44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 28, 2022 11:00AM
- Mar/28/22 1:07:53 p.m.
- Watch
- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, it is a privilege to speak in the House again.
Today is March 28, 2022, and we are debating the government's fall economic update, an update that was given in the House in December of 2021. Yes, we are actually debating budgetary measures that this government introduced over 100 days ago. In that time, Canada and the world have changed. With COVID, we saw omicron come and go, provincial lockdowns and vaccine passports established and removed, and we are now learning to live with the virus. In Ottawa, we saw the use of the Emergencies Act to call on police forces to crush peaceful protesters under the jackboot of the Prime Minister's basic dictatorship, and another dictator is currently using his war machine to crush our friends in Ukraine.
What are we doing here in this House of Commons? We are debating legislation that, among other things, would allow the government to get rapid test kits for COVID out to the provinces. Well, maybe somebody should tell the government that everyone already has rapid tests—
180 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Mar/28/22 2:25:00 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, trusting and working together is exactly what we have been doing over the past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, with record investments in health and safety worth $63 billion, in addition to $43 billion through the Canada health transfer.
Most importantly, this exceptional collaboration has saved tens of thousands of lives in Canada. Tens of billions of dollars have been injected to support household incomes. We are very proud of this, and we will continue to work together.
84 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Mar/28/22 2:35:57 p.m.
- Watch
- Re: Bill C-8
Mr. Speaker, the other side of the aisle continues to obstruct and delay important legislation that would benefit Canadians and make life more affordable. On Bill C-8 alone, which is up for debate right now, the Conservatives could stop blocking and gutting the bill so that $1.7 billion could flow for COVID rapid tests, along with $100 million for ventilation systems in our schools, tax relief for teachers and real action to help with the cost of housing. While they are obstructing, we are constructing. We are going to work every day for Canadians.
96 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Mar/28/22 2:51:20 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the incredible contribution that health care workers have made and continue to make in Canada's response to the pandemic. The omicron wave is receding, but we need to recognize that COVID is not going to disappear. Unfortunately, we know that COVID-19 presented challenges for our health care system. Too many Canadians had their care deferred during the pandemic, resulting in a significant backlog of surgeries and diagnostics.
Can the Minister of Health please update this House on its recent $2-billion transfer to the provinces and territories to help clear surgery and diagnostic backlogs?
103 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Mar/28/22 2:55:04 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the health minister's lines on COVID-19 change with the blink of an eye. Last month he told the House that provincial governments determine mask mandates. Now Liberals want fully vaccinated Canadian families that travel to the United States and return home to wear masks in all public settings for 14 days.
Where is the science for this unenforceable demand, and why is Ottawa interfering with what it previously said was provincial jurisdiction?
76 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Mar/28/22 2:56:22 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, last night I spoke with a heartbroken Lisa Budgell. She is living in Alberta and wants to properly mourn her mom, who just passed away in my riding. Lisa had one COVID vaccine, recently had COVID, and is waiting for her second shot. She is not allowed to board a plane in Canada. Lisa's mental health will be forever scarred if she is unable to say goodbye to her mom.
Will the Prime Minister have a heart, swallow his pride, follow the provinces and end these travel restrictions now?
92 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Mar/28/22 2:57:03 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I think the member of Parliament was very right in pointing to the difficulties many millions of Canadians have lived through in the last two years in the biggest health crisis in over a century and the biggest economic crisis since the Second World War.
The reason we went through this crisis well in Canada, and better than in many other places, is that we have stuck together and we have had each other's back. We have followed public health measures so that at the end we will end up stronger and more united and can look forward to continuing the fight against COVID-19 as we relax some of the measures we have seen over the last two weeks.
123 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Mar/28/22 3:04:20 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the pandemic created some unprecedented challenges for the Canadian health care system, and our system is in dire need of support. Although Canada's vaccination rates are high, COVID‑19 continues to threaten our health and our social and economic well-being. One of the impacts that the pandemic has had on the health care system is the cancellation of elective surgeries. My constituents are worried about whether the system can handle another wave of the virus.
Could the Minister of Health tell the House about the recent transfer of $2 billion to the provinces and territories to support our health care system?
107 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Mar/28/22 3:05:06 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Alfred-Pellan for his hard work and for his excellent question.
On Friday we announced $2 billion in additional unconditional funding to help the provinces and territories address the delays in treatments, diagnosis and surgeries; to support health care workers, who have suffered considerably because of COVID‑19; to improve access to primary care; to create digital personal medical records for everyone; to improve mental health and access to addiction services; to help everyone live and age with dignity; and to continue to ensure that—
95 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Mar/28/22 3:37:03 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I have a couple of petitions to table today.
For the first, the petitioners are concerned about the Prime Minister calling everyday Canadians racists and misogynists and are looking for the government to end all federal mandates related to COVID‑19.
44 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Mar/28/22 4:48:32 p.m.
- Watch
- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, this is a point we have brought up many times. This was a pandemic that required health care to kick into high gear. We have seen that happen in every provincial jurisdiction. The one thing that did not happen was increases in health care transfers to the provinces beyond what was already previously budgeted for. We also saw that a third of the COVID spending that the government put forward did not have anything to do with COVID, but was only couched in the language of COVID. If it was truly a pandemic of health care resources, which I agree it was, why was health care not the number one item increased in the spending priorities of the government during the pandemic?
124 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Mar/28/22 5:22:14 p.m.
- Watch
- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, I join this member in wishing her Green Party colleague all the best as he has recently been diagnosed with COVID. I would ask her to tell him that we want him to get better soon so we can continue to argue about fossil fuels.
I would agree with the hon. member, but with this caveat. Instead of taking money to give to Ottawa and then giving it back, why do we not just leave more money, but acknowledge the work that farmers are doing to fight climate change and soil erosion by having the government get the heck off their backs?
104 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Mar/28/22 6:48:50 p.m.
- Watch
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.
577 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Mar/28/22 6:55:46 p.m.
- Watch
- 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.
146 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
