44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 23, 2023 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise tonight to speak on Bill C-56 and on Motion No. 30. I think that these are important initiatives that the NDP has brought forward.
I want to start off my speech by expressing my disappointment in the fall economic statement. There are two things that I believe need to be highlighted.
First off, and this is something that the NDP will continue to fight for, the fact that in the fall economic statement, there was no money allocated to the Canada disability benefit, to provide supports for people with disabilities, is a profound disappointment. It is disrespectful to people with disabilities.
We know that half of the people who go to food banks to make ends meet and half of the people who are homeless are Canadians with disabilities. The government has a responsibility to put the Canada disability benefit in place immediately. That is something that the member for Burnaby South, the member for Port Moody—Coquitlam and the entire NDP caucus is not going to stop fighting for.
Second, we have all, across the country, heard from small businesses that are concerned about the fact that there is not an extension of the CEBA loans. Small businesses are struggling. I know that in New Westminster—Burnaby, many small businesses have been approaching us, needing that extension for that repayment.
I am reminded by my colleague, the member for Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, that businesses in her riding as well are raising those concerns, including Dan Osborne from Gore Bay, who has said that the NDP needs to keep fighting to have that CEBA loan extension. New Democrats are committing to continue to fight for the CEBA loan extension for Dan Osborne, for businesses in New Westminster—Burnaby and right across the country, to ensure that this is in place. There is no doubt that we are going to keep fighting.
When we talk about this bill, I think it is important to talk about the last 17 years and what we saw first under the corporate Conservatives and now under the Liberals, in terms of what has actually happened in housing. Housing costs doubled under the Conservatives. We saw this during the dismal years of the Harper regime. They doubled again under the Liberals. Between the two of them, both the Liberal government and the Conservative government lost over a million homes that were affordable, homes that people could live in, homes that were based on 30% of income or a little bit more, homes that Canadians could afford.
I had a press conference last week with the member for Port Moody—Coquitlam, where we talked about rents in our area.
In New Westminster, it is $2,500 a month for a one-bedroom, on average. In Coquitlam, it is $2,600. In Burnaby, it is $2,500. These are all costs that are simply too heavy for Canadians to pay. The idea that we would put into place immediate measures to help housing is why we are supportive of some of the measures that we forced to be in Bill C-56.
Motion No. 30 helps to improve that and includes, as well, important issues that help to support the Competition Bureau and the fact that, as a federal government, there is a responsibility to crack down on food price gouging, as my colleague from Cowichan—Malahat—Langford has been so outspoken on, as well as the member for Burnaby South.
As for the food price gouging and the fact that the Competition Bureau does not have the powers that it needs, this is absolutely essential. That is why we are very supportive of this bill and of the motion as well. It is NDP-inspired, because New Democrats stand up for their constituents.
When we talk about the years of the Harper Conservatives and what they did to housing, losing over 800,000 units across the country, we have to really think about what planet the member for Carleton is on when he talks about the golden age of the Harper regime. I remember something quite different. I remember the erosion of affordable housing units.
The average Conservative MP, of course, is a proud owner of having lost over 2,400, on average, affordable housing units in their constituencies, as housing costs rose under the Harper regime and as affordable housing units disappeared, were either sold or converted to corporate landlords.
We think of the member for Carleton now in Stornoway. He lives a gilded-age life, with the French cravat and everything. It is so clear to me that he is out of touch with Canadians when he pretends that somehow the housing crisis is going to magically be solved just by giving more leeway to corporate landlords. That is the way it was under the Harper Conservatives. It certainly did not, in any way, make a difference.
In fact, it was the contrary. We saw a deterioration right across the country of housing stability and housing affordability. When the Conservatives say we do not have to do anything and we just have to give corporate landlords more leeway, we see what Doug Ford in Ontario has brought. He has brought the destruction of the Greenbelt, the unbelievable selling out of the public good for private profit. It is simply not a solution.
If we want to bring it home for people in this country, we need to make the kinds of investments the NDP is calling for, some of which are reflected in Bill C-56. Some are reflected in the improvements that we have made, that we forced the government to put into place.
The reality is, on this side of the House, the NDP absolutely believes that every Canadian has a right to have a roof over their head each night and that they should have the ability to put food on their table every day. It is more than that. We actually believe that Canadians have the right to a universal health care system and that they have a right to universal pharma care.
We should not have constituents struggling, as some of mine are a few blocks from my home. It is a thousand dollars a month for heart medication and families have to make that tough choice between whether they keep a roof over their head by paying their rent, or whether they pay for that life-saving heart medication. In a country as wealthy as this, there should be no Canadian who has to make the choice between life-sustaining medication, putting food on the table and keeping a roof over their head. Not a single Canadian should have to face that choice every day, and that is the reality.
That is why we are here in this House. There are 25 New Democrats who are fighting, along with our leader, the member for Burnaby South, to change that situation and to make a difference for people so that we actually take that enormous wealth that we have in this country and ensure that we are actually providing essential needs for every single Canadian across the length and breadth of this land.
Conservatives and Liberals, as they are wont to do, usually ask at this point who is going to pay for it. If people heard the response of our finance critic, the member for Elmwood—Transcona, to the fall economic statement, he raised the issue that we have the lowest corporate taxes in the OECD. We should actually be thinking potentially of raising business taxes by 1% or 2%. It used to be 28% and now it is 15%. For every percentage point rise, there is $3 billion available for essential needs for, for example, affordable housing in this country.
Let us talk more about the Harper record because the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who is an independent, non-partisan officer of Parliament, who does objective work, evaluated the total cost of the Harper tax haven treaties just a few years ago. How much did we give away in Harper tax haven treaties, these sweetheart deals that the Harper government signed in order to allow billionaires and wealthy corporations to take their money offshore?
Members know how it works, or they may not, so let me explain it. If someone takes their money offshore to a tax haven treaty holder, like the Bahamas that has a 0% taxation rate, and declares income there, then they do not have to pay taxes in Canada.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer looked at all of that and made the conservative estimate that the Harper tax haven treaties, and the fact that the Liberal government sadly signed more of those treaties after it came into power, costs Canadians over $30 billion each year in taxpayers' money. This figure is profoundly disturbing.
What is the cumulative impact of that over the eight years the Liberals have been in power? Members can do the math. A quarter of a trillion dollars was handed over to billionaires and wealthy corporations and then to overseas tax havens. Now let us look at what the Conservatives did over the same period. This is a conservative estimate. The PBO was very clear that the estimate could go well beyond the figures in its landmark study on the impact of the Harper tax haven treaties, back in 2019. Over a nearly 10-year period, it was $300 billion.
If we put the two figures together, we are talking about over half a trillion dollars that has been spent not on housing, not on pensions, not on health care, not on pharmacare, not on providing clean water for indigenous communities and not on providing for reconciliation or indigenous-led housing developments. No. It has gone to the wealthy. It has gone to billionaires. It has gone to corporations that are extraordinarily profitable and not paying their fair share of taxes.
When Conservatives and Liberals ask how to pay for it, our response to them is to ask how they have paid for the massive tax breaks they have given to wealthy Canadians and profitable corporations over the course of the last 17 years. How did they pay for that? They paid for it by depriving seniors of their pensions. They paid for it by forcing students to go into debt. They paid for it by not putting in place a Canada disability benefit. They paid for it by not having affordable housing in place. They paid for it by undermining our health care system.
It is time that wealthy corporations pay their fair share, that wealthy Canadians pay their fair share and that Canadians stop paying for the incredible largesse of Conservatives and Liberals. It is profoundly disappointing to me that the resources of our country are mobilized for the very rich when they should be mobilized to pay for the needs of Canadians right across the length and breadth of this land.
I only have a few minutes left, so I want to come back to the vote that took place on the Day of Dignity and Freedom, on Tuesday, to be in solidarity with the Ukrainian people, commemorated in Ukraine, of course, and around the world in the Ukrainian diaspora. Tuesday was the 10-year anniversary of the fight for freedom and democracy in Ukraine.
This is an important symbolic date because of the force of the violence of the Putin regime. The Putin regime is violent, of course, domestically. There are human rights' violations, as we have seen, and hatred. We have seen the defenestration of political opponents. However, the violence that has been reaped on Ukraine, the Ukrainian people and Ukrainian democracy is profoundly sad to freedom-loving people, the people who stand for democracy and human rights.
That day, the Day of Dignity and Freedom, was being commemorated around the world because Ukrainians could not celebrate. They are defending their homes. They are defending their farms. They are defending their communities. They are trying to keep their hospitals open. They are trying to avoid their schools from being attacked by missiles and bombs. They could not commemorate it, but it was that day that every single Conservative MP chose to vote against Ukraine and vote against the principle of having a trade agreement between Canada and Ukraine. Not a single Conservative member stood up and said to the member for Carleton that this was wrong, that his obsession with the price on carbon is unhealthy, that this unhealthy obsession doesn't make any sense when we're talking about supporting people who are fighting for their liberty. However, every single Conservative MP stood in their place and voted down the Canada-Ukraine trade deal.
That was profoundly sad to me. It was shocking, I think, to Canadians of Ukrainian origin, one and a half million strong, who were calling on Conservatives to do the right thing and support Ukraine. Not a single Conservative was willing to do that.
It was shocking to the Zelenskyy regime, his government. President Zelenskyy was here in this House asking Conservatives to vote for the deal, to vote for that agreement, that symbolic and important support for the Ukrainian people, yet every single Conservative MP said no.
This is tragic. I want to say how profoundly disappointing it was to all the other members of Parliament in this House who heard President Zelenskyy's call and who responded appropriately. All the other parties, all the other members of Parliament, voted in favour of the principle of a trade agreement with a people who are fighting for their democracy, their lands, their cities and their freedom. However, because of the extremism of the member for Carleton, the Conservatives were all forced to vote against it.
I know they are hearing from constituents—
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- Nov/23/23 11:07:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member brought up an important reality.
We know that people across this country who are living with disabilities have particular challenges, are all too often marginalized and fall below the bar of dignity that I talk about, and really have a hard time making ends meet. This is important. When we see people from various communities supported in a good way, the amazing thing that happens is that opportunity grows. However, if we leave people in a situation where they cannot make ends meet and they are struggling every day just to get by, it is really hard for them to maintain the creativity they may have in their spirit.
When we talk about a bar of dignity, we are talking about the disability benefit. If people were lifted out of poverty and had the space to expand what they might be able to do to look at a life that is not fraught with concern and terror every day, what a better community we would have. It makes me think of my friend Karen, who teaches me a lot about living in the disabled community. She always says that when we make something accessible for everyone, we make it accessible for everyone. Let us make it accessible for everyone and see what a beautiful culture we could create in this country.
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