44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 18, 2024 10:00AM
- Apr/18/24 11:32:29 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, until recently, the only questions the Conservatives asked in French during question period were about the carbon tax. For months, that was all they talked about. Finally, they had an epiphany and realized that it does not apply to Quebec, which goes to show they could understand the concept easily enough once it was explained to them over and over again. They figured they had to find something else to hammer away on during question period. They came up with federal interference in Quebec's jurisdictions, and they have been getting some good mileage out of that for the past few days.
Now, I hear the Conservative leader talking about housing. He says he is going to tell the cities what to do, but without encroaching on their areas of jurisdiction. However, when any cities disagree with him, he is quick to insult the mayors. Basically, he insults them respectfully. There was a time when Harper promised to eliminate the spending power in order to respect jurisdictions. The only way to truly respect jurisdictions is to make unconditional transfers.
Will the leader of the official opposition commit to making unconditional housing transfers to Quebec if he ever takes power?
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- Apr/18/24 1:43:19 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, one thing about the Conservative Party is that it is a misleading party. A good example of that is how the Conservatives like to twist the facts. For example, they talk about a lack of investment. In the first three quarters of 2023, which was just last year, Canada, out of the G7, had the highest amount of foreign investment. Do members know that it took Stephen Harper almost 10 years to create almost one million jobs? In less than nine years, we have created over two million jobs. I would suggest that the Conservatives are great at spin; on the reality of performing for Canadians, they fail.
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- Apr/18/24 1:56:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, affordable housing has a huge spectrum. It can be anything from somebody's rent that is geared to their income right up to helping people get into home ownership. Affordable housing is everything between those two points. Of course, we cannot focus on just one side or the other side. We have to ensure we are helping the entire spectrum of affordable housing.
We have introduced a number of programs, like our national housing plan. We have introduced measures to assist younger individuals getting into home ownership. At the same time, we are building housing. I can name 12 projects in my riding alone, like on Cliff Crescent, Princess Street, Curtis Crescent and Wright Crescent. I will name the rest, if I have time. The point is that this federal government has been there to build housing.
I was mayor in Kingston and a city councillor during the time that Stephen Harper was the prime minister. Members do not have to take my word for it that the Conservatives built nothing; there was an Order Paper question that I tried to table today. It asked what the Leader of the Opposition did when he was housing minister. He was not building housing.
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- Apr/18/24 3:57:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there are many things I can go to, in terms of what the Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister said in introducing the budget. One of the things that really stood out for me, and it contradicts many of the things the leader of the official opposition and the member who just spoke have said, was to take a look at the amount of foreign investment on a per capita basis. When we take a look at the G7 countries in the world, we will find that, in the first three-quarters of 2023, we were number one in terms of that foreign investment. That speaks volumes.
Next to that, I would remind the member of something I said earlier. It took Stephen Harper just over nine years to create just under a million jobs. We have been able to create over two million jobs in less time. I am wondering if the member opposite can explain to me why he believes we should take economic advice when our performance has far outweighed and benefited Canadians, more so than the Stephen Harper era.
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- Apr/18/24 4:44:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question.
I have had the honour of serving in the provincial legislature as well. For 11 years, I was the provincial member of Parliament for the same community of Ottawa Centre, which was kind enough to elect me as their member of Parliament. As a former provincial cabinet minister, I had my share of battles and debates with the former Harper government, which starved many of the provinces like mine in Ontario, by cutting off all kinds of funding and by downloading those services.
I held and still hold the view today that our federation works really well when all three orders of government work together. That gives us the opportunity to not make cuts and download all of the important services like the Harper Conservatives did, which I understand the current Conservative Party wants to copy by cutting services and downloading those important services to the provincial governments. Rather, we need to make sure that we are investing in Canadians and working with our provinces and territories.
That is precisely what we are doing when it comes to housing and when it comes to health care. In health care alone, the amount of work we are doing by working with our provincial and territorial counterparts, including Quebec, to ensure they have the resources necessary to provide important health care services will make the lives of Canadians far better than ever before.
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- Apr/18/24 5:16:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, when I reflect on the budget, what I see is a government that is committed to the issue of fairness, fairness for every generation. What I see is a consistency that has been clearly demonstrated since 2015. As a government, we have a responsibility to be there in a very real and tangible way, in many different ways, to support Canadians.
We saw that in the first budget we presented back in 2015-16, shortly after the 2015 fall election, where we made it very clear that fairer taxation was important. That is the reason why we put a special tax on Canada's wealthiest one per cent back then, which the Conservative Party voted against. We also reduced the tax on Canada's middle class, which the Conservative Party also voted against.
We have not been discouraged with respect to moving forward and have supported Canadians in many different ways. I can talk about the supports for the poorest seniors with the guaranteed income supplement, the GIS, which was greatly enhanced back in 2016 because of a budget measure. We can go through the years that followed, where we have consistently seen the government take actions to support Canadians in a very real and tangible way. That is the consistency we have demonstrated.
This budget is a reflection of what Canadians are telling the individual Liberal members of Parliament from coast to coast to coast. We are not saying that everything is perfect. We recognize that Canadians have very real needs. This budget, much like the fall economic statement, is there to support Canadians.
One of the other things that has been consistent is the Conservative Party of Canada's approach. Its members are not there to serve the needs of Canadians. They are more interested in filibustering and being a destructive force. One member just moments ago was talking about rural Canada and how he wanted to see a certain area get a larger percentage of the carbon rebate. There is irony in that. The fall economic statement includes a doubling up of the rural carbon rebate. Why has that not been implemented? It is because of the Conservatives. They are preventing the legislation from passing, which would enable more money going into the pockets of rural Canadians, yet they criticize the government for not providing supports. That is only one example of many I could share with the House.
Unlike the Conservative Party, when we talk about a sense of fairness, we mean it. One only needs to take a look at what happened during the pandemic as a great example. We created programs that saw literally millions of dollars put into the pockets and purses of Canadians so they would have disposable income to buy the groceries necessary, pay for their mortgage and so forth. We were there to support small businesses by providing things such as the wage loss subsidy, which also helped Canadians from coast to coast to coast. We can talk about how we were there for our seniors and people with disabilities with one-time payments.
We could talk about infrastructure and what we have built over the last number of years. If I were going to give a Homer Simpson award to the leader of the Conservative Party, it would probably be, at least in part, for his position on the Canada Infrastructure Bank. We invest billions of dollars and, as a direct result of that investment, it levers virtually $2 billion for every $1 billion we invest, and we have infrastructure projects happening across the country.
What do the Conservatives say about that? They want to get rid of the Canada infrastructure program. What kind of stupid idea is that? Do they not realize the positive impact it has on Canadians every day? That is just one program about which they have no idea what they are talking about.
Today, one of the needs we are facing is the issue of housing. During the nineties, no Conservatives, New Democrats or Liberals, and I am not sure about the Greens because they were not in the House at the time, but not one political party inside this chamber was advocating for the national government to play a role in non-profit housing. There was not one political party doing that.
If we fast-forward to 2016, under the current Prime Minister's leadership, we saw a government begin to take an active interest in housing. When the leader of the Conservative Party was responsible for housing, we know what he did. He was in the position to develop a housing strategy or build houses. We barely need more than one hand to count it. He built one, two, three, four, five, six houses. That was it. His total contribution was six houses.
It is literally a joke when the Conservatives stand to be critical of the government. No government in the last 50 years has done more proactively to deal with housing than this government has. We can look at the programs. There are supports for housing co-ops and organizations such as Habitat for Humanity. We are working with different levels of government to ensure the dream of owning a home is possible.
No government has demonstrated more leadership on the housing file than this government, which is the absolute opposite of what the current leader of the Conservative Party did when he was the minister responsible for housing. We understand the importance of the issue, and that is why we are seeing literally hundreds of millions of dollars being spent in every region of this country. We understand the best way to build more homes is by investing in it, unlike the Conservative Party.
Members can look at the contrast. Today, after the leader of the Conservative Party spoke, I asked him a question. I asked him about the fact that he only built six houses. What did he do? He stood up and attempted to mislead Canadians. He said he had built 90,000 homes. That is absolute garbage, but it is consistent with what we see coming from the Conservative Party.
It does not matter. The Conservatives will say things in here and they will use social media to mislead Canadians. When the leader was called out on it, I cannot say whether he stayed in the House, but he sure vacated his seat. He might have still been in the chamber, but he did not like being called out on the truth. The truth is, as a government, we recognize that there is a role for the national government, and the Leader of the Opposition does not recognize that. There is the contrast.
I believe if Canadians were to understand who the leader of the Conservative Party is, they would turn their backs. They want to see a national government that is prepared to work with municipalities, provincial governments, non-profits and social enterprises, or anyone who has ideas to assist in bringing in more houses. That is what it is going to take. It is not just the federal government. It is going to take a lot more co-operation, and the federal government is prepared to provide leadership. That is what we see in the budget.
One member stood up and spoke about how the government does not have anything regarding innovation and that we are not trying to encourage companies. I pointed out that we do have the accelerated investment tax credit, and the member just did not realize that. They did not hear what the Minister of Finance had said. He was being critical because he thought we did not have anything like that.
Again, here is the contrast. As a national government, we recognize that there is a role for the national government to play in encouraging innovation and encouraging investment, and we are not alone. Even Progressive Conservative Doug Ford in Ontario recognizes that, which is why we landed, for example, the Volkswagen electric battery plant. Members can imagine a plant the size of 200 football fields. It is likely going to be one of, if not the, largest manufacturing plants in North America. It will provide thousands of jobs, and this is not just in Ontario. This is the type of thing in which we believe. We think of the future green jobs, and there will be a lot more coming because we have a national government that has taken an interest in developing an economy that is going to be there to continue to build jobs into the future.
For those who are following the debate, I will give a clear indication of success. It took Stephen Harper almost nine years to generate just under a million jobs. Well, we are at just over eight years today, and we have actually generated over two million jobs, and that was while going through a pandemic. It is because we understand that the Government of Canada has a role to play in increasing opportunities into the future, which is why we will find that there is no government in the history of Canada that has actually signed off on more trade agreements than this government has. We have done that because Canada is a trading nation. Trade creates jobs.
I was so pleased to be with the minister of agriculture in the Philippines where we opened up a trade office for agriculture and agriproducts. Why did we do that? We can take a look at future opportunities in the Asia-Pacific. I am glad that it is located in metro Manila in the Philippines. This is going to create more jobs into the future. It highlights industries that are very important to us. This is a government that cares, whether it is the larger cities, the smaller municipalities, our rural farms and all regions of the country, which is why we will see there are investments to support Canadians in every way.
We can take a look at what a progressive government can do to make a difference. We can think of child care. There is a national child care program, the first ever, which enables more women to participate in the workforce and improves the quality of life for so many. We can think of the Canada pharmacare program, which would take steps towards complementing the Canada Health Act and the health care services that Canadians have grown to love and cherish. We can think of the national food program. For many years, as an MLA, I used to talk about kids going to school on an empty stomach. This is a national government that would address that issue. We are supporting children because we understand the need for it.
However, what kind of response do we get from the Conservative Party, from the members opposite? They say, “Well, the federal government should not play in roles like that. Maybe just hand over money, but do not care how that money is spent.” That is not good enough. Canadians' expectations are that the government will be there to support them.
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