Debates of Sept. 28th, 2020

Proceedings on the Bill Entitled an Act Relating to Certain Measures in Response to COVID-19

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Madam Speaker, all Canadians want Parliament to function properly. All Canadians care about what is going on with health care. All Canadians, particularly folks in Quebec and Ontario, are seeing an increase in COVID-19 cases. We need measured, worthwhile, relevant action, but we believe that must happen through healthy democratic debate. What we are seeing now is anything but.

The government is about to introduce legislation that will result in $57 billion in spending, and it is reducing the time parliamentarians have to speak on the bill to barely four and a half hours.

This is anything but parliamentary democracy. As elected officials, we have a duty to hold the government accountable. We were elected to ask the government what it is doing, how it is doing it and why. With four and a half hours of debate, we cannot hope to understand where the $57 billion is going. Unfortunately, that is what the government is forcing us to do, and we condemn it in the strongest terms.

Why are we here today? We are here because we are concerned about the health situation of Canadians. We are concerned about the survival of Canadian businesses. We are concerned about Canadian workers who are out of jobs because of the pandemic. We are concerned because the Liberal government tabled some ideas, proposals and policies that created a lack of manpower and businesses were forced to close.

In my riding, many restaurants and other businesses closed their doors because they needed workers but instead people preferred not to work and to use what we call in French the PCU.

The debate is serious, which is why we must take the necessary time to study the measures the government is proposing.

All of us on this side want to help Canadians. All of us on this side want to help the business community. All of us on this side are concerned about the health of Canadians and want to help everybody on that issue. All of us on this side want to work hand in hand with the provinces. On this side, we are not going to say what is good for the provinces but rather ask how we can help them. That is the Conservative view, not the Liberal one.

What we have today in front of us is a government that acted at the last minute. The government decided to have just four and a half hours of debate for $50 billion in taxpayers' money. This is unparliamentary, and we strongly disagree with the approach of the government.

We are here today because the government has acted in an unfortunate way in recent weeks. We should remember that when the pandemic broke out, we had urgent action to take. We worked with the government, but we also took the government to task on a number of occasions. I will come back to that later. We wanted to work together. That is why we agreed to have the hybrid Parliament and why we agreed to have committees. We were doing our job, which is really relevant.

Some senior members in our party, including the hon. member for Carleton, the hon. member for Rivière-des-Mille-Îles and the hon. member for St. Albert—Edmonton, just to name a few, asked questions that were very relevant to the WE scandal, but awkward for the government. The government had decided to give $900 million to friends of the regime without a call for tenders. Once it started really feeling the heat, the Liberal government decided to kill parliamentary democracy by proroguing the session.

Let's keep in mind that, in 2015, these paragons of virtue said that they would never use prorogation and that they would never prevent parliamentarians from expressing themselves, but they did at the first opportunity.

We would not be where we are today had the government allowed parliamentarians to continue doing their job, yet that is exactly what the government is encouraging us to do. For six weeks, we were unable to do our job as parliamentarians, a necessary job.

The government recalled the House with a throne speech last week. The very next day, it introduced Bill C-2, which includes budgetary measures to help Canadians.

We understand that time is running out because of the sunset clauses on government measures. Because of these sunset clauses, the House has to vote on certain issues before October 1, but the government is the one in charge of the calendar. It is the government that decided to shut down committees and close Parliament six weeks ago. It is the government that decided to recall the House last week when it could have easily done so earlier. The government could have easily allowed Parliament to do its work in committee, but no.

These people who really enjoy controlling Parliament and the situation have made it so that we have just a few hours before the sunset clauses take effect. They bear all the responsibility for that.

It is very funny to hear the government House leader saying that Liberals want to walk together and work together and that there is no time for political games. This is exactly what they are doing. We are not working together. They want to work all by themselves. They say they do not want to play political games. That is exactly what they are doing right now. We have $50 billion in front of us that we have to debate and they are letting parliamentarians talk about it for only four and a half hours. This is a big joke. This is everything but parliamentary democracy. We need to work together, obviously, but we need the tools to do that and what the government is tabling today does everything but give parliamentarians the right tools to do the work.

Conservatives are here for Canadians. I can assure everyone that we will stand by our guns in this situation because we need to work correctly, and that is exactly what we intend to do.

Last week the government introduced Bill C-2. We saw millions of dollars' worth of spending on the horizon. After question period last Thursday, the government House leader told us that Monday and Tuesday, so today and tomorrow, would be dedicated to Bill C-2, which was fine.

Even then we realized that we might not have enough time to really get to the bottom of things. Acting in good faith and to avoid partisan games, we proposed something that we thought was entirely fair and appropriate and that, above all, would mean that we could get the work done. We proposed meeting on Sunday in committee of the whole for over six hours to allow four ministers to appear before us and answer questions from the opposition and the government, in order to get to the bottom of the matter in relation to Bill C-2. That is our job as parliamentarians.

That is the way Conservatives are working. We have to hold the government to account. We are here to ask questions and the ministers are here to answer questions.

Being in cabinet is a privilege. If the gods and my leader are willing, maybe one day I myself will be in cabinet. Who knows? At any rate, being a minister is certainly something.

The ministers we hoped would answer questions before this committee were serious ministers, senior ministers who are responsible for billions of dollars. We wanted to hear from the Minister of Finance. We wanted to hear from the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion, as well as the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development and the Minister of Labour. These four ministers played a central part in the discussions surrounding Bill C-2, which represents more than $50 billion in spending. They could have answered the committee's questions. However, our proposal was declined. We were fine with that, because it is part of the democratic process.

A few hours later, however, we found out that the government and the NDP had hammered out an agreement on Bill C-2. That agreement was negotiated in a proper democratic fashion. We are not going to raise a fuss over it.

We will see how the debates go. What points will people raise about the bill that is about to be introduced? What are members going to be able to say in a mere four and a half hours about $57 billion in proposed spending?

This is the key element of this debate today. The government is asking taxpayers to spend $57 billion and we, the representatives of Canadians, will only have four and a half hours of discussion and debate. That is absolutely not enough, and there is no partisanship in that. Those are the facts. Technically speaking, we need to go deeply into this bill. We need to know exactly what the intention of the government is. We have a job to do, but the government, which killed the parliamentary process this summer and dodged the responsibility it had to work with other parties, decided to kill our responsibility to go deeply into the bill.

When the Liberals are attacking us on that, they are not attacking us; they are attacking Canadians. Canadians deserve answers. Canadians have elected us to ask tough questions. I know them. I know they are ready to answer that. Let us do our jobs. The government is not doing that right now.

It might come as a surprise to some of us that the government would treat parliamentary procedure so grievously.

I have had the privilege of representing the people of Louis-Saint-Laurent for almost five years now. I cannot thank them enough for electing me twice. This is not the first time in the past five years that this government's approach to the rights, privileges and responsibilities of all parliamentarians, including those in opposition, has been a little too authoritarian.

Members will recall the infamous Motion No. 6 tabled in May 2016. It gave the government extraordinary powers to ram through bills that should have been given more serious attention.

Sadly, we all remember how that led to a deeply unfortunate and disgraceful incident: the Prime Minister left his seat, grabbed an opposition member—our party whip—by the arm and marched him across the chamber like a crook.

This was called “elbowgate”. The Prime Minister crossed the floor, grabbing a political adversary and using it just like that. That was everything but good. That was a shame. I have never seen an act so disgraceful, and it was coming from the top, the Prime Minister. Why? Because we were asking to have a friendly debate, and Motion No. 6 was anything but that. The Prime Minister was not happy with our position and he did something very wrong. Obviously, he excused himself the day after. He did what he had to do.

We were then able to proceed. However, the government's main intention with Motion No. 6 was to hinder the work of parliamentarians, especially opposition members.

A year later in May 2017, the government did exactly the same thing. It once again proposed measures aimed at limiting parliamentary work, especially that of the opposition and particularly in committee. Thanks to a vigilant opposition and our tireless work at committee trying to block this measure, the government realized that it made no sense.

A number of bills were introduced in May 2019. The government wanted them to pass after just minutes, never mind hours, of debate. It was unacceptable.

Hon. members will also recall that in the winter of 2019, when another Liberal scandal, the SNC-Lavalin one, had just erupted, the government decided to put an end to the parliamentary committee's work. That was also unacceptable.

This Liberal government's first Parliament ended with 63 time allocation motions. Yes, the current government imposed 63 gag orders. That was also unacceptable.

As I said earlier, during the campaign, the Liberals said that they would be very frank and very honest with all parliamentarians, that they would make Parliament work, that they would not prorogue the House. However, that is what they did. They also adopted 63 time allocation motions. This is anything but parliamentary freedom and this is everything but good parliamentary attitude.

We ended up with this new Parliament following the election. When the COVID-19 crisis began, all members from all parties worked in good faith for the good of Canadians. Obviously we had to give the government certain powers, as the situation was unforeseen. Nevertheless, the Liberals gave themselves powers that were excessive, to say the least.

Let's not forget that the first version of Bill C-13 would have allowed the government to take measures and write cheques at will until the end of 2021. They were very ambitious, not to mention greedy. That was not what needed to be done. Our vigilance, and that of the other parties, ensured that the government backed down.

That was a good indication that the government was very ambitious. When it came time to say that this was an extraordinary situation and that Parliament could not sit in its usual fashion, the government decided to give itself all sorts of powers until December 2021.

How could we accept the fact that the government was ready to have full power for more than a year and a half? That is not parliamentary democracy. Canada deserves better. We understand and recognize that we have to address some situations if some emergency arises, but we shall respect the responsibility of parliamentarians. Again, this morning the government is so happy to shut down the parliamentary system and this is unacceptable to us.

We are very sad to see that the government wants to muzzle parliamentarians once again. The Conservatives are well aware that we need proper measures for Canadians and that these measures have to correspond to the needs of Canadian families, that we must take into account Canadian businesses that are facing tough challenges, that we must take into account Canadian workers who lost their jobs, and that we must take into account the men and women with children who are worried.

Indeed, we have measures to bring in. Indeed, we must work together. Indeed, we must put partisanship aside in order to act for the good of Canadians. However, we have a job to do, and when the government is getting ready to spend $57 billion, we think parliamentarians should do their job. Four and a half hours does not leave enough time for us to do our job properly.

Therefore, I move the following amendment:

That the motion be amended:

(a) in paragraph (b), by replacing the words “not be deferred”, with the words “be deferred until the expiry of time provided for Oral Questions at the next sitting day which is not a Friday”; and

(b) by replacing paragraphs (c) to (e) with the following:

“(c) if the bill is adopted at second reading, it shall be referred to a committee of the whole and the House shall, when the orders of the day are next called after the bill has been read the second time, resolve itself into a committee of the whole on the said bill, provided that:

(i) the committee be subject to the provisions relating to virtual sittings of the House,

(ii) the Speaker may preside,

(iii) the Chair may preside from the Speaker’s chair,

(iv) the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion, the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, and the Minister of Labour be invited to appear,

(v) each minister shall be questioned for 95 minutes, provided that:

(A) the chair shall call members from all recognized parties and one member who does not belong to a recognized party in a fashion consistent with the proportions observed during Oral Questions, following the rotation used for question by the former Special Committee on the COVID-19 Pandemic;

(B) no member shall be recognized for more than five minutes at a time which may be used for posing questions;

(C) members may be permitted to split their time with one or more members by so indicating to the chair, and

(D) questions shall be answered by the minister or another minister acting on her or his behalf,

(vi) notices of amendments to the bill to be considered in committee of the whole may be deposited with the Clerk of the House at any time following the adoption of this order until the conclusion of the second hour of debate in committee of the whole,

(vii) at the conclusion of time provided for questioning ministers, or when no member rises to speak, whichever is earlier, the Chair shall put forthwith and successively every question necessary to dispose of the committee stage of the bill, including each amendment deposited with the Clerk of the House pursuant to subparagraph (vi);

(d) once the bill has been reported from the committee of the whole, the Speaker shall put forthwith and successively every question necessary to dispose of the report and third reading stages of the bill, provided that no recorded division shall be deferred; and

(e) the Standing Orders relating to the ordinary hour of daily adjournment shall be suspended while the bill is being considered under the provisions of this order”.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Alexandra Mendes]

The amendment is in order.

The Leader of the Government in the House of Commons.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I listened to the opposition House leader and a major aspect is missing from his speech. In order for the House to proceed in a fashion where there is a great deal of constructive debate, we need the co-operation of opposition parties.

It does not take very much to filibuster a bill, let alone in any important message that comes out of the House of Commons. We all know that. If an opposition party wants to prevent something from taking place or cause frustration, it only takes a few members to do that. The Conservatives have demonstrated over the last five years that their priority is to make the House look dysfunctional. During the coronavirus pandemic, we are looking for a higher sense of co-operation from the Conservatives and opposition parties. We would like that higher sense of co-operation.

If it were up to the opposition House leader and he could wave his wand, when would he want this measure to pass? How many hours of debate would the member want in order to allow it to pass? Would he strive to achieve that within the next 24 hours?

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would not say “arrogant” or “funny”, but I would try to find a word between the two, because what we are seeing now from the government is a total lack of responsibility. We also see the government's intention to kill the job we have to do here.

Why did I use the word “kill”? It is because that is exactly what the government did six weeks ago. It decided to kill parliamentary procedure by proroguing. Had it not done that, we could have worked hand in hand this summer to reach an agreement. We could have worked correctly as parliamentarians.

This was shown to us last week. The government decided to have a throne speech at the end of the month of September, which is its choice, even though it knew all this reassurance would be coming at the end of September. It calls the shots.

Seeing that, what did we do as parliamentarians? We acted responsibly. On Friday morning my colleagues and I tabled a motion offering the government the opportunity to go deep into Bill C-2. We called for a committee of the whole on Sunday for six full hours, with four senior cabinet ministers answering questions. That is what parliamentarians are all about. That is what we asked for, and the Liberals refused.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by congratulating my colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent on his appointment as House leader. I also look forward to hearing from his party's new Quebec lieutenant, the member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, who is a very outspoken individual.

I would like to ask my colleague what he thinks was the reason for the prorogation. We know that, during a pandemic, people want swift and pragmatic action. The government decided to put the House on hold for six weeks. We could have passed this bill much sooner and we could have focused on things that are a little more important, such as a real recovery plan. The Speech from the Throne was a pretentious petition that many thought was lacklustre. We lost six weeks. That is a lot of time.

I would like the House leader of the official opposition to tell me what he thinks was the reason for the prorogation.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Jonquière for his kind words. I really appreciate it. We are going to continue to work for the good of Quebeckers and Canadians.

The reason the government decided to kill off Parliament two months ago is perfectly simple: it was stuck in a quagmire of its own making with WE Charity, and it desperately needed a way out.

Let's not forget that at the very moment when the government or the Prime Minister announced the prorogation of the House, we, the Conservatives, had just received 5,000 pages of documents about the WE Charity scandal, 1,000 pages of which had been redacted. It is easy to see why the government wanted to keep parliamentarians from doing their job. It is precisely because we were doing our job, the job we were elected to do, namely asking questions and holding the government accountable.

The Right Hon. Prime Minister of Canada once made a shockingly dishonourable remark that may have revealed his true mindset. He said he had a level of admiration for China's dictatorship.

Unfortunately for him, we are not a dictatorship like China. We are the Parliament of Canada, and all Canadians need to work together for the good of the entire country.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague the opposition House leader talked about the government's prorogation of Parliament, something we are also deeply concerned about, and that the Liberals waited until today, the day after the end of CERB and the end of supports for workers and for businesses that closed their doors for public health. These people are vulnerable right now. Many of them are suffering from mental health challenges because they are worried about how they are going to pay their bills. That is something we agree on.

I am wondering where the Conservatives sit regarding paid sick days. The member talked about the NDP working with the Liberals to move this forward because of the desperation that is going on right now. We know many workers are going to the workplace while sick. In fact, low-income workers are more likely to take unpaid leave than are their high-income counterparts. Only 14% of workers earning less than $16,000 took paid leave, compared with 70% of those earning more than $96,000 a year; this is from the Huffington Post. Workers are going to work sick. They are putting their colleagues at risk and they are putting businesses at risk. These businesses could be brought to their knees if people get sick and the virus spreads.

Do my colleague and the Conservatives support increasing workers' sick days to 10 working days so that people can stay home when they are showing symptoms of the virus? This is not just important for workers. It is also important for the economy. I wonder if the Conservatives and my colleague support our efforts in pushing for this and making sure this happens.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from the NDP for his important and passionate question. I do recognize his passion for those issues. That is what democracy is all about; we have to share our positions.

This is why we totally disagree with what the government is doing right now. The government wants to kill that kind of debate. The government does not want to see us asking tough questions or tabling where we are so that we are sure that our position is well known.

This is why we had the proposition to have a committee of the whole. We were ready to sit here in the House of Commons as a committee of the whole on Sunday just to be sure that we were doing our job. The government did not agree with our proposition, but, more than that, it decided to have only four and a half hours of debate. The question raised by my colleague is quite important. This is why we need to debate this correctly in the House, not only for four and a half hours.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Madam Speaker, I want to go back to the beginning of this crisis when all of these pieces of legislation were being proposed by the government. I am going to give credit where credit is due, not just to the Conservative side but to all sides of this House, for the work that was done to make those bills better and to recognize that in many cases they were woefully inadequate.

To use a couple of examples, the wage subsidy initially proposed a 10% wage subsidy, but it was the opposition, all of us, that spoke to the government because we were hearing from our constituents that it was woefully inadequate. There were changes made to the CERB, changes made to the CEBA and changes made to rent relief because all parliamentarians worked with this team Canada approach. We went to the government and said, “These are the changes that need to be made”.

When these pieces of legislation were first introduced, a lot of the deficiencies in them were not known until after the bill had been rammed through Parliament. What is the value of having committees? What is the value of having parliamentarians deal with these pieces of legislation to improve them for Canadians and for the businesses that employ people?

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Madam Speaker, my colleague from Ontario has detailed quite clearly why we need to have good parliamentary debate. This is exactly why we are asking the government to let us do our job.

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

Madam Speaker, naturally, I rise to speak to Bill C-2, an act relating to economic recovery in response to COVID-19.

Sometimes the saying “better late than never” applies, but not here since it is too late for the bill before us. In fact, the three economic support benefits in this bill, which affect thousands of workers and were announced by the government on August 20, are still not in place, while the CERB ended yesterday. Why is that?

The reason is that this government, which was involved in another major scandal, the WE Charity scandal, deliberately chose to prorogue the House for petty political considerations. If that is not partisanship, I do not know what is. It has left thousands of people in the lurch, in a state of distress and uncertainty. It is scandalous.

Long before now, long before the crisis started, we knew that the EI social safety net was torn and needed a complete overhaul so that it could fulfill its purpose. The eligibility criteria, coverage, duration, benefit amount and funding arrangements all needed to be reviewed.

Without going into details on the regular EI program, I want to remind all members that only about 40% of workers are currently covered. Among women, youth and seasonal workers, that figure is even lower. Self-employed, part-time and contract workers are not eligible at all. That is why action is needed, and we knew that long ago.

At the height of the crisis, nearly nine million workers became unemployed. It became glaringly obvious that our EI regime was unable to do what it was designed to do and insure and protect workers in the event of unemployment. That is why the government implemented the CERB.

On April 11, the current President of the Treasury Board said the government knew that the EI safety net had a few too many holes in it and did not provide sufficient coverage. However, the government did not move forward with its reform quickly enough, even though in 2016, during the previous Parliament, the Liberal government had promised to conduct a broad review of the EI system and modernize our income support system for unemployed workers, since this social safety net was failing too many of them.

It is even more troubling, and indeed downright outrageous, to see in the throne speech just how quick the Prime Minister was to interfere more and more in areas of provincial jurisdiction while being so agonizingly slow, so lax, in taking care of the federal government's own social programs for workers and seniors. We therefore join the consensus among politicians in Quebec and call on the federal government to mind its own business and look after its own affairs.

As we know, strong measures to help workers and support employment must be the cornerstones of the economic recovery. In fact, it was the Bloc Québécois that proposed that the Canada emergency response benefit and the Canada emergency student benefit include employment incentives. Our hope was that these benefits would support two objectives, namely to provide support while creating jobs. Despite the government's firm commitment to the House on April 29 to attain both objectives, nothing has been done.

Furthermore, the government knew that many workers who had lost their jobs because of the crisis would not qualify for EI when the CERB ended. For that reason, the government decided to relax the EI rules and make the program more accessible.

We welcome these adjustments. However, there is more work to be done, because even with less stringent rules, not all workers in need qualify. Today, more than 900,000 workers are wondering whether they will qualify for EI and, if not, whether they will be eligible for the measures we will be voting on.

Today, self-employed workers, workers in non-standard jobs and seasonal workers need help more than ever before.

Leaving our constituents in this state of uncertainty is unacceptable, and we must do everything we can to prevent these workers from slipping into poverty.

We could have passed the new measures sooner, but the government decided to prorogue Parliament, thereby delaying passage of the necessary measures in Bill C-2. Once again, we condemn this government tactic.

Let's not forget that in June, the Trudeau government was making headlines with its inept mishandling—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Alexandra Mendes]

Order. I would remind the hon. member that the use of members' names is not permitted.

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

Madam Speaker, I will try not to do it again.

The Liberal government made headlines for mishandling the Canada student service grant program by asking WE Charity to manage it. The government did everything it could to keep this quiet, and it put protecting its image ahead of helping workers and managing the crisis.

Why did the government prorogue Parliament for five weeks when it could have taken action in July? We sat during the summer, and the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities could easily have been called upon, because it was sitting to discuss these matters. The government could have prorogued Parliament for just 24 hours.

We believe that the prorogation of Parliament was just another Liberal tactic to draw a red herring across the trail. It is another example of the government's ineptitude. The Liberals were more concerned about protecting their image than giving priority to workers in need. What is more, this approach is a blatant example of this government's lack of respect for the work of Parliament.

We could have taken the time to study the bill properly and hear from witnesses in order to fix any problems, but now we are being forced to adopt it right away. That is unacceptable.

We are in favour of using a more flexible EI program to transition away from CERB. That is what we asked for. We are also happy with the three economic benefits in the bill we are debating even though we condemn the government's way of doing things.

However, we must remind the House and the government that this new flexibility and Bill C-2 are only the first step toward true employment insurance reform.

I would also like to point out that these new measures will be in effect for just one year. What happens 12 months from now? As we said, employment insurance needs real reform and has for quite some time. I think this is the time to decide what the future looks like.

A number of unions and groups advocating for the unemployed have already expressed their enthusiasm for the measures that are going to be adopted. However, all these groups have also insisted that the new measures lay the groundwork for a future overhaul. We stand with Quebec workers in calling for these changes.

I would also point out that the adjustments made and the measures introduced today do not solve all the problems with EI; far from it. Let me remind hon. members that I myself presented a motion to the House that was unanimously adopted, to increase the special EI sickness benefits from the current 15 weeks to 50 weeks. The situation is critical for these individuals, too. We do not have a minute to waste. Why did the government not use this as an opportunity to address the matter of sickness benefits and extend them immediately?

In closing, I would like to reiterate that we want this bill to pass. We owe it to Quebec's workers and to everyone whose CERB ended yesterday. We cannot leave anyone in the uncertainty and anguish they are feeling today.

Our hope today is that this government will finally decide to take a serious look at the EI reforms that are needed and not let any future scandals distract it from this crucial objective.

I ask today, is the government prepared to go ahead with a long-term reform of the EI system?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, indeed, the minister responsible has done an incredible job in terms of the amount of effort. I suspect if we were still giving out those awards, I would be nominating her for the hardest-working member of Parliament, especially over the last eight months. Virtually day in and day out, seven days a week, there has been a tremendous amount of consultation and working with Canadians.

The member made reference to the bill and that it is there to help and continue to provide the support that is absolutely essential to Canadians, which is why it is so very important that we see the legislation passed.

However, the member had concerns in regard to the manipulation of Parliament. I would ask her to provide some comment and indicate the last time the Prime Minister and the ministers made themselves available right here on the floor of the House of Commons during the months of July and August, when literally hundreds of questions were asked by opposition members and answered. I can't recall that happening in the last 30 years.

Can the member opposite tell me the last time that happened in the House of Commons and questions were put forward?

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

Madam Speaker, the government is not answering questions from the opposition or from parliamentarians. We need to get back to the bill before us today.

Earlier, I heard the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons say that we need to act now. He said that we need to leave politics aside and work together to help all Canadians. He said that Canadians need our help.

How disappointing. We had plenty of time to work on this between June and August, when we had a set schedule and already knew that the Canada emergency wage benefit would be coming to an end. They prorogued the House on August 18 and announced the three new measures on August 20. That seemed shifty to me.

If the government is wondering when we were last consulted, the answer is “never”.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Madam Speaker, the member raised some very important points in her remarks, such as the right of parliamentarians to do their jobs. She did a fine job illustrating the fact that the government was caught red-handed in the WE Charity scandal, so it decided to shut down Parliament. Two days later, it presented some financial measures that are included in the bill. For six weeks, we were unable to do our jobs as parliamentarians.

Why does the member think that the government decided to muzzle opposition members?

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

Madam Speaker, we did not get time to discuss it. We could also use some forward planning. It is not always possible to manage things as if it is an emergency.

In my speech, I wanted to show that even before the CERB was introduced, we knew that the main social safety net, the EI program, would not meet needs in the event of a crisis. The program has been slashed repeatedly by government after government over the past 25 years. If we had taken the time to have this conversation, we would not be in the situation we are in today, neither when the CERB was active nor today.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Madam Speaker, here we are. The benefits of the CERB ran out last night at midnight, and we are rushing through legislation right now to get people help. I agree with my colleague that the government prorogued Parliament at a time when people needed help the most.

Right now, we are seeing people fall through the cracks, such as those who have closed their businesses and workers who do not have a job to go back to. They need help. In my riding, many people did not qualify for the first fish harvester benefit and grant program that the government rolled out. We have a crisis with our wild salmon right now. Fishers are not on the water fishing when they should be, and this is impacting them right now. It is so important that we get support for workers.

Does my colleague support the idea that benefits should not be cut? The government proposed cutting CERB payments from $2,000 to $1,600. Does my colleague agree that it should stay at $2,000? Even with that, it will be difficult for many families to survive this pandemic and get through it, especially with the second wave hitting our country particularly in Quebec right now.

I wonder if my colleague supports standing up for workers and the people who need the support, such as business owners and those collecting the CERB as we walk toward this new EI. I am very grateful to hear the member speak about the need to reform EI. Clearly, that is evident in this crisis.

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

Madam Speaker, I hope this answer is clear: The Bloc Québécois supports EI reform.

Currently, 3.5 million workers are still unemployed. The more flexible employment insurance system will therefore pay at least $500 to those who qualify for EI.

The new Canada recovery benefit targets those in certain age groups or working in seasonal industries or other economic sectors such as accommodation and tourism. These folks have nothing in front of them. They do not qualify for EI. They should have received the new benefit we are considering, not the day after tomorrow, but yesterday.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Madam Speaker, my question is for my colleague from Thérèse-De Blainville.

For years, the Bloc Québécois has been calling for EI reform to help workers who experience the spring gap, who are not eligible for EI, who are self-employed or who do not have access to sickness benefits.

Since the COVID-19 crisis, the government has woken up and realized that the EI system is not working. There is a problem with it. We are unable to help all those who are losing their jobs. We are seeing that all of the cuts that have been made over the years by Liberal and Conservative governments were not a good idea.

The government rushed to create the CERB during the crisis. That caused problems because it disincentivized work. Rather than holding a meaningful debate, the government created the CERB. Then the WE Charity scandal broke out, and the government decided to shut down Parliament.

Is that something that frustrates my colleague?

If the government had dealt with it from the beginning, perhaps the EI problem would not be as serious as it is today and we would be in a better position. Perhaps the government would not have created programs that disincentivize work, or any other hastily designed programs that ultimately fail to solve the problem.

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

Madam Speaker, I thank my esteemed colleague for his question.

It does not make me sad. It makes me mad. Civil society groups in Quebec and across Canada have been demanding change for 15 years. There have been no significant changes to EI in 15 years.

The purpose of EI is to protect workers who lose their jobs, to protect the unemployed. That is all it is supposed to do. The system has not been changed in 15 years. Actually, it has been changed for the worse, whittled away little by little. It is outrageous.

That is why I am seizing this opportunity. We have time to really undertake a complete overhaul of the EI system. We do not want to find ourselves in another economic crisis or health crisis, wondering if the program is doing what it is supposed to be doing.

I think there have been a lot of missed opportunities, even though this has been pointed out plenty of times.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, what an honour it has been to have the opportunity to represent the people of Elmwood—Transcona throughout the course of a very challenging time in our history.

I was elected not quite a year ago with the general mandate to defend the interests of working people here in Ottawa and to try to make Parliament work for people. That has been foremost in my mind and in the work of the NDP throughout the course of this pandemic, which could not have been foreseen at the time of the last election. Nevertheless it is our responsibility as public office holders to deal with it, in the best way we possibly can.

Many things have been called into question about the way we did things before the pandemic. There are many urgent questions about how we deal with the particularities of the pandemic and the challenges it presents.

We have heard a lot from other opposition parties today about the challenge to parliamentary process. Is that the main thing that the people we represent are concerned about? It is certainly something that is important. It matters how things work here. It matters that we are able to hold the government to account, but is it the main thing that ought to preoccupy us on a day when the income support program that has been sustaining Canadian households throughout this pandemic expired yesterday at midnight? I think not.

I think it is incumbent upon us to be a little flexible in our understanding of parliamentary process at this time. We can continue to talk about the role that the government played in creating this situation, where Parliament has not had more time. Nevertheless, we find ourselves here and have to respond to that situation. I hope Canadians will have been paying attention to the way that the government manufactured this sense of urgency and judge its members appropriately at election time.

We can talk about the economic crisis. It was severe. There is a lot that Parliament and the government need to do to avoid the economic threats that the pandemic presents. Of course, the CERB has been a very important part of heading off those threats to the economy. It has helped the economy continue as best it can in very difficult circumstances by ensuring that people have money to pay their landlords to stay housed, by ensuring that people have some money to put food on the table, and by ensuring that people have some money to spend in their local economy to help businesses that are struggling.

Those are all things that are very important, but first and foremost what we are called to respond to is the very real story of human tragedy that the pandemic has given rise to. We know that what people are struggling with, and what is top of mind for them, is a sense of fear because they have lost their jobs. In some cases people have gone back to work, which is great.

For other people, their entire industry has been called into question, with the future of their industry being on the ropes. Not only are they not back to work, but they are not sure if there will ever be work to go back to, in the industry that they worked in before, in the way that they knew it prior to the pandemic.

We know people have been overtaken with grief at the loss of loved ones, particularly in personal care homes. They were not able to go to visit someone at the height of the first wave. We are concerned as we enter into a second wave that families will find themselves in that position again, or that families will be limited to one visitor or none at all for a relative in a hospital. It may not be that someone is sick with COVID-19, but because they have another issue that has landed them in the hospital, concerned family members are challenged by not being able to see them.

We can think of people living in indigenous communities who have been abused for far too long. They worry about systemic problems that have led to overcrowded housing and a lack of clean drinking water, and what it will mean for their communities, families and loved ones if the virus enters their community. There have been travel bans put in place. It has made life hard for people.

These are the things that people are really worried about and they have been foremost in the minds of the NDP members and our work.

What can Parliament and government do to support Canadians as they deal with all of those consequences of the pandemic, on top of the challenges that they already had in their lives? As they try to manage that stress and they try to show compassion and care for the people around them, what can we do to ensure that we do not pile additional unneeded stress, particularly financial stress, on top of all those many concerns?

That is what the Canada emergency response benefit was meant to do. It was something that we had to fight for, initially. I remember sitting here, in this very place, prior to the initial lockdown, listening to the NDP leader question the Prime Minister about what they were going to do to support families as we headed toward lockdown. I remember, very distinctly, the Prime Minister talking about tinkering with the employment insurance system, a system that has long been broken and not serving Canadians well who have paid into that insurance program to support them when they are out of work. We knew that was not going to be enough. We knew that playing at the edges of that broken employment insurance system was not going to support Canadians through it.

New Democrats pushed for a basic income for all Canadians during this time that would be taxed back from those who did not need it at the end of the fiscal year, as a way to get help out as quickly as possible to as many Canadians as possible. We negotiated with a government that was determined to have an exclusionary approach to income, to decide who was deserving and who was not deserving. That is how the CERB was born.

Then, in the subsequent months, we spent a lot of work championing the cause of many different groups of Canadians who were left out by that exclusionary approach. I am thinking especially of persons living with disabilities, because we did, through multiple rounds of negotiations, finally convince the government to make some income support available for persons living with disabilities. It was not the kind of support we wanted to see. It was to be a one-time payment. It is shameful that that money has not yet been delivered. It was meant to be an emergency support payment, and people living with disabilities in Canada are still waiting.

Seniors were left out. It could be that the income of some seniors who have the good fortune of having a defined benefit plan did not change, but their circumstances changed. The support networks that they knew, the friends and family who would come and help them to do laundry and get groceries, were now being asked not to go to their parents' place or their grandparents' place. That meant that in order for seniors to replace the work that was done in that support network, money was required for laundry services, for grocery delivery, for whatever it may be.

We fought hard to try to get support for seniors as well. That payment was made, but it was only a one-time payment. We know that this pandemic is going to last a long time. That is why we need better solutions that build towards a better Canada that supports its seniors and that supports its people living with disabilities.

We fought for students who were left completely out of the CERB, notwithstanding the fact that we all knew that their summer employment prospects were not going to be the same as they had been before and that finding a job that could support them in paying their tuition in the fall was going to be impossible. Also, not every student is a kid living in their parents' basement. That is the impression we got from the government, while negotiating for the student benefit. That is simply not true. A lot of students are supporting themselves and supporting families as they go to school. They have to pay rent and put food on the table, and they were not able to get employment.

The government finally, after New Democrats pushing for students to be on the CERB, set up an entirely separate benefit that paid less. One of the reasons the government said it was justified in paying students less and having a whole separate administration, bureaucracy and program for students was because they were going to have an excellent summer work program that was going to top up students' benefits. That came to be known as the WE Charity scandal. That money has not flowed to students in any way, shape or form. That employment was never created. In fact, we found out that that money really was a targeted benefit for certain wealthy and well-connected friends of the Liberal Party, including their own family members, to the great shame of the government.

Part of the reason why we are in the urgent scenario that we are in is because they did such a terrible job of that. It was so obscene that the Prime Minister felt he had to prorogue Parliament just to escape scrutiny from it. That meant that Parliament did not have the time it ought to have had, and could have had, if Parliament had not been prorogued.

The economic challenges of the pandemic are not going away. They are not going to go away until we get back to normal, and that is going to take a significant amount of time. As I said earlier, the CERB expired yesterday at midnight, so we now find ourselves in a position where a significant portion of the over four million people who were still on CERB now do not have anything in place. We heard some discussion of this earlier in the House, and I think everybody is quite right to feel a great sense of frustration at the government that it came to this point. The NDP had negotiated a series of summer sittings, once every two weeks, partly to check in and make sure that the government was not misappropriating funds or spending them on its friends in inappropriate ways. It is a good thing we had those summer sittings, because we learned a lot about what the government was doing behind closed doors.

However, we did not get to have the last one, during which we could have done one of two things.

First, we could have considered legislation for the government's new program. We know that they knew the details, because they announced all of the details of the program the day after the Prime Minister prorogued Parliament. The idea that this was not ready to go or that we could not have had that discussion in August is simply false. We know they were ready to have that conversation, but they decided not to for reasons that had to do with their own political interests and nothing to do with the public interest. I submit that in that moment the government lost sight of the real stories of human tragedy that the pandemic has engendered and the importance of the role of government in supporting Canadians through this time. Had that been foremost in their minds, they would not have prorogued Parliament. They would have brought this legislation to us then.

Second, the NDP called for Parliament to resume earlier, for an earlier Speech from the Throne. Anybody familiar with Liberal election platforms for the last 30 years could have mocked up that Speech from the Throne on the back of a napkin in about half an hour. There was nothing special in that Speech from the Throne; there was nothing new. There was nothing even particularly eloquent about it. There was no good reason to wait on this important work for that Speech from the Throne, so we could have gotten that done. They could have done that a lot sooner. It was a canned speech as far as I am concerned. We could have been dealing with this and subjected it to more and appropriate scrutiny.

However, there is no doubt that there is an urgent need for this help, because we find ourselves where we find ourselves. We can play the blame game, but I think Canadians want us to move beyond that. Assigning political blame should not be a recipe for paralysis in a crisis.

We do need to move forward. We do need to have something to replace the CERB. Finally, after weeks of no communication, the Liberals got serious about talking to opposition parties, and we were able to push them to stop the cut that they announced in August to the CERB benefit, from $2,000 a month to $1,600 a month, and get them to maintain that benefit level for Canadians who needed it. That was a real, productive outcome of those negotiations, even if they happened late.

Likewise, we were able to secure improvements to the government's sick leave plan, a sick leave plan that, incidentally, the government was opposed to for a long time. The NDP had to make it a real priority in our negotiations with the government to get a commitment to paid sick days for Canadians in the context of the pandemic. Then it took months for the Liberals to announce a plan, and when they finally announced it, they prorogued Parliament. There has been delay after delay after delay, but I think we have shown that when the government is finally ready to work, we are there ready to get to work right away. We are ready to make improvements to these measures on behalf of Canadians.

I will say once again that when it comes to laying blame for the situation that we find ourselves in, although this is not a recipe for us to not ensure there is something in place for Canadians, in a democracy the ultimate mechanism for accountability is an election. Even though we are going to do our job and make sure there is a program for Canadians in their time of need, I do hope that Canadians remember at election time, whether it is in a month from now, a year from now or three years from now, that the Liberal government was prepared to play political games with their futures and, if nothing else, even if this legislation passes expeditiously, to rob them of the time to plan for what the replacement would look like.

We know in this minority Parliament that it takes negotiation among the parties to get something passed. Canadians know that. They are not fools. Notwithstanding whatever the government announced in August, Canadians did not know what they could rely on until this moment, until there had been negotiations, and they will not know until the legislation is passed. That makes it very hard for them to plan for their futures.

That has been a theme of the government: It has been ragging the puck and making it hard for Canadians to plan month to month. We saw it with a couple of eleventh-hour extensions of the CERB. The government wasted that time instead of using it to come up with something that could have either replaced the CERB or extended the CERB for a longer period. We saw month-to-month extensions and then an extension over the summer, but that time was not properly used to develop an alternative that Canadians could rely on.

Despite the fact that we are prepared to support these measures as a matter of urgency, the paid sick leave provisions are not what Canadians deserve. Canadians, like workers in many other jurisdictions internationally, should have the right to 10 paid sick days from their employer on a permanent basis, regardless of what the illness is. In the bill the Liberals presented before, Bill C-2, we saw a very restrictive approach to these sick days and know they are only temporary. When the new bill is tabled, I am hoping and expecting very much to see expanded eligibility that makes it easier for Canadians to avail themselves of this sick leave, which is not quite COVID-specific. I hope it is just a stepping stone to get to the point where Canadians have permanent sick leave.

It is also relevant to the pandemic. What we want to do is take as many barriers off the table for Canadians that would cause them to question whether they are eligible for this benefit or not, because we saw this in the story of CERB and the attestation, as well as with the concern over the fraud provisions in Bill C-17. Canadians are honest, by and large, and they are deeply concerned about applying for benefits that they are unsure they qualify for. What was really important when it came to sick leave was to ensure that Canadians had the maximum level of comfort to be able to avail themselves of those provisions. Let us remember why these sick days are such an important tool for the pandemic. It is so that when Canadians wake up and are feeling sick, whether they are sneezing, coughing, have a headache or feel sick to their stomach, they can make the call to not go into work to protect their colleagues and their communities from the spread of a virus that we know is spreading rapidly. This is what we are asking people to do to prevent the spread of the virus, and they need the tools to be able to do that. Paid sick leave is an important tool.

We have pushed to try to make this as easy to access as possible in the context of a government that does not want to see 10 permanent sick days allocated to Canadians as a matter of right. That is unfortunate, but it is a battle we will continue to fight, notwithstanding supporting this legislation today. What we are doing today is getting something in place that can serve Canadians now. It is not building back better. It is not what we would like to see when it comes to having immediate solutions that build toward a brighter future. It is a band-aid solution, but one that is badly needed in the circumstances.

I hope one day Canadians will have a government that is willing to respond to a crisis in a way that sets us up to have a better future beyond the crisis, rather than just limping through. That is something Canadians can count on the NDP to continue fighting for here in this chamber.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, there has been a lot of discussion today about whether proroguing the House was necessary and why that happened, but when we think about what has taken place over the last six or seven months, we know billions and billions of dollars have been spent to assist Canadians. Quite often there was very little debate before those funds were approved by all parties of the House. It happened the majority of times when those bills came forward.

The thought that perhaps we needed to come back to the House to ask if the government was going in the right direction and whether we should continue down this path was extremely important. What we saw was one of the shortest prorogations in modern history. Only two sitting days were actually lost as a result of it.

I find the comments from my NDP colleague very interesting because I thought the New Democrats were on board with the Speech from the Throne and were going to vote in favour of it. Now I hear him talking about horrible it is, that it was not even eloquent and that it did not have anything good in it. Is he going against his party? Is he not going to vote in favour of the Speech from the Throne?

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I do not feel quite right dignifying that with a response.

What the New Democrats have been doing is working with a government that we are quite critical of. We were elected to a minority Parliament, as were they, and we said we would come to Ottawa and make Parliament work as best we could for people. That is the work that we continue to do, notwithstanding the shenanigans of the Liberal Party. We will work as best we can. As long as we can find agreement on a path forward that is better for Canadians than what they would get if the Liberals were simply left to their own devices, we will continue to do that work. That is what we are here to do.

It came as no surprise to me that it was not a very inspiring Speech from the Throne. That was not my criterion. I was not looking to be inspired by a Prime Minister who has had ethical scandal after ethical scandal and is clearly looking to help his friends. What I was looking for is an opportunity to do my work and leverage more out of the government for ordinary Canadians who it does not think about enough, frankly, and I will continue to do that work for as long as I can.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Madam Speaker, I think the hon. member would agree with me that Matt Gurney of the National Post described the throne speech best when he said it was bizarre.

I really appreciate what the hon. member had to say and his interventions in the House because he speaks with passion. He speaks succinctly and with reason as well. During his speech, he mentioned band-aid solutions. We saw that very early on in this crisis when the government was trying to ram through legislation without any parliamentary oversight, without any committee work, without the ability of stakeholders or advocates across this country to really assess those pieces of legislation and allow them to be better, better from the stakeholder and advocate perspective, better from parliamentarians' perspectives and certainly better for Canadians.

I wonder if the hon. member agrees with me. If we are proposing to spend $57 billion for programs that Canadians need, would it not be wise to have this go through the normal parliamentary process, putting it through committees to hear from people who are affected by these programs to see whether they are negatively affected and whether there is more that can be improved? Would that not be the normal process to go through rather than the process we are going through right now?