- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- Hamilton Centre
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 65%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $131,250.15
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, I gave the hon. member the opportunity to advocate for seniors and talk about what a living wage would look like in retirement, and she chose not to answer the question, so I want to put the question back to the hon. member. What is the rate and how far would she be willing to go on seniors' pension rates to help lift them out of poverty? I ask the member to give me numbers.
77 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Mr. Speaker, it is a rare day I get to rise in the House and find common ground with my Conservative colleagues, but I think I may have found it. The Conservative member spoke about the inadequate rates for seniors in their pensions and retirements, and I completely agree.
She talked about how inadequate the Liberal government's increases were to it, so I would like to find some common ground with the hon. Conservative member and ask her to reflect on what she thinks would be a fair and adequate rate to allow seniors to retire with dignity in this country.
102 words
All Topics
- 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
- Mar/31/22 12:50:08 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I will, once again, zero in on the second problematic point of this cockamamie Conservative motion, which states that taxes on Canadians continue to increase, from carbon tax to the Canada pension plan premiums.
The text of this motion mis-characterizes the Canada pension plan as a tax, when in fact it is a deferred wage and a meaningful way for Canadians to plan for retirement.
Given that the previous Conservative member refused to answer this question when I put it directly to him, could the member opposite clarify why the Conservatives believe the Canada pension plan premium, which saves for retirement, is considered a tax? Also, by cutting pension premiums against inflation, would it not stand to reason that Conservatives are also looking to lower the meagre payouts to our most vulnerable seniors?
136 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Mr. Speaker, in all of Hamilton, 2,020 seniors saw a reduction in their GIS benefits because of the CERB clawbacks. Residents in Hamilton Centre bore the brunt, with almost 660 having their GIS clawed back. This has been an attack, and it has been devastating on working poor seniors in my community.
In a time of such uncertainty and despair, that the Liberals would plunge seniors further into poverty can only be described as cruel and unusual. They have known about this for quite some time. I ask the hon. member, who knew this was an issue for seniors, why he and the Liberals waited so long to fix it.
111 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/3/22 11:47:19 a.m.
- Watch
- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, how completely out of touch does the hon. member have to be to practically dislocate his shoulder patting himself and the Liberal Party on the back for leaving out hundreds of thousands of vulnerable seniors for a decade until they qualify for Liberal old age supports? The Liberals continue to move the goal posts on our most vulnerable people, including my seniors here in Hamilton Centre. What are the Liberals going to do for those under 75 years of age?
Do not even get me started on the GIS clawbacks. Seniors have to wait until May to receive the compensation promised to them following the GIS clawback. In the meantime, many of them are being evicted from their homes in the middle of winter. This bill does not provide any support for that. Why do the Liberals think it is acceptable for seniors to be evicted from their homes and forced to use our food banks?
158 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
