44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 17, 2022 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, I know the member is upset, but he keeps pointing at me personally and I find that it is threatening my space. Could you ask him to settle down a little?
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Madam Speaker, it is a great honour, as always, to rise in the House and speak for the people of Timmins—James Bay. It is very powerful that we are having this discussion today on trying to move forward with dental care legislation and protection for Canadians who are low-income renters, in the midst of constant obstruction from both the Conservatives and the Bloc.
I will be sharing my time today with the member for Edmonton Strathcona.
Today, as we are discussing dental care, let us put it in context for people back home. We will be voting this afternoon on the New Democrat motion to take on “greedflation”, to actually shine a spotlight onto the massive level of profits that are being made as ordinary working-class Canadians and senior citizens cannot pay their grocery bills.
This morning, Galen Weston suddenly had his moment on the road to Damascus and announced that although he was not completely willing to stop the price gouging, he was going to put a price freeze on all of his No Frills products. Nice, Galen. It is nice to know that when the New Democrats start putting pressure on, the big grocery giants are starting to jump.
We are not done with it. We see that inflation has been hitting in two key areas. One is obviously at the grocery stores, and the other is at the pump. Those are the two sectors that have had unprecedented levels of profits over the last year. It is inexcusable for giants like Galen Weston and big oil to claim that they are just responding to the crisis that has been caused by the Ukrainian war and inflation, when what we are actually seeing is “greedflation”. Whenever the price at the pump has been dropping, we have been seeing that inflationary pressures have dropped.
Internationally, we see efforts in the EU, California and the United Nations, pushing for a windfall tax, to say that this upper level of profit, this unprecedented level of profit, is coming out of the pocketbooks of people who cannot afford to pay it and should be paid back. That is something that is happening at the international level. We have not seen the government go anywhere near that, but it would be interesting today to see whether the Conservatives and the Liberals will stand with us and actually take on “greedflation”.
I mention that because it is really important to frame how the New Democrats have come into this Parliament and how we have been proceeding.
When the Prime Minister called that completely unnecessary election last summer, in the summer of 2021, we went door to door and we listened to people, and we met family after family whose concerns were that their children could not get dental care. We met seniors who could not afford to get proper work done on their teeth.
We made a promise that if the Canadian people set up the cards in Parliament such that we had a minority Parliament, we would come back in and fight for a national dental care program. We ran on that, and we are delivering on that. We are very focused on that. I think it is very telling, because what obviously has my Conservative friends' backs up about this is that we are actually delivering.
We said that we were going to push for a doubling of the GST tax credit, because we need to get some money back into the pockets of citizens. We saw the Conservatives light their hair on fire, and then they flip-flopped, because how would they go home to their constituents and not say that they believed they should be entitled to having money come back?
What they have been doing is that they have a very different strategy from us. We are very focused on what we are doing. We announce what we are doing. We work on it. It is like siege warfare, I have to say, with the Liberals, dragging them kicking and screaming sometimes to do the right thing, but one can do that in a minority Parliament if one is focused.
We said we would get the dental care provisions in place, that we would double the GST tax credit and that we would get support for low-income renters, because they are unable to pay the bills at this increasing time of insecurity.
The Conservatives, for their part, God love them, love to jump down rabbit holes of conspiracy, to get people arguing about things that are completely inconsequential.
Obviously, we could not have this conversation without the new shadow critic for infrastructure. At a time when the issue of infrastructure and housing is the number one issue in the land, she is demanding an investigation into Pfizer, because she saw some crazy right-wing politician on YouTube making allegations. That is what the Conservative leader's new infrastructure critic is saying.
I remember when she was going on about the so-called Nuremberg Code and it took the very wise member for Parry Sound—Muskoka, whom I have a lot of respect for, to have to publicly say, “Being offered a vaccine that prevents serious illness and our governments' responses to COVID-19 are not the same as being tortured in a Nazi concentration camp.” He had to say that against a member of his own party.
I mention that because the politics of disinformation are about getting people upset so that they are not focused on what matters, and what matters right now are concrete solutions to addressing the growing financial gaps and insecurities.
If we want to talk disinformation, the front face of the Conservative movement in Canada right now is Danielle Smith. I mean, oh my God, where to begin? We find out now that she has been promoting pro-Russian, pro-Putin separatist propaganda. This is not acceptable when we see the horrific death rates, torture, killing and rape that are happening in Ukraine. However, she says that those who do not want to wear a mask are the most discriminated against people in the history of Canada. We need to see all leaders in this country standing up against Putin, because the economic devastation that is happening around the world is impacting us here. It is also from a basic human rights point of view that we need to stay focused.
Again, I mention this because this is the politics of disinformation that the Conservatives are opting for to cover the fact that they are not delivering real results for people. When we came in and said we were going to double the GST tax credit, the Conservative leader said that if we gave money to working-class people or senior citizens to help pay their bills, the money would be somehow “vaporized”. That was the term he used.
“Vaporized” is a magical Conservative economic term, kind of like cryptocurrency, and if we are talking about what got vaporized, how about the $1 trillion in crypto savings that disappeared after the Conservative Party leader told people to invest their savings in cryptocurrency? That is vaporization. What New Democrats are doing is delivering.
Today, we are hearing a million reasons Conservatives are telling ordinary Canadians they should not have dental care, and that it is not necessary. However, the bill before us today will affect 500,000 children who do not have access to dental care, and that is an enormous number of children who deserve it. We see that 50% of low-income Canadians have no dental care services, and only one-third of Quebeckers have private dental care insurance.
For anyone who has a child who needs their teeth fixed, it is an incredible pressure, and I know from talking to families about how they try to find ways to get dental care. However, this year, Bill C-31 will give two payments to low-income families with children under 12. This is not the full solution, but it is the interim step that is necessary in order to get this program in place. This was in our supply agreement with the Liberals.
Now, it must be said that just because we have a supply agreement with the Liberals does not mean that we get along with the Liberals. This is about pushing these guys, because I have to say that pushing Liberals to actually do something is like wrestling with the Teletubbies. Just trying to even get something to grip on with a Liberal is difficult at the best of times, but in this minority Parliament, we found where it was needed and we knew it was on dental care. This year, we pushed them. We actually pushed these Teletubbies and we are going to get that money to low-income families, but that is only the beginning. We need this national program because senior citizens have a right to it and ordinary working-class people have a right to it. We need to move on this.
Therefore, while my colleagues on the other side are going to jump down the rabbit holes of conspiracy and YouTube nut jobbery, we will stay focused on getting kids their dental care, on getting money to the working class and seniors, and on taking on the grocery giants and greedflation.
I will be here all week and I am ready to take questions.
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Madam Speaker, that is a very important point. We are here in Parliament, sent by the Canadian people, and they sent us a very clear message in the 2021 election. They did not like that unnecessary election; they basically sent the same configuration and said to do some work, and doing some work means that at a certain point we put the interests of Canadian people above our own partisan interests.
That means we do not have to get along, but we have to say there are objectives that have to be met, and the objective that has to be met is that we have to get this dental care through. If we do not get this thing through, if we allow the Conservatives and the Bloc to obstruct it, that would mean children would not get this service, and it would mean that next year seniors and families would not get this service. We have to put our own partisan interests to the back once in a while and say that as a Parliament we can come together, so yes, we are going to work on this; we are going to get this thing through and we are going to get proper dental care for all those who deserve it.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for obviously looking to New Democrats now for the direction of where this House is going to lead. That is about showing up, because, God help the poor Liberals, they just do not seem to have direction. Yes, we pushed them on the GST credits. We are hoping they are going to be willing to stand up to the grocery giants, as I would like to see my colleague do as well.
As for what is coming next, stay tuned, because there is a whole bunch of elements we need to work on in terms of housing. We have to get actual housing built. That would be a good booster for the economy. We need to get investments, particularly in western Canada, in the energy transformation. We hear a lot of hot air, but we need to see investments, so we can actually start to build a new clean energy economy.
Any time my colleague wants to know what is coming up next in the House, he can come over and I will explain to him how we are going to push these Teletubbies, bring them into the promised land and make them a relevant government.
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Madam Speaker, we have certainly thought about this issue, and we have been working across the board to make sure children everywhere are entitled to this. We know that only one-third of Quebeckers actually have private dental coverage. They are left woefully behind in this area. If we actually have a program that works, we will make sure every child in this country, followed by every senior and by families who have a right to it, are able to obtain it, whether it is in Abitibi or in Crowsnest Pass.
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