Thank you, Madam Chair. It's an honour to rise in the House again and to be here.
I'd like to acknowledge that we are on the traditional territory of the Algonquin first nation as uninvited guests. To them I say meegwetch.
I'd like to acknowledge the hard work of my staff members, who have been working overtime during this crisis. Answering the phone calls and the emails, and dealing with constituents in crisis, is difficult work. I really appreciate what they've done, and I know the constituents do as well.
I'd like to thank the government for its response, and I know that many Canadians have needed help and are getting help. The opposition and members of the Liberal backbench have brought forth all kinds of issues and gaps in the programs, and the government has been responsive and has been helping Canadians. I think it's really important at this time that we have this unity, working together, because our constituents and Canadians are important. They need our help, and playing politics during a pandemic and a crisis isn't the right thing to do. Working together to make sure that we deal with people, and help them with their problems, is the right thing to do.
There are still many needs that people have. For small businesses, too many are still falling through the cracks and are unable to access relief. A lot of micro-businesses are having problems. Some landlords won't sign the new CECRA program. In cases where landlords refuse to co-operate, commercial tenants should be able to apply directly to the government. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business's latest report found that half of small businesses surveyed cannot make their June rent. We're asking the government to allow tenants to access the 50% rental funding when landlords don't agree to opt in to the CECRA program. We're also asking that the government ease the 70% revenue drop criteria for CECRA so more businesses can apply.
CEBA, the business account, still requires a business chequing account. I know that the government has promised changes to that, and I'm looking forward to hearing about those changes. This is something that opposition members have brought up a number of times.
Many in the arts and music industry who rely on summer business will need a lot more help to survive until next year. I'm thinking about all of the festivals and the industries behind them that support them. RSM Productions in Nanaimo, a sound and lighting company, has lost all of its contracts. It is a company that needs help.
Municipalities have experienced staggering drops in revenue, and increased costs. They must continue to provide essential services including police, fire, water, sewage and waste management, regardless of those lost revenues. They're going to have trouble collecting property taxes from businesses and homeowners in financial distress. In my community, they've had free public transit, but ridership has been down to next to nothing anyway. The FCM estimates that municipal transit systems are incurring monthly losses of about $400 million due to diminished ridership, part of at least $10 billion to $15 billion in near-term, non-recoverable losses due to COVID-19.
We need to help municipalities. I understand that they are under provincial jurisdiction, but we work with municipalities with the green infrastructure fund and with the gas tax, and we need to be able to help municipalities weather this storm.
Aboriginal friendship centres have been asking for more help. I know the Tillicum Lelum Aboriginal Friendship Centre in my community provides a broad spectrum of important programs for the 12,000 urban indigenous people in my riding, including a health centre, youth and elder housing, a safe house for homeless youth, a home for single moms and a food hamper program. It also provides mental health and addiction counselling, and continues to provide that online during this crisis. It's an integral part of the urban indigenous community, and it's seriously struggling. It hasn't received any funding yet, and it's expecting to receive maybe $25,000 to $30,000. I'm hoping that the government steps up with more funding for urban aboriginal organizations.
Many non-profit organizations are suffering. In B.C., non-profits contribute $6.4 billion to the economy and employ 86,000 people. However, 78% are facing serious disruption, 74% have seen a large decrease in funding, and at least 19% are shutting down permanently.
I was disappointed to see the government contract with Amazon rather than Canada Post for delivering PPE. That's because of the way Amazon treats its employees. We see that Jeff Bezos is now on track to becoming the first trillionaire. In contrast, our Canada Post employees are paid well, they work hard for their money and they return that money into our economy. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers has great ideas for how it can improve things in our economy, including public banking and more energy-efficient delivery systems, so we really need to be supporting our Crown corporations rather than a trillionaire.
Our airlines have really let down passengers. The local chamber of commerce bought tickets to go to two separate conferences, and when they cancelled those tickets they got a voucher for 11 months from the day of cancellation. How are they going to use that for the annual conference next year? That's completely useless to them. I have constituents who have tickets that the airline said they needed to use before September, but there are no bookings before September. Therefore, the airlines are letting people down. We need to stand up for consumers in this country the same way that the Europeans and the Americans do and make sure that the passengers get a refund or at least a voucher that they can use. Eleven months is ridiculous. Four months is ridiculous.
People living on CPP disability need relief and really need a permanent increase in their benefits so that they are on par with the benefits that the province gives people on disability.
With our health care system, we've seen the need for improving health care, and we know there's a $15 billion deficit just in maintenance in our health care system; and our long-term care system needs to be brought into the health care system properly so that our seniors are not abandoned to a for-profit model.
Regarding CPP, OAS and GIS, our seniors have been asking for a raise in these things for a long time. They deserve it. The cost of living in my riding has gone way up. Because real estate values have escalated in the last five years, the cost of renting a place has driven up the cost of living. We need to take these things into consideration. It's not the same in every part of the country, but in some parts of this country it is out of control.
I know there are worries about fraud in the relief programs, but we see fraud in other areas. We see polluters who abandon their messes, declare bankruptcy and then leave it for us, the citizens and the taxpayers, to clean up. That's privatizing the profits and socializing the losses, and that needs to end.
We also need to make sure that offshoring of wealth, whether that's legal through loopholes or illegal through tax evasion, is stopped. We lose about $19 billion a year in taxes, through tax evasion or tax avoidance.
One of the things I've been talking about here for a while is a guaranteed livable income. It's similar to the basic income or universal basic income that's proposed, but we base it upon a basket of goods, the same way that a living wage would, so that people have the things they need to survive. It's an idea that has gained support across the political spectrum, but the Greens have been talking about this for several decades. In fact, 50 Canadian senators have written to the Canadian Prime Minister, calling for a minimum basic income for Canadians. The GLI establishes an income floor below which no Canadian can fall. It's something whose time has come.
This crisis has shown us that there are a lot of issues we need to deal with. One of the things it has taught us is that life is more important than money, and when we work together we can get things done. I look forward to continuing to improve the programs the government has put forward.