Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_27
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Ms. Kristina Michaud: it is always a pleasure to rise in the House to speak about such an important democratic exercise, specifically the budget and its implementation. A budget provides a framework and a guide for the government's policy agenda. It is normally quite thick and takes a while to analyze. This bill is huge, I have to say. The government has thrown a lot in there. This type of bill is called an omnibus bill. There are many items in the budget, but a lot of reading between the lines is still needed. The government announces things without really describing them, so we have to guess what its intentions are, what those things mean and when they will be implemented. In this budget, I noticed that the government wants to differentiate between the investments that have already been announced and those that are forthcoming. To do that, it is putting different markers at the start of each line. Checkmarks are used for investments that have already been announced. That implies that it has been done. Arrows are used for upcoming investments. When I flip through the budget, I see a lot of checkmarks. That means that the government is announcing things a second time. That is a rather odd strategy. Announcing an investment twice does not double the amount. That is not how it works. The government needs to stop treating us like fools. It is difficult to see what new announcements this government is making. For example, in the housing section, all we see are checkmarks. There is nothing more for the regions of Quebec, despite the fact that they too are experiencing a housing crisis. The housing crisis is not something that is only happening in big cities. There is a crisis in the largest regions of Quebec and in the smallest, and I am sure that the same is true elsewhere in Canada. Unfortunately, the funding is not reaching the smaller regions. I do not like it when politicians criticize everything all the time. We see this every day, and I believe it does nothing to counter the cynicism people feel toward politics and toward elected members who find fault with everything. I looked at the budget that was brought down in Quebec City shortly before the one in Ottawa. The opposition parties had some harsh criticisms. They ranted and raved, saying there was nothing good in the budget. I decided I would do my homework and acknowledge the good things when it was Ottawa's turn. It is nice for our constituents to see us commend things instead of always criticizing the government. It is nice to note the positive things, the aspects that are good, while pointing out what could have been done better. When I received the federal budget, I realized that it would be hard to point out the good things because there are not that many, especially when I look at what Quebeckers were asking for. Often, what the Bloc Quebecois suggests aligns with what Quebeckers are asking for. What Quebeckers want is what we are going to bring forward and ask for in the House of Commons. As I was saying, the bill includes nothing for housing, nothing for seniors, nothing about the EI reform we have been asking for for years, and no long-term solution to health care underfunding. I am willing to recognize the good points, but is it that hard to meet the public's expectations? Still, I did want to go through the process of trying to find good things in this budget. For example, the government seems to want to resolve, once and for all, the uncertainty around the calculation of the taxable capital gain on intergenerational transfers of small and medium-sized businesses, especially farms. That is good. At last, this is happening. Farmers have been talking to us about this issue for a long time. Will it be resolved soon? We hope so. Another good thing in Bill C-47 is that the government is planning to establish a real employment insurance board of appeal by incorporating elements of Bill C-37 , which was introduced before the holidays. Great, that is a good thing. That is progress. However, in all honesty, what we would have liked to see is nothing less than EI reform. That is what we have been asking for for years. Every year, unemployed workers' advocacy groups in every region of Quebec are promised that EI reform is coming and that it will be in the budget. They have been hearing this since well before 2015. Every time a budget is tabled, these groups realize they have once again been taken for a ride. Need I remind the House that about 60% of people who lose their jobs cannot get EI, even if they paid into it with every paycheque? Need I also remind the House that it is worse for women and youth because many of them work in non-standard jobs? The only other EI measure in the budget is a one-year extension of the pilot projects to provide an extra five weeks of benefits in regions where seasonal work is particularly prevalent. We can hope that this is good news for our ridings, but obviously there is a "but" because only unemployed workers who have access to EI can benefit from that. As I was saying, unfortunately, 60% of seasonal workers are excluded from the program. Yes, it is a good measure, but there is always a "but". The problem is that the measures are temporary and ill-conceived. That is what workers in my area have been complaining about for years. We wonder whether it would be possible for the government to have a more long-term vision, or any kind of vision at all, really. The government seems to think only about tomorrow, not about what might happen in the coming years. It cannot keep using one-time cheques and temporary measures, because that will never really solve the problems that have been going on for far too long. It is a little disappointing, and it is kind of symptomatic of this government. I believe that it would not be that difficult to put in place a more well-thought-out measure, one that might perhaps take more than two weeks to create. I understand that EI reform cannot be done quickly, but people have been proposing solutions for years, and everyone has been weighing in and saying that there are solutions and they just need to be implemented. I will quickly address another point that my colleagues have already brought up. This is the proof that this whole thing is half-baked. Bill C-47 contains items that were in Bill C-46 . We thought this meant that the GST would be doubled once again and that there would be an extra $2-billion top-up for the health transfer. It was a nice surprise for us, but it was actually just a little mistake. When Bill C-46 was passed last week, the government forgot to remove those items from Bill C-47. These are really rookie mistakes. I will now talk a bit about the environment. I see that time is flying and I have a lot of things to say. The government is announcing significant sums of money for the transition to a low-carbon economy. We are talking about $80 billion over 10 years. That is a lot of cash. To me, the energy transition means transforming our energy sources, our economic model, our consumption habits and our vision of production. That, in my opinion, is where we should be investing our money, but that is not all the government's vision. No, the government says it wants to continue to do everything the same way, but by polluting less. Obviously, we wonder how that could be done and how we can do the same thing and hope for a different result. How can we increase production while lowering greenhouse gas emissions? The government says it will be easy with carbon capture and storage technologies. Oh, that is interesting. Now we are left to wonder whether it actually works. No one knows, because it is virtually non-existent in Canada. The Minister of Environment himself said in a Radio-Canada interview in 2021 that he wanted to lower expectations around this technology. He said that the government wanted to invest in these technologies, but added that it must be understood that nothing will happen overnight. He said that this is not the best way to reduce our emissions over the next few years. He also said we are going to need a lot of new technologies in the years to come, including things like carbon capture and storage. He said we are several years away, maybe a decade, from commercial use. That is what the minister said in 2021. Between you and me, I would not count on it too much. This is the same government that announced in its 2015-19 policy agenda that it would ban single-use plastics by 2021. However, that ban was only put in place a few weeks ago, and it is 2023, so we will not put too much stock in that. Considering that Canada began developing this technology in 2021, perhaps we can hope that it will be ready for 2031. The problem is that the government has set greenhouse gas reduction targets, and the next milestone year is 2030. The government's plan for 2030 is to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 40% to 45%. The Minister of Environment often says that our emissions are going down, but everyone knows that was because of the pandemic. Even in 2020, emissions started to go up again due to transportation and oil and gas production. I see my time is up, and I am ready to answer questions about the environment.