- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Peterborough—Kawartha
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $106,196.43
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Provencher.
As always, I recognize what a privilege it is to stand in the House of Commons and represent my community of Peterborough—Kawartha.
Today, we are debating Bill C-18 amendments that have been brought back from the Senate. It is known as the online news act. In a nutshell, this bill proposes to make big tech like Google and Facebook or Meta, as it is now known, pay when they share links from smaller independent legacy media. This bill is deeply flawed and, quite frankly, it is an absolute disaster.
I grew up just outside Peterborough, Ontario in a town called Douro. We had about three channels. As the youngest child, it was my job to be the human remote control. It was also my job to turn the dial for the aerial outside to make sure it was just right. Everyone at home who was a child of the eighties knows what I speak of. My favourite shows were the CHEX news, The Raccoons and The Beachcombers.
When I was nine we moved to the township of Otonabee and we got a satellite dish. It was a huge deal. If someone pressed a button, the giant satellite dish out in the yard moved with a remote control with hundreds of channels.
As technology has rapidly progressed, the customer has definitely taken more of a driver role. The customer says what they want, when they want and how they want it.
There are so many more options and it has increased competition, which has made it harder and harder to capture the attention of the customer. Local news will always be relevant. Local news will always be a priority because we need to know what is happening in our community. We want to know.
The landscape of how we consume media has drastically changed but our need to stay connected and informed has not. I worked at a local television station for 14 years and then I went on to start my own business in social media. I know the value of local media.
I also know the competition has dramatically impacted our legacy media and not necessarily in a positive way. I worked for CHEX television at that time and we always dreamed of having a satellite truck so that we could go live. Imagine doing live hits. We were a small-town news media but with a big following because people wanted to stay connected. Then along came this little guy and we could go live with our phones like that.
Bill C-18 is not going to help legacy media. It is going to hurt them. Bill C-18 is a subsidy program. It is not a support program and it will never work. It also opens a dangerous door for censorship and control. It is a terrible idea hidden behind a classic Liberal narrative of "We will protect you and we know what is best for you."
This morning I spoke with Jeff Dueck, who is the sales manager from My Broadcasting Corporation in Peterborough, Ontario. He has major concerns with this bill. He shared many of his concerns with me, but the one that struck me the most is when he told me that they do not want subsidies but they want an equal playing field.
Subsidies are the polar opposite to sustainability and they are a classic Liberal tactic. They create chaos and then offer a sliver of help and long-term dependence, rather than freedom and autonomy. Canadians have caught on and the trust is gone. Jeff went on to say this:
The inability of our Government and the CRTC to listen to us and modernize outdated policies is slowly killing our industry, and in doing so, putting Canadians at risk of losing access to valuable sources for local news and information from trusted media outlets. When major players make major changes, it affects us all and stigmatizes us as a “passe“ business model amongst the businesses that we count on for advertising revenues - but that's still far from the reality.
If people take anything from this, please listen to what I am about to say. The harsh reality of this bill is that despite its intention, it is actually going to do the exact opposite.
If I were at Google or Facebook and the government told Google or Facebook it had to pay to share the links of small legacy media, what motivation would I have to share it? I would have none, zip. I would not share it. That is what is going to happen. This methodology is literally the stick instead of the carrot.
The truth is that one of the very best ways to get news to more people is to have a bigger platform to share it. That is the exact thing one would want. Once a bigger platform shares one's content, they are then able to tap into a whole new audience. Once they have that audience they have the opportunity to promote their subscription or merchandise. It is literally the best way to grow their business and brand online.
Bill C-18 will destroy legacy media: it will no longer be seen because it will no longer be shared.
Andrew Coyne, a columnist at The Globe and Mail, said it well when he said:
The premise, that the problems of the newspaper industry can be traced to search and social-media platforms like Google or Facebook "stealing" their content, is utterly false. The platforms don't take our content. They link to it: a headline, sometimes a short snippet of text, nothing more. When users click on the links, they are taken to our sites, where they read our content. Much of the traffic on our sites, in fact, comes from social-media links, which is why we go to such lengths to encourage readers to post them - indeed, we post such links ourselves, hundreds of times a day.
Has anyone even begun to ask how in the world this would work administratively? Who, and how are the links going to be tracked? Who is billing? Is it the legacy media's job to be their own watchdog and submit a claim? I am not sure who has worked in a newsroom in this room, but I can tell you, nobody has time for that. We do not need another government-run program with more bureaucracy to create more backlogs.
This whole idea is bonkers. It is a distraction from the out-of-date and archaic mandates by the CRTC. The real problem here is there are a bunch of platforms that can play what they want. They have no rules and no restrictions. Then there are legacy media that are bound by the archaic shackles of the CRTC.
How about we let radio stations play the music they want? That would be a great start. Of course they will continue to promote our talented and diverse Canadian artists. How about we trust them to listen to the customer instead of holding them hostage?
Bill C-18 is a terrible bill. It will be the death of our legacy media. If members in this House want to support our journalists and artists then they need to vote this down. Seriously, if members do not believe me, they should pick up the phone and listen to the people on the front lines. They know this is a disaster.
Jen Gerson is the co-founder of The Line, an independent journalist. She was a witness at the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage in September 2022. She said that this bill:
...is predicated on a lie. The bill adopts a very ancient complaint of newspaper publishers that aggregation-based news websites and social media networks are unduly profiting by “publishing” our content. However, we know this isn't true. In fact, the value proposition runs in exactly the opposite direction. We publishers are the ones who benefit when a user posts a link to our content on Facebook, Twitter and the like. This free distribution drives traffic to our websites, which we can then try to monetize through subscriptions and advertising.
Legacy media does not need Liberal interference and control. They need the government to get out of the way, stop regulating how they do their jobs and let them do what they do best, which is to create content Canadians want to consume. If Canadians cannot see the content, what is the point in creating it? Let us make sure that legacy media's hard work pays off. Let us vote down Bill C-18.
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- Nov/1/22 4:05:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time today with the hon. member for Mégantic—L'Érable.
It is always an honour to rise in the House of Commons to represent my constituents of Peterborough—Kawartha. Today we have put forth an opposition motion. For those who are watching at home or starting to get interested in politics, opposition motions are so important. Every day the Liberals get to decide what is important, and we know that they are not choosing what is really important to Canadians.
With an opposition motion, the Conservatives can use our voices to speak for Canadians. I will read our opposition motion that we put forth today. We will have a vote after this, and we are asking the Liberals, NDP and Bloc to support us on this motion to pass it. The motion says:
That, given that,
(i) the cost of government is driving up the cost of living,
(ii) the Parliamentary Budget Officer states that 40% of new spending is not related to COVID-19,
(iii) Canadians are now paying higher prices and higher interest rates as a result,
(iv) it is more important than ever for the government to respect taxpayer dollars and eliminate wasteful spending,
the House call on the Auditor General of Canada to conduct a performance audit, including the payments, contracts and sub-contracts for all aspects of the ArriveCAN app, and to prioritize this investigation.
This is a very important motion. Today in the House, I heard members from the Liberal side of the House say the motion is too broad and it deals too much with the cost of living.
When the Liberal government in charge is responsible for spending Canadian taxpayers' money and is wasting their money when we are in a cost of living crisis, it absolutely is pertinent to this motion. The ArriveCAN app cost $54 million and we do not know where that money was spent, because it was only supposed to cost $250,000. Canadian taxpayers deserve to know.
This motion is extremely important as we look at the complex issue of the cost of living crisis. There are people who cannot afford to buy bread or eggs and the government is wasting money. Really what this comes down to is mismanagement of funds, possibly corruption, but we do not know. That is why we are calling on the government. If we do not have accountability, how do we get to the bottom of it? If we do not ask the right questions, we cannot get the right answers. Canadians do not have trust anymore. We need trust restored so that we can help the people.
There were 1.5 million Canadians who used a food bank in March. That is the highest number ever recorded in Canadian history. In one month, 1.5 million people accessed a food bank. One in three of those were children.
This past weekend I went to the grocery store to get some essentials. Like everyone else, I noticed the outrageous cost of food. The cashier said to me that at least three people a day tell her that they are going to have to use a food bank. We live in a G7 country.
I like to think that everyone in the House cares. I do. I really think that everyone is here because they want to serve and that is why they took this job. However, some days it is hard to believe that because of the wasteful spending and the lack of acknowledgement of an app. Just admit that it did not work, that it was a waste and we need to fix it. Let the Auditor General do it, learn from it and move on. Restore trust.
I was former shadow minister or critic for tourism, and I took so many calls about this app. I have one constituent who was featured on Global National. Her name is Katie. Katie works in the States but she is a Canadian citizen. Katie went across the border. Some of the stats will show us what happened to Katie. Her story was featured on Global National with the ArriveCAN app.
She was one of the 10,000 people who were impacted by the glitch of the app, but no communication was ever made to Katie. None. This is just another epic fail in terms of the accountability of the Liberals. She was told she was going to be fined up to $1 million. She was not just getting an email; she was literally getting accosted. She was receiving threatening messages every single day.
I do not know how one measures the damage to Katie's mental health. She was threatened with being imprisoned for up to three years. She was threatened with admission into a federal quarantine facility. The worst part is that she was threatened with never being allowed back into her own country.
There is so much wrong with this app. Conservatives kept on telling Liberals it was not working. We felt like parrots. We were saying it was not doing whatever they thought it was supposed to do. We talked about the backlogs at borders and at Pearson. Canada established this reputation whereby people had zero travel confidence to come to Canada, because of the ArriveCAN app.
I travelled from Germany, in March I believe it was, and the anger from the people on the airline at how poorly Canada was run was embarrassing. They said the ArriveCAN app was disgusting. We cannot even begin to calculate the lost revenue this faulty app created. I do not know what tools we would use to calculate this.
The tourism industry before COVID was a $105-billion industry. It is up to only $80 billion at this point. We have lost so much money because of this app.
The member from Kingston loves to heckle me, and he has come in to distract me. I have said it before and will say it again: If you don't want to listen to me, leave.
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- Oct/20/22 8:42:30 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I will be sharing my time today with the member for Brandon—Souris.
Five minutes to talk about mental health is certainly not enough time. I appreciate the grace and vulnerability that has been shared tonight. I also appreciate that every single member in the House has been touched by mental health. I appreciate that everyone acknowledges that this is a crisis.
However, my frustration and anger is at a bubbling point, just like many Canadians around this country. We do not need more advocacy. We need leadership. This week, 31-year-old Burnaby RCMP officer, a member of the detachment's mental health and homeless outreach team, just three years into her career, Constable Shaelyn Yang was fatally stabbed while attending a homeless campsite before 11 a.m., in broad daylight.
I want to tell the House what our Prime Minister said. This is a quote from yesterday in question period:
We need to do more to step up on our mental health funding, as the hon. member before mentioned.
He was referring to the hon. member for Cariboo—Prince George, who has been an advocate and has done great work. The Prime Minister went on to say:
We need to make sure that we are giving our frontline police officers the tools to be supported as they encounter difficult situations. We need to make sure they are not the only mental health workers out there accessible to so many people. Unfortunately they have been. They have been extraordinary at it, but we need to provide better support. The provinces and the federal government need to work together to fund more mental health supports.
That is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau—
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to inform the House that I will be sharing my time with the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent.
As always, I am proud to stand in the House with the privilege of representing the constituents of Peterborough—Kawartha. Today, I rise to speak to Bill C-30, an act to amend the Income Tax Act, meaning Canadians would get a one-time tax rebate. This bill would amend the Income Tax Act to double the GST/HST credit for six months, increasing the annual GST/HST credit amount by 50% for the 2022-23 benefit year.
Bill C-30 is another one of the Liberal government's attempts at a flashy headline that really would do nothing to address the core issues when it comes to our affordability crisis in this country. The Liberals want to think that they are saving Canadians, when, in fact, the Liberal government has put Canadians in this affordability crisis. Government supports should offer real results for Canadians who need it most, especially when we find ourselves in this cost of living crisis.
The GST rebate proposal would provide welcome immediate relief that Conservatives will support. However, let me be clear that we do not support the incompetence of the Liberal government and its inability to manage the Canadian economy while Canadians suffer to put food on their tables. There needs to be a long-term solution to address the real problem across our country. Inflationary deficits and taxes are driving up costs at the fastest rate in nearly 40 years.
Just last week in the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, we had a witness from Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada testify for the ongoing study of the mental health of young women and girls. I asked if they believe our current cost of living crisis is affecting our kids. Their answer, as indicated in the blues, was, “we have multiple anecdotes of families who are reporting increased stress. We're hearing it from the kids...We're actually meeting with our clubs in the next two weeks, and I think we'll hear more of those stories, where they've said food costs are a problem.”
When moms, dads and caregivers are stressed or worried about how to put food on the table, pay rent, or keep the lights on, that tension is noticed by our kids. The Liberal government is downloading to our children its inability to manage the economy. Children do not need the burden of adult problems. They have endured so much these past few years, and they need to be children.
I have said it many times before in the House. The affordability crisis is a mental health crisis, and it is being exacerbated by the hurtful policies of the government. The government had the opportunity to support our Conservative motion to give Canadians a chance to breathe and to give them the break that they needed, as we put forth our motion to stop the planned increased taxes on January 1. However, instead of giving Canadians a break, the Liberals voted to tax their hard-earned paycheques even more.
The average Canadian family now spends more of its income on taxes, at 43%, than it does on basic necessities such as food, shelter and clothing combined, which is 36%. By comparison, 34% of the average family's income went to pay taxes in 1961, while 57% went to the basic necessities. When families are spending more of their income on taxes than on any other necessity, coupled with the current rate of inflation, there is an affordability crisis. Something has got to give. Canadians are hanging on by a thread.
Next Monday is Thanksgiving, and Christmas is just 81 days away. With Canadians struggling to get by with the basic necessities, how are they ever expected to manage the extra spending that the holidays require? The price of turkey is up 15%. The price of potatoes is up 22%, and the price of cranberries is up 12%.
The one-time help proposed in this bill would give an average of $467 per family. An individual without a child earning more than $49,200 will get nothing. A family of two adults and two kids earning more than $58,500 will get nothing. When groceries are up almost 11% and when inflation is at a 40-year high, this is not acceptable.
I want to read another message from Emily, who wrote to me. She said, “You know, it is interesting. I am even starting to get worried, and we own our house, one car, little to no commute, one child, emergency account, early to mid-forties. My husband is a professional engineer making middle six-figures and we are starting to get a little nervous, so imagine others.” With the impact of both parents having to work and not having a choice, and the impact on our kids, the mental health crisis is out of control.
The average family of four is now spending over $1,200 more each year to put food on the table, and this does not even consider the rising cost of gas with the government's carbon tax or the cost of housing. Do members know who this stress and burden is passed down to when parents are stressed about paying for the necessities? It is our kids, especially our teenage kids. They are our future.
Mr. Owen Charters of the Boys and Girls Club of Canada explained it best when he said:
Too often, kids who come from underprivileged homes or homes where there's a single parent take on a burden that is like that of an adult at a very young age. They worry about those adult issues. They may not always let their parents know, because part of being a responsible member of that family is not to let that burden fester on the other members of the family. We see that as part of single-parent families especially or families where the parents are dysfunctional.
The irony in all of this today is that the Liberals want Canadians to believe they are saving them, when in fact they are responsible for the problem. They want Canadians to think they are coming up with solutions, when in fact they created this. It is like they are cutting someone's leg then offering a band-aid and patting themselves on the back for helping. It is ridiculous.
The jig is up, and Canadians know what the Liberals are doing. The government continues to think more spending will help with the cost of living. No, it does not work that way. How does taking home less from a hard-earned paycheque help the economy or mental health? How is tripling the carbon tax helping Canadians? It is not. Do members know what we need to make food and housing? It is gas. Do members know what Liberals want to do? They want to increase the tax on gas, so the already outrageous food and real estate prices are going to keep going up.
Do members know what happens to people when they do not have hope and when they cannot see a light at the end of the tunnel? They get depressed. They get anxious. They use drugs and alcohol to escape the pain, and they might even attempt suicide.
We will fight for the people. We will fight for their paycheques, and we will fight for this country. Canadians deserve better. The children deserve better. Our seniors deserve better. They gave their lives to this country, and so many of them cannot even afford to buy milk.
We do not need to burden our children with adult problems, and they do not need to see their parents suffer. The Conservatives will keep pushing the Liberals to wake up, do the right compassionate thing and stop their planned tax hikes. I encourage all of the members on that side of the House to stand up to their government, because I know they are getting the same calls to their constituency offices that we are getting.
Canadians are suffering, and we were elected to bring their voices here, not to take this voice to them. It is wrong, what the government is doing. It is wrong, how it is making Canadians suffer and not recognizing the pain that is happening in this country. Yes, I will support Bill C-30, because Canadians need a break, but I will not allow the Liberals to forget that the reason Canadians need help is because of their inability to manage our economy.
I will continue, like all of my Conservative colleagues, to push the government to invest in development, not relief. That starts with not taxing Canadians and letting them keep their hard-earned paycheques.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Battle River—Crowfoot.
As always, it is an honour and privilege to stand in the House of Commons to represent the constituents of Peterborough—Kawartha. Today, I rise to speak to Bill C-29, an act to provide for the establishment of a national council for reconciliation. With Truth and Reconciliation Day just two days away, this coming Friday, September 30, this is an important bill, and I take very seriously how delicate this conversation is for many people.
After six and a half years, this bill is the government's attempt to address the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's calls to action 53 through 56. These four calls to action include: call to action 53, to “establish a National Council for Reconciliation”; call to action 54, to “provide multi-year funding for the National Council for Reconciliation to ensure that it has the financial, human and technical resources required to conduct its work”; call to action 55, to provide annual reports to show progress on reconciliation; and call to action 56, to issue “an annual 'State of Aboriginal Peoples' report [to] outline the government's plans for advancing reconciliation.”
As I mentioned, this bill is long overdue, and although we will support a lot of what this bill is, there are serious amendments, serious discussion and serious overhaul that need to be considered. I will address that today in my speech.
If we are going to work toward meaningful reconciliation with indigenous people, a robust and inclusive response to calls to action 53 to 56 is needed. Unfortunately, this bill would not meet the target. We continue to have the same problems over and over, and that is that there is too much government in the way.
We often hear this saying, and I will be talking about it today in my speech. It is “FIBI”, or “for indigenous, by indigenous”. We need to trust indigenous and allow them to do what they are able to do because they know how to make the best decisions for them, not the government.
Section 8 of the bill has the creation of a not-for-profit corporation that would monitor and report the government's progress in its efforts for reconciliation with indigenous people. The council would not be an agent of His Majesty in the right of Canada, nor would it be governed by the Financial Administration Act. It portrays itself to be an independent body.
Here lies the first major concern we have with Bill C-29. How independent would this council be if the minister of crown-indigenous relations picked the board members. The bill stipulates that the first board of directors would be selected by the minister in collaboration with the transitional committee. This would mean that the minister of the day and their hand-picked transitional team would determine the council's future, which is expected to hold that same minister to account for its own failed record on reconciliation. This does not sound like meaningful reconciliation.
Call to action 54 calls on the government to provide multi-year funding for the national council. The government did this in budget 2019 by allocating $126.5 million, yet the act would not require any accountability for the expenditure of this money and not one financial report would need to be filed by the council.
This is a major problem. Accountability and transparency are seriously lacking in the government. That is the issue we have at the core here. There is no trust between indigenous peoples and the government. The idea that zero accountability and financial reporting on such an important file is just more of the same of what we expect from the Liberals.
We need to see where dollars are going so they are being best used on those who need it most and not on more red tape and a bloated bureaucracy that does nothing to help those across our country who need it most.
I see this often in the file of indigenous tourism, for example. We need to see that the dollars are going directly to the organization that needs the dollars, not through another organization, because then they are going to lose money. It makes no sense, and it is not a good, efficient use of the money when it has been targeted to help the people who need it most.
The most glaring issue with Bill C-29 is the lack of representation on the national council for reconciliation. The bill sets aside three seats for Assembly of First Nations, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami and Métis National Council.
These are the three national organizations the Liberal government almost solely deals with regarding indigenous issues. However, this does not even scratch the surface concerning who needs to be at the table of a national council for reconciliation. We need advocates for women and girls, children, aboriginal business associations and native development offices. They all play an important role in reconciliation and deserve a seat at the table.
What about a voice for urban indigenous people? Just yesterday, I was having a conversation with Jaimee Gaunce, the director of policy at Ontario Aboriginal Housing Services, about urban indigenous individuals falling through the cracks when it comes to housing and so many benefits because they do not fit within the bureaucratic boxes when it comes to accessing funding that, as an indigenous person, they should have every right to. Someone who is indigenous is not suddenly non-indigenous when they choose to live off reserve, so why do they lose the support they should have every right to access just because they left the reserve? It is not right. This only perpetuates the goals of colonization that we are collectively trying to undo through truth and reconciliation.
If I did not take this opportunity to mention that this Friday is National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, I would not be doing justice standing here in the House. This day honours the children who never returned home and the survivors of residential schools as well as their families and communities. The reality is that we know now through science and data that trauma lasts seven generations. The last residential school was in 1997, I believe, which is in my time. My children come home from school and educate me more about what happened in our Canadian history than I was taught in my own school.
The reality is that we cannot have reconciliation without truth, and the truth is just starting to surface. These are challenging but critically essential conversations, and I urge everyone to read the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's 94 calls to action, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, and the final report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
Every child matters. We will remember the children, their families and their communities, but it is time to stop talking and show solidarity through showing up and starting to have action. Bill C-29 needs more concrete amendments to ensure that the proper action is taken toward truth and reconciliation. It is long overdue to put a council in place with the right representation at the table. We need a plan that is by indigenous, for indigenous.
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- Mar/22/22 4:41:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time today with the member for Fort McMurray—Cold Lake.
Canadians are in the middle of an economic crisis that, as many know, is contributing to our mental health crisis. Gas prices and the costs of food and housing are at an all-time high, and this is truly hurting our country, our children, our seniors and our most vulnerable. We can do better. We can take action today. We can instantly give Canadians relief. This should not be about a coalition. I urge all MPs in the House to think about their constituents and vote to help them. This motion can help Canadians.
The motion being debated states:
(i) Canadians are facing severe hardship due to the dramatic escalation in gas prices,
(ii) the 5% collected under the Goods and Services Tax (GST), the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST), and the Quebec Sales Tax (QST) creates increased revenue for the federal government as fuel prices rise which compounds the pain on Canadian consumers and the economy,
the House call on the government to immediately provide relief at the pumps to all Canadians by introducing a temporary 5% reduction on gasoline and diesel whether collected under the GST, HST, or QST which would reduce the average price by approximately eight cents per litre.
I fully support this motion and call on the government to recognize the devastating impacts of the increased gas prices, to take action and to provide hope and relief for Canadians.
On Saturday, I asked a question on Facebook: “How has the increased cost of living impacted your daily decisions and habits?” The post received hundreds of upsetting comments, and I would like to share some of them with members today.
John wrote, “Being a single father and working fulltime I'm still unable to stay afloat. Between the cost of child care for an hour and a half 5 days a week and price of gas, I'm at a point where I'm deciding what bill/bills am I not going to pay this month in order to pay the insane rent pice and to feed my son.”
D'Arcy wrote, “I’ve owned a Mini Cooper for 12 years. I just traded it in for a Honda Civic as I can’t afford premium fuel anymore. Not to mention cut backs on food, and other things. The worse is not being able to see my daughter who lives in Calgary. The cost to drive up and get her is getting to be too much.”
Mike wrote, “Well I can't afford to even rent a room in a place let alone and apartment. So I've been living with different family members for the last 4 years!! So it's affected me pretty [badly] and I make $25 [an hour].”
Abby wrote, “I am going to purchase a horse and buggy bc I can't afford the gas and taking the bus doesn't work for a hockey mom with a baby on oxygen.”
Natalie wrote, “We are selling off things... next is my husband's vehicle and our atv..... we are running out of things to sell and that has me feeling overwhelmed.”
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Ms. Michelle Ferreri: I hope members care about what constituents have to say. It would be nice if they would listen.
Kelly wrote, “I am not travelling to see my parents as often or eating as good as I should be especially with type 1 diabetes! The cost of food is crazy, they always seem to charge way more for healthy foods and the cost of living has sky rocketed but pay cheques or social assistance has not! How is it even possible for people to survive and live a comfortable healthy life?!! The stress is overwhelming.”
Shannon wrote, “I'm a registered nurse getting paid the same wage I was paid 13 years ago with no cost of living increase and starting to do the math on whether it makes sense for me to work at all anymore given what it will cost me to get there.”
Darlene wrote, “I am a Canada Post rural route contractor (I drive my own truck). I can't afford to work.”
When did we get to a place where people cannot afford to go to work? These stories are heartbreaking and the true reality of what Canadians are going through. I am of the belief that stories like these are a call to action. They indicate that Canadians are in need of financial relief, and it is our job in the House to listen, to act and to help.
Increased gas prices impact everyone. Small business owners must pay more for shipping and products, which translates into increased prices for customers. We can see how this is impacting our economy. If we cannot support our local businesses, they cannot pay their bills and will shut down.
Let us talk about how gas prices are devastating the people who feed us: our farmers.
Kevin wrote to me saying that he is a farmer and it is definitely not fun. He described that the amount of money going out of all farmers' pockets is constantly increasing. They all do what they can to watch their profit margins, but one thing they need, no matter what, is fuel, and they usually use the same amount year after year. He said that they are the ones feeding the world, but he feels like they have to pay a punishing price to do so.
How are we expected to attract the next generation of farmers when they continue to go further and further into debt? Did members know farmers have one of the highest suicide rates of any career? Let us not forget to take a moment and remember the saying, "If you ate today, thank a farmer.”
Now, let us talk about children. Parents and caregivers are forced to make a decision to pull their kids out of sports and extracurricular activities because there is no extra money or they cannot afford to drive them. This is wrong. Kids have suffered enough these past two years. They need their friends. They need physical fitness.
Parents and caregivers and seniors cannot afford nutritious food. This is wrong. Nutritious food is critical and is directly linked to health and wellness. We cannot afford to further strain our health care system. I have seniors in my riding of Peterborough—Kawartha who are eating cat food. We can do better. We must do better. This motion today can offer relief and hope. I urge the new Liberal-NDP government to consider this motion.
People may not think that prices at the gas pumps are linked to our opioid crisis, but they are. Anxiety, depression and addiction are being exacerbated from the stress of an increased cost of living. As one constituent said to me, “I no longer live. I just try to survive.” This quote made me think about our tourism industry.
As shadow minister for tourism, I can say this industry was the first hit and the hardest-hit, and it will be the last to recover. Some people will tell us that travel is a privilege. What about the people who are employed because of the travel industry? What about the dog kennel owner who may lose his business because people cannot afford to travel so they are not using the kennel? What happens to him?
What about people who cannot afford to visit their friends and family because gas is too expensive? How do they think that impacts their mental health, their productivity at work and their relationships? This has a domino effect. Not being able to afford to feed their family or to put gas in their vehicle is devastating and immeasurable. It affects everyone.
Allison, a constituent, wrote to me about how the gas prices are impacting her family. She wrote that she hardly leaves the house. He family is eating up the freezer selections instead of buying fresh and deciding if a home purchase in Barbados is a better way to invest instead of here as everything is hundreds of thousands of dollars overpriced.
Canada is supposed to be the best place in the world to live. People are truly thinking of leaving. We can help. We can offer a 5% reduction on gasoline and diesel. I urge everyone in this House to vote in favour of this motion.
We need to get back to a place of being able to use the money in our bank to pay for necessities, not racking up debt on credit cards. We need to give Canadians the ability to afford to go to work, give kids the opportunity to be able to go to their taekwondo class or gymnastics, and allow seniors to have the dignity to buy healthy food. Let us get the number of people using food banks down.
Canadians need a break. They are exhausted. They are drained. They are traumatized. This motion is a break. I will be voting for it.
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- Dec/16/21 12:46:20 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-2
Madam Speaker, what a moment. What an experience to stand in the House of Commons. I thank my constituents of Peterborough—Kawartha. I am here because of their support. I am here because they believed in me. I promise to do my best and do what I learned growing up in Douro, Ontario: work hard. Just like the Journey song says, I am just a small-town girl, and I truly believe in the lessons a small town teaches: help others with genuine service.
I want to take everyone back to June 2021. I received a call from a very distraught mom named Kim, whose daughter Cassy was missing. Cassy suffered from schizophrenia, and Kim felt the media was not giving her disappearance the attention it deserved, because she was a person who lived on the street. Kim did an interview with me on my social media, pleading with people to get Cassy home. Within 72 hours, Cassy was located in the sex trade in Toronto and brought home to Peterborough—Kawartha, thanks to the people on social media who shared that.
I never met Cassy. I just chatted with her mom, but I want to fast-forward to August 2021, during the campaign. Just outside of my campaign office was a very distraught and distressed woman. I approached her and asked how I could help. She looked into my eyes and told me she was scared. She told me she had nowhere to live and the people on the street were hurting her. I noticed a wings tattoo on her chest, the same tattoo her mom Kim had described to me when we put out a call to find her. I wondered if this could be her, so I asked if her name was Cassy. She said yes.
Cassy was like many people who are forced to live on the street and struggling with mental illness and addiction. She had a mom and a family who loved her, but that is not always enough. Trauma and circumstance landed Cassy here. She did not choose this life.
I want to point out that I am splitting my time with the member for Miramichi—Grand Lake.
Cassy did not choose this life. I did not see Cassy every day, but when I did, she was distraught, exhausted, hungry and afraid. She did not have a home, and she did not have the intervention to help get her the treatment she needed. On September 20, 2021, yes, the day of the election, while I was running around with my team, I received a text that cut me to the core. The text was from Cassy's mom, and it read, “Cassy is dead. She was the body behind the music store. Family still to be notified so I don't think they have released her name to the media.” I was absolutely shattered. I was gutted emotionally and heartbroken. I felt I had personally failed Cassy.
How did the system fail Cassy? How many more people like Cassy will be failed? In that moment, I questioned why I was running in politics and why it mattered. My partner Ryan was with me and, like a great partner does, he recalibrated me and picked me up. He took my hand and said that by taking this job as a member of Parliament, I could be part of the change that was needed for all people like Cassy.
I applied for this job because I know we can do better. We need to change how we talk about mental health; we need to better understand the complexities of addiction, and we need to change policy that intervenes when people like Cassy do not have the capacity to take care of themselves. We need the infrastructure and resources dedicated to building forward-thinking mental health treatment facilities. Mental health impacts every single one of us.
We have heard about so many programs and so much money being dumped into mental health, but the reality is that things are not getting better. They feel worse. Money does not solve everything. If we are not spending money in the right places or we do not have a reasonable timeline to allocate funds, vision or an innovative plan to partner with money, we cannot expect change. We need to change how we think and talk about mental health. This is what will help us change how we treat it. Humans have an incredible track record of not understanding something until we experience it.
Fortunately, and unfortunately, most of us have experienced how devastating mental illness is. Most of us know that our mental health contributes to our happiness, our creativity and our productivity, which are directly linked to our economy. Our economic crisis is a mental health crisis. How can we expect people who cannot afford food or a home to get out of the poverty cycle? We have to get the cost of living down if we want to be serious about mental health. We have to create an environment that fosters independence and confidence.
I was appointed as shadow minister of tourism, and I know first-hand how much this industry is suffering. Many of those devastated by the pandemic do not want more loans; they want to work. One of my favourite economic solutions comes from the member for Carleton, who said that programs and subsidies need to be three things: timely, targeted and temporary.
Much like I said earlier, this economic crisis is a mental health crisis, and I will work diligently to help in the recovery of lost jobs. We need to be reunited with friends and family. We need each other more than ever. We need to acknowledge and respect public health guidelines, but we also need to be more prepared to deal with what is our new normal. We need to transition to learning to live with COVID.
This pandemic has magnified the opioid crisis. My riding of Peterborough—Kawartha has one of the highest rates of opioid deaths in the country. We have the second-highest overdose rate in the province of Ontario. We have people dying in the streets and in their homes. I myself have lost friends and family to overdoses and suicide.
As I stand here today, I want to leave this message for myself and for all of the people of my riding of Peterborough—Kawartha: We cannot give up; we cannot stop. We must work every day to learn what works, but more importantly, what does not work. I will work for Peterborough—Kawartha and for every Cassy who was failed by the system, because I believe that when we take care of our neighbours, we take care of our entire country. We cannot stop believing.
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