money.
Not being very smart, I did not quite understand why the government did that. The explanation it gave was that the pipeline would be so profitable that the government could use the profits to fight climate change.
I am a good researcher, so I checked reports from the Parliamentary Budget Officer. I figured that the federal government must be making money on this, because every 15 minutes, the minister says that the government is taking action on climate change. However, the rate of return on the public money invested in the pipeline is 0.5%. In comparison, as the Conservatives keep saying, the inflation rate is 5%. As members can see, the environment is of virtually no importance to the government.
I wanted to make a joke. I wanted to calculate how many trees could be planted with the profits from this pipeline, but I realized that without Alberta's tax relief, the pipeline would be in the red. In order for my joke to work, I would have to go into the forest and tear down trees, which makes no sense.
I continued to think about this. I am a very calm and logical person. I told myself that there was surely something going on that I did not understand. There are so many intelligent people in this place who are helping to save the planet. It was at that point that I understood what comes next.
What comes next is that the pipeline has to be expanded. We did not figure it out, but Canada has to inject at least another $12 billion of public money into the pipeline. If we expand the pipeline, pump out more oil and increase production, what will happen? There will be more money to combat climate change.
This is the kind of thing that makes Quebeckers and Canadians cynical. However, if Canadians and Quebeckers do not fully understand the message that the government is sending, the financial markets do.
What message is the government sending the financial markets? It is the following. If you are a foreign company that decides to set up shop in western Canada and you make a bad investment in a pipeline, which, besides being unprofitable is not supported by civil society, the Liberal Party will be there to help you. If the company fails or is no good, the Liberal Party will be there to help. That is what is known as too big to fail.
Let us not then be surprised when there are problems and a big part of the country is trapped in this industry.
The Bloc Québécois is a party that makes proposals. What this situation shows us is that we must address the issue of the money going out to those provinces and this industry. The facts show that over the past five years, our own banks have invested $700 billion in this industry, money taken from savers, families, people who put money in the piggy bank.
We are therefore proposing a green finance platform. It is very simple: We believe that Canadian banks should be required to publicly declare how much they are investing in the oil and gas sector. It is a matter of transparency. They should have to disclose their investments. Nutritional information is disclosed, chemicals are disclosed, the content of feather pillows has to be disclosed, but when we deposit our money with a Canadian financial institution, we cannot find out if our money is brown or green. That is what we are asking for.
I know that the Conservatives will not like me. They believe in the free market, but as it happens, I am an economics professor. The first thing we teach CEGEP students is that a market economy only works when there is transparency, when people know where they are putting their money, when they know what they are doing. That is what we are asking for.
In conclusion, I just want to say one thing. We know the western provinces are victims. Jean Chrétien himself said that, if he had given as much money to Quebec as he did to Alberta, he would have won every seat in Quebec. I personally think Quebeckers have better judgment than that. Still, the message is there.
Western Canada's fossil fuel industry is essentially a state enterprise subsidized and supported by various levels of government. That is why we also want to propose green equalization, which is so important to us. This program, which will benefit provinces that do their utmost to reduce emissions, will take equalization and current oil subsidies into account.
We are reaching out and hoping for a little introspection on both sides of the House. I can guarantee that there are not a lot of fingerprints on the dictionary page with the word “introspection”. If we want to fix the problem, we have to admit there is a problem. We are a petrostate. Quebeckers are victims of the petrostate. Quebec's economy is a victim of the petrostate. We need to cap production and reduce it. We need to focus on the future. That is a fact.
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