Canada Minute: Issue 90

Canada Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of Canadian politics.

📅 This Week In Canada: 📅

• The House of Commons returns today for its first sitting week since June 18th, and it sits every day through Friday. Private Members' Business opens the day at 11:00 am with the last hour of second reading debate on Bill C-266, MP Parm Bains's National Framework on Skilled Trades and Labour Mobility Act, and a vote follows at the end of that hour. Government Orders begin at 12:00 pm with third reading of Bill C-10, the Commissioner for Modern Treaty Implementation Act, which would create a Commissioner to conduct reviews and performance audits of federal institutions carrying out modern treaties, backed by an office to support the role. It is the first time C-10 has been debated at third reading, the last Commons stage before the bill moves to the Senate. The Notice Paper also records that Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne gave notice on September 17th of a bill to extend the federal fuel excise tax relief. Projected agendas for Tuesday through Friday are not posted yet, because each day's is published only after the previous sitting adjourns.
  
  
• European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told the European Parliament on Wednesday that she wants to open the door for Canada to become the first associate member of the European Union. Prime Minister Mark Carney watched from the front row in Strasbourg and rose to embrace her after the line drew a standing ovation. Associate membership is not a legal designation in the EU, and the bloc's own rules say only European countries can apply to join. The Prime Minister's Office welcomed the idea of moving beyond the existing free trade agreement to what von der Leyen called an alliance for the future, but offered no detail on what associate membership would mean. Jonathan Wilkinson, Canada's incoming ambassador to the EU, played the proposal down, saying the two sides are "a ways away" from settling on a description and that Canada is not looking to be a member. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Carney cannot seem to get his story straight, and that Conservatives back the existing free trade and NATO arrangements but oppose EU taxes, EU laws, and EU open-border immigration policies being imposed on Canadians.
  
  
• Carney said the next day that whatever alliance Canada agrees with the European Union will be debated and voted on in Parliament. Speaking in Strasbourg after his own address to the European Parliament, he said there would be a series of debates, committee study, and ultimately a vote on the final structure of the alliance. He said the label would be for the EU to settle and that the substance of the arrangement matters more than its name. That substance is still being worked out, but Carney pointed to closer ties on critical minerals, defence, artificial intelligence, and energy security, along with letting young people live, work, and study on either side of the Atlantic and building an integrated market for financial services. A Canada-EU summit is set for Montreal on October 29th and 30th. Ten of the 27 EU countries have still not ratified the trade deal that has been in place provisionally for nine years.
  
  
• The federal government is making immediate expensing permanent through a new Productivity Mega Deduction, announced by Prime Minister Mark Carney at the Canada Investment Summit in Toronto on Tuesday, which lets businesses write off the full cost of most capital assets in the year they are bought. It widens the roughly 15% of capital investment covered by last year's Productivity Super-Deduction to about two-thirds, taking in mining property, oil and gas pipelines, software, computer equipment, aircraft, rail track, bridges, and roads, and it applies to assets acquired on or after September 15th. Finance Canada puts the cost at $36 billion over five years starting in 2026-27, and says the marginal effective tax rate on new business investment will fall from 13% to 6.4%, against 16.9% in the US and an OECD average of 19%. The government estimates that the $8.5 billion of average annual support will lift economic output by up to around $22 billion a year within a decade and raise long-term employment by up to 80,000 jobs a year. Business groups welcomed the move, with Canadian Chamber of Commerce chief executive Candace Laing calling it "a moment we've been waiting for". Brian Ernewein, a senior adviser at KPMG Canada, described the change as a timing difference that works like an interest-free loan equal to the tax saved on the faster writeoff, because the deductions would have been claimed eventually anyway.
  
  
• Carney also told his caucus in Ottawa on Friday that his government will bring in sweeping economic legislation this fall, which he called the Building Canada Strong Act. Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon said the bill will change the Canada Labour Code, add measures on supply chains, and take the next steps toward cutting regulatory reviews for all projects to one year, but he declined to give specifics because the bill has not been tabled. It is presented as the second phase of the Building Canada Act, which created the Major Projects Office to fast-track projects judged to be in the national interest, and it is expected to cover projects that would not qualify for that office's assessment. The existing review framework is the Impact Assessment Act, brought in by the Liberals in 2019 as Bill C-69 and long criticized by the energy sector, the Government of Alberta, and the Conservative Party for holding up oil and gas development. Parts of how that act is applied were already changed by regulation earlier in September. The Liberals return to the House with a slim majority of 173 seats, having won by-elections in Quebec, British Columbia, and Ontario in August.
  
  

🚨 This Week’s Action Item: 🚨