- Member of Parliament
- Member of the Subcommittee on Review of Parliament’s involvement with associations and recognized Interparliamentary groups
Deputy House leader of the New Democratic Party
- NDP
- London—Fanshawe
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $131,911.16
- Government Page
- May/31/24 11:04:35 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, Safe Space London is a collective by, with, and for sex workers, allies, women and non-binary folks.
Since 2009, this collective offers harm reduction and first aid supplies, HIV and STI testing, cosmetics, clothing, hygiene products, peer support programming and a safe place for sex workers. It also provides important education campaigns and advocacy for sex work decriminalization.
Across Canada, organizations like Safe Space are under attack by Conservatives who use cheap slogans to fearmonger and victimize the most vulnerable in our communities. They do this in an attempt to raise their own status and to fundraise. Punching down is not leadership.
The community around Safe Space London is fierce. I want to thank all the allies and organizations in London that have stood with them, showing the power women have when we stand together. I will always stand and support Safe Space, and I will always fight against the Conservatives' misogynistic, anti-choice, anti-sex work agenda.
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- Oct/17/23 12:55:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague and I share having ridings in the city of London. I know a lot of people are quite happy and interested to move forward with the accelerator fund. However, renoviction is a huge issue across this country, and certainly within the city of London. Constituents of mine living in the apartments on Webster Street are being renovicted out of their affordable places to live. They cannot afford to live there anymore. I know this has happened in her riding as well.
We have called repeatedly for the government to create a not-for-profit housing acquisition fund, so co-operatives, non-profits and municipal governments could access a fund to buy those lower-rent buildings and apartment buildings. Can she talk about the fact that we have not heard anything from the government, her government, on an acquisition fund?
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- Oct/16/23 10:33:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I too want to thank my hon. colleague for the strength she brings to this debate. Knowing her background as a Jewish Canadian, I cannot even imagine this, so I appreciate that.
She spoke a lot about the local impact. I come from London, where we are still dealing with a lot of the impacts of what happened to our London family. To move forward, I have been asking about concrete actions we can take in this place and that the government can take to continue to support all of our communities when we are dealing with such tragedy and acts of violence and hatred.
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Madam Speaker, I hear it too. Young folks in London—Fanshawe do not know where to turn, and there is a hopelessness around that. It is unfortunate. It used to be the federal government and provincial governments hand in hand would directly build housing, and since 1995 we are short about 15,000 to 20,000 affordable units built every year by governments. That consistent decision by federal and provincial governments not to build housing has created this crisis. We need to be able to directly and quickly build co-ops and not-for-profit housing centres, and have rent geared to income so we have that balance. We need to focus a lot less on developers and people who are making a ton of money off rental income for their benefit and are not being appropriately taxed. We need to put that back into the housing stock.
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- Apr/19/23 2:50:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, PSAC workers who serve the people of London are on strike today demanding a fair deal from the government. These workers deserve respect.
People in London are looking carefully at what the government will do next. Will it do what it usually does and show its Conservative colours, or will it listen to workers' legitimate demands and commit to not introducing back-to-work legislation?
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- Feb/16/23 3:37:14 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague and neighbour in London West spoke about the $49 billion extra funds coming to the provinces. Of course, that is spread over 10 years and it is spread over the provinces.
In our city, London Health Sciences is asking for an additional plan of $3 billion, and $300 million of that will fall to the city because of a lot of the downloading. We talked about downloading from the federal government to the provinces and provinces to the municipalities. I would like her to respond about the specific ask from London, the need and how this money could go to help that institution.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House to represent the people of London—Fanshawe and to speak to Bill C-32 today.
There are a lot of issues that have been raised in this bill that we have been talking about for a long time. We have been fighting for Londoners, of course, but fighting for a fairer economy and bringing that voice into this place.
There are a lot of pieces of this bill that we think are a good start and reasons we support this bill, but as usual there is a lot lacking. As a New Democrat, I work, I push and I continue to fight for so much more for the people of London—Fanshawe. One of the key points is that we are supporting the removal of the federal portion of interest on student loans. That could make a real difference for students.
I was formerly the post-secondary critic for the NDP in this place, and we fought for so much more. We called for the cancellation of up to $20,000 of federal debt per student and a break from that repayment. We made it retroactive. We talked about going even further. Ultimately, the government is making money off the backs of our future, off those who will contribute to our economy in so many ways through the education system, and that is very short-sighted. We could go so much further, but it is a good start.
On the windfall tax, we support some of these measures, but the government could do much more if it had the political courage to go further. Big banks, big box stores and oil and gas companies have made record profits from COVID.
If we had raised that proposed 15% and made it permanent, we would see an extra $4.3 billion in the federal coffers. We could reinvest that in people and in social programs that establish the solidity that people need. The equity that people can get from social programs is the role of government, not to play catch-up to big corporations that are at the very top.
We have concerns with this bill, because it does not go far enough. As New Democrats, we were fighting in the last Parliament to deliver supports under the CERB and the wage subsidy to handle and to deal with what people were facing with COVID-19. When the government provided those supports and said it had people's backs, people needed that and they believed it.
Now we see the government clawing that back. It is clawing back the benefits that people applied for in good faith. There are people I know, who come to my constituency office, and do not know where to turn. They count on the government to provide fairness and support, and they are not seeing that.
I was here a few weeks ago with my hon. colleague from Elmwood—Transcona. I am always awed by his ability to give a speech in this place, off the cuff. He has so much knowledge within.
Something he was talking about really stuck with me. It was the need for respect and the call for the respect that people deserve. They work so hard, play by the rules, do everything they are supposed to and do everything the government asks of them. They are paying their fair share in taxes, yet when they need the government to help them, it is not there. They become frustrated and angry. They do not know where to turn.
It is that need to show respect that is a piece of the tax fairness we talk about. The government has to find the right balance to show that respect to Canadians. It has to have the courage to ask those who make the most in this world to redistribute those excess profits and to not take advantage of people who are just trying to get by and who are just trying to feed their families. They need to pay their fair share.
I am so happy to see that my colleague from Cowichan—Malahat—Langford has championed this issue and has received unanimous support to investigate the greedflation from grocery stores that we talk about, at the agriculture committee. However, it is clear that the $1 million a day that Loblaws makes in profits, because it is taking advantage of people, is driving inflation. It has to be a part of that fair taxation.
According to the new study released by the Centre for Future Work, 15 profitable industries, including the grocery sector, are driving inflation in Canada. The combined profits of these 15 sectors are up by a whopping 89%. Nobody's salaries are up by 89%. People feel that, and they see that unfairness. They are asking for solutions from the government.
The windfall tax that we have been calling for on excess profit could go so far in systems that are now in crisis. That is because of underfunding and government cuts and because of downloading of responsibilities from the federal to the provincial government and from the provincial to municipal governments.
We are seeing that in our health care system. In my hometown of London, Ontario, hospitals have seen a surge, like so many across this country, especially in the children's hospital. Patients are waiting up to 20 hours for service.
I cannot imagine being a parent and watching my child suffer. It is one thing for parents to take that on themselves and try to deal with it, but they have to watch their child go through that, to suffer in a hallway, to wait and then to be told to go home. Surgeries are being cancelled in London, because they cannot deal with the influx of patients. People take their kid home and they are suffering. I cannot imagine what that has done to families.
Now people in London are, in an innovative way, trying to deal with those long wait times in emergency rooms. London Health Sciences Centre is trying to change how it structures its emergency room policies. It is trying to create a separate emergency room system for those dealing with mental health crises and addiction crises. It is trying to make something work.
The Doug Ford Conservative provincial government said that it is not going to fund it, and that the city needs to take the burden of that cost. It is $300 million on a city in Ontario that cannot carry a deficit, and it has to somehow figure out how to service the people in our municipality and not overburden the taxpayers.
One of the things regarding inflation that we have heard is that the government is at fault and it is overspending. Conservatives have a very simplistic view that it is just about taxes. We know that is not true. The Conservatives will not accept the fact that, even though there are studies about it now, including the one that I just referenced, this could potentially be about greed.
I will come back to the point that the member for Elmwood—Transcona was making about respect. Instead of continuing to protect big corporations, if we could implement true tax reform to make these companies that are making massive excess profits pay their fair share and to hold those wealthy friends accountable, then that would be respect. That would be showing the Canadian public that we are willing to do the work, and that we have the courage to stand up to ensure they have that fairness and they see that fairness.
One of the problems that I also see is regarding the Bank of Canada and its continuous pursuit to hit that 2% target, yet in that lies the potential of a recession. If it hits that 2% target, it could risk 850,000 jobs. There are already people desperately trying to make ends meet, and now they have to worry about losing their job and figuring that out.
London has such a proud manufacturing history. There are McCormick, Dr. Oetker, Labatt, Indiva in my riding and Environize. There is a place called the Cakery. There are so many places and I wish—
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- Dec/6/22 2:47:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, families are frustrated and anxious about the state of our emergency rooms. Sick kids are waiting in makeshift spaces for up to 20 hours and this government is letting Premier Ford download health care costs onto municipalities.
London city hall, already overburdened, is being asked to pay $300 million to cover health care's restructuring. The Liberal government is leaving families and the cities they live in to fend for themselves against the callous provincial government.
When will the government hammer out a health care transfer deal to ensure cities do not have to bear the brunt of health care costs?
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- Nov/17/22 2:31:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, they are simply not listening. This is not about one province, and it is not about a second province. It is about all the provinces, and maybe they should be taking offence at some of these responses, because I know the constituents in my riding are.
Parents in London are living in fear of their kids getting sick. They know there is a crisis in London's children's hospital and they face a record influx of patients and high emergency wait times. London's health officials are warning that it is not getting better; they are expecting significant pressure for the upcoming weeks.
Families and their children cannot afford to wait for this help, and this government continues—
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- Feb/20/22 11:07:20 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to address a bit of a local issue. The people of London have experienced first-hand the dangers caused by the right-wing extreme hatred. Unfortunately, in the last few days we have seen the raising of Confederate flags in London as well.
I want to ask the hon. member what he has heard from his constituents about that and how the government plans to address it. I would also ask him if he would be willing to support the NDP's private member's bill, Bill C-229, on the banning of those hate symbols.
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