SoVote

Nov/26/21 12:32:36 p.m.
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I know only a few members are here, but I remind everybody once again to make sure they have their mask on when they are not speaking. The hon. member for Joliette.

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Mr. Gabriel Ste-Marie

Nov/26/21 12:32:39 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Mr. Speaker, it is important to remind everyone in the House that the health measures are important. I want to start by humbly thanking the people of my riding of Joliette for putting their faith in me once again. I also thank all the volunteers and campaigners who pitched in during this election campaign. I am truly honoured to speak on behalf of the people I represent in Joliette. I will be talking about Bill C‑2, regarding the economic impacts of the pandemic. As members know, the pandemic caused a huge economic downturn, a recession. Some sectors had to be shut down to comply with health measures, and these closures dealt a blow to the economy. Over the past century, economics has shown us that the least bad solution during these periods is for the government to step in with income support measures. We had measures such as the Canada emergency response benefit, the Canada emergency wage subsidy and the Canada emergency rent subsidy. These measures obviously need to be specific and well targeted if they are to be effective. This is why the Bloc Québécois was generally in favour of them. The Bloc is in favour of effective spending and against waste. We now seem to be emerging from the pandemic-induced economic crisis, and that is encouraging. The latest statistics released by the government show that for period 21, there were just over 300,000 applications for the wage subsidy, which is about 10 times fewer than there were a few periods ago. We appear to be on the right track. However, we all know that some economic sectors, businesses and workers have been hit harder by the pandemic. Some sectors will need more time to get back to the way things were before the pandemic. We think it is important to bring in effective programs to help these sectors overcome the pandemic. We believe in that, because we want to be able to count on the women and men who work in these sectors after the pandemic, once the new normal sets in. In the meantime, however, we have to be prepared to work together for the common good. In one of our first encounters after her appointment during the last Parliament, I pointed out to the Minister of Finance the importance of targeted measures and predictability. Unlike in previous years, when this was rarely the case, these two components are included in Bill C‑2. The two measures proposed in the bill will apply until May 2022, with the possibility of being extended until July. That provides some important predictability and, for the first time, specific sectors are targeted. This all seems great, and we applaud it. Right now, the government is telling the House that action is urgently needed. The last period has ended, and the bill must be passed to avoid an interruption in subsidies. Therefore, we must hurry up, so much so that the government wants to invoke closure. I would like to remind the House that the Liberal Party and its government are the ones responsible for this urgent situation. Did the public really want a general election? It seems that they did not, but the government was hoping to win a majority. Voters said no. Moreover, it took the government two months to recall the House. During that time, we could have been studying Bill C‑2 and taking the time to ensure that it adequately meets people's needs and the needs of our economic sectors. We did not get that time, because the government preferred to delay opening the new Parliament and resuming the work of the House. Now the government is saying that action is urgently needed. That is obvious. It reminds me of a student who has two weeks to study or do their assignment, but who waits until the day before the deadline or the exam and realizes they must get going. Yes, it is urgent, but the student should have started earlier. The government could stand to learn that lesson. It needs to take responsibility. If Bill C‑2 passes second reading, and the Bloc Québécois will soon be sharing our concerns about that possibility, we believe it will be extremely important to take the time to study the provisions properly in committee. The bill sets out percentages for sectors such as tourism and culture. There are some more targeted and more accommodating proposals. There are measures for other sectors in general. The bill requires a business to have lost 40% or 50% of its revenue before being eligible for assistance. Are these percentages carefully targeted? For the Canada emergency wage subsidy, people will receive a specific percentage. Is that percentage appropriate? All of this must be studied in committee. We need senior officials to explain the reasoning behind these percentages and share their figures and information. We can then decide whether the policy proposed in this bill is appropriately targeted. We need to do the work. We will have to hear from different groups and sectors in society about whether the measure is good and whether they have any amendments to suggest. When the House passed economic aid bills under a gag order, the government had to come back to the House a month or two later to say that it was wrong, that it had made mistakes and that it had cut corners. Why? It is because those bills were all passed at the last minute, without taking a step back and without taking the time to study the bills and improve them. Sometimes, when we try to move too fast, it slows us and everyone else down. At the beginning of the pandemic, it was important to act quickly, so there may have been flaws in the legislation. However, the government could have quickly done better by targeting the measures more carefully and by taking more time to examine the issue, rather than proroguing Parliament or, more recently, calling an election and taking two months before coming back to the House. I would like to remind members that the wording of Bill C‑2, as it now stands, gives the Minister of Finance a lot of discretion. If certain sectors need to be added during the designated assistance period, she would have the power to do so, just as she could change the percentages if needed. Our hope is that, if this bill is passed, the government will use that discretion to support industries properly and respond to needs quickly. One group is conspicuously absent from this bill: self-employed workers. Yes, there is the rent subsidy, but there is essentially nothing else in the bill. The people I have in mind are self-employed workers in the cultural sector. Supporting them is extremely important, but there is nothing in the bill as it stands. That is an issue I have with the principle of the bill. Why were these workers left out? That is a huge problem. The government has hinted that there will be a program a few months from now, but how are these self-employed workers supposed to make it through until then with no income? This is very troubling. Members may recall that, a few years ago, technicians and salaried employees in Quebec's cultural sector were asked to switch to self-employment to better meet the industry's needs. That is what they did, so now we need to help and support the sector. There are lots of self-employed workers in the economy, but the government is not giving them anything in this bill. That is a problem. This sector is made up of people, women and men who need support. We must help them overcome the effects of the pandemic, which they are still grappling with. We have not forgotten them, and this oversight forces us to question our support for the very principle of this bill. That was an overview of our thoughts on the bill. Once I have answered members' questions, the House will hear a wonderful speech from my colleague from Terrebonne.

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Mr. Daniel Blaikie (Elmwood—Transcona, NDP)

Nov/26/21 12:42:16 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Mr. Speaker, the NDP shares the Bloc Québécois's concerns about the arts and culture sector and its self-employed workers. The problem is that there is no real equivalent to the Canada recovery benefit for that sector, and the Canada emergency wage subsidy is not available to people who are self-employed. That is why I was a little surprised that the Bloc leader was so quick to support Bill C-2 and say he would vote in favour. It is clear that there is a gap in the bill with regard to self-employed workers in the arts, culture, travel and tourism sectors. This gap needs to be filled, and I would like to know how we can work together to achieve this before the bill is passed.

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Mr. Gabriel Ste-Marie

Nov/26/21 12:43:18 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Mr. Speaker, I thank my NDP colleague for his question and comments. I would like to correct one main fact. The Bloc leader did not say that he would support Bill C‑2. We are debating it. We actually have some serious concerns, in particular with respect to self-employed workers in the cultural sector. When we read the bill, we do not see anything about that. The government is telling us that there will be something, but we do not know when. The Liberals are telling us that this is difficult. I am sorry, but in a G7 country with considerable financial resources, the state has the means, if the government is so inclined, to quickly put in place measures to support self-employed workers in need, especially those in the cultural sector. The government has the ability to effectively target these support measures. For that reason, if the bill is passed at second reading, it will be important to take the time to study it in committee in order to discuss the points raised by my colleague.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Winnipeg North, Lib.)

Nov/26/21 12:44:19 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Mr. Speaker, the legislation brings forward the extension of a great deal of benefits for Canadians and businesses in great need. I understand that Bloc members are open to supporting the legislation, and I applaud them for taking into consideration how beneficial this will be for so many people in Canada and our economy. I wonder if the member could provide his thoughts on the idea that in any piece of legislation, it is difficult at times to be completely encompassing and that there will be some follow-through to come. Are the essence and principle of the bill something that he could personally support?

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Mr. Gabriel Ste-Marie

Nov/26/21 12:45:05 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Mr. Speaker, as I said, we are not yet free from the economic consequences of the pandemic. We need to work together to help those sectors still struggling get through the crisis. We will need these women, men and businesses when the pandemic ends. The bill includes targeted measures and provides for predictability. That is good. However, it disregards the whole issue of self-employed workers, including those in the cultural sector, which is particularly troubling for us. Why extend the measures for some sectors and abandon self-employed workers in the cultural sector? We are looking at this bill and wondering whether we can even support it in principle. Why abandon these women and men in the cultural sector? This is a serious problem.

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Mr. Arnold Viersen (Peace River—Westlock, CPC)

Nov/26/21 12:46:10 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the member for Joliette on his re-election. I think it was in the National Post this morning, but we heard that there are over a million job vacancies in this country, and we are still waiting for a plan from the government on how it is going to get people back to work. The Liberals brag about the low unemployment rate, but businesses are looking for workers. In my home province, the oil patch is getting fired up again, with a starting wage of $55 an hour. People should come on down. Let us get these jobs filled.

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Mr. Gabriel Ste-Marie

Nov/26/21 12:46:57 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Mr. Speaker, the labour shortage is a serious matter. The government has to do something about it and come up with solutions. In the long term, there will obviously be the issue of business productivity. There needs to be a major cleanup at the department of immigration and that is something the government has to tackle. There is also the issue of seniors. Can we put tax measures in place to give them a hand and encourage them to return to the workforce without losing all their pension income? This is an important issue that we will come back to.

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The Deputy Speaker

Nov/26/21 12:47:34 p.m.
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Resuming debate. The hon. member for Terrebonne.

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Ms. Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné (Terrebonne, BQ)

Nov/26/21 12:47:43 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by thanking my esteemed colleague from Joliette for sharing his time with me, and my other colleagues for allowing him to do so. I would like to draw everyone's attention to the fact that this is day two of the days of action on violence against women. As we all know, women were the pandemic's first casualties. They suffered psychologically and physically. There were more cases of intimate partner violence during the pandemic. We also know they paid the heaviest economic price. In fact, 68% of those who lost their jobs between October 2019 and October 2020 were women. That is more than two-thirds of the newly unemployed, and it is a huge segment of the population. In addition, many female entrepreneurs worried they might not be able to make it through the crisis. We know that what women need is financial independence. That is why it is the government's job to protect vulnerable populations and to protect women, and that is why it should offer programs to support that segment of the population. As my colleague from Joliette mentioned, that is why the Bloc Québécois is in favour of measures to support workers in need and those segments of the population that need the most help. This health crisis has been going on for 20 months, and for 20 months, the government has been proposing measures that we do not feel are targeted enough. One the one hand, business owners are coming to see us and saying that the government needs to do away with benefits for all workers because they are contributing to the labour shortage, but on the other hand, some segments of the population have been left out of Bill C-2, as my esteemed colleague mentioned. I am thinking about cultural workers, mostly. Self-employed cultural workers are not included in this bill, and that is one of its shortcomings. That is why we need to discuss it and work on it. I want to point out that this situation is unacceptable. It is not right that, after 20 months of this pandemic, we are still at this stage and some sectors in need are still being left out. This includes self-employed cultural workers. Currently, they are not covered by the emergency measures. That is because the government called an election, and we are now dealing with a bill that is seeking to speed things up and fails to propose any measures for cultural workers. We called for a better targeted bill and it took 20 months for the government to introduce one. The government has not done its due diligence for the most vulnerable members of society.

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Ms. Rachel Blaney (North Island—Powell River, NDP)

Nov/26/21 12:50:59 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the member on her first speech in this House. I am really happy to be here on this day with her. I know that across the country, especially in my riding of North Island—Powell River, there are a lot of seniors whose guaranteed income supplements are being cut back significantly. It is leading to them not having a home. It is very hard to talk to a 79-year-old senior about how they are going to be living on the streets within the next week or so. Could the member speak about any concerns that she and her party may have about leaving vulnerable seniors so far behind?

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Ms. Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné

Nov/26/21 12:51:46 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Mr. Speaker, I thank my esteemed colleague for her question. The Bloc Québécois is very concerned about seniors. The Bloc Québécois is fighting to put an end to the two age groups being used to determine eligibility for the benefits. As members know, the pandemic hit seniors hard, in terms of both their finances and their health. That is why we also want to study this bill in committee. We want to look into this type of issue and work on behalf of the seniors we know are suffering because of this pandemic.

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Mr. Arnold Viersen (Peace River—Westlock, CPC)

Nov/26/21 12:52:30 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Mr. Speaker, in Canada we have over a million job vacancies. Restaurants are closing at four o'clock in the afternoon because they cannot find people to work there. In my riding they are talking about bringing in temporary foreign workers to work in the oil patch. Those are $55-an-hour jobs that they cannot find people to work for. I see nothing in Bill C-2 that would help to alleviate the job crisis that we have in this country. What does the member have to say about that?

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Ms. Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné

Nov/26/21 12:53:08 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Mr. Speaker, much like my colleague, the Bloc Québécois is concerned about the labour shortage. A number of businesses in Terrebonne have come to tell me that they are having a hard time finding workers. We are in the middle of a labour shortage, but the shortage has been around since before the crisis. I should point out that this labour shortage could be exacerbated by the CRB, which is why we are calling for more intelligent, targeted measures. This is what the Bloc Québécois is calling for, but that does not mean that we should stop supporting vulnerable populations. Some populations are still vulnerable in this pandemic, in particular self-employed cultural workers. We must continue to support these groups.

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Ms. Andréanne Larouche (Shefford, BQ)

Nov/26/21 12:54:01 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague from Terrebonne on her speech. I want to talk more about two segments of the population that were mentioned. My colleague raised the issue of women. As critic for status of women, I am a member of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, which had an emergency meeting in the summer of 2020 to look at how the pandemic was disproportionately affecting women. We cannot deny that some sectors will be further affected, and the bill addresses those sectors. Culture and tourism employ many women, and they will need to be supported to get through this crisis. I wonder if my colleague could expand on the issue of seniors, particularly the message that the government sent when it cut the guaranteed income supplement for seniors who were working and support for those who collected the CERB. It is important to support seniors, because there are people over 65 who want to work, who want to contribute to the economy and help with the labour shortage problem. At this point, however, they are being penalized. I would like to hear more from my colleague on the subject of both seniors and women.

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Ms. Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné

Nov/26/21 12:55:07 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Mr. Speaker, I thank my dear colleague for her intervention. It is true that the government often sends rather mixed messages, in particular with this bill and with other measures where we see that certain segments of the population are left to fend for themselves. I am thinking in particular of seniors and women who have lost the most in this pandemic, as I mentioned earlier. I would like to mention one thing. The Bloc Québécois has been calling for the reform of the EI system for a long time. We find ourselves in a situation where we have to pass another bill 20 months after the start of the pandemic because we have not yet brought in the necessary EI reforms. We would not be debating all of this today if we had a system that would allow self-employed workers, among others, to access EI.

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Mr. Daniel Blaikie (Elmwood—Transcona, NDP)

Nov/26/21 12:56:08 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Mr. Speaker, I just want to take a moment to thank, once again, the constituents of Elmwood—Transcona for having placed their trust in me to represent them in this place. I want to thank my wife, Janelle, and our children, Robert and Noah, who support me in my parliamentary service, as well as all of our family, friends and the many volunteers who contributed to my being here today. I find this bill and the topic of pandemic supports interesting. I think it speaks to the crossroads that Canada finds itself at, in the face of two great challenges. On the one hand there is the challenge of pandemic recovery, and on the other there is the challenge of the climate crisis; they both raise similar questions. They raise questions of how to support workers who suddenly see their industry dramatically hurt by forces beyond their control. They both raise the question of how to support vulnerable people who are not able to work through times of crisis and the economic effects of those crises, like inflation, as an example. They both raise the question of how to direct investment in infrastructure and services in a way that makes us more resilient to the challenges we face. They both raise the question of how we decide who should pay the costs of these investments and what the mechanisms are by which those payments ought to be made. These are just some of the important questions that the pandemic and the climate crisis both raise. Getting the pandemic recovery right is important, certainly in its own right, but I want to begin with a reminder that these are not questions that are going to be over with the pandemic. These are questions that we are going to face in the years to come as the climate crisis worsens. The Liberals have been very clear in introducing this bill that, as far as they are concerned, we are turning the page on the pandemic. If we look around, it is quite clear that we are not past the pandemic. In fact, I heard many Liberal members yesterday in the debate about a hybrid Parliament make arguments about how we are not past the pandemic and how the effects of the pandemic and the imperatives of the pandemic still very much rule our lives. Certainly, if we look around at different parts of the country, we can see that, in fact, we are in a fourth wave. Even when the public health crisis has passed, I think it is quite reasonable to expect that the economic consequences of the pandemic will extend past the end of the public health crisis and take longer to resolve. Earlier this week, the Deputy Prime Minister said that Canada has recovered all the jobs lost during the pandemic, and that statistic may true in terms of the number of available jobs out there. However, it is also true that the unemployment rate is almost 7%. It is also true that the inflation rate is over 4% and that employers are complaining about a labour shortage. What do all those numbers mean? We often throw figures and statistics out in this place without getting to the core of what those numbers mean for people across the country. They mean that there are many Canadians looking for work, but they are not the Canadians with the skills, the education and the experience that employers are looking for right now for their business. Otherwise, they would find it a lot easier to get that job, and more employers would be satisfied that they can find workers. It means that even as this mismatch in the labour market is frustrating employers and keeping Canadians who want a job unemployed, both people and businesses are facing rising costs after depleting all of their reserves trying to cope with the economic disruptions of the pandemic. These numbers mean that it is absolutely not the time for the federal government to turn its back on the people who need help the most, yet this is the direction that Bill C-2 takes us. New Democrats have been very clear that we believe the Canada recovery benefit should have been maintained for the time being and restored to its original level of $500 per week. We opposed the cut this summer to $300 per week. We were critical of the government not only for simply ending the CERB and doing it with only two days' notice, but also by choosing not to use the option they had of extending the CRB until November 20 just by regulation. By a wave of their hand, they could have allowed for another month of support for the almost 900,000 people who were still availing themselves of the financial help under the Canada recovery benefit. They chose not to do that. That still would have meant that the benefits only lasted until a couple of days before we assembled here to talk about next steps. We know that the cost of living never went down. In fact, it was quite the contrary, which is why it did not make sense to reduce the benefit. It was at $2,000 a month. The costs that people were facing for housing, food, home heating and other things went up and the Liberals thought it was time to bring the benefit down, leaving people to wonder how they were supposed to pay more for the essentials with less money in their pockets. One has to assume it was a simple attempt to starve people back to work: to make sure that they did not have enough from the benefit and maybe they would rejoin the job market. When reducing the benefit to $300 a week did not work, the government decided to cancel it altogether. The problem is, as I mentioned before, the people who need jobs are not the people employers are looking for. If so, they would be employed. It has already been a month since there has been no CRB support. No one has received CRB support for the last month, yet we have not heard from employers that suddenly they are able to hire the people they need and want to hire in their businesses. That is because other factors are driving the labour shortage. Consider that many people work in industries that have yet to bounce back. Jobs are not necessarily available in the sectors they had experience and training in, which can make it hard to find work. Consider that many people who were already close to retirement got to see what retirement life would be like, either by working a bit from home, or because they were laid off for a while during the pandemic. To protect their personal health, or just because they found that they could actually get by and they liked retirement life and it was their time to do that, they chose not to go back to work. They had worked hard all their lives and now it was time to take their retirement. There may be more early retirements as more workers are called back to the workplace and employers begin to end work-from-home mandates. If the Liberals were serious about having the backs of workers until the end of the pandemic, they would be working with employers to identify the jobs they need to fill and the inventory of skills needed for those positions, and then train people off of the pandemic benefit into the jobs that are available instead of simply cutting the benefit. Instead, they chose to reduce and terminate that benefit and financial support that could have made it easier for people to pursue the education and training they needed to get those jobs. This mean-spirited and ill-conceived approach to wrapping up pandemic benefits does not bode well for the promised reforms to the employment insurance system, because those reforms have to be about financially supporting people while they get the education and training they need to fill the positions that are available in the labour market. The Liberals had an opportunity to do that. With pandemic benefits, they failed to do that and now we have to worry that the same failure will plague the reform of the employment insurance system. I have to say, they are sure taking their sweet time on this. We have known for a long time that there are structural problems with the employment insurance system and we have not seen the Liberals act quickly in order to rectify those. We talked about the costs of these pandemic programs. It is worth noting that what fails to be mentioned is that at the peak of the CERB and CRB, about nine million Canadians were availing themselves of those programs. When the program was cut there were fewer than 900,000 people on those programs, which means over a 90% reduction in demand for the program. That means a 90% or more cut in the cost of the program, and that is before we consider that the Liberals cut the amount of the benefit by 40%. The ongoing cost of maintaining CRB for another six or 12 months is significantly less than what we have already paid out in CRB spending. Even if we accept for the sake of argument that it is time to pivot, as the Deputy Prime Minister has said, the targeted approach that the Liberals are taking fails by its own lights. I take the example of the tourism and hospitality sector. The government's targeted program is based on the wage subsidy program. It is a program that is only going to work for workers who are employed by somebody else, when many people such as independent travel agents are actually self-employed. There is no small number of people in that industry. About half of the independent travel agents fall into the category of being self-employed. About 80,000 or 90,000 are represented by the Association of Canadian Independent Travel Advisors. We are talking about 40,000 to 45,000 people. Those are some of the 800-and-some thousand who were still on the CRB. That is an industry that is composed of about 85% women. A government that likes to pride itself on gender analysis of its policies clearly has not done its homework here, and there is a gendered impact of the failure to extend a benefit like the CRB, because these women are going to have no income support under this. We spoke earlier about the arts and culture sector where many self-employed workers have no financial support. These people no longer receive financial support such as the CERB because these programs no longer exist. Without an employer, they have no way to receive financial assistance. Bill C-2 would also ignore the opportunity to address problems with the Canada emergency business account. We have heard from many small businesses, which clearly needed the support the most, that the one-year repayment deadline in order to enjoy the forgivable loan portion of that program is simply unrealistic, because they continue to be in serious economic trouble. Let us talk about the Canada worker lockdown benefit. When I asked the Associate Minister of Finance earlier today, we heard that it is going to be retroactive to October 23, so it is okay that they cut the CRB with only two days' notice for the people who were still on it. However, the Associate Minister of Finance confirmed earlier today that no region in Canada meets the criteria for the Canada worker lockdown benefit so far, so the fact that it is retroactive to October 23 is completely meaningless. It will not help anyone, because there is no region that meets the criteria in the legislation to date. Maybe there will be down the road, up to May 7. That is the cut-off for the Canada worker lockdown benefit. That is interesting, because the other provisions allow the government, by order in council, to extend those provisions to the end of June or the beginning of July. There is no such provision for the Canada worker lockdown benefit. That will end in May, short of another legislative intervention. When it came to the CRB, the government decided not to extend the benefits through October and November. They extended the other programs they could, but they chose not to do that for the CRB. When it comes to the CRB's replacement program, the government has created a program that does not cover the time between October 23 and now. The Liberals have also chosen not to give themselves the option to extend that program past May 7. We have to wonder what workers have done to the government to make it feel such a strong sense of retribution. This is just part of why this bill would really fail to take us in the direction that we have to go, and I think it is going to fail to address some of the immediate economic problems that we have, such as the labour shortage that employers are so keen to solve. It would actually take the government showing leadership and working with employers and employees or workers who are out of jobs to figure out how to match their skills to the jobs that are available. These are just some of the problems with the bill as written. In fact, the omissions from the bill are worse. The Liberals have failed to take the opportunity to implement a low-income CERB repayment amnesty. We know a lot of people who are already poor took the government at its word when it said that if they needed help they should go ahead and apply for help, and if they had doubts about whether they were eligible for the help that the government had created, they should apply. The government would figure it out later and they would not be punished or persecuted. I think of the kids who aged out of foster care in Manitoba during the pandemic. They went to the provincial government, because there were no jobs available in the summer of 2020. Let us not kid ourselves. It was not like there were a bunch of jobs on the market that they could have walked in to, and the provincial government said they could not apply for help from the province until they had applied for every other avenue of help. The government showed them the website for CERB and directed them to apply there. That was a no-fail application process, so of course those kids were going to succeed and they were going to receive CERB money. They did, and now the federal government is asking that they pay that back. The province sure as hell is not going to give them retroactive social assistance payments to cover the period that they missed because they applied for this federal program. Instead of showing some compassion, the federal government is chasing them down for money they do not have. What that will do is make it harder for them to get a proper start in life because they are already starting from behind. That is why we need to see a low-income CERB repayment amnesty in Canada now. I think of George from my riding, who is on the GIS. He applied for the CERB because he lost some employment income. It turns he just did not meet the $5,000 qualifying income threshold. He just missed it. Therefore, he has been asked to give that money back. George filed properly. He paid his taxes on that money, and because he was paid the net amount, he never got the gross amount. The government wants the gross amount back. On top of that, the government has included that income from CERB in what it is demanding back in the eligibility calculation for his guaranteed income supplement. He has had his guaranteed income supplement cut by $750 a month, while the government asks for the gross amount that it paid him in CERB when all he got was the net amount. His normal income has been shredded by the government's uncompassionate approach to the GIS and its failure so far to fix this problem, which is affecting up to 88,000 seniors across the country. I want to talk about these clawbacks a bit too. People were told that if they need help to take the help. We were told: “We are here for you. We have your back. We have your back until the end of the pandemic.” Seniors who were working to top up their GIS took the government at its word. What they found out this July was that they were not getting a pandemic benefit, they were getting an advance on their guaranteed income supplement for the next year, except they were not told so they did not bank the money. We know of some people who finally got dental work done. They had problems in their mouth that had been causing them pain and plaguing them for years. They could not afford to fix it before because we do not have any kind of national dental strategy, which is an issue for another day that I am happy to talk about, and it is something that the federal government should get moving on. Therefore, they used some of that money to fix their teeth. Sometimes people used some of that money to fix their car, which is how they get to work. They used it to pay off bills that they had not been able to pay off and on which the interest was piling up on. These people did not misuse the funds, but it turns out they were spending tomorrow's paycheque without knowing it because the government did not bother to tell them. There have been recent media reports that show the government knew about this problem at least as early of May of this year. The GIS reassessment happened in July. Why the government could not be bothered to at least issue a letter to let people know so that they could begin to develop a strategy, I do not know. It is shameful and the government has a real obligation to let them know. I have to say I was a little shocked this week. I heard the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion, in response to a media question on this very point at a press conference, say, “It's a more complicated issue than one would think because there's serious kind of fairness and equity issue for people who may have earned similar amounts in employment income. If a senior worked last year and made an equivalent amount, they too would have lost their GIS or had their GIS potentially reduced, and so we're working on a path forward that recognizes this.” It is interesting because the Liberals have no concept of equity and fairness when it comes to the largest corporations. Only when it comes to the poor, are they willing to nickel and dime. Let us talk about the Canada wage subsidy program and quote from the good work of The Globe and Mail on this issue. This is from May 10, 2021: Beyond a handful of hedge funds, some of the largest wealth managers in the country - household names such as Franklin Templeton, CI Financial, Gluskin Sheff & Associates - collected [the wage subsidy]. Collectively, these three companies manage close to $110 billion of assets in Canada. The Scotiabank Hedge Fund Index, which measures the monthly performance of Canadian-domiciled hedge funds with assets under management of at least $15 million, shows an average return of 11% in 2020, the best year for the industry in a decade. Another wage subsidy recipient was the hedge fund JM Fund Management appears in the same article: It's JM Catalyst Fund had such a good 2020, with outsized returns not seen by the fund since 2016, that it was ranked as the third-best performing hedge fund at the 2020 Canadian Heritage Fund Awards. Where is the concern for equity and fairness there? Companies who had competitors who did not take the wage subsidy are not being asked to pay any of that back, and they walked off with tens of millions of dollars, but God forbid that somebody who is poor got an extra couple of thousand dollars to fix their car, fix their teeth or pay off a late bill. That is why I think this bill gets us off on the exact wrong foot for the pandemic recovery, because that should be about making sure that the people at the top are paying for the recovery and the people at the bottom are getting the help they need, and this is not what we would be doing with this bill.

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Mr. Arnold Viersen (Peace River—Westlock, CPC)

Nov/26/21 1:16:50 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-2

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member's speech laid out the intricacies of the Canadian economy. It also laid out the intricacies of the average Canadian's everyday life and the fact that it takes a steady hand and a diligent government to ensure that there are no unintended consequences. Now we see a job market with a million empty jobs in this country. A million jobs are looking for a person because of the actions of the government. We see out-of-control inflation too. I do not see anything in the bill that would help fill those one million jobs. I am wondering if the hon. member sees anything in the bill that would help alleviate the jobs crisis we have in this country.

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Mr. Daniel Blaikie

Nov/26/21 1:17:13 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-2

Mr. Speaker, as I said, the CRB has been done for a month already. It is pretty clear to anyone who is paying attention that there will be no financial help for any of the people who were collecting the CRB. It will only continue for those who were receiving their help through the wage subsidy, a program that we know in some cases, like in Alberta, was actually used to fund scab labour while workers were locked out. No, this is not going to do anything for the labour market, because contrary to the claims of the Conservatives that I have heard many times, it was not the pandemic benefits that were causing the problems in the labour market. There is a lot going on in the labour market. We had a labour shortage before the pandemic. If the people who were receiving these benefits are going to help with the labour shortage, there is clearly a need for education and training so that their skills are suitable for what employers are looking for. That is a training mandate. It is the kind of training mandate that was cut out of employment insurance, which was then unemployment insurance, by the Liberals in the nineties and was never put back in. It is the kind of thing that has to be part of employment insurance reform going forward. The bill does not give me a lot of confidence that the government understands that.

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Ms. Christine Normandin (Saint-Jean, BQ)

Nov/26/21 1:18:26 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-2

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his excellent speech. The Bloc Québécois shares the same concern about cuts to the guaranteed income supplement for seniors. I do not think the situation can only be fixed through legislation. As of August, we could suggest considering the CERB as employment income instead of a benefit. An administrative fix could apply here. Considering that we have known about this situation since August and it is still possible to make corrections without amending a bill, does my colleague agree that the government has been dragging its feet?

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