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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Dec/16/21 12:10:32 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Madam Speaker, where I agree fully with the member is in regard to the importance of seniors and the fact that we should work expeditiously to get the bill through, so it will be there before Christmas. I would like to remind my colleague is that virtually from day one, in 2015, we dramatically increased the amounts going to the poorest of all seniors in Canada by a substantial increase to the GIS. During the pandemic, we gave direct payments to GIS recipients and all OAS recipients. We have also proposed to increase payments substantially to seniors age 75 and over. We have also invested tens of millions of dollars into all sorts of organizations that provide services for seniors. The member made a statement saying to give $100 for every senior. Is that an add-on amount to what has already been committed? As this first time I have heard of this, what is the Bloc position on $100 for every senior?

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Ms. Andréanne Larouche

Dec/16/21 12:11:44 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Madam Speaker, I find it fascinating that the Liberal government is in such denial about seniors living in financial insecurity and that it prefers to send out one-off cheques when what seniors really need is ongoing help. If the Bloc Québécois had not been there back in April to remind the government that everyone was getting assistance during the pandemic except for seniors, they would not have even gotten the one cheque. The government sent another single cheque for the GIS and for OAS, but seniors aged 75 and over got another one-off cheque this summer, just before the election, coincidentally. The government is now proposing an increase to OAS, but only for seniors aged 75 and up. However, seniors over 75 are not the only ones who need help. Seniors 65 and up need assistance as well, which is why the government needs to make adjustments to OAS for all seniors, aged 65 and up.

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Mrs. Karen Vecchio (Elgin—Middlesex—London, CPC)

Dec/16/21 12:12:42 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Shefford for talking about seniors. I heard the deputy House leader for the government talk about all they have done for seniors, but I agree with my colleague when she speaks of those people who have the lowest incomes. That is what matters here. We know that cheques have gone out for old age security. They went out to everybody. Whether someone made $90,000 or $15,000, they got the same cheque, but the guaranteed income supplement is still an issue. People have to deal with the fact that the government is trying to reverse some decisions it made, but with the cost of inflation, we know that low-income seniors are really falling behind. What does my colleague suggest when it comes to the guaranteed income supplement and what the government can do?

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Ms. Andréanne Larouche

Dec/16/21 12:13:31 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague. It is an honour to serve with her at the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. Seniors and the status of women are two causes that matter very much to us both. I agree with what she said about the Liberals not being mindful of what is going on with seniors. That is why the Bloc Québécois proposed extending the old age security increase to those 65 and over. We also want to let workers earn more before hitting the threshold at which their guaranteed income supplement is clawed back, and we want to see credits for experienced workers that enable them to stay in the workforce. Furthermore, I agree with my colleague that seniors are in a precarious position. I am amazed to hear the government claim that it has helped them through organizations that support seniors. Does the government really want to make seniors go line up at the food bank? That is good for those organizations, but it does not give seniors more money to buy groceries. The same goes for the New Horizons for Seniors program. It is a good program that gives seniors opportunities to socialize, but investing in that program does not put more money in seniors' pockets.

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Mr. Daniel Blaikie (Elmwood—Transcona, NDP)

Dec/16/21 12:14:37 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Madam Speaker, there are structural reasons why a lot of seniors, people living with disabilities and others in Canada continue to face serious financial stress. We have proposed some more structural and systemic solutions to those problems. The Liberals came in with a one-time payment, and then Liberals such as the member for Winnipeg North get outraged. They get up and say, “We threw some money at you. Why are you still complaining? We paid you off. Be satisfied. Stop talking about poverty. Stop talking about how these people are still in a difficult situation. That is what the money was for.” The government reminds us in these situations of a lawyer for an unscrupulous wealthy person who pays people off and then has them sign non-disclosure agreements so they do not talk about the problem any more. Does the member think that maybe this time around the Liberals will be sending NDAs along with cheques to seniors just to try and shut people up about talking about the systemic—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Dec/16/21 12:15:36 p.m.
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I have to give the hon. member a moment to reply. The hon. member for Shefford.

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Ms. Andréanne Larouche

Dec/16/21 12:15:43 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Madam Speaker, I have already talked about the one-time cheques. Seniors are outraged. They feel they are being used, manipulated for electoral purposes, rewarded with nothing more than a little cheque from the government every now and then. What they need is stable, long-term buying power.

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Mr. Daniel Blaikie (Elmwood—Transcona, NDP)

Dec/16/21 12:16:06 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Madam Speaker, today, we are talking about a motion to see Bill C-2 move swiftly through the House. On behalf of the New Democrats, we recognize the urgent need for many people, in the face of the pandemic, to receive help. It is true that some of those people will receive some help through Bill C-2. That is why the New Democrats have not tried to filibuster or obstruct the passage of the bill, but we have not tried to hasten it. We have laid out very clearly a path through the NDP to try to expedite the passage of the bill. We talked about the problem of benefit clawbacks, not just with respect to the guaranteed income supplement but the Canada child benefit and Canada worker benefit. We talked about the need for a CERB low-income repayment amnesty. We talked about some of the people who were seriously affected by the government pursuing them for debts they had incurred, sometimes without much choice, such as foster kids in Manitoba. They were told by the provincial government they had to apply for CERB or they would not be eligible to apply for social assistance in the province of Manitoba. Other people took the government at its word when it said to apply if they really needed help in the struggle of the pandemic, not only because of employment loss but also because of sudden increased costs, such as hiring a laundry service because family members or their support network could not go into their place of residence to assist with those things or having groceries delivered. There were a number of other costs. When we raised the problems with the CERB and folks not being able to access any financial assistance because they had not necessarily lost employment, members on the Liberal benches exhorted people to apply for the CERB, highlighting that it was a no-fail application process. Unanimous consent motions were passed in this place, which meant not one member in the House objected to them, saying that if people really needed help and applied in good faith, they should not be punished or persecuted. That was why we felt it was very important to have a CERB low-income repayment amnesty. We also talked about the fact that if the government was willing to clawback benefits from the most vulnerable in Canadian society because they were not entitled to them, we wanted to see it take action on clawing back benefits from the largest corporations, which were obviously in a good financial position because they were able to pay dividends to their shareholders. We know that while many businesses have struggled, some businesses have done exceptionally well, much better financially than in the years preceding the pandemic. Therefore, we have been calling for some action on that. The government chose not to negotiate with us on the passage of this bill. That is its choice. This is not a case of sour grapes. It chose to negotiate with the Bloc. We are here to stand up for the people who were left out with respect to Bill C-2. The government had a choice. It could have worked with the NDP, in the name of the people for whom we are here to fight. It could have worked with the Bloc on the concerns its members chose to raise, or it could have worked with both of us. These were not mutually exclusive options. The government chose not to work with us or negotiate with us, so it is hard for us to expedite the passage of a bill that leaves too many people out, and the government has not worked with us to try to address those legitimate concerns. I think there was a perception by the government in the last Parliament that somehow, because we are a responsible party and we knew Canadians did not want an election during the pandemic, it could take our support on things for granted. That was never true; it was not something to be taken for granted. It was true that we wanted to avoid an election. The leader of the Conservative Party did not think we should have an election during a pandemic and was not prepared to trigger one. The Bloc Québécois members did not want an election during a pandemic, that it would be irresponsible and they would not trigger one. The New Democrats voted accordingly and the Prime Minister broke faith with all of us in the House who had said we should not have an election. The Prime Minister got past June 2021 without having this place vote non-confidence in him. We wanted to get through the summer without having an election, so Parliament could come back in a timely way in September and deal with some of the very real issues with which Bill C-2 purports to deal. It does deal with some of them but not enough. Instead of honouring the real effort that parties in this place made, despite many of the shortcomings of the government, to preserve that Parliament, in August, the Prime Minister took it upon himself to call an election anyway, an election that nobody wanted, an election for which the House of Commons had not called. He did it under a pretense that was not a product of the summer months. If the Prime Minister thought there were big decisions his government needed to make, that was not news at the beginning of August. He would have known that by June and he could have been honest about it in this place. Instead, he denied that he wanted an election. People on all sides of the House were glad to hear it. We behaved accordingly and he broke faith with this place and with Canadians by calling that unnecessary and unwanted election. I said “pretense” earlier. Why do I call it a pretense for an election? Because the Prime Minister said big questions had to be decided and the government may need to implement some major new initiatives. He took his sweet time and we came back late after the election. Then when we got back here, we had a Speech from the Throne that had nothing new to offer in terms of a change in pattern or major new policy direction by the government in the face of the pandemic. Bill C-2 is not a big, bold move except to the extent of abandoning hundreds of thousands of Canadians in the midst of a continuing pandemic and difficult economic times. However, he did not ask for a mandate for that. In the election, he said he would have the backs of Canadians. He never did go to Canadians in the election and he never was honest with them about the real turn he was going to take. It turns out that the reason for the election was a pretense. While the Prime Minister tried to contrast himself with the Conservatives on the pandemic recovery during the election, on October 21, just a month after the election, he would take their advice and cancel the Canada recovery benefit with just two days' notice for people who were on the program, almost 900,000 of them. There was nothing really new in the Speech from the Throne. The big job, agreeing with the Conservatives on how to handle the pandemic recovery, had already happened in October before the Prime Minister even had the decency to reconvene this place. The Speech from the Throne was not where he was going to make good on his commitment to Canadians to announce the new direction for which he needed a new mandate. Maybe it would come in the fall economic statement, which happened this week. I am sorry to report that I do not see anything particularly new, bold or exciting. In fact, we did not even see a commitment to urgently implement some of the campaign promises the Liberals made. What we did see the day before was the Prime Minister, who had an election to get a mandate to distinguish himself from the Conservatives, taking their advice to renew the mandate of the Bank of Canada, without any larger discussion as is happening in some other countries. We know the United States has a dual mandate, employment and inflation. We know that New Zealand recently introduced its concern for the cost of housing in the mandate of its central bank. We know that the U.K. has recently asked its central bank to consider the impact of monetary policy on the battle against climate change. Our allies, who are themselves competent financial managers, are talking about different ways to rebuild their economies coming out of the pandemic. However, the Liberals decided to take the advice of the official opposition after causing an election, because they said there was a huge difference about how they were going to handle things. We stand in this place with a Prime Minister who broke faith on not having an election during a pandemic. We stand here with a Prime Minister who went to Canadians, saying he needed a mandate for something very different between he and his Conservative opposition. Then he proceeded to largely take their advice on the basic core elements of the pandemic recovery, something that is represented in this bill. We stand before a government that has decided not to work closely with the NDP to address some of those things. However, we know the bill will pass quickly and the people who can get help through this little bill will get it, because the government chose to work with somebody else, as its right, However, if the government wants our support on things like this, then its members need to sit down and talk to us. They need to talk to us about the people who we are here to represent and fight for, and that means seniors. We have talked a lot about the guaranteed income supplement. The government made an announcement on Tuesday. We had been asking for a long time what it planned to do. The Liberals have told us, along with everybody else, in the fall economic statement, and there are a lot of questions about the adequacy of that solution. We would have been very happy on this side of the House to provide some feedback in advance of the announcement to ensure it would work for more people. We will not get everything we want until we are in government, but I will give an example: the payment for people living with disabilities. This is a one-time payment, but it should be an increase in a regular benefit, something the Liberals went on to promise, but we have not heard anything about how they plan to deliver that. The Liberals initially announced that it would apply to people who received the disability tax credit. We had an opportunity to negotiate that, because we knew that was not good enough. Not all people living with disabilities receive the disability tax credit. There are a bunch of reasons for that. First is that it is expensive and difficult to get certified for the disability tax credit. A lot of people living with disabilities live in poverty. They do not have the $20 to $40 for the administrative fees at the doctor's office to get a successful application for the disability tax credit. Beyond that, a lot of them do not have an income that would allow them to benefit from a tax credit. They need to have enough income to pay taxes to benefit from a tax credit. Unfortunately too many people living with disabilities do not have enough income. Therefore, it was a bad way to deliver help to the people who needed it most. The second problem was the one-time payment disproportionately would go to the people living with disabilities who had the highest incomes. That did not make sense from a policy point of view, because the money would not get where it was really needed and it would not get there quickly. Then there were long delays in that payment. My point is that we were able to expand the number of people who received that payment and help get it to more of the people who really needed it. Now we have a situation where the government has announced another one-time payment to fix the GIS problem. It sounds like there is going to be another long delay in getting that help to people, people who are already homeless and do not have months to wait. We could have talked about a solution to that and have more assurances it would work well and work quickly. That did not happen I am glad the government responded to public pressure. I am proud of the role the NDP has played in putting that pressure on the government. While I am also glad the government felt the need to respond, responding to public pressure and pressure of a political party in the House are not the same as negotiating a solution in the context of a bill. We are not just here for seniors; we are here for workers. Many workers are being let down right now by the employment insurance system. The Liberals have said they will fix it, but we do not know when. There has been no clear signalling about when a fix for EI is going to come. Our constituency offices are hearing from people who are applying to EI and it is not there for them. The system cannot keep up with what is going on in the economy. That is why we needed exceptional pandemic benefits, the benefits the government just cancelled without having done the work of reforming employment insurance. I was just talking to my colleague from Edmonton Strathcona about constituents who she was hearing from in her home province of Alberta. They cannot get financial assistance through employment insurance, despite having worked hard and paid their dues to the employment insurance system. They have been unable to access it when they need it. We are here for people living with disabilities who are getting short shrift from the government. The Liberals say a lot of words, but they do not have a lot of action that will really help people in a timely way. We have been here to advocate for students. The Canada emergency student benefit was not something the government was even contemplating, except for the pressure and the negotiation of the NDP. Folks in this place might remember that the Canada emergency student benefit paid less than the CERB. Our position was to make students eligible for the CERB like everybody else. Students needed to pay their tuition in the fall of 2020, and they were not going to be able to get jobs in the summer. The government thought that students were naturally lazy: it could not just have them sitting around at home. It was not going to pay them to sit around and do nothing, so the government was going to pay them less than the CERB, but would create a phenomenal jobs program that would hire them in the summer. Does anyone remember, in the lead-up to the summer of 2020, the jobs program that the Liberals were contemplating? That program came to be known as the WE Charity scandal. The money never got out the door, which was a good thing in hindsight, because we had no idea how they were contemplating rolling out that program. The point is that the program for students never happened. The jobs never came and they continued to have a reduced benefit on the false pretense that there were going to be jobs coming to them that would help them make up the difference and pay their tuition in the fall. That never happened. There have been moments of co-operation in this Parliament, and we are willing to co-operate in expediting legislation when it reflects the priorities of the people we are here to represent. For folks in the LGBTQ2S community, we worked with the government to expedite passage of the bill banning conversion therapy. This is something that Sheri Benson, who was elected from Saskatoon alongside me in 2015, first brought to the House. My colleague for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke has done a lot of excellent work in advancing it. Where there was something for the people that we are here to represent, and the government was doing it in a good way without leaving out a whole bunch of other people, we were happy to co-operate, just as we have been happy to co-operate on a bill that would finally bring 10 paid sick days to workers across the country. Again, it is not a perfect bill. We think that there should be 10 paid sick days for workers across the country, but the bill says that a person would collect one sick day a month, so a person would have to wait 10 months to get those paid sick days. We are in a pandemic. The idea behind giving sick days was that if people were not feeling well, they would not have to go to work. The idea was not to have them work sick for 10 months while they accumulated the time they needed to protect themselves and everybody in their workplace from COVID-19. The idea was to give them that time so they could do the right thing and protect everybody in their workplaces and in their communities. Nevertheless, we have been working with the government to quickly pass that legislation, because we recognize that, while it is not how we would do it, it is the best on offer and we have been fighting hard to make it better. We presented amendments in committee that would have found a compromise position on this long, 10-month wait. It would have made sure that workers had at least four days up front so that they could do the right thing. However, it was voted down by the Liberals, so we know that this is as good as we are going to get for now and we recognize that it has to be in place quickly. At least there was some discussion and negotiation around that. This is all to say that New Democrats are here to fight for the people we represent. We are here to fight for seniors. We are here to fight for students. We are here to be a voice in this place for people living with disabilities across the country. We have been fighting for women, such as the women in the travel industry who were left out of Bill C-2. We are here for independent travel agents who work for themselves and have been doing work for their clients: First, at the beginning of the pandemic, they helped them to figure out cancelled trips, vouchers and rebates, and now they are doing bookings as people, in a sense of optimism, are starting to book travel. However, they are only going to get paid when people take those trips, and of course omicron is calling that into question. We are here to speak for them. When the government is willing to work with us to make sure that those people are not left behind in the bills that it presents, we will be there to try and make sure that the legislation advances quickly. When the government chooses other partners, that is its business, but it is leaving a lot of people behind in Bill C-2. I wish there was more time to fix it and leave fewer people behind, which is why we are not voting to expedite the bill, knowing full well that it will be expedited according to the program that the government has chosen by choosing its partners. We invite government members to work with us in the future to create better legislation and leave fewer people behind, but it just does not seem to be the approach that they are taking so far in this new Parliament.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Dec/16/21 12:36:05 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Madam Speaker, in fact, the government and ministers have been very open to working with all members of the House in an apolitical fashion to try to improve legislation, period. There seems to be a difference when the NDP is in opposition, where it will promise and say absolutely anything, such as $100,000 for every breathing Canadian coast to coast every year coming from the government as a direct payment. Whatever it takes, the NDP will say that. In government, on the other hand, I will use the example the member just made reference to. In the legislation we talk about 10 paid sick days. In B.C., with an NDP premier, there are more workers and the province has passed five paid sick days. The NDP will praise the NDP government in B.C. The member and the party have chosen not to support this legislation. This legislation is solid, good legislation for businesses and people. It would provide additional disposable income and support businesses. How does the member justify explaining to his constituents that the NDP does not support Bill C-2?

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Mr. Daniel Blaikie

Dec/16/21 12:37:23 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Madam Speaker, first of all, the member will know we have never had an NDP government here in Ottawa, and I look forward to the opportunity to prove him wrong. Second, if having the member for Winnipeg North say something was enough to make it true, we would live in a world of contradiction.

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Mr. John Brassard (Barrie—Innisfil, CPC)

Dec/16/21 12:37:46 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Madam Speaker, I want to pick up on something the parliamentary secretary just said. He talked about this piece of legislation and its intent, in his words, to create “disposable income” for people. We have gone from providing supports to people to protect their lives and livelihoods to now providing them with disposable income. I guess the new Liberal economic recovery plan is to use government money to pay people to go out and buy things instead of what this bill is intended for. I am just wondering this. Did the hon. member pick up on that, and does he have any comments on it?

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Mr. Daniel Blaikie

Dec/16/21 12:38:29 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Madam Speaker, I imagine my Conservative colleague will take some solace in the fact that what the member for Winnipeg North said was not true. In fact, the government has taken the advice of the Conservatives and cancelled the Canada recovery benefit program. It has created a Canada worker lockdown benefit that so far has not applied anywhere in the country. Despite the program being retroactive, nobody will be able to qualify for it retroactively. I regret to say it may apply in some cases going forward because of omicron. I was at a press conference earlier. My colleague for Winnipeg Centre has done some excellent work on the idea of a guaranteed livable basic income and has brought a bill forward to the House that I look forward to debating and passing. When we give people who are already living below the poverty line enough income to live with dignity, we are not giving them disposable income. We are giving them enough for rent and groceries. There are a lot of people who could use more financial support who are not going to get disposable income out of it. What they are going to get is a bit of dignity and the ability to have a home, to depend on that home in the future and to not pay rent at the expense of knowing where they are going to get money for medication and groceries.

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Ms. Heather McPherson (Edmonton Strathcona, NDP)

Dec/16/21 12:39:52 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for the incredible work he does to protect people living with disabilities, students and workers. The question I have for him today has to do with seniors in particular and the unbelievably disappointing GIS clawback we have seen. I know the member wrote to the government almost five months ago, on August 3, asking it to fix this program and it did not. We have heard from the Deputy Prime Minister that there will be a fix coming and that it may come as late as May, which we all know is far too late for seniors who live in their cars, who cannot afford their groceries or who cannot afford their cancer treatments. Could the member perhaps provide some feedback to the government on how we could fix the GIS clawback today and right now?

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Mr. Daniel Blaikie

Dec/16/21 12:40:52 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for the emphasis on the seniors who have been in distress because of the clawback of the benefit. I am shocked, really. We raised this in the summer when it was just becoming apparent that seniors were being affected. We have since learned in media reports that the government knew about the problem last May. Maybe the government thinks it makes sense to celebrate, on the one-year anniversary of finding out about the problem, by trying to fix it, but that is no celebration for seniors who have been living it. There are a lot of outstanding questions about whether this fix is going to work. I am glad to see the government bowing to public pressure and trying to find a solution, but it needs to do better. What we were asking for is that they simply eliminate pandemic benefits from the eligibility calculation for income-tested benefits. That is a big word salad. It just means the exceptional benefits paid in the pandemic would not count against their normal income under the statutory programs that people rely on. Had the government warned people that they were going to take it back from them a year later and that they should put some aside for that, it would be one thing; however, expecting seniors who are already living in poverty to navigate all the details of government departments that members in this place often have a hard time figuring out, and expecting them to ask members of the government directly about things and get straight answers when we cannot, is wrong. Expecting seniors in financial distress to figure it all out for themselves was wrong, punishing them for it was wrong, and delaying the solution for up to a year from when they knew about the problem is equally wrong.

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Mr. Dan Albas (Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC)

Dec/16/21 12:42:41 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Madam Speaker, I certainly appreciate the member's contributions to the debate today. In June of last year, when it came to Bill C-208, a bill that would allow someone to sell their family farm or fishing enterprise to their children and be treated the same as if selling to someone at arm's length, the government and the minister said that the coming into force date was not specified in that piece of legislation and therefore they would reinterpret it as coming into force this year. In this bill, at least Finance Canada seems to have learned its lesson, and there is no coming into force date for the amendments here. Would the member agree that it is important for the government, and in this case particularly Finance Canada, to honour the will of Parliament and if a piece of legislation has no coming into force date when the government amends a current act, that act be deemed, once it has gone through both Houses and received royal assent, the law of the land? Does the member believe that Finance Canada and the government have learned their lesson, and are doing that in Bill C-2?

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Mr. Daniel Blaikie

Dec/16/21 12:43:51 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the member raising that bill. He would probably know that former NDP finance critic Guy Caron was the original drafter and champion of that bill. It was a bill I was very happy to support in the last Parliament. It is generally understood, when legislators here make amendments to legislation or when we present a bill and the bill passes, that we expect it to come into force. It is not up the government to decide willy-nilly when certain things are going to come into effect. There is a great amendment in this bill. It is not retroactive, in the way that it was okay for the government to have a retroactive clawback of seniors' benefits, which is too bad. When it came to clawing back dividend payments from companies that did not need them, members should have heard the people at the finance committee: It was a big to-do about how terrible it would be to have retroactive clawbacks. I thought that was funny. Maybe if seniors could call their wealth dividends, the government would care. I did suggest that the finance committee have a look at how we label seniors' wealth dividends, so they could get more champions around the committee table. I hope we will do that. I certainly hope the amendments that have been made to this legislation will be considered in effect, along with the rest of the bill, once it passes.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Dec/16/21 12:45:14 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Madam Speaker, the member did not specifically answer the question of why the NDP would not support Bill C-2. Bill C-2 would provide ongoing support to businesses and people in a very real and tangible way. I understand that it does not cover everything that the NDP would like it to cover, but it would support Canadians. Could the member explain to the people who might be following the debate, or his constituents, specifically why the New Democrats would be voting against legislation that supports people going through the ongoing pandemic?

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Mr. Daniel Blaikie

Dec/16/21 12:46:00 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Madam Speaker, we are debating a time allocation motion and tomorrow we are debating the bill. I will have more time tomorrow to put those thoughts on the record. The member is also welcome to look at the other speeches I have given on this bill, which detail in full why the NDP is not supporting this bill.

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Ms. Michelle Ferreri (Peterborough—Kawartha, CPC)

Dec/16/21 12:46:20 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Madam Speaker, what a moment. What an experience to stand in the House of Commons. I thank my constituents of Peterborough—Kawartha. I am here because of their support. I am here because they believed in me. I promise to do my best and do what I learned growing up in Douro, Ontario: work hard. Just like the Journey song says, I am just a small-town girl, and I truly believe in the lessons a small town teaches: help others with genuine service. I want to take everyone back to June 2021. I received a call from a very distraught mom named Kim, whose daughter Cassy was missing. Cassy suffered from schizophrenia, and Kim felt the media was not giving her disappearance the attention it deserved, because she was a person who lived on the street. Kim did an interview with me on my social media, pleading with people to get Cassy home. Within 72 hours, Cassy was located in the sex trade in Toronto and brought home to Peterborough—Kawartha, thanks to the people on social media who shared that. I never met Cassy. I just chatted with her mom, but I want to fast-forward to August 2021, during the campaign. Just outside of my campaign office was a very distraught and distressed woman. I approached her and asked how I could help. She looked into my eyes and told me she was scared. She told me she had nowhere to live and the people on the street were hurting her. I noticed a wings tattoo on her chest, the same tattoo her mom Kim had described to me when we put out a call to find her. I wondered if this could be her, so I asked if her name was Cassy. She said yes. Cassy was like many people who are forced to live on the street and struggling with mental illness and addiction. She had a mom and a family who loved her, but that is not always enough. Trauma and circumstance landed Cassy here. She did not choose this life. I want to point out that I am splitting my time with the member for Miramichi—Grand Lake. Cassy did not choose this life. I did not see Cassy every day, but when I did, she was distraught, exhausted, hungry and afraid. She did not have a home, and she did not have the intervention to help get her the treatment she needed. On September 20, 2021, yes, the day of the election, while I was running around with my team, I received a text that cut me to the core. The text was from Cassy's mom, and it read, “Cassy is dead. She was the body behind the music store. Family still to be notified so I don't think they have released her name to the media.” I was absolutely shattered. I was gutted emotionally and heartbroken. I felt I had personally failed Cassy. How did the system fail Cassy? How many more people like Cassy will be failed? In that moment, I questioned why I was running in politics and why it mattered. My partner Ryan was with me and, like a great partner does, he recalibrated me and picked me up. He took my hand and said that by taking this job as a member of Parliament, I could be part of the change that was needed for all people like Cassy. I applied for this job because I know we can do better. We need to change how we talk about mental health; we need to better understand the complexities of addiction, and we need to change policy that intervenes when people like Cassy do not have the capacity to take care of themselves. We need the infrastructure and resources dedicated to building forward-thinking mental health treatment facilities. Mental health impacts every single one of us. We have heard about so many programs and so much money being dumped into mental health, but the reality is that things are not getting better. They feel worse. Money does not solve everything. If we are not spending money in the right places or we do not have a reasonable timeline to allocate funds, vision or an innovative plan to partner with money, we cannot expect change. We need to change how we think and talk about mental health. This is what will help us change how we treat it. Humans have an incredible track record of not understanding something until we experience it. Fortunately, and unfortunately, most of us have experienced how devastating mental illness is. Most of us know that our mental health contributes to our happiness, our creativity and our productivity, which are directly linked to our economy. Our economic crisis is a mental health crisis. How can we expect people who cannot afford food or a home to get out of the poverty cycle? We have to get the cost of living down if we want to be serious about mental health. We have to create an environment that fosters independence and confidence. I was appointed as shadow minister of tourism, and I know first-hand how much this industry is suffering. Many of those devastated by the pandemic do not want more loans; they want to work. One of my favourite economic solutions comes from the member for Carleton, who said that programs and subsidies need to be three things: timely, targeted and temporary. Much like I said earlier, this economic crisis is a mental health crisis, and I will work diligently to help in the recovery of lost jobs. We need to be reunited with friends and family. We need each other more than ever. We need to acknowledge and respect public health guidelines, but we also need to be more prepared to deal with what is our new normal. We need to transition to learning to live with COVID. This pandemic has magnified the opioid crisis. My riding of Peterborough—Kawartha has one of the highest rates of opioid deaths in the country. We have the second-highest overdose rate in the province of Ontario. We have people dying in the streets and in their homes. I myself have lost friends and family to overdoses and suicide. As I stand here today, I want to leave this message for myself and for all of the people of my riding of Peterborough—Kawartha: We cannot give up; we cannot stop. We must work every day to learn what works, but more importantly, what does not work. I will work for Peterborough—Kawartha and for every Cassy who was failed by the system, because I believe that when we take care of our neighbours, we take care of our entire country. We cannot stop believing.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Dec/16/21 12:54:00 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Madam Speaker, I want to congratulate the member on her first speech in the House of Commons. I can still reflect on and remember mine a few years back. I want to pick up on the importance of the perceived and real fifth wave that is quickly approaching in terms of what the member would suggest to her constituents and colleagues in regard to the importance of the booster shot. We can appreciate that we want to be able to keep our families together and the economy open, but there are going to be some more difficult days ahead. Would she like to share her thoughts with her constituents and others with regard to the booster shot?

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