SoVote

Jun/7/22 11:37:39 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Saint‑Hyacinthe—Bagot for that excellent speech. I have here the Conservatives' opposition day motion. The motion is quite detailed and long. It includes all their failed initiatives from this parliamentary session. For their sake, I am glad it all fits on a letter-sized page. It includes a number of whereases that are hard to argue with, especially the ones about the high cost of living. That is a simple fact. We know inflation has gone up and the price of goods has gone up. The whereases are fine. Things are off to a good start. For example, we know the price of gas is over two dollars. We are aware of that. People in my riding are worried about it. The same goes for the price of food, which has gone up over 9%. Other goods have gone up even more. We know that. The motion also says that heightened inflation is projected to persist longer than was reasonably believed a while ago. Obviously, economic projections are made with the best information available at the time, and nobody predicted the war in Ukraine. The point is, it is true that the cost of living is higher and will remain higher for some time. Based on the solutions offered in the motion, however, it is clear that, although they identified the symptoms of inflation correctly, the Conservatives do not understand the causes. They did not do their homework, and the facts cannot lie. Facts can be checked. The Conservatives are laughing, but they will learn. The facts show that household demand has continued to increase, but it is not much higher than it would have been without the pandemic. Habits have changed and people are consuming less services and more goods, which has led to supply chain issues. This is true in Canada, it is true in Quebec and, because we cannot ignore the rest of the world, it is true in the majority of other developed countries. On top of that is the war in Ukraine. The war in Ukraine has most certainly had an effect on supply chains, an effect that is still present today, for example, on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Russia is using supplies of grain, food and fuel as a weapon of mass destruction, which has made food prices here skyrocket. This weapon is also being used to make developing countries suffer because they are being held hostage. This is very real. If we look at the figures, we can see that 70% of the factors driving the price increases are what we call supply-side factors. Neither we nor the Bank of Canada have any influence over these factors. That is our economic reality. It is unpleasant, hence all the grandstanding we are seeing, but that is our economic reality. The Conservative motion proposes solutions to all these supply shock problems. The first solution is to end all federal restrictions on travel, masks and so on. There are not many federal restrictions left, but a few still remain. That is already out of touch. I am a member of the Standing Committee on Health, and last week we heard from Dr. MacDonald, a professor at Dalhousie University who specializes in pediatrics and infectious diseases. I asked her if she thought that politicians should stop meddling in health measures and including specific health measures in motions in Parliament. She replied that she agreed, that it did not make any sense. She said that parliamentarians should stop dictating health measures and that these decisions should be made by public health authorities. This is true of the Conservatives' motions, but it is also true of the Liberals, who may be using the health measures for political purposes. This has to stop. That is one reason this motion is problematic. It is not the Conservatives' job to dictate health measures in a motion. There is also the cost of living. We know that the cost of living is going up. The Conservatives are saying that we need to do something about it and that they will propose something smart. Since March 2022, the solution of the motion's sponsor, the member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, has been to support the member for Carleton in the leadership race. We know they are popular. They are saying that what they will do, since everyone is suffering, is fire the Governor of the Bank of Canada. What a brilliant idea, as if firing the Governor of the Bank of Canada is going to help people in Mirabel and Beauce, or our farmers. They want to fire the leader of one of the most credible central banks in the world when 70% of inflation is not his responsibility. As for the other 30%, the Conservatives who said he was not taking action are now complaining because he is taking action by raising interest rates. The last time a party or a government was irresponsible enough to propose such a thing was in 1961, when Prime Minister Flemming, who was a Conservative, shockingly enough, said he was going to fire the Governor of the Bank of Canada, James Elliott Coyne. What happened? The government did it by passing legislation, because it was illegal. However, the Senate slammed the door on their faces. Things must be going badly if the Senate is giving lessons on democracy. The Senate told the government that the head of a central bank cannot be fired. Nevertheless, that is where today's Conservatives are headed under the member for Carleton. They are going to be given a lesson on democracy by the Senate. Lucky them. There are solutions, and we have proposed some. The first is to tax oil companies in order to fund our public services and launch assistance programs. I am sure the Conservatives will say this is a Bloc fantasy. There is only one entity in the world that is proposing to abolish gas taxes, and that is the Conservative Party of Canada. However, on May 26, the U.K. proposed a 25% windfall tax that is expected to bring in $6 billion U.S. I did not make this up; their Conservative friends in Britain proposed it. On June 4, the Biden administration suggested a similar tax, which is now being studied. India is also thinking about this. How amazing to think that India is a step ahead of the Conservatives. The Conservatives' solution is to lower taxes. As my colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot said, the oil companies are going to lie low for a few weeks, like they did in Alberta. Then, once the public relations crisis is over, they will raise prices. They know full well that people are not going to run out and buy electric vehicles tomorrow morning, and that they will have to keep filling up their tanks. The Conservative motion will not help farmers in the member for Beauce's riding, I can promise him that. What should we do instead? First, we need to increase seniors' purchasing power. Where in the motion is the increase to the federal pension for seniors? Nowhere. There needs to be a program to support the people who are most affected, such as farmers, who cannot buy a Tesla combine. Where is the targeted program for them? Nowhere. There needs to be a program to help taxi drivers, including Uber drivers. Where is that program in the Conservative motion? Nowhere. We need to address the labour shortage. There was nothing in the budget tabled by the Liberals, who are no better. Where in the Conservative motion are the solutions to the labour shortage? Nowhere. We are talking about real people who are being affected by these higher prices. Where is the proposal for increasing the GST rebate and issuing cheques more frequently every month? It is nowhere to be found, either from the government or from the Conservatives. We asked that fertilizers that had been ordered and paid for before the crisis in Ukraine started be cleared for delivery. That is not in the motion, although we do support the part about the tariffs on fertilizer. It just goes to show that there is always a little light in the darkness. Where is the Conservatives' proposal for fixing social housing? We need 60,000 units in Montreal just to start getting back on track. Where is the Conservatives' proposal for sending that money to Quebec, since the Liberals think sending money to Quebec is even harder than building housing? Nowhere. Where is the money for real housing, for real families who are on a real budget, with real children who go to real schools? Rather than helping people, the Conservatives are fixating on the governor of the central bank. Where is the tax credit for experienced workers in our supply chains? It is nowhere to be found in the Conservative motion. Where is the Conservatives' proposal for handing over control of the temporary foreign worker program to Quebec so that farmers in Oka, Mirabel or Sainte‑Anne‑des‑Plaines get the people they need, so that the process is efficient and there is no need to conduct the same labour market impact assessment twice? Nowhere. Where is their aerospace policy that will help us become more efficient at research and development, seeing as Canada is the only country with such a large industry and no aerospace policy? Nowhere. The Liberals will tell us that they gave $800 million to Bell Textron. We know that, and we are happy about it. However, Canada still has no policy. This Conservative motion is devoid of substance. As for the Liberals, they will do what they always do, which is stand up and tell us that they have increased family benefits indexed to inflation. However, indexation is always one year behind, and people are living with 6% to 7% inflation right now. There are solutions out there, and we have proposed some, but they are nowhere to be found in this motion.

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Mr. Stephen Ellis (Cumberland—Colchester, CPC)

Jun/7/22 11:47:42 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech about the economy. However, this is just a motion. It is not the Conservatives' budget. It is just a motion designed to help all the people in our ridings, be they in Nova Scotia or Quebec. It is just the Conservatives' straightforward way of trying to help all Canadians.

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Mr. Jean-Denis Garon

Jun/7/22 11:48:20 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague is a great person and I thank him for his question. They have the right idea. They identified a problem and they want to find solutions. However, the Bloc Québécois and I find that these solutions are short term and not a good fit for the situation. These are not the right solutions. I realize that this is not a Conservative budget, thank God. However, it does give us some indication that, if the Conservatives were in power, oil companies would take precedence over the people of my riding.

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Ms. Rachel Bendayan (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Tourism and Associate Minister of Finance, Lib.)

Jun/7/22 11:48:55 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I agree with what my colleague just said in the House. He talked about the importance of coming up with solutions. Does the Bloc Québécois have some solutions and some concrete, long-term economic policy ideas that can help us develop well-thought-out policies in the House?

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Mr. Jean-Denis Garon

Jun/7/22 11:49:35 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I just spent 10 minutes proposing solutions that were not in the motion, as I said. The Bloc Québécois has obviously been proposing plenty of solutions. However, the government keeps saying that inflation is temporary, that we are in a supply and affordability crisis because of what is happening in Ukraine. In question period every day, when ministers read their talking points prepared by the Prime Minister's Office, they keep saying it is temporary. Today I am suggesting concrete solutions for people who are experiencing these problems right now. Obviously, long-term solutions do exist. We have been asking for an aerospace policy in Quebec for 10, 12, 15 years, and we have yet to see one. We are proposing solutions. I spent 10 minutes doing just that. Obviously, we are in a crisis, and this calls for crisis solutions, which need to be brought in immediately. Unfortunately, the budget was devoid of these kinds of solutions.

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Mr. Daniel Blaikie (Elmwood—Transcona, NDP)

Jun/7/22 11:50:31 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his speech. I think we can agree that, in this time of inflation, while some things are indeed out of the government's control, there are some measures it could be taking. What is missing from the Conservative analysis is a real assessment of the role of the private sector and how it is contributing to inflation. We must not forget that aspect in our analysis. I wonder if my hon. colleague could elaborate on that.

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Mr. Jean-Denis Garon

Jun/7/22 11:51:13 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Conservatives think that the private sector is the solution for everything. That is because they took economics 101, but did not bother with economics 102. Public goods is a real thing. The governments that are the closest to the people on the ground, providing them with services to support them, are the governments of Quebec and the provinces. That is why I invite our NDP colleagues to support the unconditional increase of health transfers, so that the money goes directly to the provinces. I also invite them to support unconditional transfers for housing, so that the provinces can house people. These solutions rarely come from Ottawa because Ottawa is not in touch with people and Canada is a big country where there is a lot of diversity in the economic structure and in mentalities. The federal government needs to trust Quebec and the provinces and give them the money. I am not a huge federalist, on the contrary, but if my colleague believes in federalism, he has to believe in the ability of the governments of Quebec and the provinces to help people. That is all.

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Mr. Daniel Blaikie (Elmwood—Transcona, NDP)

Jun/7/22 11:52:14 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke. I want to speak to what is a bit of a grab bag of various initiatives that we have largely seen before in the House in other Conservative opposition day motions. I take it that my colleagues on the Conservative side will not be surprised at the fact that New Democrats do not intend to support this motion because we have actually debated and voted on most of these initiatives already in the House. In fact, one wonders if there is not a procedural question about revisiting some of the same decisions in the House, but I will put that procedural point on hold to address what I take to be the substantive issues in the motion. The motion is talking about a very real problem that Canadians are experiencing and, frankly, cannot get away from, which is the incredible price increases at the grocery store, at the pump and elsewhere on just about everything, which is making it really difficult for Canadians to operate within their normal budget. We all know that wages are not keeping pace with the extent of the price increases we are seeing, so we certainly welcome an opportunity to talk about the impact that inflation is having on Canadians and to propose solutions, even where we disagree about what those solutions ought to be. One of the solutions proposed in the motion is to simply lift all public health restrictions. New Democrats have said many times in the House that we support public health officials leading those conversations, as they have in provinces, where they have come to certain conclusions and federal public health officials, at the moment, have come to different conclusions. We support public health officials making those decisions. We also believe that Canadians have a right to know the evidence and information on which those decisions are based. I think the government's refusal to table that evidence and make it public has created a problem of public trust in our institutions, which is growing. I would beseech the government to make that information public and to be very frank about the recommendations it is getting from public health, including the data and evidence that support them, because that is important to building and maintaining public trust in our institutions. It is something that we need now more than ever, and the government is doing a disservice to Canadians and our institutions by not being more forthcoming with the information it is receiving from public health officials. Even as we support public health officials, we certainly have our own critique of the how the government has handled the file and what that has meant in Canadians' own attitudes toward our public health officials at the federal level. As I say, we call upon the government to do better in supporting those institutions and Canadians by being frank, open and accountable about the information that drives its decision-making. However, that is not the call here. The call here is to substitute politicians for public health officials and say that the House of Commons should decide, rather than experts based on the best available evidence, and that is a wrong turn. It is not one that we have supported at anytime during the pandemic, and it is not one that we are going to support at this time or anytime in the future, even as we encourage the government to do a better job of making that information available. I will speak more generally now for a moment about the motion because it talks about a number of things. It talks about lowering the GST and the carbon tax on the price of gas, even though that is a solution that does not touch as many people as it needs to because we know there are a lot of people who do not drive vehicles who are also suffering from inflation. They are the people who ride their bikes and take public transportation and cannot afford to own a car, and this solution helps perpetuate a culture that is driving climate change. It is bereft of any kind of meaningful thinking about the next real economic crisis, which has already started to make itself felt and is only going to continue to make itself felt to a greater and greater degree. Our solution to inflation in the present moment cannot be one that is going to compound a growing economic problem, which is the problem of climate change. We have to find solutions to inflation now that also set us up for success moving into the future. We are going to have to continue to grapple with serious economic challenges that will cause economic displacement and will continue to cause upward cost pressures on goods of all kinds as climate change will continue to interfere with supply chains beyond the life of the pandemic. When I said I wanted to speak a little more generally, what I meant was that what is characteristic of Conservative solutions, as they call them, is that they are completely blind to the role the private sector plays in driving inflation. It is as if the private sector is completely innocent, that corporate board members are completely innocent, that the CEOs of large companies like oil and gas companies, big box stores, insurance companies and banks, which have all made a killing during the pandemic with profits way above their prepandemic norms, are somehow innocent, and if we only left it more to them, everything would work out. They do not talk about the kind of good work that has been done by the member for Windsor West on gas prices to actually do something. When we talk about raising taxes on oil and gas companies, they say that this will just get passed onto the consumer and, in the next breath, they say, “Let us cut taxes on gas.” As if those same companies, which have been known to jack up the price of gas by 8¢ a litre just because of a long weekend, are not going to take that space up themselves, now that they know that people are prepared to pay for it. The blind spots are inexcusable. The way to take meaningful action on gas prices is to follow the lead of the member for Windsor West, who has talked about establishing a price monitoring board that would look at real data from the oil and gas industry and determine what their pricing might be. We then need to have an ombudsperson who would be able to take complaints from Canadians who notice that the price of gas jumps every time somebody sneezes internationally and there is worry that it might cause a crisis. Well, actually, they are not worried. They see it as an opportunity for speculation. That is what needs to be reined in, and the only way to do that is by properly regulating the market. When we do that, we could increase taxes on oil and gas companies that have made record profits over the course of the pandemic, and we would know that this money can be reinvested back into Canadians without them having to pay for it at the pump. That is how one sets up an infrastructure to actually look after Canadians and make sure that they are being treated fairly. We do not hear that except from the NDP in this place. I hope that we will start to hear about it from more than New Democrats because it is something that actually ought to get done. However, the idea that, somehow, just by giving a little bit of a break at the pump for those who are driving vehicles is going to be the solution to inflation is facile. It puts us on the wrong track in the much bigger economic problem we are facing, which is climate change. We talk about housing. The solution for housing proposed here is to have a public inquiry into money laundering. Well, we should be looking into money laundering and the role it is playing, but if we are talking about urgent action to help people during the pandemic, people would be much better off getting a bigger GST rebate, paid for by the largest companies that are making the biggest profits. I named those industries earlier: oil and gas, insurance and banking. Big box stores have also seen giant increases in profits. That is something that would go directly to Canadians who are the most in need. It is something we can do now. It is something that the government has already done during the course of the pandemic, and that is why we know it can be done. We know it can be done quickly, and we know that it helps. Providing an extra $500 on the Canada child benefit this year is another way to help families that are struggling with rising costs. That is something that we can do right away. We know that there are companies operating in Canada that have made additional profits that Canadians have paid for, so I ask what the difference is between that and a tax. Canadians go to the grocery store to buy food for their family, and Loblaws or somebody else has decided to jack up the price in a moment of opportunity, as they see it, or whatever the rationale is, maybe to shield themselves from future risk. Whatever it is, they have decided that Canadians are going to pay more for things they cannot do without and that is going to go into their bank account. The difference between that and a tax is that this never gets reinvested into Canadians at the bottom and the services that they need. That is where a tax, if it is done well, is better than what we too often hear from the Conservatives. On the question of tariffs on fertilizer, I think there is an interesting point here. The Conservatives clearly have put together a list of things with people that they want to be able to talk to and please, and there are some important points about the tariff on fertilizer that I will get to in the questions and comments, but the fact of the matter is that this reads more like a target demographic list of people they want to fundraise on.

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Mr. Warren Steinley (Regina—Lewvan, CPC)

Jun/7/22 12:02:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I was happy to listen to the member opposite's speech, but the NDP has truly fallen far from being the party of hard-working Canadians. In this motion, we talk about getting rid of restrictions and mandates so people can go back to work. These are people in the public service and the RCMP across this nation. There are three million to four million people who have not been able to go to work. Also, those same people cannot travel within their own country, yet all this member wants to talk about is big corporations and how they are bad for Canadians and never help Canadians. What we want to do is talk about a few things, and one of which is getting Canadians back to work. How far has the NDP fallen that its members do not even care if people can provide for their families anymore? This member should be ashamed of that speech.

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Mr. Daniel Blaikie

Jun/7/22 12:03:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am certainly not ashamed to stand up to talk about something we will never hear from the Conservatives, which is the extent to which corporate Canada is also putting pain on Canadians. We are also not embarrassed to be proposing real solutions about that. I will suppress the unparliamentary phrase that comes to mind as an appropriate response to the member's question and just say that people who want to go back to work also want to go back to safe workplaces. For as much as there are people who are frustrated they have not been able to go to work because they did not get the vaccine, there are also a lot of people who are glad to be in a safe workplace and glad to follow the directives of public health officials. As I said, we believe government should do a better job of reinforcing faith in those public officials by being open and transparent about the information they are getting from them, but a safe workplace is also about standing up for workers. That is something we are proud to do on this side of the House.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Jun/7/22 12:04:24 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the motion talks about tariffs on fertilizer, and we all know Russia is a major exporter of fertilizer. This is not necessarily about previous contracts but contracts moving forward. Does the member have any thoughts regarding the issue? An hon. member: That is not true and you know it. Mr. Kevin Lamoureux: Madam Speaker, does the member believe the federal government should be relieving tariffs on fertilizer?

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Jun/7/22 12:04:59 p.m.
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There are questions and comments coming from members of the official opposition, and I would just ask them to please hold off until I recognize them. They have already had the opportunity to ask a question. The hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona has the floor.

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Mr. Daniel Blaikie

Jun/7/22 12:05:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the motion simply says “eliminating tariffs on fertilizer”. The member for Winnipeg North is right to point out that tariffs were imposed on fertilizer coming from Russia as part of our effort to punish Vladimir Putin. The legitimate issue here is that there are farmers who signed contracts to buy fertilizer as part of their pricing for the year before the invasion of Ukraine, so there is a real question of fairness in retroactively imposing a tariff on farmers who had already signed contracts to get that fertilizer and who had built it into their pricing structure for the year. We are not hearing that kind of conversation from the Conservatives. They are not trying to build a parliamentary consensus. They are trying to build a fundraising list. That comes across very clearly in the motion. An hon. member: That is wrong.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Jun/7/22 12:06:06 p.m.
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I want to remind members of the official opposition that it is not time for questions and comments unless I recognize them, and if they have other questions and comments, then they should stand and attempt to be recognized. Otherwise, I would ask them to please hold on to their thoughts, jot them down and wait for the appropriate time to do that. Continuing with questions and comments, the hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot has the floor.

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Mr. Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay (Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, BQ)

Jun/7/22 12:06:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, thank you for recognizing that I have the floor. I would like to ask my colleague, with whom I had the pleasure of serving on the Standing Committee on International Trade during the last Parliament— Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Jun/7/22 12:06:44 p.m.
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Once again, it is really disrespectful what is happening in the House right now, and I would ask the parliamentary secretary not to partake in discussions going back and forth with the official opposition when somebody else has the floor. I know most members who are participating in this right now have been in the House for some time. They should know what the rules of the House are.

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Mr. Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay

Jun/7/22 12:07:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to be able to hear myself talk without anyone talking over me when I am trying to ask a question. In 2021, we floated the idea of a type of minimum tax for G7 countries to prevent competition among the tax systems and to prevent multinationals from taking advantage of that competition to engage in blackmail, for example, by threatening one country that they would move to a neighbouring country if the former did not lower its tax rate. That is a good idea that seems to break with the neo-liberalism that has prevailed for several decades. What does my colleague think about that?

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Mr. Daniel Blaikie

Jun/7/22 12:08:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question, which was asked in the appropriate way. I think we have been in a race to the bottom for far too long. An agreement that would guarantee a fair minimum tax rate is a very good idea. I think it would be a good thing for companies that want to stay in Canada but are in competition with companies whose operations are located in countries with lower tax rates.

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Mr. Randall Garrison (Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, NDP)

Jun/7/22 12:08:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to this Conservative opposition day motion because I think it identifies a very real problem facing Canadians: inflation generally, and the price of gas, the price of food and the price of housing. Unfortunately, it does something the Conservatives are wont to do recently, which is ignore the ongoing pandemic. It asks us to ignore health experts in favour of so-called freedom from mandates. I would just remind members of the House that in my home province of British Columbia, in the last week of May, 44 people died from COVID. We have many people, some of whom I know quite well, who are suffering from long COVID, and many members, or certainly many citizens of British Columbia, are receiving things like cancer treatments that compromise their immune systems, so there are lots of reasons why we should continue to listen to the health experts and not simply adopt some political position on mandates. I would agree with the Conservatives on only one small aspect, which is that I think the government has an obligation to show its work, as we say, when it comes to mandates. I believe that public health officials will do what is right, but the government needs to show us the evidence it is using for the decisions it is making, which it was pretty good at during the early stages of the pandemic, but seems to have forgotten about now. Having identified the affordability crisis, of course the Conservatives like to say the solution is more money in Canadians' pockets. Strangely, there is some agreement here. I believe there are some Canadians who need more money in their pockets. The problem is this: Which Canadians need that money in their pockets? The Conservative solution is to make sure that the pockets that get filled are those of large corporations and not the people who are actually facing an affordability crisis in their families. When it comes to gas prices, let us look at the profits of oil companies. In the first quarter of 2022 only, Imperial Oil recorded $1.17 billion in profits. This was its best record in 30 years. Suncor recorded a profit, in the first quarter only, of $2.95 billion, which is four times its profits last year. What is going on here is profiteering. These are companies that are taking advantage of the international situation, of the climate crisis and of all kinds of things to line their own pockets. The Conservative solution here, first of all, is a bit ironic, because it is to increase the deficit by decreasing our tax revenues. It is also to trust that the oil companies would not just fill that space with their own price increases and scoop up all the benefits of any tax reductions. There is no mechanism to prevent that, and we have seen the record, over and over again, of the oil companies: they will take any advantage to increase their profits. The Conservative solution risks lining the pockets of big oil and providing nothing for families who are struggling with high gas prices on a daily basis. The New Democrats have instead called for an excess profits tax not just on oil companies, but also on big banks and large food retailers. Scotiabank recorded profits of over $10 billion last year, the Bank of Montreal had over $8 billion, Loblaws had a net profit of $1.2 billion, and Sobeys, a smaller player, had over $600 million in profits. The Conservative proposal would increase the deficit and inflationary pressures, and there would be nothing about these record profits being racked up by the big corporations. It would take away necessary revenues for providing some help to those who really are hit by the affordability crisis. We know who is hardest hit: It is the seniors living on a fixed income, people with disabilities, indigenous people and northerners. We must never forget that these impacts are strongly gendered, I will say, in that when we look at women over 65, a vast majority of them are living in poverty, especially single women over the age of 65. When we look at single-parent families who are living in poverty, the vast majority are headed by women, so when we are talking about these impacts of affordability, we have to remember that they hit particularly hard at Canadian women, no matter their age or their family status. I want to thank the member for Nunavut, who continually raises the food insecurity problem in the north, for bringing our attention to it again today. The biggest impact of these rising costs for Canadian families is food insecurity. I want to draw the House's attention to the report released yesterday by Food Banks Canada. Canada, one of the richest countries in the world and one of the major food-producing countries in the world, now reports that 23% of Canadians, over seven million Canadians, reported going hungry in the past year because they could not afford to buy food. One-third of Canadians earning less than $50,000 a year reported having to skip meals because they did not have enough money, and 43% of indigenous people, to the enormous shame of this country, reported food insecurity that caused them to go hungry for more than one day. What is the solution? Food banks do their best to fill that gap in our income system and in our food system, but we cannot keep asking charitable, hard-working volunteers to solve the food insecurity crisis. We need to step up and solve that crisis by putting more money in the pockets of those who face food insecurity, immediately and in the long term. Conservatives point to that problem of food insecurity in their preamble, but then when we look down into the solutions in today's motion, there are none. There is nothing to actually help people who face food insecurity, unlike New Democrats' proposed measures to put money in the hands of those most vulnerable to food insecurity right now and in the long term. We have always called for an increase to OAS and GIS benefits for seniors. Seniors cannot do anything about rising food prices, because most of them already spend all of their fixed income. Their only choice is to eat less and put their health at risk. Again, we would like to see an increase to OAS and GIS. We have called for an immediate hike to the Canada child benefit. Even a modest hike as we are calling for, of $500 a year, would provide an increase on a monthly basis to families with kids trying to meet food costs. We know there are lots of parents who go hungry and will not report it so they can feed their kids. They skip meals. They do not eat the nutritious meals they need as adults, so they can provide that food to their kids. An increase right away to the Canada child benefit would help meet that crisis, and would continue in the long run to help people with food security. A doubling of the GST tax credit for low-income Canadians would go a long way in the short and long term to helping to meet that crisis of food insecurity. It is interesting that the data that was released yesterday by Food Banks Canada also shows that 60% of those who use food banks report that housing costs are the main reason they are at the food bank. They cannot afford to buy healthy, nutritious food for their families because they are already paying way too much of their limited income to meet their housing needs. This time, the Conservative motion acknowledges the affordability crisis in housing, but it proposes a national inquiry in money laundering as if this would have some impact on the provision of affordable housing units. I believe that we need to crack down on money laundering, absolutely. I do not think we need an inquiry to know what we need to do. Nevertheless, I cannot find the connection between the Conservatives saying there is a crisis in affordability and that we should have an inquiry into money laundering. It just does not make any sense to me. New Democrats, instead, favour measures to curb the use of housing for speculative investments. We need to crack down on corporate landlords who are gobbling up affordable housing in many cities across Canada, and then renovicting the people who have lived in that affordable housing and forcing them out onto the street or into their families' overcrowded housing units. We also need to crack down on real estate investment trusts. Real estate investment trusts get privileged tax treatment. They get tax breaks for buying up affordable housing. I just cannot imagine why we think that is good public policy in this country. I would love to see us eliminate the special tax treatment for real estate investment trusts. Obviously, we would have to phase in something like that, because people have done a lot of their financial planning based on it, but still it is something in the short and long term that we could do to address using the housing market for speculation and profit. Instead, we should be doing something that I have always called for as a New Democrat and that we have always worked for. That is to get the government back into the business of building non-profit housing in very large numbers. The market will never provide the housing that we need at the low end. It will continue to build high-end housing until the cows come home, as they used to say where I was raised, but it will never provide those affordable housing units. Non-profit housing could provide the housing security that is necessary for families. They do not necessarily have to own a single family house to feel secure in their housing. They could get a unit in a non-profit housing co-operative, for instance, and raise their kids in that security. It also creates a sense of community: of people who live together and have a common interest in taking care of their housing needs. New Democrats are not the only ones who make the obvious link between the high cost of housing and homelessness, but it is something I do not hear the Conservatives talking about. It is something I rarely hear the Liberals or the Conservatives talking about. When I look in my community, I see the unfortunate complaints that are coming up about people feeling unsafe in the streets because of homeless people. What is the solution? First of all, I do not think homeless people are the problem, in terms of safety locally. The solution is housing in the short term, so that those people are not forced onto the streets. Of course, the member for Winnipeg Centre has been very vocal, this week and always, in calling for the government to immediately fund a low-barrier, safe shelter place for indigenous women in Winnipeg Centre, and it is a good example—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Jun/7/22 12:19:18 p.m.
Watch

I am sorry, but the hon. member's time is up. I have been trying to give him some signals to let him know that it was coming to an end. The hon. member will have an opportunity to say more during questions and comments. Questions and comments, the hon. member for Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo.

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Kamloops

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