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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 32

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 16, 2022 02:00PM
Context: House Hansard - 32 - Feb/16/22
Mrs. Stephanie Kusie (Calgary Midnapore, CPC)
  • Feb/16/22 6:59:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, on November 25, I asked the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion for information relative to a BDC report that found that 64% of companies said that they had difficulty finding workers, and this was limiting their growth. RBC also reported that over one-third of businesses were having problems at that time finding employees, resulting in 870,000 vacancies across Canada. Of course, businesses need workers to make money. Therefore, what was the minister doing in an effort to resolve these labour shortages? This actually feels like a small problem today compared to what we have had to deal with since that time. We have incredible instability in the nation at this time as a result of the poor leadership by this government and by the Prime Minister at the helm. Unfortunately, the reality is that life goes on outside the Parliamentary Precinct. I am very happy that the situations at the borders have been cleared up. The problem still exists here in Ottawa, but the reality is that life goes on outside the precinct. The labour shortage still exists. Unfortunately, this is the problem with this government. There are a number of serious problems that we should be dealing with as a government and as a nation as a whole, rather than dealing with these unfortunate, unnecessary distractions, which become significant problems as a result of the lack of leadership. I think of things that are relevant to the labour shortage, such as inflation, which of course was announced this week to be 5.1%. It is a historic number, in a bad way, when inflation is over 5%. The finance minister stands up time and time again and talks about 4.5% GDP growth. That is just not important to average Canadians who have to buy groceries and heat their homes. This leads me to the next problem that this government ignores, apart from the continuing large problem, and that is the cost of living. We have seen time and time again members of the government in the House who cannot name the price of a whole chicken and cannot name the price of bacon. I have to say that we see this inability to face problems also replicated within the numbers that government members provide. They talked about one million jobs in the pandemic recovery. Well, these are just the jobs that were recovered naturally during the pandemic as a result of people going back to their jobs when the economy opened up across this nation. It is a completely insincere number, and we even saw this with the 200,000 jobs lost, which was another failure. They talk about a 106% employment rate. This is also insincere, given that the workforce has shrunk. Seniors have left, individuals have left, so of course we are going to have 106% employment if the workforce has shrunk. We see these problems in different sectors, including agriculture, food processing, retail, hospitality and health care. I have offered solutions, such as eliminating the LMIA and providing a credit for automation, but as with all the other problems, including the most significant one just outside these doors, this government just does not acknowledge them and does not come up with solutions to them.
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Context: House Hansard - 32 - Feb/16/22
Mrs. Stephanie Kusie
  • Feb/16/22 7:06:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is incredibly disappointing because it just seems incredibly canned. That seems to be a problem of the government, its inability to really listen to Canadians. It seems to be consistently out of touch with Canadians. When I think about the labour shortage, that is about people eating. When I think about the cost of living, that is about people starving. Very frankly, here is some advice to the government. If I had to solve these problems in descending order, I would start with the removal of the emergency measures act. I would move on to inflation, then the cost of living and then, finally, the labour shortage. Frankly, it is overwhelming. I certainly hope that the government, under its leader, who was very disappointing in the House today, will come to its senses and provide some solutions for Canadians.
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