SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 333 - Jun/17/24

Mr. Richard Cannings (South Okanagan—West Kootenay, NDP)

Jun/17/24 7:55:18 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise here this evening to speak to Bill C-69, a bill that enacts certain provisions of the budget tabled back in April. I spoke to the budget at that time, back in the spring, but I would like to add a few comments now that it is before us as an implementation act because it is an important budget. All budgets are important, but this one in particular is important. As we all know and hear every day, Canadians are struggling, especially to find housing, to pay the rent, to dream of paying a mortgage or even to find a roof to put over their heads. They struggle with the cost of groceries and the price of gas at the pumps. Also, we are facing a climate crisis that is bringing us fires, floods and other extreme weather events that cause widespread stress to Canadians, their health, their homes and their livelihoods. Last year's fires in my riding and surrounding areas not only destroyed houses, but put tens of thousands of people on evacuation. They ended the tourist season abruptly in early August, just when all my local businesses are poised to make an income after months of losses. Then a mid-winter freeze caused serious damage to grapevines and peach, apricot and cherry orchards, which are part of the agriculture sector, a real backbone of the economy in my riding. Any budget has to recognize and face the climate crisis head-on. While Canadians are struggling, big corporations and wealthy Canadians are doing better than ever. Big oil companies are making a killing. Big grocery companies are making record profits. Budgets are documents that make choices that will help Canadians. That is what we hope. It is clear that it is ordinary Canadians who need that help, not big corporations and wealthy individuals. The NDP has used its leverage in this minority Parliament to deliver results for people. In this budget alone, we have compelled the Liberal government to build more homes, preserve existing affordable housing, protect renters and bring in universal single-payer pharmacare, starting with contraception and diabetes medications and devices. I want to pause there because, while they are all critical, people may not realize how critical diabetes medications are. A friend of mine, who was 27 years old, died because he could not afford the full cost of his insulin medication to monitor and help his diabetes. That will not happen again. This budget would establish a national food program. Canada is the only G7 nation without a national school food program. A quarter of Canadian kids live in homes that are food insecure. This is another NDP initiative put in this budget. We are very proud of it. The Conservatives voted against it. This budget would reverse damaging cuts to indigenous services. It would invest in accessible, high-quality, non-profit child care, another NDP initiative. It would establish a dedicated youth mental health fund. It would double the volunteer firefighters tax credit. I will talk more about that later. As I said, several elements in this budget are key NDP initiatives. They are the pillar of this budget, I would say. However, they would not be there without the NDP's pressure. This is not an NDP budget. It would be different if it was an NDP government. We would go much further in some areas to help Canadians who need it the most. I will talk about some of the victories, the things that will change the lives of Canadians for the better, and some things that are conspicuously missing. We have the homebuyers' plan, which has been enhanced by increasing the withdrawal limit from $35,000 to $60,000. The government is also cracking down on short-term rentals by denying income tax deductions on income earned. Short-term rentals are one of the big issues in my riding. My riding is a very popular area for people to come visit and spend their vacations at all times of the year. Increasingly, it is becoming more and more difficult to find housing, simply because it is very profitable for people to buy houses simply for investment and to put up as short-term rentals. This will help curb that, along with some important provincial legislation that has just been introduced. That is very welcome news. This budget implements the Canada health transfer 5% growth guarantee. Canadians expect the federal government to support provinces in delivering the health care that we need. We all know that our health care system is struggling as well. This will help keep it going and give us the health care that we need, which we are so proud of, health care that was brought to us, again, by the NDP back in the 1960s. I mentioned the volunteer firefighters tax credit. It used to be $3,000. There are almost 100,000 volunteer firefighters across Canada. They are the people who keep us safe in small communities from one end of the country to the other, and yet they receive so little in return for that brave and hard work. They used to get a $3,000 tax credit. That was raised to $6,000 in this budget, again, based on an NDP initiative by my colleague from Courtenay—Alberni, who put forward a private member's bill to increase that to $10,000. We will take $6,000 as an improvement, but let us keep supporting our firefighters. There is one thing that is not in this budget. With regard to wildfire firefighters who are not part of local firefighting corps but who fight wildfires in the summer, one would be surprised to find that they are not defined as firefighters under the CRA regulations. Firefighters, policemen and other people, such as ambulance drivers, get special dispensation under the Income Tax Act to put more money aside for their retirement. Wildfire firefighters do not. They are specifically excluded, and we need to change that, to call wildfire firefighters “firefighters”. It was not in this budget, but I hope it will be soon. While I am talking about firefighters, another thing that is not in this budget is a national wildfire-fighting force. We need this, and 75% of Canadians have come out in support of such a force, which would be there to support local and provincial firefighting services. We need this help. It is clear that things are getting worse year by year. We cannot go on as we have been. We have been depending on the armed forces to help us. This year, the armed forces have said they are not going to be there this summer. We need to do something different, and I think a national wildfire-fighting force is the way to go. I will also mention the good news about support for research. Finally, the government is putting funding into the scholarship and fellowship funding for young researchers in Canada. That funding had remained stagnant for 20 years. Students were living in poverty, and that has finally been fixed. That is very good news. I will just finish by mentioning the Canada disability benefit, something the NDP has been fighting for, and yet we are very disappointed that this was brought in as a $200-a-month benefit, something that will not get people with disabilities out of poverty. People with disabilities live in poverty all across the country. No province gives them enough money to live above the poverty line. We had a chance to finish that, make it right, and we will continue fighting for people with disabilities, to make sure that they will not live in poverty.

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Context: House Hansard - 333 - Jun/17/24

Mr. Richard Cannings

Jun/17/24 8:10:43 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, we could talk all night about this. I would simply say that budgets are about choices. There is some increased funding here in this budget. It would go to a dental care plan that would bring dental care to nine million Canadians. For the first time, they would have access to a dentist. All of us here get free dental care, but the Conservatives want to keep that from the rest of Canadians. That is an investment in our health care system that would save us money in the long term. There are many other examples like that.

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Context: House Hansard - 333 - Jun/17/24

Mr. Jamie Schmale (Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, CPC)

Jun/17/24 9:29:02 p.m.
Watch

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to stand today to speak to Bill C-69, the budget implementation act. As we have heard in the debate going on tonight regarding the bill, there are a number of concerns on this side of the House, specifically the government's new spending ideas: $61 billion in new spending. We do this when we are having and dealing with a very real inflation crisis that is causing real hardship throughout the country. The number of people who are raising their voices to that fact is something we have never seen before. Food bank usage across the country is up to record levels. There are homeless encampments now in pretty much all of our major cities, not to mention the smaller rural communities as well, where this was never seen or heard about. To make matters worse, this year we will be spending $54.1 billion to service the national debt. It is unfortunate, because we are paying more money for interest than the federal government is sending to the provinces for health care. That is absolutely significant. I do not think I have ever heard a single person articulate the benefit of paying more in interest payments on the national debt, how that actually makes sense. It is wasted money. Not only that, but because we are paying only the interest, we are not actually paying down the debt. That means the payments will continue. That could fluctuate based on the interest rate at the time, depending on how that certain part of the debt is structured. Future generations and the last generation we are looking at right now, the youth graduating high school who are going to college or university, are recognizing they might not ever be able to buy a house. They might not ever be able to have the dream many generations here in Canada had before them. Yes, there is a group of people, the very wealthy, who are not being hurt by this and are not affected by it. It is those everyday, normal, working-class people who are being punished with higher prices for food, rent, fuel and heat, all of the things making life more difficult for working Canadians. When people have less money in their pockets, less money to spend on their priorities, cutbacks in family budgets occur. We have seen and heard the stories that grace the newspaper articles and the headlines about people skipping meals and watering down milk for their kids trying to stretch dollars and stretch the supply in the refrigerator a little longer just to get through the next day or so. It is absolutely crushing to hear and read these stories in a country like Canada, where the dream has always been absolutely real. It is absolutely crushing to see these young people. The other side will always ask for patience, more time and more resources. There will always be the promise that utopia is just around the corner and that it will be worth it if we just keep spending. The other side will say that, but will it actually be what the Prime Minister is promising? I would argue no. The Prime Minister and the Liberal Party inherited a balanced budget. The economy was on fire. Life was affordable and life was enjoyable. Now look at where we are. Was it worth it? The average Canadian's net worth, their nest egg, their savings account and their retirement package have suffered. The buying power of their dollars has suffered. The path the government is on is not worth it for the everyday person. The policies need to change. We have to start focusing on what used to make us extraordinary. Ontario, especially, used to be the manufacturing wheel of this country. We used to build a lot more things in this country. It is unfortunate that in Ontario, when Kathleen Wynne and Dalton McGuinty were in the premier's office, obviously separately, one after the other, they started to mess around in the energy market. That is when hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs left Ontario. We are watching the numbers continue under the Liberal government, because when the Liberal Party of Ontario lost the election, a lot of staffers made the trip up the 401 or Highway 7 to Ottawa and started working for the current government. We can see it is a continuation of the mentality that if we just keep spending, just keep borrowing and just keep taxing, we will eventually get there, but life has only gotten worse for the majority of Canadians. The reality is that the Liberal Party has gone too far. Its members do not know how to fix it, and their solution at this point is yet another government program. They will start the tape; they will look at the problem they created, and the solution will be a new program. The government can get money only by borrowing, taxing, printing or a combination thereof, and if it does too much in excess, it can debase the economy or the currency. We have seen a bit of both here. Conservatives want to look to where the problem started and address it from its root, and that is where a lot of our common-sense plans come from. We are addressing the fact that we need to build and make things again in Canada. How do we do that? We need a regulatory environment that allows private enterprise to start up and flourish. The bureaucracy has gotten bigger under the current government. That, unfortunately, has been slowing a lot of the progress from the private sector, and we have seen money in the billions of dollars flee this country looking for other jurisdictions, because capital is like water; it takes the path of least resistance. When we allow the private sector to do what it does best, to innovate and to create opportunities and wealth in our communities, the economy grows. When the economy grows, jobs are created, spending happens, more jobs are created and overall happiness rises, because when people have options, when they have choice, they are happier. When they do not have choice, people are more miserable, and in Canada there is very little competition in pretty much every single sector, such as airlines, groceries or telecommunications. The list goes on, and it is getting worse. We need some common-sense solutions here in this party. The Conservative Party is ready to take on that challenge.

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