44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 27, 2023 10:00AM
- Apr/27/23 1:26:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member spoke about cats. When I think about my cat, my cat has this habit of jumping out of nowhere and grabbing me, and it is really annoying. It is kind of like another cat I know in this place, a cat who has taken an all-expenses-paid trip to the Aga Khan island, charged six thousands dollars' worth of hotel rooms, went on a Jamaican vacation with a donor to his family foundation, turfed the first indigenous justice minister and has ethical breach after spending breach after problem. He is the biggest cat here. He is the fat cat, the fattest cat of them all.
Why is my colleague opposite, if he is a proponent to support mice, continuing to prop up this cat's government?
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- Apr/27/23 3:07:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, “They will definitely be allowed to enter Canada with this letter” is what a senator's office told people when distributing hundreds of unauthorized travel documents, yet the then minister of defence said he did not know this was happening because he was not reading his emails. These actions put lives in danger and vaporized any illusion of equity in Canada's grossly inadequate evacuation of Afghanistan, and none of the people involved in this scandal have faced any consequences.
Is the government comfortable sending a message that the system is so broken that the only way to help people during a crisis is for Canadian politicians to issue fake travel documents?
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- Apr/27/23 8:39:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is always a deep honour to rise and speak in this place.
There is something uniting Canadians right now, and it is not a good thing. It is this emotion, this sense, this pulse that is kind of humming through Canadians. The beat goes like this: spend more, get less; spend more, get less. It is at the heart of family disagreements. It is at the heart of people feeling hopelessness. It is spend more, get less; spend more, get less.
I have to tell members that when I read through the bill we are debating tonight, it reads, “spend more, get less; spend more, get less”. I know so many families in my riding that feel this day in and day out. They are living what is in this bill. They are living that increased thump of anxiety with their expenses climbing, as they are spending more and getting less day in and day out. It is this black feeling of despair. They are looking to us in this place to end the cycle, and it has to start here with this bill.
This bill spends more and gets less, and we have to stop it. I know there are so many people of all political stripes in this place who care deeply about the issues that affect Canadians, but we also have to look at the track record. If anybody came to us and said, “I want a bunch of money, and I am going to spend more, but you are going to get less,” we would say, “No, you cannot do that. You need a better plan. You cannot spend more and get less.” However, that is what the government has done for so many years. We have given it so many chances, but it has spent more and we have gotten less.
On housing, the government has spent so much money, and we have gotten so much less. Canadians are spending double on rent and double on their mortgage, and there is no big increase in affordable housing stock. We cannot afford to keep spending more and getting less housing when housing is at the core of so many of the social crises facing our country. Without affordable housing, people fall into crime, they fall into addiction and they fall into that thump of anxiety: Where am I going to live? How am I going to pay the bills? It is spend more, get less.
On firearms violence, we are spending a lot more. We are buying back a bunch of firearms. I do not see violence going down. I see gang violence going up. We are spending more; we are getting less.
We are spending a lot more money on the media and not getting more journalists investigating the things we need to see in this place. We are getting fewer journalists, less freedom and less transparency. On so many things, in every area, it is spend more, get less; spend more, get less.
Then what happens? We get more inflation. Our debt goes up and we have to pay the cost on that debt. Then what happens to Canadians as we in this place keep trusting managers who have failed to get more while spending less? When we spend more and get less here with managers who have not figured this out, we get fewer government services, fewer new Canadians' applications being processed, less service on the phone with the CRA, fewer passports and the biggest government strike in two generations. We are spending more and getting less.
Then what happens? What Canadians see, because of that inflationary pressure and because of that debt, is higher taxes and more anxiety when people are trying to figure out if they will be able to pay to fill up their car. We all care about climate change. We all, in this country, want to do our part. However, if we keep spending more on things that are not lowering our greenhouse gas emissions and are not even measuring them, we are spending more and getting less climate action.
I do not have an LRT in my riding. There are 50,000 people in my riding who would love to take the train and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, but they are spending more and getting less, over and over. For so many things, like car payments, we are spending more and getting less. On education, young Canadians are spending more and getting less. We are spending more on debt and getting less.
On labour, I went out for dinner last week to a pub in my riding, and while I was waiting for a tow truck, the server, the only one in the entire restaurant, said she issued 40 T4s last year because she could not get labour. She is spending more, getting less; spending more, getting less. We have to stop it.
I know there are partisan differences in this place. I know there are. I know we all want to solve problems differently in different ways. I know in our hearts that we understand our role, and there are times when the government needs to step in and deliver services. However, we cannot keep spending more and getting less, because we are mortgaging Canadians' futures when Canadians have to spend more and get less today.
Let us think about a young Canadian doing that. How are they going to care for their parents 20 years from now, who have never been able to save for their retirement? I am having that conversation with my kids right now. I am having a conversation with my parents. When we are spending more and getting less, we are spending more and getting less not just now but for the future. That is what we are doing in this country, in this place. We have not stopped and said the management here is not working.
The other thing that concerns me is that the government is doing a lot of things to try to distract from the fact that it has not gotten its team together to crack down on spending more and getting less. It is distracting Canadians.
I was reading some of the coverage on the labour strike happening right now. A couple of the ministers walked out and told Canadians not to expect to get their passports because of the labour strike. The buck stops with them. They spent more and are getting less labour. They spent more and we are getting fewer services. However, they pointed the fault not at themselves but at their employees, who are also spending more and getting less. That is why they are striking.
We need to be standing up for every worker in Canada in the private sector and public sector, every Canadian. When we keep spending more and getting less, we are not doing our jobs here. We are not holding the government to account and saying that we can do better. We cannot let it keep dividing us with these sorts of tactics. They are not productive. Again, everybody in this place has a responsibility to do that.
There are some people who are spending less and getting more, and that is a big problem when everyone else is spending more and getting less. That is why it is so important for us to hold the Prime Minister to account when he has big ethics breaches. He has had some pretty big ones that show a big lack of judgment. When everyone else is spending more and getting less, he should not be spending more of our tax dollars and getting more for himself personally. I have a big problem with that, and so do many other people in my community, because it says that the government is not serious, from the top down, on fixing the structural problems causing us to spend more and get less.
We can feel the anxiety from Canadians. For that reason, I implore my colleagues here not to support this bill. We need to make the government go back to the drawing board. The NDP cannot allow the government, a failed management team, to keep spending more and getting less.
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- Apr/27/23 8:50:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this government has spent a lot on climate. Our greenhouse gas emissions are going up. We do not have substitute goods for high-carbon products and practices. We are not meeting our climate targets. They are not even measuring results of the program.
On housing, we do not have affordable housing stock.
On health care, people are waiting in emergency rooms.
Everybody feels that tune, and they have got to stop trying to deceive Canadians.
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- Apr/27/23 8:51:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have questions about Canada's grocery oligopoly. I do. However, the government has racked up so much debt. That money has caused an inflationary crisis, including food increases.
With regard to energy, of course we need to address climate change. While we do that, why are we lining the pockets of autocratic countries? Why are we not investing in our own energy security?
It is just that mindset that deflects away from the decisions that those parties have made in a supply and confidence agreement and how that affects real Canadians. It is just pinning it on striking labour workers, somebody's vaccination status, what their gender is, or corporate or whatever.
The buck stops with them. They are in a coalition agreement, and they have a plan that spends more and gets less. It has got to stop.
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- Apr/27/23 8:53:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, oh, boy, I agree.
They have got to get back to the table. The government also has to stop trying to trial balloon things, saying that this strike is the union's fault, because what that does, and what it is trying to do, is pit public sector workers against private sector workers and against everyone.
We have to unite as a country. There are a lot of people who do not want us to be united, and the government cannot be doing that. Yes, it has to fix this mess that it created. It has got to have a little more compassion.
To my colleague, and I know that he and I have had long chats before, but I would just ask him this: Why is he propping up this government? It is not the jam of the NDP. It is not the jam of the NDP 20 years ago—
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- Apr/27/23 8:54:55 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that was a bit of a hot mike for my colleague.
We have got to be compassionate for Canadians and feel what they feel. We have got to stop spending more and giving them less.
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