44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 21, 2023 02:00PM
- Jun/21/23 8:59:03 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, it is an honour, as always, to be in the House of Commons to speak to this opposition day motion. I will be sharing my time with the member for Richmond Centre. What the House will be hearing from for the next 10 minutes is pretty much a direct contrast to what we heard for the last 15 minutes from the member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke.
I am pleased to speak to this motion, because this allows me to reinforce the objective of the 2023 budget that just recently passed. We know that the Conservatives voted against that budget because they saw that the investments we were making were the opposite of the direction they feel this country should be going in. They see it as a waste of money. I have always seen this budget as an investment in people.
I am proud to stand in the House of Commons and speak to this motion, because it allows me to speak about the direction of the Liberal government. There is no question that we have a challenge in Canada. I think we could all agree, on all sides of the House. There is an affordability challenge. Anywhere one goes in the country, many people are struggling. We see it every single day. If one were to go into my community, one would see that people are challenged. We agree on that.
What we disagree on is how to respond to that challenge. When we can take resources and invest in children, families, health care, education, seniors and the people of Ontario, it is the best investment we could make. When we invest in our economy and infrastructure, and when we support the belief that polluting is not good for our environment, and therefore not good for our economy, these are the types of things that help define who I am and what brought me to this House.
I have been elected for 20 years. It was not all in this House; I have only been here for two years. I was elected to the school board, and I was elected to the Ontario legislature. I have seen the two different responses happen over and over again. One could be at the local municipal level and see Conservative ideology jump in, of course at the Ontario legislature and here. This is nothing new to me.
The Conservative game plan is always the same. If they are in opposition, they attack the way in which government is spending. They will criticize and do something to portray that there is a better way going forward, that they could offer a better solution to the challenges that we have.
However, we can just look to the past and remember Harper's time in government. When we went through one of the worst economic challenges, back in 2008 and 2009, we saw how the Conservatives responded, and we paid a huge price for it. On that side of the House, people forget that Stephen Harper ran the largest deficit in the history of this country. I do not know if Conservatives remember that. Maybe they have forgotten.
Stephen Harper ran the largest deficit in the history of Canada, up until COVID. This is 100% true. One just has to check the records. It seems that Conservatives have forgotten this. During that time, when we were going through our worst economic challenge, back in 2008-09, the Conservatives responded by cutting, not investing. I was around. I was at the school board and then the Ontario legislature, and I saw the cuts that the House made. I will give a couple of examples.
They made the largest single cuts in the history of this country for literacy and basic skills. It is hard to imagine. When 42% of our country was struggling with some form of literacy back in 2008-09, the Harper government decided to make the largest cuts ever to literacy and basic skills. Even the statistics by the Conference Board of Canada, a decade ago, said that a 1% increase in literacy and basic skills was like a 2.5% increase in our economy. I do not think there is anyone in the House who could deny the correlations among literacy, education and economic output. No one could deny that. However, the Conservatives made cuts.
Let us talk about immigration. In 2011-12, during that challenging time, the Harper government decided to cut health care services to immigrants. Anyone in Canada knows that part of our economic success in this country has been from bringing newcomers into the country, having them working in the economy and boosting the economy. It is what has made Canada great since its inception. However, during those economically challenging times, the former Harper government decided to do what was unthinkable: cut health care services to immigrants and refugees. That was the response by a Conservative government.
Our approach has always been different. Liberals in this country invest in education. They invest in the economy. They invest in people. I want to remind anyone who is watching that, during COVID, the Conservatives voted against investing in people. Think of their rhetoric today. They do not want to invest in people. They would rather take the approach of cutting taxes and giving money to big corporations to generate more wealth and more economy. It is based on 1978 Reagan economics, the 1980 Reaganomics ideology, which is so old. It does not work. We know it does not work, because we have seen that. We have seen it fail in the United States and we have seen it fail in Canada.
What we decided to do as Liberals is to invest in people. We decided to make sure the young people in our country today have the type of investments necessary so that, when they get older, they can actually contribute to the economy. I brought this up during debate on the fall economic statement. We heard the rhetoric from the other side of the House, rhetoric that said we should not invest in dental care for children. We heard rhetoric around not investing in child care. How about a $500 rebate to help with the affordability issue of housing or different types of incentives that help Canadians, like the grocery rebate? People were debating these, saying they are not good. I will tell members that when people are down, when people are feeling like they are struggling to get by, what they need is investment so they can go ahead and build themselves up to contribute to our great economy.
I want to talk about some of the changes we have seen over the last few years. Since COVID, we have seen an increase of almost 900,000 jobs in this country. Correct me if I am wrong, but something must be working if 900,000 jobs have been created since the pandemic. I will go from saying 900,000 to almost a million jobs. If almost a million jobs have been created in that time period, how can anyone on that side of the House argue that the strategy that has been put in place is not working? With a million folks working in the economy, and taking down interest levels from 8.5% to 4.4%, we are doing the best compared to other jurisdictions around the world. Almost a million jobs and cutting the inflation rate by half suggests that something is working, and our economy, the numbers, say everything.
The Conservatives will twist things; it is part of the strategy they use. Conservatives will use any tool necessary to divide Canadians in order to seize power. Rather than running on ideas, beliefs and approaches, what Conservatives do is to pick and poke at anything that is frustrating a person out there in Canada, and they leverage it in such a way as to divide Canadians. Once they divide Canadians, they use that to get back into power without offering any solutions.
I challenge the Conservatives' approach to building our economy. I will always stand here as a Liberal and speak about how we can invest in people, in this country and in families, and support our seniors and students. I believe without question that the approach we have taken by investing in people will be the approach that will help build Canada up to even stronger economic outputs in the future.
1410 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/21/23 9:09:49 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, if one goes out there and speaks to the average Canadian, they will tell us they appreciate the work of Jean Chrétien. He is probably one of the most loved prime ministers we have had in this country, so he must have been doing something right. It is wrong for the member to take one specific incident and apply it to everything Liberals do. I can take hundreds of incidents when Conservatives have made cuts and made them part of the way they actually run government. That is just their ideology; it is what their approach has always been, and I do not think it is something the member can actually use as a comparable.
119 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/21/23 9:11:36 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I am happy the member opposite brought up firefighters and acknowledged their value in our country, our provinces and our municipalities. In fact, I was proud to work with firefighters for many years to look for ways to increase the number of types of cancer for which firefighters or their families would be able to claim some type of compensation should a firefighter be afflicted with cancer.
I know there are members on this side of the House who have been championing these issues. Firefighters in Canada are valuable, and without question, as a government and as members, we should continue to look for ways to support them and invest in them.
114 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/21/23 9:13:13 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I am a fan of much of the advocacy work the hon. member does. The question was what we should do over the next few months to build more supports for people with disabilities, and it is to do exactly what we have been doing in the last year. It is to identify the issues that are important to us, build it into a budget, consult people and come back to the House and vote for a budget that actually invests in people.
85 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
