- Member of Parliament
- Member of the Joint Interparliamentary Council
Whip of the New Democratic Party
Member of the panel of chairs for the legislative committees
- NDP
- Edmonton Strathcona
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $141,604.97
- Government Page
- Oct/5/23 3:17:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this summer, 11 emergency rooms in Alberta closed due to the shortage of health care workers, and today we learned that some Canadians are being forced to leave overcrowded emergency rooms without treatment due to no staff.
The Liberals and the Conservatives have failed to protect Canadians from Conservative leaders like Danielle Smith and Scott Moe, who want U.S.-style health care that will poach nurses and doctors from our public system. When will the federal government stand up for Canada's public health care and ensure that our hospitals have the staff they need to care for Canadians?
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- Dec/5/22 2:47:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, sick kids in Alberta are waiting in heated trailers outside hospitals, and now hospice care for children is paused as staff are redeployed to deal with the health care crisis. Families are forced to scramble for help during their last days with their children. While Danielle Smith is distracted by her ridiculous sovereignty act, neither the federal nor the provincial government is protecting the most vulnerable Albertan kids. This is heartbreaking.
When will the government stand up for families dealing with this health care crisis and get sick kids the care they deserve?
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- Oct/28/22 11:29:47 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Conservative premier Danielle Smith is yet again threatening Alberta's public health care system, stating that she will pull Alberta out of federal programs she does not like, federal programs like the Canada Health Act. To make matters worse, the federal government is doing nothing to stand up for Canadians' fundamental right to health care.
When is the government going to step up and protect Albertans from Conservative attacks on our universally accessible, publicly delivered health care system?
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- Oct/28/22 11:29:19 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Conservative premier Danielle Smith is once again attacking public health care in Alberta, stating that she will pull Alberta out of federal programs that she does not like. She is pushing an American-style private health care system, a system that will not help anyone but the wealthy—
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Madam Speaker, I learn so much from my colleague from Vancouver East about housing. She is such an expert on housing. We all should listen to her and hear the call that she brings to this place.
I am going to start today with a bit of a story because we are in the House debating this bill and the need for dental care for Canadians, which would bring some relief for Canadians who are struggling right now. I have told this story before, but I want to share it again.
I spend a lot of time door knocking in my constituency. It is very important for members of Parliament to speak to their constituents as often as possible to find out what those concerns and issues are. One day I knocked on a door in one of my neighbourhoods. It was a pretty affluent neighbourhood. I knocked on the door and was talking to a gentleman who was telling me about the fact that the issue of dental care was a massive issue for him. He had a dental plan, and his children had access to dental care. His family was fine, but his concern was for the children who were going to school with his daughter who did not have those things.
I think about that a lot when I stand in this place. I think a lot about the fact that, as parliamentarians, our job is not to get things to make our lives better. Our job here is not to do things to benefit ourselves and those who are our friends. Our job as parliamentarians, and the reason I am a New Democrat, is to make lives better for all Canadians so we can help folks who are struggling. That is our job in this place, so I think about that gentleman an awful lot and the fact that his concern was around others. I am so proud to represent people like him in Edmonton Strathcona, those who care about their neighbours.
I am a mother. I have children. They are not as young as they once were, which is the way growing up works. I do want to acknowledge that I come to work in this place and I have this incredible privilege to ensure that my children will always have access to dental care. That is something that all of us in this place need to reflect on, and I am going to go back to that in a few minutes.
Our public health care system is full of holes. It does not make sense that our public health care system does not include dental care. It does not make sense that our public health care system does not include pharmacare or mental health care. At what point did we decide that parts of our bodies needed to be protected and covered and other parts did not? It does not make any sense.
It does not make sense to pretend that our teeth are not actually part of our body. From a health perspective, it does not make sense, and from an economic and fiscal perspective, it does not make sense. If I had the power right now to fix those gaps in our health care system and I could do that today, I would. It is one of the most important things, as parliamentarians, we should be doing.
Today, we have an opportunity to fix one of those gaps. I am incredibly proud to support Bill C-31 to get dental care for some of the people in Canada who need it the most, children under 12. If we do our job in this place, we could get half a million kids the dental care they desperately need. We can get them that dental care. We can get it for them and for all kids, not just the kids in families that can afford it. We have known for decades that dental care belongs in our health care system. It has been 58 years since the Royal Commission on Health Services called for dental care to be included in our public system.
I have said this before as well, but the most common surgery performed on preschool children at most pediatric hospitals in Canada is for the treatment of dental decay and the health implications that stem from that. We are asking families in this country to make heartbreaking decisions on protecting their children's health and their teeth or paying their bills, paying for groceries and paying for gas for their vehicles. That is a decision we should never be asking people in Canada to make.
I said earlier that I know that I stand in this place as somebody who has a great deal of privilege. I have a wonderful salary. I have a wonderful benefits program. My husband has a well-paying job. He has a dental program. My children will never have to worry about their teeth or about having dental care accessible to them. I feel deeply fortunate for that.
All of us sitting in the House should feel deeply fortunate for that. The dental plans that we have cover us and our families. What kind of people would we be if we did not want all children in the country to have the things our children have? What kind of person would I be if I could look at my daughter and say, “Thank goodness that my daughter Keltie has dental care,” and then look at someone else's daughter and not want that for them? How could I do that?
I will tell members that there are Conservatives sitting in the House right now who have already voted twice against dental care for children. I want them to know that I see them. Canadians see them.
Conservatives voted against health care 50 years ago. They voted against one of the things that Canadians see as fundamental to our identity and fundamental to who we are as a country. Fifty years ago, Conservatives voted against that, and now they are voting against dental care. They are fine having dental care for their families, and they are fine having dental care for themselves, but they do not want dental care for the children across the country in their constituencies and in their ridings. I have no idea what they must say to the people in their ridings to justify this. I have no idea how they can say, “For me, it is great. For you, not so much.”
It is horrendous. All children deserve dental care. Every MP who voted against dental care in the last Parliament, and I will acknowledge that that included Liberals, is saying that what they have access to, what they are entitled to, others are not. That is disgusting.
Another thing that I want to bring up within the bill, Bill C-31, is the support for rent. Winter is coming. We know that. Winter comes with so many more challenges for vulnerable people in Edmonton.
This year is going to be, as we will imagine, harder than most because everything costs so much more. We already have a homeless crisis in my city and in cities across the country. Things are getting worse.
The support in the bill for renters and for low-income people who rely on the GST rebate is really not that much: $500 for renters and a temporary doubling of the rebate. It is not that much money overall, but the difference in one's life, when one is living on the edge, would be enormous. The opportunity to prevent people from becoming homeless and to help people who are really struggling right now is enormous. We have to do what we can for these people.
The support in the bill would be the difference between holding onto a place to live and becoming homeless for hundreds and maybe even thousands of Canadians. It would be the difference between buying groceries and going without. It would be the difference between hope and despair.
People are struggling to pay for everything right now. Groceries are more expensive. Rent is more expensive. Gas is more expensive. I know that it can feel overwhelming for many Canadians right now. That is what these programs are about. Universal dental care, and social programs like it, raises people up. They give people opportunities.
After all, that is ultimately what the democratic government is supposed to be. It is supposed to be people coming together to make laws, make rules and make programs that create a stronger, healthier and happier Canada.
I like to hope that we are all in this place wanting to make a positive difference in our communities and for our constituents. I know we do not all agree on what that looks like, but I believe in the power and the equity of social programs delivered by government, and the power of people lifting each other up. I am proud today to say that, because of the work of New Democrats, Bill C-31 would do that.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour to stand as the representative for Edmonton Strathcona today to speak about the budget implementation act, Bill C-19.
I thought I would start today with some of the parts of the budget implementation act that I like and am very supportive of. I know many people think politicians only oppose, but I have to say there are things in this budget implementation act that I really like, and that I am really proud of. I thought that was where I would start, and then I am going to dig down to a few of the things in this budget implementation act that cause me a lot of concern and a lot of problems.
However, the first thing I want to say is that I am absolutely delighted to see the first step taken to recognize the desperate need for dental care for children in this country, and I am so proud to be part of the New Democratic Party that made that happen in this budget implementation act.
The previous member for St. John's East was just here today. I just had an opportunity to speak to him earlier today, and I can say his name now. Last year, in the previous Parliament, Mr. Jack Harris brought forward the exact bill to make sure dental care was available for children, and the Conservatives and the Liberals voted against it.
That is how we know that what we are seeing in this budget implementation act is clearly the work of the New Democratic Party. This is something we have been able to provide for Canadians, and as somebody who is part of that caucus, I am so proud. The biggest change and increase in health care for Canadians in decades is happening with this government and this budget implementation act.
I wanted to start with dental care. The single biggest reason children end up in the emergency room is that they do not have access to dental care. I have told the House before that I have two children, and I am very lucky I have a dental plan that comes with my employment, so when both my children required braces, we were able to do that. However, for so many children in this country, that is not possible, so I am very excited about that change.
I am very excited about some of the investments in housing. The joke we always hear in here is that the NDP's response will always be, “It is not enough.” I am going to say that many times today, but I am happy there have been investments in housing and that there is an additional investment of $1.5 billion to build new affordable homes and make changes so Canadians can save hundreds of dollars a month in rent.
I am happy to see there is a ban on foreign homebuyers for the next two years. I am happy to see an additional investment of $4.3 billion in indigenous housing. Everybody in this place should know that this is insufficient for the need, and it is insufficient for the demand, but I am happy to see it in the budget implementation act.
I am happy to see some of the actions taken on tax fairness. I have stood up in the House time and time again and demanded we do more to ensure our tax system is equitable and fair. Canadians are paying more and more for groceries, for rent, for gas and for all of the things they need, but their salaries have not gone up. If things are costing more, and the people who are making money are not making any more money, I wonder where all of those dollars are going. I have to say, they are going to the ultrawealthy.
We do need to do more to make taxes fairer, so while I am excited to see there is a tax on financial institutions, it is not what was promised, and while I am excited to see a luxury tax, it is not enough. We did not see the excess profit tax we wanted to see, so we will keep pushing for some of those things.
There are a few things I certainly could go into more detail with, and I am aware I am going to run out of time, so I want to talk a bit about some of the things I have concerns about. One is a very small thing, and I know I may be one of the only people in this place who is deeply concerned about this. However, in this budget implementation act, it would become illegal for Canadians to break Canadian laws in space. It would become illegal for Canadian companies to break Canadian laws on the moon.
Members may wonder why this matters to the member of Parliament for Edmonton Strathcona, and I am going to tell them why. I have spent 20 years pushing for Canada to do more to ensure that we have corporate responsibility for our corporations when they work abroad. Right now, this budget implementation act says that people cannot break the law if they are on the moon, but the way the government works right now is that if someone is in Guatemala raping and murdering indigenous people, it is no problem. If someone is in Papua New Guinea causing environmental destruction that will never be recovered, it is no problem, or in Zambia, Namibia, Nicaragua or Ecuador.
Last week, two indigenous leaders from the Amazon pointed out to us that the lungs of our planet are being attacked by Canadian mining companies and we are not holding them to account. We are not doing what we need to do to protect them. It is too bad those Canadian mining companies are not working on the moon, because that is when the government cares. It does not give us a core ombudsperson who can do the job, but it is happy to make sure that the moon is safe. That is where we are at the moment.
The other thing I will talk about, which members have heard me say many times, is that there is not nearly enough in this budget implementation act to deal with the scale and scope of a just transition for workers in Alberta. It is workers across the country, of course, but we know the impacts will be felt in Alberta more than they will be felt anywhere else in this country. Our economy has more invested in the oil and gas sector, and as the economy shifts, we will need more and more investment in the transition.
We should be investing in post-secondary education, making sure it is more accessible, more affordable and easier to access so that people can retrain for different jobs. We should be thinking of massive projects we can do that will employ workers, unionized workers, to build electrical grids and other infrastructure projects that we are going to need as we go forward into the new economy, and we are not seeing that investment here.
One day a few weeks ago, I asked a member of the government what they were planning to do for Alberta, and basically I was told that they are really excited to invest in the auto sector in Ontario. That is great and I am happy to see that, as it is important, but how exactly is that helping with the just transition for Alberta? We need to see a clean jobs training centre. We need to see just transition legislation. My colleague, Linda Duncan, who represented my riding before me, worked so hard on that. She worked on it for 11 years. We still do not have those supports for Alberta workers.
Another thing I want to talk a bit about is the direction and control aspect of this. I have worked very closely with some of my colleagues. The member for Northumberland—Peterborough South and I have worked very closely to move forward the work on a just transition. I was really happy to see that the member for Elmwood—Transcona was able to get some modifications to what was in the BIA on direction and control. This is something that protects charities. My goodness, of all the things we should be working toward, it is making sure that the charitable sector is able to do its job effectively and well.
I realize that I am running out of time. I could talk about a whole bunch of other aspects of the BIA, but I will say that I am disappointed that there is not nearly enough on just transition. I am disappointed that we have no actual increase in health transfers, despite what we hear from the government. I am disappointed that there is nothing for long-term care in this budget implementation act and, of course, I am disappointed there is nothing for mental health. Finally, we really wanted and expected to see something on the disability benefit, and we have not seen that yet. That is a shame, because this is something that has been promised to some of the most vulnerable people in our communities, so it is disappointing that it is not in the budget.
I am proud of the victories we have been able to win with this budget implementation act. I am proud of what we see in it, but this is not a budget that a New Democrat would have brought forward. We will continue to fight. We will continue to push, and we will continue to get wins for Canadians.
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- Apr/25/22 3:54:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my question for my colleague is one that I will repeat many times for many of his colleagues within the Conservative Party. They have made it very clear that they do not support spending on things like pharmacare, dental care and supports for seniors, and I am wondering how he justifies that to his constituents in New Brunswick. How does he justify that he does not think the people in his constituency deserve dental care?
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- Mar/29/22 12:30:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, of course I think it is important that we work as a team. It is something I called for in my speech. Canadians can be proud of the efforts that parliamentarians have taken to work collaboratively and together to find ways to move things forward, but my role is to hold the government to account when I feel it is not moving far enough and fast enough. That is certainly the case with the situation in immigration.
Our immigration system was deeply broken before we got into this situation. Every single one of the 338 members of Parliament in the House knows that we hear time and time again from our constituents about how the system was broken before this crisis. That is something we can all work together on going forward.
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- Feb/10/22 11:52:31 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague is a member of the international human rights subcommittee with me, and I look forward to working with him on many of the global issues we will be tackling in that committee.
In terms of his question, I think there is a real need for a conversation, a serious, non-political, science-based conversation, on how we reduce restrictions and protections. As we move forward, we all want to get out of COVID-19. I want my children to go back to school. I want my daughter to—
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- Feb/10/22 11:50:05 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague has been a tireless advocate for the care community and for workers across this country, and I thank her for all of her efforts in that regard.
In Alberta, this is not something new for us. We have been seeing some very serious attempts to privatize large swaths of our public health care system. Right now in Alberta, for example, we regularly do not have an ambulance that is available to respond to emergencies in Edmonton, Red Deer, Calgary and many rural communities. The testing systems that we have in place are becoming privatized. So much of our health care system is under attack, and I think Canadians need to understand how dangerous that is.
I do not believe that Canadians want a two-tiered health care system. I do not believe they want an American-style system that leaves so many behind. We need to be very vigilant as we go forward to ensure that we increase our health care transfers to the provinces, that we ensure that the Canada Health Act is improved and that we have things like mental health care, pharmacare—
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- Feb/10/22 11:37:12 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to address my colleagues in the House of Commons today to talk about the opposition motion. I will be splitting my time with the very articulate and intelligent member for Vancouver Kingsway.
I want to start off by saying what I know we all are aware of: The actual enemy, the enemy we are all trying to fight, is COVID-19. It is not each other; it is not convoys or individuals. It is a disease. It is a global health pandemic. We know that this global health pandemic has been incredibly hard for so many people. In this place, we sometimes lose sight of the fact that people have lots their loved ones. Almost 35,000 Canadians have died, and that is 35,000 families, parents, children, brothers, sisters and friends.
Over three million Canadians have become sick, and we still do not know what the implications of that will be for the future. We are hearing some specialists say that one in four Canadians will have long-term impacts from COVID-19. Three million Canadians have been sick. That is just to date and those are just the ones we know about. It is important to remember some of these things in this place.
People's livelihoods have been deeply impacted too. In my riding of Edmonton Strathcona, a number of entrepreneurs have tried to start businesses and they have not been able to get the support they need. There are the workers and people in the artistic community. Edmonton Strathcona is the heart of the artistic community. It is where the Fringe Festival is and where the Edmonton Folk Music Festival is. All of these artists have not been able to earn an income and have not been able to do what they do for a living.
As terrible as that has been, we also need to consider what has happened to our teachers, who we are asking to go online and off-line, and consider the difficulties they have had to deal with if they have families at home they are trying to protect while also trying to protect our children. We have put an immense pressure on health care workers and other essential workers. We have an overwhelmed health care system. We have the opioid crisis and our mental health challenges. All of these things are terrible and we really do need to look at them, but we cannot lose sight of the real enemy here and the real enemy is COVID.
I understand the restrictions have been hard, but I honestly believe they have been necessary. A personal hero of mine is a doctor in Alberta named Dr. Vipond. He keeps saying that we are using the wrong word. These are not in fact restrictions; they are protections. Maybe that is how we need to look at this. Maybe that is a way we can look at this going forward, that these are protections.
We do not know how successful these protections have been. We do not know how many more people might have died if these protections had not been in place. We do not know how many more variants we would have had or how much longer we would be in COVID-19 if these protections had not been there. We know masks, smaller social gatherings, vaccinations and PPE help. All of these things make it easier for our health care systems to continue on and make it easier for us to keep our loved ones and ourselves safe.
As many members know, Alberta will be lifting all of the protections. Some of my Conservative colleagues enthusiastically cheered this earlier today. However, before people get out their “best summer ever” hats or “best spring ever” hats, I want to remind members in the House that since the best summer ever, thousands of Albertans have died. That is thousands of Albertan families that have been devastated.
Why is Alberta lifting restrictions? Alberta is lifting restrictions because a handful of angry men have blocked our border and the premier cares more about what those “truckers” think, and I use quotes very deliberately, than about the health and wellness of the people of Alberta. We have a premier who is more concerned about his polling numbers than he is about enforcing the actual laws that he put in place. Bill 1 was the first law Premier Kenney put in place. He is not interested in using it because that law was never intended to be used against people who vote for Premier Kenney. That law was intended to be used against indigenous people. That law was intended to be used against people protecting our climate.
COVID-19 does not have to be a death sentence, yet a person in Alberta is now more likely to die of COVID than heart disease, lung disease or any other single cause except old age. Why is that? In a word, it is because of politics. It is because we have a premier in Alberta who cares more about his poll numbers than about the health and well-being of Albertans.
Public health should not be subject to the whims of politicians. Public health must be guided by science and the science on COVID is very clear. Vaccines work. Masks work. Restrictions on indoor gatherings work. We should be using every tool we have to prevent the loss of life and the long-term impacts of COVID. Knowing that long COVID is with us, knowing that the impact will be with us for a long time, our health care system is going to be spending resources on COVID long after this virus is gone.
There are other solutions we can look at. I have stood up in the House many times and talked about vaccine equity. I have talked about how important it is for Canada to play a role. We all know there is no way we are going to get out of this pandemic in Canada while we fail to ensure that people around the world are able to get the vaccines and the protections they need. We know that, yet we have a government right now that refuses to donate the doses that are required.
The Liberals are proud of the fact that they have not even met the 50% mark of their promises almost three years in. They have continually failed to work with the WTO to have the TRIPS waiver signed so that countries around the world can access the recipes to make those vaccinations. It is so important to think about the fact that they do this to protect the profits of the pharmaceutical companies. These pharmaceutical companies are making tens of thousands of dollars a minute, and they developed these vaccines with public dollars.
I saw a quote yesterday on Twitter where someone made the point that having pharmaceutical companies be in charge of a vaccine rollout is the equivalent of letting oil and gas companies be in charge of climate change. Think about that for a minute. We are giving the ability to make vaccines that save people's lives to pharmaceutical companies whose entire reason for being is a profit margin.
We need the government to act more on this. We need it to change the CAMR, Canada's access to medicines regime. We need it to sign on to the TRIPS waiver. We need it to do more on COVAX, to actually care about those vaccines and care about getting them out the door. We need to support people around the world to have syringes, to have cold supply chains and to have PPE. It is not the same thing to try to vaccinate someone in a rural community in Uganda as it is to try to vaccinate someone in downtown Toronto. We need to support countries as they go through that.
In addition to what we can do around the world and the role we have to play there, we need to do more here. Our health care system in Canada has been decimated year after year. We should be having federal transfers that are 50% of the cost of health care. We do not have that anymore. That is not possible anymore.
I look at what the Conservatives are doing with this motion. They seem positively gleeful about removing all health restrictions, all the things that will ensure our ICUs can continue and all the protections for our doctors and essential workers. I try not to be cynical in this place and sometimes that is very difficult, but I do wonder: Are the Conservatives trying to destroy our health care system? Do they want to see our health care system crumble so that they can bring in the two-tiered American-style health care we have seen Jason Kenney and the UCP try to bring to Alberta?
We need to use science-based decision-making. We need to listen to experts. We need to see this pandemic as a global pandemic that requires a global solution. It is time to stop making this political. It is time to stop the empty words. It is far past time for us as parliamentarians to do the right thing for Canadians, for ourselves, for our children and for our parents.
It is way past time for us to do the right thing for people around the world.
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- Dec/3/21 2:07:15 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-3
Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate the new member for winning his seat in the last election.
I want to follow up on one of the questions that was asked by my colleague from Thunder Bay—Rainy River on the availability of health care workers. He spoke about his daughter, who is a paramedic, and I know that in Alberta there is a real shortage of paramedics. I have spoken to paramedics on their doorsteps, and the sadness, anger and exhaustion they expressed to me is really quite heartbreaking. We are hearing that from paramedics, from doctors, from nurses, from all health care workers.
I wonder if the member could speak a bit about the plan to get more health care providers in our system and to make sure that our health care system is more robust, with a better balance between federal transfers and provincial transfers, so that we have the publicly delivered, universally accessible health care that all Canadians need.
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