SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 47 - Mar/28/22

Mr. Arif Virani (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade, Export Promotion, Small Business and Economic Development, Lib.)

Mar/28/22 6:34:51 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank the member opposite for raising this important issue in the House. I just want to emphasize that the federal government is extremely disappointed that the U.S. Department of Commerce continues to apply duties to most exports of Canadian softwood lumber. Those duties are unfair and entirely unwarranted. They harm Canadian communities, of which the member represents in British Columbia, and the workers. They harm Canadian workers and Canadian communities right across the board, particularly the industries in Quebec and British Columbia, but also people who are purchasing homes right around this country. We understand that the softwood lumber industry is a key component of our highly integrated forest sector, and it is an economic anchor for communities around Canada. We know that Canadian interests in the softwood lumber dispute are best dealt with through a team Canada approach. Let me highlight this. What we are doing is that we are not taking a partisan approach and we are not taking the approach that favours a particular region. We are adopting this as truly a team Canada initiative and have done so continuously through our years in government. We are in close contact with provinces, territories, industry and other partners on how best to respond to the most recent U.S. decisions regarding duties on softwood lumber products. In January, the Minister of International Trade, Export Promotion, Small Business and Economic Development convened a round table with representatives from across the country to exchange views on Canada's approach to the softwood lumber dispute. One thing that is clear is that we stand by our industry and by the workers, and they can rest assured that Canada is actively contesting these unfair measures. What are we doing in the face of these unwarranted initiatives by the U.S. Department of Commerce? We have launched legal cases against the various U.S. decisions to date that have imposed duties on Canadian softwood lumber products. Under chapter 19 of NAFTA, Canada is challenging the 2017 U.S. subsidy and dumping determinations. These determinations are also the subject of WTO challenges. We are already seeing the results of those efforts at the WTO. In August 2020, the panel that adjudicated Canada's challenge of the subsidy determination found the U.S. duties to be inconsistent with the United States international trade obligations. Further, we are contesting, under chapter 10 of CUSMA, the first and second administrative reviews. I will pause parenthetically here. That is the very same provision under CUSMA that the official opposition, when CUSMA was renegotiated, urged us to abandon in order to get a deal done. Were it not for our determination in ensuring that the dispute resolution mechanism was entrenched, we would not have a vehicle for which to advocate for my friend opposite's very constituents and the industry she is purporting to advocate for. We are a reliable trading partner. In the past, all of these independent tribunals have consistently found that the United States allegations regarding softwood lumber are entirely without basis, meaning Canada has won at every turn. We will continue to litigate, because that is the route that is available to us. We believe that will ultimately be the case in this present dispute. In parallel, what are we doing? I reject categorically the categorization that was presented by the member opposite that we are somehow abandoning this issue or not making it a priority. To the contrary, we continue to engage on this issue with the U.S. government at every level. The Prime Minister has raised it with President Biden. The Minister of International Trade has raised it with her U.S. counterparts, that is U.S. Trade Representative Tai and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. An agreement is in the best interests of both parties involved, and we will only accept a deal that is beneficial to Canadian industry, Canadian workers and Canadian communities.

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Mrs. Tracy Gray

Mar/28/22 6:38:23 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it has been seven years. What I was asking the NDP-Liberal minister for was an outline of actions the government will be taking on negotiating a softwood lumber agreement, not just raising the issue. The last softwood lumber deal was negotiated by the previous Conservative government, including achieving an extension, which expired in 2015. The Liberals did not negotiate softwood lumber into CUSMA, nor through three U.S. presidents, and they did not sit down and negotiate a new deal. Lumber production is up in the United States, yet down in Canada. Mills have closed in Canada, thousands have lost their jobs and lumber prices have skyrocketed in large part due to U.S. tariffs affecting construction costs. We now have testimony at the trade committee that increases in lumber costs have increased inflation. Residents in my riding of Kelowna—Lake Country cannot afford these cost increases affecting construction and housing prices. Could the NDP-Liberal minister tell us how long the government expects the forestry industry and my constituents dealing with inflationary costs to wait for a softwood lumber agreement?

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Mr. Arif Virani

Mar/28/22 6:39:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what I would say in response is that we are working on this at all levels, as I have indicated. We are taking a team Canada approach. In the most recent trade trip by the minister in the fall, she brought with her representatives of the official opposition, as well as the NDP, to participate in that team Canada approach. What we are doing is emphasizing that these tariffs do not just hurt Canadian communities, but they also devastate American communities, because by virtue of the duties placed on Canadian lumber coming in to build American homes, it is escalating the price of homes in the United States. The result of this advocacy has been that recently we have seen 100 different congressional representatives from both sides of the American House petition the Biden administration to reduce these unwarranted tariffs for the benefit of American homeowners. That is the kind of advocacy we need more of. That is the kind of advocacy we will continue. We will not cease to make this a priority in terms of all of our relations with the American administration.

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Mr. Tako Van Popta (Langley—Aldergrove, CPC)

Mar/28/22 6:40:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am here this evening to talk about the recent flooding in the Fraser Valley, in particular in the Sumas Prairie area. The Minister of Emergency Preparedness or his parliamentary secretary will be well aware of the extent and dimensions of the damage and the estimated cost for repairs. It is somewhere between $339 million and $580 million to seismically upgrade the Sumas Prairie diking system and the Matsqui Prairie diking system, and probably about that much money again to pay for repairs that need to be done because of the damage caused by the recent flooding. Tonight, I want to talk in particular about another aspect, which is the American impact on the flooding on the Canadian side. The Nooksack River runs in the U.S. Just like the Sumas River, it breached its dikes during the floods in November. By way of reference, north is downhill, and that water ran into Canada. Canadians have said, “Good neighbours don't flood their neighbour's property”, and Americans have said, “Well, good neighbours don't actually block the natural flow of the water”, and that is the natural flow. One American official is quoted in the Vancouver Sun as saying, “You're not going to argue against the lay of the land. Sumas Prairie is a lot lower than Everson” on the American side, and that is absolutely true. Sumas Prairie on the Canadian side used to be Sumas Lake until about 100 years ago. Pioneers decided to build a dike around it. They cut in canals, put in pumping stations and pumped Sumas Lake dry. It has become very productive farmland now. Fixing the Canadian side is going to be the easy part. That is roughly $1 billion. Fixing the American side is going to be much harder from an engineering perspective, but also from an international relations perspective. Canadians are hoping that the Americans will improve the dikes and the levies on the Nooksack River, but there is, of course, a downstream risk for the Americans with that. The Americans prefer a natural floodway northwards across the Canadian side of Sumas Prairie to the Fraser River. They are already buying up farmland for that. If that happens, it will have a devastating impact on the Canadian side. There is a lot of very densely populated and very productive farmland at risk here. My question to the government is this. What is the government doing in negotiating with the U.S. to come up with a sensible solution to what looks to be a very serious international impasse?

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Mr. Yasir Naqvi (Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and Minister of Emergency Preparedness, Lib.)

Mar/28/22 6:43:32 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, in response to the hon. member for Langley—Aldergrove, I will start by saying that our thoughts remain with the families of those who have lost loved ones and all those affected by the floods, landslides and extreme weather conditions in British Columbia last November. Our government recognizes that this was a flooding event of extraordinary scale and scope. While the full causes of the event have yet to be determined, the Insurance Bureau of Canada has estimated the insured damages to be at least $550 million, and we know that climate change is making these kinds of events more frequent and more severe than ever before. The President of the Queen's Privy Council and Minister for Emergency Preparedness travelled to the province earlier this month to survey the rebuilding progress in some of the most severely affected regions, including Merritt and Abbotsford, and spoke directly to those whose homes have been impacted. The minister saw that the people of British Columbia are working hard to rebuild their lives. However, we agree with our hon. colleague that there is much more work to be done, not only to build back from this event, but to create more resiliency in our infrastructure and communities to mitigate the impacts of future disasters. We have made a commitment to British Columbia and those impacted by these floods that our government will be there for them during the rebuild. That is why our government has formed a joint committee with British Columbia to work alongside indigenous leadership on immediate and ongoing support. Through this committee, we also discuss how we can enhance climate adaptation and response measures to better prepare communities for future events. Improving infrastructure resiliency was one of the top priorities the committee set out during its first meeting in December. The disaster financial assistance arrangements program, also known as DFAA, remains a key component of how the federal offers financial support to the provinces in the aftermath of these kinds of events. To speak to the effectiveness of the program, through the DFAA the federal government has paid out over $6 billion in postdisaster assistance to provincial and territorial governments since 1970. As I have previously confirmed to the House, the Government of British Columbia has submitted an initial request for support under the DFAA for November's flooding, and our officials are working together with their provincial counterparts to move this request forward. As we continue to work with the province on rebuilding from this disaster, we also continue to work on a number of measures to better prepare for and respond to weather-related events of all kinds. In 2019, we collaborated with federal, provincial and territorial partners, indigenous communities and municipalities to develop the emergency management strategy for Canada. This strategy sets out common priorities and areas for action when it comes to helping Canadians and their communities better predict, prepare for and respond to natural disasters. Through budget 2021, our government has allocated funding to complete flood maps for high-risk areas in collaboration with the provinces and territories. Budget 2021 also provided an additional $1.4 billion in funding to expand Infrastructure Canada's disaster mitigation and adaptation fund and to support projects such as wildlife mitigation activities, rehabilitation of stormwater systems and restoration of wetlands and shorelines. Finally, several ministers have been mandated to collaborate to develop a national climate change adaptation strategy and invest in reducing the impact of climate-related disasters, including flooding. I thank the member for his advocacy on this issue on behalf of his constituents, and I look forward to working with him as we develop solutions to better protect his communities and the rest of British Columbia.

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Mr. Tako Van Popta

Mar/28/22 6:47:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, of course, we in the Fraser Valley are grateful for support from the federal government in funding repairs and enhancing infrastructure to adapt to climate change. However, my real question today is this: What is the state of negotiations with our American counterparts regarding the Nooksack River specifically, which drains Mount Baker and the North Cascade Mountains? I ask because we cannot solve the problem on our own. Fixing the Canadian side is the easy part; we know exactly what needs to be done. It is just going to require money and a lot of energy. I want to know what our relationship is with the United States on that matter.

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Mr. Yasir Naqvi

Mar/28/22 6:48:00 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as the member opposite knows, we of course work very closely with our American partners. In this instance, it is important that we also work very closely with the Province of British Columbia. As I mentioned, we have formed a joint committee with the province to work alongside indigenous leadership on immediate and ongoing support and to better understand the future steps that need to be taken in terms of adaptation, from a climate change perspective, and in terms of infrastructure resiliency. That would also involve talking about cross-border issues, and I am sure, with the help of the member opposite and working with our colleagues in British Columbia, we will be able to come up with solutions that work best for all our communities.

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Mr. Daniel Blaikie (Elmwood—Transcona, NDP)

Mar/28/22 6:48:50 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am rising this evening to follow up on a question that I asked at the end of last year about the government's treatment of some of the most financially vulnerable during the pandemic, including many seniors. Since then, we have gone through the omicron wave of COVID-19, and a couple of things stand out about that wave in particular. The first is that I think it was a wave where people were, relatively speaking, less concerned about the effects on their personal health. That is not true for everyone, but it is true for many who noted that omicron, we are told, had less severe symptoms for many people who got it than those who got one of the preceding variants of COVID-19. Also, frankly, there was very widespread uptake of the vaccine by the time omicron got here, which had not been true for previous iterations of COVID-19. Overall, for many people, it was a wave that felt less threatening from a personal health point of view, although there were still many people who found themselves in hospital, many people who were seriously ill in hospital and many people who were concerned about access to medical services for things other than COVID. They may not have been as worried about COVID getting them very sick, but they were still concerned about access to medical resources in the event that they were sick or injured from something else. It was a very disruptive wave, and there was a lot of fear and anxiety on the financial side that we had not quite experienced with the other wave. This was largely because it was the first big wave of COVID since the government had chosen to first drastically reduce the amount of CRB payments by 40%, from $2,000 a month to $1,200 a month, and because the Liberals ultimately did away with the CRB program altogether post-election and replaced it with programs that were much more difficult to access. It was the first time that a lot of Canadians really did not have robust financial support to fall back on when the economic disruption of omicron struck. I raise that because many Canadians are still contending with those very difficult economic circumstances. There are seniors experiencing that. New Democrats fought very hard in the fall alongside people in civil society and many seniors' advocacy groups to make sure that those seniors who were being punished by having the CRB, which they rightly received according to the rules, clawed back through their GIS. They were being evicted from their homes and released into destitution. We finally succeeded in getting the government to try and correct that. That was a good thing. We are hoping that the assistance is going to arrive in the weeks to come, very shortly in April, but we are thinking about seniors who are still facing a lot of cost challenges, particularly those seniors between the ages of 65 and 75 who are not going to see the increase in the old age supplement that other seniors are seeing. We in the NDP feel that there is a fundamental unfairness there to be creating two tiers of seniors, and I want to ask the government if it will finally decide to get rid of the two-tier senior model and have a uniform increase for the old age supplement that would apply to all seniors.

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Mr. Irek Kusmierczyk (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion, Lib.)

Mar/28/22 6:52:50 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Madam Speaker, I think all of us agree that, during the pandemic, so many of our most vulnerable Canadians and constituents were severely impacted and, of course, seniors are at the top of that list in terms of the challenges that they faced. However, contrary to what my colleague is suggesting, the financial support needed by more vulnerable Canadians remains available and has been there from the start of the pandemic. From the onset of the pandemic, the Government of Canada has been implementing measures to help those who need it most. Today I am going to focus on an additional program available to provide temporary income support for the most vulnerable in Canada. This additional support came through Bill C-2, which we tabled in December 2021 and was promptly passed, thanks in large measure to the NDP. This bill enabled us to provide benefits to Canadian workers whose employment was impacted by COVID-19 in designated lockdown regions. In light of the omicron surge, Bill C-2 proved to be very forward-looking. Among other things, the bill introduced the new Canada worker lockdown benefit. It also extended the weeks available for the Canada recovery sickness benefit and the Canada recovery caregiving benefit. I am not going to go into too much detail, but I will briefly explain what the new Canada worker lockdown benefit is. The benefit provides income support of $300 per week through to May 7, 2022, to eligible workers who are directly affected by a public health lockdown order related to COVID-19 in their respective region. Eligible workers can apply within 60 days of the lockdown in their designated region to receive the benefit retroactive to October 24, 2021. In December 2021, in response to public health restrictions brought about by the omicron variant, we temporarily expanded the Canada worker lockdown benefit definitions so that more workers would be eligible. This temporary definition ended on March 12, 2022. My colleague's question implies that the government is using financially vulnerable people as the basis for economic recovery and that assertion is false. The truth is that some beneficiaries received overpayments because of, for example, the Canada emergency response benefit advance payment. We are in the process of identifying those overpayments, and we will proceed with recovering them. By the way, flexible repayment options are available to prevent undue hardship for recipients. Canadians are at the very heart of every decision this government makes and, yes, financial support is there for more vulnerable Canadians.

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Mr. Daniel Blaikie

Mar/28/22 6:55:46 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Madam Speaker, there are a few things to correct. New Democrats actually opposed Bill C-2, and we did it because we did not feel that the financial support was going to be adequate. We felt we should heed the advice of many public health officials that new waves of COVID were going to come, and that turned out to be true. In fact, the government had to modify the conditions of the program just days after Bill C-2 passed because it was already clearly inadequate to the task of addressing the omicron wave. What is also going to be inadequate is having no meaningful increase in the OAS for seniors aged 65 to 74, which is why I will ask again if the government will change its tune and apply the OAS increase to all seniors, rather than only those aged 75 and above.

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Mr. Irek Kusmierczyk

Mar/28/22 6:56:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we are proud of our track record in terms of supporting seniors. One of the first things that we did for seniors was to restore the age of eligibility of OAS back to 65 from 67. We enhanced CPP. We raised the GIS for single seniors. We introduced the special tax repayment for those who receive OAS and GIS. We invested half a billion dollars for seniors' essential services and supplies during the pandemic, and we provided a one-time $500 payment to seniors 75 and older. Of course, this year we are increasing OAS by 10%. We have been there for seniors before the pandemic. We were there for seniors during the pandemic, and we continue to be there for seniors. We recognize that they are some of the most vulnerable Canadians in our society.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Mar/28/22 6:57:36 p.m.
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The motion that the House do now adjourn is deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, the House stands adjourned until at 10 a.m. pursuant to Standing Order 24(1). (The House adjourned at 6:57 p.m.)

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