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House Hansard - 52

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 4, 2022 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 52 - Apr/4/22
Mr. Blake Desjarlais (Edmonton Griesbach, NDP)
  • Apr/4/22 5:11:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is my honour today to rise in this place on behalf of my neighbours and constituents in my community of Edmonton Griesbach. Folks in my community and across Canada are facing a true crisis of affordability. With the cost of living rapidly rising and workers' wages continuing to be stagnant, or even worse decreasing as they are in my home province of Alberta, where the current Conservative government is slashing the wages of hard-working public health care workers, we must do more. During this affordability crisis, it is our job to protect our social safety net so that it truly assists those who need it most and continues to provide Canadians with the dignity they need. We are seeing more and more seniors, people with disabilities, and Black communities, indigenous communities and all person-of-colour communities across Canada struggling to make ends meet due to this crisis. We need more protection and we need the social programs to keep them going. This is no surprise to my community of Edmonton Griesbach. We have been struggling with the affordability crisis for years. We see, for example, a study by the Edmonton Social Planning Council. Its research showed that 9,705 lone-parent families are already experiencing poverty, while an additional 10% of Edmontonians are living in extreme poverty. This makes Alberta one of the most unequal provinces in our federation, according to the Edmonton Social Planning Council. This is something that must change. All this is happening while large companies have been making huge profits. CN Rail and Suncor have made record profits throughout this pandemic, while everyone else did their part. We all did so much for one another. We took care of our neighbours. We talked to family members. We even gave a few bucks to some of the community organizations, trying to help others. However, these big companies—
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