- Member of Parliament
- Caucus Chair
- NDP
- Cowichan—Malahat—Langford
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $140,733.69
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, like the member opposite, I, too, want to recognize how much natural resources have contributed to Canada's wealth.
Canada's oil and gas companies, right now, are making out like bandits. They have never seen profits so high, but what are they doing with that wealth? They are doing stock buybacks and dividend payouts. We are literally seeing the wealth of Canada flow through our fingers. It is certainly not going to workers.
We have to be like Wayne Gretzky. We have to be going to where the puck is going. There a narrative shift going on. We have to transition to a 21st-century economy.
I am very appreciative of the fact that the member for Timmins—James Bay was able to strengthen this legislation so workers and the unions that represent them would be a big part of this conversation. Could my hon. colleague across the way comment on just how important it is that the voice of labour be central to the conversation and to the legislation going forward?
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Madam Speaker, it is indeed a great honour to rise today to speak to the government's bill, Bill C-32, which is an act to implement some of the measures announced in the fall economic statement just a few weeks ago before we were all home for the week of Remembrance Day in our respective ridings.
Many of my colleague from all parties have spoken about this, but this comes at a time of great struggle for constituents in Cowichan—Malahat—Langford. Overwhelmingly, the correspondence I get in my office regards the high cost of living and the fact that their wages are not keeping up.
We know that the increase in food prices is forcing families to make very difficult decisions at the grocery store. For that reason I am very glad to have won the unanimous support of the agriculture committee to commence a study into that and to have also had a unanimous vote here in the House of Commons acknowledging that this is a very real problem and supporting our committee's work in the weeks ahead. I, for one, am looking forward to hearing representatives of large grocery stores speak to what their companies are prepared to do to address this issue.
There is, of course, the high cost of fuel. The war in Ukraine has sent shockwaves through the energy world. We know this because Russia is a major exporter of oil and gas. Through their geopolitical manoeuvring and attempts to punish countries that are supporting the Ukrainian people in their fight for freedom and in their fight to halt Russian aggression, we have a situation where fuel prices for all sorts of fuels have spiked dramatically.
We have a very real problem of private companies involved in those industries engaging in what I would, frankly, call war profiteering. They are taking advantage of geopolitical tensions to rake in billions of dollars of profit, at a rate that we have never seen in this country before.
As for our health care system, and I think that this is the big sleeper issue in Canada that is only just now starting to get the attention it deserves, it has gotten so bad in my riding that, while it falls largely under provincial jurisdiction, constituents are now coming to me as a federal member of Parliament and pleading with me to do something.
We need to have a nationally focused amount of attention on this crisis. We need to have a Canada where people can be assured that they can have access to primary care when and where they need it. We need to find innovative solutions to help this crisis and address it. I am disappointed that the recent meeting between provincial ministers and the federal minister has yet to result in anything concrete to address the crisis.
Of course, while Canadians are struggling, they see a situation in which it was reported that we collected $31 billion less in corporate taxes than we should have last year. At a time when Canadians are struggling with costs to make their own family budgets work and are seeing more and more of the burden falling on their shoulders, they see Canada's largest and most profitable corporations getting away with it, through innovative tax schemes and hiding their wealth offshore to escape the burden of paying their fair share in this country. That is an issue that we absolutely must pay attention to.
In response to these big issues, my friends in the Conservative Party have focused a lot of their attention on the carbon tax. Yesterday, at the agriculture committee, I agreed with my Conservative colleagues in taking a small step to address some of the challenges that our agricultural producers are facing. We will be reporting Bill C-234 back to the House.
However, on the larger issue, I think that what is ignored by my Conservative friends is the fact that the federal carbon tax does not apply in all provinces. What they are advocating for will have no effect on residents in my province of B.C. because we, as a province, have chosen not to have an Ottawa-knows-best approach on pricing pollution.
We, as a province, have preferred to retain autonomy, so our policy is determined in the B.C. legislature in Victoria under the good and sound guidance of the B.C. NDP government. It allows our province to basically take that revenue and distribute it in ways that it sees fit because we, as a province, do not think that Ottawa should have control over that policy, so we, as a province, have decided to retain autonomy.
The Conservatives' fixation on the carbon tax does not take into account the fact that the inflationary pressures we see in the world are the result of things that are largely beyond the control of Canada as a country. In the United Kingdom, the Labour opposition is blaming a Conservative government for the same thing Conservatives in Canada are blaming a Liberal government for. This is a problem we see in many of the G7 countries. It is not limited to one side of the political spectrum or the other.
Again, if one is going to talk about inflationary pressures and completely ignore the massive profits oil and gas companies are making, one is doing a disservice to one's constituents. One is not addressing the elephant in the room here, which is that corporations are using inflation to hide and to pad the massive profits they are making. We need to have a serious conversation about that.
If we truly want to help Canadians with the unexpected costs that come with heating their homes and fuelling their vehicles, we need to develop policies to get them off fossil fuels. It has always been a volatile energy source. If we go back to the 1970s when OPEC, as a cartel, decided to cut production, we see what that did to North America. It has always been volatile, and as long as we remain dependent on it as an energy source, no matter what the tax policy is, we are going to suffer from that volatility. If we want to truly help Canadians, we need to encourage things such as home retrofits, and encourage programs that get them on different sources of energy.
In the meantime, if we want a policy that is effectively going to help Canadians no matter what province they live in, why do we not go with the NDP policy of removing the GST on home heating fuels? That, in fact, would benefit residents in British Columbia, unlike singly focusing on a federal carbon tax.
When I look at Bill C-32, there are certainly a few good things. I appreciate that the Liberals are starting to see things such as a Canada recovery dividend are necessary. They are limiting it to the large financial institutions. We would like to see such a model be not only not temporary but also extended to oil and gas companies and to the big box stores. This is about putting fairness into the system because right now the free market, the so-called free market, is largely failing Canadians. The free market is trying its best, but the wages are not keeping up with rising costs.
One thing members have not yet mentioned either is that there is a critical mineral exploration tax credit in Bill C-32. Canada has a very troubled history with mining, and any projects that go forward need to absolutely be done in conjunction and in consultation with first nations. If we are truly going to transform our economy into the renewable energy powerhouse it should be, those critical minerals that Canada has an abundance of are going to be key to developing that kind of technology.
What I have often found with the Liberals over my seven years of being in this place is that there are a lot of good ideas but they are not fully fleshed out. They do not go as far as they could have potentially gone to make the full impact we wish they would have done.
There is a lot in Bill C-32 for the committee to consider, and I hope it takes a lot of feedback from a wide variety of witnesses. There are measures here that are building on what we, as new Democrats, have been able to force the government to do, such as doubling the GST credit, providing an interim benefit for dental care and making sure there is help for renters.
I am proud that a caucus with less than 10% of the seats in the House of Commons has been able to achieve these things. This is what I came to Ottawa to do. I came to deliver for my constituents and bring tangible results that make a difference in their lives. Through this and other measures, I will continue to do that, to make sure they are getting the full benefits and assistance they need to weather these tough times so they can come out even more prosperous on the other end.
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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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