:
Mr. Speaker, it is a great privilege to lend my voice today in support of Bill , the budget implementation act, 2024. This budget is about what kind of country we want to live in and what kind of country we want to build together.
For generations, Canada has been a place where everyone could secure a better future for themselves and their children, and where a growing economy created opportunities for everyone to succeed. However, to ensure every Canadian succeeds in the 21st century, we know that we must grow our economy to make it more innovative, productive and sustainable. We must build an economy where every Canadian can reach their full potential, where every entrepreneur has the tools needed to grow their business and where hard work pays off.
Building the economy of the future is about creating jobs in the knowledge economy, in manufacturing, in mining and forestry, in the trades, in clean energy and across the economy in all regions of the country. To do this, our government's economic plan is investing in the technologies, incentives and supports critical to increasing productivity, fostering innovation and attracting more private investment to Canada. This is how we will build an economy that unlocks new pathways for every generation to earn their fair share. Bill is a crucial step in opening up these new pathways.
Bill takes us forward on the understanding that, in the 21st century, a competitive economy is a clean economy. There is no greater proof than the 2.4 trillion dollars' worth of investment made around the world last year alone in the transition to net-zero economies. Experts say we are at a global inflection point, with clean energy investments surpassing investments in conventional energy, with the cost of renewable technology dropping significantly, including wind, solar and heat pumps, as technology advancements are made and deployed at scale, and with companies that outperform their peers in decarbonizing more competitive and yielding higher returns for stakeholders.
As the big anchor investment decisions around the globe are being made to secure the global supply chains for the emerging clean economy, we need to ensure Canada is best positioned to compete and lead the way by seizing the massive opportunities to attract investment and generate economic growth that will bring decades of prosperity. That is why our government is putting Canada at the forefront of the global race to attract investment and seize the opportunities of the clean economy with a net-zero economic plan that will invest over $160 billion to maintain and extend our lead in this global race.
The cornerstone of our plan is an unprecedented suite of major economic investment tax credits, which will help attract investment through $93 billion in incentives by the year 2034-35. That includes carbon capture, utilization and storage, the clean technology investment tax credit, the clean hydrogen investment tax credit, the clean technology manufacturing investment tax credit, clean electricity and, added in budget 2024, an EV supply chain investment tax credit. These investment tax credits will provide businesses and other investors with the certainty they need to invest and build here in Canada. They are already attracting major job-creating projects, ensuring we remain globally competitive.
For example, just a couple of weeks ago, I attended the announcement in Alliston, Ontario, where Honda made the largest investment in Canadian automotive history, investing over $15 billion. This is a huge vote of confidence in our economy. Out of all the countries in the world, Honda chose Canada to build its comprehensive, end-to-end EV supply chain, which will mean thousands of good-paying jobs for decades to come. The federal investment tax credits were essential in remaining competitive and securing that generational investment. From new clean electricity projects that will provide clean and affordable energy to Canadian homes and businesses to carbon capture projects that will decarbonize heavy industry, our major economic investment tax credits are moving Canada forward on its track to achieve a net-zero economy by 2050.
In November 2023, our government introduced Bill to deliver the first two investment tax credits and provide businesses with the certainty they need to make investment decisions in Canada today. That bill also included labour requirements to ensure workers are paid prevailing union wages and apprentices have opportunities to gain experience and succeed in the workforce.
With Bill , the budget implementation act, 2024, we would be making two more of these major economic investment tax credits a reality to attract more private investment, create more well-paying jobs and grow the economy.
First, it would implement the 30% clean technology manufacturing investment tax credit, which would be available as of January 1, 2024. This is a refundable investment tax credit for clean technology manufacturing and processing, and extraction and processing of key critical minerals equal to 30% of the capital cost of eligible property associated with eligible activities.
Investments by corporations in certain depreciable property that is used for eligible activities would qualify for the credit. Eligible property would generally include machinery and equipment used in manufacturing, processing or critical mineral extraction, as well as related control systems.
Eligible investments would cover activities that will be key to securing our future, including things like the manufacture of certain renewable energy equipment like solar, wind, water or geothermal. It would cover the manufacturing of nuclear energy equipment and electrical energy storage equipment used to provide grid-scale storage. It would cover the manufacturing of equipment for air and ground storage heat pump systems; the manufacturing of zero-emission vehicles, including the conversion of on-road vehicles; as well as the manufacturing of batteries, fuel cells, recharging systems and hydrogen refuelling stations for zero-emision vehicles, not to mention the manufacturing of equipment used to produce hydrogen from electrolysis. These are the technologies that will power our future.
Bill 's clean technology manufacturing investment tax credit would power the investment that is needed to build them today and build them here at home.
The bill would also make the clean hydrogen investment tax credit a reality, which would exclusively support investments in projects that produce clean hydrogen through eligible production pathways. This refundable tax credit would be available as of March 28, 2023, and could be claimed when eligible equipment becomes available for use at an applicable credit rate that is based on the carbon intensity of the hydrogen that is produced.
Eligible equipment could include, but is not limited to, the equipment required to produce hydrogen from electrolysis of water, including electrolyzers, rectifiers and other ancillary electrical equipment; water treatment and conditioning equipment; and certain equipment used for hydrogen compression and storage. Certain equipment required to produce hydrogen from natural gas or other eligible hydrocarbons, with emissions abated using carbon capture, utilization and storage, would also be eligible. Property that is required to convert clean hydrogen to clean ammonia may also be eligible for the credit, subject to certain conditions, at a credit rate of 15%.
It is important to realize that these clean economy investment tax credits work to incentivize investment and remain competitive but also do not stand alone. They are just part of the tool box that also includes legislation like the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act; the and amendments to CEPA, which is the Canadian Environmental Protection Act; regulations like the clean fuel regulations, the carbon pricing and oil and gas emissions cap; programs like the strategic innovation fund and many others; and the blended finance utilities that the government has launched, including the Canada growth fund and the Canada Infrastructure Bank. These all work together, and that is why we are seeing the results we are seeing.
Bill 's support for these investments comes at a pivotal moment when we can choose to renew and redouble our investments in the economy of the future, to build an economy that is more productive and more competitive, or risk leaving an entire generation behind.
With Bill C-69, we would not make that mistake. Our major economic investment tax credits are moving Canada forward on its track to achieve a net-zero economy by 2050. I could not be more proud of our work in this area.
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Madam Speaker, it is indeed an honour to rise today to speak to such an important piece of legislation, a piece of legislation that comes out of the concept of fairness and about creating opportunities for younger generations.
I am of generation X. The opportunities that I have had, quite honestly and quite frankly, are becoming more and more difficult for the generations after me, such as generation Z and millennials, to have. What members are seeing in this budget bill is about creating opportunities and creating fairness for those future generations. How do we do that?
There are different ways to approach government's responsibility to society. The approach that conservative, small-c conservative, governments typically tend to take is more of a libertarian-style approach of stepping away, letting the market run things, letting every person fend for themselves, letting every person either make it or not based strictly on their own capabilities, their own merits. However, there is also an opportunity for the government to be part of creating fairness, ensuring that systemic biases that exist in our systems, scenarios or environmental changes do not have a significant negative effect on future generations.
Quite frankly, that is the reality of where we are. I know that Conservatives will get up to say that this is all the fault of the government, that it is the government that brought in all of the policies that have created the circumstances of today, but nothing could be further from the truth.
We are seeing these circumstance throughout the world. Conservatives never talk about what is going on in the United States, in Europe or in other G7 countries because, if they were to do that, they would have to acknowledge the fact that Canada is positioned much better than some of our counterparts. It is small comfort to those who are going through particular hardships right now, but in terms of positioning ourselves, I would suggest that we are actually putting ourselves in a better position. We have a lower inflation rate than the United States, for example, which is our closest ally. By all measures, by all indications, it would appear that we are in a better position for the monetary policy of Canada, which is run by the Bank of Canada, to start using the tools that it has to lower interest rates.
I would argue that we are on the right course in getting our affairs in order to be able to provide fairness and opportunity for future generations. That is extremely important because I think there will be a lot of people out there who ask, “What about me? I worked hard. I did all of these things throughout my life. I did not get handouts. I did not get opportunities.” In particular, a lot of businesses or business owners would say that.
My reaction to that would be to not forget that, when one's economy does well, when one's middle class does well, when people are prosperous and, in particular, those who are coming up in age, such as millennials and gen Z, are doing well, everybody does better. The economy does better as a result. Businesses and wealthy people certainly do better when economies are in full gear and are significantly making an impact, realizing the opportunities that all generations participating in an economy have to benefit.
The next part I want to touch on is specifically with respect to providing opportunities for individuals with disabilities, to give them more opportunities to be in a better position to be able to contribute to our economy.
One of the really interesting things that I learned during my time as a municipal politician, when I sat on the accessibility committee for the City of Kingston, was that, when we talk about accessibility and about providing opportunities, I think a lot of people default to thinking of physical accessibility. They think about bringing down barriers to allow accessibility from a perspective of getting into a store, having the right-sized doorway, having a ramp for wheelchairs, etc.
However, accessibility quite often talks to economic accessibility. The reality is that, when we start to empower people and give them opportunities, we are unlocking new economic opportunity. For the disabled community in particular, not only are supports to be provided intended for the purpose of supporting individuals but also for giving them opportunities to participate in our economy so our economy can continue to grow and to flourish as a result.
I note there is, I would say, some somewhat valid criticism out there about the supports, particularly when it comes to the disability benefit, but I would counter that by saying that this is a starting point. This is the very first time in our nation's history that we have a program that is aimed specifically, from the federal level, at supporting disabled individuals throughout our country. We can build on it from this point. We can make it better. We can continue to strive for more and for better.
One of the things we are really worried about in this over $6-billion program throughout the country is making sure provinces do not take the opportunity with the disability benefit to say that the feds are giving $200 so they can claw back $200. It would never be as direct as that. Doug Ford in Ontario is not going to say that the feds are giving $200, so they are going to claw back. The way they would most likely do it is that they would freeze the supports and then they would let inflation slowly creep up and replace that $200.
We want to make sure provinces do not look at this as an opportunity to say that the feds are going to take care of this, so they can get out of the way and reduce their contribution, whether that is directly or, as I suggested, through inflation. There is work to be done there. I certainly will be an advocate to continue pushing because I believe, as I stated earlier, this is not just about providing for individuals who require supports more than others. It is also about unlocking economic opportunity as individuals have more opportunity to enter into our economy and to participate in our economy.
One of the programs in particular I was really glad to see in this piece of legislation, this budget bill, was a national school food program. I want to thank the countless number of schools throughout my community that put together petitions, individual petitions from each school, that called on the to do this.
I want to give special kudos to Brenda in my community. I will not use her last name because I did not get approval to mention her full name, but I want to give special congratulations to Brenda for her work, for doing this and for going around to the schools.
When I called her to tell her about this, Brenda told me a story. When the and the made that announcement, I immediately called Brenda and, “Brenda, you now know your advocacy was worth something and it mattered.” She said that she was so glad to have the opportunity to talk to me about this because she would go to schools and some of the schools would ask her why she was even doing this. They would say that this was never going to matter and these petitions were not going to matter. However, they do. The voices in our communities matter.
I want to thank Brenda for the advocacy she did, going around to every school in the Kingston area to get these petitions together so I could then come here to present them. I know in one small way people using their voices to be heard affected the outcome of this. I send Brenda congratulations for all the incredible work she did in making sure our community's voices, when it came to developing a national school food program, were being heard. As a result, we are now presenting this program, which I know we would be able to build on in the years to come that will genuinely help kids get the best possible start every single day they go to school.
I told this story before in the House, and I will tell it again. In Kingston, we have the Food Sharing Project, and this is Andy Mills and a bunch of other people who have been doing this on a volunteer, not-for-profit basis. There are a lot of volunteers with a very low budget. They have been finding deals on food and bringing all the food together in a small warehouse in an old industrial part of Kingston, organizing all the packages and sending them out to the schools on a daily basis, literally on a shoestring budget. They have been doing this for decades.
I went to the warehouse with my family. We were invited on a tour. I said that I would bring my family one morning, and we could help pack all the boxes of food that would be sent out. Andy said, “Absolutely”. We went there, and it dawned on me when my seven-year-old said, “So this is where that food comes from”. From my seven-year-old's perspective, it was not free food for poor kids, or it was not food that was specially set aside in a classroom. It was there for everybody.
This program is about giving kids nutritious food to eat to start their day, and throughout the day, but it also does an incredible job of breaking down stereotypes that exist. They are stereotypes that, quite frankly, I am sure I witnessed and was influenced by when I was growing up, when I saw kids who did not have a full lunch when they came to school.
When my seven-year-old made that comment and said, “So this is where that food comes from”, and he connected all the dots, then it dawned on me that he had no idea. He just thought this was food at the school for kids to eat. That, in my opinion, is why a national school food program is so important. It is just a basic, fundamental opportunity to have nutritious food while in school. I am extremely proud to have been in the House to see this come forward in a budget.
I was very perplexed when Conservatives would not even vote for the program before there was even any money allocated to it. I find it even more concerning how Conservatives will continually stand up and talk about food bank usage and talk about the suffering and pain that Canadians are going through, yet they will not vote in favour of a national school food program, nor will they vote in favour, as they have indicated they will not, of putting money behind it.
It is quite rich and very hypocritical to stand up in the House and say that the government is not doing enough to support and to give families the food they need. Literally, we are talking about giving kids food in schools, and the Conservatives are against it. I find it to be very concerning.
I want to pivot to something else that we have seen coming from the Conservative benches in the last couple of weeks. In particular, we heard a speech the was giving about legislation and criminal legislation. He made a point of saying that he would use every tool and resource to impose his laws, as if he were the supreme leader and as if he were the end of all. He could use the notwithstanding clause and could bring in whatever laws he wants; it is as easy as that. That is something that has never been done by the federal government since we have had our Charter of Rights.
It is very alarming when the starts making these claims. He is basically saying that he has an idea, that he has a law, that this is the way the law is going to be and that he is going to impose it. If someone has a problem with it, they can vote him out a number of years later, regardless of the fact that it may not be constitutional. What is the point in even having a Constitution if someone does not believe in protecting minority rights? A Constitution is about protecting minority rights.
I have an answer to why Conservatives are acting like this. In my opinion, Conservatives do not care about the Constitution because they are just a reincarnation of the old Reform Party. The Brian Mulroney Conservatives are gone. Flora MacDonald, who came from my riding, a Progressive Conservative, would not even recognize what one sees over there right now. That is the former Reform Party of Canada, and as we know, it was never in favour of the Constitution. Stephen Harper—
Some hon. members: Hear, hear!
Mr. Mark Gerretsen: Hear, hear! Good. They are being honest.
Madam Speaker, this is the first time that I have accused a Conservative Party of being the former Reform Party. I have said this many times in the House, but now the Conservatives are actually applauding it. In all honesty, I respect their honesty on the matter. I respect where Conservatives are coming from. I respect that they are being honest about it, and I mean that genuinely.
They are the Reform Party. They do not believe in the Constitution. That is just the way it is. We have the , who routinely suggests that he would use the notwithstanding clause, as he sees fit, to ensure that all the laws that he thinks should be subject to the law of the land shall be there. We have a Constitution for a reason, and that is to protect minorities and to protect the rights of minorities. That was the whole intent of it.
In fairness, I respect the fact that the Conservatives are so open about this. The member for , on Friday, said that, to be clear, they would only use the notwithstanding clause when it comes to using it for the purposes of criminal justice. That is interesting. That sounds reasonable, at least to the layperson, does it not? Let us just think about what he is saying. He is saying, as it relates to criminal matters, that they are open and willing to use the notwithstanding clause. If the Reform Party had that same approach in the 1990s, it could have used that notwithstanding clause when the Supreme Court overturned the criminal offence of performing an abortion. What we are talking about here is the Conservative Party of Canada literally starting to talk about restricting and removing rights of Canadians.
This issue matters to me. I have a five-year-old daughter, and I want to make sure that my daughter grows up in the world with the same rights that her mother had. I cannot believe that we are even having this discussion about rolling back a woman's right to choose.
The member for today, presenting on behalf of his constituents, said that he wanted to roll back the charter decision and ask the government to bring in more restrictive measures for individuals, in particular women, who are trying to exercise their rights to choose. We are entering very dangerous territory with that rhetoric. I know where their political angle is. They think the average person will not know what the notwithstanding clause is, what it means or what the implications are, so it really does not matter. They will just sound good in what they are saying, and people will believe them.
Do members know what? I am not going to weigh in on whether I believe that to be right or wrong, but I will say that even just using that language and going down that road, being willing to treat people in a manner in which they can make sure that they can do things because people are not going to be paying attention, is extremely dangerous. That is what we are seeing.
It cannot be a coincidence, literally almost a year ago to the day in the United States of America, when Roe v. Wade was overturned, that suddenly, Conservatives are feeling empowered and emboldened to start having these discussions now. We would not have heard that come from Conservatives a year ago or five years ago. Stephen Harper intentionally avoided talking about it because he did not want to go anywhere near the matter, even though he may have had his own personal opinions on the Constitution. He never went near it because he knew it was not smart to do so.
The is looking at the opportunities in the States, parroting the alt-right MAGA Republican politics of the States and trying to utilize those exact same talking points and those exact same ways of operating in Canada.
I will commit to any and every Canadian who is watching this and, indeed, who is in Canada, that I will do everything I personally can to ensure that the Constitution and the Charter of Rights continue to mean something and continue to be something that they can rely on to protect the rights of minorities in this country.
:
Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my hon. colleague, the member for .
After nine years, the still does not get it. There are many things he does not understood. He does not understand that budgets do not balance themselves. He does not understand that Canadians cannot live on their credit cards forever. He does not understand that leading a country means much more than just smiling for the cameras.
After nine years, he clearly does not understand that Canadians are tired of paying for his and his government's incompetence. I say incompetence because, after nine years, too many families have seen their quality of life go down as a result of his inflationary policies. Everything costs more, including food, rent, gas, taxes, mortgage payments, everything people have to buy on credit, restaurant meals and recreational activities. The list goes on. Absolutely everything costs more.
The Liberal Prime Minister has made the public service so big it is literally bursting at the seams, which leads me to say that the government, too, costs a lot more after nine years of this Prime Minister.
The Liberal government hired no less than an additional 100,000 public servants. With so many new government employees, one would expect services to improve, at least proportionately. One might think that waiting for a passport was a thing of the past, that immigrants who are waiting for a family member are now all very happy with the family reunification and immigration processes, and that it is now easy to talk to a CRA or an EI agent. One hundred thousand more public servants means 200,000 more hands to work on finding solutions to people's problems. That would make sense, but no. That is not what happened, despite the additional billions of dollars that this government spent on expanding the public service.
The and this government's ministers created so much chaos that even 100,000 more public servants have been unable to correct nine years of complacency. Take, for example, passports, the people who are waiting for EI payments and the thousands of Canadians who have to pay back billions of dollars to the government because the Liberals' pandemic measures were a failure.
Let us talk about immigration and the former immigration minister, who not only created the worst management crisis ever at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, but also lost track of one million people. That minister is now in charge of fixing the country's housing crisis. I wonder what that minister has to say to Cédric Dussault, the spokesperson for the Regroupement des comités logement et associations de locataires du Québec, a renters' rights group, who said, “We hear from tenants who intend to commit suicide. This is more than just despair. They do not see a way out, and they want it to be over. That is what it has come to”. That is what it has come to in Canada after nine years of this Prime Minister.
This is just a glimpse of Liberal incompetence. In addition to hiring tens of thousands of public servants, this Liberal government has literally doubled the cost of hiring outside consultants. Many of those expenses were unjustified. Here is just one example: ArriveCAN. The government spent $60 million of taxpayers' money on an app developed in a basement by two people with no computer skills. That app was supposed to cost $80,000. Let us do the math. The cost ballooned from $80,000 to $60 million. That is how this government manages public finances.
As I said earlier, this Prime Minister is not worth the cost of his government, which has skyrocketed over the past nine years. Let us look back at 2015, when this same Prime Minister promised Canadians that he would run small deficits of $10 billion and balance the budget in four years. Since then, he has not only failed to keep his promise, but he has also become the spendiest prime minister in Canadian history. He single-handedly put Canada further into debt than all previous prime ministers.
I am not talking about him spending more than any previous prime minister. I am talking about the debts of all prime ministers combined. This has managed to spend more than all the previous prime ministers combined. He has increased Canadians' debt from $700 billion to $1.3 trillion in just nine years. I never thought I would use the word “trillion” in the House, but that just shows how out of control this government's spending is.
That means that today, just to pay the interest on this massive debt, Canadians have to fork over more than $57 billion a year. How much is $57 billion? People wonder, because it is impossible to grasp the scale of a number that big. It is more than what the federal government transfers to the provinces for health care every year. It is the equivalent of all the goods and services tax, or GST, that is collected when people buy goods and services. In other words, every time we pay GST somewhere, it does not go toward improving the environment, national defence or social housing; it goes to pay the interest on this Prime Minister's debt.
This Prime Minister has inflated the debt to the point that he no longer sees what effect this spending is having on Canadians. It is contributing to inflation, driving up the price of everything and forcing the Bank of Canada to keep interest rates high. That is what nine budgets from this Prime Minister has done. This ninth budget is no exception. Time and again, we see new spending, stagnating services, rising prices and daily revelations of corruption. This is the perfect example of an incompetent Prime Minister who is not worth the cost.
I also wanted to take this opportunity to talk about something that has been a concern of mine for the 25 years that I have been in politics. This theme has only reinforced my decision to be a Conservative in Quebec over the years. I want to talk about the mindset that, no matter what the Liberals do, no matter what the left proposes, whether it is the NDP, the Bloc Québécois or the Liberal Party, just one group suffers as a result of all their good ideas. That group is average Canadians. It is the Quebecker who works hard to support his family. It is the Quebecker who struggles to pay rent, to give her children a decent education, to be a good citizen by volunteering to help those in need. That is a fact. I talk to people in their homes. The only people paying for all this spending are not the Prime Minister, nor his ministers, nor the Liberal government, but the hard-working people at home.
Who pays more for gas when someone decides one day that it would be a good idea for gas to be more expensive so that people will use less? Who pays more for electricity because it is bad to waste electricity and because, if the price is raised, people will realize that it is too expensive and then use less? If they need it, they will have to pay either way. The Prime Minister said so himself when he was invited to comment on the rising price of gas before the carbon tax even came into effect. He said that that was exactly what they wanted, for Canadians to pay more. Worse yet, left-wing parties like the Bloc Québécois are not shy about saying that it is not enough. The Bloc says that the carbon tax — they probably also want to talk about the carbon pricing that applies in Quebec — should be radically increased. It is the public that pays every time these people say that they have a good idea.
Who pays for these taxes, these bags, these services, these user fees, this big government that is supposed to solve all the problems? It is Canadians. It was Canadians before, it is Canadians now, and it will be Canadians as long as we have a Liberal government. That is why the Conservatives have a common-sense plan to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. The “Liberal Bloc” does not want us to keep saying it, but it is a common-sense plan that will ensure that we can give Canadians back a little pride, so that Canadians realize that things were not like this before the Liberals took office and that it will certainly not be like this once they are no longer in power.
:
Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to stand up on behalf of the people of Barrie—Innisfil in the House of Commons and, in this case, in particular, to discuss the budget implementation act.
If one listens to the Liberals, and I have been in the House for most of today, one would almost get the sense that Canadians have never had it so good as what they have right now.
The member for stood up before, and I recall asking him a question about Canada's productivity. We are seeing declines in productivity, investment and capital investment, other than government investment; it is at a point where our productivity is heading into developing nation status right now.
It is obvious that the ability of Canadians to have some sort of lifestyle or provide for a quality of life for themselves is clearly diminishing after nine years of the current NDP-Liberal government. There is not one day that I am in my Barrie—Innisfil office, not one phone call and not one email that is telling me that their life is better after nine years of the NDP-Liberal government. In fact, I would say that we spend most of our time, and my staff's time, in my Barrie—Innisfil office walking people in off the ledge, because they are so concerned about their economic future.
I recall that, a couple of months ago, I had a senior come into my office. Fortunately, he had a mortgage, but he had to renew it. With the new interest rates, mortgage renewal rates, the way they are, he was only going to be left with $600 at the end of the month to pay his property taxes, to pay his heat, to pay his hydro and to buy groceries. That is an indictment of nine years of failed economic policy, and it is having a severe impact on Canadians right across the country.
The budget does nothing to address that. In fact, I will subscribe to the idea that it actually makes things worse for Canadians, especially in the younger generation. In 2015, younger Canadians voted for the ; he was talking about providing them with hope over fear and all the other things he was talking about. He said that things were going to be better for the next generation; in fact, things have gotten worse.
Young people right now do not just feel as though they have been lied to and let down. Rather, they feel as though they have been left behind after nine years of the Liberal-NDP government.
I will go one step further. Any young person whom I talk to right now does not just feel that. Young people are despondent right now, because they do not feel as though they are going to have the same opportunities as their parents had.
They have done everything right. They have gone to university. They have gotten educated. In some cases, some of them are working three or four jobs just to get by. However, because of the economic policies of the government, they still cannot afford to come up with the down payment to buy a home.
Those who have bought a home are now facing a mortgage renewal crisis that this country has not seen in generations. Moms are being kept up at night, trying to figure out how they are going to pay for their mortgages, because mortgage rates have tripled as a result of the failed economic policies of the Liberal government.
When one listens to the Liberal government, it is almost as though Liberals do not realize that they have been in government for nine years and that they have created the mess we are in right now through failed economic policies. When one injects as much liquidity into the system and one creates as much debt and deficit as we are dealing with right now, what does one think is going to happen?
The was predicting three or four years ago that we were going to see interest rates increase as a result. The only lever that the Bank of Canada has to curb inflation is to raise interest rates.
We have heard from former Liberal finance ministers and from former Bank of Canada governors, who keep saying the same thing: It is almost as if the Bank of Canada is pressing on the brakes while the Liberal government is pouring more fuel on the inflationary fires.
There is no greater example of that than what is within the budget: There is $40 billion in additional spending and $56.1 in interest costs, just to service the debt. The debt has been doubled by the ; his insatiable appetite to spend is putting at risk the economic prosperity of millions of young Canadians, including my kids. That $56.1 billion is more than we spend in health care transfers to the provinces, and it is almost an equal amount to what we take in on the GST.
It was the former NDP leader, Thomas Mulcair, who said just shortly after the budget that the GST is designed to pay for many of the services Canadians rely on. Every time somebody goes out and fills up their car with gas, goes out for dinner or buys a ticket to something, they pay the GST. They pay it knowing that it is designed to go towards providing for the social safety net that Canadians rely on in this country. However, right now, almost every single penny of the GST is going toward servicing the cost of the debt accumulated by the and the failed NDP-Liberal experiment.
As Tom Mulcair said, “It is no longer the GST. It is the DST, the debt service tax”. He could not have been more correct.
The government is hiding behind generational fairness, but the generational mess it has created for younger Canadians is not going to be fixed by the budget. It is going to be fixed by a government that lives within its means and that focuses on the revenue side of the ledger rather than solely the expense side. By that, I mean not attacking income-producing sectors of our economy that have historically created great wealth for our nation, such as our natural resource sector and agriculture sectors. Those sectors have contributed greatly to not just providing for that social safety net but also to being able to provide for Canadians.
In the natural resource sector, we have a big role to play in providing clean Canadian energy to the rest of the world, and there is no greater example of that than when the President of Germany came to Canada, begging for LNG. Energy security is the number one issue that Europe is facing right now. He came to Canada, and our shooed him away as though there was no business case for that. Two weeks later, the same German president signed a $27-billion deal with Qatar, which has fewer environmental, labour and human rights standards. That $27 billion could have come to Canada to be used to improve health care, education and the quality of life of not just the next generation but also future generations to come.
We have seen an increase in housing costs. We have seen rent and house prices double. We are seeing mortgage rates that, in some cases, have tripled. Hundreds of thousands of homes are now due for mortgage renewal, and these next couple of months and the budget would do nothing to allay the fears that moms have when they go to renew their mortgage, already facing an increasing affordability crisis and a housing attainability crisis.
The last thing I want to focus on is the fact that the government has raised the carbon tax again by 23%, and that is not the end of it. We are at $80 a tonne right now, and we are heading up to $170. After the 2019 election, the government said the price would never go up past $50 a tonne. We are already past that point, and it is expected to double, which is going to increase the cost of everything, such as the necessities of life, as well as housing costs, the cost of groceries and the cost of transporting goods. Everything will become more expensive in this country, and as our productivity continues to decline, so too will the quality of life of Canadians.
I am going to vote against the budget because it would do nothing to improve the quality of life for future generations or this generation today.
:
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to the budget implementation act and how budget 2024 impacts the good people of Charlottetown, whom I am proud to represent.
I would like to start by congratulating the for her hard work in judiciously addressing the most pressing priorities of Canadians while being mindful of spending. We have heard lots of discourse in recent weeks on the budget deficit, but not nearly enough on the importance of investing to meet the needs of those people who need it most.
Canadians deserve a government that can invest in the supports they need to live safe, healthy lives, while managing spending over the longer term. Far and away the most important issue for Islanders is, consistently, health care. The budget reaffirms the government's commitment to allocate $200 billion over 10 years to strengthen universal public health care. Through bilateral agreements signed by the federal government with all provinces and territories, the budget continues to work collaboratively to deliver good-quality public health care for all Canadians.
Budget 2024 also commits $1.5 billion over five years into the first national pharmacare plan. This includes free contraception, which allows every woman to choose the method of contraception that works for her and covers diabetes medication, improving the lives of 3.7 million Canadians living with diabetes. In Prince Edward Island, the 2023 pilot program improving access to affordable prescription drugs had previously reduced copays to five dollars for eligible medications used for cardiovascular disease, diabetes and mental health. The program also substantially grew the size of the formulary in Prince Edward Island to bring it on par with the other Atlantic provinces.
The national pharmacare program further expands on increasing accessibility of life-saving drugs for Canadians. In my home province of Prince Edward Island, one in three Islanders lives with diabetes or prediabetes. This investment will go a long way toward supporting them and preventing further complications by reducing the cost barrier to finding appropriate medication.
Finally, budget 2024 introduces the Canadian dental care program. Over the next year, more than nine million Canadians who are currently without health insurance will have access to the dental health care they need. I would like to underline here that I understand the apprehensions of dentists and other oral care providers in signing on to the program. The has been remarkably proactive in hearing these concerns and working to address them. We are already seeing progress. I am confident that providers will do the right thing and work with the federal government to address their concerns and to work in the interest of 400,000 seniors who have already signed up to the program from coast to coast.
I had the opportunity to meet in my office with a group of dentists, including the president of the Dental Association of Prince Edward Island. They went through the list of preoccupations they had with the program, but they ended on a very positive note, which is that, to a person, every single dentist and oral health care provider is there for their patients, acting in their best interests. The demand and the need for the program have been manifest by the number of people who have signed up. I am confident that health care providers will, at the end of the day, act in the best interests of their patients to help ensure the success of the program. I firmly believe that, and I have faith in them to do that. I also have faith in the to ensure that their concerns will be met.
The second priority I would like to talk about is housing. There are several commendable measures in the budget, too many to list, but I would like to touch on a few of them. The first is the additional $400-million investment in the housing accelerator fund, which has been fast-tracking the construction of 750,000 new homes over the next decade, since its launch.
In my province, the housing accelerator fund agreements with municipalities will lead to 895 new homes over the next three years across the province, 300 of which will be in the capital city of Charlottetown. It is a program that works. It is a program that is sought after by municipalities. It is a program that is exceptionally popular. It is a program that will continue to deliver the affordable, sustainable housing that Canadians need.
Another initiative I would like to speak to is the removal of GST on student residences in post-secondary institutions. Prince Edward Island is home to over 8,000 students. The initiative will help institutions provide safe housing for students on campus. It is something that is a preoccupation of university presidents. I have had conversations with them. It is a welcome initiative from the government, recognizing an important need both on P.E.I. and across the country.
The budget, in fact, significantly invests in post-secondary education and in the future of millennial and gen Z youth as they navigate the educational landscape. Indeed, with investments in new strategic research infrastructure and federal research support, core research grants, and increases to the Canada student grants and Canada student loans, budget 2024 sets students up for success by ensuring that anyone can have access to world-class post-secondary education without cost barriers. This will also ensure that Canada remains at the forefront of innovative research and technology in a rapidly changing global environment.
Not only does the budget work for post-secondary students, but it also establishes a national school food program, providing nutritious meals to 400,000 children from K to 12 every year. While schools remain under provincial jurisdiction, the $10-a-day child care bilateral agreements from coast to coast show that our government is more than capable of collaborating with progressive provinces and territories to support those people who need it most.
Much like the Quebec early learning and child care infrastructure informed $10-a-day child care, the Prince Edward Island school food program can serve as a successful template on which to model a national program. I was pleased to have the responsible tour and see the Prince Edward Island program in broad light in the last three or four months.
The program launched in 2020. It served 600,000 meals in 2023 and will serve an estimated 800,000 meals this year. There is much to learn from the structure and impacts of the program, and it can certainly be scaled up to meet national needs. The government has worked hard to lift children out of poverty, and the school food program will continue to do so, ensuring that they have access to the nutrition they need now to prepare them for tomorrow.
I would like to speak about some measures that will positively impact Prince Edward Island in particular. In budget 2024, the government proposes extending five more weeks of employment insurance payouts to seasonal workers for another two years. While this does fall short of returning Prince Edward Island to one EI zone, it does extend much-needed relief to the almost 3,000 seasonal workers on P.E.I.
Another measure in the budget is freezing the Confederation Bridge tolls and maintaining ferry fees to Nova Scotia until 2026. These measures are important in keeping travel from P.E.I. to the rest of the country affordable. It will benefit Islanders who regularly travel for work, to see their loved ones, or to access health care.
I was also pleased to see the establishment of the new Pituamkek national park reserve on the north coast of Prince Edward Island. Not only does this area have ecological significance due to its low contact with humans, but it is also important in understanding and preserving Mi’kmaq culture and settlement patterns. It is thus an important initiative that will help us interpret the past, while protecting biodiversity into the future.
Through these measures and more, budget 2024 delivers a sound plan for Canadians that I am proud to support. It solidifies the economy, supports the middle class and those working hard to join it, and truly delivers fairness for every generation.
:
Madam Speaker, it is good to be here to speak on behalf of the amazing people of North Island—Powell River on the budget bill.
I want to acknowledge that it is really hard times. Not only in Canada but in many countries across the planet, we are seeing massive challenges during this time. I feel fundamentally that we have to raise the bar of dignity in this country so that people can live with dignity and respect, and we know that is not happening enough.
I will talk a little bit about the things I am supportive of in this budget and also share some of my concerns.
The first thing I want to bring up is the launching of the new national school food program. My colleague, the member for , and I were with our in Comox Valley. We were standing with representatives of Lush Valley, which does tremendous work in our region providing safe, local food and works with a lot of schools in the region to make sure there is healthy food provided. What they were very clear about was that they were grateful for how much the provincial government in B.C. had stood up and given funding, but they needed to see that funding matched because the need is increasing so much.
We know that young people across Canada are faced with challenges, and it is very hard to learn when one has not had breakfast. One of the things about this program that I fundamentally believe in is that it has to be accessible for everyone. When we talk about dignity, it means making sure that what one person gets the other person gets, and that there is no feeling of “you go off and eat because we know you are poor”, which is so destructive. I am really proud of the work that is being done here. I know that Lush Valley and many organizations across my riding will be grateful for this money because it will provide food in a way that is open and friendly and make sure that nobody, even these young children, lose their dignity in that sense.
I was also happy to see the health transfer grow. It is not as much as I would necessarily like it to be, but in my riding, health care is, in some cases, at a pretty significant crisis point. The provincial government has stood up and done a lot of profound and important work, but there is still so much more that needs to be done and that needs revenue.
I think of the folks in Port Hardy. I was there not too long ago, and we were talking a lot about the fact that their emergency room is closed for several hours in the night and how hard it is when people have an emergency and they have to go to Port McNeill. From Alert Bay, they have to take a ferry now instead of going to their hospital to get the help that they need.
In my riding, there are a lot of people aging, and they want to age in place. They want to age in their communities because they know one another and they support one another. That is really important, so I am glad to see this increase. I really hope it supports these people in a meaningful way. We need to see health care being taken of. We need emergency rooms open, and we need health care to be accessible. We need to make sure that it helps people stay in their communities of choice. We have a large country, which is something unique about Canada, but we need to make sure that this increase really helps.
I appreciate as well the expanding of the Canada student loan forgiveness program to pharmacists, dentists, dental hygienists, midwives, early childhood educators, teachers, social workers, personal support workers, physiotherapists and psychologists who choose to work for rural and remote regions. This is really important, because it creates an attraction strategy to show people the beautiful places to live all across Canada. However, the one thing that concerns me about this is that I do not see anything here that would maximize retention.
We know that a lot of people go to smaller communities, they live there for a few years and all too often they will leave once their student loans are paid off, in this example specifically. We need to see support in terms of retention. When I talk to health care providers, sometimes the concerns are things like not enough child care or not enough resources for them to do some of the things they really need to do. We need those services in rural and remote communities. We know that once people settle in those communities, often their lives are so much stronger because of the close connection of the community. It is unfortunate right now because what we are seeing is this constant spinning door of people coming into the community and leaving. We really need to look at retention. I am happy this was done, but I want to see more retention.
In terms of affordability, I was happy to see some of the work done around cracking down on predatory lending. We need to make sure that there is a higher level of accountability because too many people are low-income and they are going to these lending places and are having to pay such a high level of interest that they can never catch up.
I am actually hearing this about people who are providing care for seniors. They are making so little money that they are continuing to have to borrow just to make ends meet and that creates a system that we do not want. It does concern me because the other thing we know is that, in the previous budget, we saw a commitment to making sure that the people who were providing those services would get $25, at the very least. We know that the provinces and territories have not signed on to this, so something is not working to make it attractive enough.
We need to see the wages improve for people who do that care work, who go into people's homes and help them and who go into long-term care facilities and into assisted living facilities and do that important care work. We know it is largely women and unfortunately they are not being paid enough. Therefore, I am glad that there is some accountability for these lending organizations that are very predatory, because the harms can be fundamentally bad and it really leaves people grasping.
I want to thank the member for for his incredible work. We saw the doubling of the volunteer firefighters tax credit and the search and rescue volunteers tax credit, from $3,000 to $6,000. This is incredible. What we need to understand is that, in rural communities, they would not be able to get insurance on their homes if it were not for the amazing people volunteering as firefighters, because that creates some safety. Therefore, we have to make sure that those amazing volunteers get more. This got us to $6,000, and we want to see it even higher because we know that people who look after our communities and keep us safe need the recognition.
I am excited about the fact that we see some money going into indigenous loan guarantee programs. We need to see indigenous communities getting the supports they need to build their businesses. We know that our legislative agenda, both provincially and federally, has been to isolate indigenous communities from participating in our economy for far too long. We are still trying to overcome some of those systemic problems, so it is good to see some movement.
I was also pleased to see a bit more tax for those who are making a ton of money off of the labour of everyday Canadians. We know that there is the implementation of a 15% global minimum tax to ensure that large multinational corporations start to pay close to their fair share, wherever they do business. That is really important because it is about time that we see that.
There are some things that did concern me about this budget. I was glad that we came along and made sure that Indigenous Services did not see the big cut in funding that was predicted and being forecast. We worked really hard to make sure that funding was not removed.
I am also very concerned about the first nations funding for languages. We have heard very clearly from the First Peoples' Cultural Council that this is a big concern. For my riding, North Island College has worked with several indigenous communities across our riding to build courses so that people can come in and learn the language. That is for everybody, and it is quite profound to see both indigenous people and non-indigenous people coming to learn the language of the first people of the territory that they live on. I think of the 'Namgis First Nation, which is creating a whole cultural revolution in its region and really helping children, often who are exposed mostly, if not 100%, to their own language first for a period of time so that the language will be strong in them. I know that Tla’amin Nation near Powell River is doing a lot of tremendous work in this area as well. Therefore, it is too bad not to see that language funding there because we know that is a key part.
I look forward to answering any questions.