SoVote

Ms. Bonita Zarrillo (Port Moody—Coquitlam, NDP)

May/2/22 2:47:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, a scathing report from the environment commissioner showed that Infrastructure Canada is no longer accurately tracking emissions for the projects it funds. Local communities depend on this data. They are on the front lines of climate change and are committed to meeting climate targets. They need the federal government to provide reliable information, as well as the stable funding they have been requesting. How can the Liberal government claim to support local communities when it is not even tracking the climate impacts of the infrastructure it funds?

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Context: House Hansard - 62 - May/2/22

Mrs. Jenica Atwin (Fredericton, Lib.)

May/2/22 3:03:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, eliminating all remaining long-term drinking water advisories on reserve is a priority for the government. To accomplish this long-awaited aspiration, it is indispensable that first nations communities need to access reliable funding for their water and waste-water services over long periods of time. Can the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Indigenous Services inform the House on how the government is working in partnership with first nations at every step of the way to ensure sustainable access to clean drinking water in first nations communities, specifically in Atlantic Canada, a territory governed by the peace and friendship treaties?

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Context: House Hansard - 62 - May/2/22

Mr. Xavier Barsalou-Duval (Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, BQ)

May/2/22 11:12:31 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Lac-Saint-Jean, who gave an excellent speech on Bill C-8. I thank him for sharing his time with me. It was wonderful to listen to him, and I might have been very happy just to continue listening to him. I do have a few things to say about Bill C-8. One of the first things we can talk about is how this bill was presented. When the government provides an economic update, it is often referred to as a mini-budget, and everyone has expectations and wants to see what is in it. When we saw Bill C-8, the economic update implementation bill, there was not much to it. Let us say that we were not impressed, but that does not really matter. We expect better from a government. We expect a government to do important things and make important announcements. We expect the government to do serious work, since it has public servants and staff. There are all kinds of people making requests, sharing ideas and wanting to change society. Bloc Québécois has all kinds of good ideas. The members across the way do not often take these good ideas, but they do from time to time. Today we are debating Bill C‑8, which contains different elements divided into seven parts, and I am going to focus on one of them. The Bloc Québécois had some questions about the other parts and was prepared to send them to be studied in committee, which is what happened. We had serious concerns about part two of the bill regarding the tax on underused or vacant housing belonging to non-residents or non-Canadians. The government wants to impose a 1% tax on vacant housing to help address the housing crisis. Will that make a difference? I am not sure. Could the idea of a 1% tax on vacant housing curb speculation to some extent or prevent these properties from being left vacant? It is possible. However, the most important question here is whether it is the federal government's role to implement this tax. Normally, when we think about housing and property taxes, we do not think “federal government”. In fact, if we take a step back, it becomes increasingly clear that this tax is nothing more than a federal intrusion into an area that is not under its jurisdiction, specifically municipal affairs and the property value of buildings. This was also pointed out by witnesses in committee, particularly the constitutional expert Patrick Taillon. Generally speaking, we expect that everything municipal will be handled by the municipalities, which are under provincial jurisdiction, not federal jurisdiction. If there were a tax to be imposed, perhaps Quebec should do it, but certainly not the federal government. I think we can discuss whether this is a good measure. There may be interesting ideas that warrant discussion in the context of such a measure. When we see who is behind it and wonder how it would be implemented, however, it no longer works, and that is the problem. This means that, unfortunately, we may have to vote against Bill C-8. There is not much in the bill to begin with, but it does contain something that is just unacceptable. In general, federal intrusion in one of Quebec's jurisdictions is often done through the government's spending power. This, however, is a different case, because this is not how the federal government usually interferes in Quebec's jurisdictions. For those who do not know it—which I do not believe is the case for the members on other side, who are very familiar with this strategy, as they often use it—the federal government's spending power lets it do indirectly what cannot be done directly under the Constitution. Essentially, the government will send a cheque, which it is not supposed to do, but people are going to take it because they need the money. There will be many strings attached. In the end, even though it is our jurisdiction and we should be making the decisions, the feds will be the ones deciding, because with all the conditions attached we are going to lose any possibility of truly controlling our levers and jurisdictions. Quebec's jurisdictions include our education and health care systems. Year after year we ask for more funding, but it seems that we hit a wall in Ottawa. We are told that we are being given more funding. The government will increase funding by 3% a year, but system costs are increasing by 6% a year. They are making fun of us. We continue to hear the same nonsense from them. The last budget was even worse. They basically added another layer, stating that “Any conversation between the federal government and the provinces and territories will focus on delivering better health care outcomes”. When they say “any conversation”, that is not about funding, it is about telling us how to manage our health care system. That is basically what they are saying. It is somewhat insulting to be told that. It is indicative of the direction that this government is taking, always encroaching on Quebec's jurisdiction. The health care system is a good example, but there are many, many more. We could take, for example, the infamous fight over pensions in the 1960s. I am too young, as my father was not even born in the early 1960s. When the war over pensions was being waged, some will remember that the Quebec government wanted to set up a system where people would contribute a portion of their money to a shared fund that would one day pay out a pension when they retired. It would be a big pool of money that would generate returns. That is what gave rise to the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec. The federal government did not like that. It wondered how Quebec managed to plan for such a big pot of money so it could have more control over its own destiny, which is why the federal level tried to bring in another regime that would compete or at least move faster. In the end, that did not work. The federal government ended up having to recognize the Quebec system because Quebec had been quicker. The federal level wanted to impose its own system to prevent Quebec from controlling the money. Perhaps the federal government wanted to provide better conditions for seniors, but we all know that, in the end, the aim of that battle was to determine who would manage the pot of money. Would those funds be invested to serve Ottawa's interests or Quebec's interests? That was the big question. Thank goodness that big issue was dealt with, because now we have problems again. Take the finance issue, for example. Who remembers the Canada-wide securities commission? How many courts ruled that that was under Quebec's jurisdiction? It is not up to the federal government to create a national securities commission, but they did it anyway, both the Conservatives and the Liberals, they really pushed it. Fortunately, after multiple attempts and a lot of hard work, the Bloc Québécois succeeded in sending the commission packing. Its funding was axed. That feels good. It gave Quebec's financial system some relief. What I just cannot fathom is the federal government's constant desire to get bigger. It is like a kind of spiderweb always out to suffocate the provinces, bit by bit. That is what it has done yet again with Bill C‑8. The federal government is going to take up all the space until there is none left for us. The Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords sought to restore the balance. That was the original objective. Every time the federal government reviewed areas of jurisdiction, it would say that it could not give this or that to Quebec, and there was ultimately almost nothing left. Quebeckers voted against these two accords because the offers were ridiculous, it has to be said. The federal government never seems to want to make concessions but is always trying to get more. We are seeing the same thing with Quebec's Bill 96. Ottawa, with its Official Languages Act, is finding ways to try to undermine this legislation and restrict it from applying to federally regulated businesses. I vehemently disagree with this and with the proposed centralizing measures they want to impose with their pharmacare and dental care programs. These may be good measures, but the problem is that they are not well intentioned.

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Context: House Hansard - 62 - May/2/22

Mr. Gord Johns

May/2/22 11:48:13 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, this is again the problem in the House. We have four official political parties and a fifth party, the Green Party, and what parties do not recognize is that when 27,000 people die in this country in six years, this issue should be addressed in the fall economic statement. In B.C. it has killed more people than COVID-19, yet COVID-19 responses are in this budget. Absolutely, this is a fall budget issue and it is missing in this document. It is missing in the funding and it is missing in the response from the government. I am disappointed to hear my colleague think that this issue should not be responded to in the fall economic update. I am going to go back to my speech, if I can. The second report says: Current policies are currently costing Canada huge amounts. In 2017, the estimate of healthcare costs in Canada related to the use of opioids and other depressants and cocaine and other stimulants was one billion dollars, and the cost of policing and legal proceedings related to drug possession exceeded six billion dollars. These are 2017 numbers. Yes, this is relevant to the fall economic statement. The task force recommended providing sufficient and ongoing funding to address the issue and stated, “Although a significant initial investment will be required to reshape the system and address the drug toxicity crisis, costs can be expected to decrease over time as the impact of new, more effective policies is felt.” That there are societal costs to problematic substance use is not news. In 2014, a report of the blue ribbon panel on crime reduction was prepared for the British Columbia provincial government. It states: Clearly, substance abuse is an expensive societal issue. Drug treatment is also an expensive enterprise. This raises the immediate question as to whether treatment is worth the cost. According to the US National Institute on Drug Abuse, “every dollar invested in addiction treatment programs yields a return of between $4 and $7 in reduced drug-related crime, criminal justice costs, and theft. When savings related to healthcare are included, total savings can exceed costs by a ratio of 12 to 1.” This is an economic issue. This was an opportunity missed in the fall economic update. The report recommended that quality mental health and addiction services be made more accessible, finding that evidence suggests such investments would lead to significant future savings. It is an economic issue and should have been addressed in the fall economic statement. Beyond these health and justice system costs, there are less visible costs to communities from the war on drugs. These costs are something I have heard a great deal about, as I have travelled the country to learn about the toxic drug supply crisis and speak about my private member's bill. I have been on a “stop the harm” tour, listening to people in Victoria, Duncan, Nanaimo, Edmonton last week, Saskatoon and Toronto. I was in Montreal today, in my colleague's home province, listening to frontline people. I hope he does the same, because they will tell him it is an economic issue as well as a human rights and health issue. In Halifax I hear the same thing. I was talking to Jean-Francois Mary at Cactus Montreal today. He said that for someone who gets HIV, it costs $35,000 a year to get medicine. For someone with hepatitis C, it costs about $75,000. He says he gets $250,000 in funding from the province but does not get any federal funding. He is here to stop the spread of HIV and stop hepatitis C, so this is an economic issue. I also heard this from Kayla DeMong at Prairie Harm Reduction. She said it does not make any economic sense that we are not investing in harm reduction. She just got her funding pulled from the Province of Saskatchewan. They need federal funding. I could go on, but I will go right to the fact that we need empathy right now. We need to listen to the people. We need to open our hearts on this issue. It is an economic issue and it is a human issue as well. I listened to Isabelle Fortier this morning, from Moms Stop the Harm. When I was at Dopamine in Montreal, she talked about her daughter Sara-Jane, who was studying law at the University of Ottawa. She got into a depression and started using substances to cope with it. She died 600 metres from a hospital from a preventable overdose. She wanted to volunteer at Amnesty International, Greenpeace and the Red Cross. She lost her dreams. One thing I have seen from coast to coast to coast in the eyes of the people who are struggling the most with this crisis is that they have fear in common. They are scared. They are scared about where they are going to sleep. They are scared for what they are going to eat. They are scared that they are going to die of drug poisoning. They are scared that they are never going to be whole again, or be with their families, friends and loved ones. They are scared that their dreams are gone. I am calling on all of us to have empathy. Gandhi said that, “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” I am calling on us to be leaders and to show that we have courage, that we care about the most vulnerable, that we do not fail them and that we unlock their dreams. It is good for the GDP. We have an opportunity. We can look to Portugal, which took a health approach instead of a criminal approach. It is proud of taking on a complex issue with a complex solution. It had courage, it did not have fear, and it was good for the country's economy. This is a fall economic update issue. It has been a fall economic update issue for six years. It has been a budget update issue for six years, with failed opportunities. I encourage us all to have the love, compassion and courage to make this issue a priority. All of us can dream to open up and unlock the dreams of the people who are dying right now by supporting them, by investing in them and by prioritizing them. We can do this, and I hope we will all do it and stop letting people die unnecessarily.

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Context: House Hansard - 62 - May/2/22

Mr. Mark Gerretsen (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate), Lib.)

May/2/22 11:54:57 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I must say that I really appreciate the passion that this member has displayed today. I would agree with him that this is an extremely important issue. I really hope that we can see better funding come forward and better action taken towards dealing with this serious crisis that we have. The member talked about the tour that he has been on in support of his private member's bill. I wonder if he can relay to the House what he has been hearing. What are some of the real-life experiences and stories that he has been hearing from people as he has been touring around the country? What they are saying, and what does he think they would want the House to know?

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