44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 25, 2022 11:00AM
- Apr/25/22 11:09:12 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Avalon for bringing this motion forward. He talked about standards of care. There are provincial standards of care across Canada. The trouble is that none of those standards are being met in any province, and the problem is both funding and the model of delivering long-term care in Canada, which to a large extent is a for-profit model.
I am wondering how his motion would help this. If we do not get the profit out of long-term care in Canada, how can we put strings on any funding we might provide to make sure these long-term care homes provide a dignified place to live for seniors?
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- Apr/25/22 11:12:19 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am just as concerned as my colleague by what has been happening to seniors in long-term care facilities, but we do not have the same approach to finding solutions.
In Quebec, we realized what was going on, and our ombudsperson produced a report in 2021 with a number of recommendations to prevent this kind of thing from happening again if ever another pandemic strikes. Quebec realized what was going on, figured out what to do about it and is completely overhauling its health care system.
I have a question for my colleague.
If Quebec were to reject Canadian standards for long-term care in Quebec, does my colleague agree with his government that Quebec might not get any of that funding?
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- Apr/25/22 12:13:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as members know, the whole issue of health transfers was discussed earlier in the debate on a motion.
As we know, in the 1960s and 1970s, the federal government funded 50% of health care spending. That funding was cut repeatedly, and now the feds fund only about 22% through health transfers.
The Quebec government and all Canadian provinces are calling for an increase in these health transfers. Unfortunately, this budget does not include any such measures. What are my colleague's thoughts on that?
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- Apr/25/22 12:44:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am so glad that our government is putting the money where its mouth is when it comes to affordable housing. We have committed a historically large amount of funding for affordable housing.
As members know, this amount is passed on to projects in provinces and cities. In my riding of Nepean, I am so glad that we had one new affordable housing project five years back and later on, during the course of the last six years. We have two projects coming up right now under the affordable housing scheme.
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- Apr/25/22 1:21:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate my colleagues' passionate discourse on this and the fact that they were more or less agreeing with what I was saying. When the Liberals were out selling the budget and travelling around Canada contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, the Parliamentary Budget Officer issued a report on Friday that was quite troubling with respect to the budget. He flags several downside risks in the recent federal budget, the biggest being big-ticket campaign promises that have yet to make an appearance in the government's fiscal forecast.
What they've forecasted is in the budget, but there are things that are not forecasted that are going to cause some significant costs later on. The PBO's largest concern is expenditures looming outside of the budget, including some of the Liberal campaign pledges and lobbying by provinces for big increases to health care transfers.
On the spending side, he said there could be a significant delta. This is the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Yves Giroux. He went on to say some of those election promises were slated to start up in the current fiscal year, most notably the commitment to increase annual payments to seniors receiving the guaranteed income supplement. He said many of these costs, including a promised increase to Canadian mental health transfers, do not appear in the budget. Universal pharmacare, which is of course a large part of the NDP-Liberal alliance, could cost billions of dollars a year. The Liberals pulled up short of a commitment to a full-blown program during the campaign, but the agreement struck with the NDP last month says that the government will make continuing progress toward such a program. However, there is no forecasted cost to that. Those costs will come up later on.
When the Parliamentary Budget Officer is warning about this particular budget, then I think all Canadians should heed those warnings. As I said earlier, I spent the last couple of weeks in the riding, and I heard from a lot of people. I know the Liberals' argument, because I have heard it a couple of times this morning, has to do with some of the geopolitical problems happening around the world being a cause of current inflation, whether it is supply chain issues or others. However, as I said at the onset, this was predicted to happen when the money printing presses were going at full steam a year and a half to two years ago. Even then, people were concerned about the cost of living. Some emails I received August 25, 2021, almost eight months ago, begged me to do something about this, if not for them, then for their future children. They say the government needs to fix this broken situation as it relates to housing.
One from August 25 reads, “I'm not sure who I would send this letter to, but I wish to express my concern with current rental and housing shortages in Barrie and surrounding areas.” This is a serious issue and many people are struggling as a result. I know there are billions allocated toward housing, but there have been billions allocated in the past, and we have not seen any measurable increases.
There are affordability projects right now that are waiting for approval from the government. I wrote a letter to the Minister of Housing and Diversity and Inclusion three or four months ago. Still, no decision has been made for an already existing project that is waiting to go through the rapid housing initiative. It is to be a joint partnership between Simcoe County and what we hope would be the province and the federal government, but we have not heard anything at this point. There are a lot of announcements, but the list is long.
The emails and texts about the anxiety and the affordability crisis people are facing right now are long. Adding on billions and billions of dollars for more long-term, unsustainable programs, from the affordability standpoint, is awfully difficult for Canadians.
The last thing I will speak to is my profound disappointment about Lake Simcoe. In 2019, Conservatives were promised $30 million for the re-establishment of the Lake Simcoe cleanup fund. Just two or three days before the election in the advance polls, the then deputy prime minister, the now finance minister, came to the shores of Lake Simcoe promising $40 million for the reinstatement of the Lake Simcoe fund. Just a couple of days after the election, my colleagues and I wrote a letter to the Prime Minister about it.
In this budget, only $19.7 million was allocated, and it is not for direct funding for Lake Simcoe. It is to be spread across the country. There was $60 million spent to clean up Lake Simcoe. We saw measurable improvements. I am extremely disappointed that the commitment made in 2019 was not lived up to in this budget. We are going to continue to fight for Lake Simcoe.
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- Apr/25/22 2:55:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government has tried to deny that it is planning to impose a tax on home equity, but the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has obtained documents proving that the government recently provided an additional $200,000 in research funding to Generation Squeeze, the aptly named group trying to squeeze Canadians out of their hard-earned home equity.
Will the minister stop hiding, come clean and admit that they are trying to make a tax grab out of Canadians' hard-earned home equity?
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- Apr/25/22 3:21:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, today I will be tabling two petitions in the House. The first one is to acknowledge the need small hatcheries in communities have and the fact that there has not been any increase to their funding since 1982.
The work these volunteers do to really help support wild salmon is amazing and we need to see it supported. These folks from my riding, specifically from Powell River, want respect and acknowledgement that their organization, the Powell River organization, does such tremendous work and work in educating the community. They want to see an increase to the annual contribution to the Powell River Salmon Society and, of course, they also want to ensure that there is actually DFO within their region. That is something I hear across the riding. We need to see more staff.
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- Apr/25/22 4:55:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Winnipeg North for his question. My speech seems to have angered him, and I am not really sure why.
I can say one thing. I have been a manager before. If I am asked to organize long-term services and ensure that seniors are well taken care of in long-term care facilities, I know that there needs to be predictability.
Planning, organizing and providing services requires predictability, and that means that funding needs to be recurring, not a one-shot deal. It takes planning and forecasting. I am not denying that the federal government gave money to the provinces to help them deal with challenges during the worst of the pandemic, but now the pandemic is winding down, and the provinces are calling for the funding they need to reorganize their top-notch services for the patients who need it.
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- Apr/25/22 5:00:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would first like to thank my colleague for sharing her time with me.
This year, I was fortunate enough to be one of the privileged members of Parliament who participated in an in camera review of the budget before other members and prior to the minister's speech. It was an opportunity for us to understand it and analyze it.
When I walked out of the room, a little earlier than expected, the first thing that came to my mind was that this was a missed opportunity. It is a missed opportunity to address real problems and, in the process, to create a sustainable economic recovery. Let me briefly go over the context in which this budget was tabled.
First of all, there is a labour shortage, a supply chain shortage, and a customer shortage, since people no longer want to return to performing arts venues, movie theatres and so on. The hospitality and tourism sector is still suffering, and I would remind members that the measures to help it will end next week.
Second, we have an inflationary context. Just this morning, the Governor of the Bank of Canada revised current and projected interest rates upward. Third, we are in a climate crisis.
Given these three overarching factors, the Bloc Québécois made five demands: higher health transfers, which my colleague talked about; a better standard of living for seniors; measures to fight inflation, including short-term protection measures; measures to encourage sustainable finance; and, lastly, indigenous housing. Of these five measures, only indigenous housing is in the budget. We are happy about that.
Unfortunately, none of the other four proposed measures wound up in the budget. My colleague did a great job describing the government's approach to the Canada health transfers and seniors' standard of living.
As for the fight against inflation, unfortunately, the budget contains very few measures to help people get through what is likely to be a longer period than expected, as the governor said this morning. In 2022, we are going to see high inflation.
Given the need for economic recovery and a green transition, I have to say again that this budget is a missed opportunity.
First of all, the budget proposes numerous measures for housing, especially for affordable housing. A few days ago, the Gatineau newspaper Le Droit reported that affordable housing means a one-bedroom apartment costing $1,950 a month. I wonder who here would agree that this is really what is needed. Imagine a single mother of three who does not want to transfer her children to another school and who is offered affordable housing at $1,950 for a one-bedroom unit. I think most of us would agree that this is not necessarily what will most help those suffering from inflation.
Second, the budget proposes dental coverage. Clearly, this encroaches on an area of provincial jurisdiction. As we keep saying over and over again, we do not want measures that encroach on provincial jurisdictions. It is also important to remember that the proposed coverage is meant to help children aged 12 and under, but Quebec already has a program that covers children aged 10 and under. We therefore thank the federal government for wanting to help 11- and 12-year-olds, but that is not exactly what we were asking for.
Finally, on the environment, the budget proposes some good measures, such as electric vehicles. At the same time, however, it is completely undoing its own environmental efforts, particularly by increasing funding for an extremely expensive technology that is not even proven: carbon capture and storage. If this technology were reflected in gas prices, the consumer price index I mentioned earlier would be even higher.
This response to the climate crisis is disappointing, especially since only a few days earlier, the government had approved the Bay du Nord project, which will involve the extraction of almost one billion barrels of oil over the next few years.
We expected a bit more ambition and vision in this budget. As far as the five Bloc measures are concerned, sustainable finance was not addressed either. There are very few measures in the budget.
Once again, we saw very little with regard to fighting inflation. There are several measures that could have been proposed to fight inflation, such as social housing instead of affordable housing, as I was saying, as well as measures to fight monopolies and cartels. We know that that helps boost consumer purchasing power.
The government could have brought in tangible measures to deal with the semiconductor shortage that has been mentioned and that is causing a major problem for the supply chain. As I was saying, there is a shortage of products in the supply chain.
The budget contains a lot of proposals about creating working groups and task forces, but it is weak on tangible action. The proposals in the budget are sorely lacking in vision in areas that are very important.
The proposed measures intrude considerably on provincial jurisdictions. In a nutshell, the federal government is putting money into areas where Quebec has already made investments. It is rather rich that the new areas in which the federal government is innovating with this budget, such as electric vehicles, dental insurance, or even the day care system that copies the Quebec model, are all already covered in Quebec. It is unbelievable that the budget proposes to interfere in provincial measures that already exist in Quebec. What this means is that Quebec is already doing quite well.
I have a question for the Quebeckers watching me today: Why are we still part of a country that is undermining us?
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- Apr/25/22 5:11:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am sorry about this, but I am going to speak in French, because it is important to try.
The federal government has reduced its share of funding over many years, leaving hospitals with a shortfall of several billions of dollars.
Does the member think that the federal government should restore its share of the funding and increase health transfers to the provinces?
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- Apr/25/22 5:13:00 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook.
I am rising today to participate in this very important debate. On an annual basis, when we have a chance to speak about the budget and the plan the government has going forward for the people of Canada, it is a critical time to participate in debate in this chamber and discuss some of the issues contained in the budget and some of the policies that are being focused on.
There are about five or six areas that I am going to touch upon, but I am going to start with one that is very close to the residents I represent in Parkdale—High Park. It is the issue of Ukraine. We are now past the second month of the conflict in Ukraine, and we heard the Minister of Finance deliver a budget that she was very emotional about as a woman of Ukrainian heritage.
What we have done to support Ukraine with sanctions, humanitarian aid and military aid is extensive. What this budget included very specifically is something that a lot of my constituents have talked to me about. They talked about further military aid and further economic aid to prop up the economy as it comes out of and exits this period of Russian unlawful and illegal aggression. Those are very significant initiatives, and I wanted to start by highlighting them.
The second piece dovetails with a commitment we made going back to the campaign and that we concluded just before the tabling of this budget. It is what we are doing to assist people who are raising families in this country. The people who are raising families in my province of Ontario unfortunately had to wait a little longer than the rest of the country because of the obstinacy in some respects on the part of the Government of Ontario. However, lo and behold, even the Government of Ontario got across the finish line, and now we have concluded a deal that will allow affordable child care to be provided to families with children under six in licensed facilities in every province and every territory in this country. This is a terrific day for Canada and a terrific day for families.
What does this mean for my constituents? It means direct assistance. Already, in the month of April alone, the cost of child care has been reduced by 25% in licensed facilities. This is just in the past month. By the end of this year, it will go down 50%. The Speaker's riding is in the beautiful province of Montreal and my riding is in Toronto. All of us have very expensive child care, particularly those of us in cities. The cost of child care is between approximately $1,500 and $2,200 per child per month in my riding. That is staggering. To take that in half by the end of this year is equally staggering. To take it to $10 a day by the end of four years is dramatic. That is what we are doing to help serve Canadians.
Who does this help? It helps children with their early childhood development, but it also helps women. I specify women because we know the choice is still made in 2022 that one parents has to stay home, and too often and more often than not, it is the woman who is compelled to stay home. It is the woman who is deprived of the ability to stay in the workforce or return to the workforce. That does not help women, does not help their empowerment and does not help Canada's economic bottom line. This policy will, and it is contained in this budget.
We are also addressing what we have heard about, rightly, regarding the growing income disparity we have seen during the pandemic and even after the pandemic between the haves and have-nots. What I am talking about is large financial institutions. This is about banks in particular, but includes large insurance companies. There are provisions in this budget that address exactly that.
We have proposed that where profits of over $1 billion were made, there will be a 15% tax on any profits above $1 billion in the 2021 taxation year. On top of that, we proposed, and are implementing through this budget, an increase in the corporate income taxation rate from the current 15% to 16.5% on banking income that is above $100 million. That is critical because it helps produce some of the fairness we are seeking to achieve in Canadian society, since some have done very well during this pandemic and some have done very poorly. We are also initiating more investigations and prosecutions of those who use aggressive tax planning to exploit loopholes. There is $1.2 billion dedicated to the CRA to promote just that.
Who else are we helping? We are helping people with their broader health care. I am talking about oral health and dental health, which are also contained in this budget. It is momentous. We know that today 33% of Canadians do not have dental insurance. I, like every other member of this chamber, benefit from the fact that we are provided dental benefits, along with other benefits, as members of this chamber. Not every Canadian is so lucky.
What we are doing is correcting that situation via a significant financial investment that will go toward the dental health of Canadians and helping with their overall health. How are we doing this? Children under 12 are targeted in 2022. By 2023, it will be children under 18, seniors and those living with a disability. By 2025, there will be full implementation. What does that mean? It means that $5 billion will be spent over five years to ensure the dental health of families with an annual income of less than $90,000. We are targeting this help to those who need it the most.
Members have heard me speak many times in this chamber over the past seven years and know that I am committed to a basic premise, which is about promoting equality and combatting discrimination. It is something that I spent 15 years doing as a practising lawyer. It is something I continue to do as a member of Parliament. I am very pleased that this document, this budget that has just been tabled, outlines the next steps in that important fight.
How are we doing this? We are reinvigorating the anti-racism strategy, which was launched in my riding by the former minister of heritage during the 42nd Parliament. That national anti-racism strategy is getting another funding injection of $85 million over four years. That will also include a national plan on combatting hate, hate that we have seen too much of, not just during this pandemic but even prior to the pandemic. It has spread online through things like misinformation and disinformation. We are also dedicating two special representatives: one on combatting Islamophobia and one on combatting anti-Semitism. Both roles are critical. Both roles will continue, in perpetuity, going forward with the funding we have announced.
Last is something that is very germane to my riding, because one of the lead proponents of this initiative is a U of T law professor who is my constituent. That man is named Anver Emon. He started something called the Muslims in Canada archives. What is that all about? Why am I talking about the Muslims in Canada archives in the middle of a budget speech? I am talking about it because if we want to address Islamophobia, we need to do short-term things, like promoting people's safety at mosques, and we also need to do medium- and long-term things.
How do we do that? We change the narrative. We disabuse the stereotypes. We change the perceptions and generalizations, giving positive imagery to replace negative imagery. We get rid of the tropes and stereotypes, and we replace them with positive history about Muslims and their contributions in this country. That is what the Muslims in Canada archives will do. That is what is being funded by this budget, to the tune of $4 million, so that, whether Muslims live in Quebec, Alberta, the Maritimes, Ontario or anywhere else in this country, their stories can be told, shared and spread throughout the community so we can cure the pernicious impacts of Islamophobia. It is something I am very proud to stand by, and that is what is in this budget.
There are two large components to this budget: the housing component and the environmental component. In the last couple of minutes I have, I will just draw on a few specific points under each heading.
On the housing front, I am very pleased to represent six different co-ops in my riding of Parkdale—High Park. What I am even more pleased by is that in this budget, for the first time in several decades, we are injecting new funding to further expand the breadth of co-op housing that exists in this country. This is critical for people who desperately need and deserve adequate housing. That is on top of the rapid housing initiative investments and on top of the housing accelerator, which will build more units. It is a critical thing to address a very basic need.
On the environment, we are talking about a number of things that dovetail with our emissions reduction plan, but what I will focus on in the brief time remaining is ZEVs. I am pleased at this point that when we turn on the television, we see things like Ford trucks being advertised that are going to be electric. I am pleased that people are talking to me more about charging stations and vehicle charging infrastructure. That shows that the idea is taking hold.
We are transforming an industry. We are transforming work for those who work in the industry through things like the just transition. We are also transforming things in terms of the quality of air in the environment that we all have for our families, for our children and for our children's children's families. That is critical in terms of getting to net zero. We are doing that with yet another commitment to furthering zero-emission vehicles in terms of providing the critical minerals for the batteries that they need, providing the charging infrastructure and continuing the rebates for those cars.
I started off by talking about the Government of Ontario. I will return to talking about the Government of Ontario. On June 2, there is an election coming up. What is unfortunate is that there was a previous government that coupled our rebate on zero-emission vehicles with its provincial rebate, but that was summarily dismissed by the government of Doug Ford during his first couple of months in office. It has not been restored, and he is not even campaigning on restoring it.
We all need to get to net zero. Doug Ford's constituents, like mine, are longing to purchase a zero-emission vehicle but could use some help in doing so. I think it is incumbent upon all provincial governments to join us in providing similar rebates so that we can get to that net-zero future together.
That is what is contained in the budget. I am happy to defend it in this House.
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