44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 20, 2022 10:00AM
- Oct/20/22 11:13:27 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I did talk about the fact that affordability is a key issue for Canadians right now. Inflation around the world is very high, and Canada is below many of the other countries. We are seeing a slight decrease, but inflation is absolutely a top issue. That is why we are putting in extra supports to help Canadians. We are doing that with doubling the GST credit. We are trying to do that now with dental care and rental supports, and I am hoping that on those pieces, the Conservatives are going to stand up to help.
My question for the member opposite is whether he is going to help support people in his community by voting for the rental supports and dental care, so his constituents could take advantage of those programs.
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- Oct/20/22 11:16:17 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, people need help now. One of the things she said that was really concerning was about buildings. I agree with her that we need to retrofit buildings to help mitigate the climate crisis, but we also need to help people now. She gave the date of 2050, but people need help right now.
I am wondering if the parliamentary secretary will support the NDP, which is the only party willing to state it, in going after CEOs and big oil companies to get them to pay their share so we can pay for retrofits now. Families need help now.
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- Oct/20/22 11:52:01 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the NDP has gone to work in this Parliament and has pushed the government to put in place supports for dental care, a historic expansion of our health care system, and It is about time. Canadians believe universal health care is our most cherished institution. Our former leader, Tommy Douglas, was instrumental in bringing that about. Now, under the leader from Burnaby South, we have expanded it with dental care this year for children. Right across the length and breadth of our country, parents will be able to provide dental care for their children 12 and under. Inexplicably the Conservatives voted against that measure to help kids. They will have to explain that to their voters whenever the next election is held.
We also forced the government to provide supports to nearly two million Canadians renters through the renter supplement, hundreds of dollars that will make a difference to people in my riding.
Of course, the member for Burnaby South had been pushing for a number of months to get the doubling of the GST credit. That will mean anywhere from $200 to $500 that will go out in the next few weeks. Thankfully, the Conservatives, after initially opposing this NDP position, rallied. I think they finally understood the importance of providing those supports. As a result, we know those cheques will be on the way soon.
Canadians are living in difficult times. They are struggling for affordable housing. They are struggling to pay their health care bills. They are struggling because their wages have not kept up. In this corner of the House, Canadians know they have an NDP leader and an NDP caucus that is resolute about providing supports, and we have the track record to prove it.
Over the course of the last two Parliaments, almost every measure that has had a net benefit to Canadian families has come from the NDP caucus, leveraging in a minority Parliament our 25 voices, and 24 voices in the last Parliament, to make a difference for Canadians.
The fact that we have one leader in the House who has a laser-like focus, ensuring Canadians benefit from decisions made in Parliament, has made a difference in the lives of so many Canadians, but we have so much more to do, and we are going to continue to push. The reality is that we have had seven years of a Liberal government that has basically been paralyzed when it comes to the important decisions that would make a difference in the lives of people.
When we look at the disability benefit, it still does not have any substance behind it. We are going to be pushing, with Bill C-22, to actually have a disability benefit that makes a difference in the lives of people. However, to date, we have not seen the substance or the meat that actually will make a difference in the lives of people with disabilities.
These are the kinds of measures the NDP will continue to push.
On housing, we were able to force the government, in the last budget, to finally start to reinvest in affordable housing, and over the next couple of years 150,000 new affordable housing units will be built. That is a result of the efforts of the member for Burnaby South and the NDP caucus, again, to leverage our 25 members to make a difference, to push for change for a better life for Canadians.
We are pushing to have put into place all the calls to action on truth and reconciliation. We are pushing for measures that would stop the spread of hate and right-wing extremism that we are seeing. We will continue to push all those elements, because we believe fundamentally, as New Democrats and as members of Parliament, that our responsibility is to make a difference in the lives of people.
We did not see that in the dismal Harper decade, an incredibly dismal period in Canadian history, or in the seven years of paralysis that we have largely seen from the current government, until, with minority Parliaments, the NDP started to leverage and get things done in Parliament. We saw over the course of the Harper dismal decade a massive expansion of overseas tax havens, valuated by the Parliamentary Budget Officer at $25 billion a year, now over $30 billion a year. This is taxpayer money going off shore. The utlrarich, profitable corporations are taking their money offshore rather than providing those investments that would make a difference in the lives of families, students, youth, children, people with disabilities and seniors.
Under both the Conservative regime and the Liberal regime, the immediate thought when a crisis hit, whether it was in 2008 or with COVID in 2020, was what they could do to help the banks. We saw under the Harper government a record $116 billion in liquidity supports given overnight. The Harper government wanted to shore up bank profits. That was its first and foremost priority. It cut pensions and eviscerated a wide variety of services for veterans, seniors and people with disabilities.
It cut a whole bunch of important programs, including, inexplicably even today, the crime prevention programs that reduced crime right across the country. For the Harper government or any person connected to the Harper government, like the member for Carleton, to pretend that it took initiatives that reduced the crime rate when it destroyed the crime prevention centres strikes the heart of rampant hypocrisy. It eviscerated the most important tool in fighting back against crime.
This was the record of the Harper government: destroying services and ensuring that the banks, the ultrarich and the oil and gas industry had record profits. That was its first and foremost objective. Sadly, the new Liberal government has done the same, continuing those practices. We have gone from $25 billion a year under the Harper government to over $30 billion in overseas tax havens under the new government. In the banking sector, it was $116 billion.
We saw the Liberal government, in March 2020, step up in 96 hours with $750 billion in liquidity supports for the banks. This is while people with disabilities were struggling to keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table. They are still waiting years later, and we have a bill that does not do anything yet. However, the NDP is going to fight like hell to ensure that it does do something to actually make a difference in the lives of people with disabilities.
What we have had over the last couple of decades is a government that has been focused on the needs of the banking sector and bank profits and that has allowed the grocery industry, the big giants of the grocery sector, to profit from Canadian families, without putting any measures in place to restrict that. With the oil and gas sector, of course we have seen the rampant profiteering, with the price going up on old stock as soon as there is any sort of crisis, as the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has pointed out so many times. Both at the beginning and at the end of every crisis, the oil and gas sector reaps record profits.
These are the decisions we have seen from both Conservative and Liberal governments, but now we have an alternative. I want to point out why it is so important for folks in Canada to recognize that. We have a choice between the current government, the official opposition and the NDP. In the coming election, whenever that is, whether next year, the year after or in 2025, at some point this Parliament will come to an end and Canadians will have a choice to make. We have seen what the Liberals and the Conservatives do. They cater to the wealthy, the ultrarich, the banking sector, grocery chain CEOs and the grocery empires rather than dealing with regular people.
The NDP, this week, in our only opposition day of this cycle, brought forward a motion that ultimately forced all parties to support it. It recognized that “Canadian families are struggling with the rising costs of essential purchases” and asked the House to “call on the government to recognize that corporate greed is a significant driver of inflation”, or greedflation, as members know, and to take action, which includes:
(a) forcing CEOs and big corporations to pay what they owe, by closing the loopholes that have allowed them to avoid $30 billion in taxes in 2021 alone, resulting in a corporate tax rate that is effectively lower now than when this government was elected
This is an important point. It was bad under the Conservatives. It is even worse now under the Liberals.
The motion continued:
(b) launching an affordable and fair food strategy which tackles corporate greed in the grocery sector including by asking the Competition Bureau to launch an investigation of grocery chain profits, increasing penalties for price-fixing and strengthening competition laws to prohibit companies from abusing their dominant positions in a market to exploit purchasers or agricultural producers; and
(c) supporting the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food in investigating high food prices and the role of “greedflation”
When we introduced this motion, the CEOs of the big grocery chains and big food immediately stepped up to say they were not going to increase their prices anymore; they were going to freeze prices. The NDP had an impact with that motion. This is an important part of what members of Parliament should be doing.
This motion passed unanimously, as members know, because it was good sense that we pushed back as members of Parliament knowing the impact that greedflation has had right across the length and breadth of this country. It has cost Canadians a terrible price. As a result of that, the member for Burnaby South brought forward this motion, which had an immediate impact.
I contrast that with the Conservatives, the official opposition. This is the third time now that they have brought forward essentially the same motion. They did it on June 7, they did it on September 28 and they are doing it today. It is for tackling a price on carbon, as if climate change and the climate crisis do not affect Conservatives. It is quite the contrary. We know that climate change is impacting people right across the country. We know that putting a price on pollution actually helps to alleviate that, yet we have this obsession from the Conservatives where on three opposition days in a row they essentially bring forward the same motion.
The motion does not deal with the issue of affordability, in the same way that the Conservatives in the House and the sound and fury from the member for Carleton do not in any way help Canadians. In fact, the Conservatives cannot really point to anything they have done over the last few years that has helped Canadians.
The NDP can. We can point to dental care. We can point to the housing supplement. We can point to the affordable housing that we forced in the last budget. We can point to the doubling of the GST credit. We can point to all of the COVID supports that we forced in this House. In a minority Parliament situation, we are using the weight of our members of Parliament to make a difference for Canadians.
What can the official opposition point to in the last few years? They can point to nothing, nada. It is so much the worse that it is a repudiation of the commitments made by the former Conservative leader in the election before last. It is important to point out that back in 2019, the Conservative leader, to quote the CBC website, made an “election promise to remove GST from home-heating bills”. To quote Global News, he said he would “cut GST from home heating bills as prime minister”.
Given the opportunity to actually put that forward, the Conservatives failed, and they brought forward the same motion a third time, as if somehow it is a magical third time. It is that triple, triple, triple of putting together the same motion and putting it out to the House again as a rerun rather than dealing with the fundamentals of removing the GST on home heating, which the Conservatives previously promised to do and did not and which the member for Burnaby South has been promoting.
What I am offering today is the opportunity for the official opposition to actually keep a promise. The Conservatives promised in the election campaign that they would take the GST off home heating, so I will be offering an amendment shortly that would do just that. The amendment, which the Conservatives should support because they committed to it, would replace the carbon tax in their opposition motion. Rather than for the third time dealing with the issue of climate change as if it is something that does not exist, we would instead put in place the removal of the GST from home heating. The Conservatives promised that, so they should support this amendment. It would actually have a meaningful impact on Canadians' lives. We know the impact of the GST on home heating, so it would make a fundamental difference.
We have seen that the NDP is really making a difference in Canadians' lives. We have seen it with dental care, housing assistance and affordable housing, measures that we forced the government to include in the last budget along with the doubling of the GST credit. All of these are a win for Canadian families.
Today, we will give the Conservatives the opportunity to keep their promise to eliminate the GST on home heating. We will propose an amendment that will make a real difference in people's lives.
That way, the Conservatives will finally be able to say that they did something to help people, that it was not just talk, that they actually did something. They need to help people instead of just going around in circles.
It is therefore with pleasure that I offer the following amendment on behalf of the NDP, and if good sense and good judgment take place, the Conservatives will support it. I move that the motion be amended by deleting the words “from the carbon tax” and substituting the following: “from the goods and services tax”.
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- Oct/20/22 2:24:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, around the world we are dealing with unprecedented times: climate change, a war that has happened in Ukraine. We are dealing with global inflation and that demands maturity and serious answers.
I would say for the member opposite that in this time, we have an opportunity not to amplify anxiety, not to make people more scared, but to provide them real solutions. It is bad enough that the Conservatives are not willing to support dental care. I am just asking, as the House leader, as somebody who is attempting to get that legislation in support of Canadians, will they at least stop opposing it so the parties that do support it can get it done?
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- Oct/20/22 2:25:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives did not support child care for those who needed it, to help cut it in half immediately and make sure that it goes to $10 a day. They did not support raising taxes on those who are earning the most so that we could give a break to those in the middle class. Here we are again with dental care, where many families are struggling because of the challenges happening across this globe, and they are not supporting that. I understand they are not supporting that, which is their partisan position, but will they at least get out of the way so that those of us who are trying to help Canadians right now can pass legislation?
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- Oct/20/22 7:31:32 p.m.
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Madam Chair, that is an excellent question. I want to thank my colleague who had the courage to support my bill and listen to the experts on substance use, Bill C-216, a health-based response to substance use.
We need to listen to the experts, listen to the local knowledge in this country and listen to indigenous knowledge about how we move forward. Those 67 leading organizations are ready to deliver mental health now, but they are running on fumes as I stated. Injecting the mental health transfer, getting it out the door to those local experts, will save lives.
We have an opportunity to save lives right now if we come together, collectively, and not wait for everything to be perfect. It will not be. What we do know is that those organizations save lives now and they can prevent the loss of further life. We need their help and we need to listen to them.
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- Oct/20/22 7:37:24 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I have worked with my colleague. He as well had the courage to support moving forward on substance use with a health-based response and listening to Canada's leading experts. The Bloc voted for Bill C-216. I am very appreciative of the opportunity to work with my colleague, who cares. He is open to learning and working together. We may not agree on everything, but he is trying to find ways to work together and we can do a lot more. We are just embarking on that conversation.
When it comes to people making decisions about suicide or suicide by accident when they are really struggling and maybe using substances, we have all heard of those stories or know somebody who has been impacted by that. We need to provide people with supports so they have a pathway out. We talk about the stigma. When people cannot get help in their own communities, they are going to make bad choices.
There are 500,000 Canadians right now who are off work due to mental health alone, and it is getting worse. We need to make sure we are providing supports and services for people. That is what we are calling for, to ensure that we get the $4.5-billion transfer in place and get the resources out to community-based organizations so that they can provide the supports and people can access the help they need.
Do I think it is perfect? Do I think everybody can get all the help they need? That might not be possible, but I can assure everyone that if we do this transfer, we are going to save thousands and thousands of lives. We know it is the right thing to do because mental health is health, and we need parity between physical and mental health.
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- Oct/20/22 7:40:44 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I think back to the community in my riding that was going through that crisis. It did not have mental health supports in place and was desperate. When I came here, I had to beg to get a mental health support worker for one year. The federal government and the minister at the time said it was not their problem and that it was the province's problem, but I explained that it was the minister's problem as she writes the cheque to the First Nations Health Authority in British Columbia. I asked her to pick up the phone, which she did, and it helped, but it is not enough.
We need to listen to communities. We need to provide the resources for healing, and we need to ensure that there are mental health supports in community. We need to listen to them. That is part of reconciliation.
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- Oct/20/22 8:11:01 p.m.
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Madam Chair, we would all agree in the House that we are in a mental health crisis. We would all agree that there have been no federal government resources applied to provide supports for Canadians who are suffering from this mental health and addiction crisis, dozens of whom are dying every day.
Would my colleague agree, as a representative of the Conservative Party, to having the House move unanimously to direct the government to provide the $4.5 billion in support for the Canadian mental health transfer immediately?
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- Oct/20/22 8:28:34 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I want to thank my fellow military mom for that question. It is pretty hard for me to put a price tag on this, to be honest, because that was the reason I ran in 2015. I was not happy about supports available for veterans. I knew my kids in the service would be taken care of, but God forbid they should need support when they got out. Would it be there? Therefore, I am really a bit biased on this one because, to me, one cannot put a price tag on the supports we need to give those who put their lives on the line for our freedom and the families who support them. I cannot answer that with a dollar figure, because to me one cannot put a price on that.
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- Oct/20/22 8:39:58 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I thank the hon. member for her acknowledgement.
Indeed, we need to do everything in our power to make sure that we not only focus on parity between mental health and physical health, but also resolve the issue of the disparity that exists specifically for the indigenous community. I have been advocating for parity since 2015. As I am becoming more aware and more educated on the issue of the disparity that exists among indigenous and non-indigenous, I felt that it is time for me to also advocate for the indigenous and, indeed, make sure that we have not only the support at the professional level but also the support at other levels.
I talked about the social determinants of health being housing, being education, being support and being community. All of those will go a long way in helping to address the disparity that exists.
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- Oct/20/22 9:01:08 p.m.
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Madam Chair, the member mentioned the challenges in rural communities and the lack of access. In urban centres, and most definitely in rural communities as well, there are individuals who cannot access services because of language barriers. That is one of the most difficult things I have been hearing about from a lot of people, especially in the face of COVID. I have had seniors come up to me who are distressed. They have experienced trauma, yet they cannot get the mental health support they need because of language barriers.
Would he support a call for the government to also fund interpretation and supports in language to access mental health support?
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- Oct/20/22 9:10:16 p.m.
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Madam Chair, we need to do all we can to try to make these services more accessible for all Canadians. I will certainly look at the bill and consider it. The intent of the bill, I support, but I have not seen the language. We need to expand the number of people who can provide this help and be covered by our health system.
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- Oct/20/22 9:10:53 p.m.
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Madam Chair, tied to both our physical and mental health are the social determinants of health. The lack of housing and people's inability to survive because of food insecurity and so on is causing great distress. The government has promised that housing is a basic human right, yet we do not deliver the resources to ensure that it is.
Would the member support the call for the government to act in accordance with its promise that housing is a basic human right with corresponding resources to match it?
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- Oct/20/22 10:20:06 p.m.
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Madam Chair, support services are absolutely critical. We need early diagnosis for young children, to catch the illness and the challenges that they are faced with, and to support them and their families all the way through.
In our communities we need to make sure we do not discriminate. The fact is that people cannot access mental health supports. The lucky ones who have extended health care can access it. However, a lot of people do not have extended health care. Access to mental health care is about the ability to pay in that regard, because it is so expensive. We need to make sure people can access services.
I would be remiss if I did not raise this issue as well. I live in a community where there are a lot of people who speak different languages. Having access to support services in their language is absolutely critical. The language barrier is real as well, and we need to break down those barriers. Funding needs to be in place to enhance access to supports.
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