- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- Hamilton Centre
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 65%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $131,250.15
- Government Page
- Feb/14/23 12:44:15 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I rather enjoy the hon. member for South Shore—St. Margarets. We get along famously. We have ongoing conversations in this House. He talked about the poor Liberal mathematics. I will find some common ground first. I would agree, and I will put this on the table, that we cannot tax ourselves out of climate change and that is a fact.
However, his math is not math. He talked about the good people in Nova Scotia who cannot afford to pay their bills and cannot afford to heat their homes, but not once did he talk about corporate profits. I am here to say today that if we were to abolish carbon pricing, the 1,000% profits that the oil and gas sector has had over this last year, in 2022, would continue to make it unaffordable for his residents.
The hon. member is a pragmatic man. Could he at least not agree that the corporate gouging, this ridiculous out-of-control profiteering, is the economic driver that is keeping the cost of heating the homes in his home province unaffordable for working-class people?
188 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/14/23 11:42:04 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, we had a total of 1,462,795 visits to food banks across Canada last year, 31% of whom were children and 8.9% were seniors. Meanwhile, Loblaws is making record profits.
Does the hon. member agree that we should extend the profit windfall tax, which has been applied to banks and insurance companies, to grocery chains such as Loblaws to double the GST and allow Canadians to be able to feed their families?
76 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/14/23 11:39:19 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I listened to the hon. member with great interest. He listed at length all the ways in which he demands the federal government support the social programs and social spending in Quebec, yet when it came time to listing what New Democrats were asking for, he basically dismissed investments in our provinces.
Which one is it? The member cannot have it both ways. Does the hon. member want more investments in his province of Quebec, or would he run an austerity budget, just like the Conservatives would?
89 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/28/22 11:47:55 a.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, it was thanks to the demands of the NDP.
While Canadians struggle to put food on their tables, grocery giants are picking their pockets to line their own on Bay Street. In the first two quarters of 2022, grocery stores made an average of $1.5 billion while workers' wages stayed the same. That is twice as much as the prepandemic profits.
This year, food bank use rose to the highest levels in Canadian history, yet rich CEOs keep cashing in. It is despicable. When will the Liberal government curb the appetite of corporate greed so Canadians do not have to continue to go home hungry?
108 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, while I rise in the House as a New Democrat in support of Bill C-30, I should state from the outset that, even with the emergency cost of living economic supports for Canadians made vulnerable in this economy, what people need most is stable social and economic supports that meaningfully improve their material living conditions, funded by a fair taxation that does not place the burden on a consumer tax that disproportionately impacts low-income and working-class people most. What Canada needs is a fair taxation system that would close corporate loopholes in order to recover the reported $30 billion lost due to corporate tax avoidance.
I should begin, in fairness, by highlighting, for those who are watching this debate tonight, that this bill would double the GST credit and provide $2.5 billion in additional targeted support to roughly 11 million individuals and families who already received the tax credit, including about half of Canadian families with children and more than half of seniors.
I believe this debate on Bill C-30 has made clear that most members, despite their partisan rhetoric, agree this bill offers a temporary reprieve from this greed-filled inflation and its inevitable recession, which will likely be associated with further unemployment. That is what keeps me up at night. It is the insecurity of the precarious workers that is built into this cyclical system and reproduced through these cycles to suppress wages and to force people back into exploitative low-paying jobs.
These attacks on workers are simply explained as profit-maximizing measures by shrewd corporate managers. This is why I believe that while contemplating this bill I should spend some time expanding on the preconditions of the economic system that drove us here.
People in Hamilton Centre are suffering. The vast majority of everyday people are unable to keep up with their monthly bills. Soaring inflation has pushed housing, food and energy costs way out of reach for people, and the feeling of insecurity is setting in across the country. Precarious employment is further punishing workers by threatening their ability to survive through this devastating economy, and wages simply are not keeping pace by being kept at and pushed down to devastatingly low rates. In short, workers' wages are being stolen by the record profits of big corporations and the payouts to their CEOs and shareholders.
Every aspect of our lives has been commodified by big banks and Bay Street. Our very existence is valued down to the decimal to be bought and sold by hedge funds and real estate income trusts so that those who have never lifted a finger in hard work in the creation of the means of production are grossly rewarded by the spoils of these dividends and payouts.
There is a class war happening in this country. There has always been a class war happening in this country, and it is being waged by the ultrarich in this country versus everybody else. Over the past 40 years the Canadian economy, both under Liberal and Conservative governments, has generated obscene amounts of concentrated wealth for the rich, while everybody else has been left behind. How can anyone in the House justify the enormous concentration of wealth by so few, while so many continue to suffer?
These everyday Canadian workers are facing down the barrel of another devastating recession, one that we know will be felt most by the rise of unemployment and the overnight hikes of interest rates, making people's payments on mortgages and personal lines of credit explode overnight. The adage of “the rich get richer, while the workers continue to get exploited” is happening now more than ever.
The people of Hamilton Centre are struggling, left to survive the misery of the daily grind of low wages and legislated poverty, should they be living with disabilities, while also facing greed-driven rocket-high costs of living.
The Liberals, with their constant talk about the middle class and those working hard to join it, which is so insulting, would have Canadian workers believe that it is their own fault if they are not getting well-paying jobs or, more accurately, if they are not born into wealth to begin with and that they should blame themselves.
The leader of the official opposition will continue to put big corporations and billionaires first. The Conservatives will blame government for any meagre supports delivered to people living with disabilities, low-wage workers, migrant workers and anybody else left out of this economy. They speak of inflation and the money that was directed to working-class people, yet they never have a critique on the $750-billion bailout of big banks and Bay Street. The Conservatives attack Canada's social safety net of the copay contributions of employment insurance and the Canada pension plan, and not because they care about the contribution of the workers, but because they are fighting to save the contribution copayments by big business corporate employers.
This is at a time when Canadians need this economic support and stability the most. We should be delivering more support to Canadians and not less, particularly those who are left unemployed and our seniors, who are struggling to get by on their meagre CPP. They should be getting more and not less. We should not be attacking their pensions in this House. We should be ensuring that CPP and EI dollars are protected in separate accounts so that successive Liberal and Conservative governments will not have the tendency to raid these funds to balance their books.
While the Conservatives have callously attacked this bill throughout the debate on one hand, we already know that they are going to be supporting it. They are forced to ultimately support it because it is literally the least the government can do in the face of the astronomical costs of living. In their so-called free market fantasy, they never admit that corporations make off like bandits, pilfering government support by exploiting loopholes that have allowed them to take taxpayer dollars while paying out record dividends to their shareholders.
I am often in this House, and when I hear Conservative Party members clapping about the record profits of oil and gas, I ask myself how many MPs are receiving dividends on the profits of the same corporations that took wage subsidies and supports. These companies were not reinvesting in the economy. They were not improving the material working conditions of their employees by raising their wages to keep pace with the basic levels of economic survival. They were lining their own pockets and those of their shareholders.
This capitalist system creates enormous wealth, but it also creates great misery for the majority of people. This entire system is predicated on corporations spending as little as they can while getting the most out of every dollar they spend. It is not that they do not want to pay low wages; they are also pressuring people to get the most output from their workers at this low wage. When we hear about job creation, long gone is the day when a family can have one or two income earners who work nine to five and have enough to pay their bills. Families and workers across the country are forced to participate in two, three or four low-wage exploitative jobs. The rewards in this economy when this wealth is generated always go to the employers while workers continue to be punished.
In this regard and in many other ways, it is the capitalism of the system that generates the inequality. If we can, in a very small tokenistic way, return some money back to the pockets of Canadians, we support that. However, we call on the government to do more by workers, do more by seniors and do more by people who are living with a disability and precarious people who have been exploited by this economy.
1327 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/29/22 4:29:24 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I heard the member of the official opposition talk about inflation and copayments for pensions and employment insurance, but not once did she talk about profits. I would like to give the hon. member the opportunity right now. Oil and gas made $147 billion, yet not one word came out of this member about that.
Would she perhaps give some consideration to the runaway profits of the oil and gas sector, the food sector and the housing market, rather than simply being stuck on the taxation associated with it?
91 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/29/22 4:01:28 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, once again, lost in this conversation is the very fact that, when talking about employment insurance and pension copays, this is workers' money and contributions matched by their employers, yet we have a Liberal government that in the past raided these funds to balance the budget to the tune of $50 billion under Chrétien and Martin.
Would the hon. Liberal member agree with New Democrats that pensions and EI contributions need to be separated out of the general coffers and protected, because it was never the government's money to begin with? It was always the money of hard-working Canadians.
105 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/29/22 3:50:12 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, we hear them heckling across the way, but does the hon. member not agree that the quickest, best and most sustainable way of putting money into the pockets of everyday workers is by improving their wages and not taking away their employer co-payments?
46 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/29/22 3:49:33 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, we heard the Conservatives go on and on and on about the cost of everything, but it is clear they know the value of nothing in this House. If they did, if they were really serious about workers, they would not be trying to attack pensions, employment contributions and in particular the co-pays. If they were truly concerned about putting money in the pockets of everyday people, they would be supporting our efforts to raise the actual wages.
81 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
