- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- Port Moody—Coquitlam
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $129,260.13
- Government Page
- May/30/24 2:31:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, a landmark report this week exposed that women with disabilities are more likely to visit the emergency room during pregnancy, because reproductive care is not accessible. It is impacting their mental health during pregnancy and postpartum. People with disabilities have had enough of the Liberals' half measures. The Liberals are all talk, no action, just like their Canada disability benefit that is nowhere near enough to live on.
What is the government going to do to address the unacceptable barriers to care for pregnant women with disabilities?
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- May/30/24 2:14:31 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, big airlines are raking in billions of dollars of profits off the back of unpaid work. In Canada, flight attendants, who are disproportionately women, work an average of 35 hours for free every month.
There is no reason that big airlines who make huge profits should be making their staff work for free, yet the Liberals have allowed big airlines to take advantage of workers.
Today, flight attendants are in Ottawa, fighting for their right to be paid for the work they do. They want the government to change the laws, to correct this unacceptable status quo and to ensure that when flight attendants are at work, in uniform, performing their duties, they are being paid. It is only fair. New Democrats agree.
The government must stand up to corporate greed and protect workers. Flight attendants deserve better, and today, I raise their voices here in the House of Commons by saying that unpaid work will not fly.
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- May/28/24 2:50:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, flight attendants, who are predominantly women, work an average of 35 hours a month unpaid. No worker should have to do their job without a paycheque, but the Liberals and the Conservatives have let the big airline CEOs get away with it. The Liberals have even given these airlines millions of dollars in handouts and, recently, the Liberals told flight attendants that they should simply file complaints with those same CEOs who are ripping them off. Why are the Liberals putting the burden on workers instead of holding profitable CEOs to account?
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- May/27/24 11:25:38 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the firewall manifesto envisions that decision-making processes that affect people's lives and freedoms flow through premiers' offices. This is exactly what the leader of the Conservatives wants to do when he says he will use the notwithstanding clause to pass his laws. The NDP is here to stop him. This right-wing ideology of Conservatives imposing their will on women and all Canadians is dangerous and serves only the corporate class who have controlled federal governments since Confederation.
This reality is so obviously true in housing. Governments at every level have overseen the financialization of housing. Instead of protecting our social housing stock for people, they have encouraged upzoning and gentrification in the name of density. Density dreams belong to developers, who have made millions and billions of dollars off the displacement of low- and middle-income Canadians. The financialization of housing is only working for the wealthy and leaving people behind. The well-being of persons with disabilities and seniors is sacrificed to millionaire CEOs.
Liberal and Conservative governments have ensured that truly affordable social housing has been sacrificed to create an asset class for the wealthiest people and companies across the globe. Right now in my riding of Port Moody—Coquitlam, hundreds of affordable townhomes and apartments are being emptied and are sitting empty. There are entire blocks of homes boarded up, ready for redevelopment, and some of these homes have been empty for years. Developers choose not to fill them so they do not have to spend one cent on maintenance or pay tenants out when the time comes to begin their redevelopment. This is wrong.
During this housing crisis, governments have allowed wealthy developers to hoard housing, allowing perfectly good homes to sit empty to protect the profits of corporations over the well-being of residents. High-end sales centres for luxury condos exist in every neighbourhood across this country, right beside where low- and middle-income Canadians have been displaced. These corporate density dreams are not focused on local buyers; they are marketing their luxury product overseas. When a traveller arrives in the international terminal of YVR, they are enticed by posters of luxury housing to attract international investment.
The current housing crisis is a crisis of negligence in protecting precious housing supply that people call home. I hear the calls for supply in the community, but this is not what this bill is talking about. I need to clarify what that supply call needs to be: affordable housing supply. The federal government must put a laser focus on maintaining what is left of housing co-ops, purpose-built rentals and not-for-profit housing in the country. It has to put that before investment. The federal government needs to immediately reinvest in social housing, not in capital loans, which it so feebly continues to bring forward, but ongoing stable operating funds to get people housed now.
The need to act cannot wait, and the solution is not Conservative gatekeeping. Conservative policies are the ones that caused this problem. We cannot have one more person lose their home because they have been displaced by corporate capitalism.
Let me reiterate how Canadians got into a situation where homelessness is growing, rents are skyrocketing and property purchase is out of reach for an entire generation. Conservative and Liberal governments encouraged the financialization of housing instead of protecting our social housing stock. They encouraged upzoning and gentrification in the name of density and profits. Density dreams are for developers. The financialization of housing is only working for the wealthy, and the most impacted right now are renters. We are losing rental homes at a rate of 15:1. For every new unit the government prides itself on building, an unaffordable new unit, it has not protected 15 other renters, who now have to find themselves evicted or demovicted from their homes.
The government must immediately act to end the financialization of housing before more Canadians lose their homes, before more children are displaced from their schools and their friends and before more seniors lose services as they are forced out of the community in which they live. I can guarantee that what the Conservatives have proposed in this bill would not do that. As a city councillor in Coquitlam, I saw how these types of policies played out, with the trading of density happening in the corner offices, while seniors, persons with disabilities and single moms were losing their homes.
I am going to tell the story about 500 Foster, a redevelopment in the city of Coquitlam. I went to see those folks before a public hearing, only to find out they received a letter from the developer, even before upzoning, telling them to start moving out. There was a single mother with a child who has a disability and a senior over 70, begging me to find him what he called an “old person's home” to move into. This is going on in every community of this country.
I will close by saying that New Democrats that know housing is a human right and that we will continue to stand up for people and block the harmful ideologies of the corporate Conservatives, who are attempting to roll back the clock so that the Leader of the Opposition can continue to act like a high school bully.
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- May/27/24 11:23:02 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there are nine days until the 80th commemoration of D-Day, and it seems that the leaders of this world have learned nothing.
Now, what we are here to debate today is the Conservatives' gatekeeper bill. The Conservatives do not like gatekeepers, unless it is them. The leader of the Conservative Party is the largest threat to Canada's freedoms since Confederation. A little known fact is that the leader of the Conservatives and I went to the same high school. Yes, I am a Calgarian. When I read this bill, it reminded me to revisit the far-right manifesto written in Alberta by the far-right mentors of the Leader of the Opposition, called the “firewall”. It lays out a plan to gatekeep Alberta against Canada, punish those who believe in a strong, united Canada and reward those who will adopt and manifest its doctrine of power with exclusion.
As we speak, Danielle Smith, the leader of the UCP and the Conservative Premier of Alberta, is passing laws that come directly from this manifesto, making it possible to throw out municipal governments' decisions, throw out municipal governments she does not like, limit academic freedoms by gatekeeping the research funds and destroy the Canada pension plan to keep people down in retirement. The firewall manifesto envisions that decision-making processes that affect people's lives and freedoms—
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- May/27/24 11:21:18 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Rafah experienced the worst horrors of war again last night with atrocities that defy humanity. As human beings from across the globe protested for the terror to end, those in power did not stop it. Shame on every leader who has allowed this to continue. Innocent lives have been taken and maimed, and the scars of the children will not be healed. The trauma of war is now imprinted in their DNA and will be a reoccurring trauma. The last eight months have been unthinkable trauma for Palestinians and Jews in communities all across the globe. Their histories will be forever scarred by the inhumanity of man. No one wins in war.
I implore the Canadian government to stand up for humanity and peace. The drumbeat of war is spreading across the world to the point that the leader of the United Kingdom is now proposing mandatory conscription. There are nine days—
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- May/24/24 10:53:03 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I know that the Conservatives were playing many games at committee to try to prolong the vote on the legislation. Simply, why have the Conservatives not supported this over the years that the NDP has tried to move it forward? I just want to understand this more clearly.
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- May/23/24 6:44:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased that at least the member is starting to have a conversation about it and use words around “fine work”. I understand that by “fine work”, he means the 28 years it took for the government to actually have a child care program.
I benefited from a child care program starting in 1995 in Quebec, and many of my colleagues outside of Quebec had to wait 28 years. It was “fine work”, for over 28 years, done by all the women out there who looked after the kids so that many of the MPs in the House could become parliamentary secretaries, ministers and so on.
The fine words are not going to pay the bills, so I would say again that the Liberal government promised this refundable caregiver tax credit. That is a no-brainer. As far as I am concerned, that should be immediate, but I remind the Liberals that they have also promised a pension benefit to personal support workers, such as those at SEIU, who are still waiting to be able to retire.
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- May/23/24 6:37:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, National Caregiver Month is almost over and yet Canada's caregivers are no better off due to the inaction of the government.
Earlier today, my hon. colleague from Hamilton Centre pointed out that workers from SEIU and other personal support workers have been waiting for three years. The government promised that these workers would get help with building their retirement savings. It made these promises in the 2020 fall statement, the 2021 budget and the 2023 budget. Even though $50 million was allocated for their pension program, that money has not yet flowed. This is unacceptable.
I want to talk about the Canadian Centre for Caregiving Excellence report that was recently released, which said that caregivers in this country are caring for aged people and are not being compensated appropriately. According to the report, 57% of all caregivers are women, who are not being compensated in the work that they do. Of these caregivers, more than one in five pays more than $1,000 out of their very own pocket to take care of loved ones. Unpaid caregivers who are already working full-time provide an average of four and a half hours per day caring for their loved ones. This means that on any given week, they are putting in an extra 30 hours of work caregiving.
These costs to our caregivers are continuing to rise as things become more unaffordable. They have to take more time to support their loved ones and they have more expenses. The Liberals said they would fix this, but they continue to let down women as they refuse to make the Canada caregiver tax credit refundable. New Democrats know that Canadian caregivers deserve respect, and we cannot help but show gratitude for the tireless work that paid and unpaid caregivers do every day.
Care work is the backbone of our society and is essential to our future, but, like the government has shown, it is far too often undervalued and underappreciated. The data shows that caregivers need more support and with the cost of living going up, they need the financial support that has been promised by the government for years.
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- May/23/24 5:56:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Shefford for all the work she does to protect exploited women and persons in Canada. I really appreciate all of the hard work she does.
New Democrats are supportive of measures that help victims receive justice through the justice system. This is why we wanted this bill to go to committee for study. The study was very important, and I believe that all members are committed to better laws that can truly protect people from human trafficking. This is one of the fastest-growing crimes in Canada, and it disproportionately affects women and girls. We heard from other speakers today that, in 97% of detected crimes, the victims of human trafficking were women and girls. As the member for Shefford said, a quarter of them are under the age of 18. This is children being exploited. It is a serious problem, and it must end.
What we heard in committee and in the study is that the bill, as it stood, would not provide more resources for targeting trafficking units and for law enforcement, and it would not make the struggle against trafficking more effective. In addition, changing the legal definition could have unintended consequences, particularly for sex workers. We heard that in committee.
My colleague from Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke received a petition from more than 60 organizations asking us not to proceed with this bill without further consultation, and members of the House know that the bill reported back to the House reflected that. The Conservatives, though, are now ignoring important community input, which is usually a Liberal tactic, I will say, and are attempting to put back in the bill exactly what the justice committee took out of it. That approach is not helping victims. If the Conservatives want to protect trafficked victims, they need to start pushing for actions that would help address trafficking crime. This must be the goal, and it must be the goal for Canada. We must do this.
Casting a broad net, as the original bill did, risks the mistake of defining all sex work as trafficking and missing actual cases of trafficking. When we think about young girls, children, we need to make sure that we can get at every case of trafficking.
I will close by reiterating that additional enforcement resources are needed now, and additional services for survivors are needed now. These resource investments would have greater impact on reducing trafficking than any legislative change that would come from the bill.
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- May/23/24 4:24:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I think about the fact that many of us in the House, even those who have been here a decade or more, are seeing things happening in the community that they have not experienced before: homelessness, a poisoned drug supply, lack of income and more than a quarter of Canadians with a disability. We are dealing with serious issues and serious problems. I know there has been much discussion about what is being funded.
When does the Liberal government start looking at the good ideas that are coming out? For example, if we talk about Quebec and child care, I know that Quebec has a livable income pilot going right now. When will the Liberal government start taking ideas that it knows are working for provinces?
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- May/23/24 2:48:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberals made the decision to expand the Trans Mountain pipeline, which will result in seven times more tanker traffic in Burrard Inlet. People in Port Moody—Coquitlam, Anmore and Belcarra are at risk of evacuation, fire, smoke inhalation and carcinogens in the event of a spill. The Government of B.C. and the local health authorities are asking for a plan to protect people, yet the Liberals have no plan, and the Conservatives have no concern, to keep people safe.
What are the Liberals going to do to protect Canadians in my riding and beyond from a catastrophic spill?
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- May/21/24 4:54:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we know economists have been saying for years that there is going to be a need for more rental housing. The capitalist society realized this very quickly, and corporations started buying up more affordable apartment buildings. I think about REITs and about one specific REIT, Boardwalk, which recently made its profit announcement. It talked about the fact that it is using CMHC funding and is taking advantage of low interest rates through CMHC that average Canadians do not have access to.
My question to the member is this: Why is the Liberal government continuing to put the needs of corporate Canada ahead of people who need a place to rent?
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- May/21/24 10:35:39 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the member so much for raising the oil and gas industry and the amount of profit that they are taking off the table. As we head into or are already deeply into the wildfire season, I wonder whether the member could talk a bit about how that is impacting Canadians at this point in time.
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- May/10/24 11:46:01 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is National Caregiver Month, and 50% of women are taking care of their elderly parents or loved ones with a disability. One in five of those caregivers reports spending more than $1,000 a month to take care of their loved one. These costs are only going up.
The Liberals keep letting women down. For years, the Liberals promised families a simple, refundable caregiver tax credit. They have not delivered. When will the Liberals give women the respect they deserve and finally make the caregiver tax credit refundable?
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- May/10/24 12:07:45 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I hear the member talk about regulations and that a few fines have been put forward, but it is not consistent. Enforcement is not happening. We heard that today, and I want the government to get better.
I also want to talk about the airports capital assistance program. One of the other things we learned is that the airports capital assistance program ranks accessibility of airports as the last priority on its list, actually below sprinklers. The result of accessibility being the last priority for the government is that there has been no funding for small airports in over 20 years.
My ask of the government today is this: Will the government immediately move accessibility up to the number one priority for the airports capital assistance program? It should move it up to priority one. It does not cost anything and it is a human rights need.
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- May/10/24 12:00:52 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, today I had the pleasure to go to the first-ever National Air Accessibility Summit and hear from advocates and organizations on how we can better serve people with disabilities on our airlines.
The summit is a historic step towards improving accessibility for persons with disabilities in this country. Attendees heard first-hand experiences of navigating air services with different accessibility needs and barriers that exist in the current system, and ideas on how to solve them. What matters is whether the government was listening.
The government failed to listen to disability advocates and organizations, like its own advisory council, while it was developing the Canada disability benefit. In the consultation on that, the Liberals heard about the barriers that the disability tax credit posed and about how many low-income people with disabilities were unable to access it. They were told about the problem of potential provincial clawbacks and so much more. However, they acted on none of it. The current government does a great job of announcing that there are problems, but if the Canada disability benefit is any sign, it is not listening to the answers.
In February I asked the Prime Minister when he would get serious about holding airline CEOs to account to protect Canadians. While the Liberals will point to the summit today, there was nothing binding and we have seen nothing on the accountability for the corporations that were perpetrating human rights abuses. The Liberal government repeatedly makes bold announcements but does little. In fact today, the Minister of Transport said that he would leave it to the guys to solve this problem, instead of legislating it here in the House.
It reminds me of the previous Conservative government. It is the very same one that the Prime Minister campaigned against as not being transparent enough, yet he now seems to want to do nothing more than emulate it. Just like the Conservatives before him, the Prime Minister continues to have open arms and deep pockets for corporations and CEOs not following rules.
However, when it comes to people with disabilities who need support, following the law is not something that the government cares about. This is not right. Like I said to the Prime Minister in the past, the government's lack of action on holding airline CEOs to account is a failure. I ask again, when will the Prime Minister get serious about holding CEOs to account to protect persons with disabilities in this country?
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- May/9/24 9:07:51 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I know there has been a lot of rhetoric in this House from the Conservatives about declining productivity. That is of no surprise when the oil and gas industry in Canada, one of the largest contributors to the economy, is not reinvesting in R and D, is not reinvesting in innovation, but instead is skimming profits and redistributing them to wealthy shareholders.
I am wondering what the member thinks about that.
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- May/9/24 8:57:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what I will say, since the Liberals are asking, is that it is time to break up the monopolies. It is time to break up the monopolies that are driving up cellphone bills and food prices in this country. They are not allowed in the United States. The Liberals, and the Conservatives before them, have let this flourish in Canada.
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- May/9/24 8:56:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the oil and gas corporations and their CEOs are double-dipping. Not only are they taking subsidies from taxpayers, but they are gouging them at the pumps, and the Conservatives are letting it happen.
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