- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- Hamilton Centre
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $131,250.15
- Government Page
- May/8/24 4:49:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the hon. member raising the cost of housing as a prime issue. He called it a “black hole”. I would say that, in some regards, the financialization of housing is parasitic, particularly when it comes to workers and working-class people.
The hon. member raised the way in which housing costs have ballooned out of control. I would put to colleagues the parable of the carpenter. Some 10 or 15 years ago, the average wage for a carpenter was about $42 an hour. The house that they would build would be about $300,000 to $350,000 for a home. If we fast-track to today, this present moment, the same carpenter, that master craftsperson, has an average salary of $49 an hour, but the homes they build are $700,000 to $800,000 for a home.
Does the hon. member agree in the economic theory stating that the surplus value of workers' wages is being redistributed to the ultrawealthy and captured by the banks, the financial class and the real estate class of this economy, which do not actually produce the wealth? It is the worker who produces the wealth in this regard.
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- Feb/16/24 1:16:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have heard the arguments from our Conservative counterparts, always talking about the state of women-owned businesses. What they seem to fail to recognize is that this sector of the care economy also depends on many female workers, yet this member of the Conservative Party talked about a wage spiral, as though inflating wages, increasing the wages of workers, is somehow a bad thing.
Is it his economic theory that this sector depends on the exploitation of women workers in order to provide affordable child care?
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Madam Speaker, I have to hand it to the hon. member. I rather enjoy his analysis on monopoly capitalism. He has spoken at length about the ways in which the dominance of corporations have concentrated their power in this stage of capitalism.
I wonder if the hon. member would find common ground with me and agree that the battle of competition is fought by cheapening of commodities. “The cheapness of commodities depends, ceteris paribus, on the productiveness of labor, and this again on the scale of production. Therefore, the larger capitals [defeat] smaller.” Further, “the credit system, which begins as a [modest helper] of accumulation,” soon “becomes a new and [formidable] weapon in the [competitive struggle], and is finally transformed into an enormous social mechanism for the centralization of capitals.”
Would the hon. member agree with that economic theory? It could have been Adam Smith.
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- Oct/17/23 4:17:43 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I often enjoy my debates with the hon. member for Northumberland—Peterborough South. He likes to reference his economic theory. He did some of that today in talking about the out-of-control housing crisis we have, what I affectionately call the crisis of capitalism.
I would like the hon. member to reflect on this. In 2013, in Hamilton, the average house cost was $350,000. The high end of a unionized carpenter's salary was $42 an hour. Fast-forward 10 years and the high end for a unionized carpenter's salary is $48 an hour, but the same home the carpenter builds has now doubled in price, to over $700,000. That is what we are looking at now. The reality is that the surplus value of the labourer's work, the money he or she is building and wealth he or she is creating in this country, is going somewhere, but who is not going to? It is not going to the worker.
My question for the hon. member is on his economic theory. When he looks at the crisis of capitalism and the housing crisis, would he at least have the courage today to stand up and talk about where the surplus value of labour is going? It is not going to the working class but to Bay Street, the banks and big developers.
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- Jun/9/23 11:29:52 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, every time the Bank of Canada raises the interest rates, workers pay the price. While bosses and CEOs cashed in on their quarterly profits, Canadians lost 17,000 jobs in one month alone. To Liberals and Conservatives, economic recovery just looks like somebody else's unemployment, but for everyday people, it looks like economic punishment.
At a time when there is deep despair, why does the Liberal government refuse to fix unemployment insurance while so many Canadians continue to lose their jobs?
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Mr. Speaker, I am gobsmacked by the Conservatives who talk about economics. They talk about inflation, but yet they never talk about corporate profits. He just said that he believed there was automatic scarcity. There is no automatic scarcity. This is something that is constructed by capitalism. There are five families that run our food. We have a cartel with our telecoms. We have a cartel with our banking. It is neo-liberal capitalist design to take the value that is created by workers and to syphon it up to the corporate class, yet they never speak about the profits.
This is not the eighties. This is the result of failed trickle-down economics that, at the end of the day, leaves workers with less money to purchase their basic necessities of life. Will the hon. member please find within his spirit a bit of courage today to stand up and finally talk about the corporate greed that is driving inflation, the corporate greed of the banking class, the corporate greed of the grocers and the corporate greed of the Bay Street elite who are driving inflation, rather than trying to put it on the backs of working-class people?
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- Feb/14/23 12:44:15 p.m.
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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?
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Madam Speaker, there are a couple things in the fall economic statement that merit support, but what stands out for New Democrats is not necessarily what is in the statement but what is not in the statement.
While the Deputy Prime Minister signals tough times and a recession, there is no comprehensive EI reform. Can the member please explain what the Liberals' plan is for workers who, through no fault of their own, may lose their job as a consequence of the economic policies geared towards numbers and not people while their government has failed to tend to the social safety net that they were counting on to catch them?
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