44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 7, 2021 10:00AM
- Dec/7/21 2:52:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, raising the GIS just to claw it back again is not going to do anything for people like Emanuel, and that answer is not going to pay his rent. We have been asking this question for some time now. We see a government that has clawed back the GIS and the Canada child benefit, and it has cut the CRB for 900,000 Canadians just as we are seeing COVID case counts go up. Financial support is not there for all of those 900,000 people who need it.
When is the government going to stop building the recovery on the backs of the financially vulnerable and actually look for some of the money at the top, such as with publicly traded companies that took the wage subsidy and have not paid anything back, except to their shareholders?
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- Dec/7/21 6:23:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, on a point of order, I think it is customary at moments like these to begin right away. I wonder if perhaps you might offer some clarification for the House as to the technical problems the clerks are trying to solve.
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- Dec/7/21 6:24:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, if the issue is keeping time, I am sure some of us would be very happy to lend our phones to the Chair so that you can begin keeping time. Some of us are quite anxious to start. We have been looking forward to this all day and are just trying to better understand the delay. Perhaps you might enlighten us as to the piece of equipment you require to begin the proceedings.
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- Dec/7/21 7:14:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will begin by indicating that I will be using my entire time for questions and answers, and I will not be restricting my questions to any one minister in particular. I find it hard enough to get an answer around here, and I would hate to unduly restrict the possibility that I might get one.
We have already talked in this Parliament about the fact that Canadians are not going to be safe from COVID-19 variants until everyone in the world is properly vaccinated. We know that wealthy countries such as Canada have had some success in rolling out the vaccine, but in the rest of the world the vaccination rate is just unacceptably low. We also know that for some time now there has been an effort at the WTO to get what is called TRIPS waiver, which would release the intellectual property rights to vaccine production and allow others to expedite production of the vaccine in their own place.
Could someone on the government bench tell me what it would cost the Government of Canada to support the TRIPS waiver at the WTO?
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- Dec/7/21 7:16:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I did not hear a dollar amount in there, so how much would it cost the government to support the TRIPS waiver?
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- Dec/7/21 7:16:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what would be the dollar cost of supporting the TRIPS waiver at the WTO?
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- Dec/7/21 7:16:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I think the minister meant to say zero dollars. The good news is that there is that much requested for the TRIPS waiver in the estimates, so it is a fully funded initiative. I look forward to the announcement.
There is $1.8 billion requested, or stated, in the statutory expenditures for the Canada recovery benefit, but we know very well that in fact a lot of what was paid out under CERB and the CRB is now being clawed back from some of the most financially vulnerable people in Canada: our seniors on the GIS and low-income families that depend on the Canada child benefit.
I wonder if this is an adjusted amount to reflect that the government is clawing back so many of those payments from our most vulnerable.
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- Dec/7/21 7:17:55 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in fact, it is not complicated. It is just a matter of excluding the pandemic benefit income from the eligibility calculation for these income-tested programs. I will ask this again: Is the amount of the clawback represented in the figure presented in the estimates?
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- Dec/7/21 7:18:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the people who take it seriously are the seniors who are being evicted right now, those who have already been evicted, and the people who are advocating for them here in the House. We know that the government has stated there is another $1.8 billion under the Canada recovery benefit. What we do not know is if this represents the amount they are saving by clawing back the benefits of vulnerable seniors and low-income families.
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- Dec/7/21 7:19:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, let me put it another way. How much is the government budgeting to save on GIS and Canada child benefit costs this year as a result of people falling out of the program because they received pandemic benefits last year?
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- Dec/7/21 7:19:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we know that the government has written letters to, for example, foster kids who graduated out of foster care during the pandemic. They were told by the provincial government in Manitoba, for example, that they could not apply for social assistance in the summer of 2020, despite the fact that there were no jobs, and that they had to apply for the CERB first. Of course, there was a no-fail policy, so they got the CERB, and now the government is asking for that back.
Does the minister have a number on how much the government intends to get back from low-income Canadians who received CERB payments in good faith? How much is the government looking to save on the backs of those vulnerable Canadians?
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- Dec/7/21 7:21:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I encourage the minister to read his bill, because the fact of the matter is that 900,000 people were kicked off the CERB in October with two days' warning, and the bill will not do a thing for any of those people. In fact, when I asked the minister in opening the debate how many regions and which regions of the country would be covered by the Canada worker lockdown benefit from October 23 to the present day, the answer was none, and we have not heard anything that would change our point of view about that.
I will ask again. When it comes to low-income Canadians from whom the government is demanding repayment of CERB benefits and who do not have the money, how much is the government anticipating that it is going to get back?
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- Dec/7/21 7:22:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, when the minister says it is time to pull back on the benefits, is he referring to the clawbacks?
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- Dec/7/21 7:22:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is about time we had a CERB low-income repayment amnesty in Canada, and that would do a lot toward not leaving behind those financially vulnerable people I am talking about.
With respect to the 900,000 Canadians who were dropped like a brick from the CRB program with just two days' notice, what training resources does the government intend to provide in order to help them qualify for the jobs that are currently available in the market?
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- Dec/7/21 7:23:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there is no question that we have a labour shortage here in Canada, yet we have a lot of workers who are seeking work and cannot find jobs, and 900,000 of them were on the CRB. What dollar amount is being requested here in order to provide training supports so they have the skills and education that employers are looking for to fill their positions?
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- Dec/7/21 7:24:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, employers cannot hire workers who are not qualified for the positions they need to fill. Instead of just trying to starve those workers back to work when they do not have the qualifications, what is the government doing to support them to get the education and training they need to fill the jobs that are available in the market?
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- Dec/7/21 7:25:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I see the government is reporting an increased expenditure for the caregiving benefit and the sickness benefit, to the tune of about $2 billion. One of the things we heard at finance committee today was that the government is not aware of which provinces have legislative plans to extend leave provisions in their provincial legislation so that workers under their jurisdiction can benefit from these extended programs. I am wondering if the numbers here in the estimates reflect lapsed funding from delays in provincial leave extensions.
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- Dec/7/21 7:26:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, can the minister name the provinces he has secured commitments from to take urgent legislative action to extend the leave provisions in their jurisdictions?
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- Dec/7/21 7:26:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I heard that as a “no”.
While I have the opportunity, I want to ask the President of the Treasury Board about reforming the estimates process. We are here tonight talking about the estimates process. It is obviously one of the pillars of the Westminster parliamentary system, this oversight by Parliament of government spending. There were some experiments in the Liberals' first years in government that led to quite a row in the House over a centralized vote, and I am wondering if the President of the Treasury Board has any plans to improve the process, which is now what it was prior to 2015. I think there was widespread agreement among the parties and the pundits and others that it was a system that did not lend itself to proper financial oversight.
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- Dec/7/21 7:27:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, when we had some discussions about estimates reform in the 42nd Parliament, one of the ideas on the table was moving toward a fixed budget date. There seemed to be some interest from then minister Brison. I am wondering if the minister would now consider moving toward having a fixed budget date.
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