- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- South Okanagan—West Kootenay
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 60%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $128,729.57
- Government Page
- Mar/22/23 9:26:57 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, if someone makes cider or mead and then throws some berries into it, suddenly they are paying an excise tax. They do not pay it when it is produced without the berries. It does not make sense. I think that illustrates the excise tax needs a serious going over to make it fair in many ways.
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- Mar/22/23 9:25:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I do not think it would be too difficult to ask for. When the government brought in this escalator tax, inflation was pretty marginal. There was very little inflation, so it was only going up 1% or 2% per year. I would like to see something less drastic than just following inflation every year, because if it goes up 6%, that is drastic. What would be more important for these producers, especially the small producers, is to develop a fair sliding scale of excise tax payments that makes it easier for them to compete with the bigger players and especially the imports.
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- Mar/22/23 9:23:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will retract that, but it is good to see him.
We do not want to scrap the tax. We want to restructure it so that it is fair. For it to go up 6% in one year when we are already facing the effects of inflation is too much to ask of these producers. We want it capped and we want all these taxes restructured so that small producers are treated fairly and can compete.
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- Mar/22/23 9:22:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Cariboo—Prince George. It is good to see him in person. As others have said, we missed him here in person in this place. We know he has been active virtually, but I—
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- Mar/22/23 9:12:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the wonderful MP for Elmwood—Transcona.
My riding of South Okanagan—West Kootenay is the finest in the country in many ways, but one of its best features is the thriving beer, wine and spirits sector. I think everyone here knows that we make the best wine in Canada, but we might be here all night if I were to list all of those wineries. Perhaps fewer know the sheer number and quality of craft breweries, so I would like to try to list them here, with apologies if I miss any. Abandoned Rail, Cannery, Highway 97, Neighbourhood, Slackwater and Tin Whistle are all in Penticton. There is also Firehall in Oliver, North Basin in Osoyoos, Rossland Beer in Rossland, Trail Beer Refinery in Trail, and Tailout Brewing in Castlegar.
Then there are the distilleries. We have Legend Distilleries in Naramata. It used to be my old doctor's office, but it has been turned into a distillery. We have Maple Leaf Spirits and Old Order in Penticton; Dubh Glas in Oliver, where my friend Grant Stevely makes what I think is the best gin in Canada, Noteworthy Gin; Tumbleweed in Osoyoos; Kootenay West in Trail; Tonik in Crescent Valley; and Kootenay Country Craft in Winlaw. There may be more. It is hard to keep up.
I was recently talking to my friends Jorg and Anette Engel, who own Maple Leaf Spirits, which is a small craft distillery in Penticton. It is one of the first craft distillers in the region, and they have taken advantage of the bountiful fruit of the Okanagan to produce award-winning brandies and other liquors. In fact, their brandy won the award for best brandy in Canada last year for the second time. As their business grew over the past 20 years, they saw other small distilleries establish in the region, and that strong growth in the craft distillery sector has been mirrored and even exceeded by the growth in the number of breweries and small wineries. This sector is therefore particularly important in South Okanagan—West Kootenay.
These businesses, many of them small family-owned companies, have combined two traditional pillars of the local economy, agriculture and tourism, to create a powerful new centre of growth for the region. However, like many sectors, this sector has been hard hit recently by soaring inflation. The cost of almost everything that goes into their products has been rising. The grain that goes into beer and spirits has more than doubled in price. The price of bottles has gone up. They also share another inflation-related challenge that no other sector has to deal with, and that is an excise tax that automatically rises as inflation rises. Since 2017, this tax has gone up every year without legislation or parliamentary debate, and this year it will increase by a whopping 6.3%, the largest one-year increase in the last 40 years.
Distillers like that of the Engels are going to be struggling to survive. They recently wrote me a letter, and I would like to read some of it here:
Our locally produced Craft liquors are more expensive in liquor stores than imported and multi-national brands, through the Federal Excise Tax. The rates of excise duty on spirits are adjusted annually on April 1st, based on changes to the Consumer Price Index. As a craft distillery, we now pay $1.74 in excise tax for each 375ml bottle.... That is $3.48 for each 750ml bottle, or $5.22 for each 1 liter bottle. Here in Canada, Excise is further more than doubled by 167% provincial mark-ups, to burden domestic distillers with a tax barrier of approximately $9 on every 1 liter bottle in a liquor store, increasing every year. In liquor stores, our products compete with liquor from the USA, who have reduced their excise tax to a fraction of what we must pay. We see an imbalance on the market. We want our products to get priced in liquor stores on a level playing field with products coming from out of country.
These concerns are shared with other distillers across the country. Marcel Rheault and Mireille Morin own Rheault Distillery in Hearst, Ontario. They have very similar concerns. They make Loon Vodka and other great products. They say they have to remain competitive, so they cannot mark up their prices to keep their margins intact. Again, this is echoed across Canada in every craft distillery, every craft brewery and every small winery in the country.
I want to be clear that all of these businesses are fine with paying the excise tax on beer, wine and spirits, but they are concerned about the fairness of how this tax is now structured and calculated. On top of the escalator feature, excise taxes on alcoholic beverages produced in Canada are treated differently depending on whether they are wine, beer or spirits, and very differently when compared with excise taxes levied by our biggest trading partner, the United States.
Excise taxes are much lower in the United States and are structured so that small producers pay much less, on a sliding scale, than bigger producers. In Canada, only the beer excise tax is scaled that way, by the size of the operation, but the average tax here is still much higher than it is in the United States. It is twice that, and the independent craft brewers of Canada would like to fix it.
One issue is the federal definition of a craft brewery, which is a brewery that produces less than 75,000 hectolitres of beer per year. If a brewery makes more beer than that, it pays the full excise tax. However, there are different definitions. In Alberta and Saskatchewan, the definition of a craft brewery is one that produces less than 400,000 hectolitres, and in the United States the definition means seven million hectolitres. That is what they consider a craft brewery south of the border. It is clear that it would be helpful for Canadian breweries if these definitions and regulations were synchronized as much as possible so that competition is as fair as possible. Craft brewers have put forward a reasonable suggestion to the government that would do just that, and I urge the Minister of Finance to consider it seriously.
The wine sector is in a special situation because most wineries in Canada never had to pay excise tax until last year, when Canada eliminated an exemption for wines made from Canadian grapes after a trade dispute with Australia. After strong lobbying from the wine industry, the federal government did step up with a support program to help wineries adapt to this new reality, but that support is set to disappear next year. The excise tax will continue after next year, of course, so it makes sense that a more long-term solution is needed.
Craft distillers are the hardest hit in many ways. As I mentioned earlier when reading the letter from Maple Leaf Spirits, the excise tax on a one-litre bottle is $5.22, and when we add provincial taxes, that goes up to about nine dollars. This makes it very difficult for local producers such as Jorg and Anette Engel to compete with imports from other countries that are taxed at a fraction of that rate. We need a similar restructuring of the excise tax on spirits to level the playing field.
These are all reasonable, common-sense recommendations, and I know from experience that the government will sometimes listen to such recommendations and make the right decisions. When the beer industry came to me last year and pointed out that de-alcoholized beer was being charged an alcohol excise tax, I put forward a private member's bill that would remove that tax. To its credit, the government included that provision in last year's budget, so it can be done.
The House of Commons finance committee has recommended that the government freeze the excise tax rate at 2022 levels for at least the next two years, and I hope the government takes up that advice for the budget coming next Tuesday. I also hope it will listen to Canadian producers of beer, wine and spirits and restructure the excise tax to make it fairer for small producers so that this sector can continue to make fine products and make a very important contribution to our local economies.
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- Mar/22/23 9:07:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have to agree with the member on the subject. Beyond capping this escalator tax, we really should be looking at restructuring the excise tax, especially for spirits.
We also have the craft breweries of Canada asking for that, even though they have the staggered rise in excise tax based on how much they produce. It is way more than breweries or distilleries are paying in the United States, for instance.
Could the member comment further on that? This is something that should be looked at. The distillers in my riding are very concerned about the unfairness of the way the excise tax for spirits is calculated today.
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- Mar/22/23 8:28:08 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will just point out quickly, and I may be answering the previous question for him, that I do not think cideries and alcoholic beverages made from berries pay excise tax. That is my understanding.
I would like to ask the parliamentary secretary what the government will be doing to make the excise tax writ large more fair for Canadians who have to compete with American companies, which have a much lower excise tax? Especially for small producers, small distilleries and breweries, it really puts them out of the market in terms of competition with those companies.
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- Mar/22/23 8:11:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member for Niagara Falls mentioned the wine industry and the impacts on it. Many wineries never had to pay an excise tax in Canada, but because of the actions of Australia and the WTO, Canada's government backed down and took away that exemption, and now those wineries suddenly have to pay a tax they never had a business case for.
I will let the member finish on that, because I know he can speak for hours on the subject, and he has maybe a minute or so. I would ask the member to please expand on that, because it really affects the wineries in my region as well.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour, as always, to rise in this place, and especially so when it comes to important decisions around helping Canadians get through these times of inflationary pressure, with a housing crisis and a health care system in chaos. Today we are debating the implementation of items included in the fall economic statement, which the Minister of Finance produced a couple of weeks ago.
The NDP is always focused on helping Canadians. That is why we were happy to see NDP initiatives that are clearly designed to do just that, help Canadians who need the support the most, included in that fall economic statement. There are initiatives like providing dental care for kids who do not have access to a dental plan now, like doubling the GST rebate for low-income Canadians to help them deal with the rising costs of food and gas, and like providing a $500 boost for low-income renters so they can afford to keep a roof over their heads. I would like to point out that the dental care provisions in the fall statement are not in Bill C-32, which we are discussing today, but were in Bill C-31, which received royal assent yesterday, so that was a great day for Canadians.
I am also happy to find a couple of paragraphs in the statement about credit card transaction fees, an issue that the NDP has been raising for decades. Jack Layton brought this up time and again. Canadian small business owners pay some of the highest credit card transaction fees in the world, and in this world of online shopping, the fees make it even more difficult for them to compete for Canadians' shopping dollars.
As the NDP critic for small business, I have talked with executives from Visa, Mastercard, Moneris and other companies involved in these transactions. I know it is a complex issue and that these fees vary with the business volume and the credit card type, but the fact remains that small business owners pay the highest rates, and these are the highest rates in the world. These are the business owners who can least afford those high fees. Now consumers are concerned because business owners have been given the okay to pass these fees on to consumers.
I was happy to see a pledge in the fall economic statement that the government will move forward on regulating credit card transaction fees if negotiations with the industry do not bear fruit. The NDP will be watching this issue with great interest because we want to make sure this actually happens. We want to make sure that real, concrete action is taken to ease the pressure on Canadian businesses and consumers.
I want to spend the rest of my time discussing some items that were not included in the fall economic statement and therefore are not in Bill C-32. They are items that I was hoping would be there as they would have helped Canadians this winter before we get another update in the spring budget.
There was something in the fall economic statement about eliminating the interest on federal student loans, which is something again that the NDP has been calling for. However, there was nothing for one of the most blatant aspects of student underfunding in Canada. That is the scholarships given to graduate students who are working full time on their research. These federal scholarship amounts provided by the three funding councils have remained unchanged since 2003. That is almost 20 years ago, when housing costs were a fraction of what they are now. Master's students now work full time on their research for the princely annual salary of $17,500. Ph.D. students work full time for $21,000. Regular Canadians would have a very difficult time surviving on those wages, but these students have to pay thousands of dollars in tuition on top of that as well. This is below minimum wage. We are forcing our best and brightest to live in poverty.
The House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research recommended in a recent report that the government increase these scholarship levels to rectify the situation. I also sponsored an e-petition, e-4098, organized by scientists across the country and signed by thousands of Canadians, that asked for a 48% increase in the value of those scholarships to match inflation over the past 20 years. The petition also asked that the number of scholarships be increased by 50% to match the demand for graduate students across the country.
Once students get their Ph.D.s, they must compete to get post-doctoral fellowships. It is an essential part of the career track of young scientists. Last year, 840 master's students received scholarships, and 750 received Ph.D. scholarships, but only 150 post-doctoral fellowships were provided. The petition mentioned above asked that the number of post-doctoral fellowships be doubled so that we can keep these students in Canada.
We are forcing young researchers to leave the country to continue their education. These are students we have educated here in Canada since they were in kindergarten. The numbers tell the story: 38% of graduates leave Canada to do their postgraduate work. They go to the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and Australia. They go to a host of other countries that know the future of their economies relies on innovation and well-educated workers.
The negative impact of this neglect of young researchers on the Canadian economy is incalculable, but even the lost cost of that training is estimated to be about $640 million every year. I was disappointed that this issue was not dealt with in the fall economic statement, but I can assure the House that I will keep up the pressure on the government to ensure that it is fixed in next year's budget.
Another issue that was not dealt with in the statement was the automatically escalating alcohol excise tax. This tax will increase by over 6% in the coming months because of the high inflation rate. Distilleries, breweries and wineries, which are already facing the rising costs of packaging and production, will have to swallow that increase in their costs to consumers. These are costs that are not faced by their foreign competition.
My riding makes the best wine in the country. My hometown is the epicentre of craft brewing in Canada, and there are more craft distilleries in my riding every year. However, these small businesses, which are an important and growing part of the economy in my riding, now face this increase of costs that was never part of their business plans.
I have talked to representatives from these distilleries, breweries and wineries, and they have practical solutions for this problem. They have no objection to paying the excise tax, but they want to make sure it is fair compared to what their international competitors pay.
The United States has a system whereby smaller producers pay a smaller rate of tax for distillers and breweries. Other wine-producing countries support their industries in ways that are trade legal. Canada came up with a similar support for our wine industry, but it is set to expire next year after only 18 months. This program needs to be extended to 2030, at least, to make sure our industry, especially the smaller producers, can continue to thrive.
Most Canadians are struggling to get by these days, but wealthy Canadians and many big corporations are making record amounts of money. Oil and gas companies are making record profits based on the windfall of world oil prices caused by international events. Big grocery stores are making record profits, even as many Canadians are forced to cut back on their food purchases.
The Liberal government could have instituted a windfall tax on these excess profits, which could have generated billions of dollars in revenue to really support the Canadians who need it most. Even the Conservative government in the United Kingdom is taxing these windfall profits. In fact, it just raised that windfall tax from 25% to 35% yesterday. The CEO of Shell Canada literally told the federal government that their company should be taxed more.
Why is the CEO of Shell more progressive than the Liberal government, to say nothing of the Conservatives?
The fall economic statement included a modest increase in the tax rate for banks and other financial institutions, but totally ignored the big corporations that made the biggest profits in this difficult time for Canadians. I hope that, by the time the spring budget rolls around, the Liberal government will have found the courage to bring in windfall taxes to make sure that companies that are making record profits on the backs of Canadians pay their fair share.
In conclusion, I will be voting in favour of this bill. It brings several supports to Canadians that will truly help those who need it most, and it takes some hesitant steps toward a more sustainable future.
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Madam Speaker, I was surprised the member did not mention wine, which is one of the industries both his riding and mine share. We do not make as much as the Niagara region, but we make better wine, of course.
I wanted to perhaps give him some time to expand on what we were hoping to see in this fall economic statement about support for the wine industry.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for his speech. I know he is a real champion for his riding. I am glad he brought up craft breweries. My riding has more craft breweries per capita than anywhere else in Canada.
Can he comment on the craft brewers' proposal to restructure the excise tax on beer, so that it gives a break to these small craft breweries and, at the same time, stops the escalating cost of that tax?
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Madam Speaker, I am happy to rise here to speak to Bill C-19, the budget implementation act.
This pandemic has been incredibly difficult for many Canadians, and now we have a housing crisis, rising inflation and a labour shortage, which are all adding to these difficulties. Our health care system has come close to a breaking point on several occasions. Thousands have died. Millions have been seriously ill. Doctors, nurses and all health care workers have been under unbelievable stress and physical exhaustion. I want to say a personal thanks to all of those who cared for us and our loved ones over the past two years and more.
Businesses and workers suffered through a series of lockdowns. Nine million Canadians found themselves out of work, without income and with no way to pay their rent, their mortgage and their grocery bills. Companies were in similar dire straits. Fortunately, this House came together to pass measures that kept people financially afloat and measures that allowed businesses to keep employees on the payroll. However, last year, we learned that still over half of Canadians were only $200 from insolvency at the end of every month, and that was before the housing crisis reached another level of unbelievable house prices, monthly rents and rental availability.
The NDP is focused on helping Canadians, making sure they get the health care they need no matter where they live or their level of income, making sure they can find a home they can afford, making sure they have the means to live out their senior years in dignity, and making sure that those Canadians who did well through the pandemic, some of whom made billions of dollars in profits, pay their fair share.
This is the first budget after the Liberals and the NDP announced their confidence and supply agreement, so I would like to highlight some of the gains that we achieved in this agreement by using our power here in the House of Commons to help Canadians.
It is fair to say that the big gains have come in creating a stronger health care system here in Canada. When we created the universal health care system that we are so proud of, several aspects of health care were left out. At the top of that list is dental care, so I am proud that we will be bringing dental care coverage to all Canadians who need it, through this agreement. It would start with free dental care for all children without coverage this year, and by the third year we would have dental care for everyone with a household income of less than $90,000 who does not have coverage now.
I have already spoken in this House about the impact this would have. It would be literally life-changing for so many lower-income Canadians, who would have access to dental care for the first time, access that so many other Canadians just take for granted. It would not only change people's lives, but it would save our broader health care system millions of dollars. Alex Munter, the CEO of the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, has told us that dental restoration is the most common surgery carried out in that hospital, restoration that is needed because of the lack of preventive care. This program would keep kids out of hospital. I have to remind Canadians that both the Liberals and the Conservatives voted down this exact initiative less than a year ago, so the NDP is very proud that it would move ahead to change lives for the better.
Similarly, the confidence and supply agreement ensures that universal pharmacare would be added to our health care coverage. Canada is the only country with comprehensive health care coverage that does not include prescribed medications in that coverage. This program would not only save lives, as 10% of Canadians simply cannot afford to fill their prescriptions, but it would save the Canadian economy more than $4 billion a year through the power of a single buyer when we purchase medications. More savings, over $10 billion per year according to some estimates, would accrue by simply keeping people out of hospital and keeping them healthier through proper medication.
I recently spoke here about the crisis in long-term care, so I will not go into detail, other than to say that one of the other points in our agreement was to bring a safe long-term care act, which would go a long way toward ensuring that our seniors can live in dignity.
The issue that is critical for many Canadians, certainly in my riding, is housing: the impossible cost of buying a house, the ridiculous rental rates and the extreme difficulty in even finding rental accommodation. My riding has an unenviable combination of high housing prices, with the average house price in my riding running at about $1 million, and low incomes. The average single income in my riding is around $30,000.
In our agreement with the Liberals, the NDP won an extension of the rapid housing initiative, which would add $1.5 billion in funding to build more than 4,500 affordable housing units.
We have also made the government's rental construction financing initiative actually work for renters across the country. Previously, this program, which is the biggest CMHC program for rental housing, was doing little or nothing to provide affordable housing. It was giving money to developers to build rental units that were then being rented at an average of 50% above the average market value, so we were giving out taxpayers' money to help developers charge excessive rent. The NDP has fixed this, to ensure that 40% of these units will be rented out at below 80% of average market rent. In my riding, that means the production of units that will be offered at $900 per month, compared to the former Liberal rates of $2,000 per month.
We still have more to do. The NDP has pledged to build half a million units of affordable housing over 10 years, to make up the effort lost over the past 30 years, after successive Liberal and Conservative governments got out of the affordable housing game. We will continue pressing the government to make these necessary investments so that all Canadians can have a roof over their head.
I will briefly mention that I am disappointed that this budget seems to do little for the fight against climate change. In particular, I have real concerns that billions of dollars will be given to highly profitable oil and gas companies to try to implement carbon capture technologies that will likely delay rather than hasten our shift to a cleaner energy future.
When balancing budgets, governments too often forget the revenue side of the equation. During the pandemic, most Canadians have suffered financially, while a few in the 1% have made extraordinary profits. The NDP had called for an excessive profits tax, as well as a wealth tax of 1% for those Canadians who have assets over $10 million, to make sure the costs of the pandemic are borne more by those who can afford it rather than have the burden fall on the majority of Canadians who have suffered.
While the Liberals did not agree to our reasonable request, they have agreed to levy a one-time excess profit tax of 15% for banks and a permanent 1.5% tax increase for banks. These two measures will recoup over $6 billion in taxes over the next five years. The NDP would have preferred that the excess profit tax be extended to big corporations such as big oil companies and big box retailers such as Walmart, which made a $3.5-billion profit in the fourth quarter of 2021 alone. We are also disappointed that these taxes are not included in this budget implementation act.
I will finish by mentioning one small victory in excise tax reform that stems from my private member's bill, Bill C-267, which would remove the alcohol excise tax from low-alcohol beer. Low-alcohol wine and spirits do not face this tax. None of Canada's trading partners charge this tax. My bill was meant to make a common sense change to the excise tax to level the playing field. The beer industry was paying more than $1 million every year in excise tax on low-alcohol beer. The beer industry and millions of Canadians who drink low-alcohol beer, and myself, are all happy to see this bill incorporated into this budget implementation act.
I was disappointed to see that other issues stemming from the changes to the Excise Act were not dealt with in this budget. Many wineries in my riding will be paying excise tax for the first time, since their exemption was eliminated after a challenge at the World Trade Organization. Wine Growers Canada has been calling for permanent trade legal support for the industry to match the supports provided by other major wine-producing countries. The government has offered temporary 18-month support, but I was hoping for a more long-lasting measure that would really make a difference in this important industry.
The NDP will continue working to make life better for Canadians. I believe this bill is a step in the right direction, but we have a long journey to go.
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- Apr/4/22 5:37:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, just to the north and west of me, for that question, because it is a very important question for both of our ridings and for the entire Okanagan area and the Canadian wine industry as a whole.
As he mentioned, and I briefly mentioned at the end of my speech, the wine industry, especially the smaller wineries, are losing the exemption to the excise tax that they have enjoyed for many years. In fact, most of the wineries in our ridings have never paid that. They are relatively new businesses and they have not have a business model to cover that. We need to support them to make that transition. Every wine-producing country around the world has ways of supporting their wine industry, and the federal government has come out with a short-term thing. He mentioned the date and the fact that it is going to be on existing inventories. We have to change that and make sure our wine industry can grow and prosper.
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Madam Speaker, people across the country are facing the rising costs of gas, groceries and housing, and one way to help them is by eliminating taxes that do not make sense. Low-alcohol beer is a healthy and increasingly popular choice, yet it is charged the alcohol excise tax while low-alcohol wine and spirits are not. Yesterday, I introduced Bill C-267 to provide a simple fix for this anomaly.
Will the government support this fix, put it in the budget and provide some relief for both craft brewers and consumers?
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moved for leave to introduce Bill C-267, an act to amend the Excise Act (non-alcoholic beer).
He said: Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise here today to introduce my private member's bill that would remove the excise tax on beer with less than 0.5% alcohol.
I would like to thank the hon. member for Windsor West for seconding this bill. Since it is National Indigenous Languages Day, I will say lim'limpt to him in the language of the Syilx people of the Okanagan nation.
This bill corrects a curious anomaly in the Excise Act where low-alcohol wine and spirits are not subject to the tax, but low-alcohol beer is. None of Canada's major trading partners have an excise tax on low-alcohol beer. Low-alcohol beer is a healthy and increasingly popular choice, and we should be encouraging rather than discouraging this, as the current tax does.
My hometown of Penticton, British Columbia has been dubbed by Lonely Planet as the craft beer capital of Canada, and I hope that, by fixing this anomaly in the Excise Act, we will help expand the domestic production of low-alcohol beer and give Canadians more choice.
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