44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 28, 2022 11:00AM
- Mar/28/22 12:48:34 p.m.
- Watch
- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, there is a lot I suggest the member needs to get a better understanding of. Bill C-8 is all about supporting, and continuing to support, Canadians through the pandemic.
Unlike the Conservative Party, we believe the pandemic is still here and caution still needs to be taken. On the whole leadership issue, and whether there is a lack of leadership, I would ask him to maybe reflect on his own Conservative caucus, especially when the Conservatives have made it very clear that they believe all mandates should end, effective today.
I am wondering this. Could the member provide the Conservative rationale on why the Conservative Party here in Ottawa believes all mandates should end today?
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- Mar/28/22 1:04:24 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, the member made reference at the beginning of his comments that Bill C-8 is all about ongoing support for Canadians, both directly and indirectly, in going through the pandemic. I want to highlight one area, which is with respect to rapid tests.
When the demand exploded for rapid tests back in December 2021, there was a huge need for the federal government to acquire and purchase additional rapid tests, and in a very short window we were very successful in our procurement of literally millions of rapid tests for circulation among provinces, territories and I believe even small businesses in certain ways. I wonder if my friend could provide his thoughts on why it was so important that we have legislation of this nature to enable us to get things such as rapid tests for Canadians.
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- Mar/28/22 1:05:25 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, I will start by acknowledging that before I was here there was plenty of work done in this place to ensure that rapid tests were procured. For my part, the last time I spoke on Bill C-8, I talked about the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce and how it has been calling out over past months on the part of businesses that needed a greater number of rapid tests.
I want to again clarify the comments I made earlier. I really appreciate that we need to ensure continued funding for rapid tests, particularly at a time when we are not through the pandemic and when we need to be doing more on vaccine equity around the world in places where new variants can continue to emerge because more has not been done. Certainly I will continue to support measures to ensure that rapid tests are readily available, as businesses and folks in my community have been calling for.
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- Mar/28/22 1:19:54 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, there are so many ways to answer that question, but I think I am going to focus on this: Did we need to spend money during the pandemic? We did. Was that money well spent, as the member asked? I would say in many cases it was not. I have seen many examples of organizations that received more money than they needed and businesses that received more money than they needed. We have lots of examples of people who were not even in Canada, inmates and all kinds of things. There was a tremendous amount of money that was not spent correctly.
At the end of the day we have to be very careful with Canadians' money, because this is the fundamental thing: It is not our, us in this room's, money. This is Canadians' money. This is money they earn and spend, and we have to be extremely careful and prudent in how we spend that money. When we put ourselves into debt, we are putting Canadians into debt, and we have to be extremely careful on that as well.
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- Mar/28/22 1:41:18 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today representing the people of North Okanagan—Shuswap as I speak to Bill C-8, An Act to implement certain provisions of the economic and fiscal update tabled in Parliament on December 14, 2021 and other measures. That was three and a half months ago, and 21 months after the first COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.
Much has changed in the past months since this bill was introduced. When I look at sections of this bill, I cannot help but question why the government has been so slow to respond to the pandemic and provide Canadians, and provincial and territorial governments, with the support they need.
In part 1 of this bill, we see one section proposing the introduction of a new, refundable tax credit for eligible businesses to claim ventilation expenses incurred to improve air quality. Why did it take 21 months for the government to offer this support to Canadians and workers?
Part 2 of this bill proposes to implement a 1% tax on the value of vacant or unused residential properties directly or indirectly owned by non-resident Canadians.
Part 4 of this bill authorizes payments to be made out of the consolidated revenue fund for the purposes of supporting ventilation improvement projects in schools. I hope we can all support measures to protect students, teachers and school staff, but again, why did it take 21 months for the government to propose this measure?
Part 5 of the bill authorizes payments for the purposes of supporting COVID-19 proof of vaccination initiatives. I ask everyone not to worry. I believe that within this too little, too late bill, there may be a timely response in part 6, as it authorizes the Minister of Health to make payments of up to $1.72 billion for rapid COVID-19 tests.
I do not want to get too excited about this proposal. I would like to know how many rapid tests Canadians will receive for this proposed $1.72 billion, so that all members may have a sense of what the cost per unit is that the government has negotiated. We still do not know what the cost per unit is that we paid for vaccines. Perhaps someone on the government's side could provide this information in today's debate, because my constituents and I, and many other Canadians, would like to know.
We are now months beyond the introduction of this bill and many more months beyond the point in time when Canadians, families, employers and schools needed timely, improved ventilation and access to rapid testing. Both as a Canadian and as a member of the House, I have to say that the government and its leader have let Canadians down. Why did the government wait until December 2021 to table these proposals?
When it was apparent that the Prime Minister would not recall Parliament for some time after last year's unnecessary election, I initiated consultations with representatives of indigenous, provincial, regional and municipal governments in my riding of North Okanagan—Shuswap to receive their perspectives on the needs and priorities of the communities we represent.
This bill could have helped Canadians and those communities as they worked their way through the challenges of COVID-19 had these proposals been tabled sooner. Rapid COVID-19 test kits could have helped to prevent the spread of COVID-19, especially in workplaces. Supports for improved ventilation systems could have also made workplaces safer for workers, and schools safer for students, teachers and other staff.
Unfortunately, like much of the government's response to the threats facing Canadians and the global community, this bill was too little, too late. Over 18 months ago, Conservatives were calling on the government to make rapid tests available to Canadians so that family members could see aging parents in care homes.
We called for more rapid tests so parents could have an alternative to keeping their children in isolation, home from school and out of other activities. People have missed work and businesses have closed because workers had to isolate, not knowing if they were positive or not. Others have lost their jobs and may not be able to return. All of this has impacted the hard-working residents who live in those communities I mentioned.
The timely provision of rapid tests could have saved jobs and businesses, and here we are today debating $1.72 billion for COVID-19 tests, over a year and a half after they were needed. How many family members have suffered anxiety, stress and mental health issues because they did not have timely access to testing? This is a number we may never know, but it is safe to say it is a significant number. I believe we all hope that the people in our communities will never endure those anxieties and uncertainties again.
Much of what I am speaking on today is about preventive and pre-emptive steps the government should be taking in order to avoid higher costs and to confront damages after they have been inflicted. In many of the consultations with the community leaders I mentioned, there was a common theme: the need for timely preparation for and prevention of known and likely threats and disasters, whether it be enhancing protection perimeters of communities against threats of wildfire and enhancing flood protection systems, or building more reliability into transportation and infrastructure, such as the Trans-Canada Highway from Chase, B.C., to the Alberta border. Residents and communities expect and need their federal government to be proactive and invested in prevention. Time is of the essence.
As for part 2 of this bill, does anyone in the House actually believe the 1% tax on absentee foreign owners will address skyrocketing housing costs in B.C.? Since 2016, the price of an average home has ballooned from $476,000 to over $811,000 today. This increase has been propelled by more factors than foreign buyer pressure alone. The government must take the necessary steps to look at this in its entirety, and the housing crisis, and develop proposals for a holistic response to deal with it. Increasing real estate prices are part of the inflation wedge that is expanding the gap between Canadians already in the market, who have housing access, and Canadians still trying to raise a down payment while clinging to the shrinking hope of owning their own homes.
I pray that it is not too late to curb the rising inflation for young people, such as my constituent Ryan, who lives in Vernon. He and his family are desperately trying to save for a down payment to purchase their own home instead of renting part of a home from their parents. Like many communities across Canada, communities in the North Okanagan—Shuswap need increased housing inventory to meet the needs of residents, especially those at low and medium income levels.
When I look at this bill, I am also disappointed that the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance failed to recognize the need for enhanced mental health supports. With all of the money her government has printed and spent over the past two years, one would expect some recognition of the mental health needs of Canadians, but this bill has none.
I would be remiss if I did not say that I speak today not out of personal concern for myself, but out of the concern I have for the young people of today and future generations who will be left to pay the interest on the debt the government is amassing under a short-sighted leader who only looks at today or the next election rather than at the long-term future of Canadians.
I call on the government to change its ways and embrace the notion of prevention. In the months and weeks leading up to the pandemic, the government ignored warnings from the Department of National Defence and the National Research Council. Prevention can save costs. Prevention can save lives.
In closing, I would like to thank the elected representatives across the North Okanagan—Shuswap, who I work with on an ongoing basis for the benefit of the constituents we represent, and the people of the North Okanagan—Shuswap.
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- Mar/28/22 2:25:00 p.m.
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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.
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- Mar/28/22 2:51:20 p.m.
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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?
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- Mar/28/22 2:53:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, from the beginning of the pandemic, we made a commitment to Canadians and Canadian businesses that we will do whatever it takes to protect their health and safety. We have put in place a system of measures to ensure that we protect travellers, protect workers and protect our economy.
The good news is that as circumstances are changing, we are adjusting these measures. We have always followed the advice that we have been receiving from our public health experts. Right now we continue to encourage people to get vaccinated because it is the best thing to do to protect themselves and those around them.
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- Mar/28/22 3:04:20 p.m.
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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?
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- Mar/28/22 4:48:04 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, usually the other parties accuse us of picking fights, but apparently it is not the Bloc this time.
Here is my question relating to my hon. colleague's speech. In the economic update, the government held the Canada health transfer to the legal minimum, which is 3%. I would like my colleague to comment on the fact that this is the absolute minimum and that the Canadian provinces and Quebec have been asking for significantly higher health transfers for a long time. An increase is overdue and would be perfectly reasonable following this kind of pandemic.
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- Mar/28/22 4:48:32 p.m.
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- 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?
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- 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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- 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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- 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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