- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- South Okanagan—West Kootenay
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 61%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $128,729.57
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Kitchener Centre for taking part in a press conference I held with the member for Timmins—James Bay on that subject last week, where we called both the government and fossil fuel companies to account for the fact the International Energy Agency has said we cannot move forward with any new fossil fuel projects and here we are, as he mentioned, $30 billion into the Trans Mountain pipeline. I could go on and on about other projects.
This is something the government and the fossil fuel industry need to face. The fossil fuel industry has known since the 1980s where we are headed. It warned in the 1980s that it could not go down that path, and then it decided that would be too expensive and there was too much money to be made. We need to call both the government and the industry to account on this and make some very important changes very quickly.
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- Sep/21/23 5:43:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have been talking to the minister about the new insurance program that is being conceived. I look forward to seeing the details on that when it comes out, hopefully later this fall. I am also glad that the member mentioned earthquake insurance. It is not related to climate change obviously, but it is something that is of deep concern in coastal British Columbia.
However, it is clear that we really must recognize the devastating impacts of climate change on the lives of Canadians. To reduce the human and financial costs of these extreme weather events, we must make bolder investments to reduce our emissions and to prepare our homes, businesses and communities for future challenges. Over the coming years, these investments will save 10 times their cost in avoided damage and loss of personal property and will also allow us to live longer, healthier lives.
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- Sep/21/23 5:37:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this adjournment debate arises from a question I asked early last June, a question that pointed out that natural disasters, fires, floods, hurricanes and tornados are making it increasingly difficult for Canadians to afford, or even obtain, home insurance.
Since then, we have had a terrible summer, a summer that was off the charts. Catastrophic wildfires raged from Nova Scotia to Northwest Territories and to British Columbia and Vancouver Island even. Floods and a tropical storm followed the fires in Nova Scotia, and tornados hit Alberta and other provinces. It is impossible to ignore that we are living in the effects of climate change, and those effects are costly. In 2022, insured damages from extreme weather events in Canada were over $3 billion. The 2021 heat dome and atmospheric river events cost more than $5 billion in British Columbia alone.
These annual costs have more than quadrupled over the last 15 years, and all the projections are that they will continue to increase until we manage to eliminate our carbon emissions. Even if we eliminated those emissions tomorrow, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere would remain constant for centuries, and the current level of extreme weather would continue. While many individuals and governments seem reluctant to make sufficient investments in climate action to reduce those emissions, it seems they are also reluctant to acknowledge the costs of inaction.
For an increasing number of Canadians, the impacts are life-changing, with the loss of homes to fire or flood, or the loss of crops and income to drought or frost. However, all of us will see rising costs as climate change intensifies. One sector will lead that way, and that is home insurance. As insurance companies face higher claims year over year, they will have little choice but to increase premiums.
That has already started to happen. Even more concerning is the increasing trend in the United States, especially, to simply not offer home insurance at all. In California, major companies such as Allstate and State Farm have stopped selling new home insurance policies because of the frequency of catastrophic fires. Similarly, in Florida, insurance companies are not taking on new customers or renewing existing policies because of flooding associated with rising ocean levels and stronger storms. Those who can get insurance are paying an average of $4,000 per year.
The residents of Port aux Basques here in Canada who had their homes washed out to sea by hurricane Fiona did not receive anything from their insurance companies because storm surges are not covered. I met with the Insurance Bureau of Canada earlier this year, and it pointed out that it is becoming difficult to buy a home in fire-prone areas of the country during the summer. Most companies simply will not provide new insurance when there is an active wildfire close to home, which is 25 kilometres to 100 kilometres in some cases. In many recent years, this stopped home sales in the Okanagan Valley, where I live, as one cannot get a mortgage without insurance. It is also becoming harder to get flood insurance on homes. In fact, over 10% of Canadian homes are in high flood-risk areas and cannot be insured.
Climate change impacts are not limited to fires and floods. I have been talking with people in the wine industry in the Okanagan Valley about the effects of last winter's early frosts that cut this year's grape harvest in half and killed many vines outright. I am hoping we can find support from the federal government to keep this important industry moving in British Columbia.
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- Sep/18/23 3:18:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this summer over 16 million hectares of forests burned; more than 200,000 Canadians were forced to flee their homes. To call this wildfire season unprecedented is an understatement, and with off-the-charts global temperatures, we can expect climate change to deliver even more extreme wildfires.
It is clear Canada's wildfire response was overwhelmed. Waiting for help from overseas costs valuable time and money, and the Liberals do not seem to be rushing to fix the system.
Will the minister support our call for a national wildfire-fighting service, which can be deployed immediately where needed?
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- Mar/23/23 7:12:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the government has been moving in the right direction, but it must show a lot more ambition to really make a difference, and to really help Canadians and Canadian municipalities adapt to these extreme weather events. I will be watching next Tuesday's budget closely to see where the government will be acting and how much priority it will be putting into climate adaptation.
I know it is always hard for governments to make big investments that might not pay off in the current election cycle, but that is what Canada needs from the federal government now. We need these dedicated funds for adaptation projects in every community. It will save money. It will save livelihoods, and it will save lives.
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- Mar/23/23 7:05:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this adjournment debate tonight arises from a question I asked regarding the impact of climate disasters on our country and specifically on our municipalities, and how the federal government must step up to help in a significant way.
We are living the effects of climate change because the chemistry of carbon dioxide and the physics of the greenhouse effect are locked in. We are trying, as we must, to reduce our carbon emissions to make sure we can get to net zero as soon as possible. However, even if we got there tomorrow, and it is clear we will not, we would still face the catastrophic fires, record-setting rainfall events, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and other extreme weather we are now seeing every year. That could go on for centuries, so we must adapt to these changes. They impact our farms, forests and water supplies.
The most immediate impact from extreme weather events is on our built environments, such as homes, businesses, highways and railways, destroying livelihoods and, tragically, sometimes taking lives. Almost by definition, impacts on our built environment are impacts on municipalities, and it therefore falls to municipalities not only to clean up and rebuild after these disasters, but increasingly to plan for the future and build resilient infrastructure. Communities simply cannot do this by themselves. What little capacity they have to raise funds for capital expenditures is quickly swamped by the scale of work that confronts towns and cities after floods and fires.
In 2018, the city of Grand Forks, in my riding, was flooded. After a couple of years of hard work and painful decisions, the city came up with a plan to rebuild in a way that would minimize the chances of a future disaster. That plan was budgeted to cost over $60 million for a city that regularly raises only about $4 million in property taxes. Luckily, the Province of British Columbia and the federal government came through with promises to pay most of that. However, in the past five years, costs have continued to climb and the city is still very much stretched to meet the fiscal challenges of that catastrophe.
The federal government has relied on the disaster mitigation and adaptation fund to provide money to municipalities through the provinces for disaster support. This fund has long been oversubscribed and underfunded. In last fall's national adaptation strategy, the federal government provided a top-up to DMAF, which was welcomed news, but it is still nowhere near enough. There must be more invested in adaptation projects that actually prevent future problems rather than just building back better after disasters. Analysis suggests that every dollar invested in adaptation saves up to $15 in the future. It is a huge return.
The minister tells me that the government will be providing up to $5 billion to B.C. after the 2021 atmospheric river event. We have to at least contemplate spending a similar amount in municipalities across the country every year to prevent future damage to infrastructure and livelihoods. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities is calling for the total $2 billion top-up to DMAF, and long-term stable funding for projects of all sizes. I believe that long-term funding for adaptation must be at least $2 billion a year. Otherwise, we will continually face enormous cleanup bills that will get larger every year.
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- Feb/10/23 11:47:22 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, Canadians have seen what happens when we are not prepared for climate disasters: Homes are swept out to sea, and vital transportation corridors are destroyed by floods. Municipalities across Canada are asking for help, but the Liberals are not stepping up. Instead, according to Postmedia, the government is underfunding disaster adaptation by $13 billion.
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities is calling for action, so will the Liberals listen and immediately increase disaster adaptation funding?
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- Dec/8/22 7:46:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the minister, in his reply to my question in question period, did admit that there are still 4 billion dollars' worth of subsidies going to the oil and gas sector. The government is just lacking in boldness and ambition on climate adaptation when we need it most. It is like the tepid responses to climate mitigation and the lack of success in bringing down our carbon emissions.
The almost $500-million top-up to DMAF is not enough. We need to make bold investments to minimize the impacts of the climate crisis. The NDP believes that we must provide at least $2 billion in additional funds to the disaster mitigation and adaption fund every year. That is still well below the $5 billion we are losing every year in ensured damages.
We need to make investments in adaptation, not just reactive funding to the disasters that are devastating communities across the country, leaving Canadians without homes and without livelihoods. We need to make these investments now. We need to make sure we are supporting Canadians and Canadian communities as they face an uncertain future.
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- Dec/8/22 7:39:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we are living the effects of climate change. There are real effects on people and real effects on our economy.
Last year, in British Columbia, we had a series of catastrophic wildfires, one of which burned down the town of Lytton. At the same time, a heat dome brought temperatures in the high 40s to southern B.C., killing over 600 people in metro Vancouver.
That fall, an atmospheric river destroyed every highway connecting the southern B.C. coast with the rest of Canada, and some of those highways have only now just been reopened. Floods devastated the towns of Princeton and Merritt, numerous first nations communities and some of the best agricultural lands in the province.
The true costs of those events have yet to be calculated, but the federal government has pledged $5 billion in support to British Columbia to help communities rebuild. This year, B.C. has largely been spared, but this spring, it got a storm track, which is now called a derecho. We have had to learn a whole new taxonomy of climate disasters. It caused almost a billion dollars in insured damage losses to parts of Ontario and Quebec.
Then in the fall, hurricane Fiona became the strongest hurricane to make landfall ever in Atlantic Canada. Houses were washed out to sea and lives were lost. Again, the federal government has promised aid to the tune of over $300 million.
The Canadian Climate Institute reported in September that the impacts of climate change will slow Canada’s economic growth by $25 billion annually by 2025. That is half of the projected GDP growth in 2025 and 12 times all insured weather-related losses in Canada in 2021. Those impacts will increase to almost $100 billion annually by 2050.
My question to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, the question that triggered this adjournment debate, was based on that report. The Canadian Climate Institute report also found that proactive measures that help communities and Canadians adapt to climate change could reduce the impact of climate disasters. In fact, the report notes that a combination of global emissions reductions and Canadian adaptation measures could reduce the negative impacts by 75%.
Shortly after I asked this question, the government tabled its national adaptation strategy. The strategy included $1.6 billion in new funding to broadly address climate adaptation. About a third of that amount is to top up the disaster mitigation and adaptation fund. That fund has been chronically underfunded and oversubscribed. Many communities trying to rebuild after fires and floods do not get the help they need.
Will the government stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry and redirect those billions of dollars to help communities prepare for climate change?
We will save many times that investment by reducing the direct impacts of extreme weather on Canadian communities, and more importantly, reduce the tragic consequences of these climate disasters on the lives and livelihoods of Canadian families.
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- Oct/28/22 12:13:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a petition about the just transition.
The petitioners say that Canada must address the climate emergency, and they request that the government bring in initiatives that reduce emissions by 60% below 2005 levels, that wind down the fossil fuel industry and related infrastructure, that end fossil fuel subsidies, that transition us to a decarbonized economy, that create good green jobs and drive inclusive workforce development, that protect and strengthen human rights and workers' rights, that expand the social safety net through new income supports and that pay for the transition by increasing taxes on the wealthiest and corporations and financing through a public national bank.
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- Oct/20/22 2:47:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, people are struggling with the destruction caused by the climate emergency, and it is only going to get worse. A report by the Canadian Climate Institute reveals that the federal government needs to take greater action. By 2025, Canada will see an annual $25-billion loss to GDP, and it will only get worse every year. CCI found that proactive measures are the best way to reduce those losses, but the Liberals are far behind.
Will the government stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry and redirect those billions of dollars to help communities prepare for climate change?
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- Sep/26/22 11:21:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the member a question on the opening part of his speech. I think he was saying the government should be in it for the long haul to help the people of Atlantic Canada and other disasters across this country. The government always has their backs when there is a disaster, but sometimes it forgets about it fairly quickly.
I am wondering if the member might comment on the concept that we should be spending more money investing in the future in terms of these disasters that are getting more common, more serious and more catastrophic. Should we be investing more to adapt to climate change? Rather than always being reactive and spending billions of dollars after the fact, we should really be ramping up our investments every year in helping Canadian communities get ready for the future.
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- Sep/26/22 9:50:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for his speech tonight and for his on-the-ground reporting as to what is really going on on Cape Breton Island. He made the point that the reason behind this and other disasters we have been facing is climate change.
I am wondering, given the member's role in this, if he would like to comment on the role that indigenous people across Canada should and could be taking in leading the fight against climate change, the fight we all have to be engaged in.
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- Sep/26/22 8:39:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to talk about the experience I have had in my riding in Grand Forks, where we had flooding in 2018. The regional district did a study as to what could and should have been done better to help the recovery process. There were things that came up as things that hindered the recovery and the rebuilding process. One was the inflexibility of the federal government in taking into account local solutions. The local governments were putting forward innovative solutions that would have helped people quicker and at a lower cost, but the federal government programs were totally inflexible. Four years later, the City of Grand Forks is still waiting for the full amount of money that was guaranteed to it, and those people are very frustrated.
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- Sep/26/22 6:42:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member for Cumberland—Colchester represents the area where my mother's family came from, my ancestors, so I appreciate that.
It is important to work together in this place to get help for Canadians when they need it. One example I did not give is the Town of Oliver in my riding, which had a landslide that caused $10 million in damage. It did not qualify under DMAF for funding, and there were years of lobbying on my part. I tried to help them. The government eventually changed DMAF so that small communities can now access funding of under $20 million. It was too late for Oliver, but those changes can be made, and we need to work here together to make changes when Canadians need them.
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- Sep/26/22 6:30:34 p.m.
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moved:
That this House do now adjourn.
He said: Mr. Speaker, it is truly an honour to rise here this evening to begin this debate on the federal government's response to hurricane Fiona and the devastation it has brought upon Atlantic Canada. As the NDP critic for emergency preparedness and climate resilience, I felt it was an urgently needed debate, and I would like to thank the Speaker for granting my request and the Conservatives for agreeing that it is a necessary discussion.
I want to start by saying that my thoughts are with all the Canadians on the Atlantic coast who have been affected by this catastrophic storm. My thoughts go to the friends and families who have lost loved ones, to those who have lost their homes and to those who have lost their livelihoods.
I lived on the island of Newfoundland for three years, including some months in a remote lighthouse, so I know very well both the ferocity of Atlantic weather and the resilience of Atlantic Canadians. I have travelled widely in Atlantic Canada over the past 40 years or so, including visits to P.E.I. and Nova Scotia just this year, so I am familiar with many of the communities that have been devastated by hurricane Fiona.
Hurricane Fiona was no ordinary Atlantic storm. It was the strongest storm ever to make landfall in Canada. Atlantic Canadians remember hurricane Juan in 2003 and hurricane Dorian. Fiona combined the intensity of Juan with the size of Dorian. Fiona recorded the lowest-ever atmospheric pressure in Canadian history and packed winds of up to 180 kilometres per hour. The storm surges swept across the coast like a series of tsunamis.
The human cost has been catastrophic. Several lives have been lost. Hundreds of homes were destroyed by storm surges or high winds, and many were swept out to sea. Roads, wharves, airports and other infrastructure have been badly damaged. Fisheries infrastructure has been destroyed in the middle of the fishing season; agricultural crops were compromised just before harvest, and close to a million Canadians are still without power.
I must pause to say that I will be sharing my time with the MP for Victoria.
We knew this storm was coming. As it tracked north up the Atlantic coast from Bermuda last week, the forecasts were uniformly calling for a record-breaking weather event. I want to give credit to the scientists of Environment Canada for their strong modelling, which informed preparation for hurricane Fiona. It was those strong warnings, I am sure, that kept the injuries and deaths to an absolute minimum. I have heard people comment time and time again that it was a miracle that more people were not injured and killed, so for that I thank the science and the warnings that went out.
I received a call from the Minister of Emergency Preparedness on Saturday, and I thank him for that update on the federal response. He mentioned that the armed forces would be helping with cleanup efforts. I have since heard that the naval vessel HMCS Margaret Brooke will be travelling along the south coast of Newfoundland to carry out wellness checks in many of the small outports there that have no road connection.
These are critical tasks and I am happy to hear they are being done, but important questions remain: How prepared were the armed forces for this storm that we knew was on its way ahead of time, and is there more that could and should have been done in the days before the storm?
I know that most communities have armies of volunteers that step up in these situations to help with organizing accommodations and food and other emergency supplies for residents who have lost or been evacuated from their homes. I thank the volunteers, as well as the neighbours who helped people clear down trees from houses and driveways and first responders who are helping with immediate and emergency cleanup, including the power company workers who are working around the clock to bring power back to hundreds of thousands of cold and hungry Canadians.
As critical and important as these initial responses are, perhaps even more important is that we look ahead to the coming days and weeks and, unfortunately, often years for the government role in rebuilding efforts that must take place. It is late September, and winter is not far away in Canada. We have systems and programs for government support to help people who have their homes damaged by disasters, but those systems are embedded in bureaucracies that often turn anxious weeks into anxious months, while winter sets in and families still have no place to go. They are forced to rely on the kindness of neighbours or relatives, or forced to move out of their communities entirely while waiting for help to rebuild their homes and their lives.
We have government programs, such as the disaster mitigation and adaptation fund, which are meant to help communities hit by overwhelming events such as fires, floods and hurricanes. In my experience, these communities, especially small communities, are left to do a lot of the heavy lifting in the rebuilding process, while they have neither the financial capability to pay for those actions nor the manpower capacity to navigate the bureaucracy to access the programs.
There are a couple of examples from my home province of British Columbia. The town of Princeton was badly flooded by the Tulameen and Similkameen rivers in last fall's atmospheric river event in southwestern B.C. It faced about a $20-million bill in costs to repair infrastructure. Ordinary federal-provincial government revenue-sharing agreements dictate that Princeton and other similar communities would pay 20% of those costs. It might sound like a good deal to a large community, but the entire annual tax budget of Princeton is only about two or three million dollars. It simply cannot afford 20% of a disaster. We need to come up with a permanent change to these cost structures to accommodate small communities.
Second, there is the example of Grand Forks, a town in my riding that was devastated by flooding in 2018. After months of wrangling, some intense and difficult work by the community itself and difficult decisions to radically change parts of the community, a funding agreement was reached whereby the provincial government would cover about $38 million of the cost and the federal government about $20 million.
The City of Grand Forks waited an entire year to get a response from the federal government on their first request for funding under this agreement. They received repeated messages from the federal government that the basic agreement was changing and they would have to be responsible for more and more of the costs. They had to repeatedly resubmit detailed funding requests. It was a bureaucratic nightmare for a small community that was trying to recover from a natural disaster nightmare.
This kind of behaviour from the federal government has to change. We have to have a kinder and more co-operative relationship between the federal government and communities in these situations.
I will finish by commenting on more long-term issues. We spend about $5 billion every year fixing damages from weather-related disasters in Canada. Those costs are largely born by individuals and insurance companies; the federal government is covering only about 10% of those costs. That annual expense is expected to rise to $50 billion by 2050, 10 times what it is now.
If we are to face the rising costs of these climate events and if we are to maintain our economy and communities in this onslaught of fires, floods and hurricanes, we have to start investing serious amounts of money in climate adaptation. We need investments in community infrastructure that protects Canadians, so they do not see their homes wash away on a storm surge; investments in heat pumps that would allow low-income Canadians to have air conditioning, so we will not have a repeat of the 619 people dying in a heat dome event in metro Vancouver last year; and investments in FireSmart programs to protect neighbourhoods at the interface with forests.
Reactive funding is necessary, but surely we can see the economic and community needs that point to investing for the future we all know is coming. In the meantime I just want to reiterate my support for the people of Atlantic Canada. I know they will use all of their ingenuity and strength to recover from this catastrophe, and I hope all levels of government will be there to help them when they need it.
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- May/17/22 3:13:55 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, when we left off for question period, I was talking about how Canada is uniquely positioned to become a renewable energy superpower. During the natural resources committee's study on critical minerals, we learned that Canada is the only nation in the western hemisphere with all of the minerals and metals needed to produce the advanced batteries, electric motors and wind turbine generators that will be needed in the low-carbon economy. The International Energy Agency's net-zero energy scenario estimates that the global value for select critical minerals will grow substantially over the next two decades, reaching today's level for coal market value of about $400 billion U.S. by 2040.
The opportunity is there for Canada to both reach net zero and prosper, but we cannot continue down the path that Liberal and Conservative governments have chosen when it comes to spending money on the oil and gas sector. Canada currently spends more per capita on those subsidies than any other developed country. We cannot keep paying companies to clean up their own pollution.
New Democrats know that public funds are best spent supporting the transition to renewable energy and helping Canadians struggling with the high cost of living, rather than on profitable oil and gas companies. Instead of spending billions on new oil pipelines, we should be building hydrogen infrastructure for heavy transportation hubs, stronger provincial interties to distribute clean electricity across Canada, and electric vehicle infrastructure and manufacturing, and we should be training and employing workers now working in the oil and gas sector in these new opportunities. They are opportunities that will last into the future.
This is where the puck is going.
We need to stop providing those subsidies to oil and gas companies, which delay climate action, and instead spend that money on climate action. Increasingly, we need to spend money on climate adaptation, since the effects of global warming are locked in. We have to talk about the cost of climate inaction, and that cost is rising every year.
Right now, Canadian governments, businesses and citizens spend more than $5 billion annually to fix the destruction caused by increased fires and floods. That is predicted to rise to over $40 billion by 2050. At the moment, the federal government puts up just over $300 million of that cost. It is past time that we faced up to the rising costs of climate change.
We must realign the disaster mitigation and adaptation fund to spend more on adaptation, so that we protect communities from disaster rather than rebuild them after the fact. Last year, British Columbia communities such as Lytton, Princeton, Merritt and many more, were badly impacted by fire and floods. Small communities such as these do not have the monetary resources to rebuild under present funding formulas.
We must have a clear strategy for the future that faces the facts of climate change, both limiting the extent of future changes and dealing with the changes that have already taken place. Canada's future is very bright, but first we must invest in that future, not in the past.
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- May/17/22 1:57:14 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, in the latest budget, the Liberal government promises over $2 billion for carbon capture and storage projects for fossil fuel companies. That is more taxpayer dollars to companies that are doing very well. Imperial Oil is making more money than it has for 30 years. Suncor made a profit of almost $3 billion in the last quarter alone.
Again, is this an inefficient subsidy? Even if carbon capture projects can be developed that actually work, and there is a lot of evidence that most do not, using them to clean up an industry whose raison d'être is providing oil and gas for the world to burn to create more carbon dioxide is an highly inefficient way to wean the world off of fossil fuels.
What do Canadians get for this multi-billion dollar propping-up of oil and gas multinationals? They get record-high prices for gasoline. The oil barons are doing well, but ordinary Canadians are not. What Canadian families need is help during these times of increasing costs. We all need help transitioning to a low-carbon future. Let us imagine a future where our car, truck and home heating costs were not left to the vagaries of world markets and the international price of oil.
Canada has committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. We cannot achieve this goal if we continue to pour 14 times the number of taxpayer dollars into the fossil fuel industry than we provide to the development of renewable energy.
The latest IPCC report had a stark warning. Either we take action now on mitigation and adaptation for climate change, or we risk suffering even more severe consequences from extreme weather events, wildfires and floods.
António Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, said some government and businesses have not entirely been truthful in claiming to be on track. In his words, he warned, “Some governments and business leaders are saying one thing but doing another...And the results will be catastrophic.”
Greenhouse gas emissions must be cut in half by 2030, and the good news from the IPCC report is that this can be done. The final cost of necessary actions will be minimal, but will require a massive effort by governments around the world.
Wayne Gretzky once said that a good hockey player plays where the puck is, but a great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be. For Canada's energy future, the puck is going to be with renewable energy. Canada is uniquely positioned for becoming a renewable energy superpower. Our nation is rich in hydro, wind, solar power and the rare earth minerals that are needed for that low-carbon future.
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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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- Mar/1/22 2:46:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the IPCC report released yesterday has a stark warning: Either we take action now on mitigation and adaptation for climate change, or we risk suffering even more severe consequences from extreme weather events, wildfires and floods.
However, the government continues to give the fossil fuel industry billions of dollars in subsidies. Instead of bankrolling the multinational oil and gas companies, could the Liberals not fund the infrastructure our communities need to help prevent catastrophe?
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