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Context: House Hansard - 315 - May/22/24

May/31/24 12:11:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 10th report of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage on the Main Estimates 2024-25.

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Heritage

Context: House Hansard - 288 - Feb/29/24

May/22/24 2:56:32 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as a family doctor who delivered close to 500 babies, I am concerned about access to reproductive choice. Claiming to support reproductive choice is not enough. We must pass legislation that makes it fully accessible to all. The pharmacare act is a start. It would provide free contraception to over nine million patients. Unfortunately, our Conservative colleagues oppose it. They also oppose access to safe abortion. Will the Prime Minister reaffirm his government's promise to defend a woman's reproductive rights in spite of the opposition's efforts to deny it?

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Context: House Hansard - 283 - Feb/15/24

Feb/29/24 3:05:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Black Mental Health Week begins next week. It is a time to amplify Black voices and support equity in mental health. It is time to correct the disproportionate lack of Black health researchers, so we can deliver culturally appropriate mental health solutions. It is time to act to improve the wide gap in health outcomes for many Black Canadians that is the result of historical and systemic anti-Black racism. Can the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions tell us what her department is doing to improve access to culturally safe and informed mental health services for Black communities across the country?

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Context: House Hansard - 282 - Feb/14/24

Feb/15/24 3:00:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I wish a happy Black History Month to residents in my riding of Vancouver Centre. I want to highlight their contributions to economic development and job creation in B.C. I also want to give a shout-out to the Black Business Association of BC, an umbrella organization for small businesses that works to help Black entrepreneurs thrive and expand despite the systemic barriers they still face. Can the Minister of Small Business tell us how our government helps Black entrepreneurs to overcome these barriers and succeed in Canada?

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Feb/14/24 2:58:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, sexual and reproductive health touches all aspects of human health and well-being. It affects physical and mental health. It impacts social participation. It ensures healthy reproductive organs, family planning, pre- and post-natal care, the delivery of healthy babies and safe abortion. There is a push globally to limit access to the full range of sexual and reproductive health care. This week, two female MPs were stopped from raising this issue in Parliament. As it is SRHR week globally, can the Prime Minister reaffirm the government's position on this human rights issue?

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Feb/1/24 1:07:00 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I do not think the Liberals are doing that anymore. They have moved to stop helping oil and gas companies. When I talked about British Columbia, one of the things that happened was that fuel usage went down by 16%, so it is not using as much fuel. We are investing in electric cars. Across the country, there is a whole highway that allows for the use of electric cars. We are putting money into the electric car industry and we are bringing down all the causes of pollution at the same time. It is not a one-shot deal. We cannot just poke at one thing. There are multiple factors that go into changing greenhouse emissions. It is something that this government is addressing. It is something that the British Columbian government addressed.

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Feb/1/24 1:05:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is very clear that we do not just have a price on pollution. As we can clearly see, we are investing in green technologies across the country. In Quebec, B.C. and across the country, we are helping to build new industries. We are giving them start-up funds, we are moving them forward and they are growing extremely well. That is one of the things we are doing. At the same time, some of that money has to go to paying the costs. I just read the amounts out from the Senate report. The costs of fires and floods, the damage to farmers and livestock and the damage to families have to be reimbursed somehow. There is a cost of not having a carbon tax. There is a cost of climate change.

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Feb/1/24 1:03:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think I said it all in my speech, but I will reiterate it. BC Stats and Statistics Canada say that the B.C. economy rose by 12.4% when other economies in Canada were going down. They said that 300 new companies, since the tax took effect, are now moving into B.C. to work in green technology. We are looking at about 130,000 new jobs in B.C. and about $90,000 per capita. I have no idea what the member is talking about. The statistics prove it.

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Feb/1/24 12:53:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Vaughan—Woodbridge. I am standing here to speak against this motion. It is a motion that is so based on ideology. It would do great harm to Canadians. A carbon tax is regarded by a majority of economists and policy researchers to be the most simple and powerful tool to limit carbon dioxide emissions. It is based on a premise that the polluter pays, which is the basis for most of our just systems, that people who do harm pay for that harm. It taxes polluters. A price on pollution is not a new idea. Norway initiated a carbon tax in 1991, taxing 80% of all its fuel emissions. In fact, since then, its fuel consumption and greenhouse gases emissions have gone down by 25%. Sweden and other Scandinavian countries did this in 1997. In 1991, Sweden brought in a $177 Canadian per tonne carbon tax. That is six times what we pay now in Canada. Other countries like Denmark and Finland all initiated carbon taxes in 1991. Their greenhouse gas emissions have fallen considerably and their economies and jobs have improved and increased. I do not want to just talk about other countries globally. I want to talk about our own backyard. I want to talk about my province of British Columbia and the fact the it initiated a carbon tax in 2007. Since then, greenhouse gas emissions have gone down by 15%, and it has not harmed the economy. In fact, the British Columbia economy is one of the most vibrant in all of Canada. After seven years of having a carbon tax, B.C.'s GDP increased by 12.4%. During the 2008 recession, when the Conservatives were in government, B.C. outperformed the Canadian average, increasing its GDP by 12.4%. In fact, it is now one of the lowest GHG emitters in Canada. It is now thriving in its economy and moving upward. It has created 123,000 new jobs in the green tech sector. Those jobs are paying an average of $90,000 per capita. That is pretty good money. It is attracting a lot of young people to British Columbia to work in green tech. At the moment, it has attracted 300 new companies from around the world to invest in British Columbia. Why? Because of the premise of a carbon tax, which is a federal premise that is revenue-neutral that goes back in rebates. The rebates and the revenue neutrality has given British Columbia the ability to lower taxes on some economies and industries; the ability to lower personal income taxes; and the ability to pass on money to low and middle-income Canadians, who get back more money than they pay in their fuel consumption tax. What it is finding is that because of a low commercial and personal income taxes, 300 companies have invested in British Columbia. British Columbia has also invested in green technology, which is what the federal government is doing as well, which has created new, well-paying jobs. Lower and middle-income people, farmers and businesses benefit from that low tax rate and from rebates. They help families, businesses and farmers. I know that the World Bank and the United Nations have cited British Columbia as having the best tax in the world and is a model to follow. However, I know that party does not think well of the World Bank and would like to leave the United Nations. I hear that this is one of its plans. Therefore, I am going to cite somebody else whom the Conservatives might find more credible, which is the OECD. It says that the B.C. carbon tax is a “textbook” example of how to get it right. Let us balance that with what the tax is doing, how it is helping people and what it has done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with what the Senate committee said in its report called “Treading Water: The impact of and response to the 2021 British Columbia floods”. What is the cost of doing nothing? What is the cost of climate change to us? Apparently, climate-change damage cost every Canadian $700 each year because of the money spent to remediate the problems we had with the fires and floods. In fact, we have had wildfires now for six years in British Columbia and two of those wildfires cost $720 million in insured losses last year, making it the most costly insured extreme-weather event the province has ever seen. Over the past 50 years, the costs of storms, floods and wildfires in Canada have risen from tens of millions of dollars to billions of dollars annually. Who pays that? Who helps out? It is the federal government. Therefore, that is costing us money. It is billions of dollars. In fact, in 2019 and 2010, the insured losses for catastrophic events were over $18 billion. With respect to the health costs, in Ontario alone, the health costs were shown to be $770 million last year because of the fires in Ontario. In British Columbia, when the floods occurred, the farmers, whom the Conservative Party says it cares about, lost millions and millions of dollars in farmland and in livestock, and the government had to help them. Both the B.C. and federal governments had to put money in to help these farmers out of their problems. A thousand farms in British Columbia were impacted in the floods last year, 15,000 hectares of land and $2.5 million in livestock in one flood. The Province of B.C. is still trying to calculate the loss of tourism due to the fires. I am not hearing anything from the Conservatives about what they would do about the extreme costs that governments have to bear and all the problems we face when we do this. Professor Tombe, an economist and public policy professor at the University of Calgary, said that if we were to axe the tax, as we have been hearing repeatedly from those people, it would benefit the highest-income bracket in Canada and be hardest on a “large fraction of low- and middle-income” families, and businesses. I want to end by quoting Mark Twain. He said, “Never let the [facts stand] in the way of a good story” or, in this case, a good bumper sticker. Let us talk about facts, and I brought facts to the table. Let us do away with the ideology, really do the math and clearly see that B.C. is the best example in the world as to what a carbon tax can do.

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Jan/31/24 8:15:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am getting very good questions here. I want to point out that we are talking about the COVID pandemic, but let us remember that measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria and small pox had all gone and died. They were not occurring anymore. They are coming back now because of vaccine deniers, people who are not vaccinating themselves. We are going to see polio once again, with children sitting in iron lungs because they have polio. We must remember that we cannot deal with any disease unless we are bound by scientific knowledge. Right now, many people are walking away from the scientific knowledge that we got from learning about vaccines and—

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Jan/31/24 8:13:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, once again, I think that is a good question, and I want to thank the member for bringing it up. We need to remember one very important thing. While it is very important to look at standards of care, with the huge death toll we saw in long-term care homes, in fact, it is not a federal jurisdiction to do those things. Long-term care is provincial jurisdiction. We are, at the moment, negotiating with provinces to look at how we could get that done so we do not trample on provincial jurisdiction. At the same time, we can work on standards and research through the Canadian Standards Association to see what it could look like, as soon as provinces decide to set those standards and set the kinds of decision-making available to the provinces to be able to deal with long-term care.

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Jan/31/24 8:12:02 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think that is a very important point, and I think we know that zoonoses are on the rise. Once again, it is that people are in contact with the animal world more than we used to be in contact with them. We are visiting game farms. We have the ability to meet wild animals in the wild. What we learned and must remember in this pandemic remembrance day is that zoonoses are very important. The transmission of viruses, bacteria and other diseases from animals to human beings is actually very possible. I am glad the member asked that question because that is a reason for pandemic observance day. It is to remember that we have learned some things, and that is one of them.

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Jan/31/24 8:01:59 p.m.
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moved that the bill be read the third time and passed. She said: Madam Speaker, this is a simple bill. Everyone has heard about it. In simple language, the bill states that throughout Canada, each and every year, March 11 would be known as “pandemic observance day”. There are about three reasons to do this. The first is to remember that, to date, 57,000 people in Canada have actually died from COVID-19, to remember and honour those people, and to also remember that 57,000 is more than all the Canadians who died in the Second World War. This is a huge number of people who died from a pandemic. We also need to remember their suffering and try to find how we can support all the people who are the family members and other bereaved people from throughout this crisis. The second part of what we need to do is continue recovering from COVID-19. I use the word “continue” because since the so-called pandemic was lifted, 7,000 more Canadians have died. Up to today, that is the number. Therefore, we know that COVID has not disappeared; COVID actually continues to be a variant. It continues to adapt and change, as we know all viruses have a tendency to do. Each time, we do not know what the variant will be. The important thing for us to do is remember that we are continuing to recover and that we must continue, therefore, to apply solid and strong public health commitments to what we do. In other words, we must continue to recognize that while this virus continues, we must wear masks when we are in an unventilated place, continue to wash our hands and continue to do all of the things we did during the pandemic, because we do not want to have the pandemic recur in large numbers. We need to therefore remember the day and learn of the evolution of the pandemic. We have tests and vaccines. Get the tests, vaccines and booster shots. People must make sure they are protected. They do not want to be counted and increase the number from 57,000 to 58,000. Please reflect on that and remember that viruses are totally unpredictable. We have independent, trusted science that we must remember, think about and follow, and we must make sure that Canadians are informed. If we are not worried and we think we are invulnerable, will never get COVID and can walk around ignoring it, we must remember that we have a duty to the people around us who could get sick and who could in fact be impacted by it. Let us not forget that this is a duty to others as well in a pandemic. With respect to recovering from COVID, we must also remember that COVID-19 was a pandemic, the first true pandemic we have had since the influenza after the war. Therefore, what we need to remember about this is that there will no longer be epidemics; we are going to have pandemics. Because of globalization, people who have never travelled before are travelling all around the world and bringing back viruses, diseases and illnesses. We are talking about people from every corner of the globe. The transmission of any illness or disease is quicker and easier in this world of globalization. We need to remember this if a pandemic begins and we feel we have not taken steps to prevent it from happening. Many countries had six times the number of deaths that Canada had because they did not have the resources. Many countries suffered a great deal. Is that what we want for other countries in the world? This duty of care is ours to remember. Our third duty is to be prepared for any other pandemic, be prepared for the recurrence of COVID-19, make sure we learn something from the COVID-19 pandemic and apply what we learned. Let us not repeat it. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Let us not have a repetition of another COVID-19 in this country or anywhere. We remember the people who lived in homes and institutions, the elderly people who died who did not have to and who died alone because they did not have family with them to look after them because of the isolation that was needed. I am asking members to remember, for those reasons; to learn our lessons; to look at how we apply those lessons to preventing future pandemics; and to make sure we always mark this day. This is a Senate bill. It was brought in by a senator who was previously a family physician, Dr. Mégie. As a physician, like I am, she understood the need to apply science to things like pandemics. Science is clear and evidence-based. Science will learn from the things we made mistakes on and from the things we learned how to do to deal with future occurrences. Let us be mindful of science. Let us not apply ideology to pandemics. Viruses do not particularly care whether one lives in Ontario or in Newfoundland. COVID-19 did not did not care; it did not understand or respect provincial boundaries. Let us remember that when we talk about how we deal with scientific evidence in order to protect ourselves and others. Again, as parliamentarians, our own duty is to remember to be aware of science and our duty of care to all the people we represent in the House, all of Canada. We have a duty to care for them in the same way we care for them when they do not have good drinking water or when they are suffering from poverty and say that food prices are too high. Those are the ways we care. Let us continue to care. When I hear of people who continue to debunk science and say that it is nonsense and that politicians make decisions, I say that politicians should make informed decisions based on good knowledge and good information. Therefore, they need to look at that information and what it tells them they should do, and look at whether they may get results from what they are doing because they are following good, evidence-based decision-making. There is not too much else I can say about the bill, but I would ask members this: Why do we have Remembrance Day on November 11 every year? It is because we want to remember the wars. We want to remember the number of people who died. We want to remember the damage. We want to make sure it does not happen again. We want to commit ourselves to peace. We want to commit ourselves to preventing war. Similarly, we want to commit ourselves to preventing pandemics that kill people. We need to be aware that the deaths of 57,000 Canadians could have been prevented if we had known and understood the pandemic when it first started. We now know what the pandemic did. We now know how to stop it. We now know the steps we need to take to remedy it. Let us remember this every year so we do not repeat the same mistakes we made and so we learn our lessons and use evidence-based, scientific methods to help protect the Canadian population. It is a simple bill, and I hope all members will support it.

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Context: House Hansard - 263 - Dec/6/23

Jan/31/24 8:01:17 p.m.
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moved that the bill be concurred in.

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Context: House Hansard - 246 - Nov/3/23

Dec/6/23 5:15:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 34(1), I have the honour to present to the House, in both official languages, the report of the Canadian delegation to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly respecting its participation in the 30th annual session, held in Vancouver, British Columbia, from June 30 to July 4, 2023.

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Context: House Hansard - 246 - Nov/3/23

Nov/3/23 12:16:41 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-202

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the seventh report of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage in relation to Bill S-202, an act to amend the Parliament of Canada Act (Parliamentary Visual Artist Laureate). The committee has studied the bill and has decided to support the bill back to the House, with amendments.

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Context: House Hansard - 230 - Oct/5/23

Nov/3/23 12:15:43 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present to the House, in both official languages, the report of the Canadian Delegation to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Parliament Assembly respecting its participation in the 22nd Winter Meeting in Vienna, Austria, from February 23 to 24.

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Vienna

Context: House Hansard - 221 - Sep/20/23

Oct/5/23 2:10:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise to mourn the passing of the Honourable Selwyn Romilly. He was the first Black student to graduate law at UBC, the first Black provincial court judge and the first Black justice on the B.C Supreme Court. Indeed, he had many firsts. Three years ago, at 81, he was the first Black retired justice to be handcuffed in public by the Vancouver Police who had mistaken him for a 40-year-old Black felon. True to form, Selwyn did not use that humiliation for bitter retaliation, but worked with police to change handcuffing procedures. Justice Romilly was recognized by his peers as a wise and eminent jurist, and a trailblazer and advocate for civil rights and justice in his judgments. He was a role model to young Black lawyers. He was a Trini like me, a year ahead of me in high school. He was a friend, teacher and mentor to many. We will miss him.

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Context: House Hansard - 218 - Jun/21/23

Sep/20/23 2:09:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this last weekend marked 20 years since the first North American safe injection site, Insite, opened in Vancouver. Since 2003, it has proven to be a lifesaver, with 1.7 million visits. I want to give a shout-out to those who looked at the positive evidence of harm reduction seen in Europe and took a chance on a pilot project with the Portland health society that proved successful. The catalyst was Mayor Philip Owen, who convinced two other levels of government to sign the Vancouver agreement. The MP for Vancouver East was the provincial minister, I was the federal representative, and all three of us, together with UBC's Drs. Montaner, Kerr and O'Shaughnessy, who headed the pilot project, took a political risk based on evidence. Eighteen months later we saw 100% of lives saved and knew it was all worth it. It still is.

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