Debates of April 29th, 2020

Canada Emergency Student Benefit Act

[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, 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 there are now youth who are 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 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 look 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, 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.

Second, 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 that 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.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Thérèse-De Blainville.

My question is about international students who are studying in Canada but who are citizens of other countries. Does the Bloc Québécois believe the government should support young people who are neither Canadian citizens nor permanent residents?

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

Mr. Speaker, I believe the question has to do with which students will get the benefit. The point is not whether this is important or not. International students have always been important to us. We agree with the motion and the criteria that have been set.

[Alain Therrien, Bloc, La Prairie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to speak to the bill on support for students during this pandemic.

As members know, from the beginning, the Bloc Québécois has been a very constructive opposition. We always try to improve bills. I think that, in general, the other opposition parties also worked with that goal in mind. It is therefore not surprising to see that there is unanimous support for this bill.

However, I must say that the bill does have its shortcomings. Obviously, there are some minor flaws, little things that are wrong and that we would have liked to work on more had we had more time. Unfortunately, we did not have as much time as we would have liked.

For two or three days, we pointed out the problems to the government and we were prepared to work together to fine-tune this bill. It is not completely perfect, but unfortunately, that sort of thing happens.

One of the basic principles of this bill is financial support for students. We are on board with this. We agree that we must help students. Since there may not be any tourism and since festivals will be cancelled, students may have a hard time finding jobs. We all agree on that. Students need some kind of financial assistance to help pay their expenses and to allow them to return to school in the fall with some savings as they pursue their education.

This bill also needs to include an incentive for young people to work. I am not saying that young people are lazy, but the bill must allow for young people to want to go out and find a job, to actually find one, and to believe that the CESB is designed in such a way as to encourage them to stay on the job because, in the end, it will be in their best interest to do so.

Unfortunately, this bill has a major flaw. As my colleague from Thérèse-De Blainville mentioned, the problem is that students receive $1,250 or a big fat zero. It would seem that the only option is $1,250, and that after $1,000, the default is zero. A student who works about 18 hours a week at a minimum wage job earns $1,000 a month. When you add the $1,250 CESB, that works out quite well, but what if their boss asks them to work one more hour a week?

What will be their answer, Mr. Speaker? I know I have your full attention and that you know the answer. They will say “no”. They will not want to lose the $1,250 for one extra hour of work. Everyone understands that.

Then why are we leaving this in the bill? Students might work no more than 18 hours. Will there be any students who work full time? Perhaps, but there will be no encouragement, no incentive, for them to do so.

I taught economics for a few years. In my intro to market economics, I would explain to my students that the more hours one works, the more money one earns. That is a basic rule, but this bill breaks the rule: the more one works, the more money one loses. That makes no sense.

During negotiations, the Bloc Québécois pushed for simple common sense: work more, earn more. Unfortunately, the government told us it could not do that because that would be too complicated and it would have to review every individual student's case. For example, the government would have to make it explicit that a student who works 19 hours would not lose the whole $1,250, just a little bit of it. That way, the student would want to keep working.

The Canada emergency benefit will simply be phased out to ensure that students realize that they would be better off working and that they have a little nest egg waiting. That is what we asked for, but we were told that the public service could not get into those kinds of details, because it would be too complicated and there was not enough time. We had reached a dead end.

In the end, we got a commitment from the Deputy Prime Minister. Indeed, although it could not be made official and standardized, because the public service apparatus would not allow it, the government committed to doing it. The Liberals said it was a good idea. We knew it was a good idea, and we have many more where that came from.

The government said it was a good idea and that it would try its best to move in that direction with its measures in the future. It committed to respecting that approach. Obviously, we very much welcome the Deputy Prime Minister's comments, for they give us a little hope.

During the negotiations, the Bloc Québécois considered the importance of having a committee look at issues related to agriculture. That has been included in the motion. We managed to get that across to the government, but I admit that it was not very hard. The government quickly agreed that it was a good idea to have a committee on agriculture because there is a lot going in that sector. We need to get answers to our questions and that is the right tool for the job.

Also, the motion proposes that the government offer subsidies to employers who hire students, but it specifies that this is for the agriculture or agri-food sectors.

The Bloc Québécois members wondered whether the same opportunity should be offered to more people, not just producers. For example, this opportunity could be offered to municipal employees and to people who want to hire students and who would be entitled to these subsidies.

I was apprehensive about how the government might respond to the Bloc's request, but the government said yes. It said that this was a good idea. The Bloc managed to make improvements to the motion.

Lastly, we have our seniors, who are being so breezily discussed. For over a month, we have been telling the government that it is neglecting seniors and it needs to do something to help them. Our proposals would cost $1 billion, which is paltry compared to the $73 billion going to wage subsidies. Seniors are always overlooked, yet they are the ones being hardest hit by the COVID-19 crisis. They built our country, our society. We need to show them respect through positive actions. The motion mentions this. I see daylight at last.

According to the motion, we need to help seniors who are struggling to make ends meet because the current situation has increased the cost of living. We asked the government to amend the motion to say that it would strongly consider and ensure that the old age security and guaranteed income supplement pension mechanisms could be activated through those two tools. This mechanism already exists, and the government can control it as it sees fit. This was another Bloc suggestion that was heard by the government.

We are not entirely satisfied, but nothing is perfect. The government listened to us and accepted some of our proposals. There is one last proposal and it is a very important one. There must be an incentive for students to work.

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

Mr. Speaker, I had the opportunity to have some good discussions with my colleague, who used to teach at a CEGEP.

I would like him to comment on this because I believe he is still in touch with the student community. How are students reacting? Are the measures we discussed today being well received by Quebec students?

[Alain Therrien, Bloc, La Prairie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I commend my neighbour. In another life, I used to be an MNA in Quebec City. The member and I had the same constituents. I know her well and I want to recognize her. I really like her.

I taught at the CEGEP and university levels. Students are happy that we are thinking about them, so yes, I would say that they are happy with this. They appreciate it.

As I said, let us try to improve the incentive to help students who want to work more than 18 hours a week and be compensated for that. I would say that these people are very pleased with this bill.

On a side note, I heard from a university economics professor. He wrote to me to sound the alarm and to say that there are problems with the bill with regard to the incentive, which we discussed at length. We must therefore ensure that the two objectives are clearly linked in the government's future actions.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today on Bill C-15, an act respecting Canada emergency student benefits. I am also pleased to split my time with my hon. colleague, the MP for Timmins—James Bay.

Yesterday was the National Day of Mourning to remember and honour those who have lost their lives or been injured due to a workplace tragedy, and also a day to collectively renew our commitment to improve health and safety in the workplace and prevent further injuries, illnesses and deaths. With the COVID-19 crisis, this is a unique time for many workers in Canada, including front-line workers, who are often women, the marginalized and young.

The most recent statistics from the Association of Workers' Compensation Boards of Canada tell us that in 2018, 1,027 workplace fatalities were reported in Canada. Among these deaths were those of 27 young workers between the ages of 15 and 24. On top of these fatalities, there were over 264,000 accepted claims for lost time due to a work-related injury or disease. This figure includes 33,000 claims from young workers aged 15 to 24. The sad reality is that these statistics only include what is reported and accepted by compensation boards. There is no doubt that the total number of workers impacted is even greater and, of course, in this new COVID reality, these numbers will skyrocket.

The government has a responsibility to protect front-line workers and essential workers to make sure that safeguards and legislation are in place so that every worker is safe and can return home every day uninjured. This is even more so for young workers, who often have less experience and are less able to defend themselves against their employer. They need strong legislation to back them up.

Many young people at this time are unable to enter the workforce or have been laid off because of the coronavirus. New Democrats are glad that the government is finally turning its focus to help these young workers and students, but another complicated system is not what students asked for, and it comes weeks too late.

Since the Liberals' rollout of the Canada emergency response benefit program, New Democrats have called on them to lift the restrictions put in place and to make this plan universal. Again, we are asking that they extend these benefits to students, as the Canada emergency student benefit program that we are debating today will still leave many students behind, including international students.

Week after week, New Democrats return to Parliament to highlight the people being left out of the government's response to COVID-19. It is because of our advocacy that we have returned once again to fix the holes this government has created. New Democrats fought for and won increases in the emergency benefits; we won an increase in the wage subsidy from 10% to 75%; we won help for small businesses with rent; and now we are debating legislation to help students.

In today's unanimous consent motion, the government admits that additional help is needed for students with dependants, seniors and people with disabilities. I have to think that there must be members in the government caucus who are quietly thinking, “Wouldn't it just be easier and fairer to make the program universal rather than create these patchwork programs?” I certainly know that many of my constituents are confused by the daily changes to programs and simply need to know that their government supports them.

With the creation of a new and separate program from the Canada emergency response benefit, the Canada emergency student benefit shortchanges students. I find it difficult to understand why the government has decided that someone who earned more money before COVID-19 can apply for the CERB and get $2,000, but a student who earned less and is ineligible for the CERB will get 40% less support. Whether one is or is not enrolled in a post-secondary institution, the cost of paying one's rent or covering one's bills and services is the same.

The government has said that students will receive less through the student benefit than the CERB because there will be other supports through service grant systems, but those will not address their needs now but at the end of the summer. In the meantime, the government has expanded loan programs so that students can be in debt with it instead of banks and credit card companies. Call me crazy, but would it not be more helpful for students to not have to go into debt in the first place?

Today, the average student with debt owes $27,000 at the end of an undergraduate degree. Because of interest fees, a student who has to borrow to pay for their education will end up paying over $10,000 more than a student who is lucky enough to be able to graduate without taking on debt. That is not fair, and it is an inequality that sets young people up to fail.

I do recognize that the government from the outset has offered to waive interest rates on student loans for six months. My concern is for students taking on additional debt loads with the government. With a lack of support, what will students' finances look like after this pandemic? The government was set to make $1 billion from student loan interest this year before the COVID pandemic. We now need to ask the question, how much will the government make now with more students taking on larger debt loads? Are students' futures the kind of business the government wants to profit from?

The government should cancel all interest on student loans, as it should never make money off the backs of students. Consistently, people have reached out to my office to tell me how they are worried because they do not qualify for any of the emergency benefits and are in desperate need. Many women fall short of the $5,000 minimum for CERB, and the government does not recognize the unpaid work that many take on.

Women are now more than ever having to find ways to juggle work and care for their families as the home has become the workplace; schools, child and day care centres have closed; and services have become even more stretched. The government's initial response to a mother who is receiving help from the Canada emergency student benefit is that she just had to justify her family obligations and to jump through more hoops to be worthy of less supports than those under the CERB.

That is why New Democrats have pushed to close the gap of $250. More money going into the pockets of some of the most vulnerable students over the course of the summer represents a significant victory. We are also proud to push the government to commit to implementing measures without delay to improve supports for seniors and persons with disabilities who are dealing with extraordinary expenses incurred as a result of COVID-19.

Even with this victory, there are still holes in the system. For example, a woman whose child support dried up because her ex-spouse lost his or her income due to the pandemic does not qualify for the CERB. Her main source of income has been lost and the government is refusing to support her. It is not fair. This is on top of the countless women who are being denied the emergency benefits because they are pregnant and are being forced to apply for maternity leave early. This is another issue that could have been avoided if the government had made its emergency benefit universal.

There are some good announcements in this package that the Liberals have put forward. New Democrats welcome the government's announcement to temporarily double student grants. New Democrats have been pushing for this for over a decade. We would like to see this grant increase made permanent. The government needs to move away from loans and offer more grants. Accessing financial support for post-secondary education should not be a debt sentence.

Accessible and publicly funded education is a great opportunity for everyone in our society. It can transform lives and open new horizons for people of every background. That makes education an amazing gift that we can give to each other, our children and the next generation. However, students have seen tuition increases across Canada on average and are paying 4% more just this year.

New Democrats believe that access to education should never depend on how much money one's parents make or how much debt one carries. If one has the grades and the drive to study hard, one should be able to get the education one wants at any age and in every community. The government needs to work with provinces to address the rise in tuition costs.

New Democrats are also echoing the call on behalf of the Canadian Federation of Students and CUPE for the government to put forward a post-secondary education act. The government needs to establish criteria and conditions in respect of funding for post-secondary education programs to ensure the quality, accessibility, public administration and accountability of those programs.

When thinking about the rising costs students are facing, I must bring up how disappointing it is to see the government completely abandoning international students. The government is leaving them with no supports. International students contributed $21.6 billion to Canada's GDP last year. They have become important members of our communities and contribute to Canada's innovation and research. The government cannot and should not leave international students behind.

Sadly, even before COVID-19, post-secondary education was out of reach for too many people. People are being forced to give up their dreams because they cannot pay skyrocketing tuition fees and cannot find work and because the government supports are coming up short.

New Democrats are committed to addressing these inequalities. We will continue to push to make the Canada emergency benefit universal so that seniors, people with disabilities, mothers, students, workers and everyone who continues to fall between the cracks will get the support they need. New Democrats will continue to push for the elimination of tuition fees and the establishment of a national post-secondary act. We will continue to push to make the doubling of student grants permanent. We will continue to address and tear down the barriers that too many Canadians faced before COVID-19 and will face afterwards.

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

Mr. Speaker, one of the things that was announced and that I am still searching for details about, and perhaps the hon. member has seen more of them, is the benefit that could be given to young people for volunteer work. This seemed like an excellent idea. What I understood from the initial announcement by the Prime Minister was that it would be cumulative: One could keep one's emergency student benefit that we are voting on today with Bill C-15 and also get between $1,000 and $5,000 for work done as a volunteer. Has the hon. member heard any details on that?

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I did hear that same announcement. I do not have much more detail. The government has not rolled out as many details as we would like. One of the issues I had with it is that while it could be a great initiative, we are talking about students having to pay those grocery and rent bills, and they are doing it on 40% less than what other people are receiving in an emergency benefit.

While students are doing all of this work, they will not be paid until the end of the summer. If they are struggling month to month to pay those bills, I do not understand why, in addition, they have to wait until the end of the summer months to get a payment. Not having to do so would be particularly helpful for those who are struggling now, in real time, to pay those bills.

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

Mr. Speaker, to continue this dialogue with the hon. member for London—Fanshawe, it seems that the Greens and the New Democrats in this place continually hammer home the need for a universal income or what we call a “guaranteed livable income”. The response from some others is that we will not be able to afford it and that when the pandemic is over, these emergency measures should be withdrawn. While much of what is being announced now, particularly for the corporate sector, can be withdrawn, the support for individual Canadians should stay in place.

Would my colleague agree that there are a lot of programs that we could stop paying for and also have huge savings in other respects, such as health care or correctional services, with a guaranteed livable income?

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member said it pretty well. It is interesting how short-sighted the argument can be that we cannot afford it, when the Liberals will bend over backwards to provide billions of dollars in tax loopholes or in corporate tax cuts, which seem perfectly legitimate to them. My hon. colleague, the leader of our party, talked about no strings being attached to these huge corporate giveaways.

We know that study after study on universal basic income or guaranteed income, as I know the member likes to call it, shows that it actually results in cost savings. In Canada, and certainly across the world, those studies have been done. If we eliminate the majority of those other, smaller programs and put them under one program so that people have that guaranteed income, it will cost less, stimulate the economy and be better for all.

Certainly, New Democrats believe that being proactive in that way in providing social programs, including health care, pharmacare, dental care, child care or any of those systems, is a way we can save money and do the most good.

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

Mr. Speaker, this is my first time interacting with the member for London—Fanshawe, and I congratulate her on her victory in the last election. I would like to ask her about the good news of the certainty for the 2,000 families employed by General Dynamics Land Systems in London. Export permits were provided for the LAVs. That company has also provided ventilators and PPE for London area hospitals.

I would like to hear the member's perspective and whether she is glad that these jobs have now been secured in London.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question and congratulations from my hon. colleague. These days, I think it is interesting that we have forgotten how the election was not that long ago.

I am very proud of the people at General Dynamics. They do amazing work. I do not believe that the current and past government did them any favours by putting them in the predicament of filling such a contract for a government that clearly ignores human rights in all forms. The people at General Dynamics do amazing work and have an incredible contract coming up with the Canadian government. They can go forward with peacekeeping measures.

This is also a company that is now making protective gear in our community. They have donated quite a lot, and I recognize the workers there, the workers of Unifor, are doing incredible work. They should never be penalized for the poor choices of governments in the past.