44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 18, 2023 10:00AM
- Apr/18/23 10:19:50 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise in this place, the House Commons, and particularly to speak to budget 2023 today.
Before I start talking about the budget, I would like to first bring some good news to the House. Some of our very good friends, Carl Brown and Veronica Dubak recently had a little baby boy, Sterling Vesely Dubak Brown, on March 17. I look forward to spending lots of time with him. He is happy and healthy, and we could not be happier for them and their family. I note the applause for Hansard.
On a more sombre note, this is the first time I have been able to rise in the House since the tragedy that hit Edmonton more recently, where we have now lost three frontline police officials. First it was Constable Travis Jordan and Constable Brett Ryan, and more recently Constable Harvinder Dhami. I cannot imagine the amount of grief their families are feeling right now, and I wanted to make sure to send my condolences out to them. It certainly has gripped our town of Edmonton very strongly as we come to terms with the loss of three lives in our community, of those who put their lives in the way of fire every single day.
I do want to get to the budget. First of all, I want to address three or four items that I found to be of particular interest to me, mental health being the key one. In the lead-up to the budget, we heard a lot of talk about mental health and the supports that may or may not be in the budget. Unfortunately, it was the latter. A number of mental health committees I have spoken to over the last number of weeks talked about how disappointing this budget has been to them. It is unfortunate. We are going through an incredible mental health crisis right now. It is something I know every member of this House ends up supporting. However, it did not seem to make it to that final step and get into the budget.
These are not just my thoughts. I will give a quick rundown of what the Canadian Mental Health Association stated. The headline of its press release the day of the budget says it all: “Budget 2023 out of touch with mental health crisis”. The press release goes on to say:
The Canadian Mental Health Association...is profoundly concerned that Budget 2023 did not include the promised Canada Mental Health Transfer.
Failing to establish the Transfer is an abdication of responsibility on a long-awaited policy and mandate priority.... The promise of federal funding starting in 2021 with an initial investment of $4.5 billion over 5 years never materialized.
The press release then quotes the CEO: “The budget is out of touch with the reality of Canadians’ well-being and their ability to afford mental health services. I believe that the government has missed the mark, and that there will be deep human and economic costs to pay.”
Mental health is something I know a number of these organizations have spent a lot of time coordinating, and they have been reaching out to the government about trying to get that support.
This is an opportunity to highlight some of these serious mental health aspects. There is an awareness event that I do each year with members of this House. With the Liberal member for Richmond Hill and the NDP member for Courtenay—Alberni, we do an event called Father's Day on the Hill every year. It raises awareness of men's mental health, because 75% of suicides in this country are of men. We have even seen some more statistics come out that an average of 50 men are dying by suicide per week and that 81% of the drug overdose deaths are also of men.
I am always pleased to raise awareness of this event. We are now in our seventh year of doing this, but the numbers continue to climb and it is something that I know most members of the House are concerned about. To drive this home, in terms of just how important the support for mental health is, not seeing that tied into the budget has been disappointing to see.
Before I move on to the next topic, on men's mental health, we have even seen, this year, the Bloc Québécois join us in putting together this event. We started a foundation through it last year, which is going to promote research and programs throughout the year. Ultimately, what I would love to see in this budget, and going forward in future budgets, is not just support for mental health as a broad budget number and a lump sum of money, but for a lot of that to be dedicated to the people and the issues that need it most, whether it be the overdose deaths or the mental health of men struggling with suicide. Those sorts of supports are what Canadians are asking for and what Canadians need right now.
I want to move on to the other topic that jumped out at me in the budget, the supply chains. It is something that I take on in this caucus, as our shadow minister of supply chains. There was a lot of reaching out and advocating for supply chain issues in the lead-up to this budget. However, unfortunately, we saw even more movement in the opposite direction.
I will just read a quick quote from the Railway Association of Canada, which was not pleased with what happened in this budget: “The Railway Association of Canada...calls the federal government’s move to resurrect the failed policy of extended regulated interswitching misguided and harmful to Canada’s supply chains.” Its CEO goes on to state, “The measures announced today will not improve the efficiency, capacity or reliability of Canada’s supply chains. They will do the exact opposite, as we saw under extended regulated interswitching that was in place from 2014 to 2016.”
The supply chain issue is something that I know has gripped many Canadians, particularly in my community. Since the pandemic, I have been hearing a lot about what supply chains have meant to this country, and I think that more and more people are paying attention to the supply chains now too. In downtown Vancouver, if people see a barge out on English Bay, they might be wondering if maybe that is their Amazon package delivery or the IKEA bench they were hoping to purchase over the weekend. I think that more Canadians are looking at what governments are doing when it comes to supply chains.
It touches each ministry over there, yet there is not a lot of coordination between the ministries. I think this is partly why it was astute of our leader to put that focus on supply chains. If we can get a coordinated approach where we can bring forward those solutions, whether it is reducing red tape or providing efficiencies, I think we will see a lot more success at the federal, provincial and municipal levels when it comes to supply chain management.
There is one last topic I want to briefly touch on. I sit on the parliamentary aerospace caucus, and I co-chair that with a member of each party in the House. I have been on it for five or six years now. What we do is raise awareness for the aerospace industry and the aerospace sector. They were also disappointed in this particular budget.
For example, immediately following the budget, they said, “This budget was a missed opportunity for the federal government to support the development of a national aerospace strategy, increase resourcing in Transport Canada's certification capabilities and exclude aircraft from the Select Luxury Items Tax Act to mitigate the significant negative impacts we are currently seeing on Canadian manufacturers and workers.”
The reason why that is important is that the aerospace sector has been advocating for a national aerospace strategy since I got here, since 2015. It is too bad to see that it keeps getting pushed down the aisle.
These are just three items that I got to talk about, but I do not think I have seen, in my time here, a budget that has been criticized by so many different associations and organizations. I think that should be a wake-up call for the government on the other side to think about when it is looking at future budgets or future legislation in this place.
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- Apr/18/23 10:48:05 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think we need to support our law enforcement officials, including the RCMP. I would add that, as we have seen with the Mass Casualty Commission's report on the Nova Scotia shootings, we need to improve police and RCMP training in this country. I would also add that the RCMP Depot in Regina is the best place to do that. The proposal in the Mass Casualty Commission's report to shut down the depot in Regina is misguided, and we should be proud of our RCMP officers.
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- Apr/18/23 3:06:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the FBI arrested two suspected Chinese agents yesterday morning for allegedly operating a police station in New York City.
In Quebec, the RCMP recently informed the public that Chinese authorities were running covert police stations in the Montreal area.
While the United States proactively dismantles Beijing-operated police stations, Canada sits idly by doing nothing. What is the government waiting for?
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- Apr/18/23 3:07:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the government takes foreign interference very seriously. The RCMP handled the situation by taking concrete action and shutting down the alleged Chinese-run foreign police station.
We will keep investing and allocating resources in the field to respond as needed to protect our institutions, our communities and Canadians.
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- Apr/18/23 3:08:09 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the FBI arrested two individuals connected to the PRC's foreign interference threat activities. The FBI said that one of the individuals was connected to the illegal police stations that the PRC established in Canada.
Why does it take the FBI to take action to protect Canadian sovereignty on Canadian soil?
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- Apr/18/23 3:08:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, with great respect, I think my colleague got the initials wrong. It was the RCMP that shut down the so-called police stations in Canada, and it will continue to take decisive, concrete action against those forms and all forms of foreign interference.
I would encourage the colleagues across the way in the Conservative Party to support the budget, which was advanced by the Minister of Finance, the Deputy Prime Minister, which puts more resources into the RCMP to protect our communities and to protect all Canadians from foreign interference.
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