44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 15, 2022 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for her question.
I am very proud of our government and of all the measures we have put in place for seniors.
We helped seniors with these benefits during the lockdown, and they were included in taxable income. We have gone back and are making a fix, and rightly so. We do not want to penalize seniors going forward. That would not have been a regular amount of income they received.
I encourage all seniors to look at the number of measures we have put in place since 2015.
Seniors are most important to me because they are the ones who built our country and our future.
Our future is very dependent on what seniors have done in the past.
I am proud that we have put many measures in place for them.
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Madam Speaker, today is a great opportunity to rise in the House on this flag day. I want to note the importance and significance of today being the day we mark and recognize the Canadian flag, a flag we have seen on various people's knapsacks and backpacks throughout the world. It is a symbol people proudly wear to show where their home is. Unlike some other countries in the world, we are incredibly proud to show that flag as we travel in other parts of the world.
I would be remiss if I did not mention that it was MP John Matheson, who was from the riding just east of Kingston, the riding of Leeds, as it was called at the time, who played a key role in the development of the flag we now recognize as being the Canadian flag. I encourage those who are listening to look into the history of it a little. They will see the committee he led, and some of the different examples of flags that were brought forward. Ultimately, they settled on the one we have now come to cherish as the Canadian flag. I wish everybody a happy flag day. It certainly is an honour to come from the part of the country that was, at the time, led by an MP who gave a tremendous amount to the pride we now have and show through that flag.
It is an honour to rise today to talk about such an important issue. Right now we are debating the motion that would set the programming of how we will deal with this particular bill, which relates to the Old Age Security Act, and how we would make amendments to it in order to ensure those who experienced these clawbacks are properly taken care of.
I am concerned to see some of the posturing going on in the House today. We heard MPs from the Conservatives and the Bloc saying that they are supportive of the bill but not of this motion. Once again, I want to thank my colleagues in the NDP for recognizing the importance of this. The truth is we knew the Conservatives would be against it, which was a default, but the Bloc, quite frankly, is using this as an opportunity. It knows it has the luxury of voting against this motion because the NDP will be there to carry the weight the Bloc is unwilling to carry today. That is the reality of the situation.
We saw it with another equally important motion yesterday, where the NDP had to carry the weight of the Bloc, and now it is doing it again. I just want to thank my colleagues in the NDP for helping us get through this very important motion, and we know at the end of the day all members of the House will vote in favour of the bill because of the importance all members place on this issue.
This motion basically says that we would proceed moving forward with this bill in a very expeditious fashion, because it is very important to get it through. I can understand some of the need for rigorous studying of bills from time to time as they come to committee. I know members of the Conservative Party have said today that we need to study this bill and properly go through all of the details.
These are the same members who have been raising this issue time and time again and asking why something was not done yesterday. Now they have in front of them a programming motion that would basically expedite this and fast-track it, and they literally want to put on the brakes. They say that we need to hold on, study, give a lot of consideration in committee, and go through various procedural elements back and forth from committee and the House on what is an extremely simple bill.
The bill states:
for the purpose of determining benefits payable in respect of any month after June 2022, there shall be deducted from the person’s income for the year the amount of any payment under
It then goes on to list the four articles. That is literally the entire bill. I do not understand what could be studied in committee that would bring about some revelation of how an amendment should be made with respect to this.
This is an issue that all members of the House know about. I am happy to get into how we got to this point, which I will shortly, but it is an issue that all members of this House know about so well. They understand the content of it and exactly what this bill would do. To suggest that we should ensure that the proper, thorough, democratic process through the parliamentary system is maintained for a bill that is so direct in its nature of addressing a very specific issue is absolutely remarkable to me.
However, the Bloc has the luxury of not having to vote in favour of this motion so it can somehow stand on principle, but it only has that luxury because the NDP is once again creating a scenario for the Bloc to be able to do that. I again want to thank my NDP colleagues for staying above the partisanship of this and making sure we can move forward with this as quickly as possible.
I want to take a few minutes to congratulate the new Minister of Seniors on tackling this issue. She had not been a minister prior to this session of Parliament. She is the member for Brampton West. When she was appointed, she tackled this issue head-on, along with her parliamentary secretary, the member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour.
As she indicated in her comments earlier today, she made sure she consulted with various parties. She made sure she went to committee and answered the questions of committee members. She made sure she communicated with various seniors groups and groups that represent seniors' interests and that when she did this, she would get this right, in line with her mandate letter from the Prime Minister and in line with the very reasonable requests being made by seniors throughout the country.
I want to thank the minister for the work she has done to get us to this point, so we can ensure that seniors who experienced clawbacks relating to the CERB and other programs indicated in the bill are properly taken care of. Her mandate letter specifically says that she will, “Ensure seniors' eligibility for the Guaranteed Income Supplement is not negatively impacted by receipt of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit...and the Canada Recovery Benefit”, and that is exactly what this bill would do.
Bill C-12 builds on our commitment to old age security, to increase the guaranteed income supplement by $500 for single seniors and $750 for couples starting at the age of 65. Bill C-12 would also ensure that GIS cutbacks due to collective COVID supports will not happen again in future tax years. All parties, as I indicated, have raised this issue for sometime, so it is very odd to see that our Conservative friends across the way and the Bloc wanting to drag the parliamentary process down with this motion as opposed to just passing it so we can eventually vote on the bill.
I would like to go back to the creation of these particular programs and how we got to the position we are in. I found it very fascinating and quite perplexing, while listening to the member for Abbotsford this morning, when he pointed the finger at the government, as though the government is solely responsible for the issue that has been created. I would remind all members that these programs were passed by unanimous consent, by all members of this House.
Unanimous consent, for those watching, is when all members of the House agree to bypass a number of parliamentary procedures in order to get programs into place immediately. That is the manner in which unanimous consent was used back in March of 2020 and a few times afterward. Unanimous consent basically means that everybody agrees.
If one person disagrees with unanimous consent, it would shut it down, right there in its tracks, and the various pieces of legislation would have to go through the regular parliamentary process. However, we agreed to unanimous consent at the time because we recognized the incredible need that was out there for Canadians at the time.
Not only that, the minister at the time, Minister Morneau, went to great lengths when we heard the complaints about various different pieces of the supports from the other side of the House, and they were improved upon. I can remember, for example, that the original proposal by the government on the wage subsidy fell short, quite frankly, of what was really needed. The Conservatives were there to highlight that issue and to say that this particular support was not good enough and that we needed to do better. As a result, by working with the minister behind the scenes and outside of this chamber and fixing the legislation, we saw much better wage subsidy legislation end up coming forward.
If the member for Abbotsford is somehow saying that the government completely botched this legislation, well, he and the Conservatives had the opportunity to try to improve upon the programs at the time. In some instances they did, and in some instances issues were missed, but let us remember where we were at the beginning of this pandemic. At that time it was absolutely critical to get supports to Canadians as quickly as possible to support those in need, those who were affected.
Let us remember that at the beginning of the pandemic, nobody had any idea what was happening. We were shutting down businesses throughout the country. Provinces were bringing in lockdowns. We did not have the luxury of knowing what a lockdown is, as we do now. If a lockdown was brought in now, we would know what to expect. Back in March 2020, we had no idea what it meant, what the short-term, mid-term or long-term impacts of a lockdown would be. We have that luxury now, because hindsight is 20-20, but back then we did not. We did not understand what was happening.
The government—with the incredible support of the public service, I might add—developed these programs, working day and night, with the objective of helping as many people as possible as quickly as possible. Perfection was not an issue at the time. It was not seen, in my opinion, as a priority at the time. The priority was getting the supports out to people who needed them the most. That is what happened. That is what the government was able to deliver on, again with the incredible support of the public service.
I have said it a number of times in this House, and I will said it again: 5.4 million Canadians had money in their bank accounts within five weeks of the World Health Organization declaring a global pandemic. Let us compare that to the United States or any other jurisdiction in the world. It was regarded as the gold standard for taking care of Canadians in their absolute dire moment of need. That is what the public service was able to deliver for Canadians. That is what we were dealing with at the time.
Issues are going to come up, as the member for Abbotsford has indicated now that he has luxury of looking back on it 24 months later. Issues are going to pop up. The key is how we deal with those issues now to make sure that people are treated in a fair manner. That is exactly what we are seeing now. We are not only fixing some of those problems that existed before but also putting safeguards in to make sure that they do not continue to happen. It is the reasonable and responsible thing to do. It is the thing the minister was tasked to do in her mandate letter from the Prime Minister, and she has moved very quickly on it with her department.
I also find it extremely rich when I hear my Conservative colleagues across the way in particular trying to position themselves as the champions of seniors. It is absolutely remarkable when I hear the rhetoric that comes from across the way.
This is the party that in the last government sought to increase the age of retirement to 67 from 65. What grounds they think they have to stand on this issue as it relates to seniors I do not understand. I do not know where they are coming from. That is their record. They increased the age of retirement from 65 to 67. That is their record.
Our record is this: We enhanced the CPP. The QPP followed suit. We strengthened old age security and the guaranteed income supplement. We increased in general the number of services available to seniors. We provided a one-time $500 payment to seniors. This year we are increasing old age security by 10% for those seniors over the age of 75 because we know that once they get into that age category, they need more support. The data shows that as they reach the age of 75 and older, seniors have burned through more of their savings, their medical expenses are higher, and as such they need more resources in order to support themselves. We want seniors to support themselves. That is the objective, so increasing the old age security benefit for those who are over the age of 75 is an investment.
I am absolutely perplexed by the position of the Conservatives when they try to tout they are the champions of seniors, but I am equally concerned about what I hear coming from the Bloc. The last two Bloc members who spoke made reference to a unanimous consent motion when I asked a question. Let us understand this. Eight months ago, the Bloc members brought forward a unanimous consent motion. At the time, they were willing to deal with this problem through unanimous consent, as I described earlier, but now they are not even willing to vote in favour of this motion that expedites the process.
That is the hypocrisy. They referred to a unanimous consent motion to fix the entire problem through that one quick motion back in May, which they felt was fine to do then, and they chastised us for not agreeing to it; now we have a programming motion that would allow us to do this quickly, but they are totally unwilling to vote in favour of it. Again, this goes back to the luxury of not having to do it because the NDP is picking up the slack for the Bloc, as we are seeing.
I have already talked about the unanimous consent motion that the Bloc brought forward and the problems that existed with it. It was not indexed over time. It did not take into account the length of time that people had been in Canada. It did not have any kind of clawback based on income so that higher-income individuals would get less than those who really needed it. It was extremely problematic, yet they were willing to do that through a UC motion. Unfortunately, that just comes down to the politics of this place that we see time and again.
Quite frankly, we see it more often from the Conservatives. They bring forward these unanimous consent motions not because they think they will pass and fix the problem, but so the Bloc members can then go back to their constituents and tell them that they tried to help them but nobody wanted to agree with them and help them out. That is what we are seeing. Quite frankly, that is what the Bloc Québécois is doing in partnering up with the Conservatives. We saw it yesterday and we see it today. The Bloc and the Conservatives are continually partnering up together, and it makes me wonder why. I thought the Bloc was more concerned about seniors, as opposed to playing politics in this place in dealing with this bill.
I see that my time is coming to an end. I appreciate the opportunity to have provided some comments on this process and I look forward to any questions my colleagues might have.
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