- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- South Okanagan—West Kootenay
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 60%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $128,729.57
- Government Page
- Nov/1/23 7:24:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as I was saying, the international trade committee exists to study issues about international trade, and when we studied the ArriveCAN app, thanks to the member for Niagara Falls, who put forward this motion to study this topic, it fit within the mandate of that committee because the motion was talking about the travel back and forth across the Canadian border and how that had been restricted in many ways by the mandatory imposition of the app.
What the amendment to the motion asks of us is to dive into a deep mess of scandal surrounding the creation of the app, and that is much more something that government operations, public accounts or ethics should study. That is where this should occur, and it is occurring. If it were not occurring there, we would be asking that those committees study it, but we do not have to, because they are already studying it. I asked one member of the government operations committee how long he would be studying it, and he said there is a lot there and it would probably be until the next election. We think it is important that it be studied. It is being studied, so we do not need to study it at international trade. That would be outside the mandate of that committee.
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- Nov/1/23 7:07:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am happy to rise this evening to speak to a report produced by the House of Commons Standing Committee on International Trade, of which I am a proud member. This is a Conservative motion to concur in the sixth report of the committee on international trade, entitled “The ArriveCAN Digital Tool: Impacts on Certain Canadian Sectors”. I will say off the top that I became a member of the committee while the study was under way about a year ago. I was not present during some of the testimony, but I did take part in the meetings that drafted the report early this spring.
This report, as its name implies, is focused on the trade implications of the ArriveCAN app, the travel implications and the effect the application had on travel back and forth across the Canadian border during the COVID pandemic. As we all know, the COVID pandemic hit North America in March 2020, which closed this place in the House of Commons on March 13. A week later, on March 20, the governments of Canada and the United States agreed to temporarily restrict all non-essential travel across the Canada-U.S. border. The pandemic had huge impacts on the Canadian economy, many of which arose from the restrictions that were placed on crossing the Canada-U.S. border.
The report we are debating today summarizes testimony about the ArriveCAN app received by the committee during its study. It was divided into three sections. The first provides information about the impacts of ArriveCAN on Canada's border crossings. The second is about the impacts of the use of ArriveCAN on certain sectors, particularly tourism. The third section presents the views of witnesses about proposed government actions that could support the recovery of specific sectors affected by the mandatory use of ArriveCAN.
The ArriveCAN app was launched in April 2020. It allowed travellers entering Canada to input their quarantine plans and later their vaccination information, thus digitizing the information collected through the paper forms that travellers had to complete before that time. On November 21, 2020, the use of the ArriveCAN app became mandatory for travellers entering Canada, so they could not use the paper forms that they could use before.
I have to point out here that it was not so much the use of the ArriveCAN app that affected travellers, but the fact that for almost two years, from November 21, 2020, to September 30, 2022, the app was mandatory, they had to use it to cross the border. They could not fill out their information on the paper forms that had been used initially in the pandemic. I also want to point out again that this study was restricted to the impacts of the mandatory use of this app.
Many other pandemic measures had negative impacts on economic sectors and industries in Canada. Vaccine mandates and COVID testing all impacted the ability and speed with which people could cross the border. Also, the study did not cover the development of the ArriveCAN app that we have heard so much about in this debate. That aspect was studied and is being studied by other committees in the House of Commons. I will talk more about that later.
The international trade committee study we are debating here tonight was concerned with the impacts that ArriveCAN had on certain sectors, and I would say particularly tourism. What were some of those impacts?
The most obvious one is when an application is created that can only be used on smart phones or tablets and is then made mandatory, it has an immediate impact on anyone who does not own a smart phone or tablet, or even those who find using smart phones a challenge beyond the simple act of answering the phone or looking at an email and that kind of thing. Therefore, I am a bit surprised that when the government was deciding to make the ArriveCAN app mandatory no one seemed to ask the obvious question: What about those people who do not own smart phones? Seniors are clearly a group of people who broadly fit that category.
This problem caused a lot of delays at border crossings, especially land border crossings. I want to reiterate that the app was created to save time, but on the whole, in many ways, it caused delays, certainly from the travellers' point of view.
I have heard a lot about it from my constituents. I have six land border crossings in my riding, probably the most in the country of any riding. My constituents are used to travelling back and forth across the border for business, shopping and tourism. My riding is very reliant on the tourism industry. Many of my constituents were affected by the requirement to use the ArriveCAN app.
One of the additional problems in my riding is that several of the border crossings are found in areas without cell coverage, so people could not use the app at the border. They could not load their data at the border, because they did not have any way to use their phones. There was no cell coverage. In some places there is cell coverage, but it is from cell towers in Washington state, so they are paying extra roaming charges.
All this resulted in extra work for travellers and border agents alike. Mark Weber, President of the Customs and Immigration Union, representing the people working at the border said in testimony:
What I can tell you is that the numbers provided to you earlier by the CBSA—
That is the group that was organizing the use of the app.
—which said that 99% of air travellers and 94% of land travellers have the app completed, are absolutely false. Those numbers are the percentages completed after we helped them complete with the app. In the Eastern Townships branches, the numbers were closer to 60%, for example.
The percentage of travellers who could do all this on their own was much lower than the 95% that CBSA reported. He goes on to say:
Overall, we're looking at closer to 75% to 80% having it completed.
Essentially, our officers now largely work as IT consultants. You have land borders that have essentially become parking lots, with us helping people complete the app.
Mr. Weber's point was that it would have been quicker and more efficient for those who could not use the app to simply continue providing the paper form information about quarantine plans and showing their proofs of vaccination to CBSA officers rather than getting help to enter the information on phones they did not have or did not know how to use. Workers in duty-free stores also had to help travellers with the app.
I want to remind people that it was not entirely, completely straightforward to use the app. I use two smart phones every day, and I think of myself as pretty tech-savvy. I remember when I first had to use ArriveCAN, it was not all that straightforward. I had to figure out how to save my vaccine certificates as images, find those images on my phone and upload them to the app. I can see how someone not familiar with those processes would have trouble.
Seniors and others who were not used to using their phones were adversely impacted, both Canadian seniors returning from the U.S. and American seniors trying to visit Canada.
As border crossing restrictions were lifted, and more and more people were trying to cross the border on day trips, the difficulties were exacerbated. For one thing, the app asked for an address in Canada where the traveller would quarantine if needed. This requirement forced day-trippers from the U.S. to lie because they had no real Canadian address to put into the app.
We heard one story of a bus full of American seniors planning to spend the day on the more scenic Canadian side of Niagara Falls turning around at the border because of the ArriveCAN requirements.
The mandatory use of the ArriveCAN app impacted travel across the border, and in particular impacted tourism. There is data I could cite that clearly show the immense impact on tourism of the COVID pandemic in general, but it is hard to parse out the exact economic impact of the ArriveCAN app itself.
I am not only the NDP critic for international trade, but also the critic for small business and tourism. This report has some important recommendations about the app in general and also about how the government could respond, to support the tourism industry that is still recovering from the COVID pandemic.
I am just going to read some of the recommendations in full so members can get a sense of them. Recommendation 1 is:
That the Government of Canada ensure the safety and security of Canadians by continuing with its ongoing efforts designed to modernize Canada’s borders, including through the use of appropriate digital and non-digital tools, and through the provision of adequate human and other resources. These efforts should be informed by consultations with relevant stakeholders, during which particular attention should be paid to concerns about the potential for significant disruptions, confusion or delays at Canadian ports of entry. The focus should be airports and land crossings, including international bridges.
To this recommendation, I would comment that we should encourage travellers to use digital tools when crossing the border by making these tools easy to use and ensure that their use will make the travellers' entry into Canada easier for them, quicker and more efficient. That would result in more people using the tools. The lesson from ArriveCAN is that making digital tools mandatory would almost always result in unintended negative consequences.
Recommendation 2 states:
That the Government of Canada enhance its efforts designed to increase domestic and international awareness that Canada has removed COVID-19–related public health measures, including the mandatory use of ArriveCAN. These efforts should occur in collaboration with other governments and relevant stakeholders in Canada, and should also be focused on the U.S. market.
As a comment to that, I would say that we are well past the era of COVID restrictions now, and for long enough that this recommendation is more or less moved by now, but it was important at the time, a year ago, when we were writing these recommendations.
Recommendation 3 states:
That the Government of Canada ensure that international bridge authorities and commissions, as well as duty-free stores in Canada, are eligible for federal financial support if the Government decides to close—for any length of time—the borders that Canada shares with the United States.
To this recommendation, I would like to comment on the incredible impact that the COVID pandemic had on one sector within the tourism sector, and that is land-based duty-free stores. My constituent Cam Bissonnette has two duty-free stores and found his business in an essentially impossible position when the borders were closed because of COVID. It is the biggest impact, I would say, on any sector in Canada. For months on end, his business suffered a decline of over 95% in revenue. He and others in his sector were stuck with perishable inventory that they could not legally sell to anyone. While things have improved slowly since the borders were opened, the devastating impact of those times when the borders were closed have made it almost impossible for him and others in that sector to survive.
I will simply add that the duty-free sector is generally misunderstood by the federal government in several ways, and would ask that the government listen to those business owners' concerns very carefully.
Recommendation 4 is:
That the Government of Canada enhance safety and security, reduce delays and backlogs, and improve processing times at Canadian ports of entry through considering the recruitment of additional Canada Border Services Agency officers to serve at international bridges, maritime ports, airports and other ports of entry.
This is something for which the NDP has been calling for years.
Recommendation 5 states:
That the Government of Canada fill positions that are currently vacant on Destination Canada’s board of directors. Recognizing that the summer 2023 tourism season will be the first season since summer 2019 without COVID-19–related public health measures, these vacancies should be filled as soon as possible.
That takes us through the report that we are being asked to concur in or to agree with this evening.
I have to mention the amendment that the Conservatives made to their own motion. This amendment would send the report back to the international trade committee to add in a study of the scandal surrounding the creation of ArriveCAN, how it was made and the contracts that were put out, as mentioned in the previous speech by my Bloc colleague from Terrebonne.
This scandal is a very serious issue. It deserves to be studied thoroughly here in the House of Commons. It is being studied in the government operations committee and, as we heard, also in public accounts. In fact, it was studied there a year ago, and that study has been reopened to cover the latest allegations. That is where it should be studied, or at the ethics committee, since the scandal is an incredible mess of seemingly blatant corruption.
However, suffice it to say that the NDP is very much in favour of the House of Commons' getting to the bottom of the scandal, and I have faith in the members of the government operations, public accounts or the ethics committee to do just that. What I really think we do not need is to study it again in the international trade committee as well, calling the same witnesses and coming to the same conclusions as the other committees will likely do. The international trade committee has some important business on its plate now, including study of the new Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement. Adding in the business before us, something that is not at all related to international trade and is already being studied at government operations and public accounts, would literally be a waste of time.
I will finish here simply by saying that I am very much in favour of the main motion to concur in this report, but that I am not in favour of the amendment.
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- Nov/1/22 1:23:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will try to be brief, but there is so much I want to get into.
First is the idea that if we cut gas taxes at the pumps, it will help people. The member's own provincial government in Alberta tried this, and for a week the price went down relative to what it is in British Columbia. However, a week later gas companies pushed it back up to where it used to be, so it was cutting government income and saving nobody any money at all.
Second, when it comes to the debate we had last week, NDP members had asked the Conservatives to support their idea of cutting the GST on home energy and they refused, instead fixating on a carbon tax that will go up by two cents a litre in April, saving nobody—
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- Nov/1/22 12:39:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I used to sit on the Forest Appeals Commission in British Columbia. At appeal hearings, we would hear forest companies blame their contractors for some misdemeanour and the contractors would blame their subcontractors, and the subcontractors would blame their sub-subcontractors.
I wonder if the member could comment on the practice of hiring teams to assemble teams to assemble teams that not only balloons the cost of a project like the ArriveCAN app but shields it from any sort of transparency.
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- Nov/1/22 10:49:31 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank the minister for his speech.
I would have to agree with the previous questioner on this. ArriveCAN was basically doomed from the start, because the government was requiring all Canadians re-entering Canada to use it. They did not have a choice. It assumed one had a cell phone, and it assumed one had the tech savvy to use the app. Many people did not.
I have a riding with six border crossings in it, and I had numerous complaints about how it failed people and sent them into quarantine when they should not have been sent into quarantine. Now we hear that it cost a ridiculous amount of money.
My question is this: Given that the government has spent more money in the last year on hiring IT consultants than it has spent on its own in-government IT workforce, will it really make sure that it builds a good IT workforce that we can depend on, that we have control over and that we have transparency on, so we can get things done with a good, moderate amount of money and have control over that?
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Madam Speaker, I am happy to rise here to speak to Bill C-19, the budget implementation act.
This pandemic has been incredibly difficult for many Canadians, and now we have a housing crisis, rising inflation and a labour shortage, which are all adding to these difficulties. Our health care system has come close to a breaking point on several occasions. Thousands have died. Millions have been seriously ill. Doctors, nurses and all health care workers have been under unbelievable stress and physical exhaustion. I want to say a personal thanks to all of those who cared for us and our loved ones over the past two years and more.
Businesses and workers suffered through a series of lockdowns. Nine million Canadians found themselves out of work, without income and with no way to pay their rent, their mortgage and their grocery bills. Companies were in similar dire straits. Fortunately, this House came together to pass measures that kept people financially afloat and measures that allowed businesses to keep employees on the payroll. However, last year, we learned that still over half of Canadians were only $200 from insolvency at the end of every month, and that was before the housing crisis reached another level of unbelievable house prices, monthly rents and rental availability.
The NDP is focused on helping Canadians, making sure they get the health care they need no matter where they live or their level of income, making sure they can find a home they can afford, making sure they have the means to live out their senior years in dignity, and making sure that those Canadians who did well through the pandemic, some of whom made billions of dollars in profits, pay their fair share.
This is the first budget after the Liberals and the NDP announced their confidence and supply agreement, so I would like to highlight some of the gains that we achieved in this agreement by using our power here in the House of Commons to help Canadians.
It is fair to say that the big gains have come in creating a stronger health care system here in Canada. When we created the universal health care system that we are so proud of, several aspects of health care were left out. At the top of that list is dental care, so I am proud that we will be bringing dental care coverage to all Canadians who need it, through this agreement. It would start with free dental care for all children without coverage this year, and by the third year we would have dental care for everyone with a household income of less than $90,000 who does not have coverage now.
I have already spoken in this House about the impact this would have. It would be literally life-changing for so many lower-income Canadians, who would have access to dental care for the first time, access that so many other Canadians just take for granted. It would not only change people's lives, but it would save our broader health care system millions of dollars. Alex Munter, the CEO of the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, has told us that dental restoration is the most common surgery carried out in that hospital, restoration that is needed because of the lack of preventive care. This program would keep kids out of hospital. I have to remind Canadians that both the Liberals and the Conservatives voted down this exact initiative less than a year ago, so the NDP is very proud that it would move ahead to change lives for the better.
Similarly, the confidence and supply agreement ensures that universal pharmacare would be added to our health care coverage. Canada is the only country with comprehensive health care coverage that does not include prescribed medications in that coverage. This program would not only save lives, as 10% of Canadians simply cannot afford to fill their prescriptions, but it would save the Canadian economy more than $4 billion a year through the power of a single buyer when we purchase medications. More savings, over $10 billion per year according to some estimates, would accrue by simply keeping people out of hospital and keeping them healthier through proper medication.
I recently spoke here about the crisis in long-term care, so I will not go into detail, other than to say that one of the other points in our agreement was to bring a safe long-term care act, which would go a long way toward ensuring that our seniors can live in dignity.
The issue that is critical for many Canadians, certainly in my riding, is housing: the impossible cost of buying a house, the ridiculous rental rates and the extreme difficulty in even finding rental accommodation. My riding has an unenviable combination of high housing prices, with the average house price in my riding running at about $1 million, and low incomes. The average single income in my riding is around $30,000.
In our agreement with the Liberals, the NDP won an extension of the rapid housing initiative, which would add $1.5 billion in funding to build more than 4,500 affordable housing units.
We have also made the government's rental construction financing initiative actually work for renters across the country. Previously, this program, which is the biggest CMHC program for rental housing, was doing little or nothing to provide affordable housing. It was giving money to developers to build rental units that were then being rented at an average of 50% above the average market value, so we were giving out taxpayers' money to help developers charge excessive rent. The NDP has fixed this, to ensure that 40% of these units will be rented out at below 80% of average market rent. In my riding, that means the production of units that will be offered at $900 per month, compared to the former Liberal rates of $2,000 per month.
We still have more to do. The NDP has pledged to build half a million units of affordable housing over 10 years, to make up the effort lost over the past 30 years, after successive Liberal and Conservative governments got out of the affordable housing game. We will continue pressing the government to make these necessary investments so that all Canadians can have a roof over their head.
I will briefly mention that I am disappointed that this budget seems to do little for the fight against climate change. In particular, I have real concerns that billions of dollars will be given to highly profitable oil and gas companies to try to implement carbon capture technologies that will likely delay rather than hasten our shift to a cleaner energy future.
When balancing budgets, governments too often forget the revenue side of the equation. During the pandemic, most Canadians have suffered financially, while a few in the 1% have made extraordinary profits. The NDP had called for an excessive profits tax, as well as a wealth tax of 1% for those Canadians who have assets over $10 million, to make sure the costs of the pandemic are borne more by those who can afford it rather than have the burden fall on the majority of Canadians who have suffered.
While the Liberals did not agree to our reasonable request, they have agreed to levy a one-time excess profit tax of 15% for banks and a permanent 1.5% tax increase for banks. These two measures will recoup over $6 billion in taxes over the next five years. The NDP would have preferred that the excess profit tax be extended to big corporations such as big oil companies and big box retailers such as Walmart, which made a $3.5-billion profit in the fourth quarter of 2021 alone. We are also disappointed that these taxes are not included in this budget implementation act.
I will finish by mentioning one small victory in excise tax reform that stems from my private member's bill, Bill C-267, which would remove the alcohol excise tax from low-alcohol beer. Low-alcohol wine and spirits do not face this tax. None of Canada's trading partners charge this tax. My bill was meant to make a common sense change to the excise tax to level the playing field. The beer industry was paying more than $1 million every year in excise tax on low-alcohol beer. The beer industry and millions of Canadians who drink low-alcohol beer, and myself, are all happy to see this bill incorporated into this budget implementation act.
I was disappointed to see that other issues stemming from the changes to the Excise Act were not dealt with in this budget. Many wineries in my riding will be paying excise tax for the first time, since their exemption was eliminated after a challenge at the World Trade Organization. Wine Growers Canada has been calling for permanent trade legal support for the industry to match the supports provided by other major wine-producing countries. The government has offered temporary 18-month support, but I was hoping for a more long-lasting measure that would really make a difference in this important industry.
The NDP will continue working to make life better for Canadians. I believe this bill is a step in the right direction, but we have a long journey to go.
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- Apr/25/22 11:34:10 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am very happy to rise here this morning to speak to Motion No. 47 on improvements to long-term care, put forward by the member for Avalon. This motion points out that the COVID pandemic has exposed long-standing issues affecting long-term care, and it asks the federal government to:
...work with the provinces and territories to (i) improve the quality and availability of long-term care homes and beds, (ii) implement strict infection prevention and control measures...(iii) develop a safe long-term care act...to ensure that seniors are guaranteed the care they deserve....
I am also happy to say that I will be supporting this motion. As a New Democrat, I am very proud to say that we have used our power in the current minority government to secure a commitment from the federal government in our confidence and supply agreement to bring in a safe long-term care act to ensure that seniors are guaranteed the care they deserve, no matter where they live. This long-overdue legislation must be implemented without delay, and I thank the member for Avalon for introducing this motion, which adds further impetus to this necessary action.
I would first like to thank all the workers in long-term care across Canada. They have been at the front lines of the pandemic for the past two years and more. This is hard work. It is stressful work, and it is done by people who truly care for the people whom they care for. I want to make it completely clear that these workers are not the problem in the long-term care crisis.
As the motion points out, COVID-19 has exposed a fragmented and under-resourced long-term care system across Canada, and this has been a problem for many years. I remember speaking here just over a year ago to an NDP motion that called for significant changes to make sure our seniors are cared for properly and with dignity. In that speech, I mentioned a couple of stories that illustrated how long-standing this problem is. I would like to briefly reiterate those points today.
In 2013, nine years ago, I met with a family who had lost both their mother and their father to substandard care at a privately owned care home in Summerland, British Columbia. The province investigated the family's concerns and found that the staffing levels of the facility were far too low. Months later, the company that owned the facility, Retirement Concepts, reported that it was trying to hire more staff but was having trouble filling the new positions. As Mike Old of the Hospital Employees' Union said, Retirement Concepts is well known for paying low wages, and that has resulted in chronic understaffing at many of its facilities.
Retirement Concepts operates 20 facilities in Canada, most of them in British Columbia. In 2016, Retirement Concepts was sold to Anbang Insurance Group of China for more than $1 billion. Since then, problems at Retirement Concepts homes seem only to have gotten worse. As of last year, the operation of its properties in Summerland, Courtenay, Nanaimo and Victoria had been taken over by the provincial health authority, all because care levels were inadequate due to understaffing.
Retirement Concepts is not alone in its understaffing problems. I remember visiting another facility in Penticton in 2015, seven years ago, and talking to the staff about working conditions there. I was shocked to find out that some of the staff who had worked there for 20 years were making less money in 2015 than when they had started in 1995. No wonder they were tempted to leave whenever they could. A friend whose mother was in that facility recently told me that the staff was hard-working and attentive but completely overwhelmed. There was always a “now hiring” sign out front. Apparently, the home could not afford to pay workers as much as the local hospital, so it was constantly losing the most experienced staff whenever a job opened up at the hospital.
Experts have been issuing dire warnings for years about this crisis, but successive federal governments, both Liberal and Conservative, have failed to act. Then the pandemic hit. Hundreds died needlessly in care homes during the pandemic, sometimes in horrific conditions. The armed forces had to be called in because staff was overwhelmed in many places. According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, more than 840 outbreaks were reported in long-term care facilities and retirement homes during the initial wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. This accounted for 80% of all COVID deaths in Canada during that wave, representing the worst record among comparable countries and double the OECD average.
We must never allow this to happen again. Federal leadership is urgently needed to protect vulnerable Canadians living in long-term care, both throughout the pandemic and in the years to come.
In these debates, we have heard a lot of calls for national standards of care. Yes, we need those national standards, but the fact is that no provincial standards are being met now. The benchmark for quality long-term care is 4.1 hours of hands-on care per resident per day; no province or territory currently meets this standard of care.
There is a lack of accountability for long-term care facility operators due to lax enforcement of standards and regulations. For example, a recent CBC investigation revealed that 85% of long-term care homes in Ontario have routinely violated health care standards for decades, with near total impunity.
The problem is funding. Lack of funding results in short-staffed institutions and underpaid workers. Underpaid workers are forced to work two or three care homes at once, and we saw how that spread the virus during the early stages of the COVID pandemic.
At the heart of the funding problem are the for-profit long-term care homes. Among care home residents, 80% have underlying medical issues that have meant they have had to move into those care homes. Long-term care is medical care, but it is not covered under our universal, not-for-profit health care system in Canada, and because long-term care lies outside the health care covered by the Canada Health Act, many care homes are run first and foremost for profit.
This means Canadians often pay substantial out-of-pocket costs for long-term care, which can vary significantly depending on the region and whether it is a private or public facility. Service quality varies widely depending on ability to pay, and service quality can have a significant impact on the health of care home residents, especially during a pandemic. Residents and workers in for-profit centres have faced a higher risk of COVID-19 infection and death than those in non-profit and publicly operated homes.
Decades of research have demonstrated that long-term care homes run on a for-profit basis tend to have lower staffing levels, more verified complaints and more transfers to hospitals, as well as higher rates of both ulcers and morbidity. On top of that, during the pandemic, many for-profit operators have been paying out millions in CEO bonuses and dividends while accepting public subsidies and neglecting the residents under their care.
The NDP is proud to have used its power to secure a promise from the government to advance a safe long-term care act through the confidence and supply agreement, and I will add that this agreement also includes dental care and pharmacare, so that we can have a truly universal health care system in Canada.
We must continue to work collaboratively with patients, caregivers and provincial and territorial governments to develop national standards for long-term care and other continuing care, which would include accountability mechanisms and data collection and be tied to sustainable, long-term funding. The standards are not enough by themselves.
Successive Liberal and Conservative governments have failed to improve standards of long-term care, because they have embraced a profit-driven model for the sector. The NDP will work relentlessly to change that. Profit has no place in the care of our seniors, just as it has no place elsewhere in our primary health care system.
Our seniors deserve to live in dignity and comfort, so in conclusion, I will be supporting this motion. I urge the government to live up to its promises and act quickly and boldly to fix the long-term care crisis in Canada.
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- Mar/28/22 4:49:22 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock. I had the pleasure of visiting his riding last fall at the peak of fall colours, so I can appreciate where he comes from.
Mr. Scot Davidson: Lake Simcoe.
Mr. Richard Cannings: You have thrown me off there.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Mr. Richard Cannings: Madam Speaker, I come from a riding where tourism is a huge part of the economy, as does he. What does the member think of the government's misplaced support or lack of support for tourism when the latest tourism support program does not include companies that are seasonal? Canada is all about seasons, with the fall colours and then the winter, yet people and businesses whose work is seasonal in nature could not even apply for this support program.
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- Mar/25/22 10:30:48 a.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, I agree with almost all of the member's speech and I would especially like to bring up some more issues on the tourism and hospitality sectors that she briefly mentioned.
I have been working a lot on that file lately. The tourism and hospitality recovery program was brought in before omicron, when it was assumed that the pandemic was over, yet it is not. Businesses are still struggling. She mentioned some of the companies that do not qualify, such as start-ups.
Another group of businesses that do not qualify for the program are businesses that are seasonal. Many tourism operators in Canada are seasonal, and yet these companies are basically prohibited from qualifying for this program. I wonder if she could comment on that.
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- Mar/22/22 3:14:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the government is failing to help the tourism businesses hardest hit by the pandemic. The tourism and hospitality recovery program was supposed to help, but due to an inflexible application process, many seasonal businesses cannot access it. The Liberals cut its funding last week and the program will end in May, just when it is needed most.
Will the government commit to continued full funding for the program, change the application requirements so seasonal operators are not excluded and extend the program until September?
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Madam Speaker, the member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue mentioned tax unfairness. It is starting to dawn on me that there is a bit of a pattern forming here. We have a government that did not act to help seniors who were having their GIS clawed back. The government went after the poorest of Canadians who applied for and received CERB because they were told to, and then the Liberals clawed that back. They went after small businesses in the last Parliament, and yet they are letting the wealthiest of Canadians and big corporations off the hook. The NDP has put forward the idea of having a wealth tax for people with assets of over $10 million. There are the CEO benefits they get. There just does not seem to be any appetite to go after the people who have actually done very well in this pandemic.
I am wondering if the member would support the NDP in calling for that tax fairness to make sure the wealthy pay their fair share and to stop going after the little—
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Mr. Speaker, the hon. member made a comment wondering why the NDP is always running around fixing Liberal mistakes. Well, it is because the NDP is focused on one thing, and that is helping Canadians. When the pandemic first hit, people were suffering. It was the NDP that pushed for supports for seniors and people with disabilities. The Liberals were not there and the Conservatives were not there. It was the NDP that was pushing for that.
If the pandemic has taught us one thing, it is that we have the ability in the House to make decisions to help Canadians, and we have the capacity to do that. One thing that would really accomplish that, which would go a long way to help seniors and people with disabilities, is a guaranteed livable basic income. We have a private member's bill on that, Bill C-223, which is on the docket.
I am wondering, if Conservatives care about seniors, if they will support that bill.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for mentioning health care workers. As we all know, they have been at the forefront, the pointy end of the stick, as far as COVID goes in terms of both their physical health and mental health risks.
Another sector that has really been impacted by COVID is tourism. Two years after COVID began, the government still is not getting the supports right for many tourism operators. Independent contractors of any sort, including independent travel advisers, are not able to access any supports. New businesses that started up just as COVID was starting up are still unable to access the supports that all of their competitors have.
I am wondering this. Can the member comment on why the government seems to be blind to all of these needs?
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Madam Speaker, we are in the fifth wave of this pandemic and Canadians are fed up with all the restrictions they have been facing. These restrictions are in place for good reason, but we have to support the businesses and workers who have been suffering. Many of these sectors have fallen through big cracks.
I wonder if the member could comment on some of the sectors that everybody else and I have been lobbying for to get these changes that the government seems reluctant to make. I am talking about people like independent travel advisers, who are making nothing. I am talking about a lot of companies in the tourism industry that cannot apply for tourism supports because they are seasonal. Most tourism companies are.
Could the member explain why the government seems so slow and so reluctant to respond to their questions?
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Mr. Speaker, as I flew into Ottawa a couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of sitting on the plane next to the member for Battle River—Crowfoot's wife. We had a wonderful conversation. This being Valentine's Day, I hope he has been in touch with her, as I have been with mine. It was nice getting to know his wife in that way.
The member touched on the election, and I want to let him perhaps expand on that. A lot of people in Canada watching at home think the election took up six weeks of time, but here we are in early February, and we are only just starting a lot of what Parliament has to get going. Six months were wasted for all the issues that are facing us, not just COVID, but also housing and the opioid crisis. I wonder if the member could take some time there.
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Mr. Speaker, we are debating supports for COVID and the impact COVID has had over the last two years in Canada. I am wondering if the member could comment on the lack of any ability by the government to admit its mistakes with some of those supports and admit that it did not get them right. So many things have fallen through the cracks.
I talked to the tourism people recently. There is a whole tourism package that is unavailable to seasonal tourism companies. How many tourism companies in Canada are not seasonal? Seniors have been stripped of their GIS supports. These are the poorest and most vulnerable of Canadians, and they have stripped of their GIS support because they were told to go on CERB last year. I could go on and on.
I am wondering if the member can explain why the government has been so reticent to admit its mistakes and fix them.
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- Feb/1/22 11:18:18 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would really like to thank the member for Sarnia—Lambton for bringing up that important issue. The NDP has been calling on the government to change its decision. Some of the most heartbreaking messages, emails and phone calls I have been getting in my offices are from seniors who were advised to collect CERB because they were told they qualified, but who then found out after CERB was abruptly cut off that their GIS vanished. They now cannot afford their rent and some of them have lost their homes.
We have been pressing the government to do the right thing, reinstitute that and give them the retroactive pay they need. It is not that they deserve it; they need it. In Canada, we have to take care of our seniors, and low-income seniors are some of the most vulnerable people in our country. Let us do the—
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- Feb/1/22 11:16:27 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is workers who have really struggled in many ways through this pandemic, especially frontline workers, whether they are in the health care system, in grocery stores or in restaurants. Many in the restaurant industry have been laid off, rehired, laid off and rehired again. Many have given up and moved on to other things. Those in grocery stores have had to put up with abuse, as my colleague from Timmins—James Bay just mentioned, in trying to enforce the public health orders. Many have lost their jobs and many small businesses are struggling.
The government came out with supports for workers and businesses, but it let many of those people fall through the cracks. For the last two years, we have been pushing the government to fill those cracks and make sure workers like independent travel advisers who have not received anything—
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- Feb/1/22 11:05:29 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, we are wrapping up the debate on the Speech from the Throne today. That, of course, reminds us that there was an election last summer. I would like to thank the people of South Okanagan—West Kootenay for re-electing me as their representative in Ottawa. I send my deepest thanks.
I always say that I represent the most beautiful riding in Canada. I miss travelling around the riding because so many events are not happening. I miss those face-to-face meetings. Everyone in Canada is impacted by this pandemic, and we are living in difficult times.
My colleague from Timmins—James Bay just spoke much more eloquently than I could about what is really facing this country. People are angry, and we are all wondering when life is going to get back to the way it was. People have lost loved ones. People have lost their jobs or lost their businesses. They cannot visit their friends or relatives.
We have seen a lot of concern and anger on the streets of Ottawa the past few days, but we have to remember that the common enemy here is COVID. It is not the lockdowns. It is not the vaccine mandates. It is not science. It is not the government. The enemy is the pandemic.
Science has brought us most of the way back with really miraculous vaccines that really work. They will get us through this pandemic. That is how we will exit this pandemic and get back to normal life. We just have to make sure that we do not give COVID another chance, or a fifth or sixth chance to take us back into it.
If any group feels fed up with COVID, it is health workers. I have talked to nurses and doctors over the past months and they have had it, so I really want to give my sincere thanks to all health workers for their dedication over the past two years and for keeping our health care system functioning in the face of overwhelming demand. We have to rise above this anger and frustration and concentrate on the task at hand, which is the task of overcoming COVID here in Canada and around the world.
Getting back to the Speech from the Throne, as I said, last summer we had a general election in the middle of this pandemic. It was an election we did not need. We should have been concentrating on tackling difficult issues, not just the pandemic, but also the long list of other issues that are affecting our country.
We should have been working on these issues starting last September. The NDP would have happily supported any initiatives that were focused on helping all Canadians. We gave the government a lot of suggestions of what was really needed. Instead, it is now February, tomorrow is Groundhog Day, and we have lost six months of work time, not just the six weeks that the election took.
What are some of the issues we could have been tackling? The list is long: reconciliation; climate change; housing; the opioid crisis; helping businesses and workers during the pandemic; and the obscene income gap, which is growing, between the few very wealthy Canadians and the millions of Canadians who are struggling just to get by.
One of the most gut-wrenching moments of the past year was the announcement from the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc that they had discovered the unmarked graves of over 500 children on the grounds of the Kamloops Residential School. That was followed by a discovery of hundreds of other graves at similar sites across the country, including a similar announcement last week from Williams Lake.
We had known that many children had died in residential schools. That information was clearly laid out in the reports of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but the discoveries of the unmarked graves of children meant that millions of Canadians felt that tragedy and loss in their hearts. I have never heard such an outpouring of grief and anger through phone calls, emails and letters to my office than I did around that issue. That information brought on a truly remarkable outpouring from many, many Canadians.
The government must act on all the calls to action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and I am heartened to hear some of the documents around the history of those institutions will be made public. We need to keep investigating what truly happened, so we can make sure it will never happen again.
On climate change, it was truly a terrible year for weather across Canada. In British Columbia, a June heat dome killed over 500 people in the Lower Mainland in Vancouver. The town of Lytton burned. People lost their lives, their homes and their livelihoods. Fires continued across the southern interior of British Columbia all summer, including in my hometown of Penticton. While campaigning in August for this election, I had to keep all my precious belongings in my car because there was a wildfire burning a kilometre from my house just on the hills west of Penticton.
The summer was followed by a series of unprecedented rain events in the fall. We have learned to call them atmospheric rivers, but we used to call them “the pineapple express”. One event in November flooded the towns of Merritt and Princeton and destroyed the five highways that connect Vancouver with the rest of the country.
The Prairies had one of their worst draughts ever. There were tornados in Ontario and more serious flooding in Cape Breton and western Newfoundland. We are living the effects of climate change. These changes are here to stay. We have to work hard to ensure they do not get any worse.
One of my roles in the NDP is the party critic for emergency preparedness and climate resilience. I have called for the government to up its game both on its reaction to disasters and in preventing them. In 2018, the town of Grand Forks in my riding was flooded. It was a very difficult experience for the town, not just the physical flooding and the process of rebuilding but also the difficult decisions the mayor and council of the town of Grand Forks had to make trying to figure how they could rebuild the community so flooding would not happen again.
There are the interface fires that have destroyed homes across the country. We have to up the game in funding, not only for the fight against climate change, which is very important, but also for these responses to climate change, the adaptation. We need to ensure the government provides much more funding to communities to help them rebuild their infrastructure to prevent these disasters from happening in the first place. This includes FireSmarting communities, building new flood prevention infrastructure and building better highway and railway infrastructure for the coming weather disasters, which will be much more common and stronger than before.
We need to also up the game on climate mitigation to bring down of our emissions so these weather disasters do not get worse and worse. One of the first private members' bills I tabled as a member of Parliament some years ago was a call on the government to bring in the home retrofit program again. I am happy the government has done that with the greener homes grant, but we really need to increase our efforts in that area.
Efficiency Canada has put out a pre-budget document that spells out how we can do this. We need to significantly scale up the number of building that are retrofitted, and we need to ensure people who live in energy poverty can have these programs for their homes. We need to build 500,000 units of affordable housing, not just housing, but affordable housing, to catch up to where we should have been. We need to cut the growing gap between the super wealthy and the rest of Canada with a wealth tax, which would make them pay their fair share while supporting the rest of us who have been struggling to get by.
I would like to finish with the opioid crisis and Gord Johns's bill, Bill C-216. We need to do something different in that crisis.
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- Dec/10/21 2:03:02 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-2
Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Elmwood—Transcona for his remarkably cogent and large view of how we got to where we are today.
One thing the COVID benefit response included, or at least it seemed that a lot of Parliament suddenly realized, was that the employment insurance program did not work for 60% of Canadians. I want to give the member some time to talk about how we should be moving forward with this so that these people, the 60% of Canadian workers who do not qualify for EI in the old way, are being taken care of. What should we be doing?
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