44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 15, 2022 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, it is nice to be back in the House debating an important bill.
Bill C-12 is aligned with all the measures that the government has implemented since 2015.
It is important that we go over everything that we have done because we know that Canadians watching us may not tune in every day. It is important that we be there for them. However—
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- Feb/15/22 2:18:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the Prime Minister invoked the Emergencies Act. Twenty-four hours in, and there are more questions than answers. There are questions about whether this is justified, questions around if the criteria has been met, and questions around what this means to Canadians' rights and freedoms.
Parliamentary approval is required in order for the Prime Minister to use this unprecedented sledgehammer. Can the Prime Minister tell us when Parliament will be debating this? Will it be coming to us on Friday? Does he expect that we will look at it Friday, but then rise, take a week off and not actually deal with this until March?
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- Feb/15/22 4:59:08 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member knows just as well as I and every other member in this House about the challenges of the legislative calendar.
I am not going to say that this could not have been done sooner; I would have loved to have seen this done sooner as well. What I will say is that this particular minister was clearly seized with this file on day one after being appointed. She moved as quickly on it as she could, in addition to dealing with other obligations that she had to bring up to date in her files, and introduced this piece of legislation. We have been able to fit it into the legislative agenda.
The mere fact that we are debating this closure motion all day long makes it obvious that we have a problem with moving legislation through this House. We have dealt with obstacle after obstacle in order to get to this place. I wish we could have done this motion that we are debating all afternoon as a unanimous consent motion, but clearly the Bloc and the Conservatives would rather play games, so we are in this position.
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Mr. Speaker, the hon. member mentioned he was a business Liberal, which I think might be an endangered species within the Liberal Party, but I will take him at his word on that.
My question to him is this. Here we are debating a programming motion, one that does not allow for a full study of this bill. It does not allow for committee study. It does not allow for the minister to appear before the committee and it does not allow for meaningful conversation and amendments at the committee.
As a business Liberal, would he not agree that we should do our due diligence, have the minister come to committee to explore and debate this bill, and then move along quickly to report stage and third reading, rather than rushing it through in a single night of debate?
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Mr. Speaker, the reason we are here is because the government took money from seniors. Had it not taken money from seniors, we would not be in the House debating this bill today.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Calgary Midnapore for splitting her time with me today and giving me the opportunity to join this debate.
I would like to say that it is a pleasure to join the debate today, and to some degree it is, but, unfortunately, it is also a bit frustrating to be here debating the bill before us considering the two years that have gone by since this issue was first brought to light for the Liberal government, which is now taking action to try to rectify it. However, there is some frustration there with the timeline. Of course, we are talking about seniors applying for CERB, reaching out for pandemic benefits and having their GIS clawed back as a result.
I will talk more about the direct issue at hand in just a moment, but I would like to lay out the groundwork a bit more and talk about why this is so important, especially right now with inflation rising at the rate that it is.
The cost of everything is going up. Everyday essentials such as gas and groceries are growing, especially in regions like mine in northwestern Ontario and across the Kenora riding, where the costs are usually higher than in many other regions in the country. It is getting harder for everyone to get by, particularly seniors, who are on fixed incomes and who have worked their whole lives to help build a country. They have paid into the system, but they are now not properly supported. They do not have the support they need in order to keep up with the rising costs of living.
Of course, throughout the pandemic, the government had great, new spending programs, and printed a lot of money for them, which added to inflation and caused the crisis we are seeing right now. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has confirmed that. The PBO has also said that the rationale for stimulus no longer exists, but that is a bit of a different discussion.
I would like to share what I have been hearing in my riding and across the country. When we look at groceries, food prices overall have increased by about 4%. I believe beef is up nearly 12% and bacon is up more than 19%. As I mentioned, it is not just groceries.
For home heating, natural gas is up 20%. In Canada and northern Ontario, home heating is certainly not a luxury. It is a necessity for seniors to be able to heat their homes. Just last week, the price of gas in Red Lake in my riding was hovering just below $1.70 a litre. Of course, this is in a region that is northern and rural, and many communities are considered remote. The people in Red Lake do not have the option to take other modes of transportation. They need to pay that cost.
A constituent of mine in Sioux Lookout recently shared his home heating bill with me, which showed that he was paying $70 a week in carbon taxes alone. In Sioux Lookout, heating is something that is not a choice, as we have to heat our homes, especially in the winter months when it gets much colder.
We have this cost of living crisis, this economic crisis, coupled with the health crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is something that has hit seniors particularly hard. Many seniors are at an increased health risk and are more vulnerable to the virus than other Canadians, and for that reason, many seniors had to withdraw from some of their activities that they previously enjoyed.
Many seniors were not comfortable going to the grocery store or doing simple tasks with the threat of the pandemic out there, not to mention the fact that there is an emotional toll to all of this, which I think everyone has felt to some degree. I think every family has been touched with mental health challenges throughout the course of this pandemic because of isolation and not being able to see loved ones. Seniors in my riding have mentioned to me that it has been particularly difficult for them.
We have these two crises that have come to a head at the same time, and that is why many seniors reached out to the government. They looked to the government for support, applying for programs like the CERB to help get them through this difficult time with the rising cost of living and all the challenges COVID brought on.
Of course, these seniors were not expecting the government to claw back their GIS or have it eliminated entirely, and that is the heart of the concern that we are dealing with right now. It is why I am pleased to see the government is now taking some action to rectify that issue, but it has come frustratingly too late for many seniors across the Kenora district and across the country.
I do not have the numbers right in front of me, but there are not many issues that I hear about more in my constituency office, or in my Ottawa office, than seniors' issues with the cost of living and not being able to get by. I have been on the phone with many seniors in my riding.
I know many of my staff members have as well. Two in particular are Jordyn Ham and Madison McSweeney, who are working in the Ottawa office. I hope they do not mind me mentioning them here in the House. They have done an amazing job reaching out to those constituents, having conversations with them and helping them try to get through these difficult times.
It has been tough. It has been tough for us. We have had seniors come into our office in tears. They are frustrated. They are not sure how they are going to heat their homes or if they are going to be able to put food on the table, and it is clearly an issue that is of the government's creation. That is why the government must act to prevent another clawback, and that is why I am pleased to see the Liberals are moving forward on this.
However, I think it was the critic for seniors, the member for Hastings—Lennox and Addington, who noted that this has been an issue for two years, and we are now just getting to the debate. That should be frustrating to everybody in the House, and everyone should take issue with that.
Another thing I have been hearing from seniors in my riding is that they need a guarantee. Seniors need to know that this payment will not be taxable. They need to know that further changes and solutions the government actually comes up with are going to have the effect they need. I think there is a bit of distrust, given what has happened previously, and I have been heartened by what I have heard here today in the debate. I think most people in the House tend to be on the same page, and I hope that will give some level of comfort to the seniors in the Kenora riding as well.
With the limited time I have, I just want to make it incredibly clear that these seniors are not tax cheats. They are not people trying to game the system. They are struggling and facing such a hard time in their lives, after paying into the system and doing everything right to try to provide for themselves. It is incredibly important that we move forward to give them the support they rightly need.
To seniors who may be watching or following the debate, I want them to know that the Conservative Party has not forgotten them. The Conservative party is going to have their backs, and we are going to be continuing to advocate for them to ensure that the government follows through and that the government does not claw back any further benefits.
I appreciate the opportunity to contribute to the debate today, and I am looking forward to any questions or comments that my colleagues might have.
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Madam Speaker, I look forward to being able to debate that at length at some point in time, which would be very, very important.
A simple response is that there was a lot of dialogue about the issue which the member mentioned that did take place in the last Parliament. There was a lot of work that got it to the point where the decision was made for that to be fast tracked in this Parliament, but we are literally debating a fix to a problem with a program that the government created.
Forgive my skepticism when it comes to my lack of trust with the fact that the Liberals would have gone through the due diligence to actually get it right. Challenges with CEBA have had to be addressed three times. Time and time again, there have been many examples where the government has made claims that a team Canada approach was needed, yet what happened? We ended up back here in this place having to fix its mistakes.
I think there is a healthy level of skepticism that many of us have when it comes to ensuring that we can do exactly what our jobs are. The fact that we are sitting until midnight—
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Madam Speaker, this is such a riveting debate. I especially enjoyed the at-length comments from my friend from Battle River—Crowfoot on diversity and how we represent 338 unique corners of this world. I happen to think my riding is the number one riding in Canada. I have glaciers, ski hills and all sorts of great things.
One of the things that we all come here to do as members of Parliament is go to committees. I love committees, but with this bill we have been prevented from going to committee. What I am worried about with this legislation, and with the other bill that passed the other day, has to do with the importance of committees in debating legislation. Why should we not bring this bill before committee? Would Canadians not be better served if we spent one day to debate this bill at committee and go clause by clause before the other House returns next week?
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