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Member of Parliament

Bonita Zarrillo

  • Member of Parliament
  • Member of Parliament
  • NDP
  • Port Moody—Coquitlam
  • British Columbia
  • Voting Attendance: 67%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $129,260.13

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 305 - Apr/30/24
Ms. Bonita Zarrillo (Port Moody—Coquitlam, NDP)
  • Apr/30/24 4:45:11 p.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-22 
Madam Speaker, I am going to share my time with the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley. I am standing today as a woman in Parliament. Every time I enter this place, I am aware of how different my experiences in life are from those of the men who have tried to keep women out of this place for 100 years or more. My colleague, the member for Winnipeg Centre, said it explicitly recently when she called out the Conservative Party's infringing on the status of women committee. The fact that the Conservatives recently chose to arbitrarily remove the respected chair of the committee not only disrespected the voices of women on the committee but also was symbolic of how the women in the House of Commons are often punished when their voice is too strong, by a system designed to benefit men in power. As I was reading through the budget this year, it was with the lens of being a woman and how, for 100 years, our needs have been second, for example with respect to child care. I have often said in the House that the only reason I am standing here is the $5-a-day day care I had access to when I lived in Quebec. That fact allowed me to go back to school and become a programmer analyst. That allowed me to capitalize on opportunities in the new, digital economy of Y2K. I know how important affordable child care is for women, and I am so pleased to see in the budget, with investments in educators as well, that it is going to be a gateway of economic empowerment. That reality for women cannot be understated. Child care is the second-largest payment for families after housing. I am incredibly grateful to the leader of the NDP and the member for Winnipeg Centre for finally forcing the government to enact affordable, quality child care in this country. The Liberals would not have done it on their own; they proved that over the past 25 years. It was 28 years ago that I benefited from the $5-a-day day care in Quebec. That is how long the rest of Canada has been waiting for accessible, affordable child care. The Conservatives would not have offered this type of child care at all. In fact, the Conservatives would walk back any kind of public, affordable, accessible child care if they were ever to get into power. I never want to see that. The budget is not an NDP budget, but there are clear examples of the difference between how the NDP uses its power for good to support people and how Conservatives continue, with their gut-and-cut ideologies, to hurt people. Conservatives have used their past powers to make their corporate friends even richer by instituting $60-billion corporate handouts, which I want to say the Liberals have continued to support, while they cut services for women, families, seniors and persons with disabilities. By contrast, the NDP, with only 24 MPs, forced the government to enhance the social safety net that lowers costs for Canadians by addressing affordability, health care, housing, climate and more. With that in mind, I need to address right away the deficit of respect the Liberals have shown for persons with disabilities, as it relates to the Canada disability benefit outlined in the budget. What is in the budget is not the Canada disability benefit in reality or in spirit. The Liberal government never seems to run out of money for handouts to giant corporations and rich CEOs, but when it comes to the benefit promised to people living with disabilities suddenly the government offers only crumbs. Offering only $200 a month through the Canada disability benefit, hidden behind an inaccessible and inequitable disability tax credit is not recoverable for the government. It is insulting, and the government needs to adhere to the NDP amendments to Bill C-22 and those that came from the Senate, to ensure that the benefit will lift persons with disabilities out of poverty. The Liberal government threw aside the advice and the input of disability advocates. Its own policy advisory council had resignations over the Canada disability benefit criteria. It disregarded the legislation, and worst of all, it disregarded people with disabilities. It is shameful. The government was told that the use of the disability tax credit would create a barrier to access. It did not care; it did it anyway. While the Liberals' inadequate Canada disability benefit is best understood as an insult, there are important items in the budget that we need to protect in order to significantly reduce the cost of living for persons with disabilities and to increase overall well-being. That includes the long-overdue protection for renters to stop them from losing their homes to speculators and renovictions. The current government, and the Conservatives before it, let this country lose affordable housing at a rate of 11:1. The Conservatives and the Liberals are the architects of the reality we are living now, walking away from affordable housing investments for decades and shovelling money to developers gentrifying neighbourhoods with investments in condos 50 storeys high. They left persons with disabilities behind, leaving them with less accessible and less affordable housing. In the budget, the NDP forced the government to create a rental protection fund, the housing accelerator fund, and a new rapid housing stream to build deeply affordable homes. It is only because of the NDP that we are having a revitalization of affordable and accessible homes in this country. The NDP has also secured historic expansions to our universal health care system for persons with disabilities and all Canadians, a health care system that is under attack of privatization by Conservative premiers across this country. That cannot happen. Privatization of health care and long-term care is hurting Canadians, and the NDP will not stand for it. We will always push back on privatization of health care at the same time as we advance historic wins for Canadians, like the universal single-payer pharmacare and the transformative dental care program that thousands of children in Port Moody—Coquitlam have already benefited from. We stand against Conservative ideology that puts profits in the hands of CEOs off the backs of people who are just trying to stay healthy. I echo that statement for the Liberals who are standing by and letting it happen. The NDP pharmacare program will start with life-saving, free diabetes medication and devices and free birth control for millions of Canadians. These are equity measures Canadians cannot risk losing to a Conservative government that courts incels for votes and disregards the voices of women. With respect to persons with disabilities, the Centre for Health Services and Policy Research Institute at Queen's University wrote, in an article in 2020, “Canadians with disabilities may skip doses of medication or neglect to get their prescriptions filled because of the cost of prescription drugs.” The article also stated that pharmacare would “remove financial barriers to prescription drugs, and overcome inequities among Canadians for this important aspect of health care.” The Conservatives have already acted on trying to prevent pharmacare for Canadians, which is a program that would save $3.5 billion on Canadians' medications and billions more on preventing unnecessary trips to hospitals and doctors' offices, and on ongoing care for preventative illness. Another important program the Conservatives do not support is the creation of a national school food program. It was in my riding that James Moore asked, “is it my job to feed my neighbour's child?”. Conservative James Moore said, “I don't think so.” My NDP colleagues and I believe it is our job to make sure no child goes to school hungry. I am going to close by saying women have been ignored in the economy for a long time, and I note that the Liberals put the support of a care economy, which I agree with 100%, and the launching of a national caregiver strategy, which is amazing work by James Janeiro and others in the caregiving realm, under the chapter heading “Lifting Up Every Generation” rather than under economic growth—
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