44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 27, 2022 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, through previous questioning it is clear that Bloc members support the principle of providing dental benefits to children under the age of 12. They are not objecting to that. It also appears to be clear that they are not against us making that a government expenditure. It seems to me that they should be voting in favour of the legislation, unless there is an alternative reason. The reason the member is putting forward is they need more time and then they will support the bill.
I wonder if the member can be clear as to why members of the Bloc do not support it. I suspect it is because they do not want Ottawa to play a role in this, which I believe would be to the detriment of kids throughout the country, as it should be available to all children.
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Madam Speaker, we are talking about the children of Quebec, so we must try to be non-partisan when it comes to this issue.
We did not have enough time to contribute and reason with the government about the right way to respect Quebec's programs. Simply put, Quebec already has a program that provides this care. It could be more generous. The provision of care is enshrined in the Constitution as a provincial jurisdiction.
I think there should have been a discussion so that we could enhance the work being done for children. Today, we are demeaning all the efforts that have been made not only by Quebec, but also by Nova Scotia, to build this care. Under the pretext of taking action for dental care, the government is in fact taking action against dental care.
It is obvious that we cannot support this principle.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank my Bloc colleague for really highlighting the hypocrisy coming out of the government when it comes to the different tools that it uses to limit debate in this House. We quite often hear when the Liberals limit debate at second reading that they will solve amendment challenges and get fixes done during committee work.
What is really concerning with this bill is they did not allow expert witnesses to testify at committee and provide their opinions so that we could develop the best bill possible and get the best legislation. I would like the member to expand on that a bit.
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Madam Speaker, I could understand why the government might want to use a procedure like closure, although maybe not the super closure motion, if there were a filibuster at least.
The bill we are debating contains so many flaws. In a minority government, we could have worked with the opposition to improve it. This makes the closure motion doubly unacceptable. We are talking about 130,000 parents in Quebec who will not have access to the benefit. We are talking about 86,000 people who make less than $20,000 or less than $35,000 or so and who live in low-rent housing or in co-ops but who will not qualify.
Do these people deserve a closure motion? It is worth asking the question.
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Madam Speaker, the Bloc has claimed that our dental care program is discriminatory and unneeded in Quebec. This is demonstrably untrue. Every Quebec parent can apply for $1,300 per child to fix their teeth, just like every other Canadian parent. The provincial Quebec plan only covers children under 10, is poorly funded and has inadequate coverage. The Quebec representative of the Canadian Dental Association has confirmed the poor quality of the Quebec program, supports the federal plan and explicitly opposes sending the federal money directly to the Quebec government.
Why is the Bloc putting politics over public health and opposing a plan that will help some 100,000 Quebec children who do not have the same dental care that Bloc members have?
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Madam Speaker, during the Quebec election campaign, groups that have been calling for expanded dental coverage for years held a press conference the same day that Bill C-31 was released, which clearly has not changed. They basically said that the bill was all nonsense.
Quebec parents will be ineligible for much of the care, not all, but a large amount of care, because Quebec has already taken some steps. Now we are told that Quebec should get some help to pay for those efforts. The ministers keep telling us that all parents will be eligible and so on. The problem is the word “eligible”. Their definition of “eligible” excludes 130,000 Quebec parents.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to start by congratulating my colleague and friend from Mirabel on his poignant speech.
As he made clear, we are unhappy with the cavalier way the government is managing Bill C‑31.
Bill C‑31 was poorly drafted. It does not take into account the reality of Quebec in any way whatsoever. It does not line up with what is happening in Quebec, either with respect to the rental support or the dental care support.
Because Quebec has chosen to pay for its own social measures, it is now being largely excluded from and penalized by this bill. There are many ways to fix that, such as a compensation, or even slight changes to the eligibility rules, but nothing was done. It is the type of problem that could have been fixed through the normal process for studying bills, both in the House and in committee, with a minimum of goodwill. However, the government chose the path of super closure to short-circuit the entire normal process.
The hours of debate were reduced and committee studies were minimal, just two hours, which left no time for witnesses to be heard or for the analysis of experts. That was also the case for the people affected by Bill C-31. Our amendments to accommodate Quebec were rejected because the government preferred to use its bulldozer and not listen to reason or the people affected. The government acted in bad faith by refusing to give the House and its committee the opportunity to reasonably carry out their role. This was all aided and abetted by the third opposition party, all for the purpose of moving hastily and ramming through the bill.
This has given us a bad bill that has come back to us at third reading looking just as bad. The result is that, once again, Quebec is being dismissed by this government and by the House.
Let me be very clear. I am totally in favour of the principles of this bill. The Bloc Québécois is all in favour of the principles of this bill, but we are going to vote against it. The reason is that the application of this bill will create great inequities for Quebec and, by short-circuiting the entire process for studying and improving this bill, the government is making the choice to implement a law that is unfair to Quebec. If the government had let the House do its work, we would not be in this position.
Let me explain. The bill discriminates against Quebeckers in both its housing and dental care components. The Parliamentary Budget Officer confirmed our concerns. The people of Quebec will not get their fair share with Bill C-31.
Let us start by looking at the housing component. On October 14, the Parliamentary Budget Officer published his estimates of how much the rental assistance component of Bill C-31 would cost and how many people it would benefit. This part of the bill provides for a one-time cheque for $500. The Parliamentary Budget Officer confirmed that the people of Quebec would not get their fair share and would be discriminated against.
One eligibility requirement is having a modest income, so $20,000 for a single person or $35,000 for a couple or family. Another requirement is being a renter and putting more than 30% of one's income towards rent. In Quebec, we have collectively chosen to support social housing.
Many low-income households live in low-rent housing or in housing co‑operatives. In these social housing units, the rent is capped at 30% of income, in order to take into account the renters' ability to pay.
These people are therefore excluded from the help being proposed here. Quebec has chosen to be more progressive and collectively pay for a social housing service. With this bill, Quebeckers find themselves paying a second time for a benefit cheque, yet they are largely excluded. There is not a penny in compensation. The result is that this bill discriminates against Quebec because Quebec is too progressive for Ottawa, for this Liberal government and for the NDP, which never stops talking.
I want to be clear. There is still a serious lack of social housing in Quebec. More must be done, and Ottawa must contribute to social housing.
Because the situation is better in Quebec, low-income Quebeckers are being penalized. Because Quebec is too progressive, Ottawa has chosen to deprive Quebec of its rightful portion of the rental assistance. The Parliamentary Budget Officer calculated that because of this 30% rule, as my colleague was saying, 118,000 people in Canada will not be entitled to support, and three-quarters of them live in Quebec. We are talking about 86,700 people.
Why did the government choose to create such an injustice? Why is it refusing to correct it?
Why is it that every time an injustice is inflicted on Quebec, Ottawa chooses to ignore it? Once again, this inequity could have been fixed in committee or in the House. This government refuses to do so, and is deliberately choosing to withhold a significant portion of the assistance to which Quebec is entitled. Is the government ready to commit to correcting this injustice? Thus far, it has refused.
The same goes for the dental component. The Parliamentary Budget Officer also confirmed our fears. Quebec will receive half as much assistance per child on average. According to the PBO's calculations, Quebeckers will receive 13% of the program. If we received our share, it would be 23%. That is a 10% difference. In short, Quebec parents are far from receiving their fair share of the program. The scenario per child is not much better. On average, a child in Quebec will receive half as much as a Canadian child living outside Quebec, as I stated earlier. Furthermore, that is without compensation and without any real assurance that the support will adequately cover dental care costs.
See, these are lump-sum cheques, so parents in Quebec will not get smaller cheques. Instead, half of them will not be eligible for this benefit at all even though parents with similar incomes and in similar situations outside Quebec will be. As my colleague explained, that means approximately 130,000 people in Quebec will be excluded from the program even though, all things being equal, they would be included if they lived outside Quebec.
When we met with the Parliamentary Budget Officer last Friday, he pointed out that there were two reasons for this. The first is that Quebec is too progressive. Because of the Government of Quebec's program, many parents pay nothing when they go to the dentist. That means they cannot get money from Ottawa.
Quebeckers chose to provide dental care for children, and we chose to pay for it. Because we pay for this important service, we will get no help from Ottawa, even though we pay for that too. There is no coordination and no compensation.
The second reason for the disparity is that Quebec is overly unionized. Since our unionization rate is higher than Canada's, a higher proportion of our population has group insurance. This excludes us once again from this bill. Quebec is not getting its fair share because we are more progressive and more unionized.
In Ottawa, the Liberal government and the NDP are choosing to discriminate against progressives and union members. I am not making this up. Because it is too progressive, Quebec is being discriminated against by Ottawa. The government refused to propose an alternative arrangement. The government forced the House to pass this all very quickly, without addressing the inequities. This is unacceptable, which is why we have to vote against the bill, even though we support the principle.
Without a doubt, my nation is being ill served by its neighbour, who makes decisions for us about our own money, and who no longer even tries to offer arrangements or accommodations. I hope everyone remembers this.
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Mr. Speaker, I guess this is where we differ. Whether one is an 11-year-old child in Quebec, Manitoba, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, or any other jurisdiction in Canada, we believe that having that basic dental benefit for all children is a positive thing. There will be some variances. Some provinces, such as Alberta, have another program. Quebec has a program. Some provinces have no program. From a national perspective, we are trying to ensure that every child gets access to dental care.
It is disappointing that the Bloc is being narrow-minded and is not recognizing the true value of providing children in Canada a benefit that will make a difference.
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Mr. Speaker, I completely agree with the principle behind my colleague's comments.
However, right now we are talking about technical aspects of the bill, which was drafted quickly. The principle is good, and the Bloc agrees with everything my colleague said. The problem is in the execution. The bill was drafted so quickly that we wanted to know how it could possibly line up with Quebec's program and those of the other provinces and take their reality into account. We were told that this was not up for discussion, that we could not invite witnesses, that no amendments would be accepted and that none would be proposed to deal with that. The government forgot to harmonize its program with the existing programs in Quebec and the other provinces. As a result, Quebec is getting half as much as it should be getting.
In Quebec, we choose to pay for dental insurance for children. We are prepared to pay for federal dental insurance for the part that is not covered, but all we are asking for is harmonization. What the government is doing with the NDP, which is doing nothing but complain, is saying that we have to pay without getting any compensation or harmonization in return. The whole process is flawed because the government imposed super closure, preventing the House and the committees from doing their job. It is because the government botched the process that we are now being forced to vote against the bill today.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to come back to the speech by my colleague from Joliette, whom I respect and who does an excellent job.
I agree with the member that the government is misrepresenting the Bloc Québécois when it accuses it of not valuing dental care. That is not what the member just said. After listening to his speech, it is clear that the Bloc is sensitive to this issue. That is not the problem.
I have a question for my colleague from Joliette. Is it because of the agreement between the NDP and the Liberal Party of Canada that we have this bill, which was thrown together without respecting provincial jurisdictions?
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier for his question and for his kind words. The feeling is mutual. I appreciate my hon. colleague's dedication and desire to do good and work hard and everything he does for democracy in the House.
We are not in the loop, of course, but we do know there was an agreement to create a dental benefit. The problem is, Ottawa does not have the expertise to provide services directly to the people, whereas the provinces do. What officials told us when the most recent budget came out was that they did not know how they were going to set this up, that it was bound to be long and complicated, and that it would not work.
I suspect that, when the government said that to the other opposition party in the context of the agreement, it was told that would not fly and it would have to find another way. The government cannot create a real insurance program, so it opted to send cheques. The NDP said to be quick about it or lose their support, so the government did it quickly and haphazardly without really taking the facts and the technicalities into account. We figured we could make changes in committee, but the government was not interested and swiftly shut things down with a super closure motion. If a bill is bad from the get-go and does not get amended, it is still a bad bill.
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Mr. Speaker, I have been in this House for months and months listening to the Bloc Québécois demand additional Canada health transfers from the federal government to the province, and it is right about that. I agree. We do need the federal government to pay more of its share for health care.
We have a bill before this House that would see the federal government send $1,300 to all Quebec parents who make under $70,000 a year and have children under the age of 12 and do not have dental coverage now. It would allow them to take their children to the dentist. There are no conditions whatsoever, and the Bloc opposes it.
I am wondering if my hon. colleague can tell me why he is opposing the federal government sending out $1,300 for every child in Quebec who does not have dental care now, 100% of which would be paid by the federal government. What is he saying to those Quebec parents by opposing that payment?
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.
As I said, we are in favour of the principle. There is a factual problem with his question. He is saying that the program is for every child in Quebec or for the parents of every child in Quebec. That is not true.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer looked into this, and he showed that Quebec will receive only half as much as the rest of Canada will be getting. Quebec is being discriminated against. All we are asking is to drop this super closure motion that the NDP supported so that we can improve this bill in committee. If we had been able to amend it and improve it in committee, we would be voting in favour of the bill now. However, the government imposed super closure on a bill that is out of touch with reality and does not provide fair compensation. If we had had a chance to do the work to ensure that we were not getting just half of what we are entitled to, then we would have voted in favour of the bill. There are consequences to supporting super closure.
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Mr. Speaker, before I start, I would like to seek unanimous consent from the House to split my time.
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- Oct/27/22 5:41:45 p.m.
- Watch
Is that agreed?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Vancouver Kingsway.
I am delighted to enter into this debate. I have been listening all day to members in the House speak to Bill C-31. What are we talking about with Bill C-31? We are talking about making sure that families with incomes of less than $90,000, and with children under 12 who do not have dental coverage or insurance elsewhere, get oral health support. That is what we are talking about in this bill.
We are also talking about making sure that low-income individuals whose incomes are less than $20,000, and low-income couples and families whose incomes are less than $35,000, get a one-time housing benefit of $500. That is what we are talking about in Bill C-31.
When I listened to members in the House today, I went through a range of emotions, from anger to dismay to sadness. I heard the Conservatives say over and over again that children who need dental care support and who do not have dental care support should not get it. The Conservatives are opposed to this bill, and they used all kinds of rationales, illogical and strange as they may be. They even came right out and said that dental health should not be a priority because there is no crisis. This comes from the people who actually have dental coverage for themselves and their families.
Across the country, 500,000 children do not have access to dental care. Just so Conservative members know, here are the real facts of what is going on. Oral health is actually critical to our overall health. This goes beyond the risk of pain, infection and tooth decay. Particularly in young children, it could impact eating, sleep and growth. It could have long-lasting impacts into adulthood. In fact, oral health is linked to diabetes and respiratory illnesses. The most common surgery preformed on preschool children at most pediatric hospitals in Canada is treatment for dental decay.
The Conservatives may not care about people and the pain they may have to suffer through because they do not have access to dental services, but let me say this: They care about money. They talk about money all the time, not that they would ever stop to talk about ultrarich CEOs, who benefit from excessive bonuses and pandemic profitability. The Conservatives are not worried about those companies. They are not worried about the oil and gas industry, which last year alone made $147 billion. We will never hear them say that those companies should pay their share so those 500,000 children and families can actually get dental care. We will never hear that.
All they talk about is how we cannot afford it and about where the money will come from. The money to support people in Canada can come from the very people who have extra and excessive profits. That is what the New Democrats are here to fight for. Members can bet their bottom dollars that this is what I am here to fight for.
Let us talk about money for a minute. I do not know if any Conservative members know this, but 1% of people end up in the hospital because they do not have dental services. They end up in emergency. Just in British Columbia alone, the cost of that 1% is $155 million. That is just for one province. If we multiply that across the entire country, all the provinces and territories, it makes up all the money required to do this work and then some.
Imagine the pain and suffering that people have to go through. The Conservatives talk about dollars and cents, but they do not really think about them. When they speak, they say that dental care is not a crisis. My goodness. Really? Do we really want everybody to end up in the hospital, and then we can say let us do something about it?
The worst thing is they try to pit communities against communities. I heard them saying all day today that somehow, because there are insufficient funds to address mental health, we should not address dental health. What sort of twisted, illogical thinking is that? The New Democrats on this side of the House absolutely believe that there should be investments in mental health. In fact, we believe that head-to-toe care should be in place. We want to fight for pharmacare as well. We will go to the wall to fight for these things.
I cannot believe what I am hearing today from the Conservatives, including from their own leader, who has said in different places that dental care is not a priority. I have even heard Conservative members say that no constituents in their ridings need dental care. My goodness. I challenge them to validate that by way of proof that not one of their constituents needs dental care.
I want to turn for a minute to the housing issue, as I am also hearing twisted logic on housing.
Let us be clear. Earlier today I put on the record the distribution of how many people qualified for the housing benefit, province by province. It was to the tune of 1,785,600 people. They would qualify for this $500 one-time benefit. In Quebec, 568,800 would qualify for this benefit. It is the second-highest province by number of people who would qualify, so it is simply not true to say that Quebeckers would not get this benefit. They would.
I have to say that I admire Quebec from this perspective. When the federal Liberals cancelled the national affordable housing program in 1993, Quebec and British Columbia were the only two provinces that continued social housing and continued to build affordable housing and co-op housing, doing so by themselves. British Columbia did that. We also subsidize people who have that need. Now with an NDP government back in office there, it is investing significant amounts of money into housing.
Just because some people have safe, secure, affordable housing and rent that is geared to income does not mean we should leave everyone else behind. It does not mean we do not need to fight for them to get supports as well. I will go to my grave fighting for people to get that. As my mother has taught me, we need to lift each other up. As indigenous elders have taught me, we need one heart, one mind. That is what we have to do. People have been left behind, and just because I have made it does not mean we have made it. It means we have to work harder to bring everybody forward.
Once upon a time I lived in poverty. Once upon a time my parents made less than minimum wage to support us. Just because we are no longer living in poverty does not mean that I forget my history and background and all the people who were left behind. That is what this bill is all about. That is why the New Democrats are here, 24 of us, to force the government to take more action to support the people in this country.
We all deserve it. We want to be proud of who we are as Canadians. I ran for office to do a job, and that job is to fight for everyone so they are not left behind. Until that is done, the New Democrats will never rest. No matter what the Conservatives want to call us, or anyone else, it does not matter. At the end of the day, it is not about me; it is about the people. That is why we are here in this House.
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Mr. Speaker, my understanding is that the Conservatives are loath to support this bill because they feel that all government spending is inflationary, even though economists have said that the amount of government spending in this bill would not cause inflationary pressure.
Does the member believe that providing dental care to children 12 and under would cause the price of dental care to go up?
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Mr. Speaker, it is, of course, absurd to say that supporting Canadians who need dental services and who cannot access them because they cannot afford them would cause dental services to increase in cost. It is absurd to even say that.
I think the reason the Conservatives are opposed to the bill is that their wealthy friends in the oil and gas sector already have dental services. The Conservatives are loath to support people who do not have it and hate to contribute to them so they too can have the health care services we all deserve.
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Mr. Speaker, I heard my colleague's speech just now in the House and heard her speak earlier today. I think it was much the same speech, but we are at third reading now so I appreciate that we had to hear the speech twice.
I heard the member paraphrase what my colleagues and I, as I spoke to the bill today too, had to say about the bill, and it was a stretched paraphrase of what we put on the page about why we are opposed to the bill.
I am going to ask her one question. She talked about how everybody is screaming for this need, but there are 10 premiers across Canada, including her New Democratic premier in British Columbia, and none of them have asked the government for any support on dental care. There is a reason for that: It is in provincial jurisdiction and is meant to stay in provincial jurisdiction. However, the government, to appease the member's party, is putting something nice in the window so that its members can say, “That's why the NPD supports us.” It is, as I said earlier, a trinket.
Would the member ask her premier to please ask for this from the federal government before she stands up and says that it is something everybody is demanding?
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Mr. Speaker, it is not paraphrasing. The member for Cumberland—Colchester actually said on Monday at committee, “I think we've established very clearly that there's no dental dental crisis here”, as though the 500,000 children who do not have access to dental care are not faced with a crisis when they have dental pain and dental decay, miss school and end up in surgery, which costs more money that they cannot afford.
On the question of dental care and of health care overall, I have to say that it is a shared jurisdictional issue. That is what it is. The federal government has a responsibility for it, as do the provinces. We do not get to walk away and say that it is not about us, although that is what the Conservatives want to do. They want to close their eyes as though somehow dental services have nothing to do with the federal government. It is simply not true.
My constituents have said to me that they desperately need this service. They need it for their children, and seniors need it as well, as seniors have told me. I have met seniors who could not afford dental services and who have to blend their food into a drink because they do not have teeth to eat it. The member can tell my constituents that they do not need this plan.
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