- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- Courtenay—Alberni
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $148,159.67
- Government Page
- Oct/30/23 6:39:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am urging this government to act. My colleague and I did work together. I really appreciate the fact that, when we kicked and screamed as New Democrats to support small businesses, to fix technicalities at an urgent time for small businesses, we were able to fix some of those problems. However, right now, we are not done yet.
A lot of these small businesses are just starting to recover. I am urging the government to not abandon them now. They are looking for an extension to the end of next year, not two or three years from now. They closed their doors for public health. There are 250,000 businesses that are at risk. We are asking the government to finish the job, support their recovery and give them a little bit more time. They deserve it. Small businesses and the workers in our country are the backbone of our economy.
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- Oct/30/23 6:35:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a privilege to rise today on a really important issue that is impacting small businesses throughout Canada.
Throughout the pandemic, small businesses closed their doors to protect public health and the people in our communities. They are the unsung heroes that are not talked about enough in the House or in this country. Obviously, many of them took a major hit financially.
I have some stats from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. It cites that 60% of small businesses are still struggling with pandemic debt. In fact, the average pandemic debt is $126,827. Forty-seven per cent of small businesses are operating with sales that are below normal, and 19% are at risk of closure. This is a significant number of small businesses, which are one of the economic drivers in our communities. Many workers are employed by and rely on small businesses to succeed.
My colleague, the member for South Okanagan—West Kootenay, has been pushing the federal government to extend the CEBA loan for one more year, for the full-fledged, forgivable portion. We have been calling for a CEBA extension. Right now, 250,000 businesses are at risk of closing their doors.
As New Democrats, we understand the critical need to support small business. We are glad to see the Bloc join in our call for a full-fledged extension to the end of next year. We are glad to see the Greens support our call to action.
However, can we guess who is missing in action? It is the Conservative Party. We cannot find the Conservatives when it comes to this critical ask that the Canadian Federation of Independent Business has identified as critical to supporting small business.
I am just going to read a note from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. It is part of their petition. They are asking people to write to the government. The petition says, “18 days isn't an extension. It's an insult.” That is what the federal government just offered small business when it comes to the CEBA loan.
Then, if they can, they have to go back to the bank where they got the CEBA loan. They have to come up with a deal by March and have the bank take over the loan, or they will lose the forgivable piece. Then they have to pay huge interest on top of that to the bank that finances them. This is absolutely an insult to these small businesses and those that closed their doors to protect our health.
I went on a business walk with Jolleen Dick, the executive director of the Alberni Valley Chamber of Commerce. We went into Flandangles Kitchen and Gifts in Port Alberni. I was talking to Chris Washington. Not only did Chris close her doors to protect public health, but she also kept her employee going. She went out and got a job so that she could pay her employee the difference on the wage subsidy. She has paid $10,000 a year for the last two years toward the debt, but she cannot afford to meet the deadline. She is on her way back up, but it is not fair to punish Chris Washington and Flandangles Kitchen and Gifts, which not only closed its doors to support public health but also supports our community.
Wildflower Bakeshop and Cafe is in the same boat. They paid $5,000 toward their loan. In fact, the mayor of our community, who owns a restaurant, told me that there is not a restaurant she knows of that has been able to pay back the CEBA loan.
I am asking the government this: Will it extend the full CEBA loan to the end of next year, with the full one-third nonrepayable portion, to December 31, 2024?
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Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege and an honour to rise on such a momentous occasion. I think about the work that my colleague from Windsor West has done to preserve such an important piece of his riding. I cannot say enough about his work in bringing all people together. The establishment of the Ojibway national park is a cumulation of many years, if not decades, of work.
I want to salute my colleague, because it takes a lot of work to do even the smallest project when it comes to conservation and to make sure all community members and stakeholders have been heard. Not only has he done that, but he has also brought together and supported the wishes of his local city council. He has brought forward concerns from labour, stakeholders, and obviously the environmental groups and the NGOs of the region. Most importantly, he has been working very closely with Caldwell First Nation, the rights holders of that region. That is absolutely the most critical piece.
To me, someone who has a national park reserve in his region, Pacific Rim National Park Reserve, which was put on the indigenous peoples' lands of the Tla-o-qui-aht, Uchucklesaht, Toquaht and Tseshaht without their permission, this is an example of the collaboration and true reconciliation that are needed. When we see a national park placed on the lands of the traditional landowners, the peoples of those lands, without their permission, it creates resentment.
My colleague from Windsor West has done this in a historic way, the right way to move things along. He has worked with Caldwell First Nation, and I give him huge credit, because this is what it needs to look like moving forward when it comes to respect, conservation and true reconciliation.
I also want to thank members of the Conservative Party, the Bloc and the Green Party, as well as the two members of the Liberal Party who got behind this bill. I was disappointed about the delaying tactics, about the government's trying to block this very important bill and this very important achievement that my colleague has been trying to move forward.
This national park would protect 200 of Canada's 500 endangered species. This is absolutely incredible. It is timely that we are debating this on the eve of Earth Day, which is tomorrow, at a time when we know we are seeing warming temperatures around the world, the threat of climate change and also the loss of biodiversity. It is so important that we do everything we can to conserve those critical pieces.
My colleague has talked about the importance of this location, which is in a temperate environment, and the fact that it has Carolinian forests that are a refuge for species at risk. This includes trees, fauna, amphibians and the Massasauga rattler. It is pretty wild for someone who comes from British Columbia to hear this. These are endangered species. As in other places in our country, people are fighting to protect these green spaces.
I think about green spaces in my own riding and the amount of work it took to protect the Kus-kus-sum, which is at the estuary. It is shared with my good colleague from North Island—Powell River. There is the work the community has put in, together with the Comox people, such as Tim Ennis, who led a really important group through the Comox Valley Land Trust to protect that land. I think about Meaghan Cursons and the work she does at the Cumberland Forest Society; Lynn Brooks at Arrowsmith Naturalists, which is trying to save the Hamilton marsh; Denise Foster, who worked with the Qualicum people and Snaw-Naw-As to save the estuary land in Qualicum; and of course the Wild Pacific Trail Society in Ucluelet, which also works with first nations for conservation resources.
I want to go back to the importance of reconciliation. In the creation of the Ojibway national park, one thing that I really like is that it is being done in collaboration with Caldwell First Nation. This is important. We have seen, with Pacific Rim National Park Reserve, promises from the government in a national park reserve where it promised beneficial agreements with first nations but did not deliver them. It is really important, as we see this park come forward, that the Caldwell people would be getting a beneficial agreement with the park so that they are also the operators of the park and ensuring that they get jobs out of it.
I want to quote Chief Duckworth, who spoke at committee. She said, “We know that we need a legislative framework in order to make this national park happen, and I am here to support the hard work that's been done and the hard work going forward.” It is really exciting to see this kind of important collaboration. It is really important that I highlight again the important work of my colleague from Windsor West.
As someone who ran the Tofino-Long Beach Chamber of Commerce in British Columbia for five years, I can say that we were the runner-up for chamber of the year, Mr. Speaker, out of 130 chambers of commerce, something that I know you are not used to, because I know people always laugh at the New Democrats and say that we are not small business people, but we are. We are the engine of the working people. We work the closest with working people and workers and small business people.
We really understand the importance of chambers of commerce and business organizations. They understand how important it is to protect the environment, to work with indigenous peoples and reconcile the damage that has been caused by colonial laws, to work closely together so that we can walk forward together. Of course, we know that when we protect the biodiversity and the environment, it is good for the economy. It is good for workers.
Also, as the critic for mental health and harm reduction, I know how important it is to get outside. Just the other night, I was with the Canadian Association for Physicians for the Environment, because I am co-chair of the all-party environment caucus, and we talked about the importance of getting outside and being in nature. There is no pill that one can take that is better and that would make one healthier than getting outside or getting on a bike.
My colleague is not only doing something that is good for tourism, good for the people in the community, good for climate action and good for protecting endangered species and biodiversity, but he is also improving the lives and the health of the people in his community. This is a tremendous achievement and, again, I salute him for this important work. It is so exciting to be here and it is an honour to rise and talk about this.
We know that the Gordie Howe bridge is going to be placed next to this area, which is going to create a lot of economic activity, but also challenges for the environment. This is an absolutely critical mitigation piece when it comes to biodiversity.
I do know that the government has committed $2.3 billion, which is far from adequate, in terms of its nature legacy fund. We need to go much further. The government will spend $31 billion on the Trans Mountain pipeline, and $2.3 billion to protect biodiversity. Its priorities are completely out of order. We need more money to support more initiatives like this, and I hope that the government, when it moves forward with this legislation, will invest heavily in this national park, this incredible legacy.
We are talking about really important environmental issues, and I want to talk about one of the greatest environmentalists in my life. It is Wayne Adams, from Freedom Cove. He just passed away. His funeral is going to be on Tuesday, and sadly I am going to be here, so I will not be able to join Catherine, Shane, Shauna and the many people in our community and the Ahousaht people whose territory he lived on. He lived on a floating garden and, really, a paradise and a park of its own, and that is the park of the ocean and our natural environment.
I salute Wayne. We are going to miss him so much. He was a renowned carver. People like Ken Thomson would travel to buy his art and store it. He was just such an incredible environmentalist himself.
Here we are, talking about the environment on the eve of Earth Day. It would be a big mistake for me not to talk about the legacy of Wayne Adams and what he taught us in Clayoquot Sound and the people in our region about how we can live differently, how we can live a much slower life and protect the environment, and the importance of biodiversity and the species and living in nature. I salute Wayne.
Back to the bill, my friend and colleague from Windsor West has been determined and tenacious. He has demonstrated the willingness to work with everybody. I hope that the people in his community really see the determination and effort that he has made. He was seventh in the order of precedence in the lottery for PMB and he chose this. It shows his commitment to the people in his community, to reconciliation and to social, environmental and economic justice.
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- Dec/6/21 5:10:09 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-3
Madam Speaker, I am honoured to rise today to speak to this important bill, Bill C-3. It is great to see both the Liberal Party and, it seems, the Conservative Party coming around to see the importance of paid sick leave. I have talked about this in the House quite significantly and so has my party. In fact, the leader of my party raised this 22 times throughout the pandemic. Here we are, 20 months after the top medical health professionals in our country decided that outside of social distancing and washing our hands, the top two things we could do to stop the spread of the virus and combat COVID-19 were to get vaccinated and for governments to implement paid sick days. It is really great to see that everybody is coming together today to do that, to protect workers, so that people are not spreading the virus.
We talk about people going to work while knowingly showing symptoms of COVID-19 or being unsure whether they should go to work or not. For many of these people, their spouses have perhaps lost their jobs because of COVID-19 or are unable to work, or they are the sole breadwinners in their homes and are scraping to get by even at the best of times. Whatever their circumstances, they are worried about how they are going to pay their bills, like most Canadians. Fifty per cent of Canadians were within two weeks of insolvency prior to the pandemic. We can think about how many families were terrified at the beginning of and throughout the pandemic about missing any work at all and how they were going to pay their bills and feed their families. Paid sick days are absolutely critical.
There is one thing we have not talked about a lot here. I was really honoured to be the small business and tourism critic for the federal NDP for the last six years, and to stand up and fight for small business. We do not talk about how important paid sick days are, not just for workers but also for employers and small business. I was always mystified when Conservatives would not support paid sick leave, because they say they are strong defenders of the economy and small business. I know Liberals were always patting themselves on the back throughout the pandemic on the important needs of small business, but throughout the pandemic, whether it be on the CERB or another program, we had to fight to make sure small businesses would be included. Initially, proprietors were not even going to be allowed to collect CERB.
Initially, people were going to get $1,200. New Democrats were able to put pressure on the government so that people could get $2,000. We brought forward the idea of a commercial rent assistance program. Of course the Liberals bungled it initially. They made sure it was set up and designed so that people had to have a mortgage to be able to apply for rent support. It was landlord-driven instead of tenant-driven. It was a completely broken program. We found out that there were some Liberal insiders delivering the program for the government and we were glad to put pressure on the government to fix that broken commercial rent program. My colleague from New Westminster—Burnaby and I brought the idea to the government. I am glad to see that it finally fixed it.
When it comes to paid sick days, people were going to work unsure of whether they had the virus or not. They were terrified and governments at different levels did not have their backs to make sure people stayed at home instead of bringing COVID-19 to the workplace and possibly infecting co-workers.
Whether it is in the private sector or in government, it is extremely costly when people get sick and spread the virus in the workplace. One would think it would make economic sense to provide a social safety net, so that people who were sick would stay at home, not spreading the virus in the workplace or ending up having to close throughout the country and shut down government services to Canadians. We do not talk enough, not only about the workers, but also about the impact on businesses and the economy. That is a really important argument for why this is absolutely critical.
As much as we appreciate the legislation before us, there are flaws that are apparent in it, such as a person having to work for 11 months to get access to the 10 paid sick days.
The Liberal government said it would restore the cuts to the federal public services that the Conservatives made. I mean, we can look to Veterans Affairs as a great example. The Conservatives gutted one-third of Veterans Affairs Canada under the Harper government. As a result, the backlog has grown to over 40,000 veterans who have been injured serving our country.
The Liberals said they were going to fix it. What did they do? They outsourced and brought people back in on temporary contracts instead of hiring people and sending the message to veterans that they are committed to them in the long term and are going to end the backlog forever and not just outsource for temporary jobs.
The Liberals are notorious for this and do it all the time. They are outsourcing throughout the government, and this is creating a huge problem, because we have contract flipping going on. Obviously, we do not want this practice to continue. We want the government to hire people and make sure they have job security and benefits they can rely on so that the people they are serving, like veterans, can count on the services being delivered to them. We want to make sure the government is open to amendments that all federal subjurisdictional workers have access to the 10 paid sick days. It is very important that we cover that.
The other thing I have not talked about is the fact that women are being disproportionally impacted. With a lot of the outsourcing and temp jobs in our country, women have been disproportionally impacted by COVID-19. Social services have failed people across Canada, and the lack of child care has had a huge impact. CBC reported that 100,000 working-age women have completely left the workplace since COVID-19, which is 10 times the number of men. We talk about having an employee work approximately a month to achieve one paid sick day, but this is disproportionally going to impact women if it takes 11 months to accumulate 10 days' sick leave.
I really hope the government will consider amending this situation, because we know that people who have been working at a job need that security. Also, we do not want them coming to work sick. We do not want them spreading the virus. We are in the fourth wave right now, and we do not know what the omicron virus, which is spreading quickly, is going to look like. We want to make sure we have workers protected throughout.
We also saw how fractured the health care system became throughout the pandemic. I could speak all day about the things we saw that were highlighted in the pandemic. However, when it comes to paid sick days, it is absolutely critical. This is a victory today for health care workers, workers across this country and professionals.
We are going to continue to ensure that workers across this country have support from us as parliamentarians, but I question why it took so long. Why did Liberals and Conservatives sit on their hands against medical health professionals' advice? Members have heard me talk a lot about the government failing to listen to medical health professionals, like in the opioid crisis. The medical health professionals have made very clear and sound recommendations. Even the government's own officials are asking it to decriminalize and provide a safe drug supply, but it has not done that.
The government does not listen to its health professionals when it comes to sick days or to the other crisis that is happening, which has taken more lives than we have seen in generations. However, I am hoping the government will act swiftly, start listening to its health professionals when it comes to developing policy, and act with much more urgency in the future.
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- Dec/2/21 1:31:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague talked a lot about the government needing to get out of the way. When it comes to merchant fees, Canada's merchants pay some of the highest fees in the world. In the U.K. they pay 0.3%, in France 0.28% and in Australia 0.5%. In Canada, we have a rate of 1.4% on the interchange fees.
Liberals, in the last budget, said they were going to do something about that and cap merchant fees, yet we have not seen any action from the Liberal-Conservative coalition. They protect the big banks, protect the big credit card companies and the super wealthy.
Does my colleague agree there is a time for government intervention when it comes to small businesses being hosed by credit card companies and the big banks?
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