- Member of Parliament
- Caucus Chair
- NDP
- Cowichan—Malahat—Langford
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 65%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $140,733.69
- Government Page
- Dec/1/23 11:28:24 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, this coming Monday, the CEO of Sobeys will be back to testify about food prices.
For two years, the Liberals have been beating around the bush both on bringing food prices down and on standing up to grocery CEOs. Anyone can tell us that the minister's little meeting, where he asked the rich CEOs nicely to stop gouging Canadian grocery shoppers, had no impact.
By bringing back the grocery CEOs, the NDP has given the minister a chance to right his wrongs, so will the Liberals crack down on the out-of-control price gouging?
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- Oct/17/23 2:56:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberals' out-of-touch plan of nicely asking rich grocery CEOs to lower prices has not worked. Wishing and hoping that rich CEOs will do the right thing will not help families put food on the table. Grocery prices are still going up after 22 months. Canadians expect action, but the Liberals are out to lunch, and the Conservatives are all words and have no real plan.
When is the minister going to get real about helping Canadian families, and support the NDP's plan to lower food prices?
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- Oct/6/22 10:08:08 a.m.
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moved:
That, given that,
(i) big grocery stores have made massive profits in the past year, not long after several were investigated for bread price-fixing,
(ii) workers’ wages and the prices paid to producers in the agricultural sector are not keeping up with those corporate profits, or with inflation,
(iii) Canadian families are struggling with the rising costs of essential purchases,
the House call on the government to recognize that corporate greed is a significant driver of inflation, and to take further action to support families during this cost-of-living crisis, including:
(a) forcing CEOs and big corporations to pay what they owe, by closing the loopholes that have allowed them to avoid $30 billion in taxes in 2021 alone, resulting in a corporate tax rate that is effectively lower now than when this government was elected;
(b) launching an affordable and fair food strategy which tackles corporate greed in the grocery sector including by asking the Competition Bureau to launch an investigation of grocery chain profits, increasing penalties for price-fixing and strengthening competition laws to prohibit companies from abusing their dominant positions in a market to exploit purchasers or agricultural producers; and
(c) supporting the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food in investigating high food prices and the role of “greedflation”, including inviting grocery CEOs before the committee.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I wish to notify the House that I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie.
Today is a good day in the House of Commons because we as New Democrats are forcing parliamentarians to deal with the issues that are concerning Canadians. The motion that we as a party are bringing forward for debate today is specifically calling out the massive corporate profits that are occurring in so many sectors, often at the expense of what ordinary Canadians are able to afford.
Canadians see this week in and week out. They see it when they fill up their vehicles with fuel and they see it when they are at the grocery stores. It is reaching a breaking point for many families. It is forcing too many families to make difficult decisions that no family in a country as wealthy as Canada should have to make. These are decisions on whether their family budgets can afford to pay the rent or mortgage, decisions on whether we can get as much fresh produce for our young children as we used to get and decisions on whether we should only fill up the car with half a tank this week because we need to save money for next week.
This is the reality for too many families, and not only in my riding of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, but across British Columbia and across Canada, from coast to coast to coast. For far too long, these Canadians have been looking at the profits that have been made, especially over this year. Some oil and gas companies are making over 100% more compared with what they were making just a few years ago. I hear a lot of talk in this place about taxes, but not enough talk is happening about the revenue we are losing, the revenue that would be there to support Canadians who are in dire need of it.
It is important that Canadians see that their members of Parliament are addressing their concerns. It is important that they see the people they have sent to this place debating this issue with sincerity and making policies that are going to address it. That is why I am such a proud member of the New Democratic caucus. We have been the only party in this place to call out massive corporate profits and champion an excess profits tax. We will continue to champion that until policy-makers see the light in this place and respond with effective policy.
I want to segue to the remarkable success that Canadians enjoyed yesterday at the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food. I want to thank my colleagues from that committee who agreed to my motion to study the excess profits in the grocery sector in particular.
I want to centre particularly on food because food is the great equalizer in our society. No one can live without food. Everybody needs to eat, but some in our society are able to eat without worry. Others have to make difficult choices. When it comes to our nation's children, we know that a healthy and balanced diet is incredibly important not only for their growth, but for their ability to achieve a good education. In a country as wealthy as Canada, far too many children are suffering.
Juxtapose that reality with the fact that the three largest grocery chains in Canada have been raking in the money. We can look at Empire's net profits, which are up by 27.8% in two years. Loblaws profits are up by 17.2% compared with those of last year, and Metro's are up by 7.8%. I know that the CEO of Sobeys has recently been in the news complaining about us taking up an examination of their profits and shining a spotlight on this issue, but if I am in the bad books of a corporate CEO, I think I am doing my job properly in this place.
Those profits are publicly available, but I also want to identify the fact that calls are coming from inside the house. Last week, my office received an email from an employee. I am going to keep him anonymous. I am not going to mention who he works for, because he is afraid of reprisals, but I will quote him. He said:
I have noticed a worrying trend over the last year of large quantities of retail price increases being sent down on a weekly basis.... However, cost increases on these items don't match the increases of retail prices that are sent down....
I have noticed a trend where retail prices consumers must pay for products will increase, and cost increases will come down months after the fact, if at all. Based on what I know of our systems at [the] store level this means that the profit margins on saleable goods will increase for the company until a related cost increase brings it back down. Thus prices consumers must pay are overinflated until costs align with the retail change....
...That is why I believe that a federal probe into grocery store price increases should be supported in our parliament.
I would say to that employee that the New Democrats have heard their call. We are taking action and we are leading the initiative in this Parliament, not only at committee but in the House of Commons, to address this person's concerns and the concerns Canadian consumers have.
We are not going to stop there. We are also going to go after oil and gas. It is one thing to talk about the carbon price, a price on pollution, but if the government is going to completely ignore the massive profits that oil and gas companies are making off the backs of working Canadians, I think it needs to do some reflection on where its policies stand.
We are at a point where the CEO of Shell is being more progressive than the Liberals and calling out something the Conservatives will not even touch. I do not know what kind of a topsy-turvy world we live in when we have to depend on a CEO to be more progressive than our own government, but it is shameful.
In British Columbia, my constituents know the price of gas. They see it all the time, but they can also match that up with what large oil and gas companies are raking in right now. We need to follow the lead of other countries like the U.K. We need to implement an excess profits tax. That natural resource is owned by Canadians. Private companies have the privilege of bringing it out of the ground and selling it back to us, but it is a resource that is owned by Canadians. It is high time we put in place policies to make sure we are getting the full value out of it.
We also heard earlier this week that last year alone we did not collect $30 billion in corporate taxes. That is the difference between what corporations actually paid and what they should have paid. We are having this talk about the structural deficits we see in our housing and the structural deficits in supports for Canadians who are going through hard times, and then we look at what $30 billion in one year alone could have paid for: How many doctors could we have hired? How many school food programs could we have implemented? How many workers could we have retrained with that money to prepare them for the 21st-century economy?
That is the fundamental question before us. It is a question of what we want to be as a country. Do we really want to pursue well-funded programs that help lift everybody up, not just those at the top? I know where I stand on this matter, and I hope colleagues and other parties will do some genuine reflection on where they stand as well.
We are in a place where there has been extreme inaction from both the Liberals and Conservatives. If we were to follow Conservative tax policy, the Margaret Thatcher cosplay they are so often engaging in, we need only look to the United Kingdom as to what Conservative policy would result in. The Conservative prime minister there has single-handedly caused the U.K. economy to go into an absolute economic free fall through tax policies that rightly belong in the 1980s and have no place in the 21st-century economy, especially when we are trying to address massive inequality.
I know I am in my last minute of this speech, but I want to assure my constituents in Cowichan—Malahat—Langford and people in British Columbia and people right across this great country that, for as long as I have the privilege of standing in this place, I will never let them down. I will continue to aggressively pursue these progressive policies. I will do that until we actually see the fundamental change we need to see.
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- May/17/22 5:09:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is indeed a great honour to stand in this place and once again speak on behalf of the amazing residents of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford. I am pleased to rise to support the motion that is before us today on the NDP opposition day, which has been put forward by my hon. colleague and almost neighbour, the member for Victoria from beautiful Vancouver Island.
Today's motion is really trying to bring together several themes: the theme of massive corporate profits, the theme of rampant climate change and also the theme of inflationary pressures, both as they relate to climate change and as they are affecting residents like mine in Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, but also right across this great country of ours.
Before I delve into the specifics of the motion, I think it is important that we put today's conversation in the context of what is going on with climate change. I want to start by saying that if we look at the history of oil as an energy source, there is no argument that it has absolutely been one of our most volatile energy sources. It has experienced massive booms and busts, and with those decreases and increases in price so have risen and fallen the fortunes of many. It has never been reliable as something that is stable for people. We can see that in the current context. It has always been subject to geopolitical tensions and profiteering by various companies, which have driven the price up for ordinary consumers, and sometimes it has brought about change much faster than ordinary working Canadians can adapt to. I would argue that today's circumstances are one such example.
I also think it is very important because we are talking in the House of Commons a lot these days about inflation, but what we are not talking a lot about is the inflationary pressures of climate change. That needs to be part of this conversation.
We can look at what climate change is starting to cause around the world. Not just the world, but we can look at what happened to my home province of British Columbia last year. In one single calendar year, we had one of the highest heat waves ever recorded, which caused hundreds of deaths in the Lower Mainland and led to raging forest fires across my beautiful province, and a few short months later that was followed by one of the most disastrous flood events ever to happen in the Lower Mainland, a flood event that effectively cut off the port of Vancouver from the rest of the country.
We are talking about inflationary pressures here. We can look at how much the Government of British Columbia, the people of British Columbia and, indeed, the federal government have had to pay to adapt to that climate-related event. We have to ask ourselves this in the House, because we are talking a lot about the money that is to be made and oil as an energy source, but we never quite contemplate the question of how many future tax dollars we as a society are prepared to spend to both adapt to and mitigate climate problems as an event.
Make no mistake, this question is settled and the science is clear. Extreme weather events like the ones we saw last year are going to come more frequently. They are going to come more powerfully. We as a country are going to deal with worsening flood events, extended droughts, forest fires and massive heat waves that will bake our urban centres and kill people. This is going to cost money. It is going to be a real problem. Unless we, as the House of Commons, treat this issue with the seriousness that it deserves, we are failing the Canadian people and we are failing future generations. There has been a decided lack of ambition, action and commitment to effectively address this problem and put in place policies that are going to deal with it.
Going to my riding, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford on Vancouver Island, and looking at the current inflation pressures on working families, we have experienced some of the highest gas prices across the country, over $2 a litre in many cases. I have a farm truck. I remember that a couple of weeks ago I went to fill it up, and it was the first time ever that it cost more than $200 for a fill-up. That is a regular problem for working families in my riding.
We know low-income families are hit the hardest by rising prices because those increases in fuel prices not only affect the vehicles that they have to fill up on a weekly basis, in some cases for their work, but they affect everything that is transported using fossil fuels. If people are in the middle of a renovation or if they are going shopping, we know the price of food has gone up, as well as the price of materials and the cost of labour. These are all very real pressures.
On gas prices particularly, this is where we add insult to injury, because the average family in Cowichan—Malahat—Langford are standing at the pump watching the dollar figure go up as they are filling up their vehicle, and then they look at the newspaper and see the record profits oil and gas companies are making in Canada today. Billions of dollars are being paid out in dividends. Billions of dollars are being paid out in corporate executive compensation. Then to add further to that, they learn that the tax dollars they are paying off every paycheque are in fact being used by the Liberal government to subsidize those very same companies, inefficient subsidies to help them with exploration, but even in the most recent budget, that subsidy to help companies with carbon capture and storage.
Let us make this very clear. Oil companies, with today's prices, are profiteering off the backs of working families, and I do not see either of Canada's biggest political parties standing up, stating that this is an unequivocal fact and putting in place policies that are actually going to help working families. Both of these parties are far too deferential to corporations in this country, and it shows by the way they argue in the House of Commons.
If we look at the federal subsidies to oil and gas, we absolutely have to change course. Canada provides more public financing to the oil and gas sector than any other G20 country. Between 2018 and 2020, Canada provided 14 times more support for the oil and gas sector than for renewable energy, and this is in the face of all the evidence we see with climate change around us. Last year alone, the Liberals handed out $8.6 billion in subsidies and public financing to the fossil fuel sector, but the cherry on the cake is the fact that they have now added a $2.6-billion carbon capture tax credit, which is actually their largest “climate” item in the budget. This is unproven technology. It is money that should be spent in completely different areas if we are going to tackle this problem with the urgency that it so very rightly deserves.
In the final two minutes, in my conclusion, I want to say this. We know Canadian workers want to be a part of the climate solution. Our workers, and let us not call them oil and gas workers but energy workers, have the transferable skills to work in any industry that we put our minds to. They want to be a part of the solution. They have the skills to make Canada a renewable energy leader in this world to help put us at the forefront of the 21st century economy.
However, we need to make sure that the federal government is putting the fossil fuel industry on notice, putting Canada on notice, that we are going to change our direction, that we are going to be where the puck is going, as is the famous quote that comes often from Wayne Gretzky. We need to make those investments in renewable energy. We need to electrify our grid. We need to make those energy retrofits a part of helping low-income families, and we need to make sure that through this process we are creating those good, long-term jobs for Canadians and communities right across the country, which will make life more affordable.
I think that through this motion today we need to redirect the subsidies that we are pumping into profitable corporations and reinvest that money directly into the pockets of low-income families, just like the working families that live in my riding of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford. We need to make sure that we are converting that money instead into doubling the GST credit and making sure that the Canada child benefit for recipients goes up. By putting that money directly into the pocketbooks of Canadians, we can help them with the inflationary pressures they are dealing with right now. It will make a real difference, and it will send a signal to the world that we are serious about changing course.
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- Mar/21/22 4:40:56 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I truly believe that every member of Parliament is here for similar reasons. We want to do right by our community and we all have an overall goal of leaving Canada a better place than when we found it. I have always told people in my riding that the politics come into play because we have different ideas on how to achieve those very same ends.
In the present climate in Canada, Canadians from coast to coast to coast are really suffering. There is a lot of struggle out there. This is one of those moments in time when they are really crying out for bold policy. This is an opportunity for members of Parliament to ask themselves why they are here and if they are actually making a difference in people's lives.
I acknowledge that the motion before the House today, the motion brought forward by the New Democratic Party of Canada, is non-binding on the government. What it does do is send a powerful message because if the House were to vote in favour of this motion it would send a signal to the cabinet. It would send a signal that most of the MPs in this place, representing the majority of Canadians, want to see a shift in government policy to level the playing field and to address the very real concerns of Canadians.
What are we asking the government to do? We are essentially asking it to commit to a campaign promise and commit to a promise that was made in its budget. Excuse me if I sound a bit jaded. They sound like pretty simple things. However, I have been a member of the House since 2015, and I have a lot of unfortunate experience with Liberal promises that were left by the wayside.
It is a government that once promised electoral reform and cynically left it in the dust. It is a government that has promised sincere action on climate change, yet invested billions of public taxpayer dollars into a pipeline. Imagine investing in fossil fuel infrastructure in this day and age when all of the evidence of climate change surrounds us every day. What kind of a message is that sending to our children?
By every metric, whether looking at housing, at fuel, at the cost of food or at wealth inequality, there are multiple failures to be found. I acknowledge that my friends on the Liberal side are, in their way, trying to bring policy to address some of those core concerns. I will acknowledge that. However, if we look at the evidence on the ground we see that they are failing. They are not properly addressing those very real concerns that Canadians have.
In my riding of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, in one year we saw housing prices go up anywhere from 30% to 40%. That is simply unsustainable. When I have families in Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, families with two incomes earning six figures, who are put on the street or given notice because the landlord sold their property to take advantage of the skyrocketing housing costs and, with their income level, they cannot find a place to rent, that is a real problem. That is an indictment on the current federal government's housing policy. The market is failing Canadians and, therefore, we must find non-market solutions to address this housing crisis.
Regarding fuel prices, I acknowledge that is something out of our control. There is a war going on in Ukraine and oil is one of the most volatile energy sources on earth. It always will be. It always has been. However, when we see price increases in my riding going up to over two dollars a litre last week, that puts a real strain on family budgets. It increases the cost of everything, from building materials to the cost of food, pretty much everything that is transported by rail or by truck. Families need a break.
If we look at wealth inequality, over the last two years we see Canadian families who have been having to deal with so much. We see that the richest people in Canada have increased their wealth by billions of dollars. That is not fair.
Therefore, what are we asking the government to do with its promises that were made in the campaign and in the budget?
We are proposing that it add a 3% surtax on banks and insurance companies with profits of over $1 billion. Just so that is clear for the residents of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, a company will have had to have made a profit of $1 billion before the tax would apply. It is simply not right when we have families struggling with the basic necessities of life to be seeing those record profits being made and they are at the other end. We are simply asking that we honour those promises, that we tax extreme wealth at the high end and that we reinvest that money into our communities, reinvest it into working families and reinvest it to make our communities resilient.
I have listened to some of the debate today and Conservatives talk about addressing inflation through building more pipelines, giving a GST holiday to fuel or getting rid of the carbon tax. In my view, that is extremely short-sighted policy because it does nothing to address the inflationary pressures of climate change. It also ignores the fact that oil and gas are, as I said before, our most volatile energy sources.
Speaking of the volatility of that as a fuel source, the inflationary pressures that will come to us from climate change are going to be measured in the trillions of dollars. If we think that fuel prices now are high, imagine what is going to happen when we have conflicts arising around the world because of the scarcity of water resources or the fact that agriculture has been devastated or that coastal cities are inundated because of rising flood waters. These have real economic costs. Forget the ecological argument; listen to the economic argument. How many future tax dollars are we prepared to spend to address these issues?
We know they are going to drive up costs. To suggest in the House that we should build more pipelines and that we should have some kind of small short-sighted tax holiday is completely ignoring what the costs will be if we continue to use fossil fuels and continue to let climate change go on a runaway course.
In the reinvestment in our communities, I will say what I would do in Cowichan—Malahat—Langford. I have a few areas where that money could be reinvested, the opioids crisis for one. I have too many residents on the streets of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford who are playing Russian roulette with their lives every time they buy toxic street drugs. We have a massive housing crisis. We need to reinvest those funds to make sure that people have the right to housing established clearly, and we need the government to step in and build those non-market units.
As for pharmacare and dental care, if we want to help working families, why do we not help them with the unexpected budgetary costs they have with dental bills and pharmacare bills? However, when we have given the House the opportunity to vote on those measures, talking about coalitions here, what about the Liberal-Conservative coalition? They combined have voted against dental care. They voted against a wealth tax. They voted against pharmacare, all measures that are designed to help working families. Words are cheap, but luckily this place keeps the receipts. It is noted in Hansard and in the way both those parties have voted. I want to make that very clear.
We could also invest in bigger health transfers. I know my Bloc colleagues have talked repeatedly about provincial demands for more federal health transfers, and I know that has been a demand of all provinces. Surely the last two years have shown us how strained our health care systems have been. This is a real opportunity for us to reinvest those excess profits to build a system we can all be proud of, the system we know we can have in Canada where no one is left behind, to honour the vision of the people who built it in the first place.
I will end by saying that I hope all of my colleagues in the House will find it in themselves to vote for this motion and to signal to the people of Canada that they are serious about enacting the bold policies that we need.
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- Mar/4/22 10:34:56 a.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate to be able to rise today and contribute to the House's debate of the Liberal government's bill, Bill C-8, which has been faithfully reported back to the House by the Standing Committee on Finance.
The committee did consider one amendment to that, and of course today we are dealing with the report stage amendments brought forward by my Conservative colleagues. I very much appreciate the work done by committee members in examining this bill. I especially want to thank my colleague, the member for Elmwood—Transcona, who is the finance critic for my caucus and has been shouldering a lot of work at that committee.
Bill C-8 is an act that would implement certain provisions presented to the House in the fall economic statement. It would be a gross understatement to say that the country, and indeed much of the world, have changed since mid-December. I know, from the feedback from people in my riding and people I work with here in the chamber, that the pace of change over the last two months has really left our heads spinning. We seem, as a country, to be lurching from crisis to crisis these days, and it is not giving people much of a breather to accept their changed reality. I am hearing a lot of accounts of the mental health stress this has put on people.
It was back in mid-December that we were just, at the House, beginning to get a glimpse of how bad the omicron wave was really going to be. I remember the news reports in early December that there was some hope that the variant, which first emerged and was detected in South Africa, did not seem to have as much lethality to it, but of course that was blown out of the water by the concerns of how rapidly it spread. Even if a smaller percentage of people ended up going to the hospital, that small percentage, when we had the variant passing through our population so rapidly, did give rise to very considerable fears that our hospital system would be overwhelmed.
Of course we had a change in leadership with one of our political parties in the House. We had the protests descend on Ottawa and many cities across Canada, which turned into an illegal occupation and blockades at our border, further putting strains on our relationship with the United States. Then, of course, beginning just a few short days after that ended, we now have a fully modern conflict raging in Ukraine, where unprovoked Russian aggression is now putting the lives of 40 million Ukrainians at risk.
Here we are. The world has changed quite a bit. I do want to acknowledge that it is a frustrating time for so many people, especially in Cowichan—Malahat—Langford. They are, like many Canadians, dealing with the inflationary pressures. They see the results in the price of food at the grocery store and the cost every time they fill up their vehicles.
What people have also witnessed over the last two years is the fact that so many of the wealthy in Canada, and indeed many of our most profitable corporations, have seen their profits soar during this time. Many of those companies actually took pandemic benefits and were guilty of paying out dividends to their shareholders.
It seems the hard-working families in my riding of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford are working twice as hard as their parents but for less money. These pressures are putting families at the breaking point. That is why I have always been proud to be part of a party that stands for trying to ease that inequality in Canada and making sure the very rich in our country do pay their fair share. If they do not, that burden ends up falling on working families.
In my riding, in the space of one year, depending on what part of the riding someone is in, we saw housing prices increase anywhere in the neighbourhood of 30% to 40%. That is in one year. With those stratospheric record levels of housing costs, of course many people were trying to sell their homes during that time to take advantage of the high prices. All of that selling in the Cowichan Valley also caused a huge crisis on rental availability, because when people are putting their house up for sale, usually the tenants are evicted as it is not really known if the new owner wants to inherit tenants or not.
We also have the worst record in the G7 when it comes to combatting climate change. In my province of British Columbia, we saw a record heat wave in June. We saw wildfires consume so many communities right across the province, and then just a few short months later, we saw catastrophic floods that effectively cut off the Port of Vancouver, our busiest port, from the rest of the country.
A smart government would be looking at this and looking at the evidence that these climate change natural disasters will keep piling up if we do not address them. A smart government would look at the economic toll this will place on our ability to raise revenue in the future.
As for my Conservative colleagues, who like to proclaim themselves as fiscally responsible, they should not ignore the damage this is going to do to future tax revenue and our ability to help communities from coastal inundation, protect them from wildfire danger and stand up for our hard-working men and women in agriculture, who seem to be dealing with flooding and droughts at a much more precipitous pace.
I know, from my time at the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, of which I have been a proud member for four years now, that all farmers will tell us they are on the front lines of climate change. They need to have some recognition of the good work they are doing. They also need a partner in Ottawa who is going to help them take advantage and thrive through these very uncertain times.
It is all about choices. With Bill C-8, I think there is a sense of regret. For me, it is a sense of regret for what could have been and what should have been. That being said, if through these measure, we are going to propose things like allowing small businesses to acquire equipment that will improve the quality of their indoor air, I think that is a solid investment. Just because we are starting to see some very hopeful signs of us getting out of this latest variant of COVID-19 does not mean there will not be future airborne illnesses. We want make indoor air quality much better, and we would if we were to make these targeted investments.
I also like the idea of allowing for an increase in the school supplies tax credit and allowing us to expand that eligibility criteria to include the electronic devices that educators benefit from. A lot of people are struggling to make sure they can get by on those family budgets, so little measures like that, for many families, can actually go quite a long way.
I am also interested in the proposal here in Bill C-8 about the refundable tax credit for the return of fuel levy proceeds to agricultural businesses. This has been an issue we have been seized with at the Standing Committee on Agriculture, because, especially when it comes to activities such as grain drying or even heating a barn, I am all for giving farmers an alternative that is not based on fossil fuels.
However, what we heard, very clearly, at the agriculture committee was that the technologies that are free of fossil fuels are not yet commercially viable, and they will not be so for another 10 years. Therefore, if we are going to make sure we are trying to give that price incentive, we still have to ensure that a viable alternative exists for our farmers, which is why I am in favour of giving them these very specific and targeted breaks, so they can make it through with their bottom line.
Part 2 of Bill C-8 would basically establish a 1% annual tax on the value of vacant or underutilized residential property. This would only be when the direct and indirect owners are non-residents or non-Canadians. Again, on housing, there are so many more ways that the government could have tackled this very big issue. I would say this is a good first start, but there is much more that needs to be done. I know the government likes to pat itself on the back with all of the things it has done with housing, but the proof is in the pudding. If we still see housing prices rise to these stratospheric heights, we have to measure the effectiveness of the policy against that reality.
I will conclude here by saying that we do have a federal budget coming in the next number of months. I sincerely hope the government realizes that this is the time for bold policy action, to really make sure Canada comes through these uncertain and very challenging times.
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