Madam Speaker, first I want to let you know that I will be sharing my time with my distinguished colleague from Vancouver Kingsway.
I was delighted to hear the previous Conservative Party colleague talk about what I feel is the issue at the core of this motion. Along the way, that got a little lost among the important debates we have been having. I am talking about health professionals, health care workers. For the past nine months, they have been working incredibly hard to take care of us, they have been trying to save lives and salvage the situation. They get up every morning—or every evening or night, as the case may be—to care for people with COVID-19. These people are making absolutely incredible sacrifices, and they are there for us.
One of the very good questions we need to ask ourselves as parliamentarians is this: Are we there for them? Have successive Conservative and Liberal governments been there for our health professionals, for our health care workers?
I wanted to come back to that because it is a fundamental issue in which the federal government has a role to play. These are frontline workers. They are literally putting their lives and their health on the line. We have seen that people who spend time with those who are sick or infected can catch the virus, get sick or infect people in their family, their spouse for example. That has happened.
I wanted to take a minute to draw our attention to something very specific about these health workers who are our guardian angels. That is how we have referred to them for a while. They are refugees or asylum seekers who voluntarily signed up to work in our long-term care facilities, in our hospitals or in our clinics to try to take care of people. Many of them got sick or even brought the virus home, which led to the death of their spouse. We have heard some heart-rending stories.
We worked very hard to create a program to regularize their status, in other words, give them an opportunity to become permanent residents, considering all their hard work in our health care system. The program was announced in August, but absolutely nothing has been done to date. It appears to be blocked somewhere. Initially, we wanted it to be for all essential workers, that is, people who worked in pharmacies and grocery stores, and also for those who did not necessarily provide direct care but worked in the health care system, for example, kitchen staff and security guards. Even for those who provided direct care, the program has not yet been successfully implemented.
Something very troubling happened yesterday. Without any warning, and on the day of the economic update, the Canada Border Services Agency announced that it was going to resume removals and deportations. Some people were promised or led to believe they would be granted permanent residency, but since the program does not really exist on the ground yet, some risk being deported, even though they came to help us in our long-term care centres and our health care system. I think that is appalling. No one should be deported during a pandemic, but especially not those who came to help us.
I want to get back to health care workers. Have we been there for them?
They have been working in deplorable conditions. Certain types of jobs, especially the lower-paid ones, are just not very attractive because of the working conditions. Just look at the wages paid to orderlies, nurses' work hours, the heavy workload and the mandatory overtime.
In the middle of a crisis and a pandemic, the health care sector is short-staffed. If the provincial and Quebec governments had had the money to treat these people better, we would probably have fewer problems retaining workers and attracting new workers. People are not really encouraged to go to work if the conditions are difficult and they earn $12 or $13 an hour.
The provinces were unable to provide good working conditions and did not have the resources to do so because the federal level has slashed health transfers to the provinces. The Conservatives and Liberals are both to blame here.
Earlier I asked the member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie a question, and he gave us some acrobatics.
There is something completely unrealistic here, and the motion touches on that. After the Stephen Harper government was elected, the increase in health transfers, which had reached 6% a year, was cut to 3% a year. This created a shortfall of around $36 billion for the provinces over a 10-year period.
Unfortunately, despite all of their lofty promises, the Liberals under the current Prime Minister have picked up where the Conservatives left off, increasing transfers by 3% a year, even though health care costs are increasing by 5.4% a year, as my colleague from Vancouver Kingsway pointed out earlier today. There is a shortfall here, and it is neither viable nor sustainable.
We need to start giving the provinces back the ability to properly serve the public. To do that, the federal government needs to carry out its role of increasing health transfers. That is absolutely essential. It cannot be avoided, otherwise, we are not doing justice to our health care workers and we cannot provide them with decent working conditions.
The federal government therefore needs to increase health transfers. The Liberals will say that an increase of 6% per year is not sustainable for the public purse, so then what should we do? The NDP has some unique and worthwhile proposals, such as the completely crazy idea of getting money from those who have it, those who have so much that they do not know what to do with it all.
Our party is the only one saying that we could create a tax on wealth. People who have more than $20 million in property and assets could pay a small surtax of 1% per year. That is not too much. It would bring in hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars. Why not create a tax on wealth? It would not harm the middle class or workers. The wealthy are perfectly capable of paying it.
There are also companies that have made inordinate profits since the start of this pandemic. Why could we not establish, perhaps on a temporary basis, a special tax on the excessive or inordinate profits of certain companies that lined their pockets? I am obviously referring to the web giants, such as Netflix or Amazon, whose profits literally exploded.
I would like to say a few words about Amazon. Oxfam recently pointed out that if Jeff Bezos were to give a $105,000 bonus right now to each one of its 876,000 employees, he would still be just as rich as he was before the start of the pandemic. This shows the extent to which certain companies profited. The NDP believes that these companies could be made to pay taxes, which has not yet happened.
I have another important matter to address before concluding. I was very disappointed with yesterday's economic update with respect to the web giants. The government told us that it is going to make web giants pay the GST. That is a good thing that we have been asking for, and it is about fairness and justice. That said, charging the GST means that consumers will pay it. Customers are going to pay the GST. It is the right thing to do because it is fair, but at the same time, this costs the web giants nothing, since it will be the consumer who pays.
All of a sudden, the government is telling us that digital giants are going to pay tax not in January, but 13 months from now. They are being given a one-year reprieve before they have to pay tax in Canada. Moreover, we do not know if they will even pay tax because the Minister of Finance says they will pay tax if necessary.
Digital giants have not been paying tax in Canada for years, and that is an absolute scandal. Tax havens still exist, and the Liberal government is doing absolutely nothing.
Let's get serious. Let's get money from those who have it, boost health transfers and pay a reasonable wage to the people who look after our sick.
Once again, I thank them from the bottom of my heart and I salute them. I want them to know we should do better. An NDP government will do better.