Mr. Speaker, Cloverdale—Langley City is becoming a ghost town. After a recent strengthening of restrictions announced for the Fraser Valley region, most people retreated back into isolation: no visiting, no travel, no gym, no church. We were urged not to venture out at all for anything, so this week we saw a huge run on live Christmas trees and toilet paper while people prepared to be locked in their homes for Christmas.
We sit and watch the daily COVID updates with health officials showing us charts and graphs that demonstrate the science that drives this bus, and then they ban parking lot church services conducted via FM radio, lock seniors in their rooms without the loving touch of their families and encourage us to download COVID apps that do not even function in many of the provinces across the country. Is it any wonder that people are becoming cynical and starting to lose hope?
This government has stumbled from the very beginning of this tragic moment in our history. It sent mixed messages about lethality and transmissibility from day one: Masks do not work; masks do work. Asymptomatic people do not transmit it; asymptomatic people do transmit it. Rapid tests are snake oil; rapid tests are on the way. One can collect rent relief if one's landlord is willing to apply, but the majority were unwilling. One could collect CERB if one is self-employed, but now one has to pay it all back because of a three-letter word the government neglected to mention, so sell the truck and tools, Mr. Small Businessman, as there is until December 31 to pay it back.
People are not only losing hope. They are losing their homes. They are losing their livelihoods and their lives because of consistent bungling of programs like testing and tracking, vaccine procurement, financial support programs and the list goes on. Canadians are tired of hearing the meaningless platitudes coming from the tent of commons, given in the Prime Minister's best late-night DJ voice. It is clear that we are not all in this together.
For example, on a recent Zoom meeting with independent travel agents, it was obvious that the tourism and travel sector are barely holding on by a thread. This recession, or should I say she-cession, is tearing the supports out from under many women who have built their own small businesses over the years, providing top-notch travel advice and service. It all began for them when airlines began cancelling flights due to COVID-19. People were fighting hard to get home from abroad and leaned on the army of ladies who booked their original tickets. Thousands of hours were spent, unpaid, trying to help clients find their way home.
Then, the next wave hit. Again, without receiving a dime in compensation, these same ladies worked tirelessly to help clients find ways to alter or cancel their 2020 bookings, which were no longer valid due to travel restrictions. As large airlines began to refuse cash refunds and travel insurance companies did the same, these women, many of whom are the single breadwinner in the family, in an attempt to do their best on their clients' behalf, gave up thousands of dollars of commission in order to secure a refund for their frustrated customers.
Keep in mind that the commissions being clawed back are based on a service, booking flights and hotels, which they had provided but which the airline and tour operators were unable to fulfill. Imagine the incredible stress they are enduring right now with the threat of chargebacks by credit card companies as angry customers demand refunds for tours they cannot take. These chargebacks are going straight against the small business owner and can range in the thousands of dollars, thousands of dollars that these women cannot afford.
We are clearly not all in this together. The travel and tourism sectors have been begging for targeted assistance from the beginning, but their cries have fallen on deaf ears. Now as we approach Christmas, these wives and mothers want to know if they are going to be able to afford Christmas at all this year. They need to know who the newly announced highly affected sectors credit availability program will be helping. Is it only for the big players or is there relief in sight for them? What criteria will be in place? When can they apply?
They need details now, not later. We have seen this sort of pandemic program rollout time and time again: There are big announcements and then months of waiting, while women wait and hope against hope that there is help on the horizon.
Small business owners are drowning in despair right now. They are having a hard time keeping their doors open under the weight of the restrictions that keep changing without warning. Forty per cent of of small businesses fear they will not survive. They pivot and they pivot again. They cut costs where they can. They call sons, daughters, uncles, aunts, nieces and nephews to help with the work, while they struggle to find employees willing to come back. CERB payments encourage people to stay home rather than exceed their allotted hours. This caused a lack of labour availability for restaurants and the service industry across Canada.
Pandemic relief measures were supposed to help businesses get through the pandemic, but the fact is that the government gave households nearly $7 for each $1 of lost private sector income. Rather than investing in job creation, these programs are enabling one-time consumption of offshore goods, and now the government is set to add insult to injury to small businesses by adding payroll tax increases in January to their already overburdened shoulders. However, there is more. Over behind door number three, we find yet another lovely addition to the tax portfolio by way of a carbon tax increase.
If, as we hear endlessly from the Liberals, we are all in this together, why are small businesses bearing so much more of the burden than bureaucrats, politicians and wealthy elite? Are we truly prepared to crush the backbone of our economy: the corner store, the coffee shop, the nail salon and every small endeavour in between? It is times like these that remind me of a quote from Ronald Reagan about how the government views the economy: “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”
Jack Mintz recently urged the government to spur on private sector growth, without which we will not be able to recover from pandemic-related economic decline. As he said in his Financial Post article:
One thing this pandemic has taught is that it’s the private sector that delivers tests, vaccines, telecommunications and groceries to Canadians. Canada’s lost output from 2020 to 2025 will total $730 billion. That won’t be made up without a resilient private sector. Public spending is not a magic wand. It can even be a malevolent wand: high deficits and looming tax hikes can rattle investor confidence, leading to capital flight.
The finance minister indicated that she wants to pour up to $100 billion into building back better, using task forces and government departments that will be deployed on every ideological platform she can think of. It is all about the reset that the Prime Minister boasted about back in September to the UN.
Canadians do not want a reimagined economy. They want help to fight COVID. They want rapid tests and vaccines. They want science-based solutions that do not change with the direction of the wind. They need clarity so they can make their own plans to survive this crisis. We must let them get back to what they are good at. They know how to keep their customers safe. That is what they do every day they open their doors.
Rex Murphy recently highlighted the snobbery that is implicit in the statement “we are all in this together”. He said:
Everyone bears the health risk of the current moment. Not everyone faces losing their employment or their business. The latter deserve better thoughts, maybe more understanding, than have been shown by the better off and more comfortably situated.
I am here to speak on behalf of truckers, plumbers, carpenters, taxi drivers, furniture movers, waiters, bus boys and janitors. They are bearing the weight of this pandemic far more than those of us in the House, who are deciding their futures. They need a plan that is concrete and fixed.
They are not looking for a brave new world. They are looking to have a Christmas dinner with their family and friends without fear of being fined. They are looking for a way to attend Christmas mass or Handel's Messiah in peace. The Liberals offer a robust portfolio of vaccines that will not arrive in our local pharmacies until next September. Does the government honestly think Canadians can wait that long?