- Member of Parliament
- Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defence
- Liberal
- Surrey Centre
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $147,142.20
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to be here today to speak on the topic of Bill C-19, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on April 7, 2022 and other measures.
Over the past two years, we have faced unprecedented challenges. There is no part of our lives that was not impacted in some way by the coronavirus pandemic. Challenges were both personal and collective in nature. “Budget 2022: A Plan to Grow Our Economy and Make Life More Affordable” contains significant investments in key areas that would help Canadians continue to recover from the detrimental impacts of the pandemic.
Despite the challenges we have faced, Canada has emerged stronger. Because of our government's response to the pandemic, we are able to maintain the lowest debt-to-GDP ratio relative to our G7 international peers, with one of the fastest recoveries. We have the strongest job recovery in the G7, having recuperated 112% and maybe even 115% of the jobs that were lost since the peak of the pandemic, and our unemployment rate is down to 5.5%. This nearly matches Canada's best unemployment rate in 50 years, which we saw in 2019 when the unemployment rate was 5.4%.
The targeted investments in budget 2022 are designed to support people, economic growth and a clean future for everyone as we continue to navigate pandemic recovery. Through these targeted measures, this budget would help make it easier for Canadians to buy a home and move forward on dental care, help Canadian businesses scale up and grow, ensure that wealthy corporations pay their fair share, invest in a clean future, and help Canada become a world leader in producing electric vehicles.
I would like to take this opportunity to highlight just a few of the many important investments outlined in this budget that are particularly impactful for my riding of Surrey Centre. These include important investments in housing, immigration, health and dental care. Regarding housing, we know that access to safe and affordable housing remains an incredible challenge for far too many. This is an issue that constituents raise with me often. Access to safe and affordable housing is one of the biggest concerns faced by many residents in the lower mainland. This region has some of the highest housing prices in the country, and as our population continues to grow, we need more homes to meet the demand.
Surrey Centre has been a recipient of significant investments through the rapid housing initiative over the past few years, including $16.4 million under the major city stream to support the creation of affordable housing units for the new Atira Women's Resource Society facility. I had the opportunity to tour the Atira site currently under construction with the Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister a couple of weeks ago. This modular housing apartment will provide approximately 44 new affordable units. Owned and operated by Atira Women's Resource Society, this supportive housing complex will serve women experiencing, and at risk of, homelessness, including indigenous women, trans and two-spirited women, and women who are struggling with substance abuse, mental health and spiritual wellness. The $16.4 million funding also assisted Atira to create more units, including next door, where now dozens of units are there to help women in need.
Our government has also invested in the Foxglove supportive housing complex in my riding, which I had the opportunity to visit with the Minister of Housing and Diversity and Inclusion recently. This complex includes a total of 130 units: 66 are supportive housing, 34 are for complex care and 30 are shelter beds.
Housing is a complex issue, and I am pleased to see that budget 2022 contains significant investments to address the many layers of challenges with housing that we face and would help expand access to housing in our communities.
This would include doubling the construction of new homes over the next 10 years. Budget 2022 provides $4 billion over five years to CMHC to launch a new housing accelerator fund. This fund aims to remove barriers and help municipalities build housing more quickly. It would target the creation of 100,000 net new housing units in the next five years.
Budget 2022 also contains investments to help Canadians buy their first homes, including by introducing the tax-free first home savings account and doubling the first-time homebuyers' tax credit, and introducing a multi-generational home renovation tax credit that provides up to $7,500 in support for constructing a secondary suite in a home for an additional loved one. This would help keep seniors at home longer, and give them better, safer, more comfortable places to say.
The tax-free first home savings account would help thousands of Canadians save, tax free, up to $40,000 to buy their first home. This is on top of their RRSP options, thereby giving Canadian families up to $15,000 or $20,000 in tax savings.
As members may know, immigration is an issue very near and dear to my heart. I have one of the busiest constituency offices in the country and receive hundreds of immigration files each month. Budget 2022 proposes investments to make our immigration system more efficient. Applicants currently face long waits and delays with processing times. Our government has already begun to address these issues and I am pleased to share with everyone that we are continuing to do more.
Budget 2022 proposes $187 million over five years, and $37 million ongoing, for IRCC to improve its capacity to respond to a growing volume of inquiries and to invest in the technology and tools required to better support people using those services. The budget also proposes $386 million over five years, and $86 million ongoing, for IRCC, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and CBSA to facilitate the timely and efficient entry of a growing number of visitors, workers and students.
I also recently introduced a private member's motion, Motion No. 44, to expand pathways to permanent residency for temporary foreign workers. Budget 2022 contains a number of proposed investments relative to Motion No. 44 to improve the temporary foreign worker program.
Throughout the pandemic, employers have found it challenging to find workers. As demand grows for the TFW program, we need to make changes to meet the needs of the system and ensure that TFWs are protected and have health, safety and quality of life while they work and contribute to our communities. These proposed measures include millions of dollars in funding for increasing protections for workers, reducing administrative burdens for trusted repeat employers and ensuring employers can quickly bring in workers to fill short-term labour market gaps.
Health care, pharmacare and dental: Our health care system is vital to the functioning of this country. Our government made significant investments, more than $69 billion, to lead a coordinated federal, provincial and territorial response to fight COVID-19 and protect the health and safety of Canadians, with more funding to be rolled out in the future. This additional funding includes a $2-billion top-up, plus $45 billion to the Canada health transfer to the provinces and territories.
Budget 2022 proposes initiatives to attract more health care workers to rural communities and to support access to mental health resources with $140 million for the Wellness Together Canada portal, as well as $100 million for the substance use and addiction program to address the opioid crisis.
Finally, I would like to highlight the $5.3 billion over five years to provide dental care for Canadians with family incomes of less than $90,000 annually. It starts in 2022, with those under 12 years old, and expands to cover people under age 18, seniors and persons living with a disability in 2023, with full implementation by 2025.
There are far too many other important issues that budget 2022 proposes investments in for me to cover in the 10 minutes I have today. On that note, I will end with the hope that we can work collaboratively to pass this bill and begin the important work of getting these programs to Canadians as soon as possible to make life more affordable from coast to coast to coast.
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- Feb/1/22 10:34:49 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, friends and colleagues, I am very happy to be here in the House of Commons to reply to the Speech from the Throne.
Canadians have faced a great deal of hardship over the last two years as a result of the unprecedented times we are living in. I continue to be in awe of the resilience, compassion and sheer tenacity that has been shown. Even though for much of the last two years we in the House have been working virtually from our communities, we have been able to accomplish a great deal of very important work on behalf of Canadians.
I look forward to continuing our work together as we resume our work on behalf of Canadians. I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Right Honourable Mary May Simon on her appointment as Canada's 30th Governor General and long-awaited first indigenous Governor General of Canada. I congratulate her on the delivery of her first Speech from the Throne.
Now to our purpose for being here today, I am very proud of the government's record over the last six years. We have tackled many big issues that have been left unresolved by previous governments such as housing, child care and more. We continue to work towards creating a more equal Canada by addressing the systemic discrimination and racism embedded in our institutions. On top of that, we are nearly two years into a global pandemic, and with this new mandate, Canadians gave the government a clear direction to continue to work towards putting COVID-19 behind us and to continue working to resolve the challenges that face Canadians in their everyday lives.
Our government will continue to be on the right side of history on these and many more issues as we work towards finishing the fight against COVID, take strong action against climate change, make life more affordable, walk the shared path of reconciliation, put home ownership back in reach, create jobs and grow the middle class. Canadians expect us, as their representatives in Ottawa, to focus on the big things that matter and to work together to deliver results that create meaningful change.
I will speak today about a few of the themes from the Speech from the Throne, including housing, child care, safer communities and mental health and addiction, issues that are particularly important in my riding of Surrey Centre and in many other communities across the country.
The government is committed to ensuring that Canadians have a safe place to call home. In fast-growing communities like Surrey Centre, we struggle to create enough homes to keep up with our growing population. In fact, in the last five years, an additional 74,000 people have called Surrey home.
Since 2015, the government has increased the amount of affordable housing in Surrey and across the country. This includes 44 new affordable units in partnership with Atira Women's Resource Society, an important organization in our community that helps vulnerable women. Through a $16.4-million investment in the rapid housing initiative, a total of 105 new affordable units will support individuals experiencing homelessness and those struggling with substance abuse, mental health and spiritual wellness.
Just last week, the government announced that there will now be more than 10,000 new affordable rapid housing units across Canada, made possible by our government's additional investments in the second round of the rapid housing initiative. This $2.5-billion investment is an excellent example of what can be accomplished through collaboration across all levels of government, provincial, territorial, municipal and indigenous governing bodies, that identify priorities in each community.
The Liberal government has also been working to make housing and home ownership more accessible to more Canadians. This is through the creation of Canada's first-ever national housing strategy. We created a number of programs, like a more flexible first-time homebuyer incentive and CMHC's residential construction financing initiative. We will also be creating a rent-to-own program and will be reducing closing costs for first-time buyers.
My province of British Columbia was the first in our country to step up for its residents and sign a deal with the federal government to provide $10-a-day child care. This is a $3.2-billion investment that will not only support accessible early learning and child care in Surrey, but also pandemic recovery to allow more parents to return to the workforce and contribute to our growing economy. In fact, it has already started, reducing the cost of child care by half for every parent in British Columbia.
As a parent of three children, I was fortunate to have my mother and in-laws help us. However, that is not the case for many. Many have to choose between working or child care, a choice no one should have to make due to costs.
No matter where people live across the country, they deserve a safe community. Many communities across the country like Surrey deal with gun violence and the challenges in preventing it. Surrey has the largest youth population in British Columbia, but with it also comes challenges of youth violence, guns, gangs, drugs and addictions. The government has taken strong action, in part by banning more than 1,500 types of assault weapons. This includes building on our progress in implementing a mandatory buyback of assault-style weapons and working with the provinces and territories that want to ban handguns.
We are also moving forward with a 10-year national action plan on gender-based violence and will continue to support organizations providing critical services. The Province of British Columbia is receiving more than $30 million of federal funding to ensure that law enforcement is equipped with the necessary resources to better detect and prevent crimes before they happen, while having the resources to hold offenders accountable for any blatant disregard for the law.
We also announced in the fall economic statement that the government will be providing an additional $250 million to municipalities and indigenous communities to support community-based programs aimed at prevention and wraparound services. We know that addressing social and economic issues such as housing and employment to create opportunities for young Canadians plays an important role in addressing violence and creating safe communities.
Our government understands that we cannot simply arrest ourselves out of this problem. We support local community groups who have knowledge of the particular challenges in their communities and provide exit strategies for youth already involved in gang activities, programs like the Surrey anti-gang family empowerment program. My community is so fortunate to have access to a program working to address and prevent gang violence in our communities. The $7.5-million SAFE program, which is funded by Public Safety Canada and led by the City of Surrey, works to build positive life skills and increasing connections with families, schools and communities to keep children and youth out of gangs. This program delivers 11 individual programs through 10 partner organizations designed to disrupt the negative pathways to gang violence for Surrey's population and children. The program is on track to help over 4,500 at-risk youth and their families get the support and services they need to stay safe.
The COVID-19 pandemic increased the challenges that Canadians face in supporting their mental health. With increased feelings of stress, loneliness and sadness, it has been a rough few years. Annually, 20% of Canadians experience a mental illness or addiction problem. Throughout the pandemic we have seen those numbers grow with nearly half of Canadians reporting that their mental health worsened during the pandemic, including seven out of 10 health care workers.
Our government understands that mental health is health. We are working to help end the stigma around mental health and seeking support when people need it. We made the Wellness Together portal available to Canadians across the country and most recently the PocketWell app, which provides access to mental health tools and resources.
Pandemic-related investments in mental health include $500 million in support during the pandemic for Canadians experiencing mental health challenges, homelessness and substance use; $100 million for mental health interventions for LGBTQ+, youth and seniors affected by COVID-19, and $50 million to support those at risk of COVID-19-related trauma or post-traumatic stress disorders.
Prior to the pandemic, since forming government in 2015, we have been making investments in mental health, including $5 billion to provinces and territories to increase the availability of mental health care; $600 million for a distinctions-based mental health and wellness strategy for indigenous services; $140 million to support veterans dealing with PTSD; $45 million for national mental health care standards and $600 million to address the opioid crisis. In many communities, the COVID-19 pandemic is compounding the ongoing health crisis of opioid overdose and health. Through these new measures, vulnerable people will be better able to get the support they need while respecting public health.
It is very good to be back with all members here in person and virtually. I look forward to continuing our work together on behalf of Canadians in bringing our government's vision from the Speech from the Throne to reality.
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