44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 26, 2022 10:00AM
- Apr/26/22 11:36:36 a.m.
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Qujannamiik, Uqaqtitiji.
I would like to thank the member for Richmond Hill for focusing on housing. As I have mentioned many times, indigenous housing is a major issue and a dire need in many of our communities. I had the privilege of visiting a family in one of my constituent communities in Kugluktuk. There were 13 people living in a three-bedroom unit.
Does the member agree with me that everyone in the House needs to do better to advocate for more indigenous housing? Will the Liberal government commit to do more than what it promised? I realize there was an increase of $4.3 billion, but that is not sufficient to meet the housing needs of indigenous people.
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- Apr/26/22 11:37:25 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for acknowledging the $4.3-billion investment that has been earmarked for the indigenous community. I agree with the hon. member that we need to do better, and we will continue to do better. I continue to be an advocate very much the same as the rest of my colleagues on this side of the House.
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- Apr/26/22 12:35:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to acknowledge what a moving and powerful speech my colleague across the way gave. I have shared some of the experiences, certainly as an indigenous woman, in terms of racism in this country. It takes a lot of courage to talk about those things in such a raw, open and giving way.
I have a question about the funding that has been provided specifically for gender-based violence. One of my concerns, and I have raised this publicly several times, is the fact that in this budget there were zero additional dollars provided for murdered and missing indigenous women and girls. This is something that has been acknowledged as a genocide, certainly by the Prime Minister of this country, and human rights groups have acknowledged it internationally.
I am wondering what my colleague thinks of that. Does she support the need to provide additional funding to address this ongoing genocide?
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- Apr/26/22 1:19:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. I know he has done a great deal of advocacy before politics, in a previous life, I believe, as a lawyer with indigenous communities, and I wonder what he could point to in the budget specifically that relates to that issue, to how budget 2022 remarks and focuses on indigenous issues and what he sees as most promising there. I am especially interested to hear it from him, considering his background.
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- Apr/26/22 1:20:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, indeed there are some very important investments made as part of this budget to support the path forward on reconciliation. I mentioned in my speech earlier the very much needed investments into indigenous housing. There are also important investments made in implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the action plan on that, as well as dealing with some of the main economic barriers that indigenous peoples continue to face that are preventing them from having the type of economic development that the rest of the country has, so the changes to the First Nations Land Management Act will be very important in that regard. As well, there are some very important investments on improving child welfare in indigenous communities.
I think, collectively, there is a lot in this budget that will support the path forward on reconciliation, which is of course a critical priority of this government.
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- Apr/26/22 3:11:10 p.m.
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Uqaqtittiji, I spoke with Qajaq Robinson, who was a commissioner for the MMIWG. Robinson continues to advocate for the implementation of the calls to justice, which demand greater transparency and accountability from our government and institutions. However, the 2022 budget was silent on new commitments to protect indigenous girls, women and two-spirit people.
When will the government take real action on reconciliation and fund transformative action?
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- Apr/26/22 3:11:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind the member that there is $2.2 billion in a federal pathway for missing and murdered indigenous women. However, when we look at the budget, we also have to look at the investments we have made toward housing, the investments we have made toward Jordan's principle and the investments we have made toward mental health. These will all help indigenous women.
Just because it is not a line item in the budget does not mean we are not helping indigenous women. We are out there making sure that they are safe and supported, and we will continue to do so as a government.
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- Apr/26/22 3:45:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, one of the issues that I am quite disappointed about with respect to the budget is the lack of action by the government on its promise to deliver a “for indigenous, by indigenous” urban, rural and northern housing strategy. The budget only outlines $300 million, which is just a drop in the bucket, truth be told, to address the crisis with urban indigenous people in need of housing. Over 80% of urban indigenous people live off reserve, yet they are 11 times more likely to end up in a shelter.
My question to the member is this. Will he take up the cause to advocate, on behalf of urban indigenous and northern indigenous people, for the government to make a substantive investment in a “for indigenous, by indigenous” housing strategy in this budget, and also with the fall economic statement coming up?
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- Apr/26/22 3:46:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is an extremely important issue and priority, obviously. The government has taken housing very seriously from day one of its election in 2015. We are already on track, by 2027-2028, to deliver more than $72 billion in financial support through the national housing strategy, which is the very first national housing strategy in Canadian history. Of course, a priority on indigenous housing is an important part of that, and it should be. It is something we need to keep an eye on in the future.
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- Apr/26/22 5:06:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, today I want to talk about budget 2022. I would like to thank my colleague from Berthier—Maskinongé for sharing his time with me.
Budget 2022 is, ostensibly, “a plan to grow our economy and make life more affordable”. I doubt anyone will be surprised to hear me heave a sigh of exasperation. As I will show in my speech, there are still far too many who are not getting any help to make life more affordable.
Only one of our five unconditional demands was met: housing for indigenous communities. The government is planning to invest $4 billion over seven years starting in 2022-23 through Indigenous Services Canada and Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada to accelerate work on housing.
I applaud this initiative because I know it is essential to put an end to violence against indigenous women and girls. I was just at a meeting of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, where we discussed this issue. There is no way we will be able to extricate these women from the cycle of poverty without providing them with adequate, affordable housing.
That said, the government does not understand that Canadians gave it a minority mandate, that they did not want to give it a blank cheque, and that they did not want to let it scatter money willy-nilly and in areas of jurisdiction that are none of its business.
I am forced to see the glass as half empty today and criticize what is not in the budget. In particular, I want to talk about seniors, our health care system, and economic development in areas still affected by the pandemic and recovering from the crisis. As the critic for seniors, I will begin by highlighting the complete lack of help for seniors.
We had made help for seniors one of the five prerequisites for passing this budget. To add insult to injury, in addition to not announcing anything new, they included a chart to tell seniors that they do not need any additional help. The government should tell them that while looking them straight in the eye and trying to explain why they are still being discriminated against based on their age.
For the rest of this part, I will let our seniors speak. Here are the words of those I have met over the past few weeks who are not happy: “Why do the Liberals insist on dividing us?” “I may get sick before I'm 75”; “My car will soon give out on me and I won't be able to get around. How will I maintain my independence?”
Take Michel and his wife Josée, or even France, for example. These three retirees feel penalized by the lack of federal government assistance for people between the ages of 65 and 75. They tell us that they want to enjoy life, that they have needs and that they want to help restart local economies.
An organization in my riding, SOS Dépannage, told me that there has been a sharp rise in the number of seniors relying on food assistance. Do we really want to reduce seniors to standing in line for food hampers?
Contrary to what the NDP-Liberal alliance is saying, it is not dental insurance that seniors want to talk to me about. Besides, this dental plan comes without any transfers to Quebec and it would not cover seniors until 2023.
Seniors need more money in their pockets now. It is not to invest in tax havens; rather, it is simply to be able to age with dignity. It is nice to have great teeth, but that means nothing if you cannot afford groceries at the end of the month. It is not a year from now that seniors will be hungry. They are going hungry now.
As I said, poverty does not wait until people reach the age of 75. In fact, a petition is currently being circulated calling on the government to reverse its decision to increase the pension of those aged 75 and over, known as older seniors, by 10%. Instead, petitioners are asking for an increase of $110 per month in the old age security pension beginning at age 65.
People lined up at the Tim Hortons restaurant across from my office in Granby last week. People do not want this unfair two-tier senior system. I also had some nice conversations with seniors in Drummond. The meeting was organized by the Centre‑du‑Québec branch of the Association québécoise de défense des droits des personnes retraitées et préretraitées. That was also where I heard many of these first-hand accounts.
Many people feel passionate about signing this petition, which I am sponsoring and which was initiated by Samuel Lévesque. Petition e‑3820, which can be found on the House of Commons website, aims to support the the Bloc Québécois's demand for a permanent and lasting increase in old age security benefits for everyone 65 years of age and older.
The FADOQ also said that the government broke its own election promises. There is no additional credit for home support, no tax credit for experienced workers, nothing at all. There is no increase in the old age security pension for seniors 65 and older in the budget. In fact, there is nothing. The government instead proposes the creation of a panel tasked with studying the idea of an allocation for seniors wishing to grow old at home.
Once again, if the Liberals truly wanted to help seniors stay in their homes, they would have increased health transfers.
In the second part of my speech, I will talk about another major omission in this budget: health transfers. There is no increase in transfers to 35% of costs as requested by Quebec and the provinces. “Any conversation between the federal government and the provinces and territories will focus on delivering better health care outcomes for Canadians”. That does not mean anything. There is no commitment to the unanimous request of Quebec and the provinces to increase health transfers to 35%. This request also has the support of many seniors groups.
Quebec and the provinces do not need to be told what to do by know-it-all Ottawa. There is nothing on the increase to health transfers yet the government keeps repeating and boasting about the same points.
In the third part of my speech I want to talk to my colleagues about the recovery for some sectors that are still very much affected, because the government missed some perfect opportunities.
I know that my colleague from Berthier—Maskinongé cares a great deal about the agricultural sector, because this sector is also very important to Shefford's economy. There is not much in the budget for this sector, however.
When I travel around my beautiful riding of Shefford, people often bring up the agricultural sector. People wanted to see some innovative and bold measures. At the very least, the government should have considered improvements to existing programs like AgriStability and AgriInvest. My colleague has already spoken extensively about that.
The agricultural sector also wants something like the agri-green program, which would help producers and processors improve their operations and compensate them for good environmental practices. Aside from the second investment, the government is proposing other types of investments, but it is not going far enough. The Bloc Québécois is therefore disappointed with this announcement, on which it had pinned much hope. We will see what producers and processors have to say about it. For the time being, compensation is a long time coming. The government wrote that compensation for CUSMA will be included in the fall 2022 update. As my colleague from Berthier—Maskinongé stated, it seems that there are further delays for those hard hit by the repercussions of the last three trade agreements signed by Canada.
The situation is dragging on. I was told about this recently at the Agristars gala. The young people I met spoke to me about farm transfers and controversial Bill C-208, which would facilitate intergenerational transfers. The government is satisfied once again with conducting consultations and creating delays. It is a major step backwards for farm transfers, even though the bill was passed in the final days of the previous Parliament, after the Liberals dithered. Now, the government is delaying its coming into force. The Bloc Québécois co-sponsored Bill C-208. It is a an extremely important issue for farm succession.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague, the Minister of Environment, for his decades of activism. I pray they are not over. I do genuinely appreciate his support on this bill and on many things.
The science is clear, but we do not have enough science. That was one of the reasons there was an amendment made at committee that I completely supported. It was an NDP amendment that said let us make sure we are gathering the data. Let us assess. We do not save data as often as we should that breaks down, by discriminatory category, who is most exposed to toxic chemicals. We know who is most exposed to toxic chemicals: people of colour, indigenous people and people who are without economic clout from settler cultures. We know that.
The science is very clear, and a lot of it was put together empirically. Dr. Ingrid Waldron is the pre-eminent Canadian expert right now on mapping where we find high levels of toxic waste. If we map that out, lo and behold, we find that people of colour and indigenous communities are, out of any normal statistical variation, far more prevalent in the categories of people exposed to too many toxic chemicals.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Repentigny for her question.
I agree with some of what she was saying. As I said, it is clear that it is not just people of colour or indigenous people who are exposed to toxic chemicals. I very much appreciate my colleague's work on climate change and other important issues. She works hard for the environment. However, with respect to the bill, I disagree with the idea that it is not important to say the words. Environmental racism is now a threat.
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Madam Speaker, I, too, would like to acknowledge that we are here today on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin people.
I am honoured to rise this afternoon to speak to Bill C-226. The bill is being sponsored today by the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, but it was first introduced in the 43rd Parliament by Lenore Zann, the then member for Cumberland—Colchester. It was quite a visionary bill, because the concept was not talked about at the time. I hope she will be back in the House soon.
In a way, it is indeed a new concept. The member for Saanich—Gulf Islands mentioned that environmental racism has been recognized as a problem for quite a long time in the United States, but it is still a fairly new concept.
I think Bill C-226 comes at a good time for our society, as that society is questioning the very systems it created. When we talk about discrimination and racism, whether it is environmental or otherwise, we recognize that it is not just a matter of personal prejudice, but that it exists, perhaps impersonally, in the very systems that we have built and that reflect a certain way of thinking and of ranking priorities.
This bill makes us think about that idea, which was not really well known until Lenore Zann introduced her bill. I am very grateful that she took the time back then to talk virtually about her bill to the Lac-Saint-Louis youth council, whose members were also unaware of this notion of environmental racism in the context of the concept of environmental justice.
I would like to talk a little bit about what Bill C-226 proposes.
The bill outlines the components that would be included in a national strategy, such as a study that would include an examination of the link between race, socio-economic status and environmental risk. It also sets out a non-exhaustive list of measures that may be taken to advance environmental justice. These measures would assess, prevent and address environmental racism, including possible amendments to federal laws, policies and programs; compensation for individuals or communities; and the collection of information and statistics related to health outcomes in communities located in proximity to environmental hazards.
This is what it is all about at the end of the day. We want to make sure no one's health is compromised and no one's quality of life is compromised because of who they are and which group they happen to be living in proximity to. It is about quality of life and dignity for all peoples, regardless of background.
The bill would require the minister to table a report setting out the national strategy within two years of the bill receiving royal assent, publish that report on the departmental website, and prepare and table a report on the effectiveness of the strategy every five years. The bill aligns with this government's plan to develop an environmental justice strategy and to examine the link between race, socio-economic status and exposure to environmental risk.
We look forward to working with others toward not only getting this bill passed but also supporting its quick passage through the House of Commons. Supporting quick passage through Parliament is important, as the bill comes at a time of heightened awareness of systemic racism and growing concern for environmental justice among Canadians and around the world. It has become increasingly apparent that environmental benefits and harms are not shared equally among different members of society.
Certain groups and communities, namely indigenous and racialized communities and those with lower socio-economic status, often bear a disproportionate share of environmental burdens, such as environmental pollution and degradation. I think it was mentioned by the member for Repentigny that in some cases those who are disadvantaged by a government decision, at whatever level of government, are not necessarily part of racial group per se, but are actually defined by a lower socio-economic status.
I was reading the other day about an area of Montreal called Goose Village. It no longer exists. It was basically wiped off the map around the time of Expo 67. Goose Village was close to Griffintown in Montreal. It was a poor neighbourhood, but the people had their dignity and their properties were well kept. At the time it was felt by the mayor of Montreal, Jean Drapeau, and his administration that this area, which was close to the site for Expo 67, was a bit of an eyesore for those who would be visiting the city for the world's fair. This was before environmental assessments and before the kind of activism that we see today.
It was decided that this area should be razed, and they said it was because of unhealthy conditions and because public health was not good there. What I read is that when they looked at the report from the public health department of Montreal, it said that it was a well-kept community. It was of low socio-economic status, but it was very well kept. People took pride in their homes and their surroundings. Again, this was not racially motivated. It was using the power of government to suppress the rights of a lower socio-economic group.
That led me to think of the construction of the Ville-Marie Expressway in Montreal. It was not built through the highest-income area, and in this case it did displace a racialized community. It displaced a good portion of the African-Canadian community of Little Burgundy. Today, Little Burgundy is not as whole as it used to be. There is an expressway running through it, and it is at bottom of a hill in Montreal, not at the top of a hill.
This is a very historic community. Oscar Peterson came from that community. The Union United Church is in that community. Jackie Robinson, when he played for the Montreal Royals, went to the Union Church. It has a deep history. There is film footage of housing being torn down to build the expressway. It was not an exclusively Black neighbourhood, but it was a poor neighbourhood.
This makes us think that we need an approach to looking at how we make decisions that makes sure we do not have these implicit biases in the kinds of decisions that governments make. Environmental justice is a step forward for our society. It means that we are getting better at recognizing people's interests, dignity and quality of life, regardless of their background, socio-economic status or race, and that decisions need to be proper.
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Madam Speaker, I cannot express how happy I am to talk about this bill.
I would like to congratulate Ms. Zann, because her leadership on environmental racism and justice is exemplary. She started the fight as a provincial member and continued her advocacy so fiercely and so strongly, and I had the honour and the pleasure, along with my colleague over there who spoke earlier, to learn from her and Dr. Waldron how pressing an issue environmental racism and environmental justice is in this country for Black, indigenous and racialized communities.
We should congratulate all of those who have advocated and fought for this. We are, in this moment, able to bring this back to the table, where it belongs. We need to celebrate that leadership and honour the importance this moment holds with this legislation, because systemic racism is a fact in Canada and around the world.
One of my Conservative colleagues questioned earlier the ability of the government to even do this and whether it would be able to act and respond to this. I will dig a little into my Jewish roots. We have a beautiful expression in Hebrew that I will share:
[Member spoke in Hebrew]
[English]
“It is not upon you to finish building the kingdom, but you are not allowed to step away from the opportunity to start the work.”
[Member spoke in Hebrew]
[English]
“You are not free to release yourself from beginning this work.”
This work has been waiting for over 70 years. For 70 years, communities across this country have suffered. Their socio-economic status and health and well-being have been impacted in ways that we do not even begin to understand unless we pass legislation such as this and until we begin to dig into the science and the data to truly understand the harms that have been done.
I am so happy to support this legislation as it comes into the House and the work that needs to be done, because I worked on it already. I want to thank again Dr. Ingrid Waldron, Ms. Zann and all of those champions. We have so much to learn and we also have so much to fix and heal. We need the understanding, the data, the knowledge, the legislation and the framework in place so we can learn, ask the questions and be challenged on those answers to know how to move forward.
The tide rises, but it is not equal for everyone. That is what we know about environmental justice and environmental racism. Not everyone is in the same boat and not everyone has had the same experience, and we have an obligation to make sure all Canadians in this country have a healthy and safe environment to live, to grow, to thrive and to succeed in. Unless we ask those tough questions in a framework such as this national strategy, we are not able to give them the answers they deserve.
I would challenge my colleagues who question our ability to do this not to question the ability to do it, but just to do it. We do not need to ask why, maybe, if or if it is possible. It is possible, because we choose to make it possible. For the sake of marginalized and racialized communities, we absolutely have the obligation to do it.
To each and every one of us in the House who has fought for the principles of climate change, such as my colleague from the Bloc, whom I sat at the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development with, and so many others who understand that this is the moment, we need to move forward with asking these questions and putting these types of bills forward to make sure we get the right answers for all Canadians.
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