- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- Port Moody—Coquitlam
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $129,260.13
- Government Page
Madam Speaker, I am so happy to be standing up for Canadians today on Bill C-352. This is finally addressing the anti-competitive behaviour that has been going on in Canada for decades, which has been supported by the present Liberal government, and the Conservative and Liberal governments before it.
These governments have been back and forth, ping-ponging the government status in this country for decades, and they have done nothing about the fact that consumers have been getting ripped off in the market. I want to thank the member for Burnaby South for raising this important debate in the House of Commons to finally address the lack of competition in this country and the overpriced goods and services that Canadians need to survive.
Canadians woke up this week to the news that corporate control of their medication was a reality. Loblaw and Manulife have potentially colluded together to limit access to life-saving medication for people in this country. Galen Weston is involved in Loblaw. We all know that. Galen Weston has been to committee many times about the skyrocketing price of groceries. We all know that Mr. Weston made the statement that these kind of profits are fine and there is nothing wrong with taking these kind of profits. Meanwhile, Canadians, people in my riding, are struggling to put food on the table.
Galen Weston, as an individual and as an influencer in the Canadian economy, has already got a disproportionate amount of control over people's ability to eat in this country. Now, we are in a situation where Galen Weston and the Loblaw company are going to have even more control over whether or not people, their family members and their friends have the medication they need to stay alive. This is serious business.
Although the competition board oversees anti-competitive behaviour, it has not had the teeth to enforce or make changes. I have been in this House all morning, and I heard the Conservatives say that they are there to create a business climate. This is the moniker of the Conservatives, and this is how they have won elections in the past. They talk about how smart they are on the economy, how smart they are on business and how they are going to make business so great.
I can say that the Conservatives are complicit in the fact that people are paying too much for their groceries, too much for their cellphone bills and too much for their medications. I could go on. The Conservatives work for corporations, and they have no idea how to run an economy.
There is something that bothers me as a woman standing in this chamber. I am a woman who spent 25 years in the grocery industry, many of those years as a business analyst, and many of those years out in the field as a salesperson working in Europe, the United States and Canada. However, because I am a woman, my voice is not heard and they think I do not know what I am talking about. The Conservatives, on their bench, have a number of members who are men, who talk down to me and speak to me like I do not know what I am talking about, when they have never had a job outside of a fast food restaurant chain.
I do not appreciate it. Canadians do not appreciate it. The Conservatives now and in the past, and the Liberals now and in the past, have been hoarding the profits that belong to Canadians through their taxes, and those Canadians should have access to medication and dental care when they need it.
In addition, they should have a national food program, so no child in this country goes to school hungry. Conservatives like to say that kids go to school hungry because their parents cannot afford food. It is true. Families are having a hard time affording food. Do members know why? They are starved of time and wages because of the policies of five decades of Conservatives and Liberals.
I know amazing parents who do not have time to get their children a healthy meal in the morning, at lunchtime and in the afternoon, because the capitalist-driven Conservatives and Liberals made the decision that they wanted those parents to work 12 to 14 hours a day. I think about the nurses and women who are working in the care economy, in long-term care homes. I think about the immigrants who come to this country to work in families, in people's homes, and are paid the minimum; they do not get status for themselves or their family, and their work is precarious. If they dare speak up and talk about the terrible working conditions they are forced into, they might get deported. It is tragic, yet Conservatives have the gall to stand up in this House today and say they are creating a good business climate and are concerned that too many people are going to the food bank. This is legislated choice and legislated poverty that was perpetuated by the Liberals, started by the Conservatives and continues today.
I will go to the Canada disability benefit. I cannot believe that I am the only one who receives daily messages from people with a disability in this country who are living in poverty and getting displaced by these corporate Conservatives and Liberals, who have decided that the best thing we could do is to upzone every property in this country, give it all to the developers to build luxury condos and stick seniors out in tents on the street. I note that the member for Edmonton Griesbach has been talking about this for a very long time. People are living in tents in -35°C weather. I think about the member for Nunavut, who talks about no investment in housing. People in Nunavut are sleeping in shifts in a two-bedroom home where 12 people live.
It is disgusting that these governments, Liberal and Conservative, have done this for decades. As the Prime Minister walks down Sparks Street or Wellington Street, he can see that people are homeless and struggling. What does the government do? It starts to claw back people's CEBA. For low-income people, who needed CEBA and their government benefits, the government has decided to claw back the government benefits now so that they can repay their CEBA. However, the corporate CEOs who are not paying their fair share of taxes, who took the wage subsidy and gave it to their shareholders, are fine.
Members can see that I am a bit upset, because I listened in the House today to some of the debates and I even heard my Bloc colleague say that this debate did not matter. For Canadians, this debate matters. The anti-competitive law is an antiquated law. It has not been looked at. It is putting Canadians at risk.
I can tell members that it would not stand in any other country in this world that one person, someone like Galen Weston, could have so much influence over what we eat or what medications we can take and, in general, control the narrative of what Liberals and Conservatives will say in this House.
Therefore, today I am going to stand up for the NDP and say that we are there, working for Canadians. No other party in this House is.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague, the member for Elmwood—Transcona, for really shining a light on the fact that this government and the governments before it, both Liberals and Conservatives, walked away from those operating agreements. We knew for 10 years that those operating agreements would expire for social housing, community by community, and the governments did nothing. Therefore, I thank the member for sharing that.
Today, we are debating what is called the housing and groceries act, but I would like to call it the “finally addressing corporate greed act”, because this is about the fact that corporate greed has been unchecked through a series of Conservative and Liberal governments. It is now at the point where it is harming people and communities to epic proportions.
No longer is every Canadian able to have the essentials of life, starting with having a roof over their heads and food to eat. It is unbelievable that in Canada not every Canadian has a roof over his or her head or food to eat. In Ottawa today, I walked along Sparks Street. We know people are living on Sparks Street and Bank Street. We know them by name. It is unacceptable that they are having to live out in the cold, in the rain, their sleeping bag covered with a tarp, yet the Liberals, who have the power to change this, walk by them every day.
I want to share a story from my community, the juxtaposition of the massive numbers of luxury condos that are going up and at the same time an increase in the number of community organizations that are trying to feed the community through food rescue and recovery.
Food rescue and recovery is a brand new area since COVID. It came out of the need during COVID-19. When shutdowns first came, a lot of food inventory was in restaurants, airline food that needed to be redistributed and all kinds of redistribution. The community groups came to help. They jumped into action. They came to redistribute that food. It is has remained because the grocery chain CEOs saw an opportunity window.
There was a conversation happening in the media that input costs, transportation costs and all kinds of other costs were increasing, so consumers were ready to accept some increases in the cost of goods. However, the grocery chain CEOs saw an opportunity to skyrocket food prices and to take advantage of consumers. In that window since COVID, food prices have become out of control and food rescue and redistribution has become a necessary staple in our community.
Just last week, I was visiting some of those food rescue and food recovery organizations in my community. One of them is operated out of the legion. People were lined up looking for a healthy meal and food for their kids. Kids, seniors and families were all looking for an opportunity to have a healthy meal. The Liberal government has put this burden on communities and community groups with no resources.
At this point in time, I want to talk about an organization in my community that feeds over 3,000 people a month,. It has over 130 volunteers. The logistics of this are very difficult, but the volunteers do it because they love the community and they know people need it.
They applied for the local food infrastructure fund. Someone from the ministry came out, saw the organization and said, yes, that these were the amounts of the grants. The local food infrastructure fund recently responded to the community group, saying that while the program received a high volume of excellent project applications, only $10 million were available for the whole country. As a result, only a portion of project applications submitted would be given consideration for funding and that the group's project application would not be considered.
These are on-the-ground community groups, feeding 3,000 people a month, and the government has a $10-million program for all these kinds of organizations across the country. This is totally unacceptable and it is totally not enough resources.
Just this week, HUMA is doing a study on volunteerism. Those volunteer community groups, including food banks, are saying they are desperately in need of infrastructure money to keep these programs growing. I say this against the backdrop of the fall economic statement and the fact that the Competition Tribunal payment alone in regard to the Rogers-Shaw merger is $13 million, more than what the small groups in our communities that are keeping people fed get.
I will go back to the corporate greed that is harming people in our community and talk about persons with disabilities.
CEOs of corporations not paying their fair share of taxes is hurting persons with disabilities. Right now, the Liberal government is holding back on the Canada disability benefit. It is law. The whole House has said that it wants the Canada disability benefit out in our communities. The government is holding back by not taxing super-wealthy corporations efficiently so we can fund people living on disability pensions who are making less than $10,000 a year. Women with disabilities are disproportionately affected by this, with 58% living on less than $10,000 a year. This month is 16 days of activism against gender-based violence. We know that women are already at a higher risk of gender-based violence, and women with disabilities even more so. This is is totally unacceptable.
I recently sponsored a petition from a disability community. The government filed its response yesterday, and it is not going to do anything about an emergency response benefit for persons with disabilities. There was an article in the newspaper last week about a gentleman who lives on the island. His family was renovicted, demovicted, from its accessible, affordable home. The family members are living in a hotel, using 84% of their income, because it is the only place they can get right now to have a roof over their heads. Those are the choices that the Liberal government has made.
This all relates to Bill C-56. The NDP is going to support bill because it makes some small movements toward addressing corporate greed in the grocery industry and in housing, but it is definitely not enough.
I also want to take this opportunity to talk about why it is not enough and why corporate greed has really taken over the essentials and the necessities of life.
I think about the fact that the Liberal government and the Conservative governments before walked away from social housing. What did they do? They commoditized housing. They made it okay for large corporations and real estate investment trusts to buy up apartment buildings and then chop them up into shares, or units, and trade them on the stock exchange. They actually made housing a commodity, literally allowing it to be traded on the stock exchange. Those are the reasons our rents are going up in our communities. It costs $2,600 a month for a one bedroom in my community.
Again, the NDP is supporting the bill. We are happy to see movement, although it is very small. I just want to point out that Liberal and Conservative governments have, for 30 years, let corporate greed go unchecked. It is literally starving out our communities.
The member for Burnaby South has an additional bill, Bill C-352, to address this corporate greed. I hope everyone in the House takes this very seriously. People are living on the street without food.
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- Nov/30/23 10:25:51 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I wanted to ask if the member could expand on corporate greed and what really underlies these decisions to amalgamate and buy out competitors. Could the member for Elmwood—Transcona explain how this hurts consumers?
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member about breaking up large corporations that have limited the competition happening in Canada. My partner from the NDP was speaking about many of them recently, whether it was Target taking over Zellers or Lowe's taking over Rona. Does the member believe that this is a good idea for Canadian consumers?
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Madam Speaker, the member spoke quite a bit about the Competition Act and some of the new amendments, which are welcomed, but I want to talk about what is already existing there in relation to grocery prices.
We know that Loblaws and Shoppers Drug Mart merged about 10 years ago, but there has not been a review of that merger, which is an opportunity that exists in the Competition Act. The Competition Bureau could certainly move forward immediately and review if that merger has been beneficial to Canadian consumers. Does the member support that initiative?
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