- Member of Parliament
- Caucus Chair
- NDP
- Cowichan—Malahat—Langford
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 65%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $140,733.69
- Government Page
- Oct/31/23 11:42:36 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is truly remarkable to watch Liberals and Conservatives argue over housing. It is like watching two arsonists argue about who burned the house down. The Conservatives want us to magically think that these problems all started in 2015; in fact, what we are seeing today is the natural conclusion of decades of Liberal- and Conservative-backed policies that have gotten us to where we are.
I have a simple question: Do my Conservative colleagues support the call by housing advocates to stop the financialization of housing by implementing a moratorium on the acquisition of affordable housing units by financial landlords, as well as the creation of a non-profit acquisition fund? It has taken a long time for Liberals and Conservatives to dig this hole, and it is going to take a sustained effort to get us out of it. Does the member support that?
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Madam Speaker, no, absolutely not. I am proud to stand in front of my constituents of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford and show them concrete measures that I have been able to deliver as a member of Parliament, which are going to make a difference. Yes, there are going to be some kinks with dental care, and I agree that more needs to be done on housing, but there are measures here that are going to help Canadians, and I am proud that we have been able to deliver on them.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to acknowledge my colleague's speech. I appreciate the voice she gave to so many important issues, which are important not only in her community, but also in mine and those right across this country.
I think here in Canada we actually have a revenue problem. A new report came out today from Canadians for Tax Fairness. It reports that last year, $30 billion less was collected in tax from corporations than would be expected under existing rates. We can look at that revenue problem and look at the fact that oil and gas companies are making well over 100% in profit off of the back of working families right now. I hear Conservatives talk about the carbon tax, but there has not been a word from them on the corporate windfalls in oil and gas, which are affecting their constituents right now. They are not speaking up for them.
Could the member expand on the theme of the revenue problem we have in this country and the huge deficits in social spending, housing, health care and the ability to put good quality food on the table? Could she expand on the structural problems we have in place, from both the Liberals and the Conservatives, and how they have done a disservice not only to this generation but also to future generations?
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- Jun/6/22 2:47:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians are struggling to afford housing in cities across Canada, but the government is still allowing illicit foreign funds to make things even worse. For eight years, Chinese property developer Runkai Chen used wire transfers to launder tens of millions of dollars into Canadian banks. Canada has a broken system for tracking money laundering. The lack of action from the government only brings more hardship for everyday Canadians.
When will the government help Canadians by cracking down on money laundering?
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- Mar/21/22 4:40:56 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I truly believe that every member of Parliament is here for similar reasons. We want to do right by our community and we all have an overall goal of leaving Canada a better place than when we found it. I have always told people in my riding that the politics come into play because we have different ideas on how to achieve those very same ends.
In the present climate in Canada, Canadians from coast to coast to coast are really suffering. There is a lot of struggle out there. This is one of those moments in time when they are really crying out for bold policy. This is an opportunity for members of Parliament to ask themselves why they are here and if they are actually making a difference in people's lives.
I acknowledge that the motion before the House today, the motion brought forward by the New Democratic Party of Canada, is non-binding on the government. What it does do is send a powerful message because if the House were to vote in favour of this motion it would send a signal to the cabinet. It would send a signal that most of the MPs in this place, representing the majority of Canadians, want to see a shift in government policy to level the playing field and to address the very real concerns of Canadians.
What are we asking the government to do? We are essentially asking it to commit to a campaign promise and commit to a promise that was made in its budget. Excuse me if I sound a bit jaded. They sound like pretty simple things. However, I have been a member of the House since 2015, and I have a lot of unfortunate experience with Liberal promises that were left by the wayside.
It is a government that once promised electoral reform and cynically left it in the dust. It is a government that has promised sincere action on climate change, yet invested billions of public taxpayer dollars into a pipeline. Imagine investing in fossil fuel infrastructure in this day and age when all of the evidence of climate change surrounds us every day. What kind of a message is that sending to our children?
By every metric, whether looking at housing, at fuel, at the cost of food or at wealth inequality, there are multiple failures to be found. I acknowledge that my friends on the Liberal side are, in their way, trying to bring policy to address some of those core concerns. I will acknowledge that. However, if we look at the evidence on the ground we see that they are failing. They are not properly addressing those very real concerns that Canadians have.
In my riding of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, in one year we saw housing prices go up anywhere from 30% to 40%. That is simply unsustainable. When I have families in Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, families with two incomes earning six figures, who are put on the street or given notice because the landlord sold their property to take advantage of the skyrocketing housing costs and, with their income level, they cannot find a place to rent, that is a real problem. That is an indictment on the current federal government's housing policy. The market is failing Canadians and, therefore, we must find non-market solutions to address this housing crisis.
Regarding fuel prices, I acknowledge that is something out of our control. There is a war going on in Ukraine and oil is one of the most volatile energy sources on earth. It always will be. It always has been. However, when we see price increases in my riding going up to over two dollars a litre last week, that puts a real strain on family budgets. It increases the cost of everything, from building materials to the cost of food, pretty much everything that is transported by rail or by truck. Families need a break.
If we look at wealth inequality, over the last two years we see Canadian families who have been having to deal with so much. We see that the richest people in Canada have increased their wealth by billions of dollars. That is not fair.
Therefore, what are we asking the government to do with its promises that were made in the campaign and in the budget?
We are proposing that it add a 3% surtax on banks and insurance companies with profits of over $1 billion. Just so that is clear for the residents of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, a company will have had to have made a profit of $1 billion before the tax would apply. It is simply not right when we have families struggling with the basic necessities of life to be seeing those record profits being made and they are at the other end. We are simply asking that we honour those promises, that we tax extreme wealth at the high end and that we reinvest that money into our communities, reinvest it into working families and reinvest it to make our communities resilient.
I have listened to some of the debate today and Conservatives talk about addressing inflation through building more pipelines, giving a GST holiday to fuel or getting rid of the carbon tax. In my view, that is extremely short-sighted policy because it does nothing to address the inflationary pressures of climate change. It also ignores the fact that oil and gas are, as I said before, our most volatile energy sources.
Speaking of the volatility of that as a fuel source, the inflationary pressures that will come to us from climate change are going to be measured in the trillions of dollars. If we think that fuel prices now are high, imagine what is going to happen when we have conflicts arising around the world because of the scarcity of water resources or the fact that agriculture has been devastated or that coastal cities are inundated because of rising flood waters. These have real economic costs. Forget the ecological argument; listen to the economic argument. How many future tax dollars are we prepared to spend to address these issues?
We know they are going to drive up costs. To suggest in the House that we should build more pipelines and that we should have some kind of small short-sighted tax holiday is completely ignoring what the costs will be if we continue to use fossil fuels and continue to let climate change go on a runaway course.
In the reinvestment in our communities, I will say what I would do in Cowichan—Malahat—Langford. I have a few areas where that money could be reinvested, the opioids crisis for one. I have too many residents on the streets of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford who are playing Russian roulette with their lives every time they buy toxic street drugs. We have a massive housing crisis. We need to reinvest those funds to make sure that people have the right to housing established clearly, and we need the government to step in and build those non-market units.
As for pharmacare and dental care, if we want to help working families, why do we not help them with the unexpected budgetary costs they have with dental bills and pharmacare bills? However, when we have given the House the opportunity to vote on those measures, talking about coalitions here, what about the Liberal-Conservative coalition? They combined have voted against dental care. They voted against a wealth tax. They voted against pharmacare, all measures that are designed to help working families. Words are cheap, but luckily this place keeps the receipts. It is noted in Hansard and in the way both those parties have voted. I want to make that very clear.
We could also invest in bigger health transfers. I know my Bloc colleagues have talked repeatedly about provincial demands for more federal health transfers, and I know that has been a demand of all provinces. Surely the last two years have shown us how strained our health care systems have been. This is a real opportunity for us to reinvest those excess profits to build a system we can all be proud of, the system we know we can have in Canada where no one is left behind, to honour the vision of the people who built it in the first place.
I will end by saying that I hope all of my colleagues in the House will find it in themselves to vote for this motion and to signal to the people of Canada that they are serious about enacting the bold policies that we need.
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- Mar/4/22 10:34:56 a.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate to be able to rise today and contribute to the House's debate of the Liberal government's bill, Bill C-8, which has been faithfully reported back to the House by the Standing Committee on Finance.
The committee did consider one amendment to that, and of course today we are dealing with the report stage amendments brought forward by my Conservative colleagues. I very much appreciate the work done by committee members in examining this bill. I especially want to thank my colleague, the member for Elmwood—Transcona, who is the finance critic for my caucus and has been shouldering a lot of work at that committee.
Bill C-8 is an act that would implement certain provisions presented to the House in the fall economic statement. It would be a gross understatement to say that the country, and indeed much of the world, have changed since mid-December. I know, from the feedback from people in my riding and people I work with here in the chamber, that the pace of change over the last two months has really left our heads spinning. We seem, as a country, to be lurching from crisis to crisis these days, and it is not giving people much of a breather to accept their changed reality. I am hearing a lot of accounts of the mental health stress this has put on people.
It was back in mid-December that we were just, at the House, beginning to get a glimpse of how bad the omicron wave was really going to be. I remember the news reports in early December that there was some hope that the variant, which first emerged and was detected in South Africa, did not seem to have as much lethality to it, but of course that was blown out of the water by the concerns of how rapidly it spread. Even if a smaller percentage of people ended up going to the hospital, that small percentage, when we had the variant passing through our population so rapidly, did give rise to very considerable fears that our hospital system would be overwhelmed.
Of course we had a change in leadership with one of our political parties in the House. We had the protests descend on Ottawa and many cities across Canada, which turned into an illegal occupation and blockades at our border, further putting strains on our relationship with the United States. Then, of course, beginning just a few short days after that ended, we now have a fully modern conflict raging in Ukraine, where unprovoked Russian aggression is now putting the lives of 40 million Ukrainians at risk.
Here we are. The world has changed quite a bit. I do want to acknowledge that it is a frustrating time for so many people, especially in Cowichan—Malahat—Langford. They are, like many Canadians, dealing with the inflationary pressures. They see the results in the price of food at the grocery store and the cost every time they fill up their vehicles.
What people have also witnessed over the last two years is the fact that so many of the wealthy in Canada, and indeed many of our most profitable corporations, have seen their profits soar during this time. Many of those companies actually took pandemic benefits and were guilty of paying out dividends to their shareholders.
It seems the hard-working families in my riding of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford are working twice as hard as their parents but for less money. These pressures are putting families at the breaking point. That is why I have always been proud to be part of a party that stands for trying to ease that inequality in Canada and making sure the very rich in our country do pay their fair share. If they do not, that burden ends up falling on working families.
In my riding, in the space of one year, depending on what part of the riding someone is in, we saw housing prices increase anywhere in the neighbourhood of 30% to 40%. That is in one year. With those stratospheric record levels of housing costs, of course many people were trying to sell their homes during that time to take advantage of the high prices. All of that selling in the Cowichan Valley also caused a huge crisis on rental availability, because when people are putting their house up for sale, usually the tenants are evicted as it is not really known if the new owner wants to inherit tenants or not.
We also have the worst record in the G7 when it comes to combatting climate change. In my province of British Columbia, we saw a record heat wave in June. We saw wildfires consume so many communities right across the province, and then just a few short months later, we saw catastrophic floods that effectively cut off the Port of Vancouver, our busiest port, from the rest of the country.
A smart government would be looking at this and looking at the evidence that these climate change natural disasters will keep piling up if we do not address them. A smart government would look at the economic toll this will place on our ability to raise revenue in the future.
As for my Conservative colleagues, who like to proclaim themselves as fiscally responsible, they should not ignore the damage this is going to do to future tax revenue and our ability to help communities from coastal inundation, protect them from wildfire danger and stand up for our hard-working men and women in agriculture, who seem to be dealing with flooding and droughts at a much more precipitous pace.
I know, from my time at the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, of which I have been a proud member for four years now, that all farmers will tell us they are on the front lines of climate change. They need to have some recognition of the good work they are doing. They also need a partner in Ottawa who is going to help them take advantage and thrive through these very uncertain times.
It is all about choices. With Bill C-8, I think there is a sense of regret. For me, it is a sense of regret for what could have been and what should have been. That being said, if through these measure, we are going to propose things like allowing small businesses to acquire equipment that will improve the quality of their indoor air, I think that is a solid investment. Just because we are starting to see some very hopeful signs of us getting out of this latest variant of COVID-19 does not mean there will not be future airborne illnesses. We want make indoor air quality much better, and we would if we were to make these targeted investments.
I also like the idea of allowing for an increase in the school supplies tax credit and allowing us to expand that eligibility criteria to include the electronic devices that educators benefit from. A lot of people are struggling to make sure they can get by on those family budgets, so little measures like that, for many families, can actually go quite a long way.
I am also interested in the proposal here in Bill C-8 about the refundable tax credit for the return of fuel levy proceeds to agricultural businesses. This has been an issue we have been seized with at the Standing Committee on Agriculture, because, especially when it comes to activities such as grain drying or even heating a barn, I am all for giving farmers an alternative that is not based on fossil fuels.
However, what we heard, very clearly, at the agriculture committee was that the technologies that are free of fossil fuels are not yet commercially viable, and they will not be so for another 10 years. Therefore, if we are going to make sure we are trying to give that price incentive, we still have to ensure that a viable alternative exists for our farmers, which is why I am in favour of giving them these very specific and targeted breaks, so they can make it through with their bottom line.
Part 2 of Bill C-8 would basically establish a 1% annual tax on the value of vacant or underutilized residential property. This would only be when the direct and indirect owners are non-residents or non-Canadians. Again, on housing, there are so many more ways that the government could have tackled this very big issue. I would say this is a good first start, but there is much more that needs to be done. I know the government likes to pat itself on the back with all of the things it has done with housing, but the proof is in the pudding. If we still see housing prices rise to these stratospheric heights, we have to measure the effectiveness of the policy against that reality.
I will conclude here by saying that we do have a federal budget coming in the next number of months. I sincerely hope the government realizes that this is the time for bold policy action, to really make sure Canada comes through these uncertain and very challenging times.
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- Dec/9/21 12:25:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, in my riding of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, the market has failed my residents, and it is still failing residents. We are regularly seeing houses overbid by $100,000.
I am wondering why the Conservatives did not take this opportunity to make mention of an indigenous housing strategy or of making a commitment to building non-market affordable housing. In my neck of the woods, and I think this is the same right across Canada, this is the type of housing that is in demand. People cannot afford to go out and buy houses. They need something that is non-market and affordable, and that is going to resolve their needs right now.
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- Dec/9/21 11:32:14 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I truly enjoy listening to my Bloc colleague's speeches in the House. They are always very vibrant and full of passion, and I sincerely believe that he comes to this place with a deep sense of caring for the housing situation we see in Canada.
The situation is quite dire. In my riding of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, we regularly see properties being overbid by $100,000. It is a real crisis.
I agree with the member's comments on the election. It was an unnecessary election that cost $600 million. However, the fact that all the major parties spoke so eloquently and passionately about housing gave me some hope and optimism that it would be addressed in this Parliament.
The motion before us today is a missed opportunity because the Conservatives do not make any mention of an indigenous housing strategy. They do not make any mention of giving aid to municipalities to help them with their land-use decisions. There is also no mention of building affordable non-market housing, which is so desperately needed.
I am wondering if my Bloc colleague could expand on the missed opportunities we see in the motion.
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