44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 18, 2023 10:00AM
- Apr/18/23 11:19:25 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a huge honour and privilege to be here on behalf of the residents of Courtenay—Alberni and to bring forward their concerns and thoughts around the budget. Some things in the budget are important to help relieve the pressure on Canadians and the people in my riding, in particular.
There is the largest expansion of health care in our country in over 50 years with the expansion of dental care. There is the importance of continuing the $10-a-day affordable, accessible and quality child care, which will ensure that every child has the best start in life. It is certainly very important to the small business community, because it helps with the labour market challenges that many people face.
The GST rebate will help support people right now, as we see inflation skyrocket, especially at the grocery store. There is the promise of a reduction in merchant fees, and I look forward to more details on that issue. I have worked really hard on this for the last seven years, as well as my NDP colleagues. I hope we see that come to fruition, because it has been a long journey.
Also, there are investments in clean energy and a clean job centre, something my colleague from Timmins—James Bay has worked tirelessly around.
The budget would remove the interest on student loans and increase grants of up to 40% for students. These are things New Democrats have prioritized, and we were able to secure them for Canadians in this budget.
An area where we were able to get some success was getting $4 billion for rural and urban indigenous housing over seven years, but it is so far from what is needed. We need that per year over the next 10 years just to make any headway.
Obviously, many things are missing. I will not get into the long details around those. However, one thing I will say is that the Liberals really missed out on an opportunity to go after an excess profit tax on the oil and gas sector, on increasing the tax they put on the financial sector, and on grocery stores and big chains that have had excess profits. This is where there is not a lot of difference between the Liberals and the Conservatives. They continue this pathway of corporate welfare. We have seen Conservatives in Britain step forward with an excess profit tax on oil and gas, but we cannot get the Liberals to do that here.
I hear colleagues say that they cannot do everything and that there are too many bells and whistles. However, on a school food program, sending one in five kids to school hungry is not acceptable in a country where we have excess profits and record profits in an oil and gas sector. That is unacceptable. This could have been dealt with in the budget.
However, I am going to focus on two things that are absolutely critical, that are missing in the budget and that are impacting every colleague in my House, their constituents and all Canadians. Those are affordable housing and mental health.
I am going to tell a quick story about where I grew up.
I grew up in a co-op housing complex in Victoria. My dad was a transmission mechanic. My mom worked for the federal government as a clerk. They were lower middle class, but they were higher income earners in the co-op, where 30% of one's income went to rent. Rent was geared to income, but there were many people in the co-op: single parents, seniors, people living with disabilities and other families. One thing we all had in common was that we had safe, secure and affordable housing.
I cannot describe what that did for everybody, including for their mental health, but it gave everybody a fighting chance.
I can go back to that co-op in Victoria, British Columbia, and see the other kids with whom I grew up. I also see their children and grandchildren. I know the importance of investments in non-market social housing.
Back in the seventies and eighties, and in a minority government, the federal NDP under David Lewis was able to secure co-op housing, and it ranged from 18,000 to 25,000 units a year. That went on for two decades, and it made a significant impact on the distribution of housing in Canada. In fact, about 10% of our housing in the early nineties was non-market housing.
I want to point out that Europe has around 30% non-market housing. People there do not see the homelessness. Nor do they see people living the way we do. They understand housing is a human right and it is not a commodity. They allow the free market and the non-market to coexist so they can have some balance in their economy and in their country.
We do not do that. In fact, we have less than 4% non-market housing. One just has to go outside to see what it looks like in any community in the country.
I want to remind the House, Madam Speaker, that I will be splitting my time with the member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith. I am really grateful for her work.
We live side by side. She has seen this crisis in affordable housing in her riding just like everybody else, but it has been exacerbated by many people moving to Vancouver Island. We are seeing an increase of our population and the pressure is forcing people out on the streets. We are hearing so many stories about that, but there are many solutions.
I was just at the Canadian Mental Health Association, which had its advocacy week. I actually frequent it very often on many different occasions. Katrina Kiefer, the president-CEO of the local CMHA branch in Port Alberni, took me on a tour of some of its non-market housing units. It has low-to-medium barrier housing. The changes in the lives of the people who were in their housing was transformational. It gave them all a fighting chance.
Many had come out of really difficult circumstances. Some were there for reprieve from situations at home or fleeing abuse. Some were in recovery from substance abuse issues. Ensuring that they had housing gave them the ability to connect with the important supports they needed, the mental health supports, the physicians and the support from the health sector as they were on their journey.
We know this works. What does not work is the free market. It will not solve an affordable housing crisis. I cannot find anywhere in the world where an affordable housing crisis has been fixed by the free market. It will not happen. In this budget, the Liberals completely miss the mark, as the Conservatives did before them. They keep pushing this problem down the road.
I very much support immigration. I know there are goals to expand immigration to 500,000 people a year for the next three years. I support that wholeheartedly, but we need to ensure there is housing for them to come here and find a place to live. We need to ensure that they can get to work, that we improve our transportation services and that we ensure they can get access to a doctor, but there is no cohesive plan.
The rapid housing initiative that the Liberals have rolled out is so small in scale. The 6,500 units they put on the table, when it comes to co-op housing, does not even make a dent in the lost 500,000 units that they did not build, Conservative and Liberal governments alike, over the last 30 years.
There is the continued corporatization of housing in our country. They are allowing these REITs to get a tax benefit that normal Canadians do not get and they are increasing their share of the overall ownership of housing. The Liberals need to put a stop to this. We cannot commodify everything in our country.
Moms Stop the Harm hosted an event for the thousands of people who had died from the toxic drug crisis in Parksville, and I was able to join them. I really appreciated Jane McCormick, the brave mother of Jeffrey, who lost her loved one, for her courage in organizing that event and all the moms who showed up, and the fathers and family members who bolstered the courage.
I also met some young folks from Risebridge. They are trying to address the homeless issue on the ground level. What they are seeing is that the federal government downloads to provinces, the provinces download to local governments and some local governments do not have the aptitude or they do not feel it is their priority to address the homelessness issue. They are left with not enough resources.
We have people who are on the front line. Some of them are even traumatized by their own loss and they are driven by trying to ensure another family member does not get lost because of this.
I am calling on the federal government to scale up its investments in housing, in non-market housing specifically. This is critical to the mental health of all Canadians. Everyone deserves a place to live in our country, a safe and secure place.
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- Apr/18/23 1:30:57 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, there is so much to unpack there, but let us just talk about a couple of issues.
First of all, at the beginning of his speech the member talked about the grocery rebate being a gimmicky thing the government has come up with. Let us not lose sight of the fact that it is a top-up to the existing GST rebates that are given to Canadians. We know what the Conservatives did last time we introduced that. First they said they would not vote for it. Then maybe there was some pressure, but they backpedalled a bit and said that they would vote for it.
If the member wants to call it a gimmick, that is fine. If Conservatives want to say that we are just trying to package up the GST rebate as a gimmick, that is fine. However, let us not forget, that at the end of the day, what they would be voting against would be giving more of that GST rebate to Canadians.
Could the member explain to the House why he was in favour of it recently, when the Conservatives did their flip-flop, but now, he suddenly does not want to see it? How is the GST rebate this time not as beneficial to Canadians as it was the last time?
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- Apr/18/23 3:26:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today to participate in the debate on the budget of 2023, as presented by our government, and what it means for my constituents and people right across Canada. I propose to canvas five areas: affordability, health care, climate action, housing, and combatting hate and discrimination.
On the first issue of affordability, what I hear at the doors is very similar to what representatives in this chamber from around the country hear at the doors in their own constituencies. The cost of living has gone up, and there is a direct link to inflation.
Inflation is coming down, thankfully. We heard news just this morning of the ninth consecutive month which inflation has been reduced. It now sits at 4.3% for the month of March. However, the reduction in inflation rates has not been occurring as fast as it needs to, hence our government's proposal in the budget, which we will be voting on shortly, for additional relief targeted at persons with low and modest incomes in this country through what is being called the grocery rebate. This would apply to approximately 11 million Canadians of low and modest income who are already eligible to receive the GST credit. It is a sum of $234 for a single person and as much as $467 for a couple with two children. This would be significant in assisting people with the affordability squeeze they are experiencing right now.
However, the initiatives outlined in the budget do not stop there. There are also initiatives to address students and their needs in times of rising tuition costs and rising expenses while they are pursuing post-secondary education. This budget allocates a 40% increase in Canada student grants, which means full-time students will be able to receive up to $4,200 more per year to pay for their studies, as well as an increase in the limit on the interest-free portion of a Canada student loan.
The second point I hear a lot from my constituents is about health care and the pressures of not having a family doctor. There are also the pressures in our communities of wait-lists for surgeries and wait-lists at hospitals. This budget is a concrete response to those particular concerns. There is voluminous funding in this budget for health care, to the tune of $195 billion over the course of 10 years. That includes $46 billion of new funding, which would help reduce backlogs, expand access to general practitioners and modernize the health system.
For example, the budget allocates $2 billion just to address urgent pressures in ERs, and $1.7 billion is to address personal support workers' wages. By addressing personal support workers, we would help alleviate the stress on hospitals and medical clinics. We are also working hard to ensure, through this budget, that we are helping to empower health professionals to work in more remote areas. There is nearly $46 million allocated in this budget for loan forgiveness for those medical students or nursing students who would like to practise in rural and remote areas and to incentivize them to do exactly that.
The constituents of mine in Parkdale—High Park speak to me repeatedly not just about health care but specifically about mental health. I have heard those concerns and continually advocate for them in this chamber, in committee and within the government caucus. This budget is a firm response to those particular concerns, with $7.8 billion of the funding envelope for health care dedicated to home care, mental health and long-term care. There is a 988 suicide prevention line committed to in this budget, which would be operational by November of this year. There are aspects of this budget that also address the opioid crisis, which has had fatal consequences in my riding, much like it has in every other riding of this nation.
Through this budget, we are addressing issues such as addiction. We are increasing funding to the substance use and addictions program, or SUAP. That program, in particular, supports community-led, not-for-profit organizations in responding to drug and substance use issues across Canada. There is $144 million dedicated to the SUAP, which would result in improved access, harm reduction, treatment services and things such as safer supply.
In my riding of Parkdale—High Park, this would have a specific local impact. The budget allocates $1.27 million to the Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre in my riding for its safer opioids supply program. That is new funding that would allow the Parkdale centre to continue its very successful work in helping people who are experiencing severe opioid use disorder gain access to pharmaceutical grade medications and offering a wide range of fully wraparound services, such as social programming, case management, mental health supports and trauma counselling.
The approach of the Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre is focused on harm reduction, and that is an approach we wholeheartedly support as a Liberal government. Stigmatizing and even criminalizing those suffering from addictions does not work. Let me repeat that. There is no point in criminalizing and stigmatizing those who are suffering from mental health or substance use problems and addictions. Addictions are a health problem, not a criminal justice problem. Budget 2023 reflects that direct orientation and commits important funding to mental health care and addictions to help people heal.
The envelope of care with respect to health care includes dental benefits. As members know, we launched the Canada dental benefit for children under 12 last year. Up to now, 240,000 young persons under the age of 12 who were previously uninsured are now receiving dental care that they did not previously receive. That is a monumental change in the landscape for low-income families in this country.
We are taking an already successful pilot and expanding it through the Canadian dental care plan, which is entrenched in this budget. That is what we will be voting on when we vote on budget 2023. It is about whether we should be allocating $13 billion over the coming years to help up to nine million low-income families that are uninsured access dental care as part of their health care. From my perspective, that is something that all of us in the chamber should be supporting.
Third, my constituents speak to me about climate change. They support initiatives we have taken, like the price on pollution and the corresponding climate action rebate, but they ask for more. What this budget does is it responds to the clean economy of the future in a way that keeps pace with what we are seeing with the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States.
Through this budget, we are raising the green economy, green jobs and unionized workers across a number of sectors. One sector I want to highlight is the sector of nuclear energy, which is pivotal to the closure of coal-fired plants in Ontario, the dramatic reduction in pollution in Ontario and the drop in GHG emissions. Today, looking at the lights illuminating this chamber and the lights throughout the province of Ontario, on any given day, up to 60% of the electricity that keeps the lights on in Ontario is based upon energy that is sourced from nuclear energy on Ontario's electrical grid.
The demands on that grid are only growing because of the much-needed electrification of the transport sector in this province and around the country. What this budget would do is it would aggressively support the electrification of that grid by supporting investments in clean electrical generation, through things such non-emitting sources like wind, solar, hydro and nuclear energy. That is undoubtedly a step in the right direction.
My constituents talk to me about housing. This budget reflects the need of people who are wanting to purchase their first home and giving them access to do so by launching the tax-free first-home savings account as of April 1, earlier this month.
I just want to finish with the fight against discrimination and working to combat hate. In the wake of the Quebec mosque shooting in 2017, I founded the inclusion network in my riding. The inclusion network tries to build dialogue and understanding amongst communities so that we can promote more dialogue, not just tolerance but actually celebration of diversity.
I have conducted many events in my riding over the past several years with respect to the inclusion network. Two weeks ago, we had an interfaith walk, going from a Tibetan temple to an Orthodox church and then ending at the Jami Mosque, the Friday mosque in my riding. That is meant to promote understanding. Sadly, literally 36 hours after my event, in another part of the GTA, there was an attack on a mosque where someone used a car to try to run down a worshipper. This underscores the work that still needs to be done in this country.
What budget 2023 would do, among many other things, would be to support places of worship and their protection by dedicating $50 million more to the security infrastructure fund, which helps protect places of worship. That is something that all of us need to get behind in this day and age, when we are fighting such penetrating issues as combatting hate.
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