SoVote

Ms. Rachel Blaney (North Island—Powell River, NDP)

Oct/6/22 1:07:08 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Churchill—Keewatinook Aski. Before I start my speech on this very important motion today, I want to apologize to the amazing interpreters of this place. I was just in a committee where we were having some conversations with interpreters and some of their representations on the work they do here and the impacts that hybrid Parliament have had on them. I hope that all of us are mindful, as we go through this process, of how precious our interpreters are to the work we do. We should honour and respect them the best that we can. Today, we are here to talk about fairness. I have talked about it in this place before, and I will never stop talking about it until I leave. It is the idea of having a bar of a dignity in our country, a bar of dignity that we do not let anyone fall below, that we hold one another to account. Whether as individuals, as corporations or as part of a big family or a small family, regardless of where we are from or our age, we need to commit, collectively, to having a bar of dignity that will allow people to live the best lives they can. Today's motion talks specifically about that bar of dignity. We know that so many people across this country are falling behind. We know they do not have enough food to eat. We know they are unable to find somewhere safe to live. I am still saddened, disgusted and shocked by how many seniors from across the country are calling my office and talking about how close they are to losing their homes, how some of them, even as old as people in their 80s, are couch-surfing from one family friend to another, because they simply have nowhere safe to live. Parents from across my constituency have told me that they do not have enough money to make ends meet, that they have made hard choices about what they will feed their children and whether they can make the basic necessities of their life happen. I do not know about the other members, but I have lived through very hard financial times and, as a parent, one of the hardest things was saying no to my kids on things that I would regularly ensure they had. That is what is happening in our country. We are talking about this bar of dignity, because we know that people are worried about whether they will be able to feed themselves. I have talked to parents who are not eating their last meal of the day so their kids have enough to eat for the whole day. At the same time this is happening, CEOs and grocery stores are seeing huge returns. People in the oil and gas industry, at the top echelon of it, are making more profit than they have seen in over 30 years, while the most vulnerable, the most hard-working of them, the everyday people who are doing their jobs, going to work every day and coming home, who are doing nothing wrong, are paying the price of inflation and they are paying the price of the wealthy becoming wealthier. The CEO of Sobeys has been awarded a total compensation package of $8.6 million in 2022, which is over 15% from the previous year. I do not know about the rest of the members in this place, but the constituents who I have talked to have not seen their wages increase by 15%. They are not seeing that return on the hard work they are often doing so wealthy people can get these huge extra payments. That is shameful in a country like ours. I keep hearing discussions on the Conservative side about whether we should be giving people this bit of money to help with their dental care, the one-time payment of $500 to help get them through this next period of time. I think it is absolutely essential. What is so sad is that both the Conservatives and Liberals are not talking about addressing the issue of ensuring the very ultrarich are paying their fair share. We hear from the government side, but we do not see action. What we do see are reports, like I saw the other day, of $30 billion that could have been brought to Canada to help with key important things like non-market housing, housing that seniors, with their very limited fixed incomes, could afford to live in, or people who are struggling one day to the next with different challenges would have a place to stay, a place to call home. This is happening because of tax loopholes. I bet a lot of people across the country right now are working very hard and paying their taxes. They do it during tax time. I talked to seniors who have a little extra and pay their taxes. I talked to working families that pay their taxes. Why do we have a system that builds in these loopholes that allow the very wealthy, who can afford to pay people who understand these systems, to get away with paying less? Why should hard-working Canadians pay more, in terms of share, than those who make so very much? CEOs are walking away with huge bonuses, getting incredible raises of 15%, having millions of dollars in annual income, while 24% of people are cutting back on how much basic food they buy. These are real people in our communities who are having to make these hard decisions, and it is not fair. We need voices in this place fighting for fairness, that are saying that it is not right that there is this big disparity and it is growing every year. Everyday Canadians are staying at one level and the ultra-wealthy are rising and rising. I hope that everybody in this place is going to support the motion, because this is about saying we are going to hold those making excess profits accountable and ensuring that they finally are going to pay their fair share, so the bar of dignity is there for all. Not too long ago, there was an incident in one of my communities where some young people were addressing unhoused people in a manner that was less than profoundly kind. This tell me that if we are not fighting this lack of fairness, we will be allowing for things to happen in our society of which we will have to live the long-term consequences. It is hard for people who are unhoused. It is hard for their loved ones and for businesses. It is hard for everyone, but we do not have a government that is taking it seriously, in a profound way, and it is not taking action to address fairness. It is really sad that we are now living in a country where eating without worry is becoming less and less of a reality. Eating without worry is now becoming a privileged place to be. That is absolutely shameful and we need to do better. There are things we can do and this motion would provide them. We can strengthen the Competition Act. We know that in European countries the competition laws can fine people substantively, so we need to do that. We need to ensure there is no price gouging. They have used it to ensure that pharmaceutical companies are not increasing medication costs, especially, for example, cancer drugs. Right now, competition law in Canada has no teeth; it has no way of addressing this. This motion is about accountability to fairness and to the hard-working people of Canada. It is time we put it in place, and I hope every member in the House supports this.

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Context: House Hansard - 109 - Oct/6/22

Ms. Rachel Blaney

Oct/6/22 1:17:49 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, one of the things I have talked about for many years, prior to this job as well, is that systems matter. They matter profoundly. We can trust people and hope they are doing the right thing all the time. I am a person who usually believes that. I believe most people have a good heart and care about people, but without robust systems, we cannot be assured of that. This motion talks about having that Canadian competition law and making it more assertive, aggressive and accountable for everyday Canadians. We can speculate who is doing what, but until we have the system that holds people and systems to account, we will never be at the place we need to be.

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Context: House Hansard - 109 - Oct/6/22

Ms. Rachel Blaney

Oct/6/22 1:19:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, in the area I live, we have different farms of different sizes that do incredible work to feed our communities. One of the things that is unique in our area, as we live on Vancouver Island, is that we have three days of food for people, and that is it. If there is any emergency, there is a lot of concern about what we will do to address the fact that there is three days of food on the whole island for the people who live there. If we cannot get food into our communities, it will have a profound impact. Part of the solution is that all levels of government need to work with farmers to ensure they have a robust ability to do their work. I went to visit a farmer not too long ago in my riding. On Vancouver Island, we are seeing draught like we have never ever seen before. One of the things the farmer showed me was that she had dug a significantly huge hole so that during the winter it filled up with water, which allowed her to keep all her produce watered even during the draught. She talked about how we needed to do more work on those sorts of innovative solutions.

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Context: House Hansard - 109 - Oct/6/22

Ms. Rachel Blaney

Oct/6/22 1:22:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I could not agree more. The bar of dignity in the country is based on our capacity to take the ultra-wealthy and make them accountable, to ensure they pay their fair share. We are not asking for more; we are asking them to pay for their fair share, like most Canadians do.

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