44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 27, 2023 10:00AM
- Apr/27/23 7:14:49 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I really appreciate the member's focus and concentration on housing. I would have to differ, though. The national housing strategy has given weighted importance to our affordable housing programs and providers. Many of the programs are specifically for municipalities and municipal non-profits, as well as non-profit housing providers. There is the rapid housing initiative, the housing accelerator fund, the national co-investment fund, and the list goes on, in terms of the programs we have provided to assist non-profit housing providers with social housing units.
I really appreciate the member's advocacy on this issue. Does she not see the benefit in many of the programs that her own riding and her community have benefited from as part of that? I think we are at year five or six at this point now. Those investments have been made all over Canada, specifically for non-profit housing providers. Has she not seen those benefits in her own riding and her own community?
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- Apr/27/23 7:15:50 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is probably not a good question to ask me, because no, I have not. Even though there has been investment in my community, we have lost housing at a rate of 15 to one. Affordable housing has come down, and luxury condos have gone up. Up to 20% of those condos are sitting empty, and our homelessness rate is rising, our mental health impacts are rising and our opioid overdoses are rising. We cannot sit in this House saying we are doing A, B and C, when the results are not happening on the ground, and I will say that the National Housing Council just came forward with a report that said the national housing strategy is not working.
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- Apr/27/23 7:16:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, being from B.C., I know there are many issues the member and I share in many areas. I get lots of people asking about health care. I have asked another member of her caucus the following question, and being from B.C., I think it is important to hear her answer. John Horgan, the former premier, was actually the chair of the Council of the Federation. All the premiers had asked the government specifically not to fund new, expensive, untested and, in some cases, duplicated programs, like dental care, and instead to focus on health care and giving provinces what they need. We saw for the longest time the government did not give any of those things.
How does the member square this expansion of a program, when B.C. already has a program for low-income seniors as well as for children under the age of 12? Why has she said that, instead of funding those important programs, now we have bigger government in Ottawa doing duplicative things that do not actually help people in her riding?
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- Apr/27/23 7:17:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am not sure, but the member might have missed when I mentioned that just in the month of March, 700 people reached out to my office for information about the Canada dental program. Dental care is health care, and we need to keep people out of the hospital when they can have dental care to proactively look after their health. In the month of March, 700 people in my riding reached out for additional information, in need of dental care.
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Madam Speaker, currently, when big emitters pay the carbon tax, the money is put aside and is used to finance green projects in the province where the tax was collected. If oil companies do not propose any green projects, they lose that money at the end of the year. This approach encourages them to move quickly.
With Bill C-47, the money would not be lost at the end of the year. Oil companies would keep the money for future projects, which would give them no incentive to hurry to implement green projects that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
What does my colleague think about that?
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- Apr/27/23 7:19:04 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I had an interesting meeting today talking to some colleagues across the country just around natural infrastructure, green infrastructure and the way to build infrastructure better in community, and there are a lot of NGOs doing this work. I have actually talked to the infrastructure minister about bringing the expertise of those NGOs together. I think that always relying on corporations is not necessarily the path to this new green economy.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in this House to speak to Bill C-47, the budget implementation act.
This is also my first opportunity to address a developing situation in my riding, which is the closure of the emergency room of the Minden hospital. This emergency room serves the community. The population changes in the winter and summer months, and we are approaching the busy tourist season in just a few weeks. That is unfortunately when this emergency room is scheduled to close. Colleagues can imagine the impact this has had on the community itself.
As someone who grew up in Bobcaygeon, I unfortunately have been a client of the Minden hospital on more than one occasion and was always impressed with the service they provided. I do understand the impact this is having on the community. It is not necessarily a decision I support. I do not agree with the closure of the emergency room in Minden, especially the unfortunate timing of it.
The board of directors, I am sure, did not make this decision lightly. The administration, I am sure, did not make this decision lightly. I do not think it is something anybody signs up for, to close an emergency room in a small community when, in recent times, during the pandemic specifically, health care is really valued, not only in rural communities but in this country as a whole. This closure could potentially put pressure on other facilities. Of course, the closest hospital for many would be in Haliburton. Facilities in Peterborough and Lindsay are already stretched, not to mention that at the same time we are seeing growth rates that we have not seen before, many attributed to the fact that people are moving after the pandemic to start a life in what was once cottage country, or what I call paradise. I do not blame them. The area around Minden Hills is scheduled to grow at, I believe, the fastest rate in Haliburton County, so this decision is very emotional for a lot of people, and rightly so.
Immediately after this decision was made public, I was contacted by the media. I offered a few suggestions, which I am going to tie into the debate we are having on the budget today. I have also written to the ministers. That was one of the first things I did after hearing about the closure of the emergency room in Minden. The fact is that there are areas the government could be helping with and could have taken action on many years ago to help mitigate this blow.
The administration is telling us that the closure is due to staffing constraints. I think we can all acknowledge in this place that there is a global shortage in health care professionals. I hear stories all across the country oftentimes that there are shortages of nurses, doctors and PSWs. The list goes on. I think this is a very real concern and a very real challenge that the administration and the volunteer board of directors were having in Minden and that, of course, as I said, hospitals and health care facilities are having across the country.
There were many suggestions I offered about the recruitment of doctors and nurses. There are an estimated 19,000 doctors and 34,000 nurses in Canada who cannot work in their trade because they were trained abroad. There are tens of thousands of health care professionals who want to work, who want to help address this health care crisis and who could be helping communities like Minden, but they are held up by bureaucratic gatekeepers because they cannot get an answer on whether they can practise in their specific field, the field they are trained for.
I asked the minister of immigration to adopt our leader's stance on addressing this and to create a blue seal program, sort of like the red seal program where trades are recognized for their skills. We can do this in the health care field. I do not think the government has taken a leadership role in getting the provinces together to agree on a standardized test where health care professionals can travel. Not only that, but those who are coming to Canada and who have been trained abroad should be able to take a standardized test and within a decent amount of time get a yes-or-no answer on whether they can practise in that field.
If the answer is no, they need to know what to do to get up to that standard. If the answer is yes, that obviously speaks for itself and they can then start to practise in that field. This is a tangible way the government could have taken action. The government could have looked into this many years ago, because this is not a surprise.
In Ontario, we had hallway health care before the pandemic. We had issues with long-term care long before. Had the government kept its eye on the ball, we might have been able to address this before the crisis and before decisions like that made in Minden. We could have potentially had these bodies, and that is a lot when we are looking at 19,000 doctors and 34,000 nurses.
The blue seal program is one solution we brought to the table, and I spoke to the media about this. Let us start addressing this and getting our health care professionals who want to work and are trained into their field.
The other issue is housing. Many of the speeches that I have been listening to today in this debate have focused on housing, and rightly so. In fact, just a few weeks before this announcement about Minden was made in Haliburton County, the town of Minden had a summit. It was a volunteer group, Places for People, that arranged a housing summit.
Haliburton County is beautiful. It is paradise, and it is probably one of the best places in this country to live, to be, to work and to play. However, in my speech, I actually mentioned the fact that health care professionals who wanted to come to the area could not find housing. Not only was it hard for the hospital to recruit, but the municipality was also having trouble recruiting executives in its leadership circle. We also heard from many tourism operators who were not able to find bodies. Housing was a real issue. The fact is that we, as a country, are not building the amount of housing we need in order to address what is in front of us today, which is a housing crisis.
According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Canada needs 3.5 million more homes than projected to restore affordability. That is 3.5 million homes just to address the affordability problem that we have.
Many communities say they do not have housing, and that is true. In Haliburton County, it is absolutely true. Housing has been a massive problem. It actually hurt the economy. There was opportunity to grow, but because there was nowhere to house people for businesses that they wanted to start up, to maintain or to expand, it was hard to attract people because they could not find a suitable and affordable house to live in.
That is something the government has failed at. It keeps touting its housing strategy, but the affordability has not gone up. The affordability problem has actually worsened. The average mortgage and rent payment has nearly doubled since the government came into power. When the Prime Minister took office, the average monthly payment on a new house was $1,400. Today it has gone up to over $3,100. In 2015, the average rent in Canada for a one-bedroom apartment was $973. Today it is $1,760. That is for a one-bedroom apartment. The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment here in Canada was $1,172; today, it is $2,153.
In fact, when the Prime Minister took office, someone needed only 39% of the average paycheque to make those monthly payments on that average house. That number has now risen to 62%. By every objective measurement, things are now more expensive and Canadians are taking home less.
The affordability crisis and the housing crisis are two of the biggest problems we have. This is not to mention that when we are talking about building homes and building the economy, we also need to include labour in this conversation. We have a massive labour shortage, especially in the skilled trades, which are the trades we need to build houses.
Something else the government has failed to take into account is the fact that we should be providing more incentives for those who want to get into the skilled trades. I will give the government credit. It did include some incentives for those in the skilled trades in the budget, and I thank it for that. This could have been done long before.
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Order, please. I have the honour to inform the House that a communication has been received as follows:
Rideau Hall
Ottawa
April 27, 2023
Mr. Speaker,
I have the honour to inform you that on behalf and at the request of the Right Honourable Mary May Simon, Governor General of Canada, the Right Honourable Richard Wagner, Deputy to the Governor General, signified royal assent by written declaration to the bills listed in the Schedule to this letter on the 27th day of April, 2023, at 6:26 p.m.
Yours sincerely,
Maia Welbourne
Assistant Secretary to the Governor General
The schedule indicates the bills assented to were S-214, An Act to establish International Mother Language Day—Chapter 5; Bill C-228, An Act to amend the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act and the Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985—Chapter 6; Bill C-233, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Judges Act (violence against an intimate partner)—Chapter 7; and Bill C-11, An Act to amend the Broadcasting Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts—Chapter 8.
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- Apr/27/23 7:32:49 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I support Minden's mayor and their call to keep the emergency room at Minden Hospital. I have spent a lot of time in the member's riding. It is a beautiful riding. I have had many summers in Coboconk.
However, I am trying to rationalize the comments that were made earlier. It is a provincial decision. He knocked on doors, likely for the premier and his local member, who sit at Queen's Park where the rally is occurring. How that health care decision to close the Minden emergency ward has anything to do with us after all the resources that we are investing in health care in this budget is beyond me. The member supported the premier who is making the cuts that the member mentioned earlier. How does the member square that?
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- Apr/27/23 7:33:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am glad my friend across the way could experience summers in Coboconk. It really is a beautiful area.
A few things that the member got completely wrong in that speech include the fact that it was not a provincial decision. It was actually made by the local board of directors. The reason for it was not fiscal, from what we are being told, so he got that wrong. Let us just set the record straight that the decision was made, from what we are being told, because of a staffing issue, with the massive shortage in doctors and nurses right across the country.
I bring it up in this capacity in this chamber because where the government does have responsibility is with foreign-trained doctors and nurses. It can get the provinces to work together and start to develop a standardized test, the blue seal trade program that we are talking about. We can get provinces at the table to agree to a test. It is done in the Red Seal program. It can be done in the blue seal program. We can get them together and get something done, rather than just throwing our hands up.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague and friend for his speech.
On the topic of health, the primary role of the federal government is to properly fund health care. In Bill C‑47, there is $2 billion in unconditional transfers to the provinces. The member for Winnipeg North said that the government would try to remove that money from the bill because it is already in Bill C‑46, which was passed by the House.
First, the government is not doing its job properly. It is forgetting to harmonize its own bills. That is not very professional. Second, we believe we need a lot more in health transfers from the federal government. We want this $2 billion to stay in Bill C‑47.
What does my hon. colleague think about that?
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- Apr/27/23 7:35:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am a fan of provincial governments having the jurisdiction to operate within their authority. Health care is one of the jurisdictions that specifically belongs to the provincial government.
An area that my friend brought up and refreshed my memory on is the fact that the government spent hundreds of billions of dollars during the pandemic, only half of which, the Parliamentary Budget Officer said, was related to the pandemic itself. The other half was couched in the language of COVID. If it was truly a health care crisis, why was that money not given to the provinces to deal with health care specifically? Why were we starting to build all these other pet projects of the Liberal government? We should have been addressing that crisis at the time, which was health care, but this is something the government failed to do.
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- Apr/27/23 7:36:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I get a real kick out of the Conservatives. They figure conspiracy theories are the best thing that has ever happened to them, because they can blame gatekeepers for everything.
Let us talk about the gatekeepers that have resulted in the staffing shortages at Minden. They are Doug Ford and the Ontario Conservatives. Remember Bill 124 and its attack on nurses' wages? It was so bad, it was found to be unconstitutional. At a time when nurses were leaving the profession in droves, Doug Ford picked a fight with them. The fact is that Doug Ford under-spent $1.8 billion in health care in Ontario, and it was dead last out of all the provinces.
I think the member has a lot of gall to use the crisis in Minden to promote a conspiracy that there is some kind of bureaucratic gatekeeper when money that is given to the provinces, in Ontario, is not going to frontline health care or to support the nurses who could be doing the work to keep people safe.
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- Apr/27/23 7:37:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am not sure what planet my friend opposite is on.
The member clearly put his fingers in his ears and did not hear a word I said. The decision was made because of a staffing issue, and the staffing issue is all across Canada. It is a global issue. We are talking about health care and the fact that there are tens of thousands of doctors and nurses who are not practising in the field that they are trained in. This is something that should be addressed, yes, by the provinces, as well as the federal government.
Why are we not creating a blue seal program that allows these people to get into the trades they are trained in?
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Mr. Speaker, as always, it is a great pleasure to stand in this place. Tonight I will be speaking to Bill—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Mr. Alistair MacGregor: Mr. Speaker, I will just allow members to finish their conversations.
As I was saying, it is a great honour to stand in this place to speak on behalf of the residents of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford. Today, of course, we are continuing the debate on Bill C-47, which is the implementation act for the government's recent budget.
I first of all want to acknowledge many of the challenges my constituents and many Canadians from coast to coast to coast are going through. I understand the challenges that are going on with my residents, whose incomes are not keeping pace with the general rate of inflation. I know the pain they are experiencing every time they go to the grocery store, and that is why I, as the agriculture critic for the NDP, along with my caucus colleagues, have been leading the way, not only in getting a unanimous motion passed in the House of Commons to recognize corporate greed in the grocery sector, but also in leading an investigation at the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food to study food price inflation.
I also want to acknowledge that a lot of the anger we see in Canadians when they look at the challenges they are facing has to be juxtaposed with the insane corporate profits we are seeing in so many sectors. The most galling fact of all corporate profits we can see, especially when we compare them to 2019, is in the oil and gas sector. The oil and gas sector, since 2019, has seen a 1,000% increase in its profits. In this place, I continually hear from my Conservative colleagues that Canadians should be jumping up, down and all around about the carbon tax, yet Conservatives make absolutely zero mention of how corporate profits are being raked in off the backs of Canadian families.
During our study on food price inflation, of course a lot of our focus was on grocery profits. We know Loblaws, Empire and Metro and their role. I also had the chance to ask some economists who appeared as witnesses to talk about the role corporate oil and gas profits are playing in driving up food prices, because we know that everything that arrives on grocery store shelves depends on a truck and other modes of transportation.
For a party that likes to single itself out as standing up for working people to completely ignore the elephant in the room is absolutely quite shameful, and I think it is further indication that the oil and gas companies in Canada do not need a lobby group, because they have a political party that is actively working on their behalf and not tackling the massive profits they are making.
We also know interest rates are affecting people's abilities. They are increasing the amount people have to pay on their mortgages, their credit cards and any kind of bank or car loan. These are putting real strains, and I think that with all the economic indicators that are present, our country very much is staring down the barrel of an incoming recession.
Many of these challenges existed when I was re-elected to this place in 2021, and they got worse over the 2022 year. One of the things we have to do as members of Parliament is decide how we are going to use our time and dedicate our efforts to make life better for our constituents, and one of the things that confronted New Democrats after the 2021 election, which was almost a carbon copy of the 2019 results, was how we, as a caucus of 25, could use our percentage of the seats in this place to deliver concrete results.
We can go and criticize the government, and we can keep on stoking the fires of rage that exist. I want to acknowledge that the anger out there is palpable. It is real and it needs to be acknowledged, but the way we respond to the fear, anger and concern of our constituents is not to keep on feeding it and feeding it without any tangible fixes. What we try to do is use our time here to present concrete solutions to the problems people are facing.
I am proud that our caucus of 25 MPs, over the last year and a half, has been able to do just that. We have been able to use our power and our influence in this place to course correct the Liberals on a number of fronts. I want to particularly single out the win that we had in creating Canada's first-ever national dental care program. I understand that the program is not in place. What we have right now are interim payments, but these are in place as we get the program developed.
Last year, it was for children under the age of 12. According to the most recent statistics that we have, the Canada dental benefit has already helped more than 240,000 children, right across the country, receive the oral health care that they need. That program is being expanded this year. It is now going to include children under the age of 18. It is going to include seniors, and it is going to include persons with disabilities.
Again, these are benefits going to people who often find themselves on the margins of our society. They do not have the luxury of finding extra money to go to the dentist. They are the ones who are struggling with the mortgage payments, car payments and putting groceries on the table. For them, just going to a simple check-up is a luxury they cannot afford.
Our philosophy in the NDP has always been that oral care is health care, and it has never made sense to me that one's health care coverage stops at one's tonsils. It is a significant investment because we know that, when one does not get regular check-ups, there can be serious health issues that might be missed. They might be indicators of future cardiovascular disease. They might be indicators that one has diabetes or other very serious health outcomes. If they are not intervened with in an early period, they can result in excessive costs to our health care system.
This is an example of us using our time in this place to really make a significant investment that will make people's lives better. I also want to recognize the fact that we are talking about a budget bill, and it is impossible to cover every last detail in a 10-minute speech, but for the small businesses in my riding, we have managed to get commitments from some of the major credit card companies. Merchant fees for small businesses will be lowered.
I know that for the member for Courtenay—Alberni, my neighbour on Vancouver Island, this has been an issue that he has been raising since the 42nd Parliament, when we were first elected in 2015. It is awesome to see that this is a win that we can bring back to our constituents. It is nice, also, to see that, in recognition of the extra costs many Canadians are facing at the grocery aisle, we now have the GST rebate being doubled.
It is nice to see investments being made in housing. Again, I would have to point out some of the things that we would have done differently because there is a huge deficit in the stock of available, affordable housing in Canada.
I look at my community of Langford. There are no gatekeepers in Langford. We have building projects going on everywhere. In fact, the city skyline in Langford is dotted by construction cranes. Despite all of that private-led investment and the market-driven building that is going on, we still have too many families who cannot afford a place to live. We need to make those serious investments, to make sure that people can have a safe place to put their head at night, to have safe and secure shelter.
That is nowhere more apparent than in Canada's indigenous communities. My riding of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford has a significant indigenous population. I am thinking of Cowichan tribes. Their needs are great when it comes to the housing file. I am proud that we were able to achieve a small win on behalf of indigenous people, but it is obvious that far more is needed.
This is a budget bill where we would have done a lot of things differently. However, with what is in there and what we, as a caucus of 25, were able to achieve and put in there, I am proud to send this off to the finance committee. I will be lending my support, and I am looking forward to going back to my constituents to tell them about the amazing benefits that are going to be offered through the dental care program, which we have been able to achieve.
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- Apr/27/23 7:48:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, when I first elected back in 1988, I had two responsibilities. I was the party whip at the time, and I was the housing critic. Now, I say that because I want members to understand that I have a very strong passion on the issue of housing, ever since 1988.
I can tell the member that, if we take a look at the 1990s, we will find that all political parties, including the NDP, Bloc, Liberals and Conservatives, abandoned saying that the federal government had a role to play when it came to housing.
If we take a look in terms of—
An hon. member: Oh, oh!
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- Apr/27/23 7:49:13 p.m.
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Order. I would rather the member stood up to ask a question. I would love to hear it because I can only hear half of what is going on.
The hon. parliamentary secretary can back up a little bit.
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- Apr/27/23 7:49:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the point is that, during the 1990s, federal parties inside the House, all political parties, did not support the national government playing a strong role in housing. Now, for the first time, we have a Prime Minister and a government that are investing literally hundreds of millions, going into billions, of dollars into a national housing strategy, and we have a multitude of programs.
However, the federal government cannot deal with the housing solution all by itself. Provinces, municipalities and stakeholders all have to come to the table, but let us be clear, the federal government is playing a very strong leadership role. Would the member not agree that the other stakeholders equally have to come to the table if we are going to deal with the housing crisis in Canada?
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- Apr/27/23 7:50:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, of course there are many sectors in our society that have to play a role, but what I do not appreciate about the member's preamble to his question is his revisionist history.
We are still feeling the effects today from the great axe that Paul Martin wielded as finance minister, and to suggest that all parties were behind that is complete revisionism. The Liberals enjoyed a majority government from 1993 to the mid-2000s. They had full control over policy. They need to wear the responsibility for the mess that we are currently in. While the NDP is around, we will make sure that Canadians do not forget about that sorry history on housing.
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- Apr/27/23 7:51:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the speech tonight included the word “profits” many times. I heard the words “massive profits”, and profits were getting bashed around quite bit there. For someone who has been in business for over 25 years and has been involved in businesses that had zero profits, I know that profits are usually a good thing.
I would like to ask my colleague how we differentiate and when we differentiate between good profits and, as he keeps saying, massive and bad profits. Where do we draw the line? How do we decide on that?
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