Bill C-15 (Historical)

Canada Emergency Student Benefit Act

An Act respecting Canada emergency student benefits (coronavirus disease 2019)

This enactment authorizes the payment of Canada emergency student benefits to students who lost work and income opportunities for reasons related to the coronavirus disease 2019.

Canada Emergency Student Benefit Act

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Peace River—Westlock.

I wanted to start off by saying that when I was younger, Oshawa was a bit of a different town. Oshawa was proudly able to support many students who were working in good summer jobs at the GM assembly plant. I remember working eight years in that plant, and it was a good wage and a great experience. Many of my friends in different programs, whether engineering, management, trades or labour, gained great experience at that plant.

As you know, Mr. Speaker, I am a chiropractor. One may ask what kind of experience I received working on the floor at GM to be a chiropractor. It has allowed me to connect with my constituents and know what they are going through when they came to see me. I always joke that it even maybe helped me in politics. I have said that I have come to Ottawa to straighten out those politicians. When one gets to work in one's community, it is a wonderful experience.

Today it is a different environment in Oshawa, and there are no longer the same opportunities. We have lost our assembly plant. There are still good opportunities in the auto sector, as well as some growth in health care and education, but students still make up a great part of my constituency and this bill hits home.

Between the Ontario Tech University, Trent University Durham campus and Durham College, Oshawa is home to literally thousands of students. In 2019, Ontario Tech University has a total of 10,348 students. Durham College has more than 13,600 full post-secondary and apprenticeship students, with more than 2,000 students from over 60 countries, along with thousands of students in part-time, professional and online studies. Trent University Durham campus has over 1,600 undergraduate students, with 41 graduate students as well. Unlike years past, I am hearing from our young people that they are hurting.

Young people want the same thing that we wanted. They want a job; they do not want a handout. They want a future, experience, a better life and they want opportunities. I love hanging around young people because they really inspire me. They know Canada is the best country in the world with the best potential and that it is the best place to live.

This bill is about students and their futures. I am hearing from the students in my riding that they are in immediate need, as are their families. I am very happy to be here today to support this bill. Conservatives have been working very hard to help the government to better these bills and make better programs available for students and Canadians who need them.

Conservatives have negotiated several changes to this proposed legislation, which includes requiring the government to connect all applicants to the Canada job bank and providing them with job availability information before applying, requiring parliamentary review of the legislation and benefit and instituting a legislated sunset clause so the benefit could not be extended through regulation and there would be accountability.

We recognize unemployment in some parts of the country is extremely high because of this pandemic and that some of these jobs just are not available, so Canadians and students need real help right now. In normal times, this would be a time when students would be starting their new summer jobs so they could save up for the next school year and pay for their rent and groceries.

While the $1250 that students will be receiving through the Canada emergency student benefit is a step that will help them pay their rent and buy their groceries, it will not place them in a position to pay for their books and tuition come September. They need more. Students need to be able to work in a safe, sanitary environment that will not only pay their bills but also give them experience in their chosen field or even in a field that gives them valuable experience.

What energizes me when I talk to students is that students believe in the future of Canada. Many students come here from all over the world, and a kid in Oshawa can make new friends and learn from friends who come from all parts of the world. They all understand the importance of experience and the potential that Canada offers these students.

Students also believe in the Canadian dream. That is why I love listening to their ideas. The government sometimes has a difficult time defining what the middle class is, but the students I have talked to know what that means. They know what they are aiming for. They want to join the middle class and contribute in a significant way to the Canadian economy. Students want to do their part. They want to contribute to Canada's future. They want to settle down, pursue their careers, raise their families, reach for their dreams and help continue to make Canada the best country in the world.

Right now students are hurting. There is uncertainty. There is fear. It is not just about the COVID virus; they are worried about their future and their families. I have been hearing from mature students with dependants. They have concerns with this ongoing crisis. This is real. They are very concerned about paying their bills while also taking care of their kids. They want to be able to graduate and get a good job in their field, and, if they want, get married, pay for their kids' hockey or volleyball, buy a house, buy a car or go on vacation once a year to get away from our famously frigid Canadian winters. Students know what they want. They understand the definition of middle class and what a Canadian dream is. Students know this.

As Conservatives, we want to help improve these government programs in these trying times. We have some really good ideas, which we have heard in the House today. We want to put them forward to help students in the long term and in an effective way. We offer these ideas for the government's consideration, and we want to help it develop and improve its programs.

Therefore, along with this bill, there should be a priority to expand the Canada summers job program and create a central database to ensure that these critical jobs are filled and students not only receive valuable experience, but limit their student debt by making more money during the summer. This program should focus on jobs in the agricultural sector, because we are hearing more and more concerns about our critical supply chains and the difficulty people in our agricultural sector are having in getting the labour they need. At the same time, we want to put our students to work in a helpful and meaningful way that gives them practical life experience, which can also be valuable for their future careers.

When people think of Oshawa, they think about cars. I am really proud of that history, but many people do not realize that the Durham region adds $300 million every single year to Ontario's farm production. In 2017, there were 3,400 jobs in the forestry, fishing and hunting sectors. There are over 200 farms in the Durham region. These farms produce high-quality food for Canadians. Whether it is beef, lamb, honey, cider, fruit, vegetables or wine, we are very proud of the products we produce in the Durham region.

We have been hit with hard times before, but sometimes the hard times have a silver lining: They bring people together. I think our Conservative idea will really help benefit employers who are looking to give those students the experience they need but maybe cannot afford it right now. It will give students more money so that when they get back to school in the fall of 2020, they will have fewer loans and more money in their pockets.

In the end, although the Canada emergency student benefit provides assistance to students in the short term, it is important that our young people and mature students are able to get the supports they need so they can be prepared for the opening of the fall 2020 semester, whether it is online or in a slightly modified environment. This can be done by expanding the Canada summer jobs program so employers can get the help they need and supply chains can be secure, all while putting more money in the pockets of students and giving them experience that will last a lifetime.

What the Conservatives want to do is offer Canadians a win-win-win. The program we are offering gives students a win, businesses a win and Canadians a win. When Canadians, students and businesses win, it ensures we all have a future we can be proud of.

I anticipate some great questions from my colleagues on this.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we all look forward to seeing young people find work in their chosen fields when this is all over. I am pleased the Conservative Party is supporting this emergency aid to young people.

However, I am concerned about the sunset clause. I preferred the bill before the change that was just advocated by the Conservative Party, because allowing that change to be made by regulation could help us avoid coming back into Parliament to change the legislation, given that the pandemic may have a second wave that impacts our workforce in the fall.

I wonder if my hon. colleague from Oshawa could reflect on why the Conservative Party felt that the benefits of that sunset clause outweighed the downside of our having to come back and re-legislate if we need the benefit to last longer.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this is an ideological argument on which we could have a back-and-forth. We are talking about accountability and transparency. By not having a sunset clause, the government could go on and on with program spending. Although we hear about this team Canada approach from the Prime Minister, in reality it is not quite there yet.

As a parliamentarian, I see what we are doing through virtual Parliament and particularly what we are doing here in the House. We have people from across our country coming together because they believe in our democracy and believe in how it functions.

As we saw with the first bill, which the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands remembers, the government wanted unlimited spending and taxation power until 2021, for 18 months, which was unprecedented in the Westminster system.

With regard to the sunset clause, we do not mean to put any hardship on any student, but I would be happy to come back into the House to perform what we are doing here. This is not optimal, but it is working for Canadians. It is our job to make sure that the government has the best programs out there, because things could change in four to six months and the Conservatives want us to keep that moving forward in the—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Yellowhead.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I really appreciated my colleague's story about being a chiropractor and understanding the auto industry.

Because of what they are proposing for agriculture, my concern is that some youth are now a second or third generation away from the farm and have no idea where their food production comes from, except that it comes from a local grocery story.

Could the member touch on how this experience will help this young generation build a better understanding of agriculture and where their food comes from?

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I talked about my experience, and in my community I was able to really relate to the people who were coming to see me when I was serving as a chiropractor.

The member is correct that people seem to be disconnected. This is an opportunity to connect. This is an opportunity to do something even bigger with this program so that we are not just giving a handout; we are giving people a hand up. We would be able to not only let them have hands-on experiences about where their food is coming from each and every day, but also help them understand the importance of the Canadians who do that job day in and day out. We are talking about our farmers, who are happy to wake up at five o'clock in the morning, go out, do their job and supply Canadians with a solid food supply, in one of the safest food supply chains in the entire world.

What I am talking about is allowing our young people to experience this, in a way. We should not just be looking at this pandemic as a negative. This can be an opportunity to bring us all closer together. My colleague who asked this question gets it, and we hope the rest of our colleagues in this wonderful chamber get it as well.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, in keeping with what my colleague said, before I came to this place I was an auto mechanic. Cars are running in the vein today. My friends always said there was not a wrench big enough to fix Ottawa, but I said I had to give it a try anyway, so here I am.

COVID has upended all of our lives. We have taken to social distancing and significantly changed the way we live our lives. For me, the largest change is not getting to gather on Sundays with my local church congregation. That has probably been the biggest challenge for me. We have all changed our lives significantly due to COVID.

Many people have come to me to ask when we will be returning to some semblance of normal and when we can gather together, particularly for church. These are big questions in my community. These are legitimate questions.

We have a lot of questions about how we got here. We seem to have based our decision-making on a number of models, but that is a fuzzy kind of science. Models are only as good as their inputs. Who creates these models? Where do these models come from? What models are we using? These are valid questions that people are asking me, and I do not have the answers. I do not know what those models are, I do not know who the author of them is and I do not know what the inputs are. It seems to me that over time we should be questioning whether the assumptions we made at the beginning of all this are still holding. Did we use the correct inputs in the models?

Today we are discussing a benefits program for students. That is for sure far down the line, in my opinion. Each and every time we make another move in addressing the COVID crisis, we should go back to see if the basic assumptions we made at the beginning of all this are holding. We always say hindsight is 20/20. Now that we have a bit of hindsight, we can look back to see whether the assumptions we made in January are holding true. Is this disease as contagious as it was? Is it having impacts? I know we are seeing deaths across the country, but are the things we are doing to prevent them working? How do we know they are working? Those questions are being asked of me, and I have not necessarily seen them being answered effectively by the government.

Every day the government makes an announcement on how it is dealing with COVID, but we rarely look back. The government could say it made an assumption on January 3 and was right or made an assumption on January 3 and was wrong and things are actually worse or better. I do not see a great deal of that, and I think right from the onset we should address this. I would like to know what the models are, who the author of these models is and what the assumptions of these models are so that average Canadians, wherever they are in Canada, can say that they make sense.

We are asking Canadians from across the country to put their lives on hold. The restaurant owners in my area have been particularly tied to two-twenty, I would say. They have all been reaching out to me, asking when they can open again and telling me they are going bankrupt as we speak.

The other thing they mention often to me is that the goalposts seem to be moving. They said that over a month ago all they were hearing about was flattening the curve and today we are talking about stopping the spread. Those are both valid things, but they seem to be different. There was a subtle change in language, and there has never been an explanation as to why we changed from flattening the curve to stopping the spread. I agree with both of those things, but there was no explanation as to why we did those things. People are saying to me that we seem to have flattened the curve and are asking when they are going to get to reopen their restaurants again. When will they get to go back to work? That is very significant.

Another major concern that people have is that all of that government intervention, with the $2,000 a month from the CERB and even the proposed benefit for students, is going to change our economy. There are no ands, ifs or buts about it. It is going to change our economy. Does the government have models that it can share with us as to what the expected change to the economy is going to be?

We have seen from other places that when the minimum wage has been increased, for example, rents went up in proportion. Do we know those kinds of things about what we are doing today by handing out $2,000 a month? Where will that money flow through? It will not just stay in a particular person's bank account. He or she will spend it on things like rent and food. What kind of impact will it have on rent and food? There are all these kinds of things. Have we seen those models? We are looking to the government to explain to us some of the impacts of these benefits that are being brought forward.

We mentioned our concern that this system of payments to students may create disincentives to work, and then the NDP said that we were accusing people of being lazy. I would not suggest at all that anybody is suggesting that anyone is being lazy. We were merely saying that people are people, and they will do a cost-benefit analysis. Therefore, if someone can go to work in a local factory and make $1,000 or else stay home and collect $1,200 a month from the government, the person will do a cost-benefit analysis. There is nothing lazy about that. It is just a a cost-benefit analysis, and we do not want to put an incentive into our economy to suggest that people should stay at home.

It was interesting as well that they seem to agree with us on the incentive part of the benefit and that a person should be able to make money while also accruing the student benefit.

We, as Conservatives, are happy to support this measure, although there are many things that need to be improved. We have seen the government listen, particularly on the first round, with regard to the 10% wage subsidy. When we said that it was not going to work, the government came back with a 75% wage subsidy that should work well.

It was also interesting to hear the leader of the NDP question why these systems seem to be so tailored rather than broad. Perhaps I could suggest an answer to that question, because I remember the 2015 election. I suppose I can forgive the hon. member, because I do not think he was here in 2015.

During the 2015 election, the Liberals ran around accusing us of giving cheques to millionaires with our child tax benefit. The first thing they did when they were elected was to change that program so that cheques would not go to millionaires. We had said, however, that if we were to make the benefit taxable, we would collect it back in taxes. If we were to give it indiscriminately at the front end, we would collect it back from wealthy people on the back end. That was our rationale in 2013-2014 when we introduced that benefit. It seemed to be a logical rationale for me then, and I am happy to see that the NDP is catching on to that rationale as well in their debate around the benefit for students.

With that, I am happy to say that we will be supporting this bill, but we look forward to some significant changes to ensure that the disincentives for work can be taken out of it. We would like to see a system of registration so that if students are applying for this benefit, their skill sets would be registered so that hopefully we could match them with a job opening somewhere in the world, particularly in the agricultural sector.

Where I come from, right now many of the farmers have their seeders out. They are putting new shovels on it and getting ready to pull it through the ground to seed this year's crop.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I join my friend from Peace River—Westlock in saying how much we long to get back to worshipping together in our places of worship.

In the member's speech, he asked if the government could point us to a model of what economic recovery could like. I was reassured by a fascinating review by the parliamentary budget office on March 30, which I recommend members have a look at. There really are not road maps or models for what we are going through when we voluntarily shut down our economy in the pandemic. It is quite different even from the 2008 financial crisis, wherein I note parenthetically that the Conservative prime minister of the day actually prorogued Parliament and shut its doors so we couldn't be here to discuss anything, so we will take it as absolutely genuine that the Conservative Party wants democracy with us meeting face to face now. That was not the case in 2008.

My point about the parliamentary budget office report is that it points to World War II as probably our best sense of something like this. What the parliamentary budget office points out, and I am just going to double-check the report, is that there were massive deficits for Canada at the peak of the Second World War, averaging 21% of GDP year over year, from 1942 to 1945, and yet because the spending and the deficits were temporary in nature, we had the largest surplus ever in the history of Canada following the war, a budgetary surplus in 1947 of 5% of GDP. I am sharing that background from the parliamentary budget office.

Because this spending is not permanent, because it is temporary in nature and because we want to keep people and businesses afloat, the hope is that we have a road map here, but it is looking to history, not to the current—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

I would like to try to get a second question in during this five-minute slot.

The hon. member for Peace River—Westlock.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, no doubt the Second World War gives us a good model for coming out of this. My question is more about the models of the pandemic spread and what we could anticipate with that. That was all very murky, I thought, in January, when we were making the decisions to shut down Parliament and the Canadian economy. We were basically going on the recommendation of the government. I did not get to see the modelling around the COVID virus in particular, and those are the questions that I would like to have answered and have more clarity on. Are the assumptions we made about COVID and the spread of this virus holding true now?

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I was listening to the leader of the Green Party with bewilderment. I was following the debate she was having with the NDP about making all of these benefits permanent, but now she is suggesting that all these deficits are temporary and are going to go away when the economy recovers. It does not seem that they know that they have been pushing for turning all of these into permanent benefits. At the same time that they are working against the resource industry, working against forestry and working against people having jobs, they want an annual income with magic money that just descends from heaven.

In 2009, when Prime Minister Harper ran a budget deficit, there was a plan to get back to balance. Has the member heard one word from the Liberal government articulating a desire at any point in the future to get back to balance? We all know a $200-billion deficit means future tax increases.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the last time the Liberal Party talked about balancing budgets was when it guaranteed Canadians that the budget would balance itself in 2019. Since then, we have not heard hide nor hair of balanced budgets coming from that side of the House. It is quite worrying.

The member called it magic money coming from heaven. That would be a miracle, and I would take it.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for La Prairie.

I want to once again salute the people in my riding. Earlier my colleague spoke about the resilience of our constituents. I want to acknowledge their courage and shows of solidarity during these difficult times. Something positive during this pandemic is how people are banding together.

Today we are debating a motion to pass a bill that would create the Canada emergency student benefit. The Bloc Québécois is obviously in favour of financial support for students. This measure is necessary and essential, which is why we asked for it.

Make no mistake: students are also being hit hard by this crisis. Some colleagues in other political parties have raised concerns about this benefit. They think that students will not want to work because they will figure out they can make more money staying home. The Bloc Québécois could not disagree more.

We recognize that students need financial support because, from the outset, students who had completed their education or who will be going back to school made the effort to come to our riding offices and tell us that they did not know if or when they would find a job. We had to find a solution and identify the measures needed, and that is just what we did. This crisis will be deemed to be historic, but no one must be left behind or fall through the cracks.

I would also like to remind members that the motion asks for measures to be implemented without delay to provide additional support for seniors. We called for these measures and we are still waiting for them because they are necessary.

I spoke about fairness and about those falling through the cracks. I would like us to think about that. The current crisis has taught us that we must respond, sometimes on a case-by-case basis, to situations that require urgent support.

Furthermore, as parliamentarians, we must ask ourselves whether our social safety net and our social programs, such as employment insurance, have failed us. The Bloc Québécois has already called for a major overhaul of the system. To date, more than eight million workers have lost their jobs, and we must ask ourselves whether they should have been eligible for employment insurance. Clearly, we have our work cut out for us. We have to face the facts and completely overhaul the system.

The purpose of the bill is twofold, namely to provide financial support to students and to do so in a way that encourages them to find a job. With respect to the latter, we can say that the bill is less than perfect, considering certain obstacles.

The first obstacle has to do with the language around jobs, job creation and job opportunities. The minister talked about a program that will create more than 60,000 additional jobs, but we do not know what sector they will be in, what kind of jobs they will be, or under what conditions. It would have been better to do more to coordinate and align efforts with the provinces.

Secondly, and this is very important, the situation has changed. There was a crisis six weeks ago and we may now be starting to reopen. People are wondering whether there will be any jobs. With the Canada emergency student benefit, as with the Canada emergency response benefit, it is all or nothing. Those who earn $1,000 or less will be entitled to a benefit of $1,250 or $1,750. Those who earn $1,001 will lose the $1,250 monthly benefit. In the current context, that causes an imbalance, which is why it is important to support the motion before us to determine as quickly as possible how this will be handled. The CERB and the CESB have to be provided in such a way as to meet the objective of supporting students while providing an incentive at all times. We proposed some measures. We still have other proposals to make and we think they should be implemented.

No student wants to sit around doing nothing. Having a summer job is a valuable experience. Summer jobs give students a chance to hone their skills in their chosen trade or profession. They also get to earn money that they can live on during the school year. Accordingly, I think we need to move forward without losing sight of the fact that we absolutely need to work on measures that will incentivize work. I would add that the jobs need to be quality jobs. These measures will be a major basic support for students.

People have mentioned the changing context. In 48 hours, it will be May 1, which is International Workers' Day. During this crisis, we have saluted many essential workers, the heroes who work in many different sectors, including food, transportation, student jobs, health care and community social services. We just happened to become aware of what they do. We realized the value of their work. We recognized essential workers who are the most vulnerable workers and who have the most precarious working conditions and wage conditions. When we talk about incentivizing employment, we need to remember that the jobs we want to fill must be well paid for anyone who wants them, including students. We have some work to do on that score as well.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I really enjoyed that lovely speech by my colleague opposite. It goes to show that collaboration in the House has enabled us to introduce measures that will help students.

I would like my colleague to comment on two things. First is the reason why we had to look at what is happening with students. Not all students in Quebec have had the opportunity to work in the past year. That includes high school graduates who want to go to CEGEP. They probably have not had a chance to earn $5,000 in the previous year and qualify for the CERB. I would also like to know what the member thinks of the fact that the federal government has offered to help the provinces provide a subsidy to essential workers. As she pointed out, we are now realizing how crucial the work they do on the front lines really is.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for her question.

Yes, it is possible for high school students to find a job in Quebec. There are jobs available for young people. What is at stake this year is jobs as counsellors at day camps and all the great jobs in that sector. There is still a lot to sort out before things get back to normal.

Some students were unable to earn $5,000. We need to remember where we are starting from. First, we are talking about students who are not eligible for employment insurance. Second, there is the CERB for students who earned $5,000. However, some students were unable to earn $5,000, depending on their work or their level of education. Some do not qualify, which is why the emergency student benefit is so important.

This cannot be a half measure; it must be a comprehensive measure. Students need to be given support, but they also need to be given job opportunities without losing that support. That is the direction we want to go in.