SoVote

Ms. Heather McPherson (Edmonton Strathcona, NDP)

Feb/4/22 12:42:34 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, the member spoke about the supply chain, and I have some questions about that and the Conservative support for the blockades and convoys that we are seeing across the country. The member will know that I am from Alberta. Today the Alberta Beef Producers, the Alberta Cattle Feeders' Association and The Canadian Cattlemen's Association have called for a stop to the blockades in Coutts in southern Alberta. Also, time after time we are seeing racist symbols like Confederate flags and yellow stars being used by the protesters in Ottawa. How can anyone stand with protesters and say the supply chain is at risk when the protesters are stopping the transport of goods in my province and are showing such disregard for our electoral positions and our democracy in Ottawa?

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Context: House Hansard - 24 - Feb/4/22

Ms. Heather McPherson (Edmonton Strathcona, NDP)

Feb/4/22 1:05:20 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I would like to say how happy I am to have the opportunity to speak to Bill C-8 today. I will start my comments today talking a bit about how much people in Canada and around the world have been struggling during this pandemic. The past two years have been extremely hard for so many people in Canada and around the world. None of us imagined in March 2020, when we all left this place, that we would still be in a pandemic situation two years later, so I get the frustration we are seeing. I get why people want to get their lives back to normal. I want to travel. I want to do the things we used to be able to do before COVID. Unfortunately, COVID-19 is not over, and we still need the public health measures that are so important to keep people safe and our health care system intact. One of the things I will start with, and nobody in this House will be surprised to hear me say this, is that I am very disappointed in where we are at in this situation, because I think we have not done a very good job globally of ensuring vaccines went out to everybody around the world. I think that during this pandemic, we would not be in the situation we are in, dealing with yet another variant, if we had done global vaccine equity more appropriately. This is concerning to me because I look at some of the problems facing humanity that are global in scope, and I see the response to COVID-19 as a precursor, and it is a worrying indication of our inability to find global solutions to some of these global problems, such as the climate crisis and increasing inequality. As somebody who is vaccinated, I am delighted I am vaccinated. I am delighted my elderly parents are vaccinated and that my children have been able to be vaccinated. However, I want members in the House to understand that only 2.6% of people in Nigeria and only 2.9% of people in Tanzania have had access to a vaccine. We are dealing today with Bill C-8 and some things that are being put in place to help people as we continue to go through this pandemic. However, I think it would be a missed opportunity for me to not say in this House that I blame the global response, and the inability of our government to help get vaccines into the arms of people around the world, for this variant. I am going to talk a bit about some of the things within Bill C-8 that I like. I like that there is a tax credit for teachers in there. I like that there is a tax for housing owned by non-Canadians that is not being lived in. I like some of the changes to EI, but the New Democratic Party would have made different choices. We do not think this does enough to help Canadians considering where we are right now. The changes to EI will not help all of the folks we need to help. It will not do enough. I know the government has the opportunity to bring forward legislation that would do more, and I would encourage it to do that. Another thing I like within this bill is the ventilation for SMEs, small and medium enterprises, and schools. In August of 2020, I stood in this House and brought forward a unanimous consent motion asking for $2 billion to go out to the provinces to help with a safer restart of schools, and the government did that. It sent $2 billion to the provinces to make schools safer. That was in 2020. That is when we needed to invest in ventilation for schools. That is when we needed to see that. We are going into two years now. There is no downside to increasing ventilation in our schools, as there is nothing better we could do to make our teachers and students safer when they are in school. I will also say that, while I think it should have happened two years ago, I do not think this is enough. When I look at the amount of money there, it is going to provide less than $5,000 per Alberta school. That might work in other provinces, but in the province of Alberta, our premier is cutting funding for schools right now. We have 2,400 school-aged children who have COVID-19 right now in Alberta. That is just the number we know about, because like other parts of the country, there is no testing happening unless people are very ill. Some people estimate the number of school-aged children in my province who have COVID-19 at probably closer to 20,000, and we do not know the long-term impacts of COVID on children. In Alberta, we also need strings attached to programs like this, because we have seen this before. We have seen this a lot of times. Last year, we learned that the Government of Alberta was sitting on millions in unspent federal COVID emergency funding, more than any other province. There needs to be strings attached to make sure that these dollars get to the schools and help the teachers, students and support staff who need them. While I do like the ventilation piece in the bill, I think there are some loopholes there that we need to close. I will talk about one thing that I really dislike about the bill before us. I do not know how many times members of the New Democrats have stood in the House and talked to the government about the serious attack that is happening on seniors in this country with the guaranteed income supplement, GIS, that has been clawed back from them. We know that the cost of living has hit Canadians. We know that things have gotten more expensive, but the two million seniors who live at or below the poverty line are the most vulnerable, and they have been hit the hardest. I will tell members about some of these seniors who applied for the CERB benefit, for COVID benefits, because their Prime Minister told them to. I will tell members about some of these seniors who were eligible for it and who are now unable to pay their rent, buy their medications or buy food in this country and in my community. There are seniors like Ben who, because of a learning disability, has spent his entire life struggling to support himself doing manual labour for minimum wage, which is what he was doing when COVID hit. Now the business he worked for is gone, a victim of Alberta's economic crisis in COVID-19, and without the guaranteed income supplement he relied on, Ben's total income from OAS and CPP is less than his monthly rent, and he is facing eviction. At 73, Ben is out in the Edmonton winter in the bitter cold, knocking on doors and trying to find work during a pandemic. The Liberals will tell us that they get it, that they heard us and that they fixed the problem. They are going to give Ben help in May. They think it is okay for Ben to be on the streets unable to meet his basic needs until May. However, the solution is so easy. The Liberals could fix this tomorrow. They could fix this for seniors across this country tomorrow, yet they are going to make those seniors wait and suffer and potentially die, because they are going to delay until May. It breaks my heart. I can tell members about other seniors, numerous seniors, across this country and in my riding of Edmonton Strathcona. I want to raise this because it did not have to be this way. All this government had to do was exempt CERB income from the calculation for the GIS. That is all it had to do. It was so easy. The fact that it did not tells us all we need to know about the priorities of the Liberal government. There are other things that are missing in the bill. There is nothing on a just transition for workers. In Alberta, we really need to start thinking of a plan for how we are going to help our energy workers. There is no funding for public transportation operations. There is nothing for energy efficiency retrofits for low-income households. There is nothing for dental, mental or pharmacare coverage. There are no measures to eliminate tax havens, to eliminate tax evasion or to even have better law enforcement. There is no wealth tax. While there are things in Bill C-8 that I support, things that would move us in the right direction, the government missed an opportunity. I really hope that the Liberals will reflect on that and think about how they can fix some of the gaps that Bill C-8 left behind.

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Context: House Hansard - 24 - Feb/4/22

Ms. Heather McPherson

Feb/4/22 1:16:12 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I am very disappointed that the member is blaming at-risk seniors for the situation his government has put them in. Let me put a question back to him. Perhaps the member could tell me if he thinks there are any examples where a corporation that used money for the wrong things should be asked to pay it back. The government appears to think corporations never have to pay it back, even they are using it to pay scab labour in my riding so they can lock out their workers. Instead of attacking vulnerable seniors, let us look at making it more equitable for them, please.

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Context: House Hansard - 24 - Feb/4/22

Ms. Heather McPherson

Feb/4/22 1:17:43 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, my neighbour from Edmonton Manning and I share a beautiful city. I met with the mayor of Edmonton recently to talk about the housing crisis in Edmonton and the failure of the federal government to do what needs to be done, things like an indigenous housing strategy developed with the input of indigenous people. Obviously, the housing crisis is desperate across the country, but one of the problems I see is the fact that we do not have a strong housing strategy for indigenous people in our country. That is something that has been promised and the government has absolutely sat on the sidelines and has not done anything to make that happen. We are well past the deadline.

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Context: House Hansard - 24 - Feb/4/22

Ms. Heather McPherson

Feb/4/22 1:19:27 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question. I am sorry, but I am going to answer in English. I am learning. My French is a work-in-progress. There needs to be intervention from all levels of government. It is important we have that. In the province of Alberta, it is particularly important that we are able to work with municipalities because our provincial government seems very unwilling to support some of these initiatives and has been a barrier to our being able to achieve the things we want to achieve at the federal, municipal and provincial levels. Absolutely, there is an opportunity for the federal government to work with municipal governments. If one has a government that is more open to that then maybe even provincial governments, but that is not the case in Alberta.

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