44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 5, 2022 02:00PM
- Oct/5/22 3:18:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, our hearts remain with survivors and families of missing and murdered indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQI+ people. Addressing this ongoing violence requires living up to our goals as a country and living up to all the calls for justice.
We are taking a whole-of-government approach, supported by an over $2-billion investment in concrete measures to keep people safe and a close to $2-billion investment to support indigenous housing needs.
We understand that there is always more to do. We will continue to work urgently on it alongside indigenous people.
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Mr. Speaker, I must say, that was a unique and special touch to the conclusion of her speech. It is nice to see the Bloc and, in fact, all members of the House, recognizing the true value of this legislation, which would support Canadians in all regions of the country. It is estimated that 11 million Canadians would benefit from the passage of this legislation.
I understand and hear the message from the Bloc, that we have to look at ways we can make some changes more permanent. One that I would cite, even though it is one that I know they have a little bit of difficulty with, is the 10% increase for seniors 75 and over. I appreciate that the Bloc have some challenges with that particular issue.
This one piece of legislation is complemented by other pieces of legislation, the dental care and rental housing legislation and the disability legislation. Could I get the member's thoughts on those pieces?
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Mr. Speaker, our colleagues on the other side are trying to blast this government by suggesting it is not helping Canadian citizens. I would like to remind all of them that once the COVID-19 pandemic started, the government took care of every single Canadian from coast to coast to coast and took care of every business in Canada to help people confront the pandemic and live in decency.
Regarding the housing problem, does my colleague know how much money is allocated to building new houses? Does she know about our rapid housing initiative as well as our day care program? This government is taking care of parents so that they can go to work and do not have to stay home to take care of the children. Regarding inflation, that is a worldwide problem. The economy created for Canada, thanks to this government, is still number one among the G7.
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Mr. Speaker, I will just remind the member that it was because of the NDP that many of those programs, like CERB, allowed people to stay in their homes over the pandemic. If it was not for the NDP, people would have received half of what they needed to survive.
I was actually looking at the rapid housing initiative numbers today on an Order Paper question. A number of rapid house initiatives have not yet been built and we see it manifesting on the streets of our communities. People are living in tents. It does not matter and we cannot fall back on the fact that this is a G7 problem. There are people in Canada suffering, and the government has a responsibility to put them into homes, to build homes, to have affordable homes available for them and to pass Bill C-31.
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Mr. Speaker, the member for Port Moody—Coquitlam is an ardent defender of her constituents. We know there is a housing crisis across the country. We know there are, in each riding in this country, about 30,000 people who do not have access to dental care.
Could the member remind us about what the impacts will be in Port Moody, Coquitlam, Anmore and Belcarra as a result of this NDP bill getting through the House?
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Mr. Speaker, I agree that inflation is hurting Canadians. There are all these aspects to inflation. We have heard a lot about the price of gas. We have heard a tremendous amount about the price of housing and the impossibility of owning a home for new homebuyers in Canada. With the skyrocketing cost of rent in my riding, it is almost impossible to find rental accommodation of any sort, let alone afford it.
I agree that the top-up we are talking about helps people who are really in need of that help. These are people who are spending more than 30% of their income on their accommodation, on their rent. If someone were to tell them that $500 is not enough, they would say that it would be a big help.
We need to tackle the housing situation. The NDP wants the government to build 500,000 units of affordable housing to catch up to where we should have been had the federal government not gotten out of the affordable housing game back in the nineties. Yes, there is a lot for us to do to tackle housing and inflation, but Bill C-31 is an essential and very impactful, beneficial bill that would help the millions of Canadians who are struggling with their costs today.
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Mr. Speaker, first, on the issue of helping municipalities move forward in getting zoning and rezoning dealt with, the NDP was able to force the government to bring forward the accelerator fund. Part of that funding is, in fact, going to be dedicated to municipalities and local governments to help with that. This work is actually going to be under way, although the program is not fully developed and more work will be done.
That being said, the member talked a lot about housing and addressed the housing crisis. One of the issues impacting the housing affordability issue is the financialization of housing, yet real estate investment trusts are getting preferential tax treatment. In fact, they get government support by way of insurance coverage and mortgage coverage.
Would the member agree that the government should stop preferential tax treatment for these corporate landlords?
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Mr. Speaker, if I may, I just want to give a quick shout-out. I do not often spend holidays away from my family, but I would like to thank the Ottawa Jewish community for the warm welcome and the meaningful prayer and introspective services that I took part in today.
What happens when young people do everything in this country that they were asked to do? What happens when they do everything they are told? What happens when a 35-year-old who did everything they were supposed to do, who earned a degree, got a job and worked hard, lives in mom and dad's basement or in a 400-square-foot apartment because the price of housing has doubled since the Prime Minister came into office?
Young people have done everything they were asked to do, and they end up trying to keep their heads above water in a housing bubble that is the second largest in the world. As for families lucky enough to own a home, they were paying 32% of their income to maintain that home when the Prime Minister took office. Now, those families have to pay 50% of their income to be able to keep it. There are higher costs, higher interest rates and less money for exactly the same thing in this country.
Canadians have done everything they were asked to do. The government told Canadians not to worry. The government told people that interest rates would not rise for a long time. It gave Canadians the confidence to take out those loans. There would not be anything to worry about. That is what it said.
We are seeing interest rates, the ones the government told us would stay low, go up. We have the highest interest rates in the G7, with rises of 3%.
It is worth repeating: Canadians did everything they were asked to do. The percentage of Canadians who own their home or who are about to own a home is at its lowest level in 30 years.
No government has ever spent more on housing than this Liberal one; the government will tell us that, yet it is a failure by every metric. Measuring success by how much the Liberals have spent and not by how many houses were built in Canada is where we are, yet, with all of those dollars and all of those talking points, we have still seen the doubling of housing prices in this country since the Prime Minister took office. That is a fact.
Knowing all this and presenting the House with Bill C-31 as a solution makes it seem as though the government weighed the political benefit of a proposal rather than the economic one. In fact, it entirely forgot about the economics of this one.
The bill is the latest problem child of an NDP-Liberal marriage that shines at raising Canadians' taxes and the prices they pay on everyday goods. It fails at producing an actual outcome to get people into the housing market. It does not allow them to keep their home or the certainty at the end of the month of being able to keep the lights on in that home.
A flashy headline and an expensive tab for taxpayers is what got us into this mess, and surely members in the House know it is the exact opposite of what we need to get out of the mess. Maybe they do not know.
The problem is that it is not just housing any more. It is the cost of everything. It is the cost of gas. It is the cost of groceries. It is the cost of home heating. They have cobbled together a piece of legislation that will only drive up inflation and of which we will see every single dollar evaporate with the rising cost of that gas, of those groceries and of that home heating.
It demonstrates the government's out-of-touch planning for working families, for small businesses, for seniors and for young people who have become victims of its incompetence.
Economists agree. I am not sure what the conversation is in the House during the debate, but the Bank of Montreal's senior economist recently tweeted, “I think we all know that sending out money as an 'inflation-support' measure is inherently...inflationary.” Those are his words.
Scotiabank was clear. Its expert said, “Any belief that [the government's proposal] will ease inflationary pressures must have studied different economics textbooks.”
The house that no one can afford is on fire, and the minister who introduced this legislation is painting the basement where the 35-year-old lives. Bill C-31 is a political attempt to stay in power, not to help Canadians, and that is a shame.
There is an obvious fact that many members opposite may not see as obvious at all. It is about the other back-of-the-napkin math that is in this cobbled-together piece of legislation. In the entire 80-page Liberal platform from just last year, not one of the pages mentioned developing a dental care program like the one the government is proposing today, so we have to ask what reasoning members opposite have for introducing this legislation at this very moment.
Has there been some sort of epiphany among the Liberal caucus? Have they suddenly been convinced that this is the silver bullet for solving the affordability crisis, which they now admit is here? After seven years of Liberal government and three elections, is now the time for a proposal we have never heard of before?
Is there another factor at play? Frankly, I think there is. Perhaps it is the fact that the government now relies on votes from the NDP to ensure its very existence. The NDP curiously made dental care a centrepiece of its election platform just a short year ago. If this is the case, then do the Liberals believe that this is necessary? Is it the right thing to do, or is it a piece of legislation where $5.3 billion would be prolonging the messy divorce we all know is coming?
We should not only ask how a government has failed to provide the details of this legislation, but we should ask why we would trust a government to create a new program, when it cannot deliver the programs it already has?
The government cannot pay its own public servants. It cannot get clean drinking water onto reserves. It cannot get Canadians passports without giving them an urban camping experience they did not ask for. It cannot ensure Canadian travellers get an app to travel across a border. It cannot assure Canadians that, when they go to the airport, they are actually going to leave on an airplane, and we are supposed to believe that it is going to deliver an efficient, functional, national dental care plan to millions of uninsured Canadians, one that we have never heard of before.
For those following this debate and for those who will vote on this, dental care programs for low-income children exist in all provinces and territories, save for Manitoba and the Northwest Territories, in addition to the 70% of Canadians who are already insured and have coverage.
This program is a political one, and it is designed to fail by a government that has failed to deliver very basic services for Canadians. There would be up-front, direct payments of $650 per year to any family they deem eligible, with no questions asked and no strings attached in the legislation. Then, it is up to the CRA to follow up after the fact and verify the money was used correctly. I would like to know how the government thinks the CRA, which will takes years to fix a minor tax issues faced by my constituents, would have the capacity to verify the proper use of a grant by hundreds of thousands of Canadians, given there has been much to be desired in its ability to do just that with programs in the last two years. It is the wrong approach. We have seen it before, and we know how it ends.
Economists have been clear about the impact of direct payments on the cost of living, and I know members opposite understand there is a cost of living crisis. They have just recently admitted it. From the other side of the House, Canadians will remember that the Liberals told us interest rates would stay low. They told us the carbon tax would not go up. They told us that the problem was deflation, not inflation.
We have record inflation. We have a plan to triple the carbon tax, and we have the highest interest rates since the 1990s. It is time to end inflationary taxes and deficits, give Canadians control of their own lives and put more money in their pockets. Reducing taxes, capping government spending and removing red tape are the best ways to end the inflation crisis we have watched the government impose on Canadians through its high-spend, high-tax agenda, not with bigger budgets, higher taxes or more government.
This entire bill is an excuse for policy in hopes of being remembered in the next election, when that rolls around, and it is just one more drop of gasoline on the inflationary fire. Canadians deserve a government that will put people back into the plan, and the Liberals have proven that they are not that government. Conservatives will not forget that. Members on this side of the House will not forget that, and neither will Canadians. Putting people at the centre of decisions starts with voting against this bill, and I hope members understand the consequences of another broken promise, failed delivery and worse economic hardship for Canadians.
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