- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- South Okanagan—West Kootenay
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 61%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $128,729.57
- Government Page
- May/30/24 3:11:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians are expecting this wildfire season to be devastating, and the minister has said the same.
Last summer, we had to rely on our military to help battle wildfires and support communities. This year, the chief of defence staff says that is no longer an option. We need a solution.
Canadians overwhelmingly want a dedicated national wildfire fighting force. Will the Liberals create this needed force to tackle fires, support communities and save lives?
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- May/27/24 1:56:29 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is always entertaining to hear the member from Nova Scotia speak in this House about how he cares for the people of Atlantic Canada. The bill is important. It is essential for the people of Atlantic Canada, for Newfoundland and Labrador, and Nova Scotia, to develop sustainable resources, which they have in spades, that will drive a real boom of jobs for the future.
I am just wondering if the member can comment on that and on how the provinces, as he mentioned, have asked for this, and yet the Conservatives have blocked it, have filibustered and delayed it. It is as if they do not really care about Atlantic Canada at all.
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- May/27/24 1:56:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member across the way's speeches are always passionate and entertaining, and I just want to give him—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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- May/27/24 1:27:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I enjoyed my time with the member on the natural resources committee. Like the member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith, who brought up her Newfoundland heritage, I, too, have a family heritage there. I lived there for three years while going to university. I actually lived in a lighthouse. I can attest, as well, to the vast wind resource available in Newfoundland. I was blown around quite a bit.
Newfoundland and Labrador wants this. Nova Scotia wants this. Regional assessments will be done that will have full involvement of the fishing industry. Why does the Conservative Party still hold up this bill when everybody wants it? The Conservatives want to block it just because it involves sustainable energy.
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- May/24/24 12:11:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition signed by 84 constituents who are drawing the attention of the government to the fact that continued assaults on Palestine have escalated to the degree that the actions of Israel have been designated a genocide.
Therefore, petitioners strongly urge the Government of Canada to work with the United Nations, Palestine and Israel to establish a permanent state of Palestine with the same rights as any other nation. They also call for immediate substantive humanitarian aid, overseen by the United Nations, Red Cross and Red Crescent to ensure the safety and well-being of all Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel.
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- May/24/24 11:03:04 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to pay tribute to three great Canadians who recently passed away.
Jerome Abraham struggled with addiction for many years before entering the recovery program at Discovery House in Penticton. After treatment, Jerome went on to lead Discovery House through a period of dramatic growth, helping so many men get their lives back and return to their families. We lost Jerome to cancer earlier this spring, but we will always be inspired by his legacy.
Laura Savinkoff was the centre, the heart, of a very active peace community based in Grand Forks. I last saw Laura at a workshop she organized to discuss the horrific situation in Gaza. She died suddenly two weeks later, gone too soon, but we will remember her spirit.
Finally, I want to mention the passing of Dr. Bruce Falls, a noted scientist and humble champion of nature conservation in Canada. Bruce died last month at the age of 100 after a lifetime of inspiring service to his country.
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- May/24/24 10:50:27 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I just want to point out that, many times, I hear Conservatives bring up criticisms of anti-scab legislation. They say it will extend, delay and make labour disputes last longer and longer; in fact, it is those labour disputes where replacement workers have been brought in that become dangerous, vicious and very long, and they tear communities apart. I think of the Giant mine in Yellowknife, where nine people were killed by people who were frustrated about being replaced without any choice.
Could the member comment on the fact that anti-scab legislation is actually good for bringing people together, for giving workers their right to remove their labour when they feel that they need to put pressure on management to get fair wages and good working conditions? That is the only power they have.
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- May/22/24 10:50:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there is something in the bill we were debating tonight about tax evasion, but there is nothing in here about the tax avoidance that goes on legally every year and that costs us billions of dollars. I could go on about Vancouver mining companies that do not pay any taxes in Canada. They should pay hundreds of millions of dollars of taxes, but they have a post office box in Luxembourg.
Can the member comment on why we need to cut down on tax avoidance measures, make them illegal and bring the money back to the people of Canada, where it belongs?
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- May/22/24 5:15:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the minister about concerns that we share with him about all the blockages the Conservatives have been putting up on bills like dental care that would help Canadians across the country. They seem to think that they deserve dental care here as MPs, yet needy families in the rest of Canada should not have dental care. They believe that we should not have single-payer pharmacare that would save us billions of dollars a year.
Canadians seem to think the Conservatives are good on the economy, but the Conservatives have no concept that this measure to create a single-payer pharmacare plan that would include coverage for contraceptives, as well as the dental care plan and all the other things that we talked about, would save us money.
I am just wondering if the minister could comment on that.
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- May/3/24 12:19:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to rise here today to present petition e-4673, a very important petition with over 5,000 signatures from across the country.
The petitioners point out that Canada and the world face a biodiversity crisis with one million species facing extinction globally, that Canadian governments have consistently failed to meet their international commitments under the Convention on Biological Diversity, that Canada demonstrated leadership in the Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal in 2022 and the IMPAC5 conference in Vancouver last year, that the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework signed by Canada sets binding international targets, that the Minister of Environment and Climate Change stated his intention to introduce by early 2024 legislation that enshrines accountability for achieving these goals and that such legislation should recognize and affirm indigenous rights and jurisdiction in alignment with the UN Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Therefore, petitioners ask that the government introduce legislation in early 2024, this year, to conserve nature in Canada by implementing the global biodiversity framework.
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- May/3/24 12:13:31 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, wildland firefighters have tirelessly kept our communities safe against devastating wildfires, but despite this dangerous and life-saving work, wildland firefighters are not considered firefighters under the national occupational classification, and this impacts their retirement and pensions. It is absurd that the Liberal government and the Conservatives before them have done nothing to fix this.
Will the Liberals immediately change this, so wildland firefighters can retire with financial security?
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- Apr/30/24 7:14:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the funding put in to help volunteer firefighters and the training of firefighters, but the real point here is to create a deployable force that could go to where the firefighting is needed.
A recent Abacus Data poll found that 70% of Canadians are in favour of a national wildfire fighting force. The public is ready for this. They know it would be a good investment, not only to save money fighting fires but also to stop fires before they become the catastrophic monsters that consume vast forests and communities and to save the human cost of evacuations and the loss of homes. Yes, having a national firefighting force would save money and valuable time. It would save forests, livelihoods and lives. We need one in Canada as soon as possible.
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- Apr/30/24 7:07:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this adjournment debate stems from a question I asked earlier about how we deal with wildfires in Canada: When will the federal government create a national wildfire-fighting force?
As we all know, last year was the worst year ever for wildfires in this country. This year, all predictions point to an even more disastrous fire season. We have already had evacuation orders in British Columbia and Alberta in April. Last year, we had fires all across the country, from Halifax to Yellowknife and Vancouver Island.
I want to pause here to pay tribute to all the firefighters and other first responders who worked so hard to keep Canadians safe during last year's firestorms. Eight firefighters in the prime of life lost their lives in last year's battle against those fires, and I attended the memorial service for one of those young people in Penticton.
It is clear that local and provincial wildfire-fighting services were overwhelmed last summer. Even in British Columbia, where we unfortunately are very accustomed to catastrophic fires, the BC Wildfire Service, one of the best in the world, had to bring in crews from all over the world to help out. Indeed, thousands of firefighters from Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, South Africa, Costa Rica, Chile, Spain, Portugal, France, Brazil and the U.S.A. came to Canada last summer to help us deal with that crisis.
We are grateful for that international help, but it comes at a cost: the cost of paying the crews, the cost of bringing them to Canada and, perhaps most of all, the critical cost of time lost in making those arrangements. Provincial and municipal forces become overwhelmed and costs are exploding. B.C. spent about a billion dollars last summer fighting fires, last year alone.
We need to have a homegrown response that is both timely and cost-effective. In response to this accelerating crisis, experts have been calling for the formation of a national wildfire-fighting service.
Dr. Mike Flannigan, from Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, is Canada's foremost expert on wildfire behaviour. While firefighting is normally a provincial area of authority, Flannigan points out that the last few years have put us in uncharted territory. He has suggested a national wildfire service of a few hundred well-trained members divided into teams that could be deployed to parts of the country that face clear and imminent fire threats.
We have the modelling power and the expertise now to know where fires are likely to become problematic in the coming days and even weeks. We should have teams on the ground so that they are there when fires ignite and can be extinguished. Fires not caught in those first few hours can become the catastrophic firestorms that destroy huge areas of forest, as well as homes and livelihoods. Getting those crews to the fires quickly is essential, and we can do that with a national force.
That force could work year-round. The fire season is growing longer and longer. It is already year-round in California. We could put this force to work in the Canadian winter, working to thin forests in the interface with communities across the country, doing FireSmart inspections or being mobilized to other countries that are facing a wildfire crisis.
The government is proposing training local residents to fight interface fires. That is important and useful. We already rely on volunteer crews to cover structure protection. However, a national force would be a game-changer, and we really need to change the game on wildfire fighting in this country.
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- Apr/29/24 5:17:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, of course residents of Nunavut are really at the pointy end of climate change as well. Things are changing there much faster. Yes, we have to put everything we can into fighting climate change, fighting our emissions and adapting to climate change.
My riding is in the middle of all those wildfires we hear about, and there are floods everywhere as well. Therefore, we have to spend more on preventing climate change, doing our bit not only to bring down emissions, but also to adapt to climate change. I mentioned the wildfire fighting force. We have to do more things on the ground ahead of time to make sure communities are safe from the floods, from fires and from other disasters being fuelled by climate change.
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- Apr/29/24 5:15:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would have to say that Quebec has been leading the rest of Canada in many of these areas, in parts of health care, in education, in child care, and the list goes on. I salute Quebec for that leadership in showing the way, literally, for the rest of Canada.
Here, we have a federal government that is trying to make sure that Canadians can live better lives when we have better health care and better education, and when we have child care so that everyone can get back into the job market. Perhaps these are ideas we are getting from Quebec, but I think that if the federal government has those initiatives and has the money, we have to put some sort of boundaries on where that money is going to be spent. Right now, we send money to the provinces to fund post-secondary education, and they can spend it on filling potholes in roads. We want to make sure the money is being spent for the reasons we are providing it. Those are taxpayer dollars.
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- Apr/29/24 5:13:03 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the member for Guelph's work as chair of the science and research committee.
I hope this is the start of a new future for science and research. It is certainly a big step in that direction, where we actually recognize the very important work that not only young researchers do in Canada, but also scientific researchers in general. There was a considerable uplift in the amounts of the grants given to researchers across the country, and that will also help fund students.
Canada is so far behind other countries in the OECD and in the G7. I had someone from the British High Commission come into my office a couple of weeks ago, and it was kind of embarrassing when I heard what the U.K. has been doing for research compared to what Canada has been doing. This is where we are going to form a really solid economy for the future. We have to make those investments in research and have to develop the information technology that will make this, and continue to make this, a great country.
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- Apr/29/24 5:02:57 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, today, as we have heard, we are debating the budget introduced by the Liberal government a couple of weeks ago. We have also heard, time and time again, how Canadians are struggling to make ends meet. They are having a hard time finding housing they can afford, facing soaring rents and rising mortgage costs, or even finding anywhere to live at all. They are seeing rising food costs at grocery stores and paying more for gas at the pumps.
On the other side of the coin, Canadians are seeing big corporations, oil and gas companies, grocery giants, corporate landlords and big banks making absolutely record profits. The more we pay for gas, for food, for housing, the more those corporations and their CEOs are making billions of dollars in profits. People are looking for ways the government could be helping them get by, because it does not have to be this way.
In this budget, the NDP has used its power to force the government to help Canadians. It is a glimpse of what an NDP government would be doing, which is what is best for ordinary Canadians and not for big corporations and the wealthy. However, I will say that this is not an NDP budget, and I will certainly spend some time talking about how it could have been improved greatly.
What did the NDP accomplish for Canadians? First is dental care, which will change the lives of nine million Canadians when it is fully rolled out to all qualifying people next year. Free birth control will benefit another nine million Canadians who now have to pay for those products. Free diabetes medication will benefit 3.7 million Canadians with this disease. Insulin was discovered in Canada, but every year thousands of Canadians, many of them younger Canadians, die prematurely because they simply cannot afford the medication needed to control diabetes. These are completely preventable deaths, and it is shameful that Canada has been allowing this to happen for many years. Thanks to the NDP, this will get fixed.
These provisions are the leading edge of the NDP's program of a universal, publicly funded, single-payer pharmacare plan that will be developed over the next year through legislation outside of this budget. It is a program that will save Canadians billions of dollars every year. Estimates from the Parliamentary Budget Officer and expert studies done for the government estimate savings of between $4 billion and maybe more than $10 billion per year through a single-payer plan.
Thanks to the NDP, this budget also contains funding for school meals, which will help all children, no matter their situation, with the nutrition and energy they need to succeed in their studies. Education is the great equalizer, but we have to provide all students with the conditions for success, and this school meal program will be an important part of those conditions.
The housing crisis is affecting millions of Canadians and there are some real steps in this budget to address that, such as a rental protection fund, a program to use federal lands to build new affordable housing and a $400-million top-up to the housing accelerator fund. There is $1 billion set aside for non-market housing to build truly affordable homes, again, something the NDP has been asking for, in contrast to the Conservatives who seem to think that if we just build more units prices will magically become affordable.
In my riding, we are building more housing units than we have ever built before, but according to municipal planners, every day we have fewer affordable housing units. These additional units that are being built are simply bought up by people who already own homes and people who are using them as investments. We need more affordable units, and to accomplish that the federal government has to get back into the affordable housing business like it was 30 years ago.
I would like to highlight a couple of smaller line items that may not have gotten as much publicity but will still make a huge difference to all Canadians.
I entered politics to provide a voice from a scientific background to Parliament. Science and research are the real basis of a successful economy in this day and age, and I have been calling on the government for two years now to provide more support for researchers, especially young researchers.
Postgraduate students do most of the research in Canada and are expected to work full time at that job. The best and brightest of these are funded through federal scholarships and fellowships that have remained at the same level since 2003, over 20 years ago. Master's students have been expected to live on $17,500 a year. Out of that, they have to pay their tuition fees, which are $7,000.
Finally, in this budget, the government has recognized that shameful situation and has significantly increased the amount and number of these supports, as well as provided an overall increase in research grants to investigators, which will help even more young researchers do the work they want to do and that we need them to do.
On another front, I want to give a shout-out to my colleague, the MP for Courtenay—Alberni, who has been leading the charge for an increase to the tax credit for volunteer firefighters. Previously, those brave and generous members of communities across the country have received only a $3,000 tax credit for the work they do to keep us safe. This budget would increase that to $6,000, short of the $10,000 we were hoping for but still a significant increase for very deserving community members.
What is missing from this budget? How does it differ from one that an NDP government would bring in?
First of all, there is the Canada disability benefit, something the NDP has been fighting for. We were hoping that it would finally be there in this budget, to really lift people with disabilities out of poverty. It is there but it is a paltry $200 a month, a complete insult. The NDP will continue fighting for people with disabilities, to make sure this benefit will be enough and to make sure they will have at least $2,000 per month to live in dignity.
I was also disappointed that there is no provision for a national wildfire fighting force, which could really benefit every community facing the rising threat of wildfires every summer.
Once again, the government has been timid in its willingness to try to address one of the biggest threats to this country and its economy, and that is the growing gap between the rich and the rest of Canada. Harper Conservatives cut the corporate income tax in half, immediately putting a $16-billion burden on middle-class Canadians. That cut was made in the name of trickle-down economics, the outdated and debunked belief that, if we give tax breaks to the wealthy, it would trickle down to the rest of us in the form of more jobs and benefits. It has not happened. The profits of corporations have climbed steadily over the past 30 years, while wages have remained stagnant.
Most Canadians are paying more in tax and getting nothing in return. The Liberal government, and the Conservatives would certainly be no different, refuses to put a windfall tax on big oil and gas companies that are making a killing on the backs of Canadians. Other countries such as Spain and the U.K. have brought in such a tax, a measure that would bring in about a billion dollars a year. We could also bring in a wealth tax that would affect only those very few Canadians with personal wealth of over $10 million. Such a tax would bring in another $12 billion per year.
It is often said in this place that budgets are about choices. We have to make choices on both sides of the ledger, spending wisely to make sure that Canadians have the programs that make this the best country it can be and leave no one behind, and finding revenue options that ensure that the costs of those programs are borne by those who can afford it.
We know that this budget could have been better. We know that, under a Conservative government, it would have been far worse. An NDP government would truly put the interests of ordinary Canadians first, not the interests of big corporations or CEOs. We would listen to workers and other Canadians who are really struggling, not to lobbyists for grocery giants, fossil fuel companies and big pharma.
We are proud of what the NDP has accomplished by using the power we have to take a big step in making this a fairer and more prosperous country.
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- Apr/29/24 12:29:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Winnipeg North mentioned CERB, basically an NDP initiative through which everyone agreed that Canadians needed at least $2,000 a month to live in this country, yet in this budget we have supports for people with disabilities that amount to $200 a month. When combined with provincial supports, it is far less than what is needed for those people to live here in Canada.
I have been deluged by comments from people with disabilities. This is an insult. The government should have done nothing, almost, rather than bring this in.
I am just wondering whether he and his government will commit to fixing this over the coming months, so that we can truly support people with disabilities in this country with an income they can live on.
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- Feb/29/24 3:13:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, last summer's wildfires devastated communities across Canada. The Minister of Emergency Preparedness has admitted that the upcoming wildfire season will be even worse.
Canadians want their government to take decisive action. According to last week's Abacus poll, 74% of them want to see this done through a new national wildfire fighting force, but the Liberals are taking a go-slow approach. The wildfire season is already starting.
When will the government act to create a national wildfire fighting force?
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- Feb/27/24 6:54:30 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, preliminary estimates of the direct economic impact on the wine industry in the Okanagan Valley from last month's freeze are on the order of $450 million in one valley. That does not take into account the indirect impact on the tourism sector: motels, hotels, restaurants and tour companies. Small wineries are already being impacted by the imposition of an excise tax for the first time. The federal government did bring in an 18-month support program for the sector to soften the blow of that cost, but that program is due to end at the end of March. A renewed program would be essential to rebuild a sector recovering from this year's crisis.
Last week, I met with the wine sector and the fruit growers to discuss this urgent situation. I will close by simply urging the parliamentary secretary and his minister to listen to the deep concerns and to the suggested solutions from the vineyard owners and orchardists who are such an iconic part of my riding and its economy.
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